'Yes, yes,' he murmured. 'I have had some experience. Uncle knows that.'
He stared at me and his eyes were full of tears. I let the matter rest.
At length I grew tired of visiting Selkirk so excused myself and spent days wandering the Tower. The royal apartments were eerie and sinister; galleries which ended abruptly at blocked passageways, spiral staircases which led nowhere. I asked one of the guards about this.
'Some people come here,' he muttered, shaking his head, 'and die in their cells, or on the block or at the gibbet. Some arrive and just disappear, not only them but their cells too. The doors are removed, the openings bricked up, and they are immured until death.'
Oh, yes, a dark satanic place the Tower. Sometimes at night I heard strange screams which plagued my dreams and caused nightmares. I wondered if they were the unfortunates in the torture room or the spirits of those bricked up in the walls of that great fortress.
Yet if the buildings were frightening, so were the people who lived there. The shadowy Doctor Agrippa flitted in and out of the Tower like a bat as he scurried around the city on the Lord Cardinal's business. On one occasion Benjamin sent me to see Agrippa in his lodgings which overlooked the chapel of St Peter Ad Vincula. The afternoon if I remember correctly was quite warm, the pale sun breaking through a cloying river mist which seeped over the walls and gateways of the Tower. I tapped on the doctor's door. There was no answer so I opened it. Agrippa was sitting on the floor. He turned to me quickly, his face a mask of rage.
'Get out!' he roared. 'I thought the door was locked!'
I hastily retreated but not before I had caught the whiff of burning as if an empty pan had been left over a roaring fire. And yet the room was cold, as freezing as a wasteland on an icy winter's day. I waited outside the door. After a few minutes Doctor Agrippa opened it, his face wreathed in angelic smiles.
'My dear Shallot,' he beamed, 'I am so sorry. Do come in.'
When I entered, the chamber was warm and Filled with a cloying sweet perfume. I gave him my master's message and left as quickly as I could, now convinced that the good doctor was a perfect practitioner of the Black Arts.
I also decided it was safer to stay in our own chamber. As the days passed, Benjamin began to win Selkirk's confidence.
'He's not as mad as he seems,' my master remarked, his long, dark face lined with tiredness, the deep-set eyes screwed up in concentration.
'Has he told you anything?'
'Yes, he babbles about Paris and a tavern called Le Coq d'Or.'
'And his secrets?'
Benjamin shook his head. 'He said they are contained in a poem but he has only told me the first two lines.' Benjamin closed his eyes. 'How does it go? 'Three less than twelve should it be, Or the king no prince engendered he.' ' He opened his eyes and looked at me.
'Anything else?'
Benjamin shook his head. 'In time, perhaps.'
Time, however, had run out for Selkirk. About ten days after we had arrived at the Tower, Benjamin came back late in the evening. He described his latest meeting with the prisoner, claimed that the Scotsman was as fond of claret as I and, rolling himself in his blankets, promptly fell asleep. The next morning we were roughly awoken by one of the guards hammering on the door.
'You must come now!' he bawled. 'To Broad Arrow Tower. Selkirk is dead!'
We hastily pulled on our clothes and, wrapping cloaks around us against the early morning mist, hurried across the green, forcing our way through the press of servants, scullions and guardsmen who stood around the doorway of the Tower. We hastened up the stone spiral staircase and into Selkirk's chamber. Most of the Queen's household was there, grouped around the huge four-poster bed where Selkirk's corpse lay shrouded by its sheet.
'What happened?' shouted Benjamin.
Catesby shook his head and looked away. Doctor Agrippa was sitting on a stool, a strange smile on his round, fat face; Carey, Moodie and Ruthven huddled together whilst Farringdon was interrogating the four guards. Benjamin's question created a momentary silence.
'Selkirk's dead!' Agrippa quietly announced. 'Scawsby thinks it's poison.'
Benjamin immediately went across to the tray of goblets and jug of wine he had brought up the previous evening.
'Don't touch that!' barked Scawsby.
The old quack had re-entered the room behind us, a bag in his hand full, I suppose, of the usual rubbish - knives, charts and a cup for blooding.
'What makes you think it's poison?' Benjamin asked.
Scawsby smirked. Going over to the bed, he pulled back the stained sheet. One look was enough. Selkirk had been no beauty in life; now, brutally murdered by poison, he looked ghastly. His hair straggled out across the grimy bolster, his thin white face had turned a strange bluish colour, the mouth sagged, the eyes stared sightlessly up.
'Good God!' my master muttered. 'A terrible death after a terrible life.' He bent down and sniffed the dead man's mouth. 'Have you determined what poison it is?'
Scawsby shrugged. 'Belladonna, digitalis, nightshade or arsenic. The only consolation is that death must have been quick.'
'And you suspect the wine?' I retorted.
Scawsby went over and sniffed both the flagon and cup. The bastard took his time. He knew who had brought them up. So I filled a cup and downed it in one gulp.
'My master is not responsible for the poison!' I shouted.
[Do you know, that's the bravest thing I have ever done in my life.]
'I hope not,' Scawsby sardonically replied, 'otherwise you will be dead within the hour.'
'I look well, Master Scawsby,' I replied, 'and feel well – which is more than can be said for you!'
'No quarrels,' Doctor Agrippa interrupted. 'And no one leaves this room. There is more, is there not?'
Farringdon went to the table, removed a piece of parchment and tossed a faded white rose on to the floor.
'Selkirk was discovered half-lying on the bed. On the desk we found this white rose.'
'The White Rose of York and the mark of Les Blancs Sangliers,' Catesby muttered.
His words stilled the room but Benjamin, a determined look on his face, refused to be overawed.
'We have a problem here,' he announced. 'Selkirk had his evening meal before I joined him last night – yes?'
Farringdon nodded.
'I came up with a flagon of wine. Now, both Selkirk's food and wine were tasted by me and the guards?' 'Yes, that's so,' Farringdon replied. 'After I left, did anyone visit Selkirk?' 'No!' the guards chorused.
Benjamin shook his head. 'Impossible. Surely someone visited him?'
'There were two guards at the foot of the steps,' Farringdon replied. 'And two guards outside the prisoner's chamber. The door remained bolted and locked.'
'Except for the usual procedure,' one of the soldiers interrupted.
'What's that?' Catesby asked.
'Well, after Master Daunbey left, we always wait a while, then we open the chamber door to ensure all is well.'
'And?' Benjamin asked.
'Nothing. Selkirk was just sitting at the desk humming to himself.'
'Is there a secret passageway to this room?' I queried.
Farringdon snorted with laughter. 'For God's sake, man, this is the Tower of London, not some brothel! See for yourself.' He waved at the grey granite walls. 'And, before you say it, not even a dwarf could climb thirty or forty feet of sheer wall and slip through these arrow-slit windows!'
'Perhaps it's not murder,' Agrippa announced. 'Perhaps it was suicide.'
'Impossible,' Farringdon replied. 'Master Catesby and I have searched the room. There is nothing here.'
