my master's for Benjamin had lost his appetite. (I might be a little timid but I do not like being threatened and I was determined to hide my terrors from the likes of Wolsey.) The Lord Cardinal sipped from his own glass, quietly humming the tune of some hymn.
'You saw Compton die?' he suddenly asked.
Benjamin nodded. 'It was not necessary, Uncle.'
'I will deem what is necessary and what is not,' the Cardinal snapped. 'Compton was a traitor.' Wolsey leaned back in his chair, wetting his lips. 'There is a link between his death and that of Selkirk.'
'What was his crime?' Benjamin asked.
'Compton, a member of Les Blancs Sangliers, bought a poisonous ointment from a sorcerer. He smeared the walls of a royal chamber with it, hoping to kill the King. He was trapped, questioned, but revealed nothing. Very much,' Wolsey angrily concluded, 'like your meetings with Selkirk. You discovered nothing and now we are faced with a conundrum: how can a man locked in a chamber be murdered, and we find not a trace of the potion or how the poisoner entered or left?' The Cardinal twisted in his chair. 'As Doctor Agrippa relates, the poisoner must have been there to leave the white rose. I believe, at Compton's execution, you saw some bastard throw such roses towards the scaffold?'
'Perhaps it was the same person,' I blurted out.
'Shut up, you idiot!' rasped Wolsey.
'Was Compton questioned by the King's torturers?' Benjamin asked.
'Of course.'
'And, dear Uncle, did you learn anything?' 'No, we did not.'
'Then, dearest Uncle, I think it is wrong to tax me with my lack of success with Selkirk. After all, I had no more than ten days.' Benjamin let his words sink in.
I stared at Doctor Agrippa, who was smiling to himself whilst Catesby looked moodily away. Benjamin deftly plucked the piece of parchment from beneath his doublet.
'Before you criticise us further, I did find something. Selkirk hid this in the wall of his prison cell.'
Wolsey almost snatched the document from Benjamin's hand. He did not even let Catesby or Agrippa look at it as he murmured the words aloud, and then peered closely at Benjamin.
Three less than twelve should it be,
Or the King, no prince engendered he.
The lamb did rest
In the falcon's nest,
The Lion cried,
Even though it died.
The truth Now Stands,
In the Sacred Hands,
Of the place which owns
Dionysius' bones.
'What does it mean?' he asked, handing the parchment to Doctor Agrippa, who read it and passed it to Catesby.
'God knows, Uncle,' Benjamin replied. 'But I believe the secrets Selkirk held are hidden in those lines.'
Wolsey picked up the silver bell and tinkled it. His master clerk came scurrying back into the room. The Cardinal took the parchment from Catesby and tossed it to his servant.
'Copy that, four or five times. Make sure there are no mistakes and have a cipher clerk study it carefully to see if it contains a coded message.'
The man bowed and scurried out. Wolsey glanced sideways at Doctor Agrippa and Catesby.
‘Gentlemen, do the words mean anything to you?'
Agrippa shook his head, his eyes on Benjamin, and I caught a gleam of appreciation as if the doctor had realised that my master and myself were not the fools he had thought. Catesby seemed dumbstruck and just shook his head. The Cardinal leaned forward, beaming in satisfaction at his beloved nephew.
'Master Benjamin, you have done well – but now there's more.'
Oh, Lord, I thought. I did not like being near the Great Ones of the land. I also wondered what would have happened if Benjamin had not discovered Selkirk's secret manuscript. The Cardinal edged forward on the seat of his chair like a conspirator.
'In a few days' time, on the Feast of St Luke, Queen Margaret will leave the Tower and journey north to Royston, a royal manor outside Leicester. She will stay there until she treats with envoys from Scotland who are coming south to discuss her return to Edinburgh. You will meet these emissaries on Queen Margaret's behalf and listen to what they offer.' Wolsey stared at his nephew. 'And there is more. Selkirk was killed by someone in the Tower. One or more of Queen Margaret's household may be members of Les Blancs Sangliers. You are to discover who these are. How and why they murdered Selkirk. And, above all, what are the mysteries concealed in Selkirk's doggerel poem?'
'Any member of the Queen's household could be a secret Yorkist,' Doctor Agrippa spoke up. 'Remember, even old Surrey who defeated James at Flodden once fought for Richard III. Indeed, they could have joined the Queen's household and gone to Scotland in order to plot fresh mischief.'
'Then let's entice them out!' Wolsey remarked. 'Announce that you have found Selkirk's poem, seize your opportunity to read it to the whole company, and see what happens.'
I remembered the strange look on Ruthven's face and agreed with Wolsey's advice, although I was more concerned for my own skin. Old Shallot's motto is, has, and always will be, 'Look after yourself and all will be well.'
'There's more,' Catesby intervened. 'One of the Lord Cardinal's most trusted agents in Scotland, a Master John Irvine, is coming south. He brings important information, so precious he will not even commit it to letter. Now, near Royston Manor is Coldstream Priory. I have instructed Irvine to meet you there on the Monday following the Feast of St Leo the Great. Irvine will reveal his secrets. You will tell no one what he says but report directly to His Eminence the Cardinal.'
Wolsey grasped Catesby by the arm as the door opened and the master clerk crept back into the room.
'Yes, man, what is it?'
The clerk shook his head.
'Your Grace, the poem is copied but the cipher clerks can trace no code. I also have a message: His Majesty the King expects you now.' The fellow glanced at us. 'And, of course, your guests.'
My heart sank. Take this as a rule from old Shallot – keep away from princes. To you they will always insist on being everything, but to them you are nothing but a pawn, a mere straw in the wind. To put it bluntly, I did not want to meet the King, his sister was bad enough! However, Wolsey rose, clapped his hands and Melford appeared at the doorway with two halberdiers. The Cardinal whispered instructions to remain to Agrippa and Catesby as the soldiers led my master and I out of the chamber. We went downstairs behind the Cardinal, across a shimmering black-and-white-chequered floor and, opening a door, entered the royal gardens. They were a feast of colour with their herbs, lilies and masses of wild flowers. In the far corner stood a small orchard of pear trees though pride of place was given to huge raised beds covered with red roses, their heads stretching up towards the sun.
At the far end of the garden was a broad, smooth, green lawn where a group of people dressed in gold, red, silver and pink silks put the flowers to shame. Cloths of lawn had been placed on the grass around a pure white marble fountain. On that clear autumn day, the sound of its tinkling water rose above the gentle hum of conversation and laughter. The area had been cordoned off with screens of cloth of gold nine feet high and in this small enclosure sat the King, Bluff Hal, with the gentlemen and ladies of his court.
Henry rose as Wolsey approached. He stood, his red-gold hair swept back, legs apart, hands on hips, a veritable Colossus of muscled flesh beneath his gorgeous robes. I had once seen the King from afar but now, close up, I could see the reason for the universal admiration of him: dressed completely in white, he gleamed in the sunlight. His hair, burnished by the sun, was grown long, falling in thick locks to his shoulders. Smooth-shaven, his face glowed like precious metal. Only the eyes chilled rather than awed me, set high in his face, narrow and slitted against the sunlight, they exuded a power and arrogance I had never seen before or since.
A golden boy was our Bluff Hal, before he went mad and fat as his great legs became ulcerated and the royal arse became sore with the haemorrhoids which were clustered there. In his later years, the great belly hung down
