Read The Grail Murders for Free Online

by late-afternoon, we were galloping south. I remember it well. The sun died that day and winter came rushing in. Who says the seasons are not harbingers of what is to come?
    Agrippa was now quiet, or rather talking to himself in a strange tongue I couldn't understand, whilst his entou rage, the nicest group of gallow's birds you'd chance to encounter, kept to themselves. We stopped that night at a priory. Agrippa was still bad company, wrestling with his own problems. Only once did he pause, gaze round the deserted refectory and announce: 'There's more to it, you know.'
    'What do you mean?' asked Benjamin.
    Agrippa shook his head. 'There's more to it,' he repeated. 'Oh, how this world is given to lying!'
    (You'll find that phrase too in old Will Shakespeare's plays.)
    The weather continued to worsen but, early on the morning of our second day out of Ipswich, we left Waltham Abbey and reached the Mile End Road which wound through different hamlets into East Smithfield. The crowds on the road increased. Not just the usual tinkers and pedlars with their handcarts or wandering hedge-priests looking for a quick penny and a soft bed (I love to see my chaplain twitch!), but common folk, surging down to Tower Hill to watch one of the great ones spill his blood.
    We turned north into Hog Street, past the church of St Mary Grace where we glimpsed the high grey turrets of the Tower, and into the dense crowd milling round Tower Hill. Believe me, all of London had turned out. There was not a place to be found between the Tower and Bridge Street.
    I have often wondered why people like to view executions. What fun is there in seeing a man lose his head or his balls? I asked this of Agrippa.
    'We are born killers,' he murmured. 'We have a love affair with death. And, if our Henry has his way, he will glut all our appetites for executions and the spilling of blood.'
    We used our warrants and the swords of our entourage to force our way through, right up to the black-draped execution platform which stood on the brow of the hill ringed by yeomen of the guard. On the platform, arms folded, stood a red-masked executioner. Beside him his assistant, dressed from head to toe in black leather with a pair of antlers on his head, held the huge, two-headed axe near the execution block. A priest mumbled prayers whilst officials whispered to each other and gazed expectantly over the sea of faces around them.
    At first quite a peaceful scene, but let old Shallot tell you: in later years (and, yes, it is another story), I had to place my head on that block, the axe was raised - and only a last-minute pardon saved me. I tell you, the waiting is worse than death itself. The great hunk of wood reeks of blood and all around you is the paraphernalia of violent death: a sheet to soak up the blood which spurts violently from the neck, the basket for the head, the elm-wood coffin for the torso, and the knife just in case they leave the odd sinew or muscle uncut. Quick it may be but it's still a terrible death. When Mary, Queen of Scots was decapitated, her eyelids kept fluttering and the lips moving for at least a minute after the head left the body. Mind you, matters were not helped by the executioner at Fotheringay not realising the Scottish queen was wearing a wig and letting the head drop and bounce like ball.
    I had seen executions before but never anything so ceremonious as Buckingham's. Agrippa closed his eyes, I am sure he was asleep, whilst Benjamin, white-faced, stared under the platform. I followed his gaze and saw small, dark shapes moving about.
    'Who are they?' I asked one of the guards.
    'Dwarfs,' the fellow replied out of the corner of his mouth. 'They buy the right from the mayor. When the head is lopped off, the blood gushes out and seeps through the wood. They catch it in their rags and sell them as relics and mementos.' The man turned and spat over his shoulder. 'I understand there are always plenty of buyers.'
    Our wait continued, the crowd