Free The White Rose by Michael Clynes Page B

royal apartments. We encountered more guards and more questions until a great iron-studded door was thrown open and we entered an antechamber which reeked of wealth: great carved chairs and desks, finely wrought tables with spindly legs and tops cleverly covered with silver and topaz. My fingers itched to caress these valuables but Benjamin and I were ushered on into the Cardinal's presence. He was sitting in his throne-like chair, swathed in his scarlet robes. The light danced on the huge pectoral cross hanging from a chain round his neck and shimmered in the sparkling diamonds which covered his fingers.
    Clerks scurried to and fro, bearing piles of documents. There was a smell of fresh wax and resin for the Lord Cardinal was sealing warrants which decreed life, wealth, freedom, prison, exile, as well as bloody death at Tower Hill, or Smithfield Common. Wolsey glanced up and stared at us, his small eyes hard as flint, and I knew what the psalmist meant when he described fear turning his bowels to water. On that occasion, mine nearly did and I quietly thanked God I was wearing thick, brown pantaloons for I did not wish to disgrace myself. The Cardinal picked up a silver bell from the desk beside him and rang it gently. A tocsin itself could not have wrought such an effect: all the clerks stopped their business and the room fell silent. Wolsey muttered a few words and his servants vanished as swiftly as peasants before the tax collectors.
    After they had gone, the chamber remained silent except for the buzzing of angry flies and my Lord Cardinal's favourite greyhound busy crapping in a corner under a red and gold arras. Benjamin doffed his cap and swept his uncle a most courtly bow. I followed suit. The Cardinal studied us morosely as his greyhound went to gobble the remains of a meal from a silver dish.
    'Benjamin, Benjamin, my dear nephew.'
    Melford sidled up, whispered in the Cardinal's ear, grinned sourly at us and quietly left. As he did so, Doctor Agrippa and Sir Robert Catesby slipped into the room and sat on either side of the Cardinal. Once again the bell was tinkled: a servant entered bearing a jewel-encrusted tray. It bore five Venetian glasses, tall and thin-stemmed with bands of precious silver round the rims.
    He placed these on a table next to Wolsey and left. The Cardinal himself solicitously served us the chilled wine from Alsace, giving us each a tray of sweetmeats. He returned to his chair, his perfumed, scarlet robes billowing around him as he ordered us to eat. I was only too pleased to do so, gulping noisily from the glass and gorging myself on the thin doucettes. Once I had finished, not caring whether Wolsey was staring at me, I also ate 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