Free The Gallows Murders by Paul Doherty Page A

removed, someone from the Guild of Hangmen must have been involved.'
'But this is just dearest Uncle's feeling?' I asked.
    Benjamin sighed and put his hands together. 'Well, if this villain writing the blackmailing letters is a charlatan, the only way the King could silence him, or so dearest Uncle reasons, is by finding out what really happened to the Princes and proclaiming this to the city and the kingdom. Henry would give his eye-teeth just to find their corpses.'
    'And so this same charlatan,' I added, 'is murdering the hangmen just in case one of them has inherited the secret and could reveal the truth?'
    'Exactly,' Benjamin replied, peering over his shoulder at the approaching quayside.
'And how many are in the Guild of Hangmen?' I asked.
There should be seven,' Benjamin replied. 'John Mallow, he's old and about to retire. Andrew Undershaft, lately deceased. Hellbane, who's also been called to his maker, and four other assistants: Snakeroot, Horehound, Toadflax and Wormwood. And, before you ask your question, Roger, the chief hangman's apprentices are never called by their real names.' He smiled thinly. This is to protect them; sometimes they change their minds and decide to take up another profession.'
    I looked up at the jutting towers and turrets of the Tower.
    'If I had my way, Master,' I grumbled, 'I'd do the same.'
Chapter 4
    How can I describe the Tower? A narrow, cruel place. Yet, in 1523, it had yet to acquire its reputation as the Great Beast's slaughter ground. Oh, Edmund Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, had lost his head on the hill outside, but to me it was still a double shield of walls beyond a wide moat; a fortress, strengthened by at least a dozen towers which ringed the great Norman keep that dominated all. It stored the King's arms and artillery, his jewel house, his mint as well as his menagerie, with its lions, apes, pelicans, elephants, bears and other unfortunate animals, sent as gifts by foreign princes. When we approached it after leaving Charterhouse, my overriding concern was about the stench from the moat slimed with green, and the occasional corpse of some animal bobbing on the surface. We entered by the Lion Gate, passing guards who snapped to attention as Agrippa showed his warrant carrying the King's personal seal.
    The Tower is like a maze. It draws you in: you become lost, as well as over-awed, by the winding paths along high brick walls, the tower doors, closely guarded, the shutters on the windows firmly bolted. Then, as in a maze, you reach the centre, a great, open, green expanse surrounding the Norman keep: the playground of children of the Tower garrison, who hopped and jumped amongst the mangonels, catapults and other impedimenta of war. Soldiers' wives had put up lines to dry their clothes, whilst the men lazed in the shadows, drinking, dicing, sleeping or gossiping. A homely scene - and that's part of the trap. Around the green are entrances to the different towers. Each of them contains its own mysteries: twisting, mildewed steps which stretch up to cells, or worse, go down to the cavernous pits where the torturers with their instruments wait to search out the truth.
    In one far corner, just near the church of St Peter ad Vincula, is a stretch of ground where the grass struggles to grow. Some say it's cursed because that's where the scaffold's erected. I believe this. In my long and troubled life I came to know the Tower well. Sometimes as a visitor, other times as a guest of the King, his prisoner. I have been stretched out on Exeter's Daughter, the great rack which pulls your limbs from their sockets. If you survive and confess, the executioners fix steel plates so your body is in one piece when they cart it out for execution. However, I babble on. On that fine August day, with the sun beaming down, I had no knowledge of the Tower's future. Believe me, if I had, I would have turned and run like a whippet for the nearest gate.
    Now, across the green, facing the Norman tower, are