The Grail Murders

Paul Doherty was born in Middlesbrough and educated at Woodcote Hall. He studied History at Liverpool and Oxford Universities and obtained a doctorate at Oxford for his thesis on Edward II and Queen Isabella. He is now Headmaster of a school in North-East London.

Acclaim for Sir Roger Shallot's journals

'Lively historical whodunnit. . . Shallot himself is a splendid braggart, a Tudor Flashman'
The Times

'Set in a fascinating period of English history
...
Sir Roger Shallot [is] a colourful and likeable rogue . . . plenty of swashbuckling and intrigue'
Liverpool Daily Post

'Cleverly-twisting tale of murder and mayhem'
Brighton Evening Argus

Also by Paul Doherty and available from Headline

The Journals of Roger Shallot
The White Rose Murders The Poisoned Chalice

A Brood of Vipers The Gailows Murders The Relic Murders

Ancient Egyptian mysteries
The Mask of Ra The Horus Killings The Anubis Slayings

The Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan
The Nightingale Gallery The House of the Red Slayer Murder Most Holy The Anger of God By Murder's Bright Light The House of Crows The Assassin's Riddle The Devil's Domain

Hugh Corbett medieval mysteries
Satan in St Mary's Crown in Darkness

Spy in Chancery The Angel of Death The Prince of Darkness Murder Wears a Cowl The Assassin in the Greenwood The Song of a Dark Angel Satan's Fire The Devil's Hunt The Treason of the Ghosts

The Canterbury Tales of murder and mystery
An Ancient Evil
Being the Knight's Tale
A Tapestry of Murders
Being the Man of Law's Tale
A Tournament of Murders
Being the Franklin's Tale
Ghostly Murders
Being the Priest's Tale

The Grail Murders

Paul Doherty

Copyright © 1993 Paul Doherty

The right of Paul Doherty to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 1993 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING

First published in paperback in 1994 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING

10987654

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance lo real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN 0 7472 4263 1

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham pic. Chatham. Kent

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Niall Harrington - in memory of the many conversations we had about whodunnits.

Historical Personages Mentioned in this Text

Richard III
- the last Yorkist king, called The Usurper or Pretender. He was defeat
ed by Henry Tudor at Market Bos
worth in August 1485. He was the wearer of the White Rose.

Henry Tudor -
The Welshman, The Great Miser, the victor of Bosworth, founder of the Tudor dynasty and father of Henry VIII. He died in 1509.

Arthur -
Henry Tudor's first born. He died young and the crown went to his brother Henry.

Henry VIII -
Bluff King Hal, The Great Killer, The Great Beast, Fat Harry, The Great Bastard. A king who had six wives and a string of mistresses. He is The Mould warp or The Dark One, as prophesied by Merlin.

Catherine ofAragon -
a Spanish princess, Henry VHI's first wife and mother of Mary Tudor.

Anne Boleyn
- daughter of
Sir Thomas Boleyn. Second wife
of Henry VIII and mother of Elizabeth Tudor.

Bessie Blount -
one of th
e more dazzling of Henry VIII's
mistresses.

Mary Tudor -
daughter of Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII, nicknamed Bloody Mary because of her persecution of Protestants.

Elizabeth I -
Queen of England, supposed daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, nicknamed The Virgin Queen though Shallot claims to have had a son by her.

Catherine Howard
- Henry VHTs fifth wife. Executed for her extramarital affairs.

Francis I
- King of France, brilliant, dazzling and sex mad.

Will Shakespeare -
English playwright.

Christopher Marlowe
- English playwright and spy, killed in a tavern brawl.

Richard Tunstall
- Bishop of London.

Thomas Wolsey
- son of
an Ipswich butcher, he went to
Oxford and embarked upo
n a brilliant career. He became
Cardinal, Archbishop and First Minister of Henry VIII.

Suleiman the Magnificent -
Turkish Emperor.

Mary, Queen of Scots -
grand-daughter of Margaret Tudor
and mother of James I of England and VI Scotland.

Henry Darnley
- her husband.

James Bothwell
- Mary's lover.

Thomas More
- humanist, scholar, Minister of Henry VHI, later executed for opposing Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon.

Edward VI
- son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, a sickly boy who died young.

Catherine de Medici -
Italian princess. Married Henry II, King Francis I's son. She dominated France after her husband's death: a subtle intriguer, nicknamed Madame Serpent.

Francis Walsingham -
Elizabeth I's spy master.

William and Robert Cecil
- Elizabeth I's Chief Ministers.

Edward Stafford
- Duke of Buckingham, powerful nobleman, executed by Henry VIII.

Thomas Cromwell -
Henry's able successor to Wolsey until he, too, fell from power and was executed.

Michael Nostradamus -
seer and necromancer, often used by Catherine de Medici.

Prologue

Murder has marked us all as Cain's children: Cain who when the earth was young slew his brother with the jawbone of an ass and hid in the forest until God hunted him out, grasped his head and gave him the assassin's mark. We must be his children, mustn't we? If Cain, the son of Adam, is father to us all, then we must all bear his mark.

I see my chaplain sniffing as if he has smelt something foul: his prim lips are pursed, that cherry nose wrinkled. The trouble with him is his nose is too near his codpiece! Never trust short-legged men - the gap between their brain and their buttocks is too close for comfort.

Ah, well, so we are all Cain's children. In fairness, I must confess that's not an original thought. Michael Nostradamus, Catherine de Medici's fortune-teller, once told me that whilst I was hiding in Paris from a group of assassins who wanted to take my head but, as I keep saying, that's another story.

A strange man, Nostradamus! In his secret chamber at the Castle Blois he had a famous mirror. If you looked into it, you could see the future. Catherine de Medici, voluptuous, murderous Catherine - Madame Serpent as I call her - used to spend days staring into it.

Nostradamus also claimed he had dreams which foretold the future: demons who appeared to him at night, their black eyes filled with blood, huge scrolls in their fists, the

written records of the sins of men from the first day to the last. Nostradamus said they kept unrolling these scrolls and there was no end to them. No end to the terrible and bloody murders of men.

I agree with him for Murder has haunted my life and still plagues my dreams. Oh no, I am not an assassin myself but I have spent my life tracking them down. Now I, too, have the same dreams as Nostradamus: strange, merciless devils, faces twisted with rage, teeth showing over their lips. They belong to the blackest darkness for they are the lost souls of murderers.

The other night these spirits woke me just after the last snowfall which cloaked the fields in thick white clouds. I sat up in my four
-
poster bed, pulled back the curtains and gazed through the great oriel window which stares out over the lawns in front of my house. The moon shone ghostly white, the stars gleamed like silver wings in the heavens. On either side of me Phoebe and her sister Margot snored in their soft, warm plumpness. (A marvellous way to keep warm in the depths of winter!) I stared over the lawns, thinking of my past, and saw the black shadow move like some great bat. I knew it was the Lord Satan's precursor.

(My chaplain is laughing. The little sod had better be careful! 'More like wine fumes,' he sniggers. If he is not careful, I'll grab the cushions from beneath his bum. Oh, yes, I will and my homunculus, my little dwarf of a chaplain, shall feel hard wood under his buttocks.)

I did see the shadows come, the nightmare men, ghosts from my past.

The next morning the stranger arrived, travelling through the deep snow bearing letters and warrants allowing him access to Sir Roger Shallot, Privy Councillor, Knight of the Bath, Knight of the Garter, Justice of the Peace, Commissioner of Array, Marshall of the Order of St Michael. (A gentleman who styled himself Tsar of all the Russias, a homicidal bastard if ever there was one, gave me that.)