The White Rose (7 page)

'Master Scawsby has his good points,' Benjamin replied. 'Some people just misunderstand him.'

'Aye,' I whispered, 'including his patients. They can do very little about it because most of them are dead!'

My master smiled faintly, shook his head and began to eat. I looked around our motley crew: a harsh, unwelcoming collection of rogues with their dark, faded doublets and sour faces. They were a small, hostile group bound tightly together by their hankering after former glories. They were all English-born and had travelled to Scotland with Margaret when she had married King James. They spoke of their dead king with respect, even awe. At first I couldn't determine the true nature of their relationship with their exiled Scottish Queen. I thought it was fear tinged with respect, for Margaret kept her distance, but within days I had changed my mind: they were terrified of her, yet still bound to her as their only path to wealth and comfort. Of course, there were exceptions. Melford seemed impassive rather than afraid; he also took his duties seriously. Where the Queen went so did he, and I idly wondered whether he gave her more than just protection. Just after our arrival at the Tower, I confided this thought to Benjamin and he looked surprised. He sat on the edge of his bed in our musty chamber and shook his head.

'Queen Margaret is not sexually satisfied,' he announced to my stupefaction.

'How do you know that, Master?'

'Oh,' he replied airily, 'her face betrays her. Melford may sleep with her but he gives her no satisfaction.'

I gazed back in mock wonderment. I knew Benjamin had his secrets but I did not regard him as an expert on the female kind.

'You see, Roger, men regard women as an instrument of great pleasure.' He cleared his throat. 'Or, at least, some do. Few men see it as part of their
devoir
to give women pleasure and fully satisfy them.' He wagged a finger at me. 'You remember that, Roger.'

I nodded solemnly, lay down on the bed and, turning my face to the wall, wondered where in the world Benjamin drew his theories from. Of course, I was arrogant. My master proved the old adage: 'Still waters run deep'.

Now, I did say the Queen's household in general was terrified of her, but there were two other exceptions. Doctor Agrippa treated Queen Margaret almost with disdain, capping her remarks, quipping with her, and not showing the least trace of fear, never mind respect. The other person not to show fear was Catesby and I soon discovered he was a deep fellow. His relationship with the Queen was rather mysterious. Sometimes at table he would go up and sit beside her. Lady Carey and Melford would withdraw and the Queen and Catesby would sit, heads together, locked in deep discussion as if they were man and wife or brother and sister, bound by deep bonds of affection. Catesby had already proved himself to be an expert swordsman on our journey from Ipswich, now he demonstrated his skill as a politician. On our first night in the Tower, I asked him why the Queen had chosen the fortress when there were more comfortable places on both sides of the Thames. He smiled.

'The Queen didn't choose it - I did. First, we are near Selkirk. Secondly, we are free from infection. And finally,' he looked slyly at me, 'it's easy to keep an eye on everyone when we are all together in one place!'

A clever, subtle fellow, Catesby!

On our third day in the Tower we were shown up into Selkirk's prison cell, high in Broad Arrow Tower. The room was more comfortable than ours; it boasted two braziers, a faded tapestry on the wall, a desk, chairs, and a comfortable four-poster bed. Nevertheless, it smelt fetid and rank. I noticed with distaste how the chamber pot full of turds was sitting in the centre of the room where everyone could see and smell it. Selkirk himself was not an attractive man: white-faced and skeletal with tawny, grey-streaked hair which fell in a tangled mess to his shoulders. His eyes were light blue and full of madness. Benjamin hardly recognised him as the fellow he had seized in Dieppe but, strangely enough, he remembered Benjamin and greeted him like a long-lost brother. Catesby, Farringdon the Constable, and Doctor Agrippa showed us up. They treated Selkirk with mock deference and then, once the introductions were completed and " Benjamin and I seated, withdrew, the door being locked firmly behind them.

I studied that poor madman and wondered why he was so important. Ruthven, the only member of the Queen's household who treated us with any friendliness (for the rest regarded Benjamin as the Cardinal's spy), had told us a little about Selkirk: how he had been King James's physician and journeyed with him to Flodden. After the King's death there, Selkirk had fled abroad, first to the Low Countries and then into France.

'God knows what turned the poor fellow's mind,' Ruthven had murmured.

Now I, too, wondered that as Selkirk sat at his desk, his long, bony fingers moving pieces of parchment about. Benjamin talked to him, reminiscing about their meeting in Dieppe. Sometimes the madness would clear and Selkirk would reply in a sensible, lucid fashion but then his mind would wander off. He would jabber in Gaelic, or pick up the scraps of parchment from his desk and start reading them as if we were no longer there. He allowed Benjamin to look at these.

'Scraps of poetry,' Benjamin murmured. He looked up at Selkirk. 'Who wrote these?'

'The King was a bonny poet,' the fellow replied. 'He and Willie Dunbar.' Selkirk smiled slyly. 'Some are composed by me.'

He handed over a few more scraps of paper and I studied them. God forgive me, they were as meaningless as some forgotten language; mere phrases and sentences, some in English, others in Scots, none made any sense. Nevertheless, Benjamin treated the prisoner gently, like a child, talking softly, asking questions, creating a bond of friendship. Every day we returned. Benjamin always brought a huge flagon of wine and a tray of cups. Each time the guards posted on the chamber door inspected the cups and tasted the wine, whilst Farringdon the Constable always escorted us in. Eventually I grew tired of this.

'The poor fellow's mad!' I exclaimed. 'Who would want to hurt him?'

Farringdon frowned, bringing his thick, black brows together. 'God knows.' He scowled. 'But orders are orders, and they come from the highest in the land.'

I also asked Catesby this but he just shrugged and murmured, 'Selkirk is more important than you think.'

So I let the matter rest. I confess I admired Benjamin's skill and wit. Usually he would let Selkirk ramble on but when the man became lucid, Benjamin would quickly pose his questions.

'What do you know that is so important? Who are
Les Blancs Sangliers?
Why are you in the Tower?'

Selkirk would straighten in his chair and shake his head.

'I have secrets,' he would whisper. 'I can count the days. The walls have eyes and ears.' He would stare around apprehensively, then giggle. 'The walls also have secrets.'

'What do you mean?' Benjamin asked.

And so the questioning would continue. I watched Benjamin and began to understand why his uncle had chosen him for this task. One night as we walked arm in arm around the great White Tower, I put this to him.

'Master Benjamin, you seem most gifted in dealing with that poor madman.'

Benjamin stopped, his body tensed and he looked away into the darkness.

'Yes, yes,' he murmured. 'I have had some experience. Uncle knows that.'

He stared at me and his eyes were full of tears. I let the matter rest.

At length I grew tired of visiting Selkirk so excused myself and spent days wandering the Tower. The royal apartments were eerie and sinister; galleries which ended abruptly at blocked passageways, spiral staircases which led nowhere. I asked one of the guards about this.

'Some people come here,' he muttered, shaking his head, 'and die in their cells, or on the block or at the gibbet. Some arrive and just disappear, not only them but their cells too. The doors are removed, the openings bricked up, and they are immured until death.'

Oh, yes, a dark satanic place the Tower. Sometimes at night I heard strange screams which plagued my dreams and caused nightmares. I wondered if they were the unfortunates in the torture room or the spirits of those bricked up in the walls of that great fortress.

Yet if the buildings were frightening, so were the people who lived there. The shadowy Doctor Agrippa flitted in and out of the Tower like a bat as he scurried around the city on the Lord Cardinal's business. On one occasion Benjamin sent me to see Agrippa in his lodgings which overlooked the chapel of St Peter Ad Vincula. The afternoon if I remember correctly was quite warm, the pale sun breaking through a cloying river mist which seeped over the walls and gateways of the Tower. I tapped on the doctor's door. There was no answer so I opened it. Agrippa was sitting on the floor. He turned to me quickly, his face a mask of rage.

'Get out!' he roared. 'I thought the door was locked!'

I hastily retreated but not before I had caught the whiff of burning as if an empty pan had been left over a roaring fire. And yet the room was cold, as freezing as a wasteland on an icy winter's day. I waited outside the door. After a few minutes Doctor Agrippa opened it, his face wreathed in angelic smiles.

'My dear Shallot,' he beamed, 'I am so sorry. Do come in.'

When I entered, the chamber was warm and Filled with a cloying sweet perfume. I gave him my master's message and left as quickly as I could, now convinced that the good doctor was a perfect practitioner of the Black Arts.

I also decided it was safer to stay in our own chamber. As the days passed, Benjamin began to win Selkirk's confidence.

'He's not as mad as he seems,' my master remarked, his long, dark face lined with tiredness, the deep-set eyes screwed up in concentration.

'Has he told you anything?'

'Yes, he babbles about Paris and a tavern called Le Coq d'Or.'

'And his secrets?'

Benjamin shook his head. 'He said they are contained in a poem but he has only told me the first two lines.' Benjamin closed his eyes. 'How does it go? "Three less than twelve should it be, Or the king no prince engendered he." ' He opened his eyes and looked at me.

'Anything else?'

Benjamin shook his head. 'In time, perhaps.'

Time, however, had run out for Selkirk. About ten days after we had arrived at the Tower, Benjamin came back late in the evening. He described his latest meeting with the prisoner, claimed that the Scotsman was as fond of claret as I and, rolling himself in his blankets, promptly fell asleep. The next morning we were roughly awoken by one of the guards hammering on the door.

'You must come now!' he bawled. 'To Broad Arrow Tower. Selkirk is dead!'

We hastily pulled on our clothes and, wrapping cloaks around us against the early morning mist, hurried across the green, forcing our way through the press of servants, scullions and guardsmen who stood around the doorway of the Tower. We hastened up the stone spiral staircase and into Selkirk's chamber. Most of the Queen's household was there, grouped around the huge four-poster bed where Selkirk's corpse lay shrouded by its sheet.

'What happened?' shouted Benjamin.

Catesby shook his head and looked away. Doctor Agrippa was sitting on a stool, a strange smile on his round, fat face; Carey, Moodie and Ruthven huddled together whilst Farringdon was interrogating the four guards. Benjamin's question created a momentary silence.

'Selkirk's dead!' Agrippa quietly announced. 'Scawsby thinks it's poison.'

Benjamin immediately went across to the tray of goblets and jug of wine he had brought up the previous evening.

'Don't touch that!' barked Scawsby.

The old quack had re-entered the room behind us, a bag in his hand full, I suppose, of the usual rubbish -knives, charts and a cup for blooding.

'What makes you think it's poison?' Benjamin asked.

Scawsby smirked. Going over to the bed, he pulled back the stained sheet. One look was enough. Selkirk had been no beauty in life; now, brutally murdered by poison, he looked ghastly. His hair straggled out across the grimy bolster, his thin white face had turned a strange bluish colour, the mouth sagged, the eyes stared sightlessly up.

'Good God!' my master muttered. 'A terrible death after a terrible life.' He bent down and sniffed the dead man's mouth. 'Have you determined what poison it is?'

Scawsby shrugged. 'Belladonna, digitalis, nightshade or arsenic. The only consolation is that death must have been quick.'

'And you suspect the wine?' I retorted.

Scawsby went over and sniffed both the flagon and cup. The bastard took his time. He knew who had brought them up. So I filled a cup and downed it in one gulp.