The Grail Murders

assurance that you will grant him an audience and clarify the error of his ways.' Tunstall drew himself up and nodded wisely.
    'My Lord, I know you are busy,' I continued breathlessly, 'but if you will just agree to fix a time and place where you can see him…?' Again the holy nod and Tunstall beckoned Waller over. He, the old fool, approached bobbing and curtseying.
    Tunstall looked at him reprovingly. 'Give your friend his boots back,' he commanded. 'And be at my chambers tomorrow morning at ten o'clock and I will settle matters then.'
    Waller was almost prostrate in his thanks. The bishop sketched a blessing in the air and moved on. I grabbed my boots and left London within the hour.
    I returned to Ipswich sober-faced and assured Benjamin that my good work amongst the London poor had now reached an end and perhaps it was best if I helped him on the estates. He looked strangely at me, smiled with those innocent grey eyes and went back to the list of accounts he was studying.
    I looked at that dark intelligent face, framed by long black hair, and desperately wondered if my master was the most cunning man I had ever met or the nearest thing to innocence in human flesh.
    The days passed and then, just before All Saints, one of those last, beautiful golden days of the year when the sun burns hot and you think summer has returned, I was on top of a hayrick with some young girl from the village – a joyous, happy lass, pleasant-faced and warm-bodied. I was trying to persuade her that her bodice was too tightly tied and she, laughing, gently tapped away my probing fingers. Her resistance weakened as her laughter grew when suddenly I heard Benjamin shouting for me. 'Roger, Roger. Quickly, come here!'
    I looked over the hayrick. My master stood in hose and a white shirt open at the neck, hopping from one foot to another as he tried to push his feet into his boots. 'Here I am, Master!' 'Roger, what are you doing?'
    I hissed at the wench to be quiet whilst I clambered down and boldly declared I was trying to track the path of the sun.
    'You are too curious, Roger,' he murmured. 'Your mind never ceases its probing.'
    My master pushed me up the grassy knoll on which the manor house stood. 'What is it?' I asked.
    Benjamin pointed along the dusty trackway which led down to the main gates. 'Riders, Roger. And I think they are from dear Uncle.'
    I shaded my eyes with my hand and saw the puffs of white dust, a small pennant snapping in the breeze, the bright jerkins of the horsemen and the rider in front clothed all in black. My heart sank. Dear Uncle was making his hand felt. If he was sending his personal secretary and adviser, the magician Doctor Agrippa, some bloody business was afoot.
    We met the visitors in our large hall, freshly painted and wood-panelled with shields bearing the arms of Shallot and Daunbey along the wall. The riders, a group of Wolsey's mercenaries, dressed in the scarlet livery of the Cardinal, were taken off to the buttery to quench their thirst and ogle the maids.
    Doctor Agrippa, dressed from head to toe in black leather, tapped his broad-brimmed hat against his leg, waiting for the servants to serve chilled white wine and sweetmeats. All the time he smiled and indulged in tittle-tattle, studying me with those cold, colourless eyes.
    A strange man, Agrippa. I have mentioned him before. He was always cold and, whatever the heat, I never saw him perspire. He was a true magus. Yet, superficially, he looked like some benevolent village parson with his round cheery face sweet as a cherub's, neatly cut black hair, and that smile which failed to reach his eyes. He never grew old and, after Wolsey died, had the gift of appearing in the strangest places.
    Raleigh once told me – yes, that freebooter is still at sea, financed by my gold – that he had seen Agrippa near Jamestown in Virginia. How he got to the New World God only knows! A spy reported he was in Madrid and, years later, when I was fleeing from Suleiman's stranglers. I caught a glimpse of his face in the crowd as I was being pursued through the filthy streets and alleys of Constantinople. I saw him at court once and, only fifteen years ago, he turned up at Burpham looking as young and fresh as he had in my youth. I asked him what the matter was. He only smiled and gave me warning that Mary, Queen of Scots, imprisoned at Fotheringay, was plotting Elizabeth's death. Then he disappeared.
    Agrippa was a magus with a gift for seeing the future and once