The Relic Murders

enough of Henry. I've also diced with other princes. Francis I rotting away with every known love disease under the sun – when he died the palace stank for weeks even though they scrubbed every ceiling, wall and floor. Catherine de Medici: wicked and wanton, the Queen of the Poison. Charles DC, who never made up his mind whether he was a man or a woman. Selim the sot: drunk on hashish, surrounded by his houris and, in the shadows, the stranglers ready to snuff out your life as easily as you would a candle flame. And what about Philip of Spain in his dark, gold-encrusted chambers of the Escorial? And we mustn't forget that mad bugger in Moscow, must we? Oh, I have seen the times and Satan knows it. But I am not afeared! Not me! Not Sir Roger Shallot, Lord of Burpham Manor, Knight of the Garter, Justice of the Peace. I give Satan as good as I get! I call him a bag pudding, an ice-brained, splay-footed gull. I make the sign of the fig with my little finger. I climb back into my bed and cuddle down between my two lovelies. So, you young men, remember, this: whatever nocturnal terrors come, there's nothing that a prayer, a spark of courage, a cup of wine and a lovely girl can't cure. I can't vouch for the first two but I certainly can for the last!
    In the morning, as now, when Phoebus rolls his chariot across the ancient sky… Lord, what a silly phrase! My little chaplain and secretary, that decayed dotard, wants me to use words like that! He sits squirming on his little cushions waiting for me to continue my memoirs. Every so often he interrupts to comment on my diction. Why? Because he's seen too many bloody plays, that's why! He tries to keep out of range of my ash cane – little does he know I have bought a longer one. I have seen his fat shoulders shake with mirth at some of my tales – he's soon recovered from his own tragedy, hasn't he? He was betrothed to a sweet girl, ready to become handfast at the church door. Oh yes, Shakespeare said love is blind and it must be when it comes to him. There, there now, he protests.
    'You are always name dropping,' he blurts out maliciously, envious of my friendship with sweet Will.
    Well, look who's talking! He's always on about God – indeed, listening to his sermons, you'd think that the good Lord had breakfast with him every day. But back to his beloved. Oh, what a tragedy! Oh,the heartbreak! Oh, I laughed till my sides hurt! You see his beloved lived some miles away: she was the daughter of a prosperous yeoman. My little chaplain asked me to write love letters to her and so I did. I admit, I helped myself to some of Shakespeare's sonnets but who really cares? Will often comes here to see me and, if you can't lend a friend a phrase or two, then what's the use of friendship? Anyway, these love notes were given to a young farmer to deliver at her door. But the strangest thing happened – she never wrote back! So my little chaplain plucks up courage and goes down to see her and – guess what? Oh, the perfidy! – his betrothed had married the farmer who delivered the messages. Mind you, his heart soon healed. When he met two sisters, one tall, the other short, he asked me to which one he should pay court. Keeping my face straight, I told him that he should go for the shorter girl.
    'Remember your philosophy,' I declared sonorously. 'When confronted with two evils, always choose the lesser.'
    Mind you, the girl was as innocent as a dove. Of tender years and sweet demeanour. Her mother, a prosperous tenant of mine, came all afeared to me because my chaplain had taken her daughter out for a stroll on a balmy summer's evening. The poor woman knows my chaplain. He doesn't get the straw on his clothing from helping out at harvest time! Indeed, he spends more time in my hay loft than he does in the parish church.
    'Oh, please, Sir Roger,' the poor woman pleaded. 'Find out what your chaplain did to my daughter last night?'
    I had the girl brought by the captain of my guard to where I sit at the centre of my maze, protected by my two great wolfhounds.
    (Oh yes, I may well be past my ninety-fifth year but it is surprising how few people forgive and forget. The secret agents of every crowned head of Europe, and a few beyond its borders, would pay good gold to have my old head on the tip of a pike. But enough of that for the time being. Soon I’ll come to my story: about the orb of Charlemagne, about the Noctales, the Men of the Night, and old Shallot's desperate fight to stay