The Gallows Murders Read Free Page B

distilling these concoctions. One day Benjamin called me into his private chamber. He sat behind his desk which was piled high with horn books.
    ‘Roger, my dear friend.'
    ‘Yes, Master?' I asked innocently.
    'If you must involve yourself in physic ...' Benjamin hitched his furred gown further up his shoulders. The lattice window was open and the morning breeze rather chilling.'... If you must have your physic then, I beseech you, do not work in your chamber and make the house stink like a stableyard. I shall provide a special room for your experiments’
    Well, I took to it like a duck to water and, for the next few weeks, locked myself in a secret room high in the manor house, shrouding myself in a cloud of strange smells. I filled jars with the dried corpses of frogs and newts. I even managed to buy the skin of a donkey and concocted a sneezing powder to clear the head. I sent some to Quicksilver. Then, heigh nonny no, I packed all my medicines on a sumpter pony and trotted off to Ipswich market. I put the donkey in a stable and became a huckster. I bought a tray and created my own stall. Of course, I had to move, and did so briskly, when officials of the pie-and-powder court, those tyrants who man the tribunal which governs market affairs, came looking for me. Oh, but I enjoyed it: the shouting, the bargaining, the bartering, the recitation of the most incredible stories whilst keeping my face straight. No, I wasn't a trickster but a trader. None of my potions were dangerous, indeed many of them were quite helpful. No bailiff ever came looking for me with a warrant in his hand. However, as they teach in geometry, like is attracted to like, and I was soon on first-name terms with every rogue in Suffolk.
    Once the day's business was done, ‘I’d head straight for some boozing den, my bun full of money, rubbing shoulders with the priggers, the prancers, the dummerers, the riflers and rufflers, the foists, the naps, the morts, strumpets and whores. All lovely people! Most of them would have sold their mother's knuckle-bones for dice. They lived on a knife-edge, fearful of the chatts, their slang term for the gallows, yet ever ready for a free peck or meal, their fingers itching to cut a purse or rob a shop. I laughed, drank and gambled with the best of them. They conned me, I conned them. One little foist, who cheated me at cards, I treated free, giving him live spiders to eat, covered in butter to help his cough. Another who boasted about ill-treating a poor widow, was told to mix blood from a black cat's tail with cream from a slaughtered cow and drink it to cure the pox. (The stupid bugger did, but still scratched his private parts.) To honest folk I tried to be honest. The taverner who gave me a free drink was told that, to gather the fleas of a chamber into one place, he should put a staff on the floor covered with the grease of a fox or hedgehog, and all the fleas would gather on it. And, if that didn't work, to fill a dish with goat's blood, put it by the bed, and every flea in the tavern would drink and drown itself there. (By the way, this worked, you should try it!)
    When the day's work and enjoyment were done, I travelled back to the manor and supped with Benjamin in our dark oak-panelled hall, decorated with banners and tapestries, and with large wooden shields bearing the devices of Daunbey and Shallot which had been devised and painted by me. Of course, I’d always return a little fearful. After all, here we were enjoying the idylls of life, but London was not very far away and Wolsey never forgot us. When the Cardinal turned and snapped his fingers for us to come running, he'd always send that strange creature, black-garbed, sinister Dr Agrippa -to collect us.
    I have mentioned Agrippa before. He was Wolsey's familiar. A magus, a warlock, a man who never grew old or died. No, no, my wits aren't wandering. Agrippa, with his cherubic face and soulless eyes, lived and lurked in the shadow of Wolsey; yet I have