The Poison Maiden

Chapter 6

Alvena left in a rustle of skirts. Demontaigu rose to his feet. I tried to control the shivering, the fear curdling my belly.

‘Bertrand, shall we leave by another way?’

He shook his head grimly. ‘They’ll have the entire house watched. It’s best if we leave by the gate. Walk quickly, yet act as if we suspect nothing. Above all, move swiftly but keep with me.’ He unhitched the arbalest from the hook on his war belt, plucked a bolt from the small pouch, wound the cord back and placed it in the groove, taking great care that the catch was primed. ‘Hide this beneath your cloak. Do not loose until I give the order.’

I took the arbalest, though first I had to dry my hands on my cloak. Demontaigu noticed this and cupped my face in his hands. He kissed me gently on the brow and on the lips, holding me tenderly, staring into my eyes.

‘I feel the same as you, Mathilde, the guttering in the belly, the clammy sweat, your breath coming hard. Forget that. Once we leave this house, we are going to meet three men who will try to kill us.’

‘What if they do so from afar?’

‘I doubt it.’ Demontaigu shook his head. ‘There is more to it than that. I suspect they want us alive, to question, to interrogate to discover what we know. Now come.’

The two ruffians opened the gate. Once we were through, Demontaigu walked so briskly I almost ran to keep up with him.

‘Did I tell you that story, Mathilde,’ Demontaigu’s voice rose, ‘about the disreputable clerk who visited the Cistercians at Clairvaux to see what he could rob? He stayed a year hoping to steal their precious candlesticks from the altar but found it difficult to plan. . In the trees to the left,’ he whispered. ‘However, this man,’ he continued loudly, ‘because he spent a year in such a holy place found that he was converting to needing the grace of God more than the candlesticks, so he confessed his sins and entered the order.’

Demontaigu threw back his cloak.

‘And there’s the other story. Once, in the monastery of St Benigny, I saw a devil: it was just after dawn, a little thin man, black-eyed, with sunken cheeks and receding hair. He was hunchbacked and dirty, dressed in garish rags. They are here,’ he added in a whisper.

I glanced up. We were well away from the gate, almost approaching the trees when the three emerged, cowled and visored, long cloaks hanging to their ankles, faces masked, with only slits for their eyes and mouth.

‘Good brothers three,’ Demontaigu shouted, ‘how are you?’

Closer and closer we drew. The men, taken by surprise, didn’t know what to do.

‘The one in the centre,’ Demontaigu murmured, ‘he is the leader.’

The gap between us closed. The three recovered, cloaks were thrown back, swords and daggers drawn. They hastened towards us.

‘Now, Mathilde, now!’

I paused, pushed back my own cloak and brought up the arbalest. Our opponents were running towards us. I took aim, released the catch and the bolt flew sure and fast, powerful testimony to the training Uncle Reginald had given me in Paris. The quarrel struck the leader deep in the chest. He screamed as he was flung back. The other two, disconcerted, separated from each other and paused. Demontaigu rushed in, sword and dagger whirling as he attacked the man on his right. The other looked at me. I was already putting a second bolt into the groove. He hesitated, made for Demontaigu, then turned back to me. I fumbled with the catch, then released it. The bolt whirred out. At such close range it had a deadly impact, piercing the man in the face just beneath the left eye, shattering skin, bone and muscle. Blood spurted out through nose and mouth as he staggered back crying and shrieking, a horrid sound. Demontaigu was a knight, a trained swordsman. The third ruffian was no match. He almost fell upon Demontaigu’s sword; it sliced up into his belly as Demontaigu plunged his dagger deep into the side of his assailant’s neck. So quickly! Isn’t it strange how swiftly Death comes? There on the heathland, the trees moving gently, the distant sounds of a dog barking, children shouting. Three men killed, blood spurting out of ear, nose and mouth. The one Demontaigu had attacked died quickly, as did the first whom I’d loosed at: the quarrel had cut deep, straight into his heart. The man who had taken the bolt in the face lay screaming and moaning on the ground. Demontaigu went over. Dropping his sword and moving his dagger to his right hand, he knelt, cupping the man’s chin between his fingers, forcing him to look up.

‘You are dying,’ he murmured. ‘I am a priest. No physician under the sun can save you. Tell me now and I will shrive you. Lascelles, Pax-Bread?’

‘Gone!’ muttered the man, gargling on his own blood. ‘Taken.’ Then his head fell slack.

Demontaigu whispered the words of absolution, sketched a blessing in the air and came back to me. I stood clutching the crossbow, shivering at the cold.

‘Mathilde.’ Demontaigu prised the crossbow from my fingers and placed it gently on the grass beside me. He took my hands, cupping them in his, rubbing hard so I could feel the warmth.

‘So swift?’ I murmured. ‘So swift.’

Demontaigu embraced me, putting his hand behind my head, pushing my face into the side of his neck. ‘Mathilde, they didn’t expect it. They hoped we would be terrified, stand still, perhaps turn to flee, not advance towards them, attack vigorously and deadly as any knight on horseback. Now their souls have gone to God, and if one of them spoke the truth, so has Lascelles.’ He let me go.

Staring back down the track-way, I saw the gates of the House of Pleasure open and shut quickly.

‘God bless Alvena,’ Demontaigu murmured. ‘We owe her a debt.’ He knelt beside the three ruffians, searching their clothes and wallets, but apart from a few coins, there was nothing else. ‘Professionals,’ he declared, getting to his feet. ‘Leave them to the Moon People.’

‘The Tenebrae?’ I asked. ‘Les ombres?’

‘Possibly.’ Demontaigu tapped one of the corpses with his boot. ‘Former soldiers, I suppose, ruffians: they can be hired a dozen a penny in the city.’ He glanced up the sky. ‘There is nothing like swordplay and blood to whet the appetite, eh, Mathilde?’ He beckoned me forward. ‘We still have business to do.’

We left Lothbury, entering the tangle of alleys and lanes stretching down to Aldersgate. The Chapel of the Hanged lay between St Bartholomew’s and St John’s Clerkenwell. The light was greying, darkening those reeking, shabby runnels. On either side the houses, old and crumbling, blocked out the sky. The sense of watching malevolence deepened. The shabby scrawled signs creaked in the wind. Shadows jumped and fluttered in the glow of the occasional lantern horn. Faces leered at us through the poor light, grotesques with their wrinkled skin, furred brows, hairy lips, squinted eyes and gabbling mouths, their gums all sore with blackened teeth. In my fevered state they looked like demons massing against us. Only Demontaigu’s calm demeanour stilled my qualms. We skirted the Shambles stinking of the guts and innards of animals slaughtered in the fleshing yards near Newgate. As I’ve written, I was still recovering from the swift savagery of that hideous melee. Demontaigu, however, seemed more comforted and assured, as if the violence had drawn the tension from him. He paused when he glimpsed the tops of Newgate’s turreted towers and pattered a Pater, Ave and Gloria for his comrades imprisoned in that hideous hole. We continued on, vigilant against the rogues, vagabonds and petty thieves slyly emerging as the light faded and the bells of St Martin le Grand tolled the curfew, warning of the approaching dark. On the crumbling steps of a church porch, a wandering preacher proclaimed disasters in the heavens: how Death, a grinning Antic, postured in the shadows waiting for the Day of Doom, and Satan, all-horned, readied his fiery sickle to reap his harvest. I wondered if the man was one of Demontaigu’s brothers hiding in this den of thieves and easy livers. But there again, anyone could be anything in those dark, evil alleyways. I even wondered about the rat catcher, trailed by his ferocious dogs, who beat a drum and rattled his traps as he sang:

‘Rats or mice,

Have ye any rats, mice, polecats or weasels?

Or even an old sow sick with the measles. .?’

I was relieved to reach Aldersgate, to go beyond the bar, along open lanes and into the inviting warmth of the Paltock Tavern. Demontaigu had been watching me closely. He insisted that we eat and I would feel better. We hired a special table close to the inglehook and ordered venison stewed in ginger, chicken boiled and stuffed with grapes with freshly baked rastons and goblets of claret. We ate hurriedly in silence, then continued into the darkening day along rib-thin track-ways. At last we reached the ‘corpse road’, as Demontaigu described it, leading to the derelict Chapel of the Hanged. In truth it was an eerie, ghost-haunted place. Its cemetery was a tangle of undergrowth that covered and smothered the battered headstones and decaying wooden crosses. A place of desolation. Bats, like dark sprites, swooped and swirled over the gorse bending under a sharp evening breeze.

‘It’s owl time,’ Demontaigu murmured. ‘Vespers will soon be finished.’

He pushed back the creaking lychgate and we went up the weed-strewn path. The main door of the chapel was bolted with wooden bars nailed across. Demontaigu ignored this and led me round the church to the other side, an equally desolate place. He paused before the narrow corpse-door, inserted his dagger, expertly lifted the latch and ushered me into the chapel, a long, barn-like structure. He knew where to go and quickly lit the sconce torches fastened into clasps on the squat round pillars. The light flared, revealing a gloomy nave of table tombs, a derelict rood screen, mildewed paving stones and faded wall paintings. If I ever visited a hall of ghosts, the Chapel of the Hanged was certainly one. Demontaigu gestured me across into a far corner. He took a sconce torch from its clasp, opened a coffin-shaped door and led me down into the crypt, a barrel-vaulted chapel with rounded pillars stretching along each side. A stark stone altar stood on a slightly raised sanctuary plinth at the far end. I have been in many eerie places, but that crypt was surely one where the veil between the visible and the invisible became extremely thin.

Demontaigu led me across to the far wall. He took off his cloak and laid it on the ground for me. He then made sure the coffin door leading down to the crypt was bolted and secure. He ignored my questions, more concerned with lighting the sconce torches. Their orange tongues of flame licked out, bringing that macabre place to life. The wall paintings were stark and vivid. One I remember distinctly depicted a confrontation between the living and the dead on a hunting field. The living were all intent on pursuing some quarry. They were well dressed, cloaked and spurred astride fat, sleek destriers. The dead were skeletons garbed in funeral cloths and tattered shrouds, their horses ghastly-ribbed mounts from the meadows of hell. On either side of this horrid vision other paintings emphasised the dissolution of all things, the imminence of death, the terrors of hell and the pains of purgatory.

‘What is this place?’ I repeated. My voice echoed through that cavern of atonement like that of a disembodied soul. ‘It reeks of the smell of death and the anguish of the tomb.’

‘This,’ Demontaigu explained, squatting down in front of me, ‘is an ancient church built over a Saxon crypt. About two hundred years ago, Pope Urban II proclaimed the Great Crusade at Clermont. The founders of our order, the Templars, Hugh de Payne and Geoffrey of St Omer, immediately took the cross and journeyed across the world to storm the walls of Jerusalem. They later instituted our order. An Englishman — we do not know his full name; legend calls him Fitzdamory — also took the oath, vowing solemnly to join Hugh and Geoffrey on their holy pilgrimage. Fitzdamory’s wife, however, distraught at the prospect of losing her husband, persuaded him not to join them at the mustering place near Vezelay in France. The Crusaders left for Outremer. Fitzdamory’s wife died soon afterwards; Fitzdamory saw it as God’s judgement on his broken vow. He became a hermit beyond the city walls and used his wealth to build the Chapel of the Hanged above this crypt.’ Demontaigu touched my cheek. ‘A cavern of lost souls. Perhaps it is! Fitzdamory, as an act of penance, vowed this church as a place to receive the corpses of those hanged in London. The cadavers of condemned men and women, too poor or too wicked by reputation to secure a lasting resting place in God’s Acre elsewhere.’ He gestured at a trapdoor hidden in the shadows of the ceiling, its bolts all rusted. ‘The corpses of the hanged were lowered down here, dressed for burial, then taken out, hence the name of the chapel.’

‘But now it’s derelict?’

‘It lies beyond the city walls. Many regard it as a haunted, ill-cursed place. Our order took it over. They did not know what to do with it. .’ Demontaigu paused at a knock on the crypt door, dull but threatening, echoing through the crypt like a drum beat. He held his hand up, listening intently. Again the knock. He hastened up the steps. I followed.

‘As ye are,’ he called.

‘So shall ye be,’ came the reply.

Demontaigu drew back the bolts. Dark shapes slipped through the doorway, tripping down the steps. In the light, most of them looked grotesque, hair and beards thick and bushy. Beneath the cloaks and hoods, the arrivals were dressed in a variety of attire, cotehardies, jupons and jerkins, some costly, others stained and ragged. I caught the tension, the rank smell of fear, the sweaty haste of men who lurked in the shadows, now relieved to reach this sanctuary of peace. All were well armed. They gathered in the pool of light below, about fourteen or fifteen people. I glimpsed the preacher from the Tower quayside; his eyes, no longer gleaming in passion, were gentle and mocking. Demontaigu introduced him as Jean de Ausel, and he grasped my hand and kissed me full on each cheek in a gust of wine, sweat and leather. He then introduced Padraig, the cripple who had crouched on those wooden slats, now nimble enough to make everyone laugh by tumbling and somersaulting along the floor of that gloomy crypt. Ausel truly surprised me. He was no longer the fanatic; even his voice had changed, becoming soft and lilting. I tried to trace the accent. Ausel explained how he was of Norman family from the Pale around Dublin, with a hunger to return to the mist-strewn glens of what he called ‘the Blessed Isle’. More Templars arrived, knights, serjeants, servants of the order. Some were calm, well fed and equitable, others haunted, harassed and careworn. A few, particularly the old, objected to my presence, muttering that no woman should be allowed into their mysteries. Demontaigu, without giving my name or status, voiced that he would vouch for me, as did Ausel and Padraig.

‘Our order is no more,’ Ausel declared. ‘We need every friend we have.’ The protests faded away.

Simon Destivet, their leader, called what he termed their ‘parliament’ to order. He knelt on the dais before the crumbling altar, and made the sign of the cross as we gathered behind him and intoned the ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’. The refrain was taken up, powerful voices calling through the dark. Once it was finished, Demontaigu nipped my wrist as a warning to remain silent. Two candles were lit, the iron spigots being brought from a chest concealed in a corner; these were placed on the altar. A coffer, ironbound and secured by three locks, was put between them; Destivet, Demontaigu and Ausel each produced a key. The coffer was opened. Meanwhile lanterns, thick coloured candles gleaming behind the horn covers, were also positioned along the altar. A roll of linen was taken out of the coffer and stretched between two wooden frames. The cloth must have been a yard long and the same across, ancient but very well preserved. The lantern horns behind it were moved closer. I gasped in amazement. The more I stared, the better I could distinguish the face of a man. I could make out his tangled hair and beard, the half-closed eyes, a disfigured, bruised face, yet also gentle, a soul-searing vision of deep suffering. The Templars immediately bowed, foreheads touching the ground as they intoned a prayer: ‘Ah my Jesus, turn your face towards each of us as you did to Veronica. Not that we may see it with our bodily eyes, for this we do not deserve, but turn it towards our hearts so that, remembering You, we may ever draw from this power and strength the vigour necessary to sustain the combats of life. Amen.’

I bowed with them, realising this must be the Mandylion, the cloth that had covered the face of the crucified Christ. My uncle, Sir Reginald, had often obliquely referred to this, whilst in their hideous allegations against the Templars, Philip’s lawyers had accused them of worshipping a disembodied head. Now I saw the truth! We all knelt back on our heels, and Destivet began a mournful prayer, a quotation from scripture: ‘It is close, the day of their ruin, their doom comes at speed.’

‘No, no.’ Ausel’s voice rang clear. ‘No, no, let us not be dismayed or downcast, brothers. Let us not seek vengeance on our enemies but leave that to God. Let us be triumphant.’

Destivet nodded, even though, kneeling behind him, I sensed he was crying. Ausel was determined to lift the pall of gloom. In his lilting Irish voice he chanted a beautiful Celtic prayer. I later asked Demontaigu to copy it down for me:

‘I offer you, Lord,

Every flower that ever grew,

Every bird that ever flew,

Every wind that ever blew.

Good God, every thunder rolling,

Every church bell tolling,

Every leaf and every bud.

Multiply each and every one.

Make them into glories, millions of glories.’

Others took up the prayer. I felt a slight chill, not of fear but of awe at those men, hunted and harassed to death, still determined to pray, to fight, to proclaim their message. Afterwards, they all joined Ausel in a Celtic hymn:

‘Be thou our vision, Oh Lord of our hearts. .

Be thou our first thought in the day and the night,

Waking or sleeping your presence our light,

Be thou our shield, our sword for the fight. .’

The chant finally finished, and Destivet made the sign of the cross. The candles were doused, the sacred roll relocked in its coffer. Destivet turned and sat on the edge of the dais. The rest of us grouped around him in a circle. Each reported what had happened. One tale of gloom after another. In France, the Templars were being accused of the most heinous crimes: intercourse with demons, spitting on Christ’s image, urinating on the cross, administering the kiss of shame to the penis, buttocks and lips of superiors, or engaging in other homosexual acts.

‘According to one of Philip’s lawyers,’ a Templar spoke up, ‘the allegations against us are “a bitter thing, lamentable, horrible to contemplate, terrible to bear, almost inhuman, indeed set apart from all humanity”.’

‘But are they believed?’ Destivet asked.

The speaker shrugged. ‘A very few of our comrades escaped, but most of them were tortured: weights hung on their genitals. They were strapped to the rack, ankles and wrists, dislocated through winches, wrenched from their sockets. Others were pulled up to the ceiling by ropes which would suddenly go slack, their fall broken by a violent jerk. Burnings and scaldings are commonplace. The brothers are confessing; they have to for a moment’s peace.’

The Templars prayed for these unfortunates, then moved swiftly on to other business, including King Edward’s reluctance to allow papal inquisitors into the realm. Some of the Templars knew about the troubles at Westminster and the presence of French envoys. Destivet raised the possibility of attacking these, arguing how the assassination of Marigny and his coven would be ‘a righteous act’. Demontaigu disagreed, pointing out how the French were well protected, whilst such an attack might alienate Edward. Moreover, the Noctales were a malevolent, ever-present menace. They would continue the hunt whatever happened. Demontaigu’s argument was accepted. Various Templars related how the Noctales, armed with descriptions and information about hiding places supplied by spies and informers, had already captured and imprisoned a number of their brethren. The whereabouts of Templar treasure was discussed, its hiding places and worth. I was particularly intrigued by the references to gold and silver held by Langton, secretly hidden away before his fall. Destivet was of the mind that they should gather all such treasure, memoranda and relics, move swiftly into the northern shires and open secret negotiations with the Scottish rebel Bruce. This was being hotly discussed when the wail of a hunting horn immediately created silence. Candles were doused, war belts strapped on, arbalests winched back, bows and arrows seized.

‘Our lookouts!’ Demontaigu hissed.

A second horn echoed through the darkness, followed by the sound of running feet along the hollow nave above and a furious pounding on the crypt door. Demontaigu hastened up the steps. He asked the password and was given it. He drew back the bolts. Two men almost threw themselves down the steps, tumbling and tripping over each other.

‘Noctales!’ one of them declared. ‘Not just a few; perhaps all of them. They are in the cemetery, guarding every entrance.’

Demontaigu immediately re-bolted the door and stood on the top of the steps banging his sword against the wall for silence.

‘They know we are here!’ he declared. ‘We could break out through the church and take whatever opportunity exists in the open fields around, but they are on horseback. God knows how many there are and what other rogues they’ve hired for tonight’s work. They think they have us trapped; we will prove them wrong. Crossbowmen and archers, you stay.’

About a dozen men stepped forward. Demontaigu hurried down the steps and had a word with Destivet and Ausel. They quickly agreed that the aged should leave first carrying the treasures, relics, documents and whatever else the Noctales wished to seize. I was going ask how they were going to get out when Demontaigu led me over into a corner. He and two others grasped the rusting key in a flagstone and lifted it up. A gush of cold foul air swept through the crypt.

‘You don’t think,’ Demontaigu whispered, ‘that we’d shelter here with no way out? This is an old church. The passage beneath runs close to St Bartholomew’s near Smithfield. Mathilde, I ask you to stay with me. We will be the last to leave, but if you are captured. .’ he grasped my hands, ‘stand on ceremony. Declare who you are. Demand that you be taken immediately back to the palace. But if God is good, that won’t happen.’

The crypt began to empty, the old ones first, with a small escort; some carried sacks, others coffers and chests. The steps leading down into the pit were crumbling and steep. Curses rang through the darkness. Cresset torches were hastily relit and handed down, Demontaigu shouting that some must be fixed into wall niches. By now I was aware that the nave above us was filling with men; it echoed with shouts, mailed foot-steps and the clash of armour. Eventually the Noctales reached the crypt door. It was tried and pushed, followed by silence, then I heard the sound of running feet and a hideous crashing. The Noctales had found a fallen log or an old bench and were using it as a battering ram. The door however was thick and stout, its hinges almost welded into the wood. Meanwhile the crypt emptied further. Archers and crossbowmen prepared, arrows lying on the ground beside each man’s right foot, one notched to the bow. Demontaigu took a small sack of oil, with which he doused the steps; then he piled whatever rubbish he could find against the crypt door.

I watched sweat-soaked, heart pounding, feeling at the same time hot and cold. The battering ram was now having an effect. The wood buckled. The door shivered. There was a great crash and the bottom half gave way. A figure slipped through, sword glinting. An arrow was loosed. The man screamed and slithered down the steps. Demontaigu threw a torch. The steps and rubbish piled against the door were engulfed in a sheet of flame. The Noctales were foolish. Some tried to jump through; those who did, slipped on the oil and were easy targets against the light for our crossbowmen and archers. The air now sang with the twang of bows and the whistle of arrows, followed by heart-jolting screams as each shaft found its target. Demontaigu, sword drawn, directed the bowmen as the Noctales, with cloaks and whatever else they could find, tried to douse the flames. Demontaigu ordered his men to withdraw; crossbowmen first, then the archers. The fire began to die down. Demontaigu urged some of the crossbowmen out down the secret passageway, followed by men-at-arms. The Noctales, however, were desperate, furious at being thwarted, eager to seize their prey. Three of them reached the bottom of the steps unscathed and rushed towards our remaining crossbowmen. One leapt, bringing his sword down with two hands, and cut through the arm of an archer as he fumbled for another shaft. The man collapsed screaming. The Noctales showed no mercy and immediately drove his sword straight into the archer’s throat before one of the Templars loosed a quarrel that took the attacker full in the side of the face. Pandemonium and chaos ensued. Shouts and screams, the clash of swords. Demontaigu’s line held firm. I was now in the centre of a V, which was retreating back to that life-giving tunnel. Demontaigu had first used whatever crossbowmen had remained. The archers were now told to mass and loose at the same time; their shower of arrows drove the Noctales back.

‘Enough!’ Demontaigu shouted. ‘Enough!’

Four or five master bowmen stayed, loosing shaft after shaft as the rest hurried down the steps. Demontaigu pushed me into the arms of one of his companions; looking up, I stared into the smiling face of Ausel.

‘What a fortunate night,’ he said. ‘A fight with the Noctales and the embrace of a beautiful woman.’ He laughed at his own mock chivalry and pushed me further down towards the steps. I was half carried into the darkness below. The tunnel was narrow, no more than two yards across, and about the same high. Ausel told me to watch my head and follow him. Behind me, the last men hurried through. In the glow of a torch I glimpsed Demontaigu pull the paving stone back into place. He poured oil on the steps and dropped the torch, fleeing after us as the flames leapt up. We stumbled and ran, gasping for breath, bodies sweat-soaked. I tried not to think as rats scurried by, squeaking stridently at being disturbed. At one point the tunnel branched to the left and right. Ausel paused, waiting for Demontaigu to catch up. He stared at certain markings on the wall and indicated we should take the left fork. No sounds echoed behind us. Demontaigu gaspingly informed us that the paving stone was intricately placed and not easily raised, whilst the fire would be deterrent enough, not to mention the prospect of arrows being loosed through the darkness.

At last the tunnel sloped upwards. I felt a flurry of cold night air and we were out into an old derelict cemetery lying to the north of Smithfield, bordering its great open meadows. In the distance I could see the gibbets and scaffolds of the execution ground lit by torches as carpenters worked late into the night for some execution the following morning. A grim, macabre scene. By then most of the Templars had escaped, scattering in every direction. Demontaigu explained that there would be little time for farewells but that they all knew how and when they would meet again. Dragging me by the arm, he skirted the common on to a track-way down to the lanes leading into the city. Only then did I became aware of how deep the darkness was. The rasping night air bit at me even as lantern horns at windows or slung on hooks outside doors glowed comfortingly. The final curfew had not yet tolled. The watch were not out. The streets were busy, especially near the fleshing yards where the taverns and alehouses still provided welcoming light and warmth. Demontaigu took me into one of these, hiring a table deep in the shadows. He ordered water and napkins, and we roughly cleaned ourselves whilst sharing a goblet of wine and a platter of bread. Demontaigu then leaned back, head against the wall, peering at me through half-opened eyes.

‘We never expected that,’ he murmured. ‘Those poor unfortunates at Newgate? Perhaps one of them was interrogated? They could only have discovered the Chapel of the Hanged from a Templar. . But come, mistress,’ he smiled, ‘let’s go hand in hand back to the palace and pretend that whatever happened today did not.’