The Assassin King

‘My name’s Royston Flynn, by the way,’ said their host, as he led Anna and Oliver along a gloomy corridor lined with dusty prints of Pre-Raphaelite beauties to a large warm kitchen with framed maps on the wall, an electric Aga, racks of Le Creuset cookware and patterned crockery on an antique dresser. ‘But do please call me Royston. Or Roy, if you absolutely must, though I’d greatly prefer it if you didn’t. And charmed to meet you both, of course.’ A huge, hand-drawn schematic took up most of the pine table, its four corners pinned down by jars of marmalade, jam and honey. He removed these and it furled up into a cylinder of its own accord, to be dumped upon the rattan sofa. ‘Your uncle spoke warmly of a brilliant historian niece. Would that be you?’

‘I think it must be, as I’m his only niece,’ said Anna. ‘But I’m barely a historian at all, let alone a brilliant one. I’m still working on my PhD.’

‘Well, he was terribly proud of you. You must be heartbroken.’

He nodded and turned to Oliver. ‘Are you family too? I’m afraid he didn’t mention a nephew.’

‘No,’ said Oliver. ‘My name’s Oliver Merchant. I’m working on a documentary about—’

‘Oh that’s you, is it?’ Royston gazed delightedly at him. ‘A TV star! A real live TV star in my humble home.’

‘Hardly a star,’ said Oliver.

‘That’s not what dear Dunstan thought. He was terribly excited. Me, I’m not much for TV, or doubtless I’d be pestering you for an autograph. I’m more a radio man myself. It gives me all the company I need.’

‘And you don’t really have the time for it, I suppose,’ suggested Anna, ‘what with all these unfathomable people constantly dropping in.’

‘Exactly! Exactly! Though in my darker moments I sometimes fear that that has less to do with my personal attractions than with the scope and liberality of my cellar. Speaking of which, perhaps a glass of the blushful Hippocrene in memory of your poor uncle?’

‘Oh,’ said Anna. ‘A bit too early for me, thanks.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of you, my dear young lady,’ said Royston severely. ‘You don’t think I’d waste my best Richebourg on a mere student, do you? Come back once you’ve defended your thesis and we can talk. But perhaps your television friend…?’

‘No,’ said Anna firmly. ‘He’s driving.’

‘You poor young man,’ said Royston. ‘A terrible thing, a woman with scruples. Very well. The corkscrew shall wait.’ He pulled out a chair for himself, invited them to sit. ‘So, then. Ask me what you will.’

‘Please don’t take this the wrong way,’ said Anna, ‘but we’re still trying to work out my uncle’s movements last Sunday night. He was caught on a traffic camera, you see, a little way south of here. And when we were driving past just now, I remembered your letter.’

‘And you think he may have been here that night? No, I’m afraid not. It was well over a week ago. Closer to a fortnight, I’d say, though everything rather blurs these days, for some unaccountable reason. And it was early afternoon, not evening. Though he did stay long enough for us to polish off a bottle of that Richebourg you so rudely spurned. I say us, though your uncle barely touched his glass, as I recall. Perhaps our conversation was to blame.’

‘Why? What on earth did you talk about?’

‘Poisons, my dear,’ said Royston with relish. ‘Medieval poisons. Shakespearian poisons. How a villainous monk might murder a king with venom harvested from pricking the skin of a toad.’

‘But that’s just folklore, isn’t it?’ asked Anna. ‘John was already sick when he arrived here.’

‘Perhaps,’ admitted Royston. ‘Though would a man suffering from dysentery really have ridden south to Wisbech on an errand he could easily have delegated? Our only source for his being ill is Ralph of Coggeshall, remember, and he littered his journal with bright green children and other fantastical guff. More to the point, he was a Cistercian, just like the monks at the abbey here.’

‘But surely that would make his information more reliable,’ frowned Oliver.

‘It would certainly make his sources better,’ said Royston. ‘But it would also have given them far more reason to lie. John’s son was still only a boy when he came to the throne, but he was a young man by the time Ralph was writing. A young man with fond memories of his father. So of course the Cistercians would have wanted to blame his death on a Lynn banquet. Any hint of their own culpability might have doomed the entire order. And our only other contemporary source says nothing at all about John being sick. Nor about poison either, to be fair. He blamed his sickness on our excellent Lincolnshire cider. As if! The idea refutes itself. Anyway, why shouldn’t he have been poisoned? The country was on fire, his barons were in open revolt, and pretty much everyone hated him. If that isn’t enough, local tradition offers two additional motives, including that Brother Simon acted to save the virtue of the abbot’s sister, a nun called Judith, who’d caught John’s eye.’

‘And the other?’

‘That John was so furious about losing his baggage train that he declared a brutal new tax on bread.’

‘So many different motives,’ murmured Anna. ‘Doesn’t that suggest guesswork?’

Royston cackled delightedly. ‘That’s just what your uncle said. But there is a way to reconcile them. John had just come south after relieving the first siege of Lincoln Castle. He likely spent a night at the abbey, for there were precious few other estates on his route that were large and well-provisioned enough to accommodate his army.’

‘So he was notorious for raping the wives and daughters of the men around him. It delighted him to cause them pain. Imagine this, then. On his first stay here, Judith catches his eye. Not merely a nun, but the abbot’s sister too! How very delicious! Lynn won’t wait, but he can’t shake her from his head. So when Lincoln is besieged again, and he needs to head back north…’

‘He insists on stopping here,’ said Anna, completing the thought, ‘where he learns of his lost baggage train and declares his tax on bread.’

‘Would a monk really risk his immortal soul for a penny on a loaf?’ asked Oliver.

‘It was more than that, from what they say. Enough to cause widespread misery and wreck the abbey’s finances too. Besides…’ He turned back to Anna with a mischievous smile. ‘It’s time you saw my famous statue.’ He sprang to his feet and led them back the way they’d come, past the front door then through a plush drawing room out into the extension, where the statue stood in a marble alcove. Except it wasn’t a statue at all, Anna now saw, but rather a tomb effigy that had been stood upright. It had lost its legs at some point, leaving only the weathered grey trunk, arms and head of a middle-aged man. Yet that was enough for her to turn to Royston in surprise. ‘This?’ she asked. ‘This is Brother Simon?’