Warm stoves heat my kitchens and butteries whilst water is brought in along pure elm pipes. Oh, I lead a life of luxury, but it wasn't always like that. Time's hand draws back the curtain of the past I sneak a look down the gloomy, vaulted passageway of history, lined with skulls and laced with the blood of those I ate and drank and, God forgive me, sometimes slept with. I must speak clearly so my words do not come out like some tangled chain: in doing so, I'll exorcise the ghosts of my salad days when I was green in judgement yet had such horrors to face.

I do not have to walk far down the long, dusty passageway of time before I meet Murder squatting there, his silver skin laced with scarlet blood, his body riven by gashed stabs, face black and full of gore, eyeballs protruding further out than they should in a living man. He has that basilisk stare, ghastly, gasping like a strangled man. His hair is upstanding, his nostrils flared with struggling, his hands stretched out like someone tugging for life. That's Murder! I met him many a time in those turbulent days of Henry VIH when I and my great friend, tall, dark, angel-faced Benjamin Daunbey, nephew of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, were hired to hunt subtle murderers and crafty assassins. Let time be my witness, none of these was more cunning, more artful, more deceitful than those who planned to steal the Orb of Charlemagne and nearly sent old Roger to a watery grave. I cannot remain silent. Murder, though it has no tongue, will speak and I am duty bound to recall it. At Michaelmas the queen will come again. She will hear Mass secretly in my hidden chamber and, afterwards, sit at my table to drink claret and pluck at golden capon. Great Elizabeth will lean across and tweak my cheek.

'Come, Roger,' she'll whisper. 'Bring me the next chapter of your memoirs. Let me see those times again!'

And she will! Murder beckons me down time's sombre gallery, back into the golden, sun-filled, bloody autumn days of 1523 when King Henry, that murderous imp, still ruled England and Cardinal Wolsey, his brain teeming more than a boxful of vipers, tried to rule the king.