Do marriage and murder go together? I recently reflected on this when my little clerk, God bless his pretty arse, asked my permission to marry. 'Marry in haste and repent at leisure!' I bawled back.

He slunk away, leaving me to my thoughts. Spring has come. I hear the song of the geese as they fly across the marshes in the woods of Burpham Manor. I grasp my stick and, one arm resting on Margot the other on Phoebe (two lovely lasses!), I go and stand out on the steps of my manor house. I stare up at the strengthening sun. My eyes are weak but I hold my face up, searching for its warmth. I recall those sweet, wine-drenched, murderous days under the Tuscan sun where, an eternity ago, I and my master, Benjamin Daunbey, beloved nephew of the great Cardinal Wolsey, searched for a killer. Ah yes, Wolsey, Chancellor and First Minister of the biggest bastard this realm has ever seen, Henry VIII, by God's grace King of England, Scotland, Ireland and France. I turn and walk back into the manor hall. I study the small painting executed by Holbein the Younger, showing the Great Beast' in all his glory – Henry VIII with his fat, florid face, gold moustache and beard and those eyes. Oh Lord, those eyes! Just like a pig's before it charges. And those lips! Wet and slobbery! I remember that pursed mouth pressed up against my ear.

'Shallot!' Henry once hissed. 'You'll wet your breeches at Tyburn! And your clever little neck- will be stretched like a piece of cloth!"

Ah well, he was wrong, wasn't he? Old Shallot survived, proving once again that I do possess the quickest wits and fastest legs in Christendom. Roger Shallot didn't die, although not for any lack of trying by the legion of evil murderers whom I have had the pleasure of doing business with over the years. No, no, Roger Shallot, like the bay tree in the psalms, like the cedar of Lebanon, grew and flourished.