Paul Doherty - The Magician

‘I don’t know what-’

‘I wonder if he will betray you. If I offer him secret, safe and immediate passage back to France, he might sacrifice you. Why, William,’ Corbett leaned over, touching the clerk’s face, ‘you are beginning to sweat. Are you hot?’

‘Sir Hugh, you accuse me of treason and murder!’

‘Yes, yes, I do. Your hands are stained with the blood of an old friend. Oh, you acted the part so well, William. You even declared that de Craon might be bringing those scholars to England to have them murdered. You spoke the truth yet at the same time posed as a perceptive, loyal clerk of the English Crown who had doubts about de Craon from the very beginning. Yes, yes,’ Corbett blinked, ‘you knew the truth because you were party to those murders.’

‘I was asleep when Destaples died.’

‘Of course you were. You had already murdered him. The French magistri were no fools. Destaples was more suspicious of de Craon than anyone else. Why should he distrust an English clerk? You sat opposite him at the banquet on the night they arrived. You had been told he had a weak heart, and with the cups being filled and platters being brought it would have been so easy for you to pour a powder into his wine cup. What was it, William? Foxglove, to quicken the heart? Destaples could have died at table or returning to his chamber. Who could have been blamed? He was not a strong man, he had just completed a most vexatious journey, and he suffered a seizure.’

‘Ranulf,’ Bolingbroke turned beseechingly, ‘we have shared the same chamber . . .’

‘We also shared the same friend,’ came the reply. ‘The same master, the same oath.’

‘Louis Crotoy was next.’ Corbett patted Bolingbroke on the arm, making him turn back. ‘Louis was much more careful and prudent, but of course he never realized that de Craon had a spy in my retinue. Like Destaples, he would be wary of de Craon but not one of my clerks. Late that afternoon, the day he died, Louis heard a knock on the outside door. He came down, opened the squint hole and glimpsed William Bolingbroke, trusted colleague of his friend Sir Hugh Corbett.’ Corbett kept his voice even. ‘The rest was so simple. You were invited in. You’re a strong man, William, Louis was fairly frail; you broke his neck and threw his corpse down the steps. You then loosened the heel of a good boot – I can prove it was cut – and rearranged his cloak, creating the illusion that Louis had tripped and fallen. To all intents and purposes an accidental death, an impression heightened when you placed both keys in his wallet. You locked the outside door using one of the devices you had taken from Le Roi des Clefs.’ Corbett paused as if listening to the sounds of the castle. ‘You made a number of mistakes, William. Most importantly, just after Louis was killed, you raised the possibility of it not being murder by pointing out how both keys had been found in his wallet.’

‘Someone told me.’

‘Was it de Craon? You weren’t present when the corpse was found. I kept that information strictly to myself. Then it was Vervins’ turn. What are you going to say, William? That you were here with me and Ranulf when he fell to his death? Well of course you were! But Vervins liked that parapet walk. It had become something of a routine. What happened was that, using one of the instruments from the Roi des Clefs, Bogo de Baiocis, de Craon’s henchman, was given a free hand. The door into the side of the tower is hidden from public view. It would be easy for Bogo to slip through and up the steps with an arbalest and blunted bolt. He opened the small slat in the locked door leading on to the parapet; this provided an excellent view. The arbalest was well oiled, the bolt placed in the groove, the catches released. Vervins stumbles and falls to his death. The assassin slips down the steps out of the tower, quickly locking the door behind him. Nobody would dream of looking for a blunted bolt, and any bruise on Vervins would be considered as a result of the fall.’

‘You asked him to search for it,’ Ranulf declared.

‘Oh yes, I did. If he’d found it he wouldn’t hand it over. You’re responsible for a number of murders, William. Magister Thibault; your good friend Ufford, a colleague of mine, a trusted English clerk. You have the blood of those three Frenchmen on your hands, in particular that of my good friend Louis Crotoy. Finally,’ Corbett moved quickly and slapped Bolingbroke across the face, ‘you tried to murder me! At first I thought it was the killer of those young women, but when I trapped Mistress Feyner I realised that though she could loose a crossbow bolt up close, she could not fire through the darkness with such accuracy and speed. On the night I was attacked only three people knew where I was going: me, Chanson and you. No, don’t,’ Bolingbroke had opened his mouth to protest, ‘don’t lie, William, don’t say that I must have been followed. Mistress Feyner would never have done that. De Craon?’ Corbett shook his head. ‘That’s not the Frenchman’s style; he wouldn’t want to be caught attacking the King’s clerk on English soil.’

‘But why?’ Chanson, standing behind Corbett, listened to these accusations against a clerk he had grown to like, even admire.

‘Why, Chanson? Well, now we come to the real business in hand. It wasn’t the writings of Friar Roger Bacon but something much more serious. The Secretus Secretorum was written in a cipher. De Craon knew that our King’s appetite had been whetted. This meeting was proposed,’ Corbett waved his hand, ‘to make it more palatable to our King, whilst the French insisted it should be in some castle along the southern coast, well away from any town or city. Corfe may be impregnable but there’s not a castle built which can’t be taken by stealth and treachery. The Flemish pirate fleet was hired, paid good gold and silver as well as offered the prospect of wholesale plundering. They appeared in the Narrow Seas and ravaged the coastline further to the west. De Craon also sent agents into England: those Castilians pretending to be wool merchants. They took up residence in the Tavern in the Forest; others took the role of pedlars, tinkers and chapmen. I’m not too sure if they were taken directly to England or landed by the pirates; they could even have been Flemings themselves. Philip and de Craon are very cunning. It’s wintertime, the roads are deserted, Corfe is surrounded by forest, and so the game begins. De Craon acts all innocent, but that fire at the edge of the forest, on the night I was attacked, was a signal that all was ready. The accidental fire which later occurred in the castle was de Craon’s reply that the assault was to continue as planned. De Craon, of course, sent a message to his agents at the tavern giving them the time and place. He also arranged that banquet the night before, hoping the Corfe garrison would be caught unawares.’

‘If you hadn’t trapped Mistress Feyner?’ Ranulf asked.

‘Yes,’ Corbett agreed. ‘For all her evil, some good did come out of it.’

‘But why?’ Chanson repeated.

‘Oh, a number of reasons. First, I’m sure de Craon and his party would have escaped unscathed, but me? The Keeper of the Secret Seal, de Craon’s mortal enemy? The nemesis of his master? I would be killed along with Ranulf-atte-Newgate, principal clerk of the Green Wax, and Chanson, Clerk of the Stables; perhaps Sir Edmund and his family would have been taken for ransom.’ Corbett snapped his fingers. ‘Yes, that’s it, the same fate would befall de Craon, though he would be tended to gently enough and later released under some fictitious arrangement.’

Ranulf watched Bolingbroke carefully. He had attended the King’s Bench in Westminster and seen men sentenced before the justices in eyre or the justices of oyer and terminer. Condemned men always acted as if they were drunk, unable to accept what was happening. The same was true of Bolingbroke. He hadn’t even touched his face where Corbett had smacked him, but sat, half turned in his chair, lips slightly parted, only the occasional blink or twitch of a muscle showing he was awake and listening.