Paul Doherty: Prince of Darkness

Chest heaving, Corbett sat up beneath the blue and gold canopy stretched across the carved uprights of his huge four-poster bed. The window casement rattled under the persistent batterings of a sobbing wind and Corbett wondered it he had been merely dreaming or else visited by some dark phantasm of the night He looked quickly to his right side but Maeve, his wife, was lost in gentle sleep, her silver-blonde hair spread out like a halo across the huge bolster. He leaned over and gendy kissed her on the brow. Outside, the lonely call of a hunting owl and the death shrieks of some animal in the shadowy darkness of the trees re-kindled his sombre mood.

Corbett got up, dressed in his robe and, with tinder and taper, lit a candle. He walked to the heavy, thick arras which hung on the far wall of his bed chamber and pulled this aside, the light of his flickering candle making the embroidered figures spring to ghostly life. Corbett grasped the cunningly contrived lever, pressed it and the wooden panelling gently swung back on its oiled hinges, giving him access to his secret chamber. This perfectly square, white-washed room was the centre of his work, the one place Corbett could be alone to drink, to plot, and take every measure against the King's enemies, both at home and abroad.

He stretched and felt his shoulder twinge with pain where, months previously, the mad priest, de Luce, had plunged his dagger. Corbett had survived, nursed by Maeve, now his wife of six months and already two months gone with child. He smiled; a source for happiness there but not here, in this darkened chamber. Edward I of England had given him Leighton Manor on the borders of Essex in recognition for services rendered but also in return for his continued efforts in building up a network of spies in England, Scotland, France and the Low Countries. Corbett had been happy to accept the charge but the information he gathered carried further problems: he felt he had sown dragons' teeth and was about to reap the whirlwind.

The clerk lit the cresset torches fixed in their iron brackets on the wall and walked over to his intricately carved oak desk; the secrets he had locked away in its hidden drawers and compartments were the source of his present cares and anxiety. From a stone beneath the desk, Corbett removed some keys, lit the two candelabra which stood on either side of the desk, sat down and unlocked the secret compartment.

He plucked out the King's letter, the one he had received the previous evening as he and Maeve ate their dinner in the great darkened hall below. It had been sent in secret cipher which Corbett had already decoded. He picked up a quill from the writing tray, smoothed a piece of parchment and began to draft his own reply. A memorandum to clear his own thoughts rather than to inform the King.

Item – King Edward is old, locked in combat against Scottish rebels whilst trying to defend his possessions in France. The English Exchequer and Treasury are bankrupt The King's only way forward is the peace treaty laid down by the Papacy, which stipulates the betrothal of the Prince of Wales to the infant daughter of the French King, Philip IV.

Item – the Prince of Wales is feckless, pleasure-loving, a possible sodomite. He is dominated by the Warlock, Gaveston, and hates his father. The breach between father and son is permanent. The King would like to banish Gaveston but this may well lead to civil war which would only assist the Scots and certainly draw in the French.

Item – Philip IV of France had demanded the removal of Eleanor Belmont, and the Lord Edward had been only too pleased to agree with this. Eleanor had been placed under virtual house arrest in Godstowe Priory, a place the Prince could control from his nearby palace of Woodstock.

Item – were the rumours true that the Lady Eleanor had been ill of a malady of the breast and did the Prince send medicines to her? If so, were they really medicines, or poisons?

Item – on Sunday last Lady Eleanor Belmont had not joined the nuns at Compline or the evening meal afterwards in the refectory. Indeed, she had told her companions amongst them to leave her alone. The convent building where Lady Eleanor had her chambers had been empty during the evening service except for two aged nuns, Dame Elizabeth and Dame Matilda. After Compline all the nuns had gone to the refectory as was customary. Once the meal was over (again as was customary), the Lady Prioress with the two Sub-prioresses, Dame Frances and Dame Catherine, had walked around the main building, gone through the open door and found Lady Eleanor Belmont cloaked and hooded at the bottom of the stairs. They claimed her neck had been broken from a fall, yet the hood over her head had not been disturbed.

Item – did the Lady Eleanor Belmont fall? If so, why was her clothing not disturbed? And why had the old nuns not heard the crash of her fall and her cries? If she had fallen, where was she going to or returning from? Was it suicide? Reports said that the Lady Eleanor had been melancholic, the victim of malignant humours.

Corbett stroked his cheek with the quill of the pen, half listening to the wind moaning like some wandering spirit amongst the trees: their branches rustled, one of them tapping insistently against the window. He dipped the quill into the blue-green ink. Had the Lady Eleanor been murdered? And if so, by whom? The Lord Edward? He had been at the nearby palace of Woodstock. By the Lord Gaveston, who had also been present there? Or by both in complicity? Or was it murder by someone in the priory? Either because of jealousy or on the orders of someone else. The French perhaps? There was a delegation from Philip now in England led by Corbett's old adversary, Amaury de Craon.

Corbett bit the knuckles of his hand. De Craon, his counterpart on the French council, was a skilful, devious man who bore no love for Edward of England, or, indeed, Edward's chief clerk. The French would love a scandal involving the English crown. Belmont had been the Prince of Wales' paramour but she had been removed from the court and so they had no grievance there. Of course, Gaveston could have taken her place but the French had no proof that his relationship with the young Prince was anything but an honourable friendship. However, if de Craon started insinuating that the Prince or Gaveston were involved in murder, Philip might well decide the betrothal was off, the peace treaty be null and void, and the English would find themselves in a costly and bloody war. The clerk grasped his quill and began to write.

Item – they had information from a spy in Essex that the Prince of Wales had been secretly married to the Lady Eleanor Belmont. Was this another reason for the Prince to murder the poor girl?

Corbett suddenly went cold. The Prince, or his father? Corbett had no illusions about either the King or his son; both were equally ruthless and self-seeking.

Item – another piece of information from Eudo Tailler, an English spy busy in the shadows of the Louvre Palace. Eudo had sent it weeks ago but had since disappeared. His message was cryptic enough: a member of the de Montfort family was loose in England.

Corbett's anxiety increased. Forty years ago, eight years before Corbett had been born, Edward I had crushed a savage revolt led by Earl Simon de Montfort. The King, who had so nearly lost his crown, defeated the Earl's army outside Evesham. De Montfort had been killed and Edward had told his soldiers to hack his body and feed it to the royal dogs. The remnants of de Montfort's family had fled abroad and, whenever possible, sent assassins into England against the King and the royal family. The feud had lasted decades. A few years previously the King had used Corbett himself to uncover one of these secret covens. Corbett rubbed his face as he remembered the dark passion of Alice, the coven leader. Who was this new assassin, he pondered, and where was he now?