Hugh Corbett 14 - The Magician's Death

by Paul Doherty

  ‘Ah,’ Sir Edmund sighed. ‘Now I see. Philip has invoked the peace treaty, the clauses stipulating how he and Edward are to work together.’

  ‘Precisely.’ Corbett steepled his fingers. ‘Philip has demanded, especially since the theft of the copy from Paris, that both kingdoms share their knowledge. He knows I am responsible for the secret ciphers of the Chancery, so he called for this meeting.’

  ‘Why here?’ Ranulf asked.

  ‘Philip is being diplomatic. He wants to reassure Edward. He simply asked that the meeting place be in some castle on the south coast, not Dover or one of the Cinque Ports, well away from the hustle and bustle of the cities. Edward proposed Corfe, and Philip agreed. De Craon will bring with him four professors from the university, experts in the study of Bacon’s manuscripts, men skilled in breaking ciphers. They will meet myself, Bolingbroke and Master Ranulf here.’

  ‘Who are they?’ Bolingbroke asked. ‘What are their names?’

  ‘Etienne Destaples, Jean Vervins, Pierre Sanson and Louis Crotoy.’

  Bolingbroke whistled under his breath. ‘They are all professors of law as well as theology, leading scholars at the Sorbonne.’

  ‘Of course,’ Corbett agreed. ‘I know one of them, Louis Crotoy; he lectured in the schools of Oxford, a formidable scholar, with a brain as sharp as a knife.’

  ‘I don’t believe this.’

  ‘You don’t believe what?’ Ranulf smiled.

  Bolingbroke just shook his head. He took off his cloak and threw it over the table, fingers going for his dagger in its leather sheath. ‘Philip means mischief; there is treachery here.’

  ‘Which is why we are meeting here,’ Corbett retorted. ‘Tell me again, William, why Ufford killed Magister Thibault.’

  ‘He had to.’ Bolingbroke sat down and rubbed his face. ‘We were in the cellar trying to open that damnable coffer.’

  ‘But why?’ Corbett insisted. ‘Why should Thibault, whom Ufford last saw cavorting with a buxom wench, leave his bed sport, his warm, comfortable chamber, and, on a night of revelry, take that woman down to a cold cellar? What was he going to show her? A precious manuscript she couldn’t understand?’

  ‘Perhaps he was boasting,’ Ranulf said. ‘He wanted to impress her?’

  ‘But why then?’ Corbett insisted. ‘At that specific moment on that particular night?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Bolingbroke shook his head. ‘But yes, I’ve thought the same. You’ve asked me often enough, Sir Hugh; now Thibault’s colleagues are coming, you ask again. I truly don’t know.’ He sighed in exasperation. ‘I have also wondered how Ufford was trapped and caught.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Are you sure the manuscript we stole was genuine? Or has Philip simply put fools’ caps on all of us?’

  The wise have always been divided from the multitude.

  Roger Bacon, Opus Maius

  Everyone ought to know languages and needs to study them and understand their silence.

  Roger Bacon, Opus Tertium

  Chapter 3

  Alusia, the butterymaid, daughter of Gilbert, under-steward of the pantry at Corfe Castle, moved amongst the gravestones and crosses in the large cemetery of St Peter’s in the Wood. Alusia, small and plump, with curly black hair and dancing eyes, was very pleased with herself. The arrival of the King’s men at the castle had caused a great deal of excitement. People pretended to go about their normal business but, as her father remarked, ‘a stranger is a stranger’, and everyone stared at these powerful men from the distant city of London. Alusia had been frightened by the sombre-faced clerk with the black hair and silver-hilted sword, but already the girls were talking about the red-haired one, just the way he swaggered, those green eyes darting about ready for mischief.

  Alusia would have loved to have stayed and listened to the gossip, but Mistress Feyner had declared she would leave promptly at noon, and Mistress Feyner was to be obeyed. The castle girls called Mistress Feyner ‘the Old Owl’, because she never missed anything. Hard of face and hard of eye, strong of arm and sharp of wit, Mistress Feyner was chief washerwoman. She knew her status and her powers as much as any great lady in a hall. Indeed, matters had grown worse since Phillipa, Mistress Feyner’s daughter, had disappeared on Harvest Sunday last. Gone like a leaf on the breeze, and no one knew where. Of course, none of the other girls really missed her. Phillipa, too, had been full of her own airs and graces, especially when Father Matthew gathered them in the nave on a Saturday afternoon to teach all the girls of the area the alphabet and the importance of numbers. A strange one, Father Matthew, so learned.

  Alusia looked up at the leaden-grey sky. Was it going to snow? She hoped not, but if it did, at least she’d come here on Marion’s name day to honour her friend’s grave. Alusia blew on her frozen fingers and watched her hot breath disappear. Rebecca should have come with her, but Mistress Feyner had been most insistent that if she wanted a ride in the laundry cart down to the church, she’d have to leave immediately. Mistress Feyner had linen to deliver to Master Reginald at the Tavern in the Forest, and Rebecca would simply have to run to catch up. Alusia could not quarrel with that, but now, in this deserted graveyard, she thought that perhaps she should have waited. Oh where, she wondered, had Rebecca got to? When would she come?

  Alusia paused next to her grandmother’s gravestone and stared up at the church, an old place of ancient stone. The nave was like a long barn, though Sir Edmund had recently retiled the roof and done what he could to dress the stone of the soaring square tower. From one of the narrow tower windows candlelight glowed. Father Matthew always lit that as a beacon when the sea mist swirled in and cloaked the countryside in its thick grey blanket. Only the glow of the candles, as well as torches from the castle, could guide people, for Corfe was a dangerous place. To the north, east and west lay a thick ancient forest, full of swamps, marshes and other treacherous places. The girls talked about the sprites and goblins who lived beneath the leaves or sheltered in the cracks of ancient oak trees, of strange sounds and sights, of will-o-the-wisps, really ghosts of the dead, which hovered over the marshes.

  Alusia stared round the sombre churchyard; a mist was creeping in now, even so early in the day, its cold fingers stretching out from the sea. She hitched the cloak she had borrowed from her father close about her, a soldier’s cloak of pure wool and lined with flock, with a deep cowl to go over her head. She wondered whether Father Matthew was in the church, and if he would come out. She would pretend she was searching for herbs, but of course, the real herbs didn’t bloom until May, and spring seemed an eternity away.

  Alusia was looking for a grave, Marion’s tumulus, that small mound of black earth which marked her close friend’s last resting place. Marion, bright of eye, always laughing, whose corpse had been found beneath the slime of the rubbish in the outer ward of the castle. She had been the first to be killed, a crossbow bolt, shot so close Alusia’s father said it almost pierced poor Marion’s entire body. The castle leech, together with Father Matthew and old Father Andrew, assisted by Mistress Feyner, had dressed the body for burial. Alusia and the rest of the girls were excluded, but she had stolen up that afternoon and slipped through the door. Now she wished she hadn’t. Marion’s face had been a gruesome white, dark rings around those staring eyes, from which the coins had slipped. Flecks of blood still marked her mouth, whilst so many cloths had been wrapped around the wound her chest appeared to have swollen.

  Alusia found the grave, marked by a simple cross, with Marion, Requiescat in Pace burnt in by the castle smith. She knelt down and, from beneath her cloak, took a piece of holly she had cut, the leaves sparkling green, the berries bright. She placed this near the cross. She would have liked to have brought flowers, but it was the dead of winter. Didn’t Father Matthew say the holly represented Christ, the evergreen, ever-present Lord, whilst the berries represented his sacred blood? Alusia scratched her nose and tried to recall a prayer. Father Matthew had taught them the Our Father in Latin. She tried to say this. Latin w
as more powerful, it was God’s language. She stumbled over the words Qui est in caelo, ‘Who art in heaven’, and gave up, simply satisfying herself with the sign of the cross. Then she sat back on her heels. Why would someone kill poor Marion, and the others? One by one, in the same manner, a crossbow bolt through the heart, or in Sybil’s case through her throat, ripping the flesh on either side. Who was responsible? What had the victims been guilty of? The castle girls, in their innocence, were full of gossip about young men, eagerly looking forward to this feast or that holy day, be it Christmas when the huge Yule log crackled in the castle hearth, or May Day when the maypole was erected under the sheer blue skies of an early summer. Yet what crime in that?

  Alusia lifted her head, staring back towards the lych gate. For a moment she thought she had seen someone. The church bell began to toll, the sign for midday prayer; not that many people listened. Alusia made the sign of the cross again and got to her feet. The other girls were buried nearby. Why had they died? The gossip said they hadn’t been ravished, so what was the purpose? Poor girls with nothing in their wallets, not even a cheap ring on their finger.

  Alusia walked slowly to the lych gate and on to the narrow trackway leading up to the castle. The trees thronged in on either side, and the mist had grown thicker. Alusia walked briskly, then paused at a noise behind her. She turned swiftly, but there was no one. She walked on until she noticed a flash of colour on the verge beside the track. Intrigued, she hurried over. It was a bundle of cloth, dark greens and browns, and a glimpse of reddish hair. Alusia stood, gripped by a numbing fear. Wasn’t that Rebecca’s hair? Weren’t those her colours? Breath caught in her throat, she stooped and pulled at the bundle. The corpse rolled back: sightless eyes, a blood-caked mouth, and just beneath the chin, that awful bloody wound with the crossbow quarrel peeping out. It was Rebecca, and she was dead yet alive, for Alusia could hear a terrible screaming.

  The discussion in the council chamber had grown more heated, Bolingbroke striding up and down, obviously angry that he and Ufford had risked their lives, with Ufford paying the ultimate price, merely to steal a copy.

  ‘It was necessary,’ Corbett shouted. ‘His Grace the King has taken a deep interest in Friar Roger’s writings. We had to make sure that the book we held, our copy of the Secretus Secretorum, was accurate. I have compared the two, and as far as I can see, with all their strange symbols and ciphers, they are in accordance.’

  Sir Edmund sat watching this confrontation; Ranulf was quietly enjoying himself. He liked nothing better than watching old Master Longface in debate. Moreover, he knew Bolingbroke of old as a passionate man, and Ranulf, who had done his share of fleeing from those who wished to kill him, sympathised with his anger.

  ‘What we must look at, William,’ Corbett kept his voice calm, ‘is the logic of the situation.’

  ‘Logic?’ Bolingbroke retook his seat. ‘Sir Hugh, I know as much about logic as you do, we are not in the schools now.’

  ‘Yes we are.’

  Corbett smiled, then paused as the servant whom Sir Edmund had summoned brought in a fresh jug of ale and soft bread from the castle ovens. He was glad of the respite as the drink was poured and the bread shared out.

  ‘We must apply logic.’ He spoke quickly as Bolingbroke filled his mouth with bread and cheese. ‘What concerns me is not the copy, or what happened when you stole it, but why Magister Thibault came down to that cellar on that night of revelry. Why did he bring that young woman with him?’

  ‘Ufford had no choice but to kill them!’

  ‘I’m not saying he did. Walter was a dagger man through and through. What I suspect is treachery. Let me describe my hypothesis. Here we have two clerks of the English Secret Chancery, scholars from the Halls of Oxford, pretending to be scholars at the Sorbonne. The order goes out, our noble King wants the French copy of Friar Bacon’s Secret of Secrets. You and Ufford cast about, searching for it. A traitor emerges from amongst the French, this mysterious stranger who offers you the manuscript.’

  ‘He didn’t offer,’ Bolingbroke answered, his mouth full of cheese. ‘He simply told us where it was and promised that we would receive an invitation to Magister Thibault’s revelry.’

  ‘Do you know who this person was?’ Ranulf asked.

  Bolingbroke shook his head.

  ‘No, we never met him; he communicated through memoranda left at our lodgings. I have shown you those I kept; the others I destroyed.’

  Corbett nodded. He had scrutinised the scrawled memoranda. The Norman French was written in a hand he didn’t recognise, providing information for his two secret clerks.

  ‘What I do know,’ Bolingbroke continued, sipping his ale, ‘is that a month before Magister Thibault’s revelry, this Frenchman discovered what we were looking for and, in return for gold, told us where it was and how we could take it. I think that somehow or other he alerted Magister Thibault and brought him down to that cellar. We were to be trapped there but Magister Thibault was an old sot, full of wine and lust, and perhaps he refused to believe what he was told or didn’t realize the significance. More importantly, this traitor also told Seigneur Amaury de Craon and the Hounds of the King what was happening. We were fortunate. We were supposed to be trapped either at Magister Thibault’s or at our lodgings in the Street of the Carmelites, but we escaped. We separated; they probably thought Ufford was more important and pursued him—’

  ‘Did you see him die?’ Ranulf interrupted.

  ‘I was near the Madelene Quayside when I heard the clamour. A beggar told me how royal troops had been in that quarter since the early hours. I decided to leave Paris by another route. I joined a group of pilgrims journeying to Notre Dame in Boulogne.’ Bolingbroke pulled a face. ‘It was easy enough. I pretended to be a French clerk. It was simply a matter of reaching the port and securing passage on an English cog.’

  ‘Who do you think this traitor was?’ Corbett asked.

  ‘It could have been de Craon himself, or one of the men he is bringing with him.’

  ‘And why do you think he is bringing them to England?’ Ranulf asked.

  ‘Two reasons,’ Bolingbroke replied, ‘and I have thought deeply about this. First, I am sure Philip of France would love to discover the secrets of Roger Bacon. He is genuinely interested and wants to see what progress, if any, we English have made.’

  ‘And secondly?’

  ‘Secondly, Sir Hugh, what if . . .’ Bolingbroke paused, running his finger round the rim of his tankard. ‘What if we turn the game on its head? What if Philip of France has broken Friar Roger’s secret cipher and has discovered the hidden knowledge? How to make a glass which can see something miles away, or turn base metal into gold.’

  ‘And?’ Corbett asked.

  ‘What if de Craon is bringing the periti, the savants of Paris, to discover if we have done the same? And if we haven’t, to confuse us further, hinder and block our progress?’

  ‘There’s another reason, isn’t there?’

  ‘Yes, Sir Hugh. Philip of France does not like the University of the Sorbonne. Oh, if it agrees with what he says he is all charm and welcoming, but if it doesn’t, Philip’s rage blazes out like a fire. I wonder if he has already broken the secret cipher, and is sending these men to England so that they can be killed, murdered, and the blame laid at our door.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Launge shook his empty tankard as if it was a sword.

  ‘No, no.’ Corbett raised a hand. ‘I follow your logic, William.’ He smiled. ‘What if Philip has broken the secret cipher, and what if he wants to rid himself of the periti, men who have also discovered that knowledge? The last thing Philip would want is one of these professors claiming the knowledge for himself and writing his own book, eager for fame amongst the universities and schools of Europe. We all know our doctors of divinity and theology, how they love fame as much as gold; indeed, the two often go together.’ He paused. ‘More seriously, Philip is looking for a crisis. He has bound our King by treaty, he wishes to depict
Edward of England as the oath-breaker, the wily serpent. He knows that Edward’s motto is “Keep Troth”, yet he realises Edward would storm the gates of Hell if it meant escaping from the Treaty of Paris. Let’s say, for sake of argument, something happens during this French embassy to England. Philip will turn and scream for the protection of the Pope, who will bind our King even closer with heavier penalties and dire warnings.’

  ‘But you must have considered this before you accepted the French embassy?’ Bolingbroke asked.

  ‘Of course I did,’ Corbett replied. ‘I have shared similar thoughts with the King, though not as detailed and sharp. As God is my witness, both Philip and Edward richly deserve each other, two cunning swords-men circling each other in the dark, each looking for the advantage.’ He laughed drily. ‘Do you know, gentlemen, isn’t it ridiculous – or as they would say in the schools of Oxford, mirabile dictu, marvellous to say – that the one thing which unites Edward of England, Philip of France, Amaury de Craon and myself is the belief that something will happen during de Craon’s stay here at Corfe. Only the good Lord knows what.’

  ‘So what do you propose?’ Sir Edmund asked.

  ‘The French are to be given good secure chambers.’

  ‘They won’t want guards, they never do,’ the Constable retorted. ‘They will only accuse us of eavesdropping or treating them like prisoners.’

  ‘Make sure they are given the keys to their chambers,’ Corbett tapped the table top, ‘and that they eat together in the hall. As for the castle, let them go wherever they wish.’ He pushed back his chair, a sign the meeting was over. ‘But if they leave the castle they must have an escort.’