Hugh Corbett 06 - Murder Wears a Cowl Read Online Free Page B

shown to him but quietly cursing the King for getting his own way.
    Back in the robing room, de Warrenne wiped his eyes as he shook with laughter at the King’s duplicity. For a few seconds Edward basked in the Earl’s admiration then suddenly he leaned towards him.
    ‘John,’ Edward whispered. ‘I love you as a brother but if you ever draw your dagger on Corbett again, by my crown, I’ll kill you, myself!’
    Corbett returned to his own chamber and absent-mindedly began to collect his belongings, tossing them into saddle bags. Maeve would be furious, he thought. Her beautiful, placid face would become pinched with anger, her eyes would narrow and, when she found the words, she would damn the King, his court and her husband’s duties. Corbett smiled to himself. But, there again, Maeve would soon be placated. She would be proud of the knighthood and pause a while before returning to her ripe description of Corbett’s royal master. Then there was Eleanor: three months old and already showing signs of being as beautiful as her mother. A lusty, well-proportioned girl. Corbett had been teased that he wanted a son, but he didn’t really care as long as Maeve and the child were healthy. He sat on the edge of his bed and half listened to the sounds from the castle bailey below. The child must be healthy! He thought of his first wife Mary and their daughter, dead so many years now. Sometimes their faces would appear, quite distinct in his mind, at others they would seem lost in a cloying mist.
    ‘It can’t happen again,’ Corbett muttered to himself, tapping his boots on the floor. ‘It can’t happen again!’
    He picked up the flute lying on the bed and gently played a few notes. He closed his eyes and, in the twinkling of an eye, he was back down the years. Mary was beside him, the little girl, so quickly gripped by the plague, tottering about in front of her. Other memories followed, the cunning, shrewd look of Robert Burnell; the beautiful, passionate face of Alice-atte-Bowe. Other faces appeared, many killed or trapped in their own terrible treasons or subtle murders. Corbett thought of the King’s growing irascibility and dangerous swings of mood and he wondered how long he would stay in the royal service.
    ‘I have enough gold,’ Corbett muttered to himself. ‘There’s the manor in Essex.’ He shook his head. ‘The King will not let me go but how long will the King last?’ Corbett stared at the floor, running the flute between his hands, enjoying the texture of polished wood. ‘It’s treason,’ he whispered, ‘to even consider the death of a king.’ But the King was well past his sixtieth year and when he died what would happen then? The golden-haired Prince of Wales was a different kettle of fish with his love of hunting, handsome young men and the joys of both bed and board.
    When the old King dies, Corbett wondered, what would his successor do? Would the new king need him, or would he be replaced? What would Maeve say? The thought of his wife recalled the King’s words about de Craon.
    ‘I wonder what that red-haired, foxy-faced bastard wants?’ Corbett muttered. He got off the bed and crossed to the table littered with parchment. Two pieces caught his eye. First, a dirty thumbed piece of vellum; the writing on it was a mixture of numbers and strange signs which the cipher his spy had used in Paris. Next to it, neatly written out in green-blue ink was the translation of the cipher by one of the clerks of the Secret Seal. Corbett picked this up, read it quickly and cursed. He had meant to tell the King about this. The spy, ostensibly an English trader buying up wines in the Paris market, had seen the English fugitive and outlaw Richard Puddlicott in the company of Philip IV’s Master of Secrets, William Nogaret, at a tavern just outside the main gates of the Louvre Palace. Puddlicott was a wanted man in England: a thief, a murderer who had killed a royal messenger but, above all, he was a