‘I know nothing of this,’ Bolingbroke bleated.
‘Don’t you, William? I think you may have helped Sanson. Who knows? Perhaps you sent messages yourself through Ufford. Ah well, Edward of England prides himself on being a scholar. He reads Friar Roger’s work and stumbles on, or is allowed to stumble on, a great secret: Friar Roger’s bold assertion that he had spent over two thousand pounds, a veritable fortune, on his studies. Our King wonders, where and how could a poor friar, of common stock, draw on such wealth? He must have some great secret. And so the hunt begins.’
Corbett sipped from his ale, and before Bolingbroke could stop him, leaned across and plucked the dagger from its sheath on the clerk’s belt.
‘Oh, by the way, William,’ he patted Bolingbroke gently on the arm, ‘the Constable’s men are now going through your possessions. They are looking for the King of Keys’ tools; I’m sure they’ll find them. So,’ Corbett cleared his throat, ‘let us go back to our own King, the prince to whom we both swore fealty. He tries to hide Friar Roger’s reference to the treasure spent in the pursuit of knowledge. The King is also worried about his copy of the Secretus Secretorum being accurate. Perhaps Monsieur Sanson helped in this? Anyway, Edward of England wants to steal the French copy, so he instructs me to contact our clerks in Paris to move Heaven and Earth to obtain it. Of course, what we don’t know is that Walter Ufford has been baited, teased into a trap, and this is where you come in, William. You are a scholar at the Sorbonne, you have already been under suspicion as a spy, a clerk of the Secret Chancery in England. De Craon or Sanson approached you. Did they threaten you with the horrors of Montfaucon, or offer you gold and silver, a sinecure in France?’
Bolingbroke stared impassively back.
‘Well, you know the story better than I do,’ Corbett continued. ‘So, we come to the night of Magister Thibault’s revelry. You were invited to all that mummery. Magister Thibault is distracted by a nubile courtesan called Lucienne. Did you hire her? Was it de Craon? Or was it both? Anyway, she is under strict instructions to flatter the old fool, to persuade him to take her down to his treasure house to see the precious manuscript he is working on for the King of France.’
‘But that’s impossible,’ Bolingbroke stammered. ‘Magister Thibault came down by accident. He didn’t know when we would be there.’
‘That’s a lie!’ Corbett snapped. ‘I suggest that when you went down to that cellar you passed Monsieur Sanson and gave him a sign. He would then hasten up the stairs to make sure Lucienne kept her part of the bargain. I agree, it would take some time to rouse that old goat from his bed, but Magister Thibault stumbled down into that cellar. As soon as he opened the door he was a dead man. Ufford cuts his throat and that of Lucienne. Walter was always a ruthless man. A short while later the King of Keys is wounded and later killed; you secretly seize his keys. Eventually you and Walter make your escape, two successful spies who have achieved the task assigned to them.’
‘Why didn’t they arrest us there and then?’ Bolingbroke interrupted.
‘That’s not such a good question,’ Corbett retorted. ‘They needed you, William, they wanted you to escape.’ He paused, rubbing his hands together. ‘You and Walter did what any spies would do; you separated, though not before you made sure that you escaped with the Secretus Secretorum.’
‘The dice!’ Ranulf spoke up. ‘You have cogged dice – that’s the way I’d decide anything. You’re as sharp as I am, Bolingbroke, you’d make sure you won.’
‘Yet that was only the beginning of the mischief,’ Corbett continued. ‘De Craon constructed a plot of many layers. The first was to remove certain opponents from the University of Paris, scholars opposed to the outrageous claims of his royal master; that’s the one thing Thibault, Destaples, Crotoy and Vervins had in common. Sanson was also one of these but, unbeknown to his colleagues, he was de Craon’s man, body and soul. Philip of France later proposes this meeting. He wants a castle on the south coast, somewhere lonely for the next part of his plot. Edward of England rises to the bait and chooses Corfe, an indomitable fortress, not very far from where Friar Roger was born. Perhaps the meeting would arouse local interest and curiosity, particularly that of any disciples of Friar Roger hiding in the area. However, that part of Edward’s stratagem,’ Corbett winked quickly at Ranulf, ‘failed to come to fruition. Have you communicated with de Craon,’ he asked sharply, ‘since the attack by the Flemish pirates?’
‘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.’