Hugh Corbett 06 - Murder Wears a Cowl Read Free

cannot, we will not”,’ Nogaret snapped back, mimicking the King’s words, ‘invade Flanders.’
    Philip curbed the rush of fury within him and smiled. He gently smoothed the green-baized table top. ‘Be careful, William,’ he murmured. ‘You are my right hand.’ The King lifted his fingers, ‘But if my right hand knew what my left hand was doing, I would cut it off!’
    Philip turned, grasped the wine jug and filled a cup to the brim, watching the wine wink and bubble around the rim. He handed it to Nogaret.
    ‘Now, my Master of Secrets, enough of this bandying of words. I need money, and you have a plan.’
    Nogaret sipped gingerly at the wine and stared back.
    ‘You do have a plan?’ Philip repeated.
    Nogaret placed the cup down. ‘Yes, your Grace, I do. It will involve us in the affairs of England.’ He leaned forward and began to talk quietly.
    Philip listened impassively but, as Nogaret described his scheme, the King folded his arms, almost hugging himself with pleasure at the honeyed words and phrases which dripped from Nogaret’s lips.

Chapter 1
    Edward of England sat slumped in a window seat in the small robing chamber behind the throne room of Winchester Palace. For a while he watched one of his greyhounds gobble the remains of some sugared wafers from a silver jewelled plate, then gently lope across to a far corner to squat and noisily crap. Edward smiled to himself and gazed under bushy eyebrows at the two men seated on stools before him. The old one, John de Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, gazed blankly back. Edward studied the Earl’s cruel face; his beaked nose, square chin and those eyes which somehow reminded Edward of the greyhound in the corner. De Warrenne, he mused, must have a brain in that close-cropped hair but Edward could not swear to it. De Warrenne never had an original idea, his usual reaction to anything would be to charge and kill. Edward secretly called de Warrenne his greyhound for, whatever Edward pointed to, de Warrenne would always seize. Now the Earl just sat there perplexed by the King’s angry litany of questions, watching his master and waiting for the next order to be given. Despite the early-summer morning, de Warrenne still wore a thick, woollen cloak and, as always, a chain-mail shirt and the brown, woollen leggings of a soldier, pushed into loose riding boots, the spurs still attached. Edward chewed his lip. Did the Earl ever change his clothes? the King wondered. And what happened when he went to bed? Did his wife Alice bear the imprint of that mail on her soft, white body?
    Edward glanced at the man next to de Warrenne, dressed simply in a dark-blue cote-hardie bound by a broad, leather belt. This man was as different from de Warrenne as chalk from cheese, with his dark saturnine face, clean-shaven chin, deep-set eyes and unruly mop of black hair which now showed faint streaks of grey. Edward winked slowly at his Master of Clerks, Hugh Corbett, Edward’s special emissary and Keeper of the Secret Seal.
    ‘You see my problem, Hugh?’ he barked.
    ‘Yes, your Grace.’
    ‘Yes, your Grace!’ Edward mimicked back.
    The King’s sunburnt face broke into a mocking smile, his lips curling so he looked more like a snarling dog than the Lord’s Anointed. He rose and stretched his huge frame until the muscles cracked, then he ran his fingers through his steel-grey, leonine hair which fell down to the nape of his neck.
    ‘Yes, your Grace,’ the King jibed again. ‘Of course, your Grace. Would it please your Grace?’ Edward lashed out with his boot and caught the leg of his clerk’s chair. ‘So, tell me Master Corbett, what is my problem?’
    The clerk would have liked to have informed the King, bluntly and succinctly, that he was arrogant, short-tempered, cruel, vindictive and given to wild bursts of rage which profited him nothing. Corbett, however, folded his hands in his lap and stared at the King.
    Edward was still dressed in his dark-green hunting costume, his