Prince of Darkness Read Free Page B

guttering row of candles, their flickering flames filling the silent hall with dancing shadows, formed a path leading to the bottom of steep stone stairs. There, as if sleeping, lay the body of a young woman, her face half-averted, one pale ivory cheek peeping out from under the hood pulled over her head. Corbett walked softly across, knelt and turned the body over, the young woman's arms flapped like the wings of a fallen bird. He pushed back the hood, expecting to see the face of Eleanor Belmont, former mistress of the Lord Edward, but silently screamed in horror, the dead, ice-cold features belonged to his wife, Maeve. Above him, in the far darkness of the house, a low mocking laugh greeted his discovery but, as he jumped up, Corbett awoke, soaked in sweat, in his own bed chamber in the Manor of Leighton.
    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,