Banners of Hell by Doherty P. C

Author:Doherty, P. C. [Doherty, P. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective - Middle Ages
ISBN: 9781035407323
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2024-06-06T04:00:00+00:00

PART SIX

And the king plot­ted to avenge the mur­der of Piers.

TThe French en­voy ar­rived late in the af­ter­noon, rid­ing his glo­ri­ously ca­parisoned pal­frey into the great yard at Black­fri­ars. Dressed in the royal colours of Capet, blue, white and gold, he slid from the sad­dle and told his es­cort to dis­mount, then turned to greet Prior Roger with the kiss of peace, the os­cu­lum pacis. Af­ter­wards, smil­ing from ear to ear, which only made him look more fox like, he em­braced Cor­bett.

Cor­bett kept his face im­pas­sive. He tried not to look at Ran­ulf, who was fight­ing to keep his de­meanour re­spect­ful and not burst into mock­ing laugh­ter. De Craon could coif his red hair, trim his mous­tache and beard, wrap Ave beads around his right hand and touch the sa­cred medals on his jerkin, but that could not hide the truth. He hated Cor­bett with a pas­sion be­yond all un­der­stand­ing. Cor­bett made mat­ters worse by openly taunt­ing his ad­ver­sary, declar­ing now how pleased he was to see de Craon, and claim­ing that he was never far from his thoughts.

Cor­bett had his own spies in Paris: men and women who’d en­tered the royal house­hold and those of Philip’s ad­vis­ers. They had re­ported how Cor­bett’s as­sas­si­na­tion had been openly dis­cussed; how the French king was pre­pared to place a bounty on his head. Ed­ward had re­sponded in kind, warn­ing Philip that Cor­bett’s death would be avenged. More im­por­tantly, the Eng­lish Crown had man­aged to per­suade the pa­pacy to grant Cor­bett mi­nor or­ders, which in essence gave him cler­i­cal sta­tus. Con­se­quently, an at­tack on him would be seen as an at­tack on Holy Mother Church. Any­one guilty of such a blas­phemy would be ex­com­mu­ni­cated, damned body and soul in this life and the world to come. Cor­bett had wryly re­marked that he wasn’t too both­ered about the world to come; he just wanted to re­main safe in this one.

He breathed in slowly, de­ter­mined to re­main calm as he and de Craon lis­tened to the short, flow­ery speeches from var­i­ous no­ta­bles. At last Prior Roger in­ter­vened, say­ing that Mon­seigneur de Craon had brought a spe­cial guest who was wait­ing for them else­where. The prior, who seemed deeply flus­tered, led Mauleon, Cor­bett and de Craon to his cham­ber. Once he had locked the door be­hind him, the shad­owy, cowled fig­ure sit­ting in the win­dow seat rose to his feet and pulled back his hood.

Cor­bett gasped in ut­ter amaze­ment. ‘Gave­ston!’ he whis­pered, star­ing at the golden-haired, fresh-faced stranger.

‘Gave­ston in­deed,’ de Craon agreed, truly en­joy­ing the mo­ment.

‘It can­not be,’ Mauleon mut­tered.

‘No, no,’ Cor­bett de­clared. He walked over to the stranger. Close up, he could see the dif­fer­ences. The vis­i­tor had Gave­ston’s fea­tures. There were marked sim­i­lar­i­ties, but also no­table dif­fer­ences: the eyes were smaller, the hair streaked with nar­row lines of white, the lips not so full, the nose sharper, a lit­tle longer. ‘Mon­sieur.’ Cor­bett bowed. ‘You are not Piers Gave­ston but his brother, yes? I un­der­stand that he did have one.’

‘My name is Henri.’

‘Henri Gave­ston,’ Mauleon ex­claimed.

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