Prince of Darkness

path is open to me.'
    Philip had risen, come round the table and whispered the most secret instructions in de Craon's ear. The French envoy remembered these now and smiled. Perhaps he should follow that path. He clenched his fists in excitement: if he did, he might settle scores, not only with Edward of England, the benighted Prince of Wales and his male bawd, Gaveston, but also with Master Hugh Corbett, de Craon's old rival and enemy.

Chapter 2
    Hugh Corbett, senior clerk and master spy of Edward of England, was dreaming a dreadful dream. He was standing beneath the spreading branches of one of the elm trees which stood along the boundaries of Godstowe Priory in Oxfordshire. A late summer sun was shining but the air was silent, eerie, devoid of birdsong. Alongside him, from the branch of a nearby tree, hung a body, its neck broken, head to one side; it hung there like some ancient sacrifice or the Figure of Death from the Tarot. Corbett felt compelled to turn but found he could not. His gaze was fixed on the windows, like empty eye-sockets, of Godstowe Priory. He stirred. No sound broke the chill silence except the hollow screeching of cruel-eyed peacocks and, in faint cadence, the ghostly chanting of the nuns.
    In his nightmare Corbett walked across a lush green lawn, the shadows behind forcing him on. No sign of life was apparent as he crossed the gravel path up to the great door of the nunnery; unlatched, half-open, he pushed this aside and entered the cold, dark house. A 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