Satan in St Mary

unease, something he could not express and it troubled him.
    Corbett asked Alice what she had been doing but she simply shrugged. "Nothing really, " she replied. "I manage the inn, or I try to. The King is due to enter the city very soon and we must prepare for the celebrations. There are pirates in the channel raiding our ships. " She smiled at him. "Nothing out of the ordinary, unlike you clerks with your important secret business!"
    They sat and teased each other. Corbett ached with a need to gather her in his arms and take her upstairs, anywhere they could be alone, but he knew she would refuse and the presence of the surly Peter dampened his ardour. Instead Corbett made her promise that she would wait for him on the following evening, made his fond farewells and left the tavern, his thick cloak slung over his arm for the weather had turned warm and, if attacked, he would be more free to defend himself and use it as a shield.
    When he arrived back in the Tower, he found Ranulf waiting for him, sprawled on his narrow cot. "Yes, " he answered Corbett wearily. "I went to Westminster and managed to see Burnell, though that fat pompous Hubert, " he added bitterly, "tried to stop me. So, I just stayed outside the Chancellor's chamber shouting your name and that of the King. It worked. Burnell sent for me. He looked at the bible and the drawings you told me to point out, especially the last one. " Ranulf paused to sniff and wipe his nose on the sleeve of his jerkin before continuing: "The Chancellor took one look at the last picture and jumped to his feet, yelling for clerks and messengers and demanding that the stables prepare the fleetest horses. He glared at me and I thought I was for the hangman but then he dismissed me with this simple message for you. 'Tell Corbett that I want names. ' That's all. " Ranulf concluded. Corbett nodded, kicked his boots off and lay on his own cot to ease the bruised aching of his body. Names! The Chancellor wanted names. Corbett could tell why Duket was murdered and how, but who? Apart from the apostate priest, and he was dead, he had no names.
    Corbett shivered and pulled his cloak firmly over him, the metal brooch clasp hit him on the mouth and he sat up to arrange the cloak better. He looked closer at the brooch, drawing at the threads caught there until they lay in the palm of his hand. So tiny, so light, and so insignificant. Yet Corbett felt the sword pierce his soul and could almost taste the rank metal at the back of his throat. A series of images formed in his mind, clearing the doubts and troubles which had festered there, as when boils or buboes burst, the agony was intense. He felt a pain in his chest as if a mailed fist was clenching his heart while the blood pounded and roared in his ears like breaking surf. He lay down on his cot, his fists now tightly clenched while he tried to restore order to the chaos crashing about him. Ranulf came up to him, anxious and concerned. "Was there anything wrong? Could he fetch some wine?" Corbett drove him off with a mouthful of foul abuse and Ranulf, seeing Corbett's white face and wild staring eyes, simply slunk from the room like a beaten dog. Neville came in an hour or so later but Corbett just stared and waved him away. Ranulf did not sleep there that night, as he preferred the relative safety and security of the guardroom to the company of his apparently demented master.
    The next morning, however, Ranulf found Corbett up, washed and dressed, sitting on his cot, writing tray on his knee, scratching away with his pen on a long piece of vellum. The clerk still looked pale and drawn. Ranulf began to make solicitous enquiries but then lapsed into silence under Corbett's stony gaze. Ranulf knew something terrible had happened but could not imagine what it could be. His master was so secretive in all matters that it was difficult to determine whether he was happy or sad. Ranulf stood, shuffling his feet, until Corbett finished writing, looked up and ordered Ranulf to take the letter to Nigel Couville in the Chancery offices at Westminster. Corbett insisted that the matter was so important that Ranulf was to wait until a reply was ready and bring it straight back to him. Ranulf left immediately, leaving his master to his thoughts and the fresh piece of vellum he had begun writing on.
    Ranulf took the boat from the Tower to Westminster and, after making enquiries around the Great Hall, managed to secure an interview with the old keeper