Sir Hugh Corbett 11 - The Demon Archer

dead manor lord and we know he was an archer.’
    ‘So is our taverner,’ Ranulf interrupted. ‘We also have this hermit. He may have known, seen or heard something.’
    ‘True,’ Corbett agreed. ‘But there’s one person missing, isn’t there? Or rather two. This mysterious physician Pancius Cantrone. What was his relationship to Lord Henry?’
    ‘And who else?’ Ranulf asked.
    ‘Why, most learned of clerks, the lady we have just met.’
    Ranulf started.
    ‘ Don’t jump like a hare in March.’ Corbett patted him on the knee. ‘And don’t let your wits be fuddled. Alicia Verlian is a redoubtable young woman. I would wager that she can draw a bow and hit the mark.’
    ‘But she was at home the morning Lord Henry was killed!’
    ‘No, Ranulf, her father said he left her there. How do we know she didn’t follow, take a bow and quiver of arrows with her? We do know that someone left such weapons in one of the hollow oaks. She also has a horse. She could murder as quickly and expertly as anyone else.’
    ‘I don’t think so.’ Ranulf set his mouth in a stubborn challenge.
    ‘Fine, fine,’ Corbett replied softly. ‘But let’s keep up the hunt, Ranulf. What else do we know?’
    ‘That the King is not being truthful with us.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And why did the French want Lord Henry to lead the English envoys to France ? In the main,’ Ranulf concluded, ‘that’s the challenge which faces us.’
    Corbett got to his feet. ‘So, I will leave you to think sweet thoughts and compose a poem. Tonight "te journey to Ashdown Manor. It harbours all our oPponents.’ Corbett rubbed his hands. ‘And, of course, there’s one name I must not forget, my arch-enemy, that Lucifer in the flesh, Seigneur Amaury de Craon.’
    Corbett strode back into the tavern. Ranulf hatched him go and then put his face in his hands. He couldn’t understand what was happening. One minute he was eating his food, the next he was looking on a face which made his heart skip, his blood race. ‘Lecherous and hot as a sparrow’ Maltote had once called him. But not now! He felt no spurt of lust! Ranulf just wanted to be with the woman, to sit on a chair and watch the different expressions on that lovely face. Engrossed in this way, Ranulf was hardly aware of the shadow which slipped into the garden and stood beside him until the unexpected guest shuffled his feet and coughed loudly. Ranulf glanced up.
    ‘Ah, Master Baldock. What do you seek?’
    ‘This morning,’ the groom replied, ‘there was no one to look after your horses. I am a free man...’
    ‘You seek employment, Master Baldock?’ Ranulf smiled. ‘It’s possible. But, come, sit down next to me. Tell me all you know about Alicia Verlian.’

    The Louvre Palace was the private preserve of Philip IV of France . The gardens around it, with their flower beds and herb plots, orchards, fountains, carp and stew ponds, were the delight of his life. Only he and his close confidants were allowed to walk and rest there. Indeed, members of his household, particularly those who felt the lash of his cutting tongue, were reluctant to accept an invitation to what Philip called his ‘Garden of delights’. At the far end of this garden, in its own enclosure, stood what Philip called his ‘orchard of the hanged’. Its ancient pears and apple trees carried a different fruit, besides those the good Lord allowed to grow in glorious profusion. Here, Philip’s executioners and torturers hanged those guilty of crimes against their royal master: a cook suspected of poisoning; a door-keeper found guilty of selling secrets to foreign merchants; clerks who had been too garrulous in their cups and, above all, English spies whom Amaury de Craon’s agents tracked down and captured. The place stank of death. The corpses were gibbeted until the smell became too offensive, at which point Philip would order them to be cut down and buried in the derelict cemetery his torturers called ‘Haceldema’, a Jewish term for the ‘field of blood’. Sometimes Philip would summon suspects there. He would take them by the arm and walk round the trees, pointing to the rotten fruit, describing the crimes and felonies of each miscreant. Such a walk always jogged the memory and loosened the tongue, but this time it had failed.
    Philip now sat in his garden bower and looked across at the bloodied, bruised face of Simon Roulles, that perpetual English scholar who had, at last, been caught. Philip, his face