Spy in Chancery

light. It reeked of leather, sweat and horse dung. Corbett peered round and saw that saddles, reins, halters, stirrups and other harness were slung across wooden bars which ran the length of the room. He turned and looked at Gareth's dreamy eyes.
    'Talbot? What has this got to do with Talbot's death?' he asked but Gareth gave a toothless grin and shuffled out.
    Ranulf was no more successful in eliciting information and soon settled down to ogling the women or losing any monies he had in endless games of dice. Ranulf declared he was being cheated but the Welsh just grinned and invited him to find out how. The only suspicious thing Corbett did discover was the huge pyre of faggots and brushwood stored on the roof of the keep. He supposed they would serve as a beacon if the castle was attacked or be used to boil oil or fire brands if It was under siege. Nevertheless, on one of his journeys along the coast, Corbett found similar beacons, barrels full of brushwood stacked on top of each other and he wondered if Morgan feared, even invited invasion. Corbett also noted that he was usually allowed the freedom of both the castle and the surrounding countryside but, a week after his arrival, for two days in succession, Owen politely but firmly insisted they stay in their quarters.
    Apart from this, Morgan pretended to be the courteous host. Corbett dined on the high table: Lent was over, so it was an end to stale salted meat and dried herrings and mackerel, instead there was capon and sturgeon from Morgan's' fish stews just outside the castle walls, the Welsh lord ignoring the rule which stipulated that sturgeon was a royal fish only to be served at a King's table. Morgan's kitchens also served venison spiced with cloves, mint, cinnamon and stuffed with almonds; fresh onions, leeks; fruit tarts and pies, junkets of sliced fruit and cream, all to be washed down with tankards of heady strong mead. Corbett noticed only one item out of place, jugs of fresh Bordeaux wine served by Morgan in his vanity to impress his guests. Corbett appreciated the wine for its taste as well as the way it clarified his faint suspicions about the beacons he had seen along the coast.

ELEVEN
    During most days Corbett wandered around the castle, on occasions he attended the court held in the Great Hall. Morgan would sit on the great carved chair, beside him Father Thomas, the castle chaplain and secretary, crouched mouse-like on his stool, fearful of the things he would have to see and transcribe on the long roll of vellum before him. Most of the crimes were petty, land disputes or minor squabbles over possession. Now and again though, the authority of the Lord Morgan was challenged by a counterfeiter, poacher, outlaw or thief and punishment was always relentless, dread, cruel but, in its own way, upright and rigorous.
    Corbett saw a poacher tried, sentenced and hustled from the hall: the poor malefactor was sent straight to the castle yard, his right arm extended over a block where the hissing slice of a sword took his hand off at the wrist. The man screamed in a half-faint as the executioners hurried him from the block to stick the amputated arm into a bowl of boiling pitch to cauterise and heal the bleeding stump. A few even less fortunate were sentenced to hang: one was hustled up to the battlements, a noose put around his neck and he was hoisted over to a dangling, choking death while others were taken in a great two-wheeled cart to the scaffold on the headland above the raging sea.
    There was an atmosphere of terror about Neath yet the mood could alternate, swinging from one extreme to the other. At dinner, minstrels were invited to recite poems and epic stories while long-haired bards sang mournful dirges of past glories and dead dreams. Corbett had to sit through them with an equally disgruntled Ranulf. Neither could understand the songs or the conversation because Morgan insisted, most of the time, on speaking Welsh. The English envoys just had to sit there, knowing by the grins on Morgan's and Owen's faces that they were often the brunt of some cruel joke. Corbett observed that Maeve joined in though, when she laughed, it was false, the smile never reached her eyes and there were times when he caught her looking at him sideways, a sad haunted look in her large blue eyes.
    A few days after their arrival at Neath, Maeve decided to break the tedium of Morgan's evening banquets and, while the bards prepared themselves with all the show and