The Death of a King

ill, yet even they could do nothing to save him. The rest of the voyage was quickly over. Guerney’s body was preserved in spirits and we sailed from Bordeaux to Sandwich. The king himself inspected the corpse, and having commended me for my efforts, ordered Guerney’s remains to be buried in unconsecrated ground. That’s it, Master Clerk. A long, fruitless search, which resulted in nothing.” Sir Thomas smiled at me mirthlessly. “I’m not surprised His Grace did not inform you about such details for they are of little importance.”
    I was deeply disappointed by Tweng’s account. Guerney was dead. Maltravers and Ockle had disappeared and if the king’s agents had failed to pick up their tracks in fourteen years, then what chance had I?
    Tweng, however, had not yet finished. “What do you think, Master Clerk?” he asked. “Do you think Guerney was murdered?”
    I realized the poor man, for all his bombast, still had doubts himself. I asked about the retinue which he had taken on his journey.
    “Twenty in all, not counting myself,” he replied. “The two physicians, but they never approached him till he fell ill. Then there were six valets who took care of our needs and twelve royal sergeants, all volunteers.”
    “Did any of these ever speak to the prisoner?”
    “Yes,” Sir Thomas replied quickly. “A big thick-set fellow, very capable with his hands. A good soldier, like any Scot. He used to have regular conversations with Guerney, but when I questioned them separately, I found they had both done service in the Scottish campaign of 1328. “Anyway,” he shrugged, “the man’s innocent of any guilt, as I had sent him on to Gascony the day before Guerney fell ill.”
    I didn’t really listen to anything else Sir Thomas said. The word ‘Scot’ rang like a bell in my brain and I knew that whatever Tweng might suspect, Guerney had been murdered. I let Sir Thomas ramble on.
    “Has the king recently ordered you to resume your efforts to capture Maltravers?” I asked.
    “Yes,” Sir Thomas replied, “during the last six months, the king has paid me extra sums to hire spies, but the money’s wasted. I have thirty agents working in the duchies of Germany and not one has made the slightest progress.”
    I murmured words of consolation, promising to share any information I unearthed. For my part, it was a lie from the start. I intended to leave Sir Thomas chasing his will-o’-the-wisps in Europe, while I tracked down Michael the Scot.
    Tweng, however, seemed to have little inclination to let me go.
    “Look, Master Clerk,” he explained, “you’re in this as deep as I am and you seem just as confused. I have drawn up a file of documents on the late king’s imprisonment. Perhaps you would like to inspect them. They’re at the castle.”
    It would have been churlish to spurn such an offer and I was greedy for any fresh information, so I offered to present myself at the castle the next morning. Sir Thomas bluffly rejected this and told me he would bring the file down personally. He then rose, nodded good-night and swept out.
    The next morning I rose early, bribed the landlord for the best table near the window and obtained the loan of a portable writing tray. I had scarcely finished my preparations when Sir Thomas joined me, bearing a thick roll of vellum.
    “This is everything I know about Edward II’s death,” he announced. “Look through it and see if any of it can be of help to you.”
    I insisted on buying him his breakfast, and while he ate it I unrolled the roll of vellum and began to move swiftly through the entries. Most of them were immediately recognizable as items I had already discovered, but one did catch my eye. This was the confession of Tully, one of the sentries at Berkeley Castle during Edward II’s imprisonment. The man was evidently a common foot-soldier and was innocent of any involvement in the late king’s death. Tully, however, had been on castle guard the night Dunheved attacked. According to Tully, he and the other soldiers were assigned only to the battlements, the inner bailey being the preserve of Ockle and Guerney. On the night of Dunheved’s attack, Tully had been completely surprised as the assailants had entered the castle by a sewer which ran from the moat into the inner bailey. Consequently (and I took note of the wording), Tully only knew of the attack when he heard the sound of the uproar behind him in the inner bailey and saw Dunheved’s men break