The Death of a King

cut the ropes, then dragging it to the edge of the marsh, threw it in. It sank without trace, as did the knife and cords I threw in after. I then washed away all traces of blood in a nearby brook, mounted my horse and rode out of the wood. I skirted King’s Lynn and struck south for Cambridge. By the time I reached the small village of Burwell, I felt so tired that I hobbled my horse and fell asleep on a bed of bracken.
    I woke about midday the next morning and pressed on for Cambridge, which I reached the same evening. The halls and colleges were all closed, so I lodged in a traveller’s rest just inside the city walls. There I tried to make sense out of Guerney’s reference to Kent. I decided it must be an allusion to Edmund, Earl of Kent, half-brother to Edward II and uncle to the present king. He had joined Isabella and Mortimer against Edward II but then fell from favour and was executed in 1329. I had made a rough copy of the chronicle of St Paul’s description of the four-year reign of Mortimer and Isabella, and recollection of the bizarre details surrounding Kent’s death sent me feverishly rummaging in my saddlebag. I unrolled the greasy parchment and found a story which corroborated my suspicions about Edward II’s imprisonment and death at Berkeley.
    According to the chronicler of St Paul’s (who based himself on official records), in 1329 certain men came and told Edmund of Kent that Edward his brother was not dead but still alive in the Castle of Corfe. Edmund travelled as fast as he could to that castle and had a long conversation with John Deveril, the constable there. Kent begged the constable to tell him whether Edward II was imprisoned there and, if he was, he begged to see him. Deveril replied that Edward was alive, but he dare not show him to anyone without the express command of Queen Isabella and Sir Roger Mortimer. Whereupon the Earl of Kent gave Deveril a letter for his brother, but the constable immediately went to London and delivered it to Mortimer and Isabella. They then used the letter against Kent, claiming that he was stirring up sedition in the country with lies that his brother was still alive. They had him arrested, tried and judged as a traitor at a parliament swiftly assembled at Winchester. Once sentence was passed, Kent was immediately taken out and executed by the common hangman of the city.
    After I had finished reading, I kept thinking about Guerney’s words, “Kent was right, he knew all along.” I immediately realized what he meant. The chronicler had maintained that the story about Edward II being at Corfe Castle was a deliberate lie, concocted by Mortimer to trap Kent. But why? The earl would never have accepted such a story, unless he had good reason to believe his half-brother was still alive somewhere. On the other hand, Mortimer would never have gone to such lengths to trap Kent, a nonentity, unless he knew that the earl had seen through one of the greatest deceptions ever practised in this realm. The body buried at Gloucester in October, 1327, was not Edward II. I believe that Edward II escaped from Berkeley during Dunheved’s attack and a corpse was substituted for the royal burial.
    The Dunheved gang, it must be remembered, were only detected after they left the inner bailey where Edward II had been kept. They probably intended to use the secret exit from the castle but, once they were discovered, Dunheved must have urged the now free Edward to flee while he covered his escape. Dunheved’s men were either wiped out there and then, or rounded up very soon afterwards and quietly murdered in prison. Isabella and Mortimer must have frantically searched for the deposed king but, when this proved fruitless, decided to cover up the escape with a mock burial. This was the only way to discredit Edward, if, and when, he re-emerged on to the political scene. The cover-up was easy. Remember, Richard, my conversation with Novile, the loquacious steward at Berkeley? He pointed out that the body of Pellet, the guard killed during the Dunheved attack, was preserved in spirits for conveyance to Bordeaux. I believe that this corpse was never sent, but lies buried in the royal tomb at Gloucester Cathedral.
    Why was the deception so successful? Well, Novile described how the corpse was laid out. Only the face was exposed and it is quite simple to see how people believed it was the face of a dead king. First, the corpse was kept at Gloucester, away from the prying eyes of