Hugh Corbett 14 - The Magician's Death

by Paul Doherty

  ‘In the Opus Tertium,’ Corbett explained, ‘Friar Roger makes a very strange confession. Listen: “During the last twenty years I have worked hard in the pursuit of wisdom”.’ Corbett looked up. ‘Then he goes on, “I have spent more than two thousand pounds on secret books and various experiments.” Now this is what’s written in the French copy of the Opus Tertium. However,’ Corbett was aware how silent the chamber had fallen; Ranulf and Bolingbroke walked over, ‘as I was about to explain fully, before Vervins’ fall, in our noble King’s version, Friar Roger claims it was only twenty pounds.’ Ranulf whistled under his breath.

  ‘Which is correct?’ Bolingbroke asked

  ‘The French version, it must be. Our King has tried to interfere with the manuscript. He’s rubbed out two of the noughts.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s not French pounds?’ Bolingbroke demanded. ‘The livre tournis is only a quarter of the value of sterling.’

  ‘No, no.’ Corbett shook his head. ‘Friar Roger was English, he’s talking of two thousand pounds, a King’s ransom. Let me give you an example, Ranulf. Remember when you became a Clerk of the Green Wax, you were instructed on the workings of the Exchequer. You do recall the assignment given to you?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Ranulf agreed. ‘we were told to remember certain figures, it was a form of scrutiny.’

  ‘In mine,’ Corbett declared, ‘many years ago, when I was examined before the great Burnell, I was asked to memorise the income of the Crown at the beginning of our King’s grandfather’s reign. If I recall correctly, the entire Crown revenue in 1216 was about thirty thousand pounds; that’s about the same time Friar Roger was growing up. Now we know that Friar Roger came from fairly poor people at Ilchester just across the Dorset border.’ Corbett paused. ‘Ilchester,’ he muttered, ‘it’s only a day’s journey from here. Isn’t that strange? Yes, yes,’ he continued talking to himself, staring at the dancing candle flame, ‘very strange indeed, that the King should send us here, not far from where Friar Roger was born.’

  ‘Sir Hugh?’ Ranulf passed a hand in front of his master’s face. ‘Sir Hugh, what are you muttering about?’

  ‘I’m not muttering, I’m just speculating why Edward the King is so keen on Friar Roger; why he wants the Secretus Secretorum translated. Here we have a Franciscan, vowed to poverty, declaring he has spent an amount equivalent to almost one fifteenth of the entire Crown revenue on the pursuit of knowledge. Friar Roger, of low to middling birth, a scholar and a Franciscan! Where did he get such money? How on earth could he spend two thousand pounds?’

  ‘He’s lying,’ Bolingbroke declared. ‘He must be.’

  ‘Why should he lie?’ Corbett asked. ‘Shall I tell you something, William, I think Friar Roger made a mistake, he let something slip, and our King fastened on this. To disguise it, even from us, the King tried to change the text. He’s the only person who’s recently handled this manuscript,’ Corbett added grimly. ‘Look,’ he picked up the manuscript, ‘it’s obvious, indeed quite clumsy. Edward has done his best to reduce that amount. I’ve read it a number of times. First I dismissed it as a mark on the page. It was only when I borrowed Crotoy’s version that I realised what our wily royal master intends. Edward has spent treasure in his war against the Scots. He believes Friar Roger was an alchemist able to change base metal into gold. He also believes the Secretus Secretorum will demonstrate how he achieved this.’

  ‘I don’t believe this.’ Bolingbroke sat down on the stool. ‘I don’t believe in alchemy and the philosopher’s stone. And if our King does, why should he want to share such knowledge with the French?’

  ‘Ah.’ Corbett lifted his head and smiled. ‘What you don’t know, William, is that if the French are being cunning, so is our King. I am under strict instructions from Edward to compare notes with the French, to learn everything they know. I’m like a thresher in a barn. I have to separate the wheat from the chaff but make sure only the former is gathered by the King of England.’ He laughed. ‘I’m sure de Craon has received similar instruction.’

  He tapped the bound manuscript. ‘I will confront the King with what I know, I’ll tell him not to be so suspicious. If he had told me this in the first place a great deal of hardship might have been avoided.’

  ‘Can we translate the Secretus?’ Ranulf asked.

  ‘Perhaps. We have discussed every single type of cipher, but there is one left, a secret language.’ Corbett paused to collect his thoughts. ‘Friar Roger wrote his Secretus Secretorum in Latin. He used that language as the basis to develop his own secret tongue, what clerks call “pig Latin” or “dog Latin”. Let me explain. To all words beginning with a vowel, a, e, i, o, u, you merely add the syllable “whey”, so the word for is, est, becomes estwhey, the word for love, amor, becomes amorwhey. It is simple enough.’ Corbett sat on the writing stool as the others gathered around. ‘Any word which begins with a consonant,’ he winked at Chanson, ‘that is, a letter which is not a vowel, the first letter is moved to the end of the word and the syllable “ay” is added at the beginning. So, in Latin, the word for are, sunt, becomes ayunts. Now,’ Corbett gestured, ‘this is a very simple version; you can change the rules to suit yourself, but as long as you know what the secret word is, in this case “whey” or “ay”, then any cipher becomes easy to translate.’ He gestured at the Secretus Secretorum. ‘Friar Roger based his secret language on that principle. If we could only find out what the key was, then the manuscript might give up its secrets and the King may have his treasure.’ He threw his quill down. ‘But it’s easier said than done.’

  Corbett went and lay on the bed while Ranulf and Bolingbroke began a heated discussion about what he had told them. He stretched out, half listening to Chanson, who, bored with the chatter of clerks, had returned to mending a bit which, he claimed, could be made more comfortable for the horse’s mouth. Corbett stared up at the coloured tester above the bed. He didn’t know whether to be angry or laugh at the King’s considerable deceit, but that was Edward, suspicious and wary, a man who truly believed, though for different reasons than the Good Lord intended, that the right hand should not know what the left hand was doing.

  Where had this all begun? Corbett reflected. Until late summer Edward had been engaged in trying to break the Treaty of Paris and escape the moral and legal obligation of marrying off the Prince of Wales to Philip’s only daughter Isabella. The King had worried away at this as a mastiff would a piece of meat, giving Corbett no peace. The Keeper of the Secret Seal had, in the hot months of July and August, moved to the Tower as more and more reports flooded in from his spies in France, Gascony and Flanders. Edward had prayed, lighting great tapers in front of his favourite saints, that Corbett’s spies would find some pretext for the English to repudiate the Treaty of Paris and all it entailed. Were Philip’s troops massing on the Gascony border? Would Philip hand over the disputed castle of Mauleon? Would the French pay the dowry payments? Would the French insist that the Prince of Wales be sent to Paris for a betrothal ceremony? Were French ships beginning to gather in the Channel ports? Corbett had become exasperated with the King’s constant demands for information. In the end, all he could prove was that Philip was as cunning and wily as Edward. In September there had been a respite. The King had travelled to the royal palace of Woodstock, just outside Oxford, and returned full of praise for the writings of Friar Roger Bacon. The libraries of the Halls of Oxford, Cambridge and elsewhere were ransacked as the King collected the dead Franciscan’s books. He had become fascinated with the Secretus Secretorum and indulged in a royal rage when he learnt that the University of the Sorbonne in Paris owned a similar copy.

  ‘Yes,’ Corbett muttered, ‘that’s when the dance began.’

  ‘Sir Hugh?’

  ‘Nothing, Ranulf, I’m just talking to myself.’ Corbett returned to his reflections. Edward had dispatched the most cloying letters to his ‘sweet cousin’ in Paris, asking if it would be possible for the French Crown to loan him their copy of the Secretus Secretoru
m. Philip, of course, had politely refused. Nevertheless, the French King’s curiosity had been piqued. Corbett didn’t know whether Philip had been motivated by his arch-rival’s interest or had been following a similar vein himself. Edward, of course, became deeply suspicious, and when his clerks, including Corbett, were unable to translate the cipher used in the Secretus Secretorum, the English King had given way to even darker suspicions. Was his copy of the book truly valid? Corbett had been given strict instructions to establish the truth.

  He’d travelled to Paris himself to instruct Ufford and Bolingbroke. They had discovered how the French had already copied the Secretus Secretorum. Corbett had told them to ignore all other work but to steal or buy, by any means possible, the French version. Ufford and Bolingbroke had cast about, searching like good hunting dogs for a track to follow. They had been delighted when approached by someone in the University only too willing to sell them valuable information. They had been invited to Magister Thibault’s revelry and everything should have gone according to plan. They had hired the Roi des Clefs, the King of Keys, and, for all Corbett knew, even the young courtesan who had kept Magister Thibault amused, but then something had gone wrong. Thibault had disturbed them and been killed whilst Ufford and Bolingbroke had to flee for their lives. Corbett recalled the gruesome details about the Roi des Clefs: how his hand had been so badly injured that Ufford had had no choice but to cut his throat. A grisly death, Corbett reflected, for a man who had boasted that no lock could withstand his secret keys and devices. Ufford, too, had been killed, Bolingbroke narrowly escaping with his life.

  Officially, Edward of England had no knowledge of such dark deeds, so the cloying letters between him and ‘his sweet cousin of France’ had continued apace. Philip had been most amenable to sending a delegation to England, suggesting that, with the hardship of winter, the meeting should be in some secure place on the south coast, away from the hustle and bustle of London, but close enough to Dover. Edward had rubbed his hands in glee and immediately sent instruction that Sir Edmund prepare Corfe Castle. Now they were here. The French hoped they would learn from the English, whilst Edward prayed that, during these discussions, Corbett would stumble on the cipher which would translate the Secretus Secretorum and, perhaps, reveal the true reason for Friar Roger’s wealth, not to mention other marvellous secrets. Ranulf had kept his own counsel but Bolingbroke had also advised both the King and Corbett that Philip had other designs. The French King was resented by many of the professors and scholars of the Sorbonne University, who were alarmed at the growing power of the French Crown and the outrageous theories of royal lawyers like Pierre Dubois. Bolingbroke had been proved right. Corbett had no proof, but he strongly believed that all three deaths which had occurred here were highly suspicious. Philip was not only getting rid of opponents but cruelly warning others at the University that they faced a similar fate. Like Pilate he could wash his hands, claim the deaths were accidental and, if suspicions were aroused, blame the insidious English.

  What else was there? Corbett tried to ignore the bloody work of Mistress Feyner. He wondered what other news the outlaws had to tell him. He recalled Sir Edmund’s worries about the fleet of Flemish pirates so active in the Narrow Seas. What was the loose thread here? Corbett recalled Destaples sprawled on his bed; poor Louis lying in a puddle of his own blood, neck all twisted; Vervins, dropping like a stone from the parapet wall. Were they all accidents? Corbett closed his eyes. He returned to the problem of the three deaths of intelligent, astute men who had no illusions about their royal master and took every precaution to keep themselves safe. They would keep well away from de Craon and yet, if it was murder, they had been killed by someone who could go through locked doors to commit such dreadful acts.

  ‘Sir Hugh?’ Corbett opened his eyes; the castle bell was tolling loudly. ‘Sir Hugh, it is growing dark.’ Ranulf leaned over him. ‘We are going to the Hall of Angels.’

  ‘To meet the Lady Constance?’ Corbett teased.

  Ranulf turned away. Corbett heard them leave, closing the door behind them. He got up, walked across to the table and sifted through the scraps of parchment Bolingbroke and Ranulf had used. They had, apparently, been searching for the ciphers Friar Roger had employed in constructing his pig or dog Latin. Corbett picked up the Opus Tertium, leafing through the pages, then turned to the front of the book where Crotoy had written John, Chapter I, verse 6-7. He studied this curiously. What did Louis mean? Going across to his psalter, he leafed through its pages and found the first chapter of John’s Gospel, ‘In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God.’ He then followed the verses down to 6 and 7: ‘A man came, sent by God, his name was John, he was not the Light but came as a witness to the light.’

  Corbett closed the psalter and put it back on the table. Searching amongst the manuscripts, he found his copy of Friar Roger’s Opus Maius. He had read this closely before leaving Westminster and the name John pricked a memory. He found the reference in Chapter Ten. Bacon had dedicated this Opus Maius to Pope Clement IV and sent it to the supreme Pontiff with a young man whom the friar had taught for the previous five or six years. Corbett now read this reference carefully. John was apparently no more than twenty years old at the time. Friar Roger described him as a brilliant pupil, an outstanding scholar, to whom he had entrusted secret knowledge. He had written, ‘Any scholar might listen with profit to this boy. No one is so learned, in many ways this boy is indispensable.’ And the even more startling claim, ‘He excels even me, old man that I am.’

  Corbett closed the book.

  ‘Louis, Louis,’ he whispered, ‘what did you mean by this?’

  He stood by the fire, watching the white ash break and crumble under the heat. Crotoy had been a master of logic; he had taught Corbett how there were often different paths to the same conclusion. Had Crotoy realised that the cipher couldn’t be broken? But was there another way of resolving the mystery, of discovering who this scholar John was? Was he still alive, sheltering in England or France?

  Corbett put on his boots and grabbed his cloak. He would join the rest in the Hall of Angels. As he doused the candles, he recalled that mysterious scrap of parchment found on Mistress Feyner. That was something he had forgotten, yet something he should probe. Why had she been carrying such a message? Who was it from? What did it mean? And enough bread to fill the largest stomach, and damsons which a Pope could eat before singing his dawn mass. What was the French for belly? Ventre? Corbett placed the grille in front of the fire. The message hadn’t been written by him or any of his retinue. It was a mystery to Sir Edmund, so it must have been written by de Craon. What further mayhem was he plotting?

  I have spent more than £2000 on secret books and various experiments and languages of instruments and mathematical tables.

  Roger Bacon, Opus Tertium

  Chapter 11

  Horehound the outlaw was ready for the King’s peace. He was cold, hungry and wished to be free of the malevolent force of the forest. He had lived too long among the trees to be worried about sprites and elves. Father Matthew had once talked of mysterious beings, the ‘Lords of the Air’. Horehound truly believed in these beings he could not see but who crouched in the branches and stared maliciously down at him, who were responsible for the freezing darkness, the tripping undergrowth and the lack of any game to fill his belly and warm his blood. They hid behind that ominous wall of silence and peered out at him, rejoicing in his many hardships. Horehound was truly tired. He wanted to leave the cave and had convinced the rest of his coven to follow him. All were in agreement; even Hemlock had refused to go back and now hoped to be pardoned. Horehound had fixed the time with the red-haired King’s man. Within two days he would be warming his toes in front of the castle fire.

  Horehound had cleared the caves, dug up his few paltry coins, placed crude wooden crosses over his dead and pieces of evergreen on poor Foxglove’s grave. He stood at the fire before the cave mouth and burnt their few pathetic bel
ongings, items they would not need or could not take.

  ‘We shall leave soon,’ he called out over his shoulder. They planned to move to St Peter’s, where they would wait for the red-haired one to bring more food and provender. Perhaps they could shelter in the cemetery, take sanctuary in God’s Acre, perhaps even the church itself? Smoke from the fire billowed up as Horehound planned and plotted. He was still frightened of Father Matthew and his strange powders, but that was the priest’s business.

  ‘Do you think he’ll help us?’ Milkwort sidled up to Horehound.

  ‘I hope so,’ Horehound replied.

  ‘He didn’t last time.’

  ‘That was because he was ill.’

  ‘What happens if he is still ill?’

  ‘Oh shut up!’ Horehound snarled.

  He’d plucked up courage to approach the priest but Father Matthew had just opened the casement window and shouted down that there was nothing he could do. Reginald the taverner was just as unwelcoming. He had met Horehound out near the yard gate and, red-faced, drove them away with curses. Horehound was now suspicious; he had listened very carefully to what Hemlock had told him about strangers in the forest. He sighed; but that was the forest, ever treacherous, ever dangerous.

  ‘We’ll go now. We must thank those who have helped us.’

  They let the fire burn down and left the glade in single file, a dozen shrouded figures, men and women who had taken a vow to leave the forest for good. Horehound led the way through what he now called the Meadows of Hell, past strangely twisted trees with their branches stripped, all his secret signs and marks concealed by that freezing whiteness. Sometimes the trees gave way to small clearings. Horehound reckoned he was on a line north of the church, castle and tavern, deep enough within the trees for safety yet not far from help. The outlaw trotted on, trying to ignore the cold seeping through his battered boots and the roughly hewn arbalest, slung across his back, knocking his shoulder. He clutched the knife in the rope around his waist, plodding carefully, wary of the silence. Here and there were the prints of some animals. Horehound hated the snow; in spring and summer you could always tell if someone had passed, but the snow kept falling, covering tracks and prints, making life even more difficult. An owl, deep in the trees, hooted mournfully. Horehound paused. Wasn’t that an evil omen? True, the day was dying but it was not yet dark, so why should an owl be hunting?