Sir Hugh Corbett 11 - The Demon Archer

priests get on with it? This morning my good Bishop of Winchester wanted to deliver a sermon! I told de Warrenne to start coughing, he soon got the message!’ Edward leaned back in the chair and gazed heavy-lidded at his Clerk of the Secret Seal. ‘We thought you were for the charnel house, Hugh! A crossbow bolt high in the chest?’
    ‘I was fortunate, sire. The bolt was small and not fired at full force because the assassin was running. It is wonderful what protection a thick calfskin jacket can afford.’
    ‘But you were ill?’
    Corbett tapped his chest. ‘The bone shattered and healed but the flesh turned putrid.’
    ‘I sent you medicines.’
    ‘And my wife, the Lady Maeve, thanks you, sire.’
    ‘I was going to come and see you.’ The King became shamefaced. ‘But I couldn’t bear to see you die, Hugh. Not lose another loved one. They are all leaving me.’
    Don’t start , Corbett thought. Don’t start weeping and becoming maudlin about the past. He respected his King, with his lean, warrior face, that fertile brain which teemed like a box of worms with subtle plans and strategies. But, if he wasn’t a prince, Corbett reflected, Edward should have been a chanteur, a storyteller. He could move, in the twinkling of an eye, from the grieving old king to the energetic bustling warlord, intent on smashing his enemies or sitting in his chancery weaving webs to trap his adversaries abroad. He could be mean-spirited, vicious and spiteful and, at other times, magnanimous, open-handed, forgiving an injury, forgetting an insult. He could sit with the children of his household retainers and roar with laughter at some mummers’ play then stride out into the exercise yard, seize a sword and show the young ones how to fight.
    Corbett wondered what mood the King was in this morning. Edward, he realised, had a fear of sickness and death. His old friends were dying and Corbett quietly thanked God that the King had not come down to Leighton Manor. The Lady Maeve Would have been driven to distraction. Ranulf alone had almost sent him mad, asking him, on the hour, how he felt, how was the wound? Corbett’s gaze shifted to de Warrenne, who was used to these long silences with the King, but the Earl of Surrey always wore his heart on his sleeve. Despite his boisterous, florid looks, the good earl looked anxious, staring distractedly into the wine cup.
    ‘I was at Westminster when I received your summons.’ He spoke up.
    Edward examined his fingers.
    ‘The assassin?’ the King demanded, glancing up.
    ‘I understand your manservant killed him?’
    ‘I must thank you, sire,’ Corbett deftly replied, ‘for promoting Ranulf to being a senior clerk in the Chancery of the Green Wax.’
    ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Edward replied testily. ‘We all know Ranulf’s a clerk but he’s still your manservant.’
    Edward became lost in one of his reveries. He’d often wondered whether he could divide Ranulf from Corbett, play them off against each other. Corbett, with his love of the law, his insistence that the courts be all-important. Ranulf by contrast believed in swift and summary execution for trai- I tors, which was the way Edward liked it.
    ‘I killed the assassin, Your Majesty,’ Ranulf confirmed. He moved in a creak of leather, fingers going down to the sword he was now allowed to carry into the royal presence.
    ‘Two good blows, I understand,’ Edward replied. ‘To the belly and to the back. Then you cut his head off, set it on a pole and placed it near the main gate in Oxford ? The sheriff and the good burgesses were all alarmed?’
    ‘The sheriff and the burgesses were reminded of the power of the King,’ Ranulf said. ‘I did what I had to do for the good of the kingdom.’ He emphasised the last phrase, the all-powerful permission given to any royal clerk to excuse what he did.
    ‘What do you think of that, Hugh?’ Edward asked softly.
    ‘The Church teaches self-defence. And an attack on a royal clerk is an attack upon the King.’
    ‘Yes, yes, so it is.’ Edward drummed his hands on his stomach. ‘And you are now fit for your duties?’
    ‘As ever.’
    ‘You did, once, hand in the Seals,’ Surrey taunted. ‘What did you intend to do, Corbett, become a peasant farmer?’
    ‘ Your Majesty, if I did, I’d come and ask you for all the advice I would need.’
    Edward guffawed with laughter. ‘You are bored, aren’t you, Hugh? Lady Maeve, she is well?’ _
    ‘As ever, sire. My daughter Eleanor