Spy in Chancery

on a ruined bench in the corner of the courtyard and morosely watched the chaos. The shouts and curses would have drowned the cries of the damned in hell; Corbett stared up at the huge tympanum carved above the monastery church door where, etched eternally in stone, the damned hanged by their bellies from trees of fire while more smothered in furnaces, their hands across their mouths, their stone eyes staring through plumes of smoke; Christ in judgement held the saved in his hands while the wicked were swallowed by monstrous fish, some gnawed by demons, tormented by serpents, fire, ice or tormented by fruits forever hanging out of reach of their starving maws. Corbett morosely concluded such terrors were nothing compared to the experience of being sent across the channel in freezing winter on an English embassy to France.
    'Master Corbett,' the clerk groaned and got up as his servant, Ranulf, shoved his way through the crowded courtyard, the man's red hair glowing like a beacon above his white, anxious face. Corbett had saved Ranulf from the gallows some ten years before, now he was the clerk's faithful steward and companion, at least superficially, for Corbett knew Ranulf atte Newgate had a powerful interest in bettering himself at the expense of everyone else, Corbett included. Ranulf could lie, cheat and betray with a skill which constantly astonished and amused the clerk while Ranulf's pursuit of other men's wives would, Corbett privately maintained, bring his servant to a violent and sudden end.
    Now, Ranulf was acting the role of the agitated, concerned servant, slyly hoping he could disturb his secretive, solemn master.
    'It's Blaskett!' Ranulf said breathlessly. 'He says we are ready to leave soon and asks if your baggage is packed and loaded?' Blaskett was the pompous, arrogant peacock of a steward in the Earl of Lancaster's household. A man who loved authority and all its show like other men loved gold.
    'Is our baggage loaded, Ranulf?' Corbett asked.
    'Yes.'
    'And are we ready to leave?'
    'Yes.'
    'Then why not tell my lord Blaskett!' Ranulf stared like a man who had just received a great secret, nodded and, turning on his heel, bustled back into the monastery to continue his malicious baiting of the pigeon-breasted Blaskett.
    The English embassy departed just as the monastery bells were booming out for Terce; the French escort were waiting for them outside the monastery gate, a pursuivant of Philip's court, resplendent in scarlet and black, three nondescript clerks and two knights in half-armour, their sleeveless jerkins covering breastplates displaying the blue and gold of the royal French household. They were accompanied by a number of mounted men-at-arms, rough looking veterans, wearing boiled leather jerkins, steel breastplates and thick woollen serge leggings pushed into stout riding-boots. Corbett watched Lancaster and Richmond talk to the knights, documents were exchanged and, with the mounted escort strung out on either side of them, the English embassy continued its journey.
    The Normandy countryside was flat, brown and still in the mailed fist of winter. Some hardy peasants, their russet cloaks belted around them, felt hats pulled over their eyes, attempted to break the ground for sowing: behind them, their families, women, even small children worked scattering marle, lime or manure to fertilise the soil. To Corbett, who had witnessed the ravages of war on the marcher counties during King Edward's Welsh wars, the land seemed prosperous enough. Nevertheless, he remembered the saying of Jacques of Vitry, 'what the peasant gains by stubborn work in a year, the lord will devour in an hour'. Justice was harsh, the lords of the manor in their walled, moated homes of wood and stone, exercised more justice than they did in England and every crossroad had its scaffold or stocks.
    The villages were a collection of cottages, each with a small garden surrounded by a hedge and shallow ditch but Corbett was particularly struck by the number of towns, some old but others only in existence for decades; each was walled, the houses clustered around an abbey, cathedral or church. Sometimes the English stayed in one of these places, such as Noyon and Beauvis, where there was a welcoming priory or tavern spacious enough to host them. On other occasions, a variety of manors, royal or otherwise, were compelled to accept them. The French knights would flaunt their warrants, demanding purveyance which obliged the hapless