Paul C Doherty - The Death of a King (Missing Mysteries)

Missing Mysteries

Poisoned Pen Press is pleased to announce the release of its fifth Missing Mystery, P.C. Dohertys The Death of a King.

What critics say about The Death of a King:

Scholarly yet suspenseful with a powerful ending.

Booklist

All in all, intelligent lively and tantalising mystery which shudders throughout with menace and villainous pursuits.

Kirkus

Done in the best of detective tradition.

I Love a Mystery

...a medieval whodunit thats livelier than Umberto Ecos The Name of the Rose and more sharply plotted than Ellis Peters Brother Cadfael stories.

The Denver Post

...fascinating...it involves royal infidelity, much political plotting, vengeance, and betrayal.... History buffs will recognize that Doherty has picked an historical incident that is truly shrouded in mystery, and I imagine they will especially applaud his hypothetical solu-tion...

Alfred Hitchcocks Mystery Magazine

Copyright 1985 by P.C. Doherty.

First published in Great Britain by Robert Hale Ltd 1982.

First US Trade Paperback Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN: 1-890208-11-6

Library Card Catalog Number: 98-87218

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or oth-erwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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Printed in the United States of America

Contents

The history of fourteenth-century England is full of tales of terror, war, intrigue and betrayal. Often it is difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. We can only look at events and speculate on the variety of causes behind them. This applies to the horrifying revelations contained in this collection of letters.

However, to assist the reader, I have included a list of the main historical personages mentioned in the text. The list does not include those mysterious, sinister figures who lived, worked and died in the shadowy world surrounding the great and famous of Europe.

P.C. Doherty, 1982

EDWARD I King of England, 12721307.

EDWARD II King of England, 13071327.

ISABELLA Wife of Edward II and Queen of England from 1308 to her retirement in 1330.

EDMUND, EARL OF KENT Half-brother to Edward II, executed 1329.

THOMAS, EARL OF LANCASTER Cousin to Edward II and the kings life-long opponent. Defeated and executed by Edward II in 1332.

JOHN STRATFORD Bishop of Winchester, then Archbishop of Canterbury.

ADAM ORLETON Bishop of Hereford. Later Bishop of Worcester.

ROGER MORTIMER OF WIGMORE Welsh baron, opponent of Edward II. He escaped to France, where he joined with queen Isabella in 1325. They invaded England, deposed Edward II and ruled England until Mortimers overthrow in 1330.

EDWARD III King of England, 13271377. Edward IIs successor and son of Queen Isabella.

Edward,by the grace of God, King of England, France and Ireland, to Our faithful clerk, Edmund Beche, health and greetings. We command you to meet Us at Windsor on the first Sunday after the Assumption to discuss a matter touching Our Crown. It is Our royal pleasure and your duty to attend. Under no circumstances will We excuse your absence.

Written at Westminster and despatched under the secret seal, 10 August, 1345.

Edmund Beche to his faithful friend, Richard Bliton, Prior of Croy-land Abbey, health and blessing. It is a long time Richard, since we studied together at Oxford, yet our friendship seems to have stood the test of time and changing personal fortune. You are the prior of a great abbey but I, now 35, continue to scratch away as a clerk in the royal Chancery. True, I have no great desire to change. My fees suffice to provide robes, food, a sound horse, a house in Bread Street and a pert young woman in Cheapside. Should the latter offend your holiness then I apologize but, unlike you, I have no vocation to remain celibate or, like so many, worsen my state by matrimony.

The writ I enclose from our king, Edward III, now threatens my humdrum existence. A royal messenger delivered it with all the arrogance he could muster on the morning of 12 August, and small and terse though it is, the writ caused me great concern. As far as I knew, I had done nothing wrong, but you can never be sure. Some of my work in the writing office of the Chancery deals with royal correspondence of varying degrees of secrecy. If ale had made me loquacious in some Holborn tavern, then perhaps my comfortable existence was going to end rather abruptly. So, from the moment I received the summons, my agitation grew and the actual journey to Windsor did little to curb my anxiety.

The bells of St Pauls were clanging for Sunday Prime when a mailed clatter outside my lodgings rattled me awake. I pushed open a casement to find a courtier whom I knew by sight, Sir John Chandos, and a group of sergeants wearing the blue and gold of the royal livery staring up at me. Sir John, tall, grey-haired, with a face like a hunting falcon, was courteous but firm. The king, he shouted, wanted me at Windsor and I was to accompany him there immediately. I dressed swiftly in my best robes and hurried down to join him. I was grateful that the problem of how I was to meet the king had now solved itself, but worried sick over why a military escort had been sent to take me. We marched down to Queenshithe wharf where a barge, flying the golden leopards of England and the silver fleur-de-lis of France, lay waiting. We clambered in, the order was given to cast off and soon we were in mid-stream, rowing north through the swirling morning mist.

Apart from the splash of the dipping oars, the journey was a quiet one. I did not question Chandos and he confined himself to a few conventional remarks about my work in the Chancery and my brief military service against the French. His presence did little to comfort me. Sir John Chandos has a reputation as a ferocious fighter, totally devoted to a king who had elevated him from relative obscurity to be a member of his council. A mysterious figure always in the shadows, he acted as bodyguard and confidant to the king. He had been a member of that select group of retainers who had aided the king in the famous coup of 1330, which destroyed the rule of his mother and her lover Mortimer. Sir John had led the party which actually arrested Mortimer, killing in hand-to-hand combat two of the latters bodyguards. Since then court chatter had Sir John Chandos as the paramount figure in a number of secret and dangerous assignments. Some called him a spy but others dismissed him as the kings secret and most professional assassin.

By the time we docked at Windsor, the sun was beginning to lift the morning mist but the fear twisting in the pit of my stomach kept me cold and clammy. We left the barge and headed towards the huge donjon of the great grey castle, the armour of the sergeants echoing along the rutted streets like the tambour-beat of a death march. We crossed the great yawning moat and entered the main gate. The portcullis fell with a crash. The escort was dismissed and I followed Chandos across the castle yard into the recently renovated chapel. We walked up the main aisle, genuflected before a winking sanctuary lamp and, turning left, entered a small, cool chamber which must also serve as the vestry. At the far end, two figures sat hunched over a trestle table. They looked up as we entered. Chandos ordered me to kneel and an age seemed to pass before a resonant voice told me to sit on the stool Chandos had pushed alongside me. I slumped on to it and, raising my eyes, found myself staring straight into the kings face. My first thought was that the golden boy we students cheered so wildly as he passed through Oxford to his palace at Woodstock had disappeared. The blond hair had turned a dull grey, a mottled hue of criss-crossed veins now patterned the tawny face and his bellys so big that it seems our king has lost his youth, not on the battlefield, but at the board of countless banquets. Yet his eyes, though puffy and ringed with shadows, were keen and alert enough to force me to shift my gaze to the person sitting on his left. There, I recognized the red-haired, foxy features of our father in Christ, John Stratford, Archbishop of Canterbury.