Death's Dark Valley Read online

  Edward opened his heavy-lidded eyes and stared round at his personal bodyguard, kneeling on the coarse matting rolled out across the floor as a covering in the great royal pavilion. The Knights of the Swan were garbed in their usual gold-lined black jerkins and hooded cloaks, their personal escutcheon a long-necked white swan, its extended wings emblazoned with diamonds for all to see. Edward studied the faces of these men, knights of the body, comrades in arms. He wondered if the rumours were true. Did they truly serve him as celibate bachelors, or was it just that they were not attracted to ladies of the court, or indeed any women? Not for them the tales of chivalry, of Lancelot fighting for his Guinevere. Did these men have a love for each other more intense than any husband for his wife? Were they like David and Jonathan, those two warriors of ancient Israel, committed to each other in life and in death? Only God knew the truth. Yet they had sworn that if their king died, they would withdraw from public life and dedicate themselves only to the service of God and the memory of their old master. They would assume the rule of St Benedict and live the life of the black monks, observing vows of chastity and obedience.

  ‘Faithful servants,’ Edward whispered through dry, cracked lips, ‘keep troth in death as you have in life.’

  ‘Sire.’ The knights’ leader, Henry Maltravers, spoke up. ‘Sire,’ he repeated, ‘do not trouble yourself. We are here, as we always have been and always shall be.’

  Edward nodded and sighed as he stared around the pavilion. Twenty of his most faithful comitatus were there. Once there had been thirty, but death had culled their ranks in so many ways. Reginald Berkley, trapped in a Scottish marsh, pierced to death by the lances of Robert Bruce’s horsemen. Walter Dakin, a master bowman, caught in a snowdrift in Wales and savaged by starving war dogs. Edward blinked. Wales! He really must have words with Maltravers.

  He closed his eyes, his mind drifting down the galleries and passageways of the past. The doors were being opened. Memories burst through, his enemies and friends, long dead, making their presence felt. He hoped and prayed that his beloved Eleanor would be waiting for him. Surely she would forgive his great sins? His greatest love! She who was so lovely in face and form. Edward crossed himself. He had confessed his sin, his pride of the flesh, his passion to rule, to dominate. He just hoped Eleanor would understand.

  He recalled that fateful day at Acre. He and his wife had joined the great crusade against Sultan Babyar. They had been sheltering deep in the fortress of Acre when Babyar’s emissary, who had been with them for days, asked to see Edward on a most private and confidential matter. Edward foolishly agreed, believing the interpreter accompanying him would be defence enough against any treachery. How wrong he had been. The emissary had drawn his curved dagger and lunged, killing the man with one swift slash to the throat. He had then turned on Edward, who managed to defend himself with a stool until he found his sword. He had killed his assailant, but not before the assassin had scored a deep wound in the king’s arm. Physicians were summoned to inspect both knife and wound, and immediately declared that the assassin’s blade had been thickly coated with a deadly poison, which must now be in the wound. Eleanor had hurried in. Learning what had happened, she had immediately sucked the poison from her husband’s wound, to the consternation of all. Eleanor his saviour, his dream queen!

  Edward opened his eyes and pointed at Maltravers. ‘You still hold the dagger, the one I took from the assassin so many years ago?’

  ‘Of course, sire!’

  ‘Good. When you move to Holyrood, that must go with you in its casket. Eleanor would want that, she would insist. You must take it. You must keep it in a sacred place and in no other casket but where it is now.’

  ‘Sire,’ Maltravers replied, ‘do not trouble yourself. It will be done. But such matters must wait. Think of Scotland, think of Bruce.’

  The king roused himself, pulling himself further up against the bolsters ‘You will keep your oath,’ he rasped. ‘You will continue the general advance against the Scottish traitors, even though my feckless son will not.’

  ‘We swear,’ Maltravers replied in a carrying voice, the other knights loudly affirming their leader’s oath. ‘We will fight the Bruce and oppose his power. We shall wage war sharp and cruel against him and his kind. If we do not, we shall withdraw from the court and this world. Sire, if you do not lead us, what else is there?’

  ‘As I have said before,’ Edward replied, ‘take Holyrood, close to Clun, a day’s march from Tewkesbury, deep in the Welsh March. It stands near the entrance to the Valley of Shadows, that place of great mystery.’

  ‘Of course, we know it well,’ Maltravers replied. ‘How can we forget the battle along the cliffs of Caerwent, ferocious and forbidding? My only consolation is that I was able to rescue my beloved squire Devizes. I—’

  ‘Make Holyrood a nest for the Knights of the Swan,’ Edward interrupted. ‘Create and develop an abbey dedicated to my memory and that of my beloved Eleanor. Pray for the Crown of England.’ He paused, gasping for breath, wincing at the pain and tightness around his chest, like a ribbon of steel cutting off his breath.

  ‘And Scotland, sire? You must order a general advance. Lord Pembroke is ready to unfurl your standard, display the royal banners to the Scottish rebels.’

  The dying king seemed unaware of Maltravers’ question; he was now lost in his own wandering thoughts. ‘The casket.’ he murmured. ‘The casket that holds the dagger my beloved Eleanor saved me from?’

  ‘Sire, it is safe. You know it is.’

  ‘And the prisoner; that young man, God bless him?’

  ‘Masked and hidden away in special chambers at Caernarvon.’

  ‘If I die – when I die – he must be moved to more secure quarters.’

  ‘Of course, sire.’

  ‘And you and others of the Knights of the Swan are sworn to this?’

  ‘Sire, we have taken the most solemn oath, but more pressing matters await. Does my Lord Pembroke order a general advance?’

  ‘In a while, in a while.’

  Edward stared around the pavilion. He trusted most of these men, yet he suspected some were weak, more accustomed to the luxuries of their silk-clad courts than the iron discipline of battle. He just prayed that Hugh Corbett would reach him in time. Corbett, his most trusted clerk. The one soul apart from Eleanor whom Edward knew lived in the truth and would never concede to the darkness. He wished Corbett was here, but his beloved clerk had withdrawn because of Edward’s lies and lack of trust, and that too was a sin the old king had confessed time and again. Eventually Edward had relented and sent the most carefully worded invitation to Corbett at his manor at Leighton, close to the great forest of Epping. Corbett had courteously replied that he would come, yet would he reach Burgh by Sands in time? If he did, Edward would discuss matters, confide what he knew, his doubts about some of these knights, but until then . . .

  He beat his hands against the blankets. ‘And where’s my son?’

  Silence answered his question. The old king felt a surge of rage against his feckless firstborn, more interested in his handsome lover Gaveston than anything else.

  ‘Listen,’ Edward drew himself up, ‘my son is not here, yet we march against the Scottish rebels. Henry Maltravers, you are a knight banneret, but you are also a master of wrought metal. In London you were, like your father, a member of the guild until you flocked to my standard against de Montfort. I knighted you, I gave you great honours.’

  ‘Hurling days, sire.’

  ‘Yes, they were,’ Edward breathed. ‘Now, Henry, I want you to fashion a great cauldron. Once I am dead and my soul gone to judgement, boil the flesh from my bones, put it in a casket and bury it beneath a slab of Purbeck marble at Westminster, next to my beloved Eleanor. My bones you must put in a chest, and whenever you march against the Scots, take it with you. Let those rebels know that in death, as in life, I am utterly opposed to them.’ He stopped, gasping for breath. ‘As for my son . . .’

  The king felt
a spasm of pain deep in his chest. He tried to breathe but could not, and fell back dead into the arms of Maltravers.

  Holyrood Abbey, the Welsh March, November 1311

  Brother Richard, former Knight of the Swan, a member of the old king’s comitatus of knight bannerets, braced himself against the crenellations of Raven Tower, one of the four that formed the soaring Eagle Donjon, the great forbidding keep at the centre of Holyrood Abbey, deep in the vastness of the Welsh March, at least a long day’s journey from the market town of Tewkesbury.

  Brother Richard loved to come up here and survey this abbey fortress. The donjon lay at the centre of impressive fortifications, protected by an inner wall with a fighting ledge for defenders, its only entrance being through a heavily fortified gateway. Beyond the inner bailey stretched the new abbey, a spacious square of elegant buildings surrounding the principal church and cloisters. The latter was two storeys high and housed the various offices – chancery, exchequer, library, scriptorium, infirmary, kitchen, buttery – as well as chambers and cells for the community. Stables, hog pens, cattle sheds, kennels and similar outhouses stood some distance from the cloisters, separated by the broad abbey gardens, rich in herb banks and flower plots. In turn this outer bailey was defended by a lofty square curtain wall with crenellations taller than a man and broad fighting ledges. Postern gates were built into the four walls, and the main entrance was truly formidable, protected by iron-shielded gates, portcullis, and murder holes that pierced the ceiling of the cavernous gatehouse. This sombre vaulted chamber housed the machinery to lower the drawbridge across a wide, very deep moat, served by underground springs.

  Holyrood was a truly impregnable abbey fortress, and Brother Richard rejoiced in its sheer magnificence. After all, he and his colleague Anselm had been controllers of the King’s Works, royal surveyors and masons who had played a major part in the building and development of this hallowed place. They had also been instrumental in finding the abbey’s strategic location here at the mouth of the deepest valley along the Welsh March.

  Brother Richard narrowed his eyes and stared across at the soaring sides of the valley. Both slopes were covered by densely clustered ancient copses and woods, rich in game as well as water, timber and all the other necessities the community might need. He stood and drank in the breathtaking scene. The road towards the valley mouth was broad, but it soon sharply narrowed, almost becoming lost in the undergrowth and trees that grew close and thick, reducing the road to a mere trackway through what seemed to be a veritable sea of dark greenery.

  Not everyone liked the valley. Some called it the Valley of Shadows, others the Valley of Tears. A few described it as the Valley of Gehenna, a place of perpetual shadow, a title that evoked the ravine outside Jerusalem where the Final Judgement would take place. Brother Richard did not fully know the reasons for such sombre titles. Nevertheless, as he conceded to Father Abbot, the valley had acquired a sinister reputation. Local lore maintained that a bloody massacre had taken place during the ancient pagan days. That gruesome sacrifices had been staged, human beings being bound on stone altars and offered to the dark lords of the air, the ground beneath soaked by the blood of hundreds of innocent victims. Of course, there was also that truly bloody battle some eleven years ago, in which Brother Richard and others had so fiercely participated. A gruesome conflict that had ended in merciless slaughter. It had taken place at the far end of the valley, along the cliffs of Caerwent.

  Brother Richard blinked and crossed himself. It was best to forget a day of such utter terror. Like his companions, he now believed that the very sacredness of this place had expunged all such abominations, making both the valley and its entrance hallowed and holy. The abbey church housed the risen Christ’s body and blood. It also contained valuable relics such as the assassin’s dagger used against Richard’s former royal master and now reserved in a most exquisitely jewelled casket above the high altar. Holyrood was supposed to be a place full of God’s own harmony. Yet hideous crimes had been perpetrated in this sacred sanctuary; what one of the brothers called ‘the abomination of desolation’, as described by the prophet Daniel, who had looked into the visions of the night.

  The first victim of such horror had been Father Abbot himself, who now lay grievously sick in his bedchamber in Falcon Tower. He was fully convinced that someone had tried to poison him. At least he had survived, unlike Brother Anselm, a former Knight of the Swan, who had been cruelly murdered in a macabre fashion, a thick, heavy nail driven into his forehead. Who would perpetrate such an outrage? Why and how? The victim had been a veteran swordsman, skilled in dagger play. Nevertheless, he had been found stretched out in his chamber, glassy-eyed, with no sign of a struggle or resistance. Prior Jude had reported this at a chapter meeting and no one could understand it. Brother Crispin, the infirmarian, who had dressed the corpse for burial, had examined the wound most carefully and wondered how any assailant could draw so close to carry out such a hideous crime. Surely Anselm would have fought back, raised the hue and cry?

  Brother Richard had mourned deeply for his former comrade, who had played such a vital role in the construction and development of Holyrood. The two of them had been the architects and knew all the great secrets this abbey housed, both above and below ground. Secrets shared with no one else. They had revelled in what they had achieved and what they knew.

  During the last few years, Holyrood had been a place to enjoy the comforts of this life whilst looking forward to those of the next. Now the mood of the abbey fortress had abruptly changed, as if some malevolent demon had swept up from hell to prowl its galleries, corridors and aisles. Prior Jude was certain of this, and the community had grown fearful. The weather hadn’t helped. Brother Richard heard a harsh cawing and glanced up at the great ravens, deep black shadows against the lowering skies. Winter was tightening its grip. Isadore, the doorkeeper, learned in such matters was predicting that heavy snowfalls were imminent.

  Brother Richard gathered his brown cloak closer, pulling his wool-lined hood more firmly against his face. He really should return to his chamber and read that letter again. A missive from the French envoy, Monsieur Amaury de Craon, enquiring about his health and saying how much he looked forward to visiting Holyrood before winter closed in. Brother Richard murmured a prayer for help. He was, through his mother, a distant kinsman of the king of France, Philip IV, known as ‘Philip le Bel’ – the Beautiful. ‘Philip the Fox’, Brother Richard preferred to call him. He disliked the French monarch intensely and regarded him as one of the greatest liars in Christendom. Philip was always eager to remind the former Knight of the Swan how they were close kin, of the same blood and lineage. Brother Richard distrusted such an attitude, as had the old king up to the very day he coughed out his life blood at Burgh by Sands four years ago. Both men believed that Philip used his kinship in the hope that a slip, a mistake, a wrong word might betray some secret enterprise by the English king.

  Brother Richard sighed noisily, watching his hot breath form clouds on the icy air. The French king’s dogs were clearly sniffing around the English court searching for tasty morsels, and God knows there were enough. The old king was four years dead and his son and heir seemed more interested in his Gascon favourite, Peter Gaveston, than in dealing with problems of government, be it on the royal council at Westminster or resisting the ever-encroaching Scots under their cunning war leader Robert Bruce. Brother Richard, a close confidant of both the former king and Abbot Henry, wondered if the French knew the truth about the assassin’s dagger, kept in its precious case above the high altar of the abbey church. Or, more importantly, the identity of the masked prisoner held in comfortable but close confinement in the dungeons beneath Falcon Tower.

  He stared across at the tower. Perhaps he should visit the prisoner? He pulled a face, scratching the tip of his nose as he listened to the howling of the war dogs chained in their kennels on the far side of the abbey. There were rumours that Hugh Corbett, Keeper of the Secret Seal, was becoming inte
rested in Holyrood, and that he might be dispatched here. Brother Richard smiled to himself. He hoped so. He had met Corbett on many occasions and liked the clerk’s quiet but assured manner. A loyal servant of sharp brain and even keener wits, Corbett might help solve the murderous mystery swirling around this once holy abbey.

  Brother Richard suppressed a shiver and opened the door to descend from the tower, taking the first few steps carefully. Yet he never reached the bottom. Two hours later, as darkness fell and the abbey bells rang for vespers, his corpse was found, tumbled on the steps, a thick black nail driven deep into his forehead.

  PART ONE

  John claimed that he had been taken from the cradle and that the king who now reigned had been put in his place.

  Life of Edward II

  ‘Put not your trust in princes, nor your confidence in Pharaoh, nor your hopes in the war chariots of Egypt or the swift horses of Assyria. They will not save you on the Day of the Great Slaughter when the strongholds fall.’ Sir Hugh Corbett, Keeper of the Secret Seal and personal envoy of King Edward, sat in the refectory of Holyrood Abbey and listened intently to the chanting from the abbey church. He would have loved to join the choir and immerse himself in the serene melodies of the plainchant: the rise and fall of the music, the dramatic language and colourful imagery of the psalmist. However, he and his two companions were exhausted, frozen and ravenously hungry after their long ride from Tewkesbury.