Hugh Corbett 14 - The Magician's Death Read Online Free Page B

the top, grasping the torch, he stared down at the glistening oil, then tossed the torch in and slammed the door shut.
    They raced through the kitchen, past sleepy-eyed scullions. In the yard two revellers were being sick over the horse trough. Bolingbroke and Ufford pushed them aside and hastened to the gate and out into the shadowy side streets of Paris. As they reached the end of the alleyway, the faint sounds of clamour rose behind them. Looking back, Ufford saw a glow against the sky. The fire he had started was now raging.
    ‘Why?’ Bolingbroke asked.
    ‘Why not?’ Ufford gasped for breath. ‘It will create what the French would call a divertissement . Come, let’s go.’
    They walked quickly, but did not hurry. The watch were out, groups of halberdiers dressed in the city livery, but the clerks carried passes and were allowed to go unmolested. They avoided the main thoroughfares where the chains had been drawn across, or the open squares lit by torches and candles placed around the statues of the local patron saints. In the shadows stood crossbowmen, city bailiffs, ready to apprehend any law-breaker. Ufford took a deep breath. He regretted the deaths, but what could he do? The King of Keys would have died anyway. And as for Magister Thibault? Ufford’s lip curled. The Magister was a stupid old man who should have fallen to his prayers. It was Lucienne’s face he could not forget: those lovely eyes, her pretty mouth gaping, the smell of her perfume, the touch of her soft warm body. In a way she had reminded him of Edelina Magorian, the merchant’s daughter in London who sent him such sweet letters and was so eager for his return.
    They were now approaching the Porte St Denis and the great gallows of Montfaucon. The long-pillared, soaring gallows standing on its fifteen-foot mound, the execution ground, the slaughteryard of Paris, with its hanging noose and ladders stark against the starlit sky and, in the centre, a deep pit to receive the corpses. Ufford shivered and looked away. He would make sure he would not be taken alive, thrown into the execution cart, battered and bruised and forced to dance in the air for the delight of the mob. He gripped the leather sack more tightly. They would never come back to Paris and he was glad. There would be other assignments, though Corbett would not be pleased that such deaths lay at his door.
    ‘Walter?’
    Ufford started and realised they had reached the mouth of the narrow alleyway leading to the Street of the Carmelites. Bolingbroke pulled him deep into the shadows of an overhanging house. ‘For God’s sake, man, keep your eyes sharp!’
    Ufford swallowed hard. He could feel the night cold as he peered down that alleyway, the crumbling houses jutting out above their neighbours, almost blocking out the sky. Here and there a lonely candle burned in a casement window. A river mist hung thin in the air, blurring the light of the lantern horns slung on hooks outside some of the tenements. He narrowed his eyes. The street was the same; that stinking sewer down the centre. He could see the corner of a runnel, the place where footpads lurked, but this appeared deserted.
    ‘I can see nothing wrong.’
    Keeping to the line of the houses, they edged down towards the small tavern known as the Martel de Fer, the Sign of the Blacksmith, above which they had their room. The tavern was closed and shuttered for the night, as was the small apothecary opposite. Ufford stared across at this, looking for any chink of light, but all was cloaked in darkness. They went up the outside stairs into their narrow, shabby chamber with the paint peeling off the walls and the air rancid with the smell of cheap tallow candles. Even as Bolingbroke struck a tinder to light these, Ufford could hear the scampering mice. Yes, he would be glad to leave this place. The candles glowed, and Ufford stared around at the hard cot beds, the battered chests, the rickety table and stools. On the wall, just near