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clergyman, close to his Lordship, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He intended to give a speech after this mass denouncing your intention to tax the Church.' Corbett stopped and licked his lips, but the king seemed composed, somehow drawing himself back from the black pit of anger. 'People will say,' Corbett continued, 'that de Montfort was killed by you.'
    The king turned his back to Corbett, hands outstretched resting on the tomb, head bowed beneath the great rose window as if lost in some private prayer. When he turned he looked weary.
    'It is true what you say, Clerk,' he said softly. 'They will place de Montfort's death, like others of his accursed family, at my door. How can I ever ask the clergy for taxes when as a body they will rise and demand justice for de Montfort's murder?' He squinted at Corbett in the poor light. 'But how?'
    'Two ways,' Corbett replied suddenly, almost without thinking. 'Either he was poisoned before mass began or -' 'Or what?' the king snapped.
    'Or,' Corbett said quietly, 'the chalice was poisoned.'
    Corbett saw even the king's face go pale at the blasphemy he had uttered.
    'You mean,' Surrey interjected, 'that the wine, the consecrated wine, Christ's blood, was poisoned by somebody? Then it must have been someone who celebrated mass.'
    The earl came across the room and stared into Corbett's eyes.
    'You realize what you are saying, Clerk? That a priest or canons of this church, in the middle of mass, the most sacred of ceremonies, poisoned the consecrated chalice and gave it to de Montfort to drink?'
    'I do,' Corbett replied, gazing back steadily. He turned towards where the king stood. 'I urge Your Grace to order a guard placed round the high altar and that none of the chalices or patens or anything else be removed until we have examined them.'
    The king nodded and muttered a quiet command to Bassett, who bustled from the room.
    'This is clever,' the king said slowly. 'Whatever happens, we must be careful. Do we accept de Montfort's death and protest our innocence, for we are innocent, or investigate it? If the latter, each of those canons must be interrogated, which might cause a public scandal – and still we could find nothing. Indeed, we could be accused of trying to put the blame on innocent people.' The king chewed his lower lip and ran a beringed hand through his steel-grey hair. He took off his chaplet of silver and laid it unceremoniously on top of the tomb. 'What do you advise, Surrey?'
    'Let sleeping dogs lie!' the earl answered quickly. 'Leave it alone, Your Grace!'
    'Corbett?'
    'I would agree with my Lord of Surrey,' Corbett replied. 'But there is one thing we have forgotten.' 'What is that?'
    'The chalice,' Corbett replied. 'Do you remember, my Lord? You were to receive communion under both kinds. We must ask ourselves, was the chalice poisoned for de Montfort to drink? Or, Your Grace, was it poisoned for you?'
    The king rubbed his face in his hands and looked up at the gargoyles above the stone dog's-tooth tracery. Corbett followed his gaze. There, angels jutted out of the walls, their cheeks puffed to blow the last trumpet; beside them, the faces of demons, eyes protuberant, tongues lashing out perpetually in stone. Beneath these gargoyles, in a glorious array of purples, golds, reds and blues, was a painting of heaven: a golden paradise where souls of the blessed in white robes armed with golden harps sang to a Christ eternally in judgement, while beneath their feet, in a hellish haze of red and brown, scaled demons with the heads of monsters and the bodies of lions put the souls of the damned through unspeakable tortures. Corbett watched the king take all this in. Surrey, bored by what was going on, leaned against a wall and stared down at the ground as if he had nothing to add to Corbett's conclusions. The king walked over to the clerk, so close Hugh could smell the mixture of perfume and sweat from the heavy, gold-encrusted robes.
    'In this church, Hugh,' the king said