The Magician's Death

Although Sir Hugh Corbett is described (here and elsewhere) as a "medieval sleuth", this story cannot be dismissed as simply a detective story arbitrarily set in the Middle Ages, for it is truly a medieval mystery.

What was contained in Roger Bacon's Secretus Secretorum, the "secret of secrets", written in a seemingly unbreakable code? Was it the key to the practice of alchemy, the turning of base metal into gold? Friar Bacon (English philosopher, scientist/magician, imprisoned in Rome by the Church) apparently had gold in large and inexplicable amounts at his disposal. And who was Bacon's disciple "John", of whom Bacon said "No one is as learned; in many ways this boy is indispensable," and "He excels even me, old man that I am."?

Two men want to know the answers to these questions: Edward I of England and Philip IV of France, both desperate for money (Philip would later turn on the Lombards, then the Jews, and finally the Templars in his quest for gold), and both lusting after ever more power and influence for themselves and their families. Thus Philip imposes his daughter as daughter-in-law on the unwilling but temporarily helpless Edward in order that his own grandson will one day occupy the throne of England. A plan that goes "horribly wrong" when his three sons all die (following the curse of Jacques de Molay, last Grand Master of the Templars, burnt at the stake in Paris by Philip) and Edward and Philip's grandson, Edward III of England, claims the throne of France, thus precipitating the Hundred Years War.

A great story of a pivotal moment in medieval history. And the solution to the mystery? No one knows, but Hugh Corbett's (i.e. Paul Doherty's) unravelling of it at the behest of King Edward is as likely as any, and his depiction of life in medieval England (with the bonus of a serial-killer - local girls disappearing and their bodies being found in the primeval forest that surrounds Corfe Castle, where most of the action takes place) is, as always, chillingly convincing.