The Malice of Unnatural Death

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Friday before the Feast of the Holy Cross in the seventeenth year of the reign of King Edward II1

Coventry

At the root of that murder there was no jealousy or hatred. If anything, it was murder in the interest of science. A new weaponmust be shown to be effective before it can be used with confidence. That was why Sir Richard de Sowe died: to prove thatthey could kill him.

In choosing him, the necromancer had selected a local man whose health it would be easy to ascertain. Sir Richard was a secularknight in the pay of the king, but he had not harmed John of Nottingham. No, his death was due to his proximity.

Not that Robert le Mareschal cared about that. No, as he stood in the dark room, the seven little figures illuminated by theflickering flames of the cheap tallow candles all about them, he didn’t even think about the man whose death they were planning. He felt only the thrill of the journey: the journey of knowledge.

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