The Magician's Death

`What was so precious about that manuscript? London and Paris were full of magicians! Friar Roger had made remarkable prophecies, but surely they were just vague imaginings?'

ROGER BACON'S BOOK OF SECRETS is coveted in both France and England, but the brilliant, controversial scholar has concealed his discoveries behind a mystifying code. When Sir Hugh Corbett, spy master to the English King Edward I, instructs his agents to prise the book from its hiding-place in Paris, they succeed only at a violent and bloody cost. Next, a meeting between the scholars of both countries is demanded by Philip IV of France to discuss whether the code can ever be broken, and Edward, bound by his recent peace treaty with Philip, is forced to agree.

THE MEETING TAKES PLACE at Corfe Castle, which soon becomes a place of murder, mystery and mayhem. Young women from the castle are being slain, the outlaw Horehound is appalled at the horrors he has seen in the nearby forest -- and then two of the French scholars die in sinister circumstances. At the head of the English clerks, Corbett has to thread this murderous maze whilst, at the same time, trying to decipher the secrets of one of England's greatest scholars.