"Treason!", his guards burst in and cut the man down but the dagger and its poison were lodged in his arm. If it had not been for Eleanor the poison would have raced for his heart but she had immediately cut the wound and sucked out the poison herself.
Edward rose and poured a cup of wine. Eleanor! He should be with her now, enjoying her silken, warm brown body, not sitting in this deserted chamber brooding over the past. He sipped the wine. If only the past would die, leave him alone. He had so much to do but de Montfort and his secret societies persistently hounded him. "Go back to your grave, Simon!, " he whispered fiercely but the only answer was the darkness and the insistent whine of the wind. Edward rose and peered through the shutters. Beneath the swirling river mist, his capital lay quiet, though Edward knew different. Simon's followers, the covens with their constant plots and secret plans were gathering there scheming murder, treason and rebellion. Rats scampering about in their holes and runnels of the city Edward thought and, whatever they were plotting, was coming to a head like a boil full with yellow pus. His spies had told him this. Everything pointed to an unavoidable crisis. They had already begun to act; the suicide in St. Mary Le Bow was, the King reasoned, somehow linked to these rebels, and it was time that Burnell, his wily old Chancellor, flushed these traitors out into the light of day and destroyed them.
There was a knock at the door, it opened and the man Edward had been thinking about waddled into the room. Robert Burnell, Bishop of Bath and Wells and Chancellor of England, sketched the briefest of bows to his monarch and heaved himself into the room's one and only chair, dabbing his fat, florid face with the voluminous sleeve of his fur-trimmed gown. "God save your Grace, " he almost wheezed,