"Then what now?" said the King. "What shall we do now?" He walked over to his Chancellor and patted him on the shoulder.

"Earlier, " Edward said softly, "I compared these conspirators, these rebels, the scum of this city to rats, I see you, my Lord Bishop, as my rat-catcher. You must run these vermin out into the open. "

The Chancellor coughed and cleared his throat. "I have chosen a man, " he replied, "another clerk who now serves in the Courts of King's Bench. " Burnell stopped speaking and looked fearfully up at the King. "He is, my Lord, probably our last and only hope!''

"Good, " the King murmured. "But do not inform him of your suspicions that there could be a spy here in the very Palace of Westminster. After all, " he concluded meaningfully, "it could be one of his friends!"

They always met here, the charnel house of a deserted London church, a rotten mildewed crypt, secretive, closed, hidden from spies and the eyes of the curious. They had intoned their prayer to Lucifer, the Fallen Morning Star, their hands outstretched above a crude stone altar bearing mystical symbols round an inverted cross. Only one torch spluttered and flared against the cold darkness but this revealed nothing of the thirteen hooded figures, the cowls of their cloaks covering their heads, their faces concealed behind crude leather masks. They did not even know each other, only their leader, the Hooded One, silent as ever, was aware of their identities. They were bound by macabre pacts and bloody oaths to destroy the King and create revolt. This was the essence of their being, the link between each of them and they were here to learn how it was to be achieved.