In which direction would Philip's armies march first? The pope in Avignon crouched behind his throne and waited. Edward of England tossed restlessly in his soldier's bed as his mind worried at the problem. The merchants in London also waited; if Philip conquered Flanders then England's trade, the shiploads of wool sent to the looms and weavers of Ghent and Bruges, would stop summarily and fortunes would be lost. All of Europe held its breath. Chroniclers like Florence could only dip their quills and pen the direst warnings and prophecies of what might come to pass.

In the dark streets and alleyways of Paris, which ran together in a spider's web on the far side of the Grand Pont, more practical men laid their schemes and drew up plans to discover Philip's true intentions. Sir Hugh Corbett, Edward I of England's most senior clerk in the chancery, master of the King's secrets and Keeper of the Secret Seal, had flooded the French city with his agents: merchants ostensibly looking for new markets; monks and friars supposedly visiting their mother houses; scholars hoping to dispute in the schools; pilgrims apparently on their way to worship the severed head of St Denis; even courtesans who hired chambers and entertained clients, the clerks and officials of Philip's secret chancery. Their task was dangerous for William of Nogaret, Corbett's rival at the French court, together with Philip's master spy, Amaury de Craon, waged a silent but bloody war against Corbett's legions of spies. Two English clerks had already disappeared, their disfigured corpses later washed up on the muddy banks of the Seine. Another three of Corbett's 'pilgrims' were now rotting cadavers on the great scaffold at Montfaucon. A comely courtesan, young Alisia, with silken skin and a tangle of corn-gold hair, had been brutally beaten to death in her chamber at The Silver Moon where so many of the French King's chancery clerks were accustomed to sup and drink.