The Assassin King

The new thriller from bestselling author Will Adams

In the summer of 1215, King John famously signed Magna Carta at Runnymede, even though he never had any intention of honouring it. Within weeks, he was back at war with his rebel barons, spending the following year criss-crossing the country, emptying his various castles not just of the coin he needed to pay his troops, but of his crown jewels and other treasures too.

His army had been large. Some two thousand mounted knights, and twice that number on foot, all needing food and wages, tents to sleep in and weapons to fight with. Add on the smiths, farriers, cooks, stewards, surgeons and the rest, plus the stores they needed to get through the winter, and it meant a baggage train a good two miles long, lumbering slowly over the churned up autumn tracks, and prey to broken cartwheels and lame horses.

Lincoln castle fell under siege. John was needed there urgently. He therefore took the fateful decision to split his forces, sending his baggage train on a short cut across the muddy estuary of the Wash, planning to meet up with it again on the other side. It got bogged down halfway across, however, leaving it defenceless against the incoming tide, so that it and its precious cargo were sucked down into the vast bed of silt that underlay the region. And when the tide had gone back out again, not a single trace of it had remained.

Or that, at least, was the story people told.

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