These I will do my best to earn, nor will I ask for them till I kneel before you when you are crowned King of England at Westminster, as I doubt not God will bring about before this year is out.

I have made a map of the road by which your army should march on London after landing, and of the towns to be sacked upon the way thither.

This, however, I keep, since although not one in ten thousand of these English swine can read French, or any other tongue, should it chance to be lost, all can understand a map.

Not that there is any fear of loss, for who will meddle with a priest who carries credentials signed by his Holiness himself.
I do homage to your Grace.

This written with my hand from Blythburgh, in Suffolk, on the twentieth day of February, 1346.
Edmund of Noyon.
Father Arnold ceased reading, and Hugh gasped out: "What a fool is this knave-Count!" "Most men are, my son, in this way or in that, and the few wise profit by their folly.