Hugh Corbett 12 - The Treason of the Ghosts

by Paul Doherty

  ‘I’ll take care of her,’ came the grating reply. ‘She’s madcap and fey with it. No one believes her.’

  ‘She asked the same questions the clerk will.’

  ‘And you’ll give the same answer.’

  ‘How did you get in here?’ Deverell made to rise.

  ‘I wouldn’t come closer,’ the voice replied. ‘I just wanted to show you how careful you must be, Master Deverell. I came across your fence. It’s not so dangerous or so difficult. Your wife is in the market and you are always by yourself.’

  ‘I did what you asked,’ Deverell gasped.

  ‘And you’ll do it again,’ came the hurried reply. ‘You saw Sir Roger that night, hastening along Gully Lane. You took an oath, you gave evidence. What more can you say?’

  ‘But, but Molkyn, Thorkle . . .’ Deverell stammered. ‘They’re dead.’

  ‘Aye, and so they are. Perhaps they didn’t keep their word, master carpenter. But, that doesn’t bother me. I have come to remind you of the agreement we reached some years ago.’

  ‘I fulfilled my part of the bargain,’ Deverell protested.

  ‘And I have mine,’ came the hoarse reply. ‘I won’t bother you again. I just want to remind you of what I know and what I can do. If the clerk comes, and he will, have your story by rote, like a monk knows his psalms.’

  Deverell’s mouth went dry.

  ‘You have a good trade, Deverell,’ the voice teased. ‘Your work is admired, and your wife hot and lusty in that great bed of yours? And what do the good burgesses of Melford think of you? A master craftsman! Perhaps one day they will elect you to the council or allow you to carry one of their stupid banners in their processions. It’s a small price to pay.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Deverell agreed.

  ‘Good! Come, come, man,’ the voice continued. ‘Who can recall where you were five years ago on a certain night? That’s the attraction of a man like you, Deverell! You keep yourself to yourself, well away from the taproom of the Golden Fleece. You could be on the other side of the moon and no one would know.’

  Deverell felt a spurt of anger. ‘How do you know about me?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s obvious, carpenter: the way you walk, the way you talk. A man who keeps to himself. You have a lot to hide.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Deverell snarled.

  He would have got to his feet but the self-proclaimed friar took a step back and his hands fell from his sleeves. Deverell glimpsed a long dagger.

  ‘Don’t lose your temper,’ the visitor warned. ‘That would be no use, my brother. Silence is your best protection. Now, I have your word on that? The same story as before?’

  ‘You have my word.’

  ‘Good.’ The friar pointed to the gate. ‘Go and draw the bolts and I’ll be gone.’

  The carpenter obeyed. He swung the gate open and returned to the workshop.

  ‘Go into your house, then come and bolt the gate behind me.’

  Deverell obeyed. He stepped into a small storeroom which adjoined the buttery. He heard his gate creak and went back. The workshop was deserted and so was the yard. He hurried to the gate and stepped into the alleyway but it was busy, thronged with people. Deverell searched but he could see no friar and, thanks be to God, no Sorrel either.

  Deverell stepped back into the yard. He bolted the gate and leant against it. His body was coated with sweat. He found his legs wouldn’t stop trembling. He slid down to the cobbles, arms across his chest, trying to control his panic. He closed his eyes. All he could see was Sir Roger Chapeleys standing in the execution cart, being taken down from the church, along the rutted track towards the gibbet.

  ‘O miserere nobis Jesus,’ he whispered.

  When he opened his eyes, Deverell noticed the cut on his hand had stopped bleeding. He spread his fingers out like a priest giving a blessing.

  ‘Pax vobiscum,’ he whispered to the ghosts of his former life thronging about him. ‘Peace be with you.’

  Deverell got to his feet and, still shaking, returned to his house. He entered the clean, scrubbed kitchen and, grabbing a cup, broached the small barrel of Bordeaux a grateful customer had given him. He filled the cup to its brim and sat at the kitchen table, drinking greedily. He hadn’t witnessed Sir Roger’s execution but others had described his death throes, how the body had jerked and dangled at the end of the rope. Why? Deverell asked himself. Why was it so necessary for that man to die? He heard a rattle on the front door. He drained the cup, hid it beneath a cloth and went along the passageway. He peered through the squint hole. Ysabeau, his wife, stared bold-eyed back.

  ‘For the love of God and all his angels!’ she exclaimed. ‘Deverell, this is my house. Open the door!’

  He turned the key in the lock and pulled back the bolts. His wife came in. He took her basket from her and put it on the floor.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ She peered at him. ‘You look as if you have seen a ghost!’

  ‘It’s the coffin,’ he lied. ‘The one I made for the young girl, the wheelwright’s daughter. It still upsets me.’

  ‘Well, her soul’s gone to her Maker,’ his wife replied. ‘And you’ve heard the news?’ she continued. ‘The clerk’s arrived!’

  ‘Aye, I know he has,’ Deverell almost shouted. ‘He’ll be asking his bloody questions!’

  ‘Hush, man,’ his wife soothed. ‘Everyone knows you told the truth.’

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Deverell asked.

  ‘I’ve heard from Adela, the clerk has called a meeting up at the church. He apparently wants to question Sir Roger’s whelp and the other justice, what’s his name?’

  ‘Tressilyian.’

  Ysabeau walked down the passageway. Deverell closed his eyes.

  ‘So it’s begun,’ he whispered. ‘God’s justice will be done!’

  Deverell opened his eyes and stared at the crucifix nailed to the wall. At Sir Roger’s execution, he reflected, hadn’t the knight vowed, just before he was turned off the ladder, to return from the dead and seek justice?

  Chapter 3

  The crypt under the church of St Edmund’s, Melford, was cavernous and sombre. Rush lights and oil lamps sent the shadows dancing, turning the atmosphere even more ominous. Sir Hugh Corbett stared at the funeral ledges built at eyelevel around the chamber. Some of the coffins were rotting and decayed, displaying fragments of bone. One entire casket had fallen away and its yellowing skeleton lay on its side, jaw sagging. Corbett thought it was grinning at him like some figure of death, ready to pounce. He waited while Parson Grimstone loosened the lid of the coffin which lay on trestles in the centre of the room. The priest took the lid off and removed the purple cloth beneath. Corbett stared down at the waxen face of the corpse within. Those who had dressed the young woman for burial had done their best. Corbett moved the head with one finger. He stared at the mottled bruises which ringed her throat like some grisly necklace.

  ‘It looks like a garrotte,’ he remarked. ‘Where was she found?’

  ‘Near Devil’s Oak. Her body was tucked away beneath a hedge. Two boys collecting firewood found it and raised the alarm.’

  Corbett stared at the priest. Parson Grimstone was undoubtedly nervous - his eyes puffy with lack of sleep, hands trembling. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved and his black gown was marked with food stains. The parson placed the lid back on the coffin and walked over to the stone chair built into the wall. He sat down next to his friend Adam Burghesh and put his face in his hands.

  ‘You are very upset.’

  Sir Hugh Corbett went to stand over him. The priest looked up and swallowed quickly. He was frightened, not just by the terrible murders which had occurred but by the presence of this royal emissary, with his black hair tied in a queue behind him, the long thoughtful face tense and watchful. Corbett would have been called swarthy except for the peculiar strikingness of his high cheekbones and those brooding dark eyes which never seemed to blink. They stared and searched as if eager to remember every detail. Parson Gr
imstone didn’t like the look of the King’s principal clerk of the Secret Seal. Sir Hugh was dressed in a dark grey military cloak fastened at the neck; a brown leather sleeveless jerkin beneath, leggings of the same colour, pushed into black, mud-spattered riding boots on which the spurs still clinked.

  Corbett took his gauntlets off and thrust them into his sword belt. Yes, I’m frightened of you, Grimstone thought. Even more so of his companion - what was his name? Ah yes, Ranulf-atte-Newgate: tall, red-haired, dressed like his master. A fighting man despite his status as a clerk in the Chancery of the Green Wax. Burghesh had whispered that he was Corbett’s bullyboy. Grimstone glanced quickly at Ranulf’s white, clean-shaven face, those lazy, heavy-lidded green eyes. He reminded Grimstone of a feral cat which stalked the graveyard. A brooding man, Ranulf stood with his back to the door, watching his master, who, in turn, seemed fascinated by this rib-vaulted crypt.

  ‘A strange place to gather.’ Burghesh broke the silence. ‘Couldn’t we have met elsewhere?’

  ‘It’s cold,’ Robert Bellen complained.

  The curate sat hunched in one of the chairs almost obscured by the great central pillar which supported the roof.

  ‘The place reeks of death.’ Walter Blidscote, the plump, red-faced, balding bailiff of Melford shook his head so vigorously his jowls quivered: his numerous chins pressed down against the military cloak which swaddled him like a blanket does a baby.

  ‘A good place for justice.’ The young, blond-haired Sir Maurice spoke up. He had thrown his cloak on to the ground and sat slightly forward, tapping his gloves against his knee. He shuffled his feet impatiently as if he expected the royal emissary to hold court there, and then declare his dead father innocent.

  ‘Who built it?’ Corbett asked. He walked round the circular-shaped crypt, stooping to look into the coffin ledges. ‘I have never seen the like of this.’

  ‘There used to be an old Saxon church here,’ Grimstone explained. ‘It was pulled down in the reign of the second Henry. This used to be a burial place. They built the present church over it. The coffins are those of the previous parsons though the practice of burying them here has now stopped.’ He laughed abruptly. ‘I will join the rest out in the cemetery.’

  ‘Why did you ask to meet here?’ Burghesh demanded. ‘You can see Parson Grimstone is not well.’

  ‘For two reasons.’ Corbett sat down on a chair. He moved an oil lamp on the ledge behind him and placed his gloves beside it. ‘As you know, I am lodged at the Golden Fleece where, I suspect, the walls have ears.’ He smiled with his lips though his eyes remained hard. ‘Secondly, I wanted to view the corpse. By the way, why is that placed here and not in the church?’

  ‘It’s the custom,’ Grimstone sighed. ‘This is our death house. The poor girl was found last Monday. Her corpse was brought into the church yesterday evening. Tomorrow morning it will be placed before the rood screen. I will sing the Requiem Mass and the burial will take place immediately afterwards.’

  ‘It’s certainly a dour place.’

  Corbett scratched his head. He licked dry lips. He would have preferred to be back at the Golden Fleece. He, Ranulf and their groom, Chanson, had arrived mid-morning, just as the church bells were tolling the Angelus. Blidscote had been waiting in the taproom. Corbett suspected he had drunk more than was good for him. The clerk had insisted on viewing the corpse as well as questioning certain people more closely. He would have preferred Burghesh to be elsewhere but Parson Grimstone was in a dither. He’d insisted that his friend accompany him from the spacious, well-furnished priest’s house behind the church.

  ‘Why has a King’s clerk, the keeper of the Secret Seal,’ Blidscote now spoke carefully, trying to remove the drunken slur from his words, ‘decided to grace this market town?’

  ‘Because the King wants it!’ Corbett snapped. ‘Melford may be a market town, master bailiff, it’s also the haunt of murder - brutal deaths which go back years. What is it today?’ He squinted across the chamber. ‘The Feast of St Edward the Confessor, October the thirteenth, the year of Our Lord 1303. Five years ago,’ he pointed across at Sir Maurice, ‘his father, Lord Roger Chapeleys, was hanged on the common scaffold outside Melford for the murder of those maidens and a rather rich young widow. What was her name?’

  ‘Goodwoman Walmer,’ Sir Maurice replied.

  ‘Ah yes, Goodwoman Walmer. Sir Maurice was only fourteen years of age but, since he reached his sixteenth year,’ Corbett smiled at the young manor lord, ‘he has sent letter after letter into the royal chancery, stoutly maintaining his father’s innocence, that a terrible miscarriage of justice has taken place. Now the King could do little. Lord Roger was tried by a jury before Louis Tressilyian. Evidence was produced, a verdict of guilty brought. The King could see no grounds for a pardon so sentence was carried out.’

  ‘My father was innocent!’ Sir Maurice shouted. ‘You know that.’ He pointed threateningly at Grimstone.

  ‘How do I know that?’ the parson retorted.

  ‘Before he was hanged,’ Sir Maurice found it difficult to speak, ‘you shrived him. You heard his last confession. Did he confess his sin?’

  ‘I cannot tell you what was said under the seal of confession.’

  ‘You can tell us what wasn’t said,’ Corbett declared.

  ‘You told me!’ Sir Maurice shouted.

  ‘It’s true. It’s true.’ Grimstone rubbed his hands together. ‘Sir Roger did not confess to any murder.’

  ‘He was held here, wasn’t he?’ Corbett asked, staring round the crypt.

  ‘Yes,’ Grimstone confirmed. ‘This sometimes serves as a prison. There is only one entrance, which can be heavily guarded. I did hear Sir Roger’s confession but, you must remember, he was held here for two weeks pending his plea for a pardon from the King. He was also visited by an itinerant friar. He may have confessed—’

  ‘Enough,’ Corbett declared. ‘Let us move to the present, to October 1303. In the summer of this year, a young peasant woman was found murdered. Three days ago,’ he gestured at the coffin, ‘another victim was slain in the same way by a garrotte, as were Goodwoman Walmer and the other victims five years ago.’ He gestured to the bailiff. ‘What did the locals call the assassin?’

  ‘The Jesses killer,’ Blidscote replied. ‘When one of the victims was killed, a local poacher, Furrell, was in the vicinity. He was frightened and hid, said it was pitch-dark. He heard the girl scream followed by the tinkling of bells, like those attached to the claws of a falcon or hawk.’

  ‘And where is this Furrell?’ Corbett asked.

  ‘Disappeared,’ Blidscote replied. ‘No one knows where he went. Some people claim he ran away. Others that, drunk as usual, he stumbled into one of the mires or swamps. There are enough of those in the woods around Melford.’

  ‘He was probably murdered!’ Sir Maurice explained. ‘He was the only one who claimed my father was innocent.’

  ‘Now, why should he do that?’ Corbett asked.

  ‘I don’t know. He disappeared shortly after the trial.’

  ‘Did he speak on your father’s behalf in court?’

  Sir Maurice flailed his hand. ‘Furrell was a vagabond, more drunk than sober. He slept out in the ruins at Beauchamp Place. Who’d give credence to his story? He proclaimed his views in court and the Golden Fleece. He said my father never fled along Gully Lane the night Goodwoman Walmer was murdered.’

  ‘Yes, but your father,’ Blidscote spoke up, ‘did admit to visiting Goodwoman Walmer that evening. Sir Roger must have passed Gully Lane on his way home.’

  ‘Are you saying my father is guilty?’ Sir Maurice sprang to his feet.

  ‘Hush now!’ Corbett ordered.

  ‘Well, are you?’ Sir Maurice advanced threateningly on the bailiff.

  Ranulf-atte-Newgate slipped quietly across the room and put his hand on the young man’s shoulder.

  ‘I suggest you sit down,’ he smiled. ‘If my master says something, it’s best if you obey.’ He presse
d hard. Maurice’s fingers went to the hilt of his dagger. ‘Don’t do that.’ Ranulf shook his head. ‘I beg you, sir, please!’

  Sir Maurice stared into those slightly slanted green eyes and swallowed hard. Corbett he found daunting but this fighting man, smelling of a slight fragrance, mixed with horse sweat and leather, and those green eyes which smiled yet held his unblinkingly . . . Sir Maurice breathed in deeply and retook his seat. Only then did he notice Ranulf pushing the throwing dirk back into the leather sheath beneath his wrist.

  Ranulf leant against the door and grinned. Old Master Long Face, he thought, was up to his tricks again. Corbett had gathered them all here for a purpose. Not just to view the corpse or be away from the Golden Fleece. He wanted them to feel free to be at each other’s throats. To say things they’d later regret. Old Master Long Face would scoop their words up, write them down and concentrate as if he was playing a game of chess. Corbett ignored Ranulf and stared up at the vaulted ceiling.

  ‘What we have here,’ he measured his words, ‘are three sets of murders. The young women killed five years ago, this year’s victims and, of course, the others. Molkyn the miller, whose head was sent floating across his millpond. Someone struck him a silent, deadly blow. A difficult task, eh? Molkyn, I understand, was a burly oaf: that’s how Matthew the taverner, mine host at the Golden Fleece, described him. Strong as an ox with a nasty temper. I would have liked to have seen his corpse but it’s beneath the ground now.’ Corbett paused to chew the corner of his lip. ‘He was killed a fortnight ago. A few days later, Thorkle the farmer was slain.’

  ‘Are you saying all these deaths are linked?’ Adam Burghesh asked.

  Corbett pulled a face as he studied this veteran of the King’s wars. Burghesh looked sickly, skin the colour of parchment but the large sea-grey eyes were steady enough. A soldier’s face with a crisscross of scars on the right cheek, thick bushy eyebrows, clipped greying hair, moustache and beard. A good swordsman, Corbett thought, with long arms and broad chest. He would also have been a good master bowman, especially with the yew bow the English troops had brought back from the war in Wales. A captain of the royal levies, Burghesh had been warmly spoken of by the King when he and Corbett had met in the Chamber of the White Wax at Westminster.