Hugh Corbett 12 - The Treason of the Ghosts

by Paul Doherty

  Melford stood in the middle of a circle of copses and woods. The circle’s rim was etched with crosses to mark where Sorrel knew other corpses lay, at least seven or eight in number. Sorrel studied it carefully. She now accepted why the Moon People stayed well away from the town and its lanes. She couldn’t tell the clerk all this. Sometimes Sorrel herself had doubts. What if Furrell was alive? He could glide through the trees like a ghost. A hunting owl made more sound than Furrell. She put the tapestry back: her eye caught the red-draped four-poster bed. Furrell wouldn’t do that! He was normal in his swiving. She recalled their love wrestling on the bed. Furrell was as vigorous as a stallion in heat. Why would he prey on lonely young women? She just wished she had listened to Furrell more carefully during those weeks following Sir Roger’s execution.

  Sorrel heard a sound and froze. Had that come from the hall? Was she alone? She took the crossbow from where it leant against the wall. She opened the coffer and took out a small pouch of quarrels. She slipped one into the groove and clumsily winched back the cord. Perhaps the sound was just the wind, nothing to be frightened of. Sorrel left the solar. Faint tendrils of mist were seeping through the hall.

  ‘Is there anyone there?’

  A wood pigeon nesting in a crevice flew up in a burst of whirring wings. Sorrel took comfort from that. If anyone else was here, the bird would have been disturbed already. She walked down the hall and into the cobbled yard. Nothing amiss. She turned and went through the gatehouse, stared at the wooden bridge, and froze. She hadn’t been across for hours: in places the wood was bone white, scoured clean by the wind and rain so the fresh damp patch caught her eye. Somebody or something had crossed fairly recently. She whirled round. Had an intruder slipped stealthily into Beauchamp Place? The practice in the countryside was always to shout a greeting to allay any fear or suspicion. Sorrel found she couldn’t stop her hands trembling. She walked back into the gatehouse and stared up through the murder holes: small passages so defenders could loose arrows or drop fire if the enemy broke through the main gate. No sign of anyone in the hedges around them. A weakness of Beauchamp Place, Sorrel reflected, was that it was a warren of broken walls and crumbling steps. A group of outlaws could take refuge and, if they were stealthy footed, hide for hours before discovery.

  Sorrel primed the crossbow but the lever hadn’t been oiled properly and she found it hard to winch the cord tighter. She walked across the cobbled yard. A sound, a footfall? Sorrel broke into a run. In her panic she did not go into the hall but up the steps to the chapel. She reached the stairwell then turned, not going in, but climbing higher to the storeroom above. Furrell used to call this his lookout post. Sorrel darted inside, slammed the battered door and leant against it, heart racing, panting for breath. She tried to calm herself, wiping the sweat from the palms of her hands as she listened for any sound of pursuit. She waited for the footfall, the door being tried but nothing happened.

  She crossed to a window and looked out over the countryside in the direction of Melford. Her eye caught movement, a rider coming down Falmer Lane, but who was it? She left the crumbling windowsill and returned to the door, listening carefully. After a while she relaxed, cursing her own stupidity. She gingerly opened the door and went down the steps. She could see no trace of any pursuer. The chapel was empty. She grasped the crossbow more firmly as she reached the bottom step and entered the cobbled yard. No one. She sped across the hall.

  Sorrel didn’t fully understand what happened next. One moment she was hurrying forward, the next a shadow moved from her right. The attacker had been hiding behind a buttress, waiting for her to return. She glimpsed the white cord going over her head and instinctively brought her hand up to prevent the garrotte string being lashed tightly round her throat. The harsh cord dug into her hand. Sorrel tried to go forward but the attacker was pulling her back. She realised she must go with him, lessen the tension in the garrotte string, and with her one free hand she lashed out behind her. The string was now cutting her hand, the pain intense. Sorrel thought she couldn’t breathe, then realised it was her own terror rather than any constriction round her throat. Backwards and forwards she swayed. All Sorrel was aware of were hurried gasps, a knee pressing into the small of her back. Sorrel, using all her strength, pushed backwards, driving her assailant into the corner of the buttress. At the same time she brought her free hand up, clawing at his arm. The garrotte string was loosened. Sorrel was free. She lurched forward and glanced over her shoulder: her assailant had slumped against the wall, bruising both shoulders and the back of his head. He was dressed like one of those wandering friars, a dark cloak and hood with a cloth mask over his face.

  Sorrel didn’t wait but fled down the hall. She reached the dais and stumbled. Sounds of pursuit echoed behind her but she was up through the solar door, slamming it shut and drawing across the bolts. She crumpled to a heap on the floor before it, aware of the pain throbbing through her. The left side of her neck was badly gashed, the palm of her hand lacerated, the small of her back ached as if she had been hit by a cudgel, whilst her arms weighed so heavy. She heard her assailant try to force the door but it held firm.

  ‘Go away, you whoreson!’ Sorrel screamed.

  The thudding stopped, replaced by a scratching as if some wild animal was clawing with long nails. Sorrel got to her knees. Yes, that was what he was doing! Her assailant had drawn his dagger, seeking the crevice between the door and lintel to see if he could work loose the leather hinges. Sorrel gazed around; she’d dropped the crossbow. She ran over to the chest, pulled out the long stabbing Welsh dirk and grasped her cudgel. The scratching continued. Sorrel returned to the door and studied the hinges, thick wedges of leather. It would take some time to work those loose. She looked towards the window. She could try to escape. Perhaps if she reached the woods she could lose her attacker. She drew breath in and tiptoed across.

  Pulling back the shutters, she stared to the left and right. She was about to draw her head in when she saw a dark shape stepping out through the large gap in the hall wall. Her attacker had studied the place carefully. She withdrew quickly, pulling the shutters closed, and brought down the bar. Sorrel stood, listening intently. The clawing had stopped. She heard a sound and started as the shutters rattled. He was now trying to get in through there. Sorrel ran across. The shutters were of heavy oak, their hinges strong but there was a gap where they met. She saw the dagger glide in. Her assailant was trying to lift the bar. She lashed out with the cudgel, the dagger withdrew.

  Sorrel was now coated in sweat. What if the attacker laid siege, waiting for nightfall? Then she heard the shout, a loud hallo echoing through Beauchamp Place, followed by her name.

  ‘I am here!’ Sorrel screamed.

  She sank down on a stool: her assailant appeared to have disappeared but Sorrel was so frightened she didn’t have the strength to rise. She sat in a half-daze, aware of the throbbing pain in her hand, the wrenching ache in her neck. Only after a while did she become aware of the hammering on the door. She picked up the cudgel and knife.

  ‘Who is it?’ she called weakly.

  ‘Sir Hugh Corbett.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Sorrel, for heaven’s sake, what is the matter?’

  Sorrel closed her eyes and tried to think. The voice sounded familiar, but was it a trick?

  ‘To the right,’ she said, ‘in the hall, there’s a large gap in the wall. Step out into the open.’

  ‘Sorrel, what is this nonsense?’

  ‘Step out!’ she ordered.

  She heard a curse. Sorrel went to the shutters.

  ‘Come to the window!’ she shouted through the crack. ‘Just stand there!’

  She heard the click of high-heeled riding boots. It must be the clerk. She narrowed her eyes and pressed her face against the gap in the shutters. Sir Hugh Corbett stood there, cloak thrown back, hand on the hilt of his sword. Sorrel drew up the bar and opened the shutters.

  ‘In God’s name!’ Corbet
t exclaimed.

  He ran back into the hall even as Sorrel drew the bolts, threw open the door and almost collapsed into his arms. Corbett picked her up, took her across and, shouldering aside the curtains round the bed, laid her down gently on the faded blue and gold cover. He filled a bowl of water from a jug, dabbing at the cuts on her hand and side of her neck. She started to shiver so he pulled the coverlet up around her.

  ‘Who attacked you?’

  She grasped his hand. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she pleaded. ‘He could slip by you.’

  Corbett reassured her. Following directions, he went to the buttery, lit the brazier and, cursing and coughing at the smoke, wheeled it into the solar. He then heated some wine. By the time he had finished, Sorrel was sitting on the edge of the bed.

  ‘You would not make a good housewife,’ she smiled weakly, ‘but I thank you, Sir Hugh.’ She gulped the wine.

  ‘The attacker?’ Corbett demanded.

  ‘I don’t know. I was here by myself. I knew someone had entered Beauchamp Place. I was in the bailey. I heard a sound I didn’t recognise and fled in the wrong direction.’

  She told her story in halting phrases, looking wild-eyed at Corbett.

  ‘How do I know it wasn’t you?’

  ‘Don’t be foolish.’ Corbett pulled a stool across. ‘I have served you mulled wine, not threatened you with a garrotte string!’

  He went across and barred the shutters.

  ‘Bolt the door behind me,’ he ordered.

  Corbett went out into the hallway. He could detect, in the dust on the dais and at the entrance to the hall, the signs of a struggle and pursuit. He went out to the gatehouse and stared across the makeshift bridge. Corbett looked over his shoulder where he had hobbled his horse. The attacker must have been on foot. He’d heard Corbett’s approach, let him come in and slipped over the bridge. The long grass and trees would hide him. He could be back in Melford by now.

  Corbett rejoined Sorrel in the solar. She had recovered, a small jar on the table before her. She was carefully rubbing some paste into her hand and the side of her neck.

  ‘The juice of moss,’ she explained, ‘mixed with cobwebs and dried milk. It’s a sovereign remedy.’

  Corbett thought of his own old wound in his chest. It had healed but occasionally, as now, the muscles and bone twinged in pain.

  ‘You are most fortunate.’

  ‘I saw you,’ Sorrel smiled, ‘when I took refuge in the room above the chapel. I glimpsed a rider coming down Falmer Lane. If you hadn’t come . . . Did you find my crossbow?’

  Corbett shrugged. ‘I wasn’t looking for it. Did you see your attacker? Did you recognise anything about him?’

  She shook her head. ‘Are you sure he has gone?’ she demanded.

  ‘Oh, he has gone all right, like the silent assassin he is. I wonder why he came here in the first place.’

  ‘Why did you?’

  ‘Well, there are two reasons, Mistress, just as I believe there are two murderers in Melford. Oh yes, we have two assassins. The first is the Jesses killer or Mummer’s Man, the ravisher and slayer of women. As you told me, he has been hunting these lanes and trackways like a weasel. Sometimes he attacks tinkers’ girls, women like yourself, wandering from the towns seeking a new life, work, a crust of bread and a penny. They are easy victims.’ Corbett paused to choose his words. ‘Now and again, however,’ he continued, ‘this killer can’t control his lust. Somehow he entices young women from the town out into the countryside where he rapes and garrottes them.’

  ‘And the second killer?’ she asked tersely.

  ‘Oh, the second one is not interested in rape or murder, but, strangely enough, justice. Someone who believes that the wrong man was hanged: that Sir Roger Chapeleys was innocent, that his trial was a mockery, a mere mummery. So now he -’ Corbett paused, ‘or she - is waging a vengeful bloody campaign against those responsible. Tressilyian is attacked on his way into Melford. Deverell takes a crossbow bolt in his head. Thorkle’s brains are dashed out. Molkyn is decapitated. Strange, isn’t it,’ he mused, ‘how all three suffered wounds to the head? Now, two people,’ Corbett continued, ‘believe Chapeleys was innocent: Sir Roger, but he has now answered to God—’

  ‘And my man, Furrell.’

  ‘Yes, Sorrel, your man, Furrell.’

  ‘But he’s gone to God as well.’

  ‘Has he?’ Corbett asked. ‘Or is he still in hiding, moving like some silent vindictive ghost through the trees? Loosing arrows at Sir Louis, visiting Deverell at the dead of night, not to mention his old enemies, Molkyn and Thorkle. Come on,’ Corbett urged. ‘It’s possible. After all, who does leave you that money? Could it be Furrell, guilty at deserting you?’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t do that. I think the money comes from young Chapeleys, in gratitude for what we tried to do for his father. I tell you, clerk, Furrell’s dead.’ Sorrel tapped her chest. ‘Oh, yes, sometimes I have wondered myself but I know he’s dead, buried in some unmarked grave.’

  ‘For the sake of argument,’ Corbett moved on his stool, ‘let us say that’s true.’ He paused. ‘By the way, have you seen Blidscote? Ranulf is searching for him. Furrell didn’t like Blidscote either, did he?’

  ‘No one likes Blidscote!’ Sorrel snapped. ‘Especially the tinkers with their little boys. I tell you this, clerk: if Furrell had wanted to kill Blidscote, he could have done it years ago. Perhaps he should have done. Our bailiff’s a turd of a man.’ She moved her head and winced at the pain in her neck. ‘But Furrell’s dead.’

  ‘In which case, Sorrel, we come to you.’

  She gaped at him.

  ‘Don’t act the innocent,’ Corbett murmured. ‘You are a strong and capable woman, Sorrel. You know the countryside around Melford. You can use a bow, you are strong enough to swing a sword or a flail. You can slip across the fields and no one will notice you. You hated Molkyn and the rest because they mocked Furrell, disparaged his evidence. Because of them Sir Roger was hanged and Furrell later went missing. Your pleasure at Deverell’s death was obvious.’ He watched her intently. ‘I wonder if one of them killed Furrell. Did he become such a nuisance that they murdered him? Perhaps his corpse lies buried under Molkyn’s mill? Or on Thorkle’s estates? You kept well clear of both of them, didn’t you?’

  Sorrel’s head went down.

  ‘Look at the evidence,’ Corbett persisted. ‘When Sir Louis Tressilyian rode into Melford to meet me, he was attacked. Everyone, apart from you, was in the crypt of that church.’

  ‘Repton was not there.’

  ‘But why should Repton attack a royal justice?’ Corbett pointed to her weather-beaten boots. ‘You could slip them off, take a bow and quiver of arrows and try to kill Tressilyian.’

  ‘Why? I have no grievance against him.’

  ‘But he was responsible for Chapeleys’ hanging and, indirectly, Furrell’s disappearance. Perhaps you suspected him of murdering Furrell? Did your man persist in reminding Sir Louis of a miscarriage of justice?’

  ‘I saw where the ambush took place,’ Sorrel retorted. ‘If I had loosed an arrow at Sir Louis, I would not have missed. Perhaps the first but certainly not the second.’

  Corbett stared at a point beyond her head. He hadn’t thought of that. Moreover, hadn’t Sir Louis talked of a man’s voice taunting him?

  ‘But you were roaming the meadows and woods that afternoon. You must have seen someone. This mysterious archer who, perhaps, was the same person who daubed messages on Sir Roger’s tombstone and elsewhere.’

  Once again, Corbett privately wondered about the true whereabouts of Furrell the poacher.

  ‘I wasn’t roaming anywhere, clerk. I went to Melford to watch you arrive. I visited Deverell.’ She bit her lip.

  ‘I’ll come to him by and by,’ Corbett declared.

  ‘I then went and waited on the outskirts,’ Sorrel continued. ‘I dogged your footsteps from the moment you left the crypt and, before you ask, I never met any mysterious archer, though, I con
cede, Sir Louis was attacked.’

  ‘So you visited Deverell? You knew about the porch, the front door and the Judas squint?’

  ‘Yes I did.’

  ‘And you were there when I examined the corpse?’

  ‘So was half of Melford. It doesn’t make me the murderer. Are you going to say I killed Thorkle and Molkyn?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Corbett replied. ‘You could have taken both men by surprise. One blow would be enough.’

  ‘But I didn’t,’ Sorrel protested. She got to her feet. ‘And why do you accuse me?’

  ‘As I said, two assassins are at work in Melford. Now we come to the attack on you today. Perhaps the Mummer’s Man resents your interference in his bloody affray and came to silence you.’

  ‘I can’t prove my innocence.’ Sorrel walked to the window and pulled back the shutters, eager to breathe fresh air. ‘I have never killed anyone, master clerk.’

  ‘Haven’t you, Sorrel? Never lifted your hand in violence?’

  She stood by the window, shoulders shaking.

  ‘Isn’t that why you fled Norwich?’ Corbett continued remorselessly. ‘Perhaps a customer became too rough? Why all the secrecy, the change of name?’

  ‘Yes, in self-defence, I killed a man.’ Sorrel turned and leant against the sill. ‘He wanted to hurt me, cut at my body, watch me squeal with pain. He was drunk. In the struggle I took his knife and plunged it into his heart. I don’t know who he was or where he came from: it was in some filth-strewn alleyway. I was just a whore fumbling with a customer. I left Norwich within an hour of his death and never returned. Why, master clerk, are you going to arrest me?’

  Corbett shook his head. ‘Some men bring about their own death. I am more concerned with the present.’

  ‘And so am I, clerk! I did not murder anyone. Oh yes, the thought crossed my mind on a number of occasions. But, take Sir Louis Tressilyian, for example. Do you really think, master clerk, I would have missed? And why should I kill Deverell, Thorkle or Molkyn?’ She walked back and stood over him. ‘I prayed for your day. I would have loved to have seen such men appear at the bar of justice and be questioned, like you are now questioning me.’