by Paul Doherty
‘You have also drawn a knife against the King’s Commissioner and that is petty treason.’
Corbett paused, he felt a deep revulsion at this cold-eyed man who had wiped out so many lives; who had lied and forced others to lie to save his own neck.
‘You are sentenced to hang on the common scaffold. You will have the opportunity to be shrived by a priest. Sentence is to be carried out before sunset!’
In the remaining hours Corbett and his men, with the assistance of Sir Maurice and others, packed their belongings. The young manor lord had now taken over proceedings, sending a messenger to bring in armed retainers from his own estate. Corbett and Sir Louis Tressilyian, guarded by Ranulf and Chanson, met Sir Maurice and the execution party at the crossroads outside Melford. A large crowd had gathered, spilling into the fields around. Burghesh was defiant to the last. He was placed on the ladder, pushed up by two of Chapeleys’ retainers and the noose placed round his neck.
Darkness was falling, a cold wind had arisen. Corbett sat hunched on his horse before the gibbet. He hated executions, the logical conclusion of the King’s justice, yet this time he felt different: no elation or joy, just a grim determination to see the matter through.
He glanced over his shoulder. Tressilyian, who had given his oath not to escape, sat on his horse, his bound hands holding the horn of his saddle. He seemed to be unaware of anything except the man on the ladder, the noose round his neck. Sir Maurice sat next to him, pale-faced, hard-eyed. Corbett glanced around. Sorrel was standing nearby, a posy of flowers in her hands. He recognised the wheelwright, Repton and others from the Golden Fleece.
‘Adam Burghesh!’ he called out. ‘Do you have anything to say before lawful sentence is passed?’
Burghesh hawked and spat in Corbett’s direction.
Corbett pulled his horse back, its hoofs skittering on the pebbled trackway. The clerk raised his hand.
‘Let the King’s justice be done!’
The ladder was pulled away but Burghesh acted quickly. He leapt and his body shuddered and jerked for a while, then hung still. Nothing broke the eerie silence except for the rustling of the wind and the creak of the scaffold rope.
‘The corpse is to remain there for a night and a day!’ Corbett ordered. ‘Then it can be buried.’
He turned and beckoned Sir Maurice forward.
‘Set a guard on the scaffold,’ he whispered. ‘Make sure that killer dangles as a warning.’
‘I’ll do that, Sir Hugh. And Sir Louis?’
‘I don’t know,’ Corbett replied. ‘He’s a clever lawyer: he will argue that he carried out the King’s justice. Burghesh is proof of that.’
‘Will he suffer the same fate?’
‘I doubt it,’ Corbett replied. ‘But he’ll face a very heavy fine: prison or exile for a while.’ He took off his glove. ‘I wish you well, Sir Maurice.’
The manor lord clasped Corbett’s hand. The clerk turned his horse and stared at the now silent figure swaying slightly on the end of the rope. He felt a touch on his knee and looked down. Sorrel offered the small posy of flowers. Corbett took it. She grasped his knee.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘I now have a corpse to grieve over and a grave to visit. The King’s justice has been done.’
Corbett leant down and stroked her face.
‘Aye, Mistress Sorrel, and so has God’s!’
Author’s Note
Serial killers are not a product of the twentieth century, but our knowledge of them is the result of modern technology. The killings described in this novel represent a composite picture of different murder patterns during the Middle Ages. Enclosed communities like Melford did exist and could erupt in violent and bloody murder. The problem was that, unless the victims had powerful kinsmen or the matter was brought to the attention of the King’s justices, little could be done. Judges were bribed and juries bought or heavily influenced, not only in murder cases but even in matters of rebellion and treason. Life could be cheap and, in the fourteenth century, economic prosperity brought displacement and a sharp increase in peasants being driven from the land to wander the countryside looking for work. Such groups were always highly vulnerable, though The Treason of the Ghosts is based more on killings which took place in London and Norwich rather than the open countryside.
The changes brought about by the increased demand for English wool abroad led to radical changes in our farming and pasture system. I have often walked the narrow, deep lanes described here; even Edward I accepted that they were a hazard to law and order!
Justice, on the other hand, could be swift, and Corbett’s execution of the murderer follows a medieval pattern. The bell tower of St Edmund’s and the cunning use of the ropes is also based on fact as well as observation. In the fourteenth century the sons of Cain could be as cunning in their plotting as their modern descendants.