Hugh Corbett 12 - The Treason of the Ghosts (27 page)

‘Why Hamden Mere?’ Corbett asked. ‘Why not Devil’s Oak or Gully Lane?’

She smiled. ‘It’s where I used to play as a child.’

‘And where you take your love swain?’

‘Yes, but don’t tell Taverner Matthew: he’s always boasting how he runs a good house.’

‘And what happened?’ Corbett demanded.

‘I went and waited. I searched and I looked but there was nothing - a cruel jape - so I came back.’

‘Did you later question Peterkin?’

‘Yes I did, quietly. I didn’t want to make myself look as big a fool as he is. He just gaped at me, said it was a poem he had learnt and didn’t say any more.’

‘But you believed him the first time?’

‘He showed me a coin: said he’d been paid to deliver it.’ She shrugged. ‘That convinced me.’ Adela became all nervous.

‘You know what I’m going to ask,’ Corbett said softly. ‘Is that how Elizabeth was trapped?’

‘But I had no proof,’ she hissed. ‘I was frightened. I did not want to become a laughing stock. The taproom would never let me forget the day I believed simple Peterkin. Even if I had said something - who would believe me? What proof did I have?’

Corbett took a coin from his purse, went across and pushed it into the wench’s hand.

‘What’s that for, Master?’ she asked cheekily.

‘Your company,’ Corbett replied. ‘If I were you I’d go across to the church. I’d buy a candle and light it.’

The young tavern wench looked puzzled. Corbett opened the door. She slipped out, he closed and locked it behind her.

‘You danced with death,’ he murmured, ‘and were allowed to walk away.’

Corbett went to the window and stared down at an ostler cooling horses off in the yard below.

Of course, Corbett thought. Poor Peterkin! Frightened of being taken away, so easily terrified, so quickly bribed. Who would pay much attention to him? The man may be a dullard but the same doggerel would have been taught to him time and time again, only the place changed. Corbett wondered how many other young women in the town had received such an invitation? Some would ignore it, dismissing Peterkin as mad as a March hare. Others, like Adela, would go, perhaps at the wrong time, and find nothing. Poor Elizabeth was not so fortunate. Of course, she’d tell no one. She wouldn’t want anyone to know about the secret or, as Adela said, be made to look a fool if there was nothing there.

Corbett turned his back on the window. No one would ever connect the two: daft Peterkin and these murders. He was weak and helpless; a wench like Adela would find him no threat. Corbett smiled grimly. The killer was clever: love trysts, messages . . .! As Adela had proved, young women did not like their elders to know about such things - a conspiracy of silence which the killer exploited.

Corbett picked up the Book of the Dead.

‘He didn’t strike twice,’ he murmured. ‘He just did it the once!’

Elizabeth was lured to some place where the Mummer’s Man was waiting. Peterkin, he concluded, would be the perfect messenger. Probably after a day or so, the message and the memory would fade and, if the simpleton realised there was something wrong, how could he proclaim what he had done? Corbett vowed to have words with Peterkin. In the meantime . . . He opened the Book of the Dead and, going back twenty years, began to read. He recalled lines from a poem:

 

Corbett closely studied the Book of the Dead and found what he was looking for: unexplained deaths. He closed it and sat back. Melford was truly a place of bloody slaughter! He recalled Beauchamp Place and that pathetic skeleton stowed away in the old chapel wall.

‘Some are left,’ Corbett murmured. ‘Some are buried, which means not all have been discovered!’

He recalled what Tressilyian had said about the poacher. Was it possible?

‘Two assassins!’ Corbett murmured.

He thought of Furrell and Sorrel: one a lecherous poacher, the other committed to what? Justice? Vengeance? Both knew the countryside, and what did Furrell mean about ‘the truth being plain as a picture’?

Corbett pushed back the chair, got to his feet and reached for his cloak and war belt.

Sorrel stared at the paintings on the wall of the solar at Beauchamp Place. Now and again she would turn and listen carefully to the sounds outside. People, occasionally, came to buy fresh meat. She’d heard rumours of an important banquet at the Guildhall that evening.

‘Best time for a little poaching,’ she murmured.

Sorrel walked across to the niche where the statue of the Virgin stood. She reached behind it, plucking out the greasy scroll, a piece of vellum Sorrel had bought in Melford marketplace. She took this to the table, smoothed it out and studied the names scrawled there. Sorrel knew her letters. After all, she was a merchant’s daughter with book-learning who had the misfortune to fall in love only to be spurned by both suitor and family. The names were not correctly written, the letters ill formed but Sorrel could recognise them. She ran her fingers down: Tressilyian, Molkyn, Thorkle, Deverell, Repton . . .

‘Aye,’ she whispered. ‘And a few others.’

She took her dagger and etched a rough cross beside the names of those who had been killed. She picked the vellum up. One name caught her attention.

‘Walter Blidscote!’ she said. ‘But your time will surely come.’

Sorrel revelled in Deverell’s death, sucked at her teeth and wondered what progress the clerk was making. She had not told him everything. Oh no! She put the parchment back and moved a piece of tapestry hanging on the wall. The crude drawing etched there was not Furrell’s work but her own: a rough map of the countryside.

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.