Hugh Corbett 12 - The Treason of the Ghosts

by Paul Doherty

They went up a small hill, then down the other side to the reed-ringed millpond. Again Peterkin pointed. The mist shifted.

  Parson John gaped in disbelief. Now he could see it, as the others could behind him. A woman screamed. Molkyn’s wife pushed her way forward. Repton the reeve held her fast. Parson John just stared. Peterkin’s wits were not wandering. Molkyn’s head had been severed clean from his shoulders, placed on a wooden tray and sent drifting across the millpond.

  Four nights later, Thorkle, one of Melford’s leading farmers, stood inside his threshing barn. He stared down at the sheaves of wheat, the last from that year’s harvest. Both doors of the winnowing barn were open. A cold breeze seeped through; Thorkle wanted it so. He wiped the sweat from his brow. He wished this was done.

  Darkness was falling, a sure sign of approaching winter. Soon it would be All-Hallows Eve. The inhabitants of Melford would be lighting the fires to keep the souls of the prowling dead at bay. Thorkle repressed a shiver. Melford was becoming a place of the dead. He and the others had known little peace since Lord Roger Chapeleys had been hanged on the great gibbet at the crossroads outside the town. So many dreadful murders! First, the Jesses killer. Those young women, including Goodwoman Walmer, raped and cruelly garrotted. Sir Roger had been blamed and paid with his life: that should have been the end of it.

  Now, five years later, another young woman had been killed. And what about Molkyn? His head taken clean off his shoulders and sent floating on that wooden tray? Thorkle and others, at their priest’s urging, had climbed the steps and entered the mill where an even more grisly sight awaited: Molkyn’s decapitated corpse, sitting in a chair, soaked in his own blood and gore. Yet, like some macabre joke, the killer had placed a half-filled tankard of ale in the dead man’s cold, white fingers. What was happening?

  Chapeleys should not have died. Thorkle swallowed hard. Molkyn and he knew that. Now what? Sir Maurice, Roger’s son, had written to the royal council in London demanding the entire business be investigated.

  Thorkle stared at the door at one end of the barn. The darkness was waiting like the mist, ready to creep in. He looked at the two lanterns hanging on their hooks, then down at the corn stalks. The farm was quiet. He wished he had brought his dog but it would be close to the house, hungry for any scraps his wife threw out. He jumped suddenly. Wasn’t that a cockcrow? Why should that happen? Or was it his imagination? Didn’t the old ones say that if a cock crowed at night, it was a sign of impending violent death?

  Thorkle heard a sound deep in the barn. Grasping the flailing stick, a two-piece pole held together by an eelskin hinge, he walked to the door of the barn. Across the long yard, strewn with mud and hay, he glimpsed the candlelight from his house. He heard his wife singing. She had so much to sing about! The cheery, deceitful wife, busy over her butter churn. He walked back into the barn, placed down the flail, scooped up some ears of corn and flung them into the air. The breeze would carry the chaff. The kernel would fall into the leather sheet provided. He’d done it absent-mindedly. It was getting too late to be working.

  Thorkle was oppressed by the silence as well as his own fears. Parson Grimstone was right when he whispered so close to Thorkle in the shriving pew and heard his confession. Sin did come back to haunt you. It was so different when he and the rest quaffed ale at the Golden Fleece. They’d feasted in the special rooms provided for the jury before trooping importantly back across the cobbles into the Guildhall. It had been the height of summer: the sun strong and vibrant, the grass growing long and juicy, promising a rich bountiful harvest! Such memories decided Thorkle. He would go across to his house, satisfy his hunger on some bread and meat and go down to the Golden Fleece. He wanted company, life and laughter, a roaring fire, the reassurance of his friends and fellow men.

  Thorkle walked to the far end of the barn and pulled across the doors, pushing the bolt back. He stared up at the roof. It was well thatched, no leakages. He would finish all the work tomorrow. He walked back and stopped. One of the lanterns at the other door had been extinguished. Thorkle’s throat went dry. A cloaked figure had stepped out of the darkness, a cowled hood over his head. What was he hiding? The flailing stick? Thorkle drew his knife.

  ‘What is it? Who are you?’

  ‘The winnower, separating the wheat from the chaff.’

  Thorkle was sure he recognised the muffled voice.

  ‘What is it you want?’ Thorkle edged closer.

  ‘Justice!’

  ‘Justice?’ Thorkle squeaked.

  He stood frozen to the spot. The figure walked quickly forward. Thorkle was confused. He tried to move but the assassin was faster. The flailing stick swept back and its clubbed edge caught Thorkle on the side of the head, sending him spinning to the ground. The pain was intense. Thorkle could already feel the hot blood. He stared up: the flailing rod fell time and time again, shattering Thorkle’s head till his brains spilled out.

  Elizabeth, the wheelwright’s daughter, was frightened of the hobgoblins, sprites and all other hideous dark shapes who dwelled in the shadows but, not today. She dismissed such tales as fanciful, parents’ tricks to keep their children away from lonely glades and desolate paths. Elizabeth was in love, or so she thought. She had come into Melford to spend her birthday pennies but, of course, her real reason . . . well, she’d best not think of it. Perhaps Old Mother Crauford was right, the air might catch her dreams and waft them back to her father’s workshop or to Mother, busy in the kitchen.

  Elizabeth paused at the end of the alleyway and glanced back. The market was still busy. Adela had tried to question her but that was part of the game, wasn’t it? You never told people your secret business. If a hidden admirer made his presence known then why should she share it with the likes of Adela? She’d only go into the Golden Fleece and tell everyone. More importantly, she wouldn’t have let Elizabeth go so quickly. She’d demand to know why, how and who. Elizabeth smiled, pushed back her long hair and smoothed down her kirtle. How could she tell someone like Adela? It would only provoke laughter. Elizabeth’s smile faded. She wouldn’t say how the message was delivered or, more importantly, who was responsible; that would only arouse more curiosity.

  Elizabeth turned and ran on. She kept to the shadows. She knew which paths to use so no one would see or accost her. After all, when she returned home, she certainly didn’t want to be questioned. Elizabeth had grown up in Melford. She knew its every nook and cranny. She went by the church and glimpsed Master Burghesh busy digging a grave in the cemetery. She ran on. He wouldn’t have seen her. He was only interested in Parson Grimstone and that gloomy church. Elizabeth paused to catch her breath. The church spire and the tombstones made her feel slightly uncomfortable, evoking memories of poor Johanna, so barbarously killed near Brackham Mere. Johanna had always been more adventurous: she often went into the countryside, collecting flowers, or so she said. This was different. Two people knew where she was going: the messenger and the sender.

  Elizabeth swung her hair and walked more purposefully. She crossed a ditch, slipped through a hedge but paused for a while. She must be early. She had learnt the time from the great capped hour candle in the marketplace so she should wait awhile. She stared up at the sky. To have an admirer, a secret admirer who’d paid to meet her! It was so good to be out under God’s sky, away from the busy marketplace and the close, rather oppressive atmosphere of her family, with Mother telling her to do this or that.

  Elizabeth stared at the copse which stood on the brow of the gently sloping hill. Did adults know about love? All her father could talk about was Molkyn’s head and Thorkle’s brains. Elizabeth had never liked either man, Molkyn particularly - and that poor daughter of his, what was her name? Oh yes, Margaret, always so quiet and kept to herself. Ah well . . . Elizabeth walked through the grass. She glanced to her right: in the trees far away she thought she had seen a movement. Was someone there? Perhaps a shepherd or his boy? Elizabeth felt a shiver; the weather was certainly turning. She wished she’d brought
a shawl or coverlet.

  Elizabeth entered the trees. She loved this place. She used to come here as a child and pretend to be a queen or a maiden captured by a dragon. She threaded her way across the cold, wet grass and sat at the edge of the small glade, on the same rock she used to imagine as her throne or the dragon’s castle. It was very silent. For the first time since this adventure began, Elizabeth’s conscience pricked at deceiving her parents. Her happiness was laced with guilt and a little fear. This place was so lonely - just the distant call of the birds and the faint rustling in the bracken. Elizabeth shut her eyes and squeezed her lips.

  I’ll only wait here for a short while, she promised herself.

  Time passed. Elizabeth rubbed her arms and stamped her feet. She shouldn’t have come so publicly, swinging her arms crossing that field. Perhaps her secret admirer had seen someone else and been frightened off? In Melford, gossip and tittle-tattle, not to mention mocking laughter, could do a great deal of harm. She should have come along Falmer Lane and slipped through the hedge at Devil’s Oak.

  Elizabeth heard a sound behind her, the crack of a twig. She turned, her mouth opened in a scream. A hideous, masked figure stood right behind her: the garrotte string spun round her throat and Elizabeth the wheelwright’s daughter had not long to live.

  Chapter 2

  Punishment in the King’s royal borough of Melford always attracted the crowds, even more so than a branding at the crossroads or a fair on the outskirts. The good townspeople flocked to see justice done, as well as collect scraps of scandal and gossip. Which traders had been selling underweight? Which bakers mixed a little chalk with their flour or sold a load beneath the market measure? Above all, they wanted to discover what house-breakers had been caught, pickpockets arrested.

  On that particular October day, the crowds had an even greater reason for flocking in. Word had soon spread, how the murders of Molkyn the miller, Thorkle, not to mention that of poor Elizabeth Wheelwright, whose ravished corpse lay sheeted for burial in the crypt of the parish church, had eventually reached the royal council in London. The King himself had intervened, not by dispatching justices or commissioners of enquiry but officials from his own chamber, a royal clerk, the keeper of the King’s Secret Seal, Sir Hugh Corbett and his henchman, Ranulf-atte-Newgate, principal Clerk in the Chancery of the Green Wax. The people of Melford wanted to view this. Oh, they desired an end to the horrid murders. They also wanted to see a King’s man arrive, with all his power and authority, to enquire into this or that, to execute the royal Writ, bring malefactors to justice and publish the Crown’s justice for all to see.

  And, of course, there was the mystery. Who had been responsible for the ghastly murders of Molkyn and Thorkle? Killings took place, even in a town like Melford, but to decapitate the likes of Molkyn and send his burly, fat head across the mere of his mill! Or Thorkle, a prosperous yeoman farmer, having his brains dashed like a shattered egg in his own threshing barn! Surely someone would hang for all that?

  And those other heinous murders, the ravishing and slaying of young maidens? They had begun again. One wench had been slaughtered late last summer, her torn body being brought across this very marketplace. Now Elizabeth, the wheelwright’s daughter, with her flowing hair and pretty face. She had been well known, with her long-legged walk and merry laugh, to many of the market people. Such gruesome murders should never have occurred! Hadn’t the culprit been caught five years earlier and hanged on the soaring gibbet at the crossroads overlooking the sheep meadows of Melford? And what a culprit! No less a person than Sir Roger Chapeleys, a royal knight, a manor lord. The evidence against Chapeleys, not to mention the accounts of witnesses had, despite royal favour, dispatched him to the common gallows. Nevertheless, the murders had begun again and so the King had intervened. What was his clerk called? Ah yes, Sir Hugh Corbett. His name was well known. Hadn’t he been busy in the adjoining shire of Norfolk some years ago? Investigating murders along the lonely coastline of the Wash? A formidable man, the people whispered, of keen wit and sharp eye. If Corbett had his way, and he had all the power to achieve it, someone would certainly hang.

  The day was cloudy and cold but the crowds thronged around the stalls. Those in the know kept a sharp eye on the broad oak door of the Golden Fleece tavern, where the royal clerk would stay. He would probably arrive in Melford with a trumpeter, a herald carrying the royal banner and a large retinue. Urchins had been paid to keep a lookout on the roads outside the town.

  In the meantime, there was trading and bartering to be done. Melford was a prosperous place, and the increasing profits from the farming of wool were making themselves felt at every hearth and home. Silver and gold were becoming plentiful. The markets of Melford imported more and more goods from the great cities of London, Bristol and even abroad! Vellum and parchment, furs and silk, red leather from Cordova in Spain. Testers, blankets and coverlets from the looms of Flanders and Hainault, not to mention statues, candlesticks and precious ornaments from the gold- and silversmiths of London and, even occasionally, the great craftsmen of Northern Italy.

  Walter Blidscote, chief bailiff of the town, loved such busy market days. He made a great play of imprisoning the vagrants, the drunkards and law-breakers in the various stocks on the stand at the centre of the marketplace. This particular day he proclaimed the pickpocket Peddlicott. Blidscote himself had caught the felon trying to rifle a farmer’s basket the previous morning. Blidscote was fat, sweat-soaked but very pompous. He drank so much it was a miracle he caught anyone. Peddlicott, however, was dragged across the marketplace as if he was guilty of high treason rather than petty theft. He was displayed on the stand and, with great ceremony, the market horn being blown to attract everyone’s attention, Peddlicott’s hands and neck were tightly secured in the clamps. Blidscote loudly proclaimed that they would remain so for the next twenty-four hours. If the bailiff had had his way, he would have added insult to injury by tying a bag of stale dog turds around the poor man’s neck. Some bystanders cheered him on. Peddlicott shook his head and whined for mercy.

  Blidscote was about to tie the bag tight when a woman’s voice, strong and clear, called out, ‘You have no authority to do that!’

  Blidscote turned, the bag still clutched in his greasy fingers. He recognised that voice and narrowed his close-set eyes.

  ‘Ah, it’s you, Sorrel.’

  He glared at the strong, ruddy-faced, middle-aged woman who had shouldered her way to the front of the crowd. She was dressed in stained brown and green, a sack in one hand, a heavy cudgel in the other.

  ‘You have no right to interfere in the town’s justice,’ Blidscote said severely. ‘Punishments are for me to mete out. And what do you have in that sack?’ he added accusingly.

  ‘A lot more than you have in your crotch!’ the woman retorted, drawing shouts of laughter from the crowd.

  Blidscote dropped the bag and climbed down from the stand.

  ‘What do you have in the sack, woman? Been poaching again, have you?’

  Sorrel threw back her cloak and lifted the cudgel warningly.

  ‘Don’t touch me, Blidscote,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘You have no authority over me. I don’t live in this town and I’ve done no wrong. Touch me and I’ll cry assault!’

  Blidscote stepped back. He was wary of this woman, the common-law widow of Furrell the poacher.

  ‘Been busy, have you?’ he added spitefully. ‘Still wandering the woods and fields, looking for your husband? He had more sense than to stay with a harridan like you! He’s over the hills and miles away!’

  ‘Don’t you talk of my man!’ Sorrel snapped. ‘My man Furrell is dead! One of these days I’ll find his corpse. If you were a good bailiff you’d help me. But you are not, are you, Walter Blidscote? So keep your paws off me!’

  Blidscote made a rude gesture with the middle finger of one hand. He went to pick up the bag of turds.

  ‘And leave poor Peddlicott alone,’ Sorrel warned. ‘The punishment said nothi
ng about such humiliation. Loosen the stocks a little.’

  She pointed at Peddlicott’s face, now a puce red. The bailiff was about to ignore her.

  ‘It’s true!’ someone shouted, now sorry for the pickpocket’s pain. ‘No mention was made, master bailiff, of dog turds and, if he dies, when a King’s clerk is in the town . . .’

  Blidscote searched the crowd carefully. He recognised that voice. Master Adam Burghesh, a former soldier, companion to Parson Grimstone, shouldered his way to the front.

  ‘Why, Master Burghesh.’ Blidscote became more cringing.

  ‘Mistress Sorrel is right,’ Burghesh added. ‘There’s no need for such humiliation.’

  Others began to voice their support. Blidscote kicked the bag of ordure away. He climbed back on the stand and loosened the clamp round Peddlicott’s neck and wrists. Burghesh had a few words with Mistress Sorrel; the crowd, their interest now dulled, drifted away.

  ‘Just one moment!’ Blidscote called out.

  Sorrel turned. Blidscote climbed down and thrust his face close to hers. She flinched at the stale beer on his breath.

  ‘One of these days, Mistress, I’ll catch you at your poaching. I’ll put you in the stocks and tighten the clamps very hard around that coarse neck of yours.’

  ‘And one day,’ Sorrel taunted, ‘you may catch moonbeams in a jar and sell them in Melford, Master Blidscote. Why not join me in the countryside?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Perhaps you’ll come down to Beauchamp Place. I’ll tell you about what I see as I roam the fields, woods and lonely copses. It’s wonderful what Furrell and I learnt over the years. Do you like going out to the countryside, Master Blidscote? Chasing young tinker boys?’

  Blidscote visibly paled and stepped back.

  ‘I . . . I don’t know what you are . . .’

  ‘I do,’ she smiled and, not waiting for an answer, pushed a path through the crowd. She shooed away the apprentices who tried to catch her by the cuff, with their shouts of, ‘What do you lack, Mistress? What do you lack?’