Paul Doherty - The Treason of the Ghosts

‘I have seen both those places,’ Tressilyian replied. ‘I prefer Melford.’

They continued along the lane. The fields gave way to a copse of woods on either side. Corbett felt as if he was going down a hollow, darkened passageway. The lane rose, dipped, then rose again. Corbett identified Devil’s Oak before Tressilyian pointed it out: a great, squat tree once used as a boundary mark. The huge oak had been struck by lightning but its branches, now stripped of their leaves, still stretched up to the evening sky. Corbett dismounted. He looked across the fields to his left: a water meadow which ran down to the banks of the Swaile. Corbett glimpsed the tumbled ruins just near its bank.

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘Beauchamp Place,’ Chapeleys explained. ‘It was once a small manor house: piggeries, dovecotes, stables, but the man who built it was a fool. The land is waterlogged. After heavy rains it tends to flood. It’s been a ruin for about thirty years now. The last relic of the Beauchamps was a madcap old man, found drowned in one of the cellars. The townspeople still say it’s haunted.’ He pointed to the oak. ‘They say the same about this and poor Elizabeth’s ghost.’

Corbett stepped across the ditch. There was a gap in the hedgerow on either side of the oak. Corbett slipped through one of these.

‘Elizabeth’s corpse was found here?’

‘Yes,’ Chapeleys replied. ‘That’s what Blidscote said, to the right of the great oak tree, on the field side of the hedgerow.’

Corbett squatted down. The grass was cold, catching at the sweaty skin on his wrist. He brushed this aside and looked along the hard, gnarled branches of the hedge but could see nothing amiss. Feeling with his gloved hand, he searched the area carefully, digging with his fingers.

‘What are you looking for?’ Tressilyian asked.

Corbett got to his feet. Tressilyian was leaning against the oak tree, Chapeleys on the far side of the ditch. Corbett repressed the feeling of unease at the atmosphere of danger. He did not like Devil’s Oak. Here he was with two strangers in a place of brutal murder. He half wished Ranulf was with him.

‘Why is it,’ Corbett murmured, ‘such places have a feeling of desolation? Is it the imaginings of our own souls, a lack of wit? Or does a spot like this still reek of the terrors which visited it?’

Corbett brushed past Tressilyian and leapt across the ditch. He took the reins of his horse, stroking its muzzle.

‘What were you looking for?’ Tressilyian asked again.

‘I don’t know,’ Corbett replied. ‘I am curious. Why should a young woman like Elizabeth come to a lonely place like this? She wouldn’t, would she? No woman in her right mind would travel so far from her town to meet a man in the open countryside.’

‘Are you saying she was killed elsewhere?’ Chapeleys asked.

‘I know she was killed elsewhere,’ Corbett replied. ‘You see, when those two young boys found her corpse they would be frightened, yes? They’d run back to the town and bring back Master Blidscote and the other bailiffs. Now they would see it lying there and pull it out ever so carefully.’

‘And?’ Sir Maurice asked, intrigued by this dark-faced, mysterious clerk.

‘The man who raped young Elizabeth wouldn’t be so tender. He was brutal. He attacked her, ravished her, then wrung her neck with a garrotte string. Even a man like Blidscote, despite all the ale he had drunk, would have seen signs of a violent attack here at Devil’s Oak.’ He paused. ‘I also expected to find bits of hair, clothing, even some sign of the corpse being pushed under the hedge. Again, Blidscote would have noticed that. But the killer seems to have acted as tenderly as a mother with her babe.’

‘You don’t believe that?’ Tressilyian taunted.

‘No, I don’t.’

Corbett stared across the field and his heart skipped a beat. Was that a figure of a woman — he was sure of it — flitting through the copse of trees on the brow of the hill?

‘Sir Hugh, you were talking about the killer. .?’

‘I don’t think he was tender,’ Corbett replied, still watching the spot through the gap in the hedgerow. ‘I think he brought Elizabeth’s corpse here in a sheet and rolled it under.’ He gathered the reins and swung himself up into the saddle. ‘Call the killer tender? No, no, sirs, we are dealing with a ravenous wolf!’

They rode down the hill; the hedgerows and fields gave way to a small wood on either side. They stopped at the spot where Sir Louis had been ambushed. The signs were still there: the sapling which the justice had pushed off the road had apparently been cut down by an axe. Tressilyian found an arrow in the far ditch with its barn snapped off. The gravel on the trackway had been disturbed by the horse’s skittering, whilst Corbett could still see the tangle of undergrowth where Sir Louis had charged his assailant. The clerk drew his sword to clear away the briars and brambles and followed the same path.

‘I am sure he stood there,’ Sir Louis called out.

Corbett followed his direction: a thick ash tree where the undergrowth wasn’t so dense. He walked across and crouched down. No grass and the mud was soft from the previous day’s rain. Corbett could distinguish the prints of Sir Louis’s boot but then noticed the imprint of bare toes and a heel.

‘That’s strange!’ he called back. ‘Sir Louis, your assailant was bare-footed!’

‘Whatever, he was a will-o’-the-wisp!’ the justice replied.

Corbett looked up: a narrow trackway curved through the woods, muddy and slippery. He went back and looked at the arrow and recalled his days in the King’s armies in Wales. How the Welsh, with their long bows, used to fight bare-footed to keep a firmer grip on the soil.

‘What does it all mean, Corbett?’ Tressilyian asked.

‘I wish I knew.’ The clerk looked at the faint tendrils of mist curling amongst the trees. ‘But I’ve kept you long enough with my searches.’

‘What on earth is that?’

Tressilyian walked to the edge of the ditch. Corbett followed. A woman, cloaked and hooded, stood beneath the branches of an outstretched tree. He could make out her pale face, hair peeping from beneath a shabby hood.

‘Come forward!’ Corbett ordered. He gripped his sword tighter.

The woman stayed still.

‘Come forward! We mean you no harm!’

The woman seemed hesitant. Chapeleys grasped his horse’s reins and swung himself up in the saddle. The woman hesitated and walked forward: long, purposeful strides, sure-footed. She crossed the ditch and stood wiping the burrs from her patched, woollen gown; the linen undergarment hung shabby and frayed above battered leather boots. She wore a half-cloak, a coarse linen shawl beneath a broad and weather-beaten face — her nose slightly crooked, a pleasant, full mouth and wide, watchful eyes. Her black hair was streaked with grey at the front.

‘Who are you?’ Corbett asked.

‘I am Sorrel.’

‘Sorrel?’ Corbett laughed. ‘That’s the name of a herb.’

‘That’s what Furrell called me.’

Corbett heard an exclamation from Chapeleys.

‘Of course, you are Furrell the poacher’s woman!’

‘I was Furrell the countryman’s woman!’ she replied, deftly moving her hair from her face.

‘What are you doing wandering the woods?’ Corbett demanded. ‘Unarmed, unaccompanied?’

‘I am not unarmed, clerk. Oh yes, I know who you are.’ She smiled. ‘I have a staff. I have left it amongst the trees with my leather bag. Surely I would be safe with a royal justice, the handsome Sir Maurice and the fearsome King’s clerk? And, as for being unaccompanied, now who would hurt a poor beggar woman?’