Paul Doherty - The Treason of the Ghosts

‘I saw you earlier,’ Corbett declared, ‘in the copse at the top of the meadow where Devil’s Oak stands.’

‘And I saw you.’ Sorrel looked up at the sky and sighed. ‘So, it’s true what they say. You are a sharp-eyed clerk! Come to chase the devil from Melford, have you? By God and all His angels, he needs chasing!’

‘Watch your tongue!’ Tressilyian snapped.

‘My tongue and my manners are my own!’ Sorrel’s face took on a pugnacious look. ‘You are not in your court now, Sir Louis. Because of you, my man has disappeared, just because he told the truth!’

Corbett looked over his shoulder at Sir Louis, who just shrugged. This was no accident. Sorrel had followed them from Melford. She had even learnt a little about him.

‘Sir Louis, Sir Maurice!’ Corbett called out. ‘I have kept you long enough. I must return to Melford.’

‘You will be my guests?’ Sir Louis asked. ‘Tomorrow night a dinner at the Guildhall? You and your companions?’

Corbett agreed. He stood and watched both knights leave. The woman didn’t move.

‘You’d best get your bag and staff,’ Corbett smiled. ‘I’ll wait for you here.’

The woman crossed the small ditch, hurried amongst the trees and came back, the leather bag slung over her shoulder, a stout walking cane in one hand. She also brought a cloak which she’d slung around her shoulders and clasped at the throat. She winked at Corbett.

‘I have two cloaks. This one’s stolen. It’s best not to let the royal justice know that.’

‘You want to speak to me, don’t you?’

‘Yes, clerk, I wish to speak to you.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘In Beauchamp ruins. Common pasture there. No one exactly knows who owns what so they can’t clear me out.’ She looked at Corbett’s magnificent bay gelding. ‘Can I ride your horse? Please. I always wanted to be a lady and ride high in the saddle.’

Corbett helped her up, shortening the stirrups, then grasped the reins.

‘Now, you won’t ride off,’ he joked, ‘and claim you found the horse wandering?’

Sorrel leant down and stroked Corbett’s cheek with her calloused hands.

‘You have a priest’s face, olive-skinned and smooth-shaven. You tie your hair back like a fighting man. Your eyes are sad but sharp. You remind me of a trapped falcon. Are you trapped, royal clerk?’

Corbett grinned.

‘That’s better.’ She smiled back. ‘You can be quite the lady’s man but you’d have scruples about that, wouldn’t you?’

‘I didn’t know it was so easy to read my mind.’

‘Oh, I haven’t. However, when you sit in the inglenook at the Golden Fleece, it’s marvellous what you hear. Your reputation precedes you, Sir Hugh Corbett. The King’s man in peace and war. Are you the King’s man?’

Corbett recalled Edward’s face, harsh and lined, the cynical eyes, the way he talked to him but his eyes would shift to Ranulf as if the Clerk of the Green Wax was more his confidant: the man who, perhaps, would do things not covered by the law.

‘I try to be,’ Corbett replied. ‘But it’s getting dark, Mistress. I am cold, I am hungry and you have a tale to tell.’

He urged the horse forward, walking alongside. He glanced up. Sorrel was riding as if she was a lady, eyes half closed, humming under her breath.

‘You are comely enough,’ he said. ‘What’s your real name?’

‘Sorrel, that’s what Furrell called me. That’s what I am.’

‘And why do you wander the woods?’

‘I don’t wander, I am searching.’ Her voice was hard. ‘I am looking for Furrell’s grave.’

Corbett paused. ‘You are so sure he’s dead?’

She tapped her forehead and chest. ‘I truly am. I want to find his grave. I want to pray over his corpse. If I can discover his grave, perhaps I can unmask his killer. He was a good man. I was a wanderer. I met Furrell twelve years ago. We exchanged vows under a yew tree in the graveyard. We were man and wife, as close and as handfast as any couple blessed in church. Oh, he was merry. He could play a lute and dance a lively jig. He was the best hunter and woodsman. He could creep up on a rabbit, silent as a shadow. We never went hungry and we sold what we didn’t need.’

‘Poaching’s a dangerous pastime.’

‘Oh, the occasional deer or the lonely lamb that no one would miss. But who’s going to tell? The peasants we sold it to? Fresh meat in the pot for their children?’

‘And all that changed?’ Corbett asked.

‘Oh, it changed all right. The night Goodwoman Walmer was murdered.’

‘Who was she?’ Corbett asked.

‘She lived in the cottage on the far side of the town. A strange one: pretty as an angel, hair like ripe corn, eyes as blue as the sky. She always wore her gown that little bit too tight. Her face was painted, neck, wrists and fingers adorned with necklaces, bracelets and rings. No one knew where she came from. Geoffrey Walmer was a potter, a very good one. He sold as far afield as Ipswich. He was gone for a week and came back with her. You know how it is, clerk? A marriage between May and December? There is no fool like an old fool in love. Anyway, Geoffrey died and Cecily Walmer became a goodwoman, a widow. She looked even more attractive in widow’s weeds. The men clustered about her like bees round a honeypot.’

‘Did you like her?’

‘We understood each other. You know what she was, clerk? You’ve heard the story many a time. A prosperous tradesman goes to a big town. He makes a tidy profit, enters a tavern and meets some comely maid selling her favours. She’s only too quick to leave the horrors of the alleyways for a peaceful life and anything she wants.’

‘Are you talking from experience?’

‘Very sharp, clerk. Yes, I am but, enough of that. Now Goodwoman Walmer owned a cottage, a self-enclosed plot with chicken coops, dovecotes, piggeries and, in the fields around, juicy pheasants and partridges. Now, on the night she was murdered, Furrell went down there. Sometimes he would call in for a flagon of ale. He crept through the garden, saw the door open and Sir Roger Chapeleys leave. Now, thought Furrell, there’s a satisfied man. The manor lord climbed into his saddle like a man full of ale and pleasure. Goodwoman Walmer stood in the doorway. She leant against the lintel, arms crossed, her hair falling down to her shoulders. Furrell decided to ignore his ale and crept away.’

‘So, the widow was alive and well when Sir Roger left?’

‘Oh, yes. I don’t think Sir Roger killed those women. He was a lecher and a drunkard but he was good to me and Furrell. He knew we poached his lands but, at Christmas, he always sent us a chicken or a goose. I mean, why should Sir Roger, with all the slatterns and maids at his manor hall, go out and assault peasant wenches?’

‘He visited Goodwoman Walmer.’

‘Ay yes, but she was different,’ Sorrel laughed. ‘An accomplished courtesan. Sir Roger knew where he was fishing.’

‘Was he liked?’ Corbett asked.

‘No, he wasn’t, by either the priests or the townspeople. Sir Roger kept himself to himself, except one night in the tavern he called all priests liars and hypocrites, though he seemed to have a soft spot for Parson Grimstone.’

‘Yet that’s no reason why so many people should speak against him.’

‘I don’t know. Furrell said something strange. The day after Sir Roger was condemned, my man and I, we were having a meal in the ruins. Furrell got slightly drunk and abruptly declared the devil had come to Melford. “Why?” asks I. “Oh,” he replies, “to make those people say what they did.”

‘You mean the witnesses?’

‘Everything,’ she replied. ‘How a bracelet was found in Sir Roger’s house, belonging to one of the murdered women. How Deverell the carpenter was so sure he had seen Sir Roger fleeing from Goodwoman Walmer’s house.’