Paul Doherty - The Treason of the Ghosts

News had swept through Melford of the arrival of the King’s clerk. Deverell had grown pale and withdrawn. He had spent more and more time in his workshop. When she brought him food and drink, Ysabeau found he had almost turned it into a fortress, shutters and doors all closed, locked and barred. It was the same with the kitchen below. Deverell had even replaced the door and built a Judas squint in the wall. He never told her the reason why. Now he refused to come to bed but sat in his great high-backed chair in front of the fire, drinking and brooding. If anyone knocked on the door, he went to the Judas squint and peered through to see who was standing in the porch.

The carpenter’s wife stirred. Wasn’t that a tapping on the door? At this hour? She threw the blankets back and sat up. Yes, someone was tapping. She could hear it. She swung her legs off the bed and, putting on a pair of soft buskins, stole across to the latticed window. She opened it and looked out.

‘Who’s there?’ she called.

She could still hear the tapping but she couldn’t see anybody because of the porch recess. Whoever was there was well hidden. She closed the window and went across the bedchamber. She heard a sound like that of a groan, the crash of a stool, even as the rapping on the door continued. She waited no longer but fled down the stairs, along the passageway and into the kitchen. Lanterns and candles still glowed, the door was still barred but Deverell lay sprawled near the fireplace. A crossbow bolt had smashed him full in the face, shattering skin and bone. Blood pumped out of the terrible wounds, spilling out of the half-opened mouth.

Deverell’s wife grasped the back of a chair and stared in horror. She couldn’t breathe. She could hear screaming and realised it was herself, just before fainting away.

‘ Ecce Corpus Christi . Behold the Body of Christ!’

‘Amen!’ Corbett murmured.

He received the sacred wafer on his tongue and returned to kneel just inside the rood screen. The flagstones were icy-cold. Corbett ignored the distraction as he closed his eyes and prayed. Ranulf joined him. Parson Grimstone returned to the altar and the Mass proceeded to its conclusion. Grimstone picked up the chalice and the paten and walked off to the sacristy. Corbett crossed himself and looked around. A few parishioners grouped around the sanctuary steps. He noticed with amusement how Burghesh had his own personal prie-dieu and, once the priest had left the sanctuary, the old soldier hastened up to extinguish the candles and remove the sacred cloths.

Old Mother Crauford and the slack-jawed Peterkin were present: huffing and puffing, the old woman got to her feet. She grasped her cane in one hand, Peterkin’s arm in the other, nodded at Corbett, went through the rood screen and out by the corpse door.

Corbett crossed himself and, followed by Ranulf, walked down the nave. The church was cold and dank but well kept and swept. The benches were neatly piled in the transepts. The oaken rood screen, the sanctuary chair, furniture and wooden statues were clean and polished. No cobwebs hung round the pillars and considerable monies had been spent on a series of eye-catching wall paintings. One in particular showed Christ, after his crucifixion, going down amongst the dead: the Saviour stood on the shores by the lake of Hell, gazing sorrowfully across at the armies of the damned.

‘Very imaginative,’ Corbett murmured. ‘Every church has its paintings, Ranulf. Because local artists are hired the pictures are all different.’

He stopped to admire a triptych: Christ as a child, Mary on one side, Joseph on the other. Corbett smiled at how the town in the background looked remarkably like Melford. He walked back into the sanctuary. The three stalls on either side had their seats up, displaying misericords carved below. The artist, as usual, had carved local scenes or incidents: a wife beating a drunken husband; a dog with a leg of lamb in its mouth; a parson with a tankard to his lips. The sanctuary was the centrepiece of the church: coloured glass glowed in the windows behind the altar; a silver-gold pyx holding the sacred host hung from a filigree chain; candlesticks of heavy brass gleamed and winked in the light of the sanctuary lamp; more paintings on the walls; soft carpets on the altar steps whilst the altar itself was of pure oak, polished and smoothed.

With Ranulf wandering behind him, Corbett left and entered the Lady Chapel. The statue of the Virgin seated, holding the baby Jesus, reminded him of the shrine at Walsingham. Corbett slipped a coin into the heavy box and bought a number of candle-lights. He lit them with a taper, murmuring: ‘One for Maeve, one for Eleanor. .’

He had hardly finished when Parson Grimstone, accompanied by Curate Robert and Burghesh, joined them.

‘Would you like to see the church?’

Corbett agreed and the parson proudly led them around, explaining the paintings, the different items bought by parishioners. How the rood screen was new and the baptismal font near the front door needed to be refurbished. He then took them into the bell tower with its narrow, winding steps, coloured bell ropes, the deep, sloping window recesses on the outside wall.

‘This is the old part of the church,’ he explained.

Corbett looked at the arrow-slit windows at the far end of the recesses.

‘It reminds me of a peel tower,’ he declared, ‘on the Scottish border. Soldiers would climb into such recesses to defend it.’

‘This is Curate Robert’s domain,’ Parson Grimstone declared, his rubicund face creased into a smile, though his eyes were watery and nervous. He proudly clapped the curate on the shoulder.

In fact Bellen looked anything but proud: dressed in his black gown with a white cord round the middle, the curate stood white-faced and heavy-eyed. Now and again his lips moved soundlessly as if he was talking to himself.

‘I understand,’ Grimstone said flatly as they left the bell tower, ‘that you met some of my parishioners last night and made the personal acquaintance of Repton the reeve?’

‘It was interesting,’ Corbett replied. ‘Parson Grimstone, you have a fine church here. Do you have a Book of the Dead?’ he added sharply.

‘Why, yes.’ The parson became flustered. ‘It’s in the sacristy.’

He led them back down the church and into the small, oak-panelled room with its cupboards and chests. It smelt fragrantly of incense and beeswax candles, and was dominated by a huge black crucifix nailed to the wall above the panelling. Parson Grimstone, hands shaking, unlocked the parish coffer and sifted amongst the documents and ledgers. Beads of sweat coursed down Grimstone’s face: he quietly rubbed his stomach, whilst his search was clumsy.

You’re nervous, Corbett thought, but you are also a toper. Corbett had seen the same phenomena amongst clerks in the chancery who spent their nights in the alehouses and taverns: an unexplained flush to the face, a tendency to sweat, whilst their hands shook as if they were afflicted by palsy. He noticed how the curate stayed near the door. Burghesh was solicitous, going to help the parson like a mother would a child. Grimstone at last found the silver-edged ledger and pulled it out. The pages inside were thick and crackled as he opened it.

‘It’s the work of a binder in Ipswich,’ he remarked. ‘It’s about a hundred years old but well sewn together with twine. Why the interest, Sir Hugh?’

‘Elizabeth the wheelwright’s daughter’s name is in this?’

‘Oh yes, oh yes,’ Parson Grimstone said, flustered. ‘Of course, she is. We celebrate her Requiem Mass at noon today, followed by interment.’ He pointed to the black and gold vestments laid out over a chest. ‘Robert will sing the Mass. He has a fine voice. He knew the girl better than I did.’