Paul Doherty - The Treason of the Ghosts

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:

Amongst the dead I have walked,

And amongst the dead I have found the

truth.

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.