Hugh Corbett 12 - The Treason of the Ghosts (3 page)

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.

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 nothing 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?’

Sorrel reached the market cross and sat on the high step, the sack between her feet. Most people knew Sorrel and her past. How her man had tried to help the convicted Sir Roger Chapeleys, only to disappear some years ago. Sorrel had become a common sight, roaming the countryside around the town. If anyone ever stopped and questioned her, they received the same reply: ‘I’m looking for my poor husband’s corpse.’

For some strange reason Sorrel truly believed Furrell had been murdered and his mangled remains buried secretly without a blessing or a prayer. She was a sturdy woman and, despite the disappearance of the occasional rabbit or pheasant, honest in her own way. People, apart from the likes of Blidscote, left her alone.

Sorrel hid her excitement, her heart beating fast, her throat constricted. This was her day of salvation. This was the day she had prayed for before that little battered statue of the Virgin Mary which she kept in her chamber in the ruins of Beauchamp Place. Justice would be done, the King’s authority would be felt. This Sir Hugh Corbett would help resolve the mystery and find her husband’s corpse. In her wanderings Sorrel encountered tinkers and travelling chapmen, the Moon People, all the travellers of the road. She’d met some who knew about this royal clerk.

‘Like a greyhound he is,’ one reported. ‘Black and lean. He hunts down the King’s quarry. He can’t be bought or sold.’

Sorrel had longed for this moment. She wanted to catch the eye of the royal clerk, perhaps seek an audience. She glanced towards the entrance of the Golden Fleece. No sign yet. On the corner of a nearby alleyway she glimpsed the shuffling figure of Old Mother Crauford, grasping the arm of Peterkin the simpleton. A strange pair, Sorrel reflected. Old Mother Crauford was as old as the hills and, like any aged one, a true Jeremiah, full of the woes and wickedness of her time. On many occasions Sorrel had tried to draw her into conversation, especially about Furrell. Old Mother Crauford would hint at things, macabre memories, how Melford was always a place of murder, but she wouldn’t elaborate any further. Instead she became tight-lipped, sly-eyed and would shuffle away.

Sorrel couldn’t blame her for her reticence. The young ones of the town whispered how the old hag was a witch. Is that why she kept Peterkin close to her? For protection? Or just companionship? Sorrel wondered if they were blood kin. She studied the pair carefully. Old Mother Crauford was berating Peterkin, wagging her bony finger in his face. Was she still annoyed at how the simpleton had interrupted Sunday Mass? Or was it something else? She noticed the old woman had taken something from Peterkin’s hands. The young man’s cheeks were bulging. Sorrel smiled. Sweetmeats! Her smile faded. It jogged a memory. She had seen Peterkin feeding his face on many occasions. Once, out in the countryside, she had come across the simpleton carrying a small box of oranges, a rare fruit which cost a great deal. She’d wondered then, and still did, how Peterkin could afford such a luxury. In fact, he hadn’t been so stupid then but sharp-eyed and very defensive. He’d clutched the box and scampered away. How could a witless wonder like him earn silver? True, Melford was growing prosperous and Peterkin was used, especially by the young gallants and swains, to carry messages to their loved ones.