Hugh Corbett 12 - The Treason of the Ghosts (36 page)

‘He was a drunken fool!’

‘He was a sharp fool. To quote scripture, Master Burghesh, the foolishness of man is often the wisdom of God. You also dismissed Sorrel as a vagrant but, when I arrived, you changed your mind. You realised how much she might know: that’s why you went out to Beauchamp Place to murder her. You would have murdered me as well with that piece of twine stretched across the bridge. An old poacher’s trick or, in your case, Burghesh, an old soldier’s! I’ve seen royal archers use the same trap to bring down horsemen. Oh yes,’ Corbett watched Burghesh carefully, ‘you crept out of Melford and, if I hadn’t been at Beauchamp Place, Sorrel would have disappeared. I wonder where you would have buried her? You lured some of your victims back to the woods behind your house and, as with Furrell, buried them in the graveyard.’ Corbett took a step forward. ‘Let’s go into the church, Burghesh. Its nave must be filling with ghosts, all crying to God for justice. They’ll betray you, hand you over for punishment, both in this life and the next.’

Burghesh ripped the dagger from his sheath.

‘What are you going to do?’ Corbett scoffed. ‘Kill the King’s clerk?’ He drew his own dagger. ‘My name’s not Elizabeth. I am no soft, frightened girl.’

‘No, you are not!’ Burghesh snarled. ‘You are a clever clerk. You don’t know what it’s like to have demons tapping inside your skull. You are right about one thing: Melford is so easy to leave and—’

Before Corbett could stop him, Burghesh was through the door, turning the key in the lock. Corbett heard a brief scuffle and went down the steps. The door was unlocked and swung open. Ranulf stood there, the hilt of his sword under Burghesh’s chin.

‘Where have you been?’ Corbett accused.

‘Looking for you.’

Ranulf’s eyes never left Burghesh. He pressed the point of the sword, forcing the man to look at him.

‘I couldn’t find this creature but I remembered your words about the bell tower. I have been listening for a while at the door, just catching phrases. So, look what we’ve caught!’

‘Tie his hands!’ Corbett ordered. ‘And, once you have done that, ring the bell!’

Ranulf obeyed. Corbett went and took the sanctuary chair and placed it in front of the rood screen. Parson Grimstone came waddling in, all confused. Corbett told Repton the reeve, when he arrived, to take him back to the priest’s house and lock him in. Within a short while the nave was packed with people hastening up from the marketplace. Corbett ordered the Book of the Dead to be brought. He told them what he was going to do and quelled the clamour.

‘Is it true?’ Repton shouted. ‘Master Burghesh is under arrest? He and Sir Louis Tressilyian?’

‘Yes,’ Corbett replied. ‘But I have to discover some new evidence.’ He raised his voice and shouted above the murmur. ‘Certain graves have to be reopened, coffins and corpses removed.’ He paused for the shouting to die down. ‘We will discover something evil,’ he continued. ‘I ask you to trust me.’

‘Well, we had best do as you say,’ Repton the reeve replied sardonically. He let his hand drop over his groin. ‘We don’t want to upset our royal clerk, do we?’

Corbett led a party of men out into the graveyard. He discovered when Furrell was last seen and compared dates in the Book of the Dead. One grave was opened, its mouldering coffin removed and wrapped in a sheet. Nothing else was found. The second time, however, Repton, standing in the grave, said he could feel something beneath his feet.

‘It’s not hard soil either,’ he shouted.

A short while later a grisly, decayed cadaver was brought gently out and laid on the wet grass. The flesh had shrivelled, only some hair remained. Corbett put his gloves on, turned the head over and pointed to the crack at the back of the skull.

‘It’s Furrell, all right,’ Repton murmured. ‘God have mercy on him! I recognise his belt and boots.’

A woman screamed and Sorrel, hair flying, came running across the graveyard. She took one look at the corpse and, if Corbett hadn’t caught her, she would have collapsed to the ground. He let her kneel there, sobbing, face in her hands, and moved to other graves. The day grew on. Sometimes they found nothing but, quite regularly, other unaccounted corpses were unearthed: grisly cadavers, really nothing more than skeletons.

‘What is this?’ Repton demanded.

‘Burghesh would kill,’ Corbett replied, ‘and bring the corpses in at night. He dug the graves for a funeral Mass either early in the morning or late in the evening. His victim was then buried and sealed in her grave before the consequent funeral. It’s all the evidence I need.’

By now a considerable crowd had gathered. The news had spread and Corbett became concerned. The mood of the onlookers turned ugly. Sticks and stones were thrown across the cemetery wall, a threatening group clustered under the lych-gate. Ranulf armed himself, as did Chanson. Corbett swore in Repton and others as members of his comitatus, then went down to the lych-gate and confronted the mob.

‘Will justice be done?’

Corbett recognised the burgess who had bored him last night at the Guildhall. Corbett held up his warrant so all could see the seal.

‘I am the King’s Commissioner!’ he shouted. ‘I have the authority to hear cases and pass sentence: that will be done!’

‘What about a jury?’ the burgess asked.

‘There is no need for a jury,’ Corbett retorted. ‘Burghesh threatened a King’s clerk carrying the royal warrant: that’s treason. However,’ Corbett admitted ruefully, ‘it would be better if Burghesh confessed.’

The prisoner was brought up from the crypt. He glimpsed the mob and heard their threatening cries. Corbett had him held beneath a yew tree, then brought across the sheets of leather containing Furrell’s remains and those of the others. Burghesh stared at them and glanced away.

‘Will you confess?’ Corbett demanded.

Burghesh breathed in noisily. ‘What can I say?’ he murmured, and smiled slyly at Corbett. ‘It’s true what you said, the treason of the ghosts! The dead betrayed me.’

‘The dead want you,’ Corbett retorted. ‘You have a reckoning to make. You and Parson Grimstone.’

‘Oh, is that the way this will go?’ Burghesh asked.

‘He was your accomplice,’ Corbett insisted.

‘No, he wasn’t. He’s just weak.’

‘Is that a confession?’ Corbett asked.

‘No, it’s not, master clerk. If you want one then you shall have it, but only after I have talked to Parson Grimstone.’

Corbett agreed. Ranulf and Chanson took the bound prisoner into the priest’s house. Corbett returned to the church and sat studying the carvings on the rood screen. He tried to pray but found he was tired - a sudden weariness - so he sat at the foot of a pillar and dozed for a while. He felt sickened by Burghesh and the callous cruelty of his murders. He wanted to be away from Melford.

An hour must have passed before Ranulf and Chanson brought Burghesh back into the church. The prisoner now seemed to be in a trance.

‘Grimstone’s a wreck,’ Ranulf murmured. ‘He sits there gibbering like a child. He’ll be dead drunk within the hour.’

‘And the killer?’ Corbett nodded at Burghesh.

Ranulf felt inside his jerkin and drew out a scroll. Corbett unrolled it and recognised Ranulf’s writing. The confession had been taken in the bleak, elliptical manner clerks used. Corbett asked for a candle to be lit and read it. He went cold at the list of crimes.

‘At least fifteen,’ he murmured. ‘Fifteen people killed!’ He got to his feet. ‘Bring the prisoner into the sanctuary.’

Corbett stood before the high altar. He took a small crucifix from a side table and placed it at one end, the King’s commission beside it. Burghesh stood on the other side of the altar, Ranulf and Chanson flanking him.

‘Adam Burghesh,’ Corbett began, ‘you are accused of terrible murders in and around Melford. The list,’ he tapped the confession, ‘speaks for itself.’

‘I am guilty.’ Burghesh’s mouth hardly seemed to move. ‘I have spoken to Grimstone. I thought he’d forgive me.’

‘I have the power to try you,’ Corbett declared.

‘What’s the point?’ Burghesh half smiled. ‘If it’s to be done let it be done quickly. You have the authority, you have the proof and now my confession. My only regret is I never killed you. I should have done. I recognised that the very first day you arrived here. I am guilty as Judas and I couldn’t care if I hang like him!’

‘Adam Burghesh, by the power invested in me as the King’s Commissioner of Oyer and Terminer, I do, by your own admission and the evidence offered, find you guilty of terrible homicides. You have the right to appeal . . .’

Burghesh snorted with laughter.

‘You have also drawn a knife against the King’s Commissioner and that is petty treason.’

Corbett paused, he felt a deep revulsion at this cold-eyed man who had wiped out so many lives; who had lied and forced others to lie to save his own neck.

‘You are sentenced to hang on the common scaffold. You will have the opportunity to be shrived by a priest. Sentence is to be carried out before sunset!’

 

In the remaining hours Corbett and his men, with the assistance of Sir Maurice and others, packed their belongings. The young manor lord had now taken over proceedings, sending a messenger to bring in armed retainers from his own estate. Corbett and Sir Louis Tressilyian, guarded by Ranulf and Chanson, met Sir Maurice and the execution party at the crossroads outside Melford. A large crowd had gathered, spilling into the fields around. Burghesh was defiant to the last. He was placed on the ladder, pushed up by two of Chapeleys’ retainers and the noose placed round his neck.

Darkness was falling, a cold wind had arisen. Corbett sat hunched on his horse before the gibbet. He hated executions, the logical conclusion of the King’s justice, yet this time he felt different: no elation or joy, just a grim determination to see the matter through.

He glanced over his shoulder. Tressilyian, who had given his oath not to escape, sat on his horse, his bound hands holding the horn of his saddle. He seemed to be unaware of anything except the man on the ladder, the noose round his neck. Sir Maurice sat next to him, pale-faced, hard-eyed. Corbett glanced around. Sorrel was standing nearby, a posy of flowers in her hands. He recognised the wheelwright, Repton and others from the Golden Fleece.

‘Adam Burghesh!’ he called out. ‘Do you have anything to say before lawful sentence is passed?’

Burghesh hawked and spat in Corbett’s direction.

Corbett pulled his horse back, its hoofs skittering on the pebbled trackway. The clerk raised his hand.

‘Let the King’s justice be done!’

The ladder was pulled away but Burghesh acted quickly. He leapt and his body shuddered and jerked for a while, then hung still. Nothing broke the eerie silence except for the rustling of the wind and the creak of the scaffold rope.

‘The corpse is to remain there for a night and a day!’ Corbett ordered. ‘Then it can be buried.’

He turned and beckoned Sir Maurice forward.

‘Set a guard on the scaffold,’ he whispered. ‘Make sure that killer dangles as a warning.’

‘I’ll do that, Sir Hugh. And Sir Louis?’

‘I don’t know,’ Corbett replied. ‘He’s a clever lawyer: he will argue that he carried out the King’s justice. Burghesh is proof of that.’

‘Will he suffer the same fate?’

‘I doubt it,’ Corbett replied. ‘But he’ll face a very heavy fine: prison or exile for a while.’ He took off his glove. ‘I wish you well, Sir Maurice.’

The manor lord clasped Corbett’s hand. The clerk turned his horse and stared at the now silent figure swaying slightly on the end of the rope. He felt a touch on his knee and looked down. Sorrel offered the small posy of flowers. Corbett took it. She grasped his knee.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘I now have a corpse to grieve over and a grave to visit. The King’s justice has been done.’

Corbett leant down and stroked her face.

‘Aye, Mistress Sorrel, and so has God’s!’

Serial killers are not a product of the twentieth century, but our knowledge of them is the result of modern technology. The killings described in this novel represent a composite picture of different murder patterns during the Middle Ages. Enclosed communities like Melford did exist and could erupt in violent and bloody murder. The problem was that, unless the victims had powerful kinsmen or the matter was brought to the attention of the King’s justices, little could be done. Judges were bribed and juries bought or heavily influenced, not only in murder cases but even in matters of rebellion and treason. Life could be cheap and, in the fourteenth century, economic prosperity brought displacement and a sharp increase in peasants being driven from the land to wander the countryside looking for work. Such groups were always highly vulnerable, though
The Treason of the Ghosts
is based more on killings which took place in London and Norwich rather than the open countryside.