The Treason of the Ghosts

Chapter 15

An hour later, another visitor arrived on the banks of the Swaile. Master Blidscote, chief bailiff of the town of Melford, was about to die but he did not know it. He had been summoned out to the great water meadow fringing the river. The local inhabitants called it ‘The Ferry’ but this had long disappeared, swept away in some storm. Blidscote obediently stood on the bank, staring into the reeds, the muddy water swirling amongst them. A desolate place, the silence only broken by the raucous cry of birds.

Blidscote felt as if his life had been taken over by a swiftly rushing river. The arrival of that royal clerk meant justice and vengeance. Blidscote was trapped. Over the years he had taken bribes, tapped his nose and winked and turned a blind eye to this or that. He’d only kept his position by being pliable to those in power and bullying those who weren’t. The scrawled message thrust under the door of his small house in Fardun Street had told him where to come. Blidscote felt nervous. He didn’t like the countryside — the green, cold fields, the trees, their branches black against a grey lowering sky. He had attended the Wheelwright funeral; that had only deepened his pessimism. He shouldn’t have come but what choice did he have? He had followed instructions and ensured the jury which tried Sir Roger would return a verdict of guilty. For such a crime Blidscote could hang. Even if he didn’t, he would be turned out of his living and what could he do then? Beg? Become the brunt of the petty cruelties of the townspeople? Many would seize the opportunity to settle grudges and redress grievances.

Blidscote wiped his lips and stared back up the hill. Was that a horseman? His belly curdled on the ale he had drunk so quickly. He whimpered with fright. The countryside brought back memories of his bullying, hectoring ways with the boys of the travelling people. Had someone seen his secret heinous sin? He glanced back at the river. He heard it again, the drumming of hoofs. Blidscote turned and moaned in horror. A black-garbed rider, cloak swirling, a figure from the Valleys of Hell, had stopped on the brow of the hill. He was having difficulty with his horse. Was it the clerk? Had that damnable Corbett brought him out here to be questioned? The rider urged his horse forward. The horse’s head was bobbing up and down, hoofs thundering, the rider’s cloak billowed round him. Blidscote remembered his childhood nightmares. Death was thundering towards him. Blidscote stood rooted to the spot. He wasn’t aware of the squelching mud beneath his battered boots, the strident cry of the birds, the slithering ghostly sound of the river. Only this rider from Hell, this living nightmare charging straight towards him.

Blidscote expected the rider to rein in but he didn’t. The bailiff moved to the right then the left, no escape. He staggered back. He was amongst the reeds now, the mud oozing up above his boots as he floundered about. The rider followed him in. Blidscote tried to seize the reins, only to receive a sharp vicious kick. Further and further the rider forced him back. Blidscote stared up at the face but the rider was hooded and cowled.

‘My old companion, Blidscote.’

The bailiff now was in mortal terror. He was on the edge of the reeds. He could feel the current of the river tugging at him. He tried to turn. The rider brought the club he wielded sharply down on the bailiff’s head. Blidscote fell, face forward, into the river. The cold dirty water filled his mouth and nose. The rider dismounted and, leaving his horse to find its own way back to the bank, dragged Blidscote’s body into the shallows. Going quickly along the bank, he brought heavy stones which he thrust down the jerkin and wrapped in the bailiff’s squirrel-lined cloak. He pushed the body out as he would a small skiff. The unconscious bailiff was taken out midstream. He floated for a while and then slowly sank beneath the surface. The rider waited. He stared around to ensure he was still alone and, mounting his horse, made his way back across the meadow.

The banquet at the Guildhall proved to be prestigious. Corbett and Ranulf, in their rather travel-stained clothes, felt out of place amongst the costly garbed burgesses and their wives. Sir Louis Tressilyian, in a cote-hardie of dark murrey, soft buskins on his feet, welcomed them at the top of the broad stairs. He escorted them into the main chamber. Corbett thought he was in a church, so many torches and candles had been lit. The windows were long, most of them filled with coloured glass. The table of honour was on a dais dominated by a gorgeous silver-cast salt cellar bearing the town’s arms. The royal charter, which had granted Melford its privileges, was in the centre of the room on a table covered with turkey cloth. The burgesses came up and were introduced: a dizzying array of names and faces. Corbett shook hands and, with Ranulf walking beside him, made his way to the table on the dais.

Sir Maurice arrived, dressed in a blue and gold gown over a white open-necked shirt. He introduced Alianor, Louis’s daughter, a small, pretty-faced young woman. She had blonde hair and light cornflower-blue eyes and was dressed exquisitely in a dark red gown and white wimple. She was much taken with Ranulf. Corbett had to stand on his companion’s toes, a harsh reminder that the young woman was almost betrothed to Sir Maurice. Ranulf whispered he would be on his best behaviour, except he intended to take some of the choicest pieces of food for Chanson: the groom, with the other servants, was left to his own devices below stairs.

Parson Grimstone and Burghesh also joined them on the dais. The priest intoned the grace, blessed the assembly and all took their seats. White wine and fish food were served first: lampreys in a special sauce; portions of tender carp with special relishes and spices. Toasts were made and speeches delivered. All emphasised the growing prosperity of Melford and how honoured they were by the presence of the King’s clerk. Sir Hugh sat bemused. This was such a contrast to the silence of the countryside or his own secluded chamber in the Golden Fleece.

Other dishes were served, to a blare of trumpets and shouts of approval: fried loach with roses and almonds; roast salmon in onion wine sauce; smoked pike; salad in pastry; pheasant in strawberry cream sauce. The hall shimmered with light as silver plates and trenchers, different cups and goblets were placed before the guests.

Corbett ate little and drank even less. He chose to ignore Ranulf’s stealthy theft of food as he listened to a plump burgess chatter like a magpie about the King’s taxes on wood and the need for better protection in the Narrow Seas. Corbett tried to appear so interested, his face ached. He would have liked to have excused himself but that would be insulting. So, he listened to the burgess but his mind wandered. He’d found the Book of the Dead a treasure house of information. He desperately needed to question Peterkin whilst he had been concerned by Ranulf’s failure to find Blidscote.

‘Do you think he’s safe?’ Ranulf had asked.

‘No I don’t,’ Corbett had replied as he’d finished his preparations before leaving for the Guildhall. ‘Like the poacher Furrell, Master Blidscote may never be seen again. .’

‘And the King’s war in Scotland, Sir Hugh?’ The burgess was now eager to prove himself an expert in military strategy. Corbett repressed a sigh; he listened to the good citizen’s carefully worded denunciation of the King’s war in the north, its disruption of trade and drain on the Exchequer.

Corbett was relieved when the burgess had to give up playing Hector as more dishes were served. The burgess was about to launch himself into a second sermon when Corbett heard the bell of St Edmund’s tolling; it echoed through the Guildhall, silencing the noise and chatter.

‘It’s the tocsin,’ the burgess murmured. ‘In God’s name, what’s happened now?’ He glared down the table at Parson Grimstone.

The good priest was already deep in his cups. He tried to stagger to his feet but Burghesh gently pulled him down.

‘I will go,’ he declared. ‘Something’s wrong at the church, but I am sure it’s nothing.’ And, dangling a set of keys, he hurried out.

His departure was followed by dark scowls and muttered conversations. Corbett repressed a smile. He had seen the same thing happen in many a prosperous town. The burgesses grew wealthy, they no longer were in awe of the priest or his church whilst Parson Grimstone was, perhaps, not the man they would have chosen to be their pastor. These wealthy burgesses would eventually build their own church, create a separate parish. They would lavishly adorn their new house of prayer, using it to emphasise their own power and dignity. Corbett grasped his wine cup and listened to the burgess’s ill-concealed attack on the King’s military ambitions.

‘He should capture Wallace, hang him and then negotiate. If there is peace in the north it will create new markets. .’

The bells of St Edmund’s tolled again, just for a short while. The assembled merchants simply grinned at each other. The festivities continued unabated, as did the warlike burgess, who now delivered a long speech against the Scottish rebels.

‘Aye.’ Ranulf stopped his thieving to intervene. ‘But catching the Scottish rebel is like trying to trap moonbeams in a jug. Everyone says it can be done but no one knows how to do it.’

Corbett winked at Ranulf in grateful appreciation. Ranulf continued his teasing for a while. Corbett was about to intervene when the door was flung open. Burghesh entered, shouldering the liveried servant aside.

‘Sir Hugh!’ he shouted. ‘You’d best come!’

Corbett made a sign for Ranulf to follow. Burghesh hurried up and whispered at Sir Louis to look after Parson Grimstone. He led the two clerks down the stairs, not saying anything until they were out in the cold night air.

‘It’s Curate Robert,’ he whispered. ‘He’s hanged himself.’

They hastened across the marketplace and through the dark entrance of the church. Burghesh grasped a spluttering sconce torch just inside the porch and led them into the bell tower. In the poor light the curate’s corpse, swaying slightly on the end of a bell rope, sent the shadows dancing.

‘I didn’t cut him down. I came in, lit the torch and. .’

Corbett ordered Ranulf to bring candles from the sanctuary. These were hurriedly lit to reveal the full garish scene. Curate Robert dressed in his gown and sandals, hung, hands down, neck twisted. His face was pallid, mouth open, tongue slightly out, eyes staring in a look of horror. Corbett went up the steps and pulled the swaying body towards him. The knot had been expertly tied behind the curate’s left ear.

Using his dagger, Corbett prised the knot loose. Ranulf and Burghesh took the corpse and laid it out on the cold flagstones outside the bell tower. Corbett grasped a torch and moved further up the steps. The tower was dark and freezing. He heard the squeak of rats, their scampering feet further up the darkness. He looked into a large window embrasure and, going back down, carefully examined the other three bell ropes. Each had a heavy weight tied to the bottom to keep it secure. The one Bellen had used had its weight removed. Corbett found this behind the door of the tower.

‘Master!’

Corbett went out. Ranulf handed him a piece of parchment.

‘This was up the cuff of his gown.’

Corbett undid the piece of crumpled parchment. ‘It’s a quotation from the Psalms,’ he remarked. ‘ “I have sinned and my sins are always before me.”

He went and knelt over the corpse, made the sign of the cross and said a quick prayer.

‘Is it suicide?’ Ranulf asked.

‘It must have been.’ Burghesh pointed to the door of the bell tower, a set of keys hung in the outside lock. ‘He must have waited till we’d gone, came in, locked the door behind him and went up into the bell tower. He removed a weight, tied the rope round his neck and then simply jumped off the steps.’

‘And that caused the bells to ring?’ Corbett asked.

Burghesh nodded. ‘It would be swiftly done. Look!’

He led them back into the bell tower, grasped the rope and climbed the steps. He then jumped down, clearing three or four steps, holding on to the rope and, as he did, the bell clashed and clanged above him.

‘You probably heard them ring again,’ he added. ‘That’s when I came in. I tugged on the corpse, feeling for a life pulse in his neck or wrist. There was nothing so I hastened back to the Guildhall.’

‘He’ll need the last rites,’ Corbett declared. ‘You’d best get Parson Grimstone.’

‘He’s in his cups.’

‘He’s still a priest,’ Corbett replied. ‘And he’s the only one we have. Master Burghesh, I would be grateful if you’d do what I ask!’

Corbett waited until he had gone and closed the door behind him. He went back into the bell tower and scrutinised the bell rope and steps before returning to kneel beside the corpse. He examined the red weal round the neck and then the curate’s wrists. The corpse was not yet cold.

‘Do you think it was suicide?’ Ranulf asked.

Corbett turned the body over. He could find no other wound or cut except that ugly scar round the throat.

‘It must have been,’ he declared. ‘Bellen came in here.’ He sniffed at the man’s mouth. ‘He’d drunk some wine, then God knows what happened. Perhaps this cold darkness finally tipped his wits? There was no struggle, no sign of binding round the wrists or a blow to the head. Master Burghesh is correct, Curate Robert must have come in here intending suicide.’ He tapped the piece of parchment lying beside the corpse. ‘He put this into the cuff of his sleeve, made sure the church door was locked and went into the bell tower.’ Corbett paused. ‘He then removed the weight from one of the ropes, tied the rope round his neck, climbed the steps and jumped: that’s the bell we heard. Burghesh came across and discovered the corpse.’

‘Could Bellen have been the murderer?’ Ranulf declared. ‘He was strong enough to kill Molkyn and Thorkle and, being a priest who visits parishioners, would know about the squint hole in Deverell’s house. He was also a flagellant, punishing himself for secret sins, maybe such as the murder of those young women. Perhaps,’ Ranulf added, ‘the Mummer’s Man was Curate Robert in disguise? Or, there again, a woman might go out to the countryside to meet a priest?’

‘True,’ Corbett murmured. ‘Bellen also heard confessions. He’d know all the secrets of the parish and could blackmail as he wished.’

The door swung open. Tressilyian and Sir Maurice, Parson Grimstone between them, followed Burghesh into the church. Grimstone was near collapse. He took one look at his curate’s corpse, groaned and had to be helped to sit on a stone plinth. Burghesh sat next to him, talking quietly.

‘Suicide?’ Tressilyian asked.

‘It would appear so,’ Corbett replied. ‘Sir Maurice, my groom, Chanson, brought you a message?’

‘I can’t find it.’ Sir Maurice shook his head. ‘I have searched my father’s records but. .’ He spread his hands.

Corbett hid his disappointment. He had hoped to discover details about the mysterious painting Sir Roger had given to the parish church.

‘Ah well,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s tend the dead.’

Burghesh left them. He brought back the holy oils and gently persuaded Grimstone to whisper the words of absolution and anoint the dead man.

Corbett watched. It was a truly piteous sight: the young priest sprawled on the flagstones, his face still twisted by his violent death.

‘Burghesh,’ Corbett murmured, ‘I need the keys of the house. I must search Curate Robert’s chamber.’

‘But is that right?’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Corbett agreed. ‘But Ranulf thinks that young priest is responsible for all the murders in Melford. He may well be right. Except. .’

‘Except for what?’

‘Nothing,’ Corbett replied. ‘Not for the moment. I’ll take the keys.’

Burghesh reluctantly handed them over. Corbett gestured at Ranulf to follow. They left the church and went round to the priest’s house. Corbett unlocked the door and went into the sweet-smelling passageway. The walls were half panelled, the wood gleamed and smelt of a rich polish. Corbett, having lit more candles, pushed open doors and looked around. A comfortable place, high-backed quilted chairs, tables, stools and benches. He even espied some books, tied by a chain to a shelf in the small parlour. The stairs to the bedchambers were broad and polished with small pots of herbs in the stairwell. The windows were lead-lined: some were even filled with coloured or painted glass.

Corbett went up. There were three chambers along the gallery; Bellen’s stood at the end. Corbett unlocked the door and went in. The room smelt of sweat, candlewax, rather musty, so he pulled back the shutters and opened the window. He waited whilst Ranulf lit the candles. The small cot bed under the window was unmade. Clothes and robes were scattered about. A wineskin, now empty, lay on the floor, an overturned cup beside it. On a shelf above the desk were calfskin-bound books: a psalter, a ledger containing the Calendar of Saints and the order or ritual for different Masses as well as a Book of Hours, rather tattered and faded.

Corbett sat down at the desk and sifted amongst the different pieces of parchment. He noticed some, like the parchment found on the dead priest, were inscribed with quotations from the Old Testament about sin and forgiveness. Corbett searched on. He moved his foot and kicked a small chest beneath the table and pulled this out. He emptied the contents on to the floor: a small, thick hairshirt, a flagellum or whip with strips of sharpened leather strapped to a bone handle.

‘Poor man,’ Ranulf murmured. ‘He seemed more aware of sin than he was of God’s grace.’

Corbett searched on.

‘Strange,’ he whispered.

‘What is, Master?’

‘Well, Bellen was an educated man but there are no letters or written sermons. After all, Bellen served here for a number of years. I know priests. They have homilies, commentaries, they write letters to friends and colleagues. Bellen, apparently, did none of these.’

He picked up the psalter and shook it. A piece of parchment fell out, yellow, dark with age.

‘Now, here’s one,’ Corbett declared. ‘It’s a draft letter to his bishop.’ He pulled the candle closer and studied it.

Apparently Bellen began the letter but didn’t finish it. There were the usual salutations and then the line, ‘I have something to confess in secreto. .’ but Bellen had not continued.

Corbett heard Ranulf moving around at the other side of the room.

‘He may not have been a letter writer, Master, but Bellen did like to draw.’

Corbett looked round. Ranulf had pulled out a small coffer full of rolls of parchment. He went across and watched as Ranulf sifted through them. Most of them were drawings of the church, rather clumsy and childish: the face of a gargoyle, a pillar, the entrance to the rood screen. Corbett glimpsed one and seized it. Then, hearing footsteps on the stairs, he quickly folded this up and thrust it into his wallet. Burghesh tapped on the door and came in.

‘Have you finished, Sir Hugh?’

In the light of the lantern he carried, Burghesh looked haggard and worried.

‘Yes, yes, I have finished.’

‘And is there anything? I mean,’ Burghesh stammered, ‘anything to tell us why Robert should take his own life?’

‘I don’t know.’ Corbett smiled thinly. ‘But Ranulf and I have to return to the Golden Fleece. The burgesses of Melford will have to do without our company tonight.’

He and Ranulf stepped by Burghesh, went along the gallery and down, out through the half-open front door.

‘Was it suicide?’ Ranulf asked. ‘It must have been, surely? We were all in the Guildhall.’

‘The assassin could be someone else,’ Corbett replied evasively.

‘Such as?’

‘Peterkin; Ralph, the miller’s son.’

Ranulf caught his master’s arm. ‘You don’t believe that, do you? Look around, Sir Hugh.’

He gestured across the dark, misty graveyard, the long wet grass, the slanted crosses, chipped head-stones and the dark mass of the church beyond, its door still open, the steps bathed in a small pool of light.

‘Only the dead can hear you,’ Ranulf murmured. ‘You don’t believe Bellen committed suicide, do you?’

‘No,’ Corbett replied, ‘I don’t. Get into the mind of the man, Ranulf. Bellen may have been this and he may have been that but he was still a priest, a man of God. He had a heightened sense of sin: despair and suicide are the greatest sins. Bellen was anxious but self-composed. I think he knew a lot more than he told us.’

‘But he died,’ Ranulf insisted. ‘Burghesh did find him swinging on the end of that bell rope. If Bellen was a man of God, who would regard suicide as a sin, the same is true of murder. He was strong enough; he wouldn’t have gone to his death like a lamb to the slaughter.’

‘Aye.’

Corbett stared at a hummock of grass which almost shrouded a small headstone. For a brief moment he wondered if it really mattered. All living beings on the face of God’s earth ended their lives in places like this. Elizabeth Wheelwright, Sir Roger Chapeleys, all sleeping that eternal dream.

‘It’s cold,’ Corbett declared.

‘I didn’t find Blidscote. He may have had a hand in this.’

‘I doubt it,’ Corbett replied.

He gathered his cloak around him, putting on his gloves. He listened to the lonely hoot of an owl in the trees at the far end of the graveyard.

‘I wager a tun of wine to a tun of wine, Ranulf, that Blidscote is as dead as any that lie here.’

‘Just because I didn’t find him?’

‘I wonder if we ever will. But come, Ranulf, I need to think, sit and plot.’

They went through the lych-gate. Corbett looked down the lonely lane, ghostly in the pale moonlight. He was tempted to go and see Old Mother Crauford and Peterkin but then he heard voices. People were coming up towards the church as the news spread. He needed to impose some order on what he had learnt.

They returned to the Golden Fleece, to be greeted by scowls and unspoken curses. Corbett ignored them as he stood looking around.

‘Whom do you want?’ Matthew the taverner came up.

‘Master Blidscote — I don’t suppose he’s been in tonight?’

‘No, Sir Hugh, he hasn’t.’ The taverner glanced at him sly-eyed. ‘But the news about Curate Robert is known by all. They are calling you the Death Bringer.’

‘I’m not that!’ Corbett snapped. ‘Master taverner. .’ Then he thought better of what he’d been about to say. ‘I’ll be in my chamber if anyone wishes to see me.’

Ranulf stayed, determined not to be bullied by the dark looks and seething hostility of the taproom. Once he was in his chamber, Corbett lit a candle and prepared his writing desk. He took out the scrap of parchment from the curate’s chamber and studied the outline of the triptych.

‘I wonder. .’ he murmured.

He smoothed this out, took a piece of vellum and began to write down everything he had seen, heard or learnt since arriving in Melford. The first afternoon in the crypt; the conversation there; the daubed markings on the grave; the piece of parchment pinned to the gibbet. He wrote down a list of names and, taking each one, carefully recalled how they had looked, what they had said.

An hour passed. Ranulf came up but Corbett was so immersed he simply mumbled good night and went back to his studies. The taproom below emptied. Corbett lay on his bed for a while, thinking, trying to study each person, each death. Blidscote could have helped.

‘That was a mistake,’ Corbett murmured. ‘I should have questioned him before. But, there again, he wouldn’t have told the truth.’

He returned to his writings: slowly but surely a pattern emerged.

‘Let’s take one murder,’ he murmured. ‘Deverell’s. No.’ He shook his head.

He wrote down Molkyn’s name. Molkyn the miller? A drunkard, an oaf, frightened by a verse from Leviticus? Corbett was now certain two assassins were loose in Melford: Molkyn was the bridge between them. He had been specially elected to that jury, therefore he must have been blackmailed. But was he killed to keep his mouth closed? Or executed for his role in Sir Roger’s death? Corbett underscored the word ‘executed’. He sat and reflected, half dozing. He slipped into a dream and woke with a start. For a moment he was back in the cold, stark belfry with that grisly corpse swinging by its neck.

He got up and splashed water over his face. He had his suspicions but who could help? Peterkin? He would have to wait until the morning. Matters, however, were proceeding too fast. The hostility in the taproom might spill over and, as the news of Bellen’s death spread, people would say the murderer had confessed and hanged himself. So, why should this clerk be poking his long nose into other people’s affairs?

Corbett was about to strap on his sword belt and go out but then thought of Maeve, her face pale and anxious, eyes studying him. Her departing words echoed in his mind. She had whispered them as she put her arms round his neck and kissed him on the cheek.

‘Be careful of the shadows,’ she’d murmured. ‘Remember, if you hunt murderers, they can hunt you.’

Corbett paused, hand on the latch, and changed his mind. Instead he went to sit on the bed and thought of that bell tower, the hanging corpse and those other ropes with the weights at the end. If he could resolve that, he might trap the killer and, with the help of Molkyn’s daughter, bring these deaths in Haceldema to an end.

Corbett returned to his studies. He put Bellen’s murder to one side for the moment and returned to his theory of two murderers loose in Melford.

‘Not Furrell and his wife,’ he murmured — he was now sure of that — so who? He examined, once again, the parchment from Bellen’s chamber and recalled Furrell’s song about the angel and the devil. What else had Sorrel told him? If she was not exacting vengeance then who? There was something about her story? Corbett worked on and, as he did so, the mystery began to unravel.