Hugh Corbett 12 - The Treason of the Ghosts (14 page)

‘Do not lie, boy!’ the old parson had thundered. ‘A lie echoes like a bell across the lake of Hell and the demons hear it.’

Blidscote paused, wiping the sweat from his unshaven face. He always did have an awful fear of the church: those gargoyles which grinned down at him from the pillars; the wooden carvings, depicting the realms of the dead, the dancing skeletons . . . Blidscote felt so hot, he wondered if it was the glow from the fury of Hell. He paused and leant against the plaster wall of a house, mopping his face with the hem of his cloak. He was about to walk on when he felt the touch of cold steel on his sweaty neck. Blidscote tried to turn.

‘Stay where you are, bailiff of Melford!’

The sharp steel dug in a little closer. Blidscote couldn’t stop shaking. The voice was low, hollow, muffled, as if the speaker was wearing a mask. Blidscote forced his head round. It was a mask, ghoulish and garish like the face of a demon. Blidscote closed his eyes and whimpered. Was he having a nightmare? Had he died? Was this one of Hell’s scurriers sent to fetch him? Yet he recognised that voice from many years ago.

‘Well, well, Master Blidscote, we meet again.’

‘I have kept faith,’ Blidscote muttered. ‘And a still tongue in my head.’

‘And why shouldn’t you, Master Blidscote?’ came the cool reply. ‘What can you do? Confess all to the King’s justice or seek private words with the royal clerk? Will you tell him the truth? You can hang for perjury, Walter.’ The tone was now bantering. ‘Or haven’t you heard the news? How the King’s parliament at Winchester have issued a new statute? Perjury is now treason’s brother. And do you know what happens to a traitor?’

Blidscote just whimpered.

‘Then let me tell you, master bailiff. For we are all alone in the dark. That’s what we are, aren’t we, creatures of the night? Scurrying rats with our horde of secrets?’

The sword was quickly withdrawn.

‘Stay where you are!’ the voice hissed, and the demon figure melted away.

Blidscote did. A beggar was coming up the lane, trundling a small barrow heaped with rags and other rubbish he’d collected from the town midden heap. The small wheelbarrow creaked and clattered on the cobbles. Blidscote turned. He would have loved to have run but he knew his tormentor was still lurking in the shadows on the opposite side of the lane. The beggar man drew closer. He recognised Blidscote, put his barrow down and grinned in a display of rotting gums and fetid breath. Blidscote flinched, waving his hand.

‘Good evening, Master Blidscote.’

‘On your way! On your way!’

The man was about to protest but Blidscote gripped him by the shoulder.

‘Get you gone or I’ll have you in the stocks for vagrancy!’

The beggar took up his barrow and almost ran down the lane, muttering curses about unchristian bailiffs.

Blidscote took a step forward but the razor-sharp steel nicked his neck.

‘The Golden Fleece will wait,’ the voice whispered. ‘I was telling you about the penalty for treason and perjury. You will be taken to London and lodged in Newgate. Then you’ll be fastened to a hurdle behind a horse and dragged all the way to Smithfield. They’ll put you up a ladder and turn you off. Your fat legs will dance, your face will go black as your tongue protrudes. Afterwards they’ll cut you down, half dead or half alive. Does it really matter? They’ll quarter your sorry trunk, pickle it, dip it in tar, fix it above the city gates. Ah, travellers will comment, there’s Master Blidscote!’

‘I hear what you say,’ Blidscote gasped. ‘I have told you. I keep a still tongue in my head and will do so till the day I die.’

‘I like that, Master Blidscote. So, tell me now, Molkyn’s death and that of Thorkle . . .?’

‘I know nothing. I tell you, I know nothing. If I did—’

‘If you do, Master Blidscote, I’ll come back and have more words with you. Now, look at the wall. Go on, turn, look at the wall!’

Blidscote obeyed.

‘Press your face against it,’ the voice urged, ‘till you can smell the piss and count to ten five times!’

Blidscote stood for what appeared to be an age. When he turned, the shadows were empty. A light to the mouth of the alleyway beckoned him forward. Blidscote shook off the horrors of the night and ran. He reached the market square, the cobbles glistening in the wetness of the night. The place was quiet. The houses and shops beyond had their doors and windows closed but lights and lanterns glowed, welcome relief to the darkness and cold. Blidscote realised he had lost his staff. He ran back down the alleyway, collected it and returned to the marketplace. The shock of the meeting with that demon had sobered him. He adjusted his jerkin, pulling the cloak around his shoulders, and strode purposefully across the marketplace. He stopped at the stocks where Peddlicott the pickpocket had his head and hands tightly fastened in the pillory: sentenced to stand there till dawn.

Peddlicott lifted his head. ‘Master bailiff, of your charity?’

Blidscote slapped him viciously on the cheek and walked towards the glowing warmth of the Golden Fleece.

Ranulf-atte-Newgate, together with Chanson, sat in the comfortable house of Master John Samler, which stood in a lane on the edges of Melford. Ranulf stared around. The rushes on the floor were clean and mixed with herbs. The plaster walls were freshly washed with lime to keep away the flies, and decorated with coloured cloths. Onions and a flitch of ham hung from the central beam to be cured in the curling smoke from the fire in the open hearth. Chanson sat on the bench next to Ranulf, hungrily eating the bowl of meat stew garnished with spice to liven its dull taste. Ranulf picked up a piece of bread, smiled at his host and dipped the bread into the bowl.

‘So, John, you are a thatcher by trade?’

His host, sitting opposite, eyes rounded at having such an important person talking to him, nodded. Beside him, his wife, pink-cheeked with excitement. Their children, supervised by their eldest girl, clustered on the stairs. They reminded Ranulf of a group of owls, white-faced, round-eyed. Ranulf felt uneasy. The thatcher was a prosperous man with a garden plot before and a small orchard behind the house. He had been so overcome when Ranulf knocked on the door, ushering him in as if he was the King himself, serving the best ale his wife had brewed.

‘You have five children, Master Samler?’

‘Eight in all, two died . . .’ The thatcher’s voice trailed away.

‘And Johanna?’ Ranulf insisted. He looked across at the children.

‘Yes, Johanna.’

‘I understand,’ Ranulf continued softly, ‘that Elizabeth Wheelwright was murdered a few days ago and your daughter Johanna earlier in the summer. Am I correct?’

Samler’s wife began to sob. Chanson stopped eating and put down his horn spoon as a sign of respect.

‘She was a fine girl,’ Master Samler replied. ‘She wasn’t flighty in her ways.’

‘And the day she died?’ Ranulf asked.

‘I was out working. Johanna was sent on an errand. She loved the chance of going into the market square to talk to her friends.’ He shrugged. ‘She went but never came back.’

‘Was there anyone special?’ Ranulf insisted. ‘Anyone at all?’ He lifted his head. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked the eldest girl.

‘That’s Isabella,’ Samler replied. ‘She’s two years older than Johanna.’

Ranulf studied the girl. She was comely enough, with flaxen hair coming down to her shoulders, thin-faced, sharp-eyed. Just a shift of expression betrayed her; perhaps she knew more than she had told even her parents.

‘And you know of no reason why she was killed?’

‘Why should anyone kill a young woman like Johanna?’ the thatcher retorted. ‘I have told you, sir, she had no secrets. Oh, she danced and she flirted but there was no one special, was there, Isabella?’

Ranulf smiled across at the young woman, who sat on the stairs above her brothers and sister.

‘But she was killed out in the open countryside,’ Ranulf insisted. ‘Down near Brackham Mere.’

‘I have told you what I know, sir,’ Samler retorted. ‘One afternoon she was sent on an errand to the marketplace and never returned.’

‘Will you catch him, sir?’ Isabella Samler called out.

‘Oh, we’ll catch him,’ Ranulf replied. ‘My master is like a hawk: sharp-eyed and swift. He’ll float above Melford and, no matter where the killer hides, be it the thickest bramble bush or the longest grass -’ Ranulf got to his feet gesturing with his hand. Isabella watched him - ‘he’ll swoop, wings back, talons out, and he’ll clutch your sister’s killer in his tight claws.’

‘You are only saying that.’

‘No, Mistress, I am promising it.’

Ranulf undid his purse and put a silver coin on the table. The thatcher made to refuse.

‘No, no, take it,’ Ranulf urged. He patted Chanson on the shoulder. ‘For you, your family.’

He walked to the door, gathered up his cloak and sword belt, then looked round. Ranulf felt a tug at his heart. They looked now like a group of rabbits fascinated by a stoat.

‘I mean you well, I really do. But you have nothing to say, eh? Nothing more to tell me about Johanna’s death?’ He glanced quickly at Isabella.

‘She was a comely lass.’ The thatcher’s wife spoke up.

Ranulf put his hand on the latch and turned. ‘And she had no love swain?’

‘No,’ Isabella answered quickly. ‘Only those she laughed about.’

‘And a secret place?’ Ranulf urged. ‘Everyone has a secret place.’

‘The same as Elizabeth Wheelwright’s,’ Isabella blurted out. ‘They used to visit the copse on the hill overlooking Devil’s Oak. It’s not really secret.’

‘Could you show me the way?’

‘It’s dark,’ Samler replied.

‘No, no,’ Ranulf smiled. ‘I meant if Isabella could show us the lane back to the Golden Fleece.’

Samler’s daughter needed no second urging but grabbed her cloak from a peg on the wall. Ranulf made his good nights, as did Chanson, his mouth still full of food. They collected their horses. The lane was dark and muddy. Isabella walked ahead of them.

‘Just keep going straight on,’ she explained when they reached the end of the lane. She pointed to an alleyway. ‘That leads to the market square.’

Ranulf indicated that Chanson walk on.

‘You’d best go back then.’

Isabella watched Chanson lead the horses away. She drew closer and stared up at this strange, green-eyed clerk. Isabella Samler had lived a sheltered life. She’d never met a man like this before: tall, slim, smelling of horse, leather and fragrant soap. His white chemise was undone at the neck, allowing the glint of a silver chain, his sword-tip slapped against his boot. She felt frightened yet excited. He was dangerous. If his master was a hawk then so was he.

‘Will you really catch him?’

Ranulf chucked her under the chin. ‘If you tell me what you should, then it will be sooner rather than later.’

Isabella, in a mixture of fear and flirtation, moved a little closer.

‘Did your sister confide in you? Do you know why she went, whom she was meeting?’

‘We often lay awake in our bed loft. We’d frighten ourselves with stories about night-walkers.’

‘But there are no night-walkers in Melford, are there?’

Isabella swayed slightly side to side as if she was enjoying her riddle.

‘You’d be very surprised what walks the streets and lanes of Melford at night. Talk to Parson Grimstone. There’s more sin here, under the cover of darkness, than in your great city.’

Ranulf took a silver coin out of his purse and held it firmly between his fingers.

‘I gave one to your father but your sister had one, didn’t she? Is that why she left? Went out into the countryside? No, no,’ Ranulf smiled. He stroked her cheek with a gloved finger. ‘Johanna was a good girl but there’s not much money, is there? And the tinkers and the chapmen sell such pretty things: a ribbon, a brooch, a bracelet, perhaps a necklace of stones, all polished bright? So, are you going to tell me?’

Isabella looked at the coin and licked her lips.

‘My sister had no such coin.’

‘Then whom did she meet?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps an admirer, perhaps the Mummer’s Man.’

‘Mummer’s Man?’ Ranulf asked.

‘It’s someone I’ve heard of.’

‘You’re telling tales?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Isabella stared at the coin. ‘I met a travelling girl once. She claimed to have seen a Mummer’s Man. He had a mask over his face and his horse moved like a ghost along the lanes outside Melford.’

Ranulf recalled the lonely country trackways they had ridden along on their way to Melford. He felt a prick of fear at this hideous vision of a masked man riding a silent horse.

‘I tell you, sir,’ she clutched the front of Ranulf’s jerkin, ‘that’s all I know.’

‘Nothing else? This travelling girl?’

‘It was dusk. She couldn’t see much. I didn’t think much of her tale till after my sister’s death. I daren’t tell anyone; I was frightened of getting into trouble.’

Ranulf pressed the coin into her hands. ‘Then you’d best get back.’

She took the coin.

Ranulf grasped her wrist. ‘Don’t go out in the country lanes, and be careful of the Mummer’s Man!’

He released her and she ran off into the darkness.

‘What was all that about?’ Chanson came back leading the horses. ‘Ranulf, I’m tired and I’m cold. Despite what Samler gave us, my belly thinks my throat’s slit. My mouth is so dry it’s forgotten how to drink. Where’s Sir Hugh?’

‘Oh, old Master Long Face.’ Ranulf took the reins of his horse. ‘He’ll be riding round the dark lanes, high in the saddle, cowl pulled across his head. He’ll be thinking. He broods a lot, does Sir Hugh, turning things over and over in his mind like a water mill. Oh, he’ll come back and he’ll sit in his chamber staring out of the window, moody and quiet.’

‘Is he safe?’ Chanson asked. ‘I mean, the Lady Maeve told him to be careful.’