Hugh Corbett 12 - The Treason of the Ghosts (2 page)

Burghesh moved in his seat, his long, grizzled face betraying puzzlement at the parish priest’s delay in beginning his sermon. Parson Grimstone smiled back and hid his own anxiety. He and Burghesh had grown up in Melford; half-brothers and close friends, they’d gone their separate ways. Burghesh, however, had made his fortune in the King’s wars and returned to Melford. He’d bought the old forester’s house behind the church. Parson Grimstone had grown to rely on him, even more that he did Curate Robert.

The congregation began to cough and shuffle their feet. Parson Grimstone glanced along the front bench and noticed that Molkyn the miller was absent. His wife, Ursula, was there and the miller’s strange, blonde-haired, pale-faced daughter, Margaret. So, where was Molkyn? After all, on a Sunday, the mill was closed, no corn was ground, no flour sacked. Molkyn should be here, especially to hear this sermon. The parish priest raised his head.

‘Death!’ he thundered.

The congregation hugged themselves: this would be an exciting sermon.

‘Death!’ Parson Grimstone continued. ‘Is like a bell whose function is to waken Christian people to pray. But lazy folk, after hearing the first chimes, wait for the second: often, they are so heavy with sleep, they do not hear it.’

He glanced quickly at Molkyn’s wife.

‘Bells have different songs.’ He smiled down at Simon the bell-ringer. ‘The song of this death bell is: “Remember thy last end and thou shalt never sin.”

Parson Grimstone pulled back the maniple on his left wrist, warming to his theme.

‘Death is like a summoner.’

He paused as his congregation nodded and muttered to themselves. They all hated the summoner, that dreadful official of the archdeacon’s court, who came sniffing out sin and scandal. When he found it, be it a married woman playing the naughty with her lover, he issued a summons for the offending parties to appear at the archdeacon’s court.

‘Ah yes,’ Parson Grimstone continued. ‘Death is like a summoner and carries a rod, as a sign of his office, more sharp, more cruel than the finest arrow. Death is also like a knight on horseback. He carries a huge shield, cleverly quartered. In its first quarter, a grinning ape, which stands for a man’s executors who laugh at him and spend his goods. In the second quarter, a raging lion because death devours all it catches. In the third quarter, a scribe, indicating how all our deeds will be written down and recited before God’s tribunal. And in the fourth quarter . . .’

The door to the church was flung open. Parson Grimstone lowered his hands. The congregation craned their necks. Peterkin, the village fool, a man of little brain and even less wit, came lumbering up the nave. His shaggy, matted hair almost hid his wild eyes, his hose and battered boots were caked in mud.

Parson Grimstone came slowly down from the pulpit. Peterkin was one of God’s little ones. He depended on the charity of the parish and slept in barns, or at Old Mother Crauford’s, eating and drinking whatever was doled out to him. Parson Grimstone could see he was agitated. In fact, Peterkin had been crying, the tears creating rivulets of dirt down the poor fool’s face. The man bared his lips, blinked but the words never came out. The congregation were now agitated at their Sunday morning routine being so abruptly disturbed.

‘Hush now!’ Parson Grimstone ordered. ‘Peterkin, whatever is the matter? This is God’s house. We are having Mass. You know that. Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Or have you had one of your nightmares?’

Peterkin wasn’t listening. He was staring to his left and pointed to a painting in the transept. He was shaking and the inner leg of his hose was stained with urine. Parson Grimstone grasped Peterkin’s hand.

‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘Show me!’

Like a child Peterkin led him across into the transept, the peasants and the cottagers making way. Peterkin pointed to a painting on the wall, showing the beheading of John the Baptist. The saint’s head was being placed on a platter by a wicked-looking Salome, to be taken to her vengeful mother.

‘Have you dreamt of that?’ Parson Grimstone asked, curbing his own impatience.

Peterkin shook his head. ‘Molkyn!’ the grating voice replied.

‘Molkyn the miller?’

‘Molkyn the miller,’ Peterkin repeated like a schoolboy. ‘His head is all afloat!’

Those around heard him. Some scrambled to their feet, staring across at Ursula and her daughter, Margaret, who gazed, round-eyed, back. Parson Grimstone took off his chasuble and threw it to his curate. He hitched up his robe under his belt and grasped Peterkin’s wrist.

‘You must come! You must come!’ Peterkin said. ‘Father, I do not lie! Molkyn’s head swims!’

Leading Peterkin by the hand, Parson Grimstone walked quickly down the nave of the church. The rest of his parishioners, taking their cue, followed close behind. They went down the steps across the graveyard under the lych-gate. Instead of going right, down into Melford, Peterkin turned left towards Molkyn’s mill. The morning mist was still thick and cloying, shrouding the countryside. Parson Grimstone was conscious of a gripping sense of fear, a chill which caught the sweat on the nape of his neck. Peterkin’s laboured breathing and the clatter of his parishioners behind him shattered the brooding silence. They crossed the wooden bridge over the river Swaile, through the wicket gate which would lead them down to the millpond. The gorse and undergrowth on either side were drenched with rain. Parson Grimstone could see little because of the mist. Peterkin stopped and pointed with his finger.

‘Yes, yes.’ The parson followed his direction. ‘That’s Molkyn’s mill.’ He stared up at the great canvas arms which stretched, like those of a monster, up through the shifting greyness.

‘Come!’ Peterkin mumbled.

They went up a small hill, then down the other side to the reed-ringed millpond. Again Peterkin pointed. The mist shifted.

Parson John gaped in disbelief. Now he could see it, as the others could behind him. A woman screamed. Molkyn’s wife pushed her way forward. Repton the reeve held her fast. Parson John just stared. Peterkin’s wits were not wandering. Molkyn’s head had been severed clean from his shoulders, placed on a wooden tray and sent drifting across the millpond.

 

Four nights later, Thorkle, one of Melford’s leading farmers, stood inside his threshing barn. He stared down at the sheaves of wheat, the last from that year’s harvest. Both doors of the winnowing barn were open. A cold breeze seeped through; Thorkle wanted it so. He wiped the sweat from his brow. He wished this was done.

Darkness was falling, a sure sign of approaching winter. Soon it would be All-Hallows Eve. The inhabitants of Melford would be lighting the fires to keep the souls of the prowling dead at bay. Thorkle repressed a shiver. Melford was becoming a place of the dead. He and the others had known little peace since Lord Roger Chapeleys had been hanged on the great gibbet at the crossroads outside the town. So many dreadful murders! First, the Jesses killer. Those young women, including Goodwoman Walmer, raped and cruelly garrotted. Sir Roger had been blamed and paid with his life: that should have been the end of it.

Now, five years later, another young woman had been killed. And what about Molkyn? His head taken clean off his shoulders and sent floating on that wooden tray? Thorkle and others, at their priest’s urging, had climbed the steps and entered the mill where an even more grisly sight awaited: Molkyn’s decapitated corpse, sitting in a chair, soaked in his own blood and gore. Yet, like some macabre joke, the killer had placed a half-filled tankard of ale in the dead man’s cold, white fingers. What was happening?

Chapeleys should not have died. Thorkle swallowed hard. Molkyn and he knew that. Now what? Sir Maurice, Roger’s son, had written to the royal council in London demanding the entire business be investigated.

Thorkle stared at the door at one end of the barn. The darkness was waiting like the mist, ready to creep in. He looked at the two lanterns hanging on their hooks, then down at the corn stalks. The farm was quiet. He wished he had brought his dog but it would be close to the house, hungry for any scraps his wife threw out. He jumped suddenly. Wasn’t that a cockcrow? Why should that happen? Or was it his imagination? Didn’t the old ones say that if a cock crowed at night, it was a sign of impending violent death?

Thorkle heard a sound deep in the barn. Grasping the flailing stick, a two-piece pole held together by an eelskin hinge, he walked to the door of the barn. Across the long yard, strewn with mud and hay, he glimpsed the candlelight from his house. He heard his wife singing. She had so much to sing about! The cheery, deceitful wife, busy over her butter churn. He walked back into the barn, placed down the flail, scooped up some ears of corn and flung them into the air. The breeze would carry the chaff. The kernel would fall into the leather sheet provided. He’d done it absent-mindedly. It was getting too late to be working.

Thorkle was oppressed by the silence as well as his own fears. Parson Grimstone was right when he whispered so close to Thorkle in the shriving pew and heard his confession. Sin did come back to haunt you. It was so different when he and the rest quaffed ale at the Golden Fleece. They’d feasted in the special rooms provided for the jury before trooping importantly back across the cobbles into the Guildhall. It had been the height of summer: the sun strong and vibrant, the grass growing long and juicy, promising a rich bountiful harvest! Such memories decided Thorkle. He would go across to his house, satisfy his hunger on some bread and meat and go down to the Golden Fleece. He wanted company, life and laughter, a roaring fire, the reassurance of his friends and fellow men.

Thorkle walked to the far end of the barn and pulled across the doors, pushing the bolt back. He stared up at the roof. It was well thatched, no leakages. He would finish all the work tomorrow. He walked back and stopped. One of the lanterns at the other door had been extinguished. Thorkle’s throat went dry. A cloaked figure had stepped out of the darkness, a cowled hood over his head. What was he hiding? The flailing stick? Thorkle drew his knife.

‘What is it? Who are you?’

‘The winnower, separating the wheat from the chaff.’

Thorkle was sure he recognised the muffled voice.

‘What is it you want?’ Thorkle edged closer.

‘Justice!’

‘Justice?’ Thorkle squeaked.

He stood frozen to the spot. The figure walked quickly forward. Thorkle was confused. He tried to move but the assassin was faster. The flailing stick swept back and its clubbed edge caught Thorkle on the side of the head, sending him spinning to the ground. The pain was intense. Thorkle could already feel the hot blood. He stared up: the flailing rod fell time and time again, shattering Thorkle’s head till his brains spilled out.

Elizabeth, the wheelwright’s daughter, was frightened of the hobgoblins, sprites and all other hideous dark shapes who dwelled in the shadows but, not today. She dismissed such tales as fanciful, parents’ tricks to keep their children away from lonely glades and desolate paths. Elizabeth was in love, or so she thought. She had come into Melford to spend her birthday pennies but, of course, her real reason . . . well, she’d best not think of it. Perhaps Old Mother Crauford was right, the air might catch her dreams and waft them back to her father’s workshop or to Mother, busy in the kitchen.

Elizabeth paused at the end of the alleyway and glanced back. The market was still busy. Adela had tried to question her but that was part of the game, wasn’t it? You never told people your secret business. If a hidden admirer made his presence known then why should she share it with the likes of Adela? She’d only go into the Golden Fleece and tell everyone. More importantly, she wouldn’t have let Elizabeth go so quickly. She’d demand to know why, how and who. Elizabeth smiled, pushed back her long hair and smoothed down her kirtle. How could she tell someone like Adela? It would only provoke laughter. Elizabeth’s smile faded. She wouldn’t say how the message was delivered or, more importantly, who was responsible; that would only arouse more curiosity.

Elizabeth turned and ran on. She kept to the shadows. She knew which paths to use so no one would see or accost her. After all, when she returned home, she certainly didn’t want to be questioned. Elizabeth had grown up in Melford. She knew its every nook and cranny. She went by the church and glimpsed Master Burghesh busy digging a grave in the cemetery. She ran on. He wouldn’t have seen her. He was only interested in Parson Grimstone and that gloomy church. Elizabeth paused to catch her breath. The church spire and the tombstones made her feel slightly uncomfortable, evoking memories of poor Johanna, so barbarously killed near Brackham Mere. Johanna had always been more adventurous: she often went into the countryside, collecting flowers, or so she said. This was different. Two people knew where she was going: the messenger and the sender.

Elizabeth swung her hair and walked more purposefully. She crossed a ditch, slipped through a hedge but paused for a while. She must be early. She had learnt the time from the great capped hour candle in the marketplace so she should wait awhile. She stared up at the sky. To have an admirer, a secret admirer who’d paid to meet her! It was so good to be out under God’s sky, away from the busy marketplace and the close, rather oppressive atmosphere of her family, with Mother telling her to do this or that.

Elizabeth stared at the copse which stood on the brow of the gently sloping hill. Did adults know about love? All her father could talk about was Molkyn’s head and Thorkle’s brains. Elizabeth had never liked either man, Molkyn particularly - and that poor daughter of his, what was her name? Oh yes, Margaret, always so quiet and kept to herself. Ah well . . . Elizabeth walked through the grass. She glanced to her right: in the trees far away she thought she had seen a movement. Was someone there? Perhaps a shepherd or his boy? Elizabeth felt a shiver; the weather was certainly turning. She wished she’d brought a shawl or coverlet.