Hugh Corbett 12 - The Treason of the Ghosts (28 page)

‘Who is it?’ she called weakly.

‘Sir Hugh Corbett.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Sorrel, for heaven’s sake, what is the matter?’

Sorrel closed her eyes and tried to think. The voice sounded familiar, but was it a trick?

‘To the right,’ she said, ‘in the hall, there’s a large gap in the wall. Step out into the open.’

‘Sorrel, what is this nonsense?’

‘Step out!’ she ordered.

She heard a curse. Sorrel went to the shutters.

‘Come to the window!’ she shouted through the crack. ‘Just stand there!’

She heard the click of high-heeled riding boots. It must be the clerk. She narrowed her eyes and pressed her face against the gap in the shutters. Sir Hugh Corbett stood there, cloak thrown back, hand on the hilt of his sword. Sorrel drew up the bar and opened the shutters.

‘In God’s name!’ Corbett exclaimed.

He ran back into the hall even as Sorrel drew the bolts, threw open the door and almost collapsed into his arms. Corbett picked her up, took her across and, shouldering aside the curtains round the bed, laid her down gently on the faded blue and gold cover. He filled a bowl of water from a jug, dabbing at the cuts on her hand and side of her neck. She started to shiver so he pulled the coverlet up around her.

‘Who attacked you?’

She grasped his hand. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she pleaded. ‘He could slip by you.’

Corbett reassured her. Following directions, he went to the buttery, lit the brazier and, cursing and coughing at the smoke, wheeled it into the solar. He then heated some wine. By the time he had finished, Sorrel was sitting on the edge of the bed.

‘You would not make a good housewife,’ she smiled weakly, ‘but I thank you, Sir Hugh.’ She gulped the wine.

‘The attacker?’ Corbett demanded.

‘I don’t know. I was here by myself. I knew someone had entered Beauchamp Place. I was in the bailey. I heard a sound I didn’t recognise and fled in the wrong direction.’

She told her story in halting phrases, looking wild-eyed at Corbett.

‘How do I know it wasn’t you?’

‘Don’t be foolish.’ Corbett pulled a stool across. ‘I have served you mulled wine, not threatened you with a garrotte string!’

He went across and barred the shutters.

‘Bolt the door behind me,’ he ordered.

Corbett went out into the hallway. He could detect, in the dust on the dais and at the entrance to the hall, the signs of a struggle and pursuit. He went out to the gatehouse and stared across the makeshift bridge. Corbett looked over his shoulder where he had hobbled his horse. The attacker must have been on foot. He’d heard Corbett’s approach, let him come in and slipped over the bridge. The long grass and trees would hide him. He could be back in Melford by now.

Corbett rejoined Sorrel in the solar. She had recovered, a small jar on the table before her. She was carefully rubbing some paste into her hand and the side of her neck.

‘The juice of moss,’ she explained, ‘mixed with cobwebs and dried milk. It’s a sovereign remedy.’

Corbett thought of his own old wound in his chest. It had healed but occasionally, as now, the muscles and bone twinged in pain.

‘You are most fortunate.’

‘I saw you,’ Sorrel smiled, ‘when I took refuge in the room above the chapel. I glimpsed a rider coming down Falmer Lane. If you hadn’t come . . . Did you find my crossbow?’

Corbett shrugged. ‘I wasn’t looking for it. Did you see your attacker? Did you recognise anything about him?’

She shook her head. ‘Are you sure he has gone?’ she demanded.

‘Oh, he has gone all right, like the silent assassin he is. I wonder why he came here in the first place.’

‘Why did you?’

‘Well, there are two reasons, Mistress, just as I believe there are two murderers in Melford. Oh yes, we have two assassins. The first is the Jesses killer or Mummer’s Man, the ravisher and slayer of women. As you told me, he has been hunting these lanes and trackways like a weasel. Sometimes he attacks tinkers’ girls, women like yourself, wandering from the towns seeking a new life, work, a crust of bread and a penny. They are easy victims.’ Corbett paused to choose his words. ‘Now and again, however,’ he continued, ‘this killer can’t control his lust. Somehow he entices young women from the town out into the countryside where he rapes and garrottes them.’

‘And the second killer?’ she asked tersely.

‘Oh, the second one is not interested in rape or murder, but, strangely enough, justice. Someone who believes that the wrong man was hanged: that Sir Roger Chapeleys was innocent, that his trial was a mockery, a mere mummery. So now he -’ Corbett paused, ‘or she - is waging a vengeful bloody campaign against those responsible. Tressilyian is attacked on his way into Melford. Deverell takes a crossbow bolt in his head. Thorkle’s brains are dashed out. Molkyn is decapitated. Strange, isn’t it,’ he mused, ‘how all three suffered wounds to the head? Now, two people,’ Corbett continued, ‘believe Chapeleys was innocent: Sir Roger, but he has now answered to God—’

‘And my man, Furrell.’

‘Yes, Sorrel, your man, Furrell.’

‘But he’s gone to God as well.’

‘Has he?’ Corbett asked. ‘Or is he still in hiding, moving like some silent vindictive ghost through the trees? Loosing arrows at Sir Louis, visiting Deverell at the dead of night, not to mention his old enemies, Molkyn and Thorkle. Come on,’ Corbett urged. ‘It’s possible. After all, who does leave you that money? Could it be Furrell, guilty at deserting you?’

‘No, he wouldn’t do that. I think the money comes from young Chapeleys, in gratitude for what we tried to do for his father. I tell you, clerk, Furrell’s dead.’ Sorrel tapped her chest. ‘Oh, yes, sometimes I have wondered myself but I know he’s dead, buried in some unmarked grave.’

‘For the sake of argument,’ Corbett moved on his stool, ‘let us say that’s true.’ He paused. ‘By the way, have you seen Blidscote? Ranulf is searching for him. Furrell didn’t like Blidscote either, did he?’

‘No one likes Blidscote!’ Sorrel snapped. ‘Especially the tinkers with their little boys. I tell you this, clerk: if Furrell had wanted to kill Blidscote, he could have done it years ago. Perhaps he should have done. Our bailiff’s a turd of a man.’ She moved her head and winced at the pain in her neck. ‘But Furrell’s dead.’

‘In which case, Sorrel, we come to you.’

She gaped at him.

‘Don’t act the innocent,’ Corbett murmured. ‘You are a strong and capable woman, Sorrel. You know the countryside around Melford. You can use a bow, you are strong enough to swing a sword or a flail. You can slip across the fields and no one will notice you. You hated Molkyn and the rest because they mocked Furrell, disparaged his evidence. Because of them Sir Roger was hanged and Furrell later went missing. Your pleasure at Deverell’s death was obvious.’ He watched her intently. ‘I wonder if one of them killed Furrell. Did he become such a nuisance that they murdered him? Perhaps his corpse lies buried under Molkyn’s mill? Or on Thorkle’s estates? You kept well clear of both of them, didn’t you?’

Sorrel’s head went down.

‘Look at the evidence,’ Corbett persisted. ‘When Sir Louis Tressilyian rode into Melford to meet me, he was attacked. Everyone, apart from you, was in the crypt of that church.’

‘Repton was not there.’

‘But why should Repton attack a royal justice?’ Corbett pointed to her weather-beaten boots. ‘You could slip them off, take a bow and quiver of arrows and try to kill Tressilyian.’

‘Why? I have no grievance against him.’

‘But he was responsible for Chapeleys’ hanging and, indirectly, Furrell’s disappearance. Perhaps you suspected him of murdering Furrell? Did your man persist in reminding Sir Louis of a miscarriage of justice?’

‘I saw where the ambush took place,’ Sorrel retorted. ‘If I had loosed an arrow at Sir Louis, I would not have missed. Perhaps the first but certainly not the second.’

Corbett stared at a point beyond her head. He hadn’t thought of that. Moreover, hadn’t Sir Louis talked of a man’s voice taunting him?

‘But you were roaming the meadows and woods that afternoon. You must have seen someone. This mysterious archer who, perhaps, was the same person who daubed messages on Sir Roger’s tombstone and elsewhere.’

Once again, Corbett privately wondered about the true whereabouts of Furrell the poacher.

‘I wasn’t roaming anywhere, clerk. I went to Melford to watch you arrive. I visited Deverell.’ She bit her lip.

‘I’ll come to him by and by,’ Corbett declared.

‘I then went and waited on the outskirts,’ Sorrel continued. ‘I dogged your footsteps from the moment you left the crypt and, before you ask, I never met any mysterious archer, though, I concede, Sir Louis was attacked.’

‘So you visited Deverell? You knew about the porch, the front door and the Judas squint?’

‘Yes I did.’

‘And you were there when I examined the corpse?’

‘So was half of Melford. It doesn’t make me the murderer. Are you going to say I killed Thorkle and Molkyn?’

‘It’s possible,’ Corbett replied. ‘You could have taken both men by surprise. One blow would be enough.’

‘But I didn’t,’ Sorrel protested. She got to her feet. ‘And why do you accuse me?’

‘As I said, two assassins are at work in Melford. Now we come to the attack on you today. Perhaps the Mummer’s Man resents your interference in his bloody affray and came to silence you.’

‘I can’t prove my innocence.’ Sorrel walked to the window and pulled back the shutters, eager to breathe fresh air. ‘I have never killed anyone, master clerk.’

‘Haven’t you, Sorrel? Never lifted your hand in violence?’

She stood by the window, shoulders shaking.

‘Isn’t that why you fled Norwich?’ Corbett continued remorselessly. ‘Perhaps a customer became too rough? Why all the secrecy, the change of name?’

‘Yes, in self-defence, I killed a man.’ Sorrel turned and leant against the sill. ‘He wanted to hurt me, cut at my body, watch me squeal with pain. He was drunk. In the struggle I took his knife and plunged it into his heart. I don’t know who he was or where he came from: it was in some filth-strewn alleyway. I was just a whore fumbling with a customer. I left Norwich within an hour of his death and never returned. Why, master clerk, are you going to arrest me?’

Corbett shook his head. ‘Some men bring about their own death. I am more concerned with the present.’

‘And so am I, clerk! I did not murder anyone. Oh yes, the thought crossed my mind on a number of occasions. But, take Sir Louis Tressilyian, for example. Do you really think, master clerk, I would have missed? And why should I kill Deverell, Thorkle or Molkyn?’ She walked back and stood over him. ‘I prayed for your day. I would have loved to have seen such men appear at the bar of justice and be questioned, like you are now questioning me.’

Corbett stared closely at the woman. He always prided himself on his logic and his reason but, as Maeve often advised: ‘Follow your heart, Hugh: truth has its own logic.’

‘Very well.’ Corbett grasped her hand. He folded back the fingers and examined the white linen cloth wrapped round the wound. ‘I believe you, Sorrel. So I must still ask myself, why should the Mummer’s Man - and I think it was he - come out to Beauchamp Place to murder you?’

‘And the answer?’

Corbett chewed the corner of his lip. ‘When we first met, you said you had much to say about Melford but you’d let me draw my own conclusions. Perhaps the killer realises this. Perhaps he suspects that you know more than you do and wants to silence you once and for all.’ Corbett snapped his fingers. ‘Or something else.’ Corbett got to his feet. ‘Perhaps Furrell told you something? Shared knowledge which brought about his own mysterious disappearance?’

Sorrel shook her head. ‘If I could, I’d recall it.’

‘No,’ Corbett urged. ‘I spoke to one of the other jurors. He met Molkyn in his cups. Our good miller confessed that Furrell had declared how the truth about the killer was plain as a picture. Do you know what he meant by that?’

‘Furrell said many things,’ she answered softly. ‘But not that. Or, if he did, I never heard it. I want to show you something, clerk.’

She went across and took down the piece of tapestry and described the crude map she had drawn.

‘I didn’t tell you the full truth,’ she explained. ‘But this is Melford. Here is Falmer Lane.’ She pointed to the roughly etched map. ‘Devil’s Oak. These crosses mark the places Furrell told me to stay away from.’

Corbett studied the painting. The map was very crude. He wouldn’t have understood it if she hadn’t explained each symbol. He shook his head.

‘I don’t think Furrell was talking about any map!’

He walked over to the other paintings and began to study them carefully. Sorrel joined him.

‘I can see nothing,’ Corbett shook his head, ‘nothing at all. Where else would there be paintings, Sorrel?’

‘In a church, though Furrell rarely went there. The Golden Fleece, Chapeleys’ manor, the Guildhall, Sir Louis Tressilyian?’ Sorrel spread her hands. ‘Furrell roamed all over the countryside. He even carried out errands for Sir Roger, travelling as far as Ipswich and the coastal towns.’

Corbett stared round the room.

‘And Furrell had no Book of Hours, a psalter?’

‘No.’ Sorrel laughed abruptly. ‘He knew his letters like I do but he was no scholar.’

Corbett walked to the door. ‘Let’s go back to the chapel,’ he demanded. ‘I want to re-examine that skeleton.’

Sorrel shrugged and took him across the yard. Corbett paused to see that his horse was well. By the time he’d climbed the steps, Sorrel had removed the bricks and pulled the skeleton out.

‘What are you looking for?’ she asked.

Corbett picked up the skull, feeling its texture.

‘I have a friend,’ he said, ‘a priest, who is also a subtle physician at the great hospital of St Bartholomew in Smithfield in London. He often talks to me about the property of things.’