The Treason of the Ghosts

Chapter 1
     
     
    Parson
John Grimstone slowly climbed the steps into his pulpit and stared blearily
down the parish church of St Edmund ’s. The grey
dawn light filtered through the thick glass windows, even as the morning mist
curled beneath the door, moving up the church like a cloud of cold incense. The
nave, as usual for Sunday morning Mass, was packed with the burgesses,
villagers and peasants of the royal borough of Melford in Suffolk . The wealthy ones sat in their
benches and pews, specially bought, carved at the ends with individual
decorations and motifs. The not-so-well off, the cottagers
and peasants, sat behind them, whilst the real poor were herded at the back
around the baptismal font. The rest lurked in the shadows of the
transepts, sitting backs to the wall, their mud-caked boots stretched out before
them.
    Parson
John breathed in sharply, trying to ignore the heavy fumes of the previous
night’s wine. Today, only a few Sundays away from the beginning of Advent, he
would talk about death; that silent, sudden messenger which always made its presence felt, particularly in Melford with its history of
bloody murder and consequent retribution of public trial and execution. Parson
John plucked out the piece of parchment from inside his chasuble, placed it on
the small lectern on the back of a carved eagle which soared out in front of
the pulpit. He felt cold, the church was gloomy, and he recalled his own
nightmares: how those buried beneath the grey flagstones might push the stones
aside and stretch out skeletal, claw-like hands to drag him down amongst them —
a phantasm, but one which had plagued Parson Grimstone ever since he was a
child. His mother had recounted how the dead slept beneath this church, waiting
for the blast of Gabriel’s trumpet.
    Grimstone
cleared his throat. He must dispel this feeling of unease. A small, thickset
man, with a drinker’s red-cheeked face under a mop of snow-white hair, Parson
Grimstone considered himself a good priest. He stared down at the people
thronged before him. He had baptised their children, witnessed the exchange of vows
at marriages and, at least years ago, gone out at all hours of the day and
night to anoint their sick and dying.
    His
parishioners gazed back expectantly. This was one of the high points of the
week. Parson John, sober, was a good preacher. He always stirred their hearts,
making full use of the paintings on the walls or even the few stained-glass
windows St Edmund’s possessed. They were now in the autumn season, when
everything was dying; perhaps their priest would remember that. He might talk
about the horrors of Hell, the perils of Purgatory or, not so interesting, the
happiness of Heaven.
    Parson
Grimstone glanced down at his curate, Robert Bellen, a young, thin-faced man,
skin white as milk under a shock of black hair, slack mouth and rather vacant
eyes. A good, hardworking curate, yet Grimstone wondered if Bellen was in full
possession of his wits: he was a man with a horror of sexual sin. Perhaps
that’s why he was always tongue-tied in the presence of women. Father Robert,
hands on his lap, was staring up at one of the gargoyles, a demon with a
hideous face which surmounted one of the squat, rounded pillars which stretched
down the church on either side. Father Robert had such an interest in devils
and Hell! Parson John’s close friend, the former soldier Adam Burghesh, sat in
his own special chair to the left of the pulpit. He’d quietly murmured how the
young curate must have visited Hell, he knew so much about its horrors.
    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