The Treason of the Ghosts

the bell!’
    Ranulf
obeyed. Corbett went and took the sanctuary chair and placed it in front of the
rood screen. Parson Grimstone came waddling in, all
confused. Corbett told Repton the reeve, when he arrived, to take him back to
the priest’s house and lock him in. Within a short while the nave was packed
with people hastening up from the marketplace. Corbett ordered the Book of the
Dead to be brought. He told them what he was going to do and quelled the
clamour.
    ‘Is
it true?’ Repton shouted. ‘Master Burghesh is under arrest? He
and Sir Louis Tressilyian?’
    ‘Yes,’
Corbett replied. ‘But I have to discover some new evidence.’ He raised his
voice and shouted above the murmur. ‘Certain graves have to be reopened,
coffins and corpses removed.’ He paused for the shouting to die down. ‘We will
discover something evil,’ he continued. ‘I ask you to trust me.’
    ‘Well,
we had best do as you say,’ Repton the reeve replied sardonically. He let his
hand drop over his groin. ‘We don’t want to upset our royal clerk, do we?’
    Corbett
led a party of men out into the graveyard. He discovered when Furrell was last
seen and compared dates in the Book of the Dead. One grave was opened, its
mouldering coffin removed and wrapped in a sheet. Nothing else was found. The
second time, however, Repton, standing in the grave, said he could feel
something beneath his feet.
    ‘It’s
not hard soil either,’ he shouted.
    A short while later a grisly, decayed cadaver was brought gently out and
laid on the wet grass. The flesh had shrivelled, only some hair remained.
Corbett put his gloves on, turned the head over and pointed to the crack at the
back of the skull.
    ‘It’s
Furrell, all right,’ Repton murmured. ‘God have mercy on him! I recognise his
belt and boots.’
    A
woman screamed and Sorrel, hair flying, came running across the graveyard. She
took one look at the corpse and, if Corbett hadn’t caught her, she would have
collapsed to the ground. He let her kneel there, sobbing, face in her hands,
and moved to other graves. The day grew on. Sometimes they found nothing but,
quite regularly, other unaccounted corpses were unearthed: grisly cadavers,
really nothing more than skeletons.
    ‘What
is this?’ Repton demanded.
    ‘Burghesh
would kill,’ Corbett replied, ‘and bring the corpses in at night. He dug the
graves for a funeral Mass either early in the morning or late in the evening.
His victim was then buried and sealed in her grave before the consequent
funeral. It’s all the evidence I need.’
    By
now a considerable crowd had gathered. The news had spread and Corbett became
concerned. The mood of the onlookers turned ugly. Sticks and stones were thrown
across the cemetery wall, a threatening group clustered under the lych-gate.
Ranulf armed himself, as did Chanson. Corbett swore in Repton and others as
members of his comitatus, then went down to the
lych-gate and confronted the mob.
    ‘Will
justice be done?’
    Corbett
recognised the burgess who had bored him last night at the Guildhall. Corbett
held up his warrant so all could see the seal.
    ‘I
am the King’s Commissioner!’ he shouted. ‘I have the authority to hear cases
and pass sentence: that will be done!’
    ‘What
about a jury?’ the burgess asked.
    ‘There
is no need for a jury,’ Corbett retorted. ‘Burghesh threatened a King’s clerk
carrying the royal warrant: that’s treason. However,’ Corbett admitted
ruefully, ‘it would be better if Burghesh confessed.’
    The
prisoner was brought up from the crypt. He glimpsed the mob and heard their
threatening cries. Corbett had him held beneath a yew tree, then brought across
the sheets of leather containing Furrell’s remains and those of the others.
Burghesh stared at them and glanced away.
    ‘Will
you confess?’ Corbett demanded.
    Burghesh
breathed in noisily. ‘What can I say?’ he murmured, and smiled slyly at
Corbett. ‘It’s true what you said, the treason of the ghosts! The dead betrayed
me.’
    ‘The
dead want you,’ Corbett retorted. ‘You have a reckoning to make. You and Parson Grimstone.’
    ‘Oh,
is that the way this will go?’ Burghesh asked.
    ‘He
was your accomplice,’ Corbett insisted.
    ‘No,
he wasn’t. He’s just weak.’
    ‘Is
that a confession?’ Corbett asked.
    ‘No,
it’s not, master clerk. If you want one then you shall have it, but only after
I have talked to Parson Grimstone.’
    Corbett
agreed. Ranulf and Chanson took