The Treason of the Ghosts

thought it was grinning at him like some figure of death,
ready to pounce. He waited while Parson Grimstone loosened the lid of the
coffin which lay on trestles in the centre of the room. The priest took the lid
off and removed the purple cloth beneath. Corbett stared down at the waxen face
of the corpse within. Those who had dressed the young woman for burial had done
their best. Corbett moved the head with one finger. He stared at the mottled
bruises which ringed her throat like some grisly necklace.
    ‘It
looks like a garrotte,’ he remarked. ‘Where was she found?’
    ‘Near Devil’s Oak. Her body was tucked away beneath
a hedge. Two boys collecting firewood found it and raised the alarm.’
    Corbett
stared at the priest. Parson Grimstone was undoubtedly nervous — his eyes puffy
with lack of sleep, hands trembling. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved and his
black gown was marked with food stains. The parson placed the lid back on the
coffin and walked over to the stone chair built into the wall. He sat down next
to his friend Adam Burghesh and put his face in his hands.
    ‘You
are very upset.’
    Sir
Hugh Corbett went to stand over him. The priest looked up and swallowed quickly.
He was frightened, not just by the terrible murders which had occurred but by
the presence of this royal emissary, with his black hair tied in a queue behind
him, the long thoughtful face tense and watchful. Corbett would have been
called swarthy except for the peculiar strikingness of his high cheekbones and
those brooding dark eyes which never seemed to blink. They stared and searched
as if eager to remember every detail. Parson Grimstone didn’t like the look of
the King’s principal clerk of the Secret Seal. Sir Hugh was dressed in a dark
grey military cloak fastened at the neck; a brown leather sleeveless jerkin
beneath, leggings of the same colour, pushed into black, mud-spattered riding
boots on which the spurs still clinked.
    Corbett
took his gauntlets off and thrust them into his sword belt. Yes, I’m frightened
of you, Grimstone thought. Even more so of his companion — what was his name?
Ah yes, Ranulf-atte-Newgate: tall, red-haired, dressed like his master. A fighting man despite his status as a clerk
in the Chancery of the Green Wax. Burghesh had whispered that he was
Corbett’s bullyboy. Grimstone glanced quickly at Ranulf’s white, clean-shaven
face, those lazy, heavy-lidded green eyes. He reminded Grimstone of a feral cat
which stalked the graveyard. A brooding man, Ranulf stood with his back to the
door, watching his master, who, in turn, seemed fascinated by this rib-vaulted
crypt.
    ‘A strange place to gather.’ Burghesh broke
the silence. ‘Couldn’t we have met elsewhere?’
    ‘It’s
cold,’ Robert Bellen complained.
    The
curate sat hunched in one of the chairs almost obscured by the great central
pillar which supported the roof.
    ‘The
place reeks of death.’ Walter Blidscote, the plump, red-faced, balding bailiff
of Melford shook his head so vigorously his jowls quivered: his numerous chins
pressed down against the military cloak which swaddled him like a blanket does
a baby.
    ‘A good place for justice.’ The young,
blond-haired Sir Maurice spoke up. He had thrown his cloak on to the ground and
sat slightly forward, tapping his gloves against his knee. He shuffled his feet
impatiently as if he expected the royal emissary to hold court there, and then
declare his dead father innocent.
    ‘Who
built it?’ Corbett asked. He walked round the circularshaped crypt, stooping to
look into the coffin ledges. ‘I have never seen the like of this.’
    ‘There
used to be an old Saxon church here,’ Grimstone
explained. ‘It was pulled down in the reign of the second Henry. This used to
be a burial place. They built the present church over it. The coffins are those
of the previous parsons though the practice of burying them here has now
stopped.’ He laughed abruptly. ‘I will join the rest out in the cemetery.’
    ‘Why
did you ask to meet here?’ Burghesh demanded. ‘You can see Parson Grimstone is
not well.’
    ‘For two reasons.’ Corbett sat down on a chair. He
moved an oil lamp on the ledge behind him and placed his gloves beside it. ‘As
you know, I am lodged at the Golden Fleece where, I suspect, the walls have
ears.’ He smiled with his lips though his eyes remained hard. ‘Secondly, I
wanted to view the corpse. By the way, why is that placed here and not in