The Treason of the Ghosts

executed?
    ‘Sir
Hugh!’
    Corbett sprang to his feet at the voice calling from
the top of the stairs.
    ‘Master clerk!’
    Corbett hurried to the door. Chapeleys, wide-eyed,
was halfway down the steps.
    ‘Sir Hugh, you had best come and see this.’
    Corbett
and Ranulf, followed by the rest, left the crypt and went up into the church,
through the coffin door and out across the cemetery. Daylight was fading. The
sky was sullen and overcast. The first tendrils of the evening mist were
curling about the gnarled yew trees, creating a shifting haze around the
crosses and tombs. The silence was shattered by the raucous cawing of rooks in
the bare-branched trees. If the crypt was a dismal place, the cemetery was no
better. Corbett hid his annoyance at being thus summoned, pulling his cloak
more firmly about him. Chapeleys led them along a beaten trackway, down into a
small dell in the far corner of the graveyard.
    ‘We
call this “Strange Hollow“,’ Grimstone explained breathlessly, coming up beside
Corbett. ‘It’s where we bury the bodies,’ he lowered his voice, ‘of executed
felons.’
    Chapeleys
was striding ahead. He stopped at a burial mound. Corbett followed and stared
at the weathered lettering on a stone plinth. It gave Sir Roger Chapeleys’
name, the dates of his birth and death, with the invocation ‘Jesu Miserere’ carved
beneath.
    ‘What’s
wrong?’ Corbett asked, quickly crossing himself as a mark of respect.
    Chapeleys,
standing on the other side, beckoned him round. Corbett quickly looked. Someone
had scrawled the word ‘REMEMBER’. He touched the still-wet liquid, rubbing it
between his fingers.
    ‘It’s
blood,’ he declared. ‘And done quite recently.’
    ‘Whose blood?’ Grimstone asked.
    ‘I
don’t know.’ Corbett bent down and wiped his fingers on the wet grass.
    ‘I’ll
have it cleaned up. Perhaps it’s some game.’
    ‘It’s
no game,’ Chapeleys retorted. He then went across and clasped the justice’s
hand, as if they were close acquaintances, the best of friends.
    Corbett
was intrigued and Tressilyian caught his look of puzzlement.
    ‘There’s
no bad blood between us, clerk. Sir Maurice knows I simply carried out my
duty.’ He spread his hands. ‘Over the years I have done my best for the lad.’
His harsh, severe face broke into a grin. ‘Now he repays me by falling in love
with my daughter.’
    Corbett
nodded and stared across the cemetery. He noticed the building work, sections
of cut stone, a mound of masonry peeping out from
beneath a leather awning.
    ‘What’s
that?’ he asked.
    ‘Oh,
it’s my work,’ Burghesh replied. ‘Sir Hugh, I may be a soldier but, in the wild
and wanton days of my youth, I became apprenticed to a stonemason. Indeed, I
signed my articles as a craftsman. Then the King’s wars came.’ He shrugged.
‘Fighting and drinking seemed more glorious than cutting stone. I do a lot of
work round here. I am building a new graveyard cross for Parson Grimstone.’
    ‘It’s
quite a busy place.’ The parson spoke up. ‘Perhaps not on a cold October day
but we have small markets and fairs as well as our ale-tasting ceremonies. It’s
a place where the parish like to meet.’
    Corbett
agreed absent-mindedly. He stared up at the soaring hill tower, its red slate
roof and pebble-dashed sides.
    ‘A
well-kept church, Parson Grimstone,’ he remarked.
    ‘ Aye, and my father loved it,’ Sir Maurice said. ‘It’s a
pity, Parson Grimstone.’ The young knight bit his lip.
    ‘What’s
a pity?’ Corbett asked.
    ‘My
father had a triptych specially done and placed in a side chapel.’
    ‘And
why is that a pity?’
    Parson
Grimstone sighed noisily. ‘The triptych was kept on a wall. After Sir Roger was
executed, someone took it down and burnt it, here in the graveyard.’ The parson
pushed his hands up his sleeves. ‘I’m freezing cold, Sir Hugh. Are you finished
here?’
    ‘For
the moment,’ the clerk murmured. ‘The lych-gate is on the far side, yes?’
    And,
not waiting for an answer, Corbett, lost in his own thoughts, walked away. He
stopped and turned.
    ‘I
thank you for coming. Sir Louis, I am sorry about the attack. You said it was
in Falmer Lane ,
the same place where poor Elizabeth was found? I wonder if we could ride back there? ’
    ‘I’ll
also come,’ Sir Maurice offered.
    Corbett
and Ranulf said goodbye to the rest and walked back to the lych-gate where Sir
Hugh’s groom, Chanson, shrouded in his cloak, held