The Treason of the Ghosts

woman retreat into the mist. When I really start snooping, he
thought, I’ll visit her. It’s always the old who know the gossip.
    ‘Sir
Hugh?’
    ‘I
am sorry,’ Corbett apologised. ‘Ranulf, Chanson, we’ll meet at the Golden
Fleece and thaw the cold from our bones.’
    He
turned his horse and followed Tressilyian and Chapeleys down the lane and on to
the high road. The day was now drawing to a close. The market stalls on either
side of the thoroughfare were being taken down. Corbett gazed about. Despite
Old Mother Crauford’s lamentations, Melford appeared to be a prosperous place:
well-built houses of stone and timber, freshly washed plaster, windows full of
glass. The townspeople were no different from any others in these thriving market
centres. They reached the end of the high road and entered the town square,
fronted by shops, merchant houses with their high timbered eaves and sloping
slate roofs. The square even boasted a grandiose guildhall with steps up to a
columned entrance as well as a covered wool market where the merchants sold
their produce.
    ‘Why
isn’t the church here?’ Corbett asked.
    ‘Melford’s
grown,’ Sir Maurice called back over his shoulder. ‘It began round the old
church but all things change.’
    Aye
they do, Corbett thought, eyeing the two manor lords. Both Chapeleys and
Tressilyian were well dressed, in robes of pure wool, edged with squirrel fur,
Spanish riding boots, gilt spurs, whilst the saddles and harnesses of their
horses were of the best stitched leather, gleaming and polished. Corbett
noticed the rings on the men’s fingers and the velvet-tipped sword scabbards.
Both knights had taken these off and slipped them over the saddle horns.
Corbett had heard the King talk of the growing wealth of these country knights,
turning their fields of corn and barley into pasture for sheep, whose wool was
in sharp demand by the looms of the Low Countries. Melford boasted such wealth.
The marketplace was properly cobbled, with a pavement at one end. The stocks
and pillories were full of malefactors: vagrants, drunken youths who spent the
days in the taverns and whose raucous voices had threatened the day’s trading.
Market beadles swaggered amongst the stalls. They carried scales and specially
carved knives so as to weigh and test different produce. Outside one tavern the
ale-conners, or ale-tasters, had broached a barrel and were busy sampling its
contents to see if the taverner was selling lighter ale at the highest prices.
    ‘There’s
your hostelry!’ Sir Maurice called out, gesturing across to the Golden Fleece
which stood on the corner of an alleyway. A three-storeyed building,
black-timbered, its plaster washed a light pink, the tavern had windows of
mullioned glass that gleamed in the light of the lanterns slung on hooks along
the beam spanning the ground floor. ‘Taverner Alliot serves you well?’
    ‘He
keeps a fine house,’ Corbett replied. ‘Matthew Alliot lives high on the hog.’
    ‘Aye,
he does that,’ Chapeleys replied sourly.
    ‘He
was a witness at your father’s trial, wasn’t he?’
    Corbett
edged his horse forward. They were now on the edge of the square. Chapeleys
reined in, still staring back at the tavern. Corbett noticed how the noise and
bustle of the market, the cries of traders had faded as they entered the
square. Oh, there was the usual bustle and shouting, the cries of chapmen,
‘What do you lack? What do you lack?’ Dogs and children darted in and out.
Apprentices, still sharp-eyed for customers, swaggered about but Corbett felt
as if many of them were watching. Was it the presence of a King’s clerk and a
royal judge?
    ‘Sir
Hugh?’ Tressilyian leant over and gently touched Corbett on the shoulder. ‘I
can read your thoughts, master clerk, and, perhaps answer them. The townspeople
realise you are here because of the murders. It’s trade as usual but people are
worried.’
    ‘And
can you read Sir Maurice’s mind?’ Corbett replied. ‘It’s true, isn’t it?
Taverner Alliot was a witness against your father?’
    ‘Yes,
yes, he was.’ Chapeleys broke free from his reverie. ‘On the night Goodwoman
Walmer was murdered, my father went to the Golden Fleece to slake his thirst.
According to Alliot, my father said he was going to the goodwoman’s cottage.’
    ‘But
that’s not a lie, is it?’ Corbett asked.
    He
swore as a dog came yapping at his horse’s hoofs.
    ‘No
it’s not.’ Sir Maurice gathered the reins in his