The Treason of the Ghosts

the
town and bring back Master Blidscote and the other bailiffs. Now they would see
it lying there and pull it out ever so carefully.’
    ‘And?’ Sir Maurice asked, intrigued by this dark-faced,
mysterious clerk.
    ‘The
man who raped young Elizabeth wouldn’t be so tender, pie was brutal. He attacked her, ravished her, then wrung her neck with a garrotte string. Even a man like
Blidscote, despite all the ale he had drunk, would have seen signs of a violent
attack here at Devil’s Oak.’ He paused. ‘I also expected to find bits of hair,
clothing, even some sign of the corpse being pushed under the hedge. Again,
Blidscote would have noticed that. But the killer seems to have acted as
tenderly as a mother with her babe.’
    ‘You
don’t believe that?’ Tressilyian taunted.
    ‘No,
I don’t.’
    Corbett stared across the field and his heart
skipped a beat. Was that a figure of a woman — he was sure of it — flitting
through the copse of trees on the brow of the hill?
    ‘Sir
Hugh, you were talking about the killer...?’
    ‘I
don’t think he was tender,’ Corbett replied, still watching the spot through
the gap in the hedgerow. ‘I think he brought Elizabeth ’s corpse here in a sheet and rolled
it under.’ He gathered the reins and swung himself up into the saddle. ‘Call
the killer tender? No, no, sirs, we are dealing with a ravenous wolf!’



Chapter 5
     
     
    They
rode down the hill; the hedgerows and fields gave way to a small wood on either
side. They stopped at the spot where Sir Louis had been ambushed. The signs
were still there: the sapling which the justice had pushed off the road had
apparently been cut down by an axe. Tressilyian found an arrow in the far ditch
with its barn snapped off. The gravel on the trackway had been disturbed by the
horse’s skittering, whilst Corbett could still see the tangle of undergrowth
where Sir Louis had charged his assailant. The clerk drew his sword to clear
away the briars and brambles and followed the same path.
    ‘I
am sure he stood there,’ Sir Louis called out.
    Corbett
followed his direction: a thick ash tree where the undergrowth wasn’t so dense.
He walked across and crouched down. No grass and the mud was soft from the previous day’s rain. Corbett could distinguish the prints of Sir
Louis’s boot but then noticed the imprint of bare toes and a heel.
    ‘That’s strange!’ he called back. ‘Sir Louis,
your assailant was bare-footed!’
    ‘Whatever,
he was a will-o’-the-wisp!’ the justice replied.
    Corbett
looked up: a narrow trackway curved through the woods, muddy and slippery. He
went back and looked at the arrow and recalled his days in the King’s armies in Wales .
How the Welsh, with their long bows, used to fight bare-footed to keep a firmer
grip on the soil.
    ‘What
does it all mean, Corbett?’ Tressilyian asked.
    ‘I
wish I knew.’ The clerk looked at the faint tendrils of mist curling amongst
the trees. ‘But I’ve kept you long enough with my searches.’
    ‘What
on earth is that?’
    Tressilyian
walked to the edge of the ditch. Corbett followed. A woman, cloaked and hooded,
stood beneath the branches of an outstretched tree. He could make out her pale
face, hair peeping from beneath a shabby hood.
    ‘Come
forward!’ Corbett ordered. He gripped his sword tighter.
    The
woman stayed still.
    ‘Come
forward! We mean you no harm!’
    The
woman seemed hesitant. Chapeleys grasped his horse’s reins and swung himself up
in the saddle. The woman hesitated and walked forward: long, purposeful
strides, sure-footed. She crossed the ditch and stood wiping the burrs from her
patched, woollen gown; the linen undergarment hung shabby and frayed above
battered leather boots. She wore a half-cloak, a coarse linen shawl beneath a
broad and weather-beaten face — her nose slightly crooked, a pleasant, full
mouth and wide, watchful eyes. Her black hair was streaked with grey at the
front.
    ‘Who
are you?’ Corbett asked.
    ‘I am
Sorrel.’
    ‘Sorrel?’ Corbett laughed. ‘That’s the name of a herb.’
    ‘That’s
what Furrell called me.’
    Corbett
heard an exclamation from Chapeleys.
    ‘Of
course, you are Furrell the poacher’s woman!’
    ‘I
was Furrell the countryman’s woman!’ she replied, deftly moving her hair from
her face.
    ‘What
are you doing wandering the woods?’ Corbett demanded. ‘Unarmed,
unaccompanied?’
    ‘I
am not unarmed, clerk. Oh yes, I know who you are.’ She smiled. ‘I have