The Treason of the Ghosts

behind him shattered the brooding silence. They crossed the
wooden bridge over the river Swaile, through the wicket gate which would lead
them down to the millpond. The gorse and undergrowth on either side were
drenched with rain. Parson Grimstone could see little because of the mist.
Peterkin stopped and pointed with his finger.
    ‘Yes,
yes.’ The parson followed his direction. ‘That’s Molkyn’s mill.’ He stared up
at the great canvas arms which stretched, like those of a monster, up through
the shifting greyness.
    ‘Come!’
Peterkin mumbled.
    They
went up a small hill, then down the other side to the reed-ringed millpond.
Again Peterkin pointed. The mist shifted.
    Parson
John gaped in disbelief. Now he could see it, as the others could behind him. A
woman screamed. Molkyn’s wife pushed her way forward. Repton the reeve held her
fast. Parson John just stared. Peterkin’s wits were not wandering. Molkyn’s
head had been severed clean from his shoulders, placed on a wooden tray and
sent drifting across the millpond.
     
    Four
nights later, Thorkle, one of Melford’s leading farmers, stood inside his
threshing barn. He stared down at the sheaves of wheat, the last from that
year’s harvest. Both doors of the winnowing barn were open. A cold breeze
seeped through; Thorkle wanted it so. He wiped the sweat from his brow. He
wished this was done.
    Darkness
was falling, a sure sign of approaching winter. Soon it would be All-Hallows
Eve. The inhabitants of Melford would be lighting the fires to keep the souls
of the prowling dead at bay. Thorkle repressed a shiver. Melford was becoming a
place of the dead. He and the others had known little peace since Lord Roger
Chapeleys had been hanged on the great gibbet at the crossroads outside the
town. So many dreadful murders! First, the Jesses killer. Those young women, including Goodwoman Walmer, raped and cruelly garrotted. Sir
Roger had been blamed and paid with his life: that should have been the end of
it.
    Now,
five years later, another young woman had been killed. And
what about Molkyn? His head taken clean off his
shoulders and sent floating on that wooden tray? Thorkle and others, at
their priest’s urging, had climbed the steps and entered the mill where an even
more grisly sight awaited: Molkyn’s decapitated corpse, sitting in a chair,
soaked in his own blood and gore. Yet, like some macabre joke, the killer had
placed a half-filled tankard of ale in the dead man’s cold, white fingers. What
was happening?
    Chapeleys
should not have died. Thorkle swallowed hard. Molkyn and he knew that. Now
what? Sir Maurice, Roger’s son, had written to the royal council in London demanding the
entire business be investigated.
    Thorkle
stared at the door at one end of the barn. The darkness was waiting like the
mist, ready to creep in. He looked at the two lanterns hanging on their hooks,
then down at the corn stalks. The farm was quiet. He wished he had brought his
dog but it would be close to the house, hungry for any scraps his wife threw
out. He jumped suddenly. Wasn’t that a cockcrow? Why should that happen? Or was
it his imagination? Didn’t the old ones say that if a cock crowed at night, it
was a sign of impending violent death?
    Thorkle
heard a sound deep in the barn. Grasping the flailing stick, a two-piece pole
held together by an eelskin hinge, he walked to the door of the barn. Across
the long yard, strewn with mud and hay, he glimpsed the candlelight from his
house. He heard his wife singing. She had so much to sing about! The cheery, deceitful wife, busy over her butter churn. He
walked back into the barn, placed down the flail, scooped up some ears of corn
and flung them into the air. The breeze would carry the chaff. The kernel would
fall into the leather sheet provided. He’d done it absent-mindedly. It was
getting too late to be working.
    Thorkle
was oppressed by the silence as well as his own fears. Parson Grimstone was
right when he whispered so close to Thorkle in the shriving pew and heard his
confession. Sin did come back to haunt you. It was so different when he and the
rest quaffed ale at the Golden Fleece. They’d feasted in the special rooms
provided for the jury before trooping importantly back across the cobbles into
the Guildhall. It had been the height of summer: the sun strong and vibrant,
the grass growing long and juicy, promising a rich bountiful harvest! Such
memories decided Thorkle. He would go across to his house,