The Treason of the Ghosts

commissioners here ready to steal our corn but
never a royal clerk. We are greatly honoured! We will be the talk of the
parish. Come on now!’
    Ursula
led him by the elbow across to the chair at the far end of the table. She
wouldn’t take no for an answer but served him freshly baked bread, pots of
butter and honey and a pewter tankard of ale from a barrel in the far corner.
    Her
son Ralph returned. Corbett reckoned he must be about twenty summers old and
had apparently taken over the running of the mill. He sat surly and ungracious
on the bench, moodily sipping at the drink his mother poured. Thorkle’s widow
and Margaret continued to slice the vegetables. Ursula sat on the bench to
Corbett’s left.
    ‘You’ve
come to talk about Molkyn?’
    Corbett
chewed the bread carefully. He felt this woman was quietly mocking him.
    ‘I
haven’t really come about Molkyn. More his killer. I’ve passed the scaffold at the crossroads. Before I leave I want to see his
murderer dangle there.’
    ‘And my husband’s?’
    ‘Yes, Mistress. I think the killer of both your husbands is one and
the same!’
    ‘What
makes you say that?’ Ursula demanded.
    ‘Here
we have,’ Corbett now glanced at her, ‘two noble burgesses in the town of Melford : a prosperous
miller and an equally prosperous yeoman farmer. Someone cut Molkyn’s head off,
put it on a tray and sent it floating across the mere. The same killer, later
in the week, went into Thorkle’s threshing shed, took a flail and beat your
husband’s brains out.’
    ‘An evil man.’ Lucy’s face had a stubborn look on it.
    ‘Who
said it was a man?’ Corbett demanded. ‘In Wales I have seen a woman take a
soldier’s head with a shearing knife.’
    Lucy
looked at the one she was holding and put it down on the table.
    ‘And
a flail can be used by anyone.’ Corbett shrugged. ‘A powerful
weapon. Now,’ he continued, ‘why should someone want to kill your
husbands? They belonged to the same parish, their wives are related but they’ve
got more in common than that, haven’t they? Molkyn was a foreman, and Thorkle
his deputy, of the jury which convicted Sir Roger Chapeleys of horrid murders.
Because of their verdict, one of the King’s knights was executed on the common
gallows.’
    ‘And rightly so.’ Ralph slammed his tankard down. ‘I was in my
fifteenth year. I attended the trial. Sir Roger was a drunkard and a lecher. He
had the blood of those young women on his hands.’
    ‘You
are sure of that?’ Corbett asked.
    ‘We
were all sure of it,’ Ursula coolly replied. She glanced quickly at Lucy.
‘Molkyn and Thorkle often discussed it. Never once had they any doubts about
his guilt.’
    ‘Now, there’s two brave men,’ Corbett retorted. ‘They see a
knight hang—’
    ‘What
difference if he was a knight?’ Ralph interrupted. ‘That’s what knights do,
isn’t it, kill? Just because they are lords of the soil doesn’t make them
special.’
    ‘No,
it doesn’t,’ Corbett agreed. ‘But Chapeleys was a King’s knight. He’d sworn an
oath to uphold the law and he died protesting his innocence. Strange
that your father and Thorkle never wavered in their decision.’
    ‘The
evidence was there.’ Lucy picked up the paring knife.
    Corbett
noticed how the young woman Margaret hardly looked at him but kept her pallid
face averted as if she found his presence distasteful.
    ‘What
evidence?’ Corbett insisted. ‘Why were they so convinced Sir Roger was a
murderer?’
    ‘He
visited Widow Walmer on the night she died. He was seen by Deverell the
carpenter, fleeing along Gully
Lane . His house was searched, a bracelet from one
of the girls was found amongst his possessions. He was well known for his
lecherous ways.’
    ‘With whom?’ Corbett asked.
    ‘Widow Walmer for one.’
    ‘But the women in the town?’ Corbett
queried. ‘Did any come forward and claim he had accosted them?’
    ‘He
was well known amongst the chambermaids and slatterns of his manor.’
    ‘True,’
Corbett agreed, ‘but that’s not what I asked you. Why should a manor lord, with
maids of his own to chase, attack, ravish and slay young women from the town?’
    ‘Perhaps
it was the slaying he liked?’ Ralph declared sourly.
    ‘Then why the widow woman? Sir Roger had
declared in the taproom of the Golden Fleece how he was going down to see
Mistress Walmer. Why should he proclaim that he was going to slay someone? What
I’m saying,’ Corbett continued, ‘is that the