The Treason of the Ghosts

fortress,
shutters and doors all closed, locked and barred. It was the same with the
kitchen below. Deverell had even replaced the door and built a Judas squint in
the wall. He never told her the reason why. Now he refused to come to bed but
sat in his great high-backed chair in front of the fire, drinking and brooding.
If anyone knocked on the door, he went to the Judas squint and peered through
to see who was standing in the porch.
    The
carpenter’s wife stirred. Wasn’t that a tapping on the door? At
this hour? She threw the blankets back and sat up. Yes, someone was
tapping. She could hear it. She swung her legs off the bed and, putting on a
pair of soft buskins, stole across to the latticed window. She opened it and
looked out.
    ‘Who’s
there?’ she called.
    She
could still hear the tapping but she couldn’t see anybody because of the porch
recess. Whoever was there was well hidden. She closed the window and went
across the bedchamber. She heard a sound like that of a groan, the crash of a
stool, even as the rapping on the door continued. She waited no longer but fled
down the stairs, along the passageway and into the kitchen. Lanterns and
candles still glowed, the door was still barred but
Deverell lay sprawled near the fireplace. A crossbow bolt had smashed him full
in the face, shattering skin and bone. Blood pumped out of the terrible wounds,
spilling out of the half-opened mouth.
    Deverell’s
wife grasped the back of a chair and stared in horror. She couldn’t breathe.
She could hear screaming and realised it was herself, just before fainting
away.



Chapter 11
     
     
    ‘Ecce Corpus
Christi . Behold the
Body of Christ!’
    ‘Amen!’
Corbett murmured.
    He
received the sacred wafer on his tongue and returned to kneel just inside the
rood screen. The flagstones were icy-cold. Corbett ignored the distraction as
he closed his eyes and prayed. Ranulf joined him. Parson Grimstone returned to
the altar and the Mass proceeded to its conclusion. Grimstone picked up the
chalice and the paten and walked off to the sacristy. Corbett crossed himself
and looked around. A few parishioners grouped around the sanctuary steps. He
noticed with amusement how Burghesh had his own personal prie-dieu and, once
the priest had left the sanctuary, the old soldier hastened up to extinguish
the candles and remove the sacred cloths.
    Old
Mother Crauford and the slack-jawed Peterkin were present: huffing and puffing,
the old woman got to her feet. She grasped her cane in one hand, Peterkin’s arm
in the other, nodded at Corbett, went through the rood screen and out by the
corpse door.
    Corbett
crossed himself and, followed by Ranulf, walked down the nave. The church was
cold and dank but well kept and swept. The benches were neatly piled in the
transepts. The oaken rood screen, the sanctuary chair, furniture and wooden statues
were clean and polished. No cobwebs hung round the pillars and considerable
monies had been spent on a series of eye-catching wall paintings. One in
particular showed Christ, after his crucifixion, going down amongst the dead:
the Saviour stood on the shores by the lake of Hell ,
gazing sorrowfully across at the armies of the damned.
    ‘Very
imaginative,’ Corbett murmured. ‘Every church has its paintings, Ranulf.
Because local artists are hired the pictures are all different.’
    He
stopped to admire a triptych: Christ as a child, Mary on one side, Joseph on
the other. Corbett smiled at how the town in the background looked remarkably
like Melford. He walked back into the sanctuary. The three stalls on either
side had their seats up, displaying misericords carved below. The artist, as
usual, had carved local scenes or incidents: a wife beating a drunken husband;
a dog with a leg of lamb in its mouth; a parson with a tankard to his lips. The
sanctuary was the centrepiece of the church: coloured glass glowed in the
windows behind the altar; a silver-gold pyx holding the sacred host hung from a
filigree chain; candlesticks of heavy brass gleamed and winked in the light of
the sanctuary lamp; more paintings on the walls; soft carpets on the altar
steps whilst the altar itself was of pure oak, polished and smoothed.
    With
Ranulf wandering behind him, Corbett left and entered the Lady Chapel. The
statue of the Virgin seated, holding the baby Jesus, reminded him of the shrine
at Walsingham. Corbett slipped a coin into the heavy box and bought a number of
candle-lights. He lit them with a taper,