The Treason of the Ghosts

understand we will be
meeting again tonight?’
    ‘Oh,
yes,’ Corbett recalled. ‘Sir Louis Tressilyian has invited us to supper.’
    ‘And Parson Grimstone. We’ll all be there.’
    ‘Tell
me about Curate Robert’s peccadilloes.’
    Burghesh
hid a smile behind his tankard. ‘Who’s been talking?’
    ‘Well,
no one has, but,’ Corbett smiled at his half-lie, ‘I think you know. The flagellation?’
    ‘Yes,
Parson John’s often talked about it. He put a stop to it here. But,’ Burghesh
sighed, ‘Curate Robert has been seen out in the countryside. God knows what
sins he thinks he’s committed. We all have our secrets, eh, master clerk?’
    Corbett
was about to reply when he heard the sound of hurrying footsteps and a
hammering on the door. Burghesh went down the passageway. Sir Louis Tressilyian, cloaked and spurred, Sir Maurice Chapeleys
behind him, strode into the kitchen.
    ‘Sir
Hugh, you are needed in Melford.’
    ‘What’s
the matter?’ Corbett got up.
    ‘We
met your man Chanson. Haven’t you heard? Deverell the carpenter has been
murdered.’



Chapter 12
     
     
    Deverell’s
house stood in its own ground between two alleyways: a broad, two-storeyed
building with a garden plot and workshops. The area was thronged with people as
Tressilyian and Chapeleys ushered Corbett through the front door into the
kitchen. The curious, despite the best efforts of Blidscote and Tressilyian,
had their faces pressed up against the window. Ranulf cleared the kitchen
except for Deverell’s wife. She sat, white-faced and hollow-eyed in a chair,
staring down at the bloodstain on the stone-flagged floor. Standing beside her
was a neighbour who, by her own confession, had come to borrow some honey.
She’d knocked and rapped but the carpenter’s wife had refused to open the door.
The neighbour, a prim, self-composed woman, had taken one look through the
crack in a shutter and raised the alarm.
    ‘I
was in Melford,’ Tressilyian explained, ‘to summon the jurors who served at the
trial. Blidscote found us in the marketplace. Sir Maurice searched for you.’ He
pointed at Chanson sitting at the foot of the stairs. ‘He told us you had gone
to the morning Mass.’
    ‘What
happened?’ Corbett demanded.
    ‘Last
night Deverell refused to go to bed. Apparently he was much disturbed by your
arrival, Sir Hugh; drawn and fearful, as he had been over the last few days. He
sat here, brooding and drinking, staring into the fireplace. Now his wife
claims...’
    Corbett
raised his head and studied the carpenter’s wife. She was pretty, with her
long, black hair, but her face was piteous, grey and haggard, her eyes circled
by dark rings. She sat, lips moving, talking to herself, almost unaware of what
was going on around her. Now and again she seemed to catch herself, stare
around, then go back to her own thoughts.
    ‘Continue,’
Corbett demanded.
    ‘Ysabeau,’
Tressilyian gestured at Deverell’s widow, ‘retired to bed. She could do nothing
about her husband. He had locked and bolted the door, the same with the
shutters. She was lying upstairs wondering what to do when she heard a knock at
the door. She got up and went to the window. You’ve seen the porch in front of
the house? The door is in a recess and she couldn’t see the visitor. She then
heard a crash even as the knocking continued.’ Tressilyian paused. ‘Well, God
save us, Deverell took a crossbow bolt just beneath his left eye. Killed instantly. His wife came hurrying down, took one look
and fell into a deep swoon.’
    ‘Clerk?’ Ysabeau was staring at him with hate-filled eyes.
    ‘Yes, Mistress?’
    ‘Are
you the royal clerk?’
    ‘I
am.’
    ‘He
feared you.’ Her upper lip curled. ‘He didn’t want you to come to Melford.’
    ‘Why not, Mistress?’
    ‘He
never said. A man of secrets, my Deverell.’ She moved
her dark eyes to Sir Maurice. ‘And you are the Chapeleys whelp? He was never
the same after they hanged your father.’ She eased herself up in the chair.
‘Never the same,’ she repeated.
    ‘There
was more found.’ Blidscote opened his wallet and handed across a scrap of
parchment squeezed into a ball. ‘Apparently Deverell held that. It was found
near his corpse.’
    Corbett
undid the parchment: it was yellowing and dirty, tattered at the edges. The
scrawled words were like letters from a child’s horn book.
    ‘It’s
a quotation,’ Corbett murmured. ‘From the commandments.’ Fie smiled at Ranulf. ‘We seem to