The Treason of the Ghosts

the chair, got to his feet and reached for his cloak and war belt.



Chapter 14
     
     
    Sorrel
stared at the paintings on the wall of the solar at Beauchamp Place . Now and again she would
turn and listen carefully to the sounds outside. People, occasionally, came to
buy fresh meat. She’d heard rumours of an important banquet at the Guildhall
that evening.
    ‘Best
time for a little poaching,’ she murmured.
    Sorrel
walked across to the niche where the statue of the Virgin stood. She reached
behind it, plucking out the greasy scroll, a piece of vellum Sorrel had bought
in Melford marketplace. She took this to the table, smoothed it out and studied
the names scrawled there. Sorrel knew her letters. After all, she was a
merchant’s daughter with book-learning who had the misfortune to fall in love
only to be spurned by both suitor and family. The names were not correctly
written, the letters ill formed but Sorrel could recognise them. She ran her
fingers down: Tressilyian, Molkyn, Thorkle, Deverell, Repton ...
    ‘Aye,’
she whispered. ‘And a few others.’
    She
took her dagger and etched a rough cross beside the names of those who had been
killed. She picked the vellum up. One name caught her attention.
    ‘Walter
Blidscote!’ she said. ‘But your time will surely come.’
    Sorrel
revelled in Deverell’s death, sucked at her teeth and wondered what progress
the clerk was making. She had not told him everything. Oh no! She put the
parchment back and moved a piece of tapestry hanging on the wall. The crude
drawing etched there was not Furrell’s work but her own: a rough map of the
countryside.
    Melford
stood in the middle of a circle of copses and woods. The circle’s rim was
etched with crosses to mark where Sorrel knew other corpses lay, at least seven
or eight in number. Sorrel studied it carefully. She now accepted why the Moon
People stayed well away from the town and its lanes. She couldn’t tell the
clerk all this. Sometimes Sorrel herself had doubts. What if Furrell was alive?
He could glide through the trees like a ghost. A hunting owl made more sound
than Furrell. She put the tapestry back: her eye caught the red-draped
four-poster bed. Furrell wouldn’t do that! He was normal in his swiving. She
recalled their love wrestling on the bed. Furrell was as vigorous as a stallion
in heat. Why would he prey on lonely young women? She just wished she had
listened to Furrell more carefully during those weeks following Sir Roger’s
execution.
    Sorrel
heard a sound and froze. Had that come from the hall? Was she alone? She took
the crossbow from where it leant against the wall. She opened the coffer and
took out a small pouch of quarrels. She slipped one into the groove and
clumsily winched back the cord. Perhaps the sound was just the wind, nothing to
be frightened of. Sorrel left the solar. Faint tendrils of mist were seeping
through the hall.
    ‘Is
there anyone there?’
    A
wood pigeon nesting in a crevice flew up in a burst of whirring wings. Sorrel
took comfort from that. If anyone else was here, the bird would have been
disturbed already. She walked down the hall and into the cobbled yard. Nothing amiss. She turned and went through the gatehouse,
stared at the wooden bridge, and froze. She hadn’t been across for hours: in
places the wood was bone white, scoured clean by the wind and rain so the fresh
damp patch caught her eye. Somebody or something had crossed fairly recently.
She whirled round. Had an intruder slipped stealthily into Beauchamp Place ? The practice in the
countryside was always to shout a greeting to allay any fear or suspicion.
Sorrel found she couldn’t stop her hands trembling. She walked back into the
gatehouse and stared up through the murder holes: small passages so defenders
could loose arrows or drop fire if the enemy broke through the main gate. No
sign of anyone in the hedges around them. A weakness of Beauchamp Place , Sorrel reflected, was
that it was a warren of broken walls and crumbling steps. A group of outlaws
could take refuge and, if they were stealthy footed, hide for hours before
discovery.
    Sorrel
primed the crossbow but the lever hadn’t been oiled properly and she found it
hard to winch the cord tighter. She walked across the cobbled yard. A sound, a footfall? Sorrel broke into a run. In her panic
she did not go into the hall but up the steps to the chapel. She reached the
stairwell then turned, not going in, but climbing higher to the