The Treason of the Ghosts

on a stool: her assailant appeared to have disappeared but Sorrel was
so frightened she didn’t have the strength to rise. She sat in a half-daze,
aware of the throbbing pain in her hand, the wrenching ache in her neck. Only
after a while did she become aware of the hammering on the door. She picked up
the cudgel and knife.
    ‘Who
is it?’ she called weakly.
    ‘Sir
Hugh Corbett.’
    ‘I
don’t believe you.’
    ‘Sorrel, for heaven’s sake, what is the matter?’
    Sorrel
closed her eyes and tried to think. The voice sounded familiar, but was it a
trick?
    ‘To
the right,’ she said, ‘in the hall, there’s a large gap in the wall. Step out
into the open.’
    ‘Sorrel,
what is this nonsense?’
    ‘Step
out!’ she ordered.
    She
heard a curse. Sorrel went to the shutters.
    ‘Come
to the window!’ she shouted through the crack. ‘Just stand there!’
    She
heard the click of high-heeled riding boots. It must be the clerk. She narrowed
her eyes and pressed her face against the gap in the shutters. Sir Hugh Corbett
stood there, cloak thrown back, hand on the hilt of his sword. Sorrel drew up
the bar and opened the shutters.
    ‘In God’s name!’ Corbett exclaimed.
    He
ran back into the hall even as Sorrel drew the bolts, threw open the door and
almost collapsed into his arms. Corbett picked her up, took her across and,
shouldering aside the curtains round the bed, laid her down gently on the faded
blue and gold cover. He filled a bowl of water from a jug, dabbing at the cuts
on her hand and side of her neck. She started to shiver so he pulled the
coverlet up around her.
    ‘Who
attacked you?’
    She
grasped his hand. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she pleaded. ‘He could slip by you.’
    Corbett
reassured her. Following directions, he went to the buttery, lit the brazier
and, cursing and coughing at the smoke, wheeled it into the solar. He then
heated some wine. By the time he had finished, Sorrel was sitting on the edge
of the bed.
    ‘You
would not make a good housewife,’ she smiled weakly, ‘but I thank you, Sir
Hugh.’ She gulped the wine.
    ‘The attacker?’ Corbett demanded.
    ‘I
don’t know. I was here by myself. I knew someone had entered Beauchamp Place . I was in the bailey. I
heard a sound I didn’t recognise and fled in the wrong direction.’
    She
told her story in halting phrases, looking wild-eyed at Corbett.
    ‘How
do I know it wasn’t you?’
    ‘Don’t
be foolish.’ Corbett pulled a stool across. ‘I have served you mulled wine, not
threatened you with a garrotte string!’
    He
went across and barred the shutters.
    ‘Bolt
the door behind me,’ he ordered.
    Corbett
went out into the hallway. He could detect, in the dust on the dais and at the
entrance to the hall, the signs of a struggle and pursuit. He went out to the
gatehouse and stared across the makeshift bridge. Corbett looked over his
shoulder where he had hobbled his horse. The attacker must have been on foot.
He’d heard Corbett’s approach, let him come in and slipped over the bridge. The
long grass and trees would hide him. He could be back in Melford by now.
    Corbett
rejoined Sorrel in the solar. She had recovered, a
small jar on the table before her. She was carefully rubbing some paste into her
hand and the side of her neck.
    ‘The
juice of moss,’ she explained, ‘mixed with cobwebs and dried milk. It’s a
sovereign remedy.’
    Corbett
thought of his own old wound in his chest. It had healed but occasionally, as
now, the muscles and bone twinged in pain.
    ‘You
are most fortunate.’
    ‘I
saw you,’ Sorrel smiled, ‘when I took refuge in the room above the chapel. I
glimpsed a rider coming down Falmer
Lane . If you hadn’t come... Did you find my crossbow?’
    Corbett
shrugged. ‘I wasn’t looking for it. Did you see your attacker? Did you
recognise anything about him?’
    She
shook her head. ‘Are you sure he has gone?’ she demanded.
    ‘Oh,
he has gone all right, like the silent assassin he is. I wonder why he came
here in the first place.’
    ‘Why
did you?’
    ‘Well,
there are two reasons, Mistress, just as I believe there are two murderers in
Melford. Oh yes, we have two assassins. The first is the Jesses killer or
Mummer’s Man, the ravisher and slayer of women. As you told me, he has been
hunting these lanes and trackways like a weasel. Sometimes he attacks tinkers’
girls, women like yourself, wandering from the towns seeking a new life, work,
a crust of bread and a penny. They are easy