Deverell felt a spurt of anger. ‘How do you know about me?’ he asked.
‘Oh, it’s obvious, carpenter: the way you walk, the way you talk. A man who keeps to himself. You have a lot to hide.’
‘Who are you?’ Deverell snarled.
He would have got to his feet but the self-proclaimed friar took a step back and his hands fell from his sleeves. Deverell glimpsed a long dagger.
‘Don’t lose your temper,’ the visitor warned. ‘That would be no use, my brother. Silence is your best protection. Now, I have your word on that? The same story as before?’
‘You have my word.’
‘Good.’ The friar pointed to the gate. ‘Go and draw the bolts and I’ll be gone.’
The carpenter obeyed. He swung the gate open and returned to the workshop.
‘Go into your house, then come and bolt the gate behind me.’
Deverell obeyed. He stepped into a small storeroom which adjoined the buttery. He heard his gate creak and went back. The workshop was deserted and so was the yard. He hurried to the gate and stepped into the alleyway but it was busy, thronged with people. Deverell searched but he could see no friar and, thanks be to God, no Sorrel either.
Deverell stepped back into the yard. He bolted the gate and leant against it. His body was coated with sweat. He found his legs wouldn’t stop trembling. He slid down to the cobbles, arms across his chest, trying to control his panic. He closed his eyes. All he could see was Sir Roger Chapeleys standing in the execution cart, being taken down from the church, along the rutted track towards the gibbet.
‘O miserere nobis Jesus,’ he whispered.
When he opened his eyes, Deverell noticed the cut on his hand had stopped bleeding. He spread his fingers out like a priest giving a blessing.
‘Pax vobiscum,’ he whispered to the ghosts of his former life thronging about him. ‘Peace be with you.’
Deverell got to his feet and, still shaking, returned to his house. He entered the clean, scrubbed kitchen and, grabbing a cup, broached the small barrel of Bordeaux a grateful customer had given him. He filled the cup to its brim and sat at the kitchen table, drinking greedily. He hadn’t witnessed Sir Roger’s execution but others had described his death throes, how the body had jerked and dangled at the end of the rope. Why? Deverell asked himself. Why was it so necessary for that man to die? He heard a rattle on the front door. He drained the cup, hid it beneath a cloth and went along the passageway. He peered through the squint hole. Ysabeau, his wife, stared bold-eyed back.
‘For the love of God and all his angels!’ she exclaimed. ‘Deverell, this is my house. Open the door!’
He turned the key in the lock and pulled back the bolts. His wife came in. He took her basket from her and put it on the floor.
‘What’s the matter?’ She peered at him. ‘You look as if you have seen a ghost!’
‘It’s the coffin,’ he lied. ‘The one I made for the young girl, the wheelwright’s daughter. It still upsets me.’
‘Well, her soul’s gone to her Maker,’ his wife replied. ‘And you’ve heard the news?’ she continued. ‘The clerk’s arrived!’
‘Aye, I know he has,’ Deverell almost shouted. ‘He’ll be asking his bloody questions!’
‘Hush, man,’ his wife soothed. ‘Everyone knows you told the truth.’
‘What’s he doing?’ Deverell asked.
‘I’ve heard from Adela, the clerk has called a meeting up at the church. He apparently wants to question Sir Roger’s whelp and the other justice, what’s his name?’
‘Tressilyian.’
Ysabeau walked down the passageway. Deverell closed his eyes.
‘So it’s begun,’ he whispered. ‘God’s justice will be done!’
Deverell opened his eyes and stared at the crucifix nailed to the wall. At Sir Roger’s execution, he reflected, hadn’t the knight vowed, just before he was turned off the ladder, to return from the dead and seek justice?
Chapter 3
The crypt under the church of St Edmund’s, Melford, was cavernous and sombre. Rush lights and oil lamps sent the shadows dancing, turning the atmosphere even more ominous. Sir Hugh Corbett stared at the funeral ledges built at eyelevel around the chamber. Some of the coffins were rotting and decayed, displaying fragments of bone. One entire casket had fallen away and its yellowing skeleton lay on its side, jaw sagging. Corbett thought it was grinning at him like some figure of death, ready to pounce. He waited while Parson Grimstone loosened the lid of the coffin which lay on trestles in the centre of the room. The priest took the lid off and removed the purple cloth beneath. Corbett stared down at the waxen face of the corpse within. Those who had dressed the young woman for burial had done their best. Corbett moved the head with one finger. He stared at the mottled bruises which ringed her throat like some grisly necklace.
‘It looks like a garrotte,’ he remarked. ‘Where was she found?’
‘Near Devil’s Oak. Her body was tucked away beneath a hedge. Two boys collecting firewood found it and raised the alarm.’
Corbett stared at the priest. Parson Grimstone was undoubtedly nervous — his eyes puffy with lack of sleep, hands trembling. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved and his black gown was marked with food stains. The parson placed the lid back on the coffin and walked over to the stone chair built into the wall. He sat down next to his friend Adam Burghesh and put his face in his hands.
‘You are very upset.’
Sir Hugh Corbett went to stand over him. The priest looked up and swallowed quickly. He was frightened, not just by the terrible murders which had occurred but by the presence of this royal emissary, with his black hair tied in a queue behind him, the long thoughtful face tense and watchful. Corbett would have been called swarthy except for the peculiar strikingness of his high cheekbones and those brooding dark eyes which never seemed to blink. They stared and searched as if eager to remember every detail. Parson Grimstone didn’t like the look of the King’s principal clerk of the Secret Seal. Sir Hugh was dressed in a dark grey military cloak fastened at the neck; a brown leather sleeveless jerkin beneath, leggings of the same colour, pushed into black, mud-spattered riding boots on which the spurs still clinked.
Corbett took his gauntlets off and thrust them into his sword belt. Yes, I’m frightened of you, Grimstone thought. Even more so of his companion — what was his name? Ah yes, Ranulf-atte-Newgate: tall, red-haired, dressed like his master. A fighting man despite his status as a clerk in the Chancery of the Green Wax. Burghesh had whispered that he was Corbett’s bullyboy. Grimstone glanced quickly at Ranulf’s white, clean-shaven face, those lazy, heavy-lidded green eyes. He reminded Grimstone of a feral cat which stalked the graveyard. A brooding man, Ranulf stood with his back to the door, watching his master, who, in turn, seemed fascinated by this rib-vaulted crypt.
‘A strange place to gather.’ Burghesh broke the silence. ‘Couldn’t we have met elsewhere?’
‘It’s cold,’ Robert Bellen complained.
The curate sat hunched in one of the chairs almost obscured by the great central pillar which supported the roof.
‘The place reeks of death.’ Walter Blidscote, the plump, red-faced, balding bailiff of Melford shook his head so vigorously his jowls quivered: his numerous chins pressed down against the military cloak which swaddled him like a blanket does a baby.
‘A good place for justice.’ The young, blond-haired Sir Maurice spoke up. He had thrown his cloak on to the ground and sat slightly forward, tapping his gloves against his knee. He shuffled his feet impatiently as if he expected the royal emissary to hold court there, and then declare his dead father innocent.
‘Who built it?’ Corbett asked. He walked round the circular-shaped crypt, stooping to look into the coffin ledges. ‘I have never seen the like of this.’