Read Online Hugh Corbett 12 - The Treason of the Ghosts by Paul Doherty - Free Book Online

Blidscote opened and closed his mouth, smacking his lips as if wishing he could drink, forget what was happening.
    Corbett glanced around. Including the justice, these were all nervous men. Sir Roger Chapeleys had been a manor lord, a knight, a warrior, a man who had done good service in the King’s armies both at home and abroad. True, a lecher and a drinker but what if he had been wrongly executed?
    ‘Sir Hugh!’
    Corbett sprang to his feet at the voice calling from the top of the stairs.
    ‘Master clerk!’
    Corbett hurried to the door. Chapeleys, wide-eyed, was halfway down the steps.
    ‘Sir Hugh, you had best come and see this.’
    Corbett and Ranulf, followed by the rest, left the crypt and went up into the church, through the coffin door and out across the cemetery. Daylight was fading. The sky was sullen and overcast. The first tendrils of the evening mist were curling about the gnarled yew trees, creating a shifting haze around the crosses and tombs. The silence was shattered by the raucous cawing of rooks in the bare-branched trees. If the crypt was a dismal place, the cemetery was no better. Corbett hid his annoyance at being thus summoned, pulling his cloak more firmly about him. Chapeleys led them along a beaten trackway, down into a small dell in the far corner of the graveyard.
    ‘We call this “Strange Hollow”,’ Grimstone explained breathlessly, coming up beside Corbett. ‘It’s where we bury the bodies,’ he lowered his voice, ‘of executed felons.’
    Chapeleys was striding ahead. He stopped at a burial mound. Corbett followed and stared at the weathered lettering on a stone plinth. It gave Sir Roger Chapeleys’ name, the dates of his birth and death, with the invocation ‘ Jesu Miserere ’ carved beneath.
    ‘What’s wrong?’ Corbett asked, quickly crossing himself as a mark of respect.
    Chapeleys, standing on the other side, beckoned him round. Corbett quickly looked. Someone had scrawled the word ‘REMEMBER’. He touched the still-wet liquid, rubbing it between his fingers.
    ‘It’s blood,’ he declared. ‘And done quite recently.’
    ‘Whose blood?’ Grimstone asked.
    ‘I don’t know.’ Corbett bent down and wiped his fingers on the wet grass.
    ‘I’ll have it cleaned up. Perhaps it’s some game.’
    ‘It’s no game,’ Chapeleys retorted. He then went across and clasped the justice’s hand, as if they were close acquaintances, the best of friends.
    Corbett was intrigued and Tressilyian caught his look of puzzlement.
    ‘There’s no bad blood between us, clerk. Sir Maurice knows I simply carried out my duty.’ He spread his hands. ‘Over the years I have done my best for the lad.’ His harsh, severe face broke into a grin. ‘Now he repays me by falling in love with my daughter.’
    Corbett nodded and stared across the cemetery. He noticed the building work, sections of cut stone, a mound of masonry peeping out from beneath a leather awning.
    ‘What’s that?’ he asked.
    ‘Oh, it’s my work,’ Burghesh replied. ‘Sir Hugh, I may be a soldier but, in the wild and wanton days of my youth, I became apprenticed to a stonemason. Indeed, I signed my articles as a craftsman. Then the King’s wars came.’ He shrugged. ‘Fighting and drinking seemed more glorious than cutting stone. I do a lot of work round here. I am building a new graveyard cross for Parson Grimstone.’
    ‘It’s quite a busy place.’ The parson spoke up. ‘Perhaps not on a cold October day but we have small markets and fairs as well as our ale-tasting ceremonies. It’s a place where the parish like to meet.’
    Corbett agreed absent-mindedly. He stared up at the soaring hill tower, its red slate roof and pebble-dashed sides.
    ‘A well-kept church, Parson Grimstone,’ he remarked.
    ‘Aye, and my father loved it,’ Sir Maurice said. ‘It’s a pity, Parson Grimstone.’ The young knight bit his lip.
    ‘What’s a pity?’ Corbett asked.
    ‘My father had a triptych specially done and