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her gums and wiped the
trickle of saliva from the corner of her mouth. She looked at Corbett with
rheumy eyes, as if she could learn from one glance who he was and why he was
here.
    ‘Good
morrow, Mother.’
    Ranulf
walked towards her. He opened his purse and took out a coin. The woman snatched
it.
    ‘Are
you the King’s clerk?’
    Her
voice was strong but rasped on the phlegm at the back of her throat. She turned
and spat, hobbled forward and grasped Corbett’s bridle.
    ‘You
must be the King’s clerk?’
    ‘And
you, Mother?’
    ‘Old
Mother Crauford, they call me. How old am I?’
    ‘Not
much older than twenty-four,’ Ranulf teased.
    The
old woman’s head turned as quick as a bird’s.
    ‘Now,
there’s a pretty bullyboy. I’ve seen you all come and go.’ She pointed a bony finger.
‘How old am I?’
    ‘Seventy?’
Corbett asked quickly.
    ‘I’m
past my eighty-fifth summer.’
    Corbett
stared down in disbelief. ‘You keep your years well, Mother.’
    ‘Go
and read the baptism accounts.’ Mother Crauford pointed to the church. ‘Born in the autumn of 1218. I remember the King’s father
coming here. Small and fat he was, hair as gold as wheat.’
    Corbett
stared in disbelief at this old woman who had seen the King’s father in his
youth.
    ‘And
so you’ve come to hunt the ghosts, have you?’ she continued. ‘Melford is full
of ghosts. It’s always been a wicked place.’
    ‘So
you think warmly of this town?’ Ranulf taunted.
    ‘I
think warmly of no one, Red Hair! It’s true what the preacher says. Men are
steeped in wickedness.’
    ‘You
mean the killings?’ Corbett asked.
    ‘Murders
more like it.’ The old woman let go of the reins of his horse. ‘There have
always been murders in Melford. It’s a place of blood. No wonder! They say a
town was here before even the priests arrived; little difference they’ve made.
Anyway, I wish you well.’
    She
hobbled on. Corbett watched her go. He’d seen the same in many a town or
village. The old, shaking their heads over the doings of
their younger, stronger ones.
    Tressilyian and Sir Maurice rode up.
    ‘I
see you’ve met Old Mother Crauford,’ Sir Maurice smiled. ‘The townspeople call
her Jeremiah. They heard a sermon eiven by the parson, how the prophet Jeremiah
would always be lamenting the sins of the people. Ever since then she’s been
called Jeremiah. She hasn’t a pleasant word for anybody or anything.’
    Corbett
watched the old woman retreat into the mist. When I really start snooping, he
thought, I’ll visit her. It’s always the old who know the gossip.
    ‘Sir
Hugh?’
    ‘I
am sorry,’ Corbett apologised. ‘Ranulf, Chanson, we’ll meet at the Golden
Fleece and thaw the cold from our bones.’
    He
turned his horse and followed Tressilyian and Chapeleys down the lane and on to
the high road. The day was now drawing to a close. The market stalls on either
side of the thoroughfare were being taken down. Corbett gazed about. Despite
Old Mother Crauford’s lamentations, Melford appeared to be a prosperous place:
well-built houses of stone and timber, freshly washed plaster, windows full of
glass. The townspeople were no different from any others in these thriving market
centres. They reached the end of the high road and entered the town square,
fronted by shops, merchant houses with their high timbered eaves and sloping
slate roofs. The square even boasted a grandiose guildhall with steps up to a
columned entrance as well as a covered wool market where the merchants sold
their produce.
    ‘Why
isn’t the church here?’ Corbett asked.
    ‘Melford’s
grown,’ Sir Maurice called back over his shoulder. ‘It began round the old
church but all things change.’
    Aye
they do, Corbett thought, eyeing the two manor lords. Both Chapeleys and
Tressilyian were well dressed, in robes of pure wool, edged with squirrel fur,
Spanish riding boots, gilt spurs, whilst the saddles and harnesses of their
horses were of the best stitched