There was more confusion as Corbett made the introductions.
Tressilyian studied him from head to toe. ‘I suppose you’ve already been asked,’ he smiled, ‘why you are here? The King could have asked me to investigate.’
‘Aye, sir, but you were the principal justice who tried Sir Roger. Today’s events prove that this is a matter for royal concern. After all, you, the King’s justice, were attacked on his highway. You were telling us what happened.’
‘I was riding down Falmer Lane,’ Tressilyian explained. ‘There was a fallen tree across the lane, just a sapling. You know how such things frighten horses? Bare branches, dry leaves? I thought nothing of it. I climbed down, took off my gauntlets to grasp it, that’s where some of these cuts came from. Suddenly an arrow came flying through the air.’ Sir Louis tapped the cut high on his cheek. ‘It missed, just skimming my face. I sheltered in the sapling; its twigs and branches cut me. I had no bow. My horse had become frightened and was skittering away. Two more arrows were loosed. I decided that I wasn’t going to wait. I gauged where the mysterious bowman must be, drew my sword and charged as if I was on the battlefield.’
‘But your assailant escaped?’
‘I never even saw him, just a crackle of bracken and then the voice.’ Tressilyian paused, staring across at the coffin. ‘God’s teeth, Corbett, this is a sombre place.’ He flung his hand out. ‘And that poor woman!’
‘What did your voice say?’ Corbett insisted.
‘ “Remember.” That’s what it said. A man’s voice. “Remember, royal justice, how you hanged an innocent man! You and the others will pay for it.” Tressilyian shrugged. ‘Then there was silence. There was nothing more I could do. I returned to my horse and rode here. I saw young Chapeleys going across God’s acre. He’s visiting his father’s grave?’
‘Yes,’ Grimstone replied.
‘Why did you think it was a ghost?’ Corbett asked.
Tressilyian looked at him blankly.
‘When you came in here,’ Corbett insisted, ‘you said you thought you’d been attacked by a ghost.’
‘Well, it’s obvious,’ Tressilyian retorted, his light blue eyes dark with anger. ‘A young woman lies dead, another has been murdered. Members of the jury who found Sir Roger guilty have also paid with their lives.’
‘Yes, but Sir Roger was hanged?’ Ranulf asked. ‘You were present at the execution?’
‘Yes I was. However, after I had passed sentence, before the cart was taken away,’ Tressilyian wiped the sweat from his broad brow and sunken cheeks, ‘Sir Roger protested his innocence. He claimed his name would be vindicated. He would make a settlement with God and return to settle with us.’
Sir Louis’s eerie words in such sombre surroundings created a tense silence. Grimstone and Burghesh looked at each other. Bailiff 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 placed in a side chapel.’
‘And why is that a pity?’
Parson Grimstone sighed noisily. ‘The triptych was kept on a wall. After Sir Roger was executed, someone took it down and burnt it, here in the graveyard.’ The parson pushed his hands up his sleeves. ‘I’m freezing cold, Sir Hugh. Are you finished here?’
‘For the moment,’ the clerk murmured. ‘The lych-gate is on the far side, yes?’
And, not waiting for an answer, Corbett, lost in his own thoughts, walked away. He stopped and turned.
‘I thank you for coming. Sir Louis, I am sorry about the attack. You said it was in Falmer Lane, the same place where poor Elizabeth was found? I wonder if we could ride back there?’
‘I’ll also come,’ Sir Maurice offered.
Corbett and Ranulf said goodbye to the rest and walked back to the lych-gate where Sir Hugh’s groom, Chanson, shrouded in his cloak, held their horses. The groom’s white face was a picture of misery, the sly cast in his eye even more pronounced.
‘Sir Hugh, I am freezing.’
‘You should have sung,’ Ranulf teased. ‘That would have brought everybody hurrying back.’ He patted the young groom on the shoulder. ‘The King’s business.’ He added mockingly, ‘We are all freezing, Chanson.’
‘I have given the horses a good rub down,’ Chanson muttered.