The Treason of the Ghosts

the bound prisoner into the priest’s house.
Corbett returned to the church and sat studying the carvings on the rood
screen. He tried to pray but found he was tired — a sudden weariness — so he
sat at the foot of a pillar and dozed for a while. He felt sickened by Burghesh
and the callous cruelty of his murders. He wanted to be away from Melford.
    An
hour must have passed before Ranulf and Chanson brought Burghesh back into the
church. The prisoner now seemed to be in a trance.
    ‘Grimstone’s
a wreck,’ Ranulf murmured. ‘He sits there gibbering like a child. He’ll be dead
drunk within the hour.’
    ‘And the killer?’ Corbett nodded at Burghesh.
    Ranulf
felt inside his jerkin and drew out a scroll. Corbett unrolled it and
recognised Ranulf’s writing. The confession had been taken in the bleak,
elliptical manner clerks used. Corbett asked for a candle to be lit and read
it. He went cold at the list of crimes.
    ‘At
least fifteen,’ he murmured. ‘Fifteen people killed!’ He got to his feet.
‘Bring the prisoner into the sanctuary.’
    Corbett
stood before the high altar. He took a small crucifix from a side table and
placed it at one end, the King’s commission beside it. Burghesh stood on the
other side of the altar, Ranulf and Chanson flanking him.
    ‘Adam
Burghesh,’ Corbett began, ‘you are accused of terrible murders in and around
Melford. The list,’ he tapped the confession, ‘speaks for itself.’
    ‘I
am guilty.’ Burghesh’s mouth hardly seemed to move. ‘I have spoken to
Grimstone. I thought he’d forgive me.’
    ‘I
have the power to try you,’ Corbett declared.
    ‘What’s
the point?’ Burghesh half smiled. ‘If it’s to be done let it be done quickly.
You have the authority, you have the proof and now my
confession. My only regret is I never killed you. I should have done. I recognised
that the very first day you arrived here. I am guilty as Judas and I couldn’t
care if I hang like him!’
    ‘Adam
Burghesh, by the power invested in me as the King’s Commissioner of Oyer and
Terminer, I do, by your own admission and the evidence offered, find you guilty
of terrible homicides. You have the right to appeal...’
    Burghesh
snorted with laughter.
    ‘You
have also drawn a knife against the King’s Commissioner and that is petty
treason.’
    Corbett
paused, he felt a deep revulsion at this cold-eyed man who had wiped out so
many lives; who had lied and forced others to lie to save his own neck.
    ‘You
are sentenced to hang on the common scaffold. You will have the opportunity to
be shrived by a priest. Sentence is to be carried out before sunset!’
     
    In the
remaining hours Corbett and his men, with the assistance of Sir Maurice and
others, packed their belongings. The young manor lord had now taken over
proceedings, sending a messenger to bring in armed retainers from his own
estate. Corbett and Sir Louis Tressilyian, guarded by Ranulf
and Chanson, met Sir Maurice and the execution party at the crossroads outside
Melford. A large crowd had gathered, spilling into the fields around.
Burghesh was defiant to the last. He was placed on the ladder, pushed up by two
of Chapeleys’ retainers and the noose placed round his neck.
    Darkness
was falling, a cold wind had arisen. Corbett sat hunched on his horse before
the gibbet. He hated executions, the logical conclusion of the King’s justice,
yet this time he felt different: no elation or joy, just a grim determination
to see the matter through.
    He
glanced over his shoulder. Tressilyian, who had given his oath not to escape,
sat on his horse, his bound hands holding the horn of his saddle. He seemed to
be unaware of anything except the man on the ladder, the noose round his neck.
Sir Maurice sat next to him, pale-faced, hard-eyed. Corbett glanced around.
Sorrel was standing nearby, a posy of flowers in her hands. He recognised the
wheelwright, Repton and others from the Golden Fleece.
    ‘Adam
Burghesh!’ he called out. ‘Do you have anything to say before lawful sentence
is passed?’
    Burghesh
hawked and spat in Corbett’s direction.
    Corbett
pulled his horse back, its hoofs skittering on the pebbled trackway. The clerk
raised his hand.
    ‘Let
the King’s justice be done!’
    The
ladder was pulled away but Burghesh acted quickly. He leapt and his body
shuddered and jerked for a while, then hung still. Nothing broke the eerie
silence except for the rustling of the wind and the creak of the scaffold