The Treason of the Ghosts

rope.
    ‘The
corpse is to remain there for a night and a day!’ Corbett ordered. ‘Then it can
be buried.’
    He
turned and beckoned Sir Maurice forward.
    ‘Set
a guard on the scaffold,’ he whispered. ‘Make sure that killer dangles as a
warning.’
    ‘I’ll
do that, Sir Hugh. And Sir Louis?’
    ‘I
don’t know,’ Corbett replied. ‘He’s a clever lawyer: he will argue that he
carried out the King’s justice. Burghesh is proof of that.’
    ‘Will
he suffer the same fate?’
    ‘I
doubt it,’ Corbett replied. ‘But he’ll face a very heavy fine: prison or exile
for a while.’ He took off his glove. ‘I wish you well, Sir Maurice.’
    The
manor lord clasped Corbett’s hand. The clerk turned his horse and stared at the
now silent figure swaying slightly on the end of the rope. He felt a touch on
his knee and looked down. Sorrel offered the small posy of flowers. Corbett
took it. She grasped his knee.
    ‘Thank
you,’ she whispered. ‘I now have a corpse to grieve over and a grave to visit.
The King’s justice has been done.’
    Corbett
leant down and stroked her face.
    ‘Aye,
Mistress Sorrel, and so has God’s!’



Author’s Note
     
     
    Serial
killers are not a product of the twentieth century, but our knowledge of them
is the result of modern technology. The killings described in this novel
represent a composite picture of different murder patterns during the Middle Ages. Enclosed communities like Melford did exist and
could erupt in violent and bloody murder. The problem was that, unless the
victims had powerful kinsmen or the matter was brought to the attention of the
King’s justices, little could be done. Judges were bribed and juries bought or
heavily influenced, not only in murder cases but even in matters of rebellion
and treason. Life could be cheap and, in the fourteenth century, economic
prosperity brought displacement and a sharp increase in peasants being driven
from the land to wander the countryside looking for work. Such groups were
always highly vulnerable, though The Treason of the Ghosts is based more
on killings which took place in London and Norwich rather than the
open countryside.
    The
changes brought about by the increased demand for English wool abroad led to
radical changes in our farming and pasture system. I have often walked the
narrow, deep lanes described here ;, - even Edward I
accepted that they were a hazard to law and order!
    Justice,
on the other hand, could be swift, and Corbett’s execution of the murderer
follows a medieval pattern. The bell tower of St Edmund ’s and the
cunning use of the ropes is also based on fact as well
as observation. In the fourteenth century the sons of Cain could be as cunning
in their plotting as their modern descendants .