A haunt of murder ctomam-6 Read online

  A haunt of murder

  ( Canterbury Tales of Mystery And Murder - 6 )

  Paul Doherty

  Paul Doherty

  A haunt of murder

  The Prologue

  The great raven, hooded and cowled like a monk, its broad ruff of feathers up behind its head, perched on the rotting post and croaked to the gathering night. Above it, crows, mournful in their cries, circled the fields, still searching for food before the sun dipped into the west. The pilgrims, weary and tired, now had no thought about the blessed shrine of St Thomas a Becket or praying before his consecrated bones. They were saddle-sore and weary with aching backs, chapped thighs, wrists tense from clasping reins. Sir Godfrey Evesden had ridden out and come back sombre-faced: once again they were lost!

  The pilgrims turned and glared at the person responsible. The miller, drunk in the saddle, clasped his bagpipes like a mother would a child. The only sign that he was even conscious was the occasional burp or smacking of his lips. On either side the colic-faced reeve and the pimple-scarred summoner held him straight in the saddle. Sir Godfrey Evesden rode up. He was not frightened of the miller’s great girth or his powerful fists which could pound a fellow like a blacksmith hammering a sheet of metal.

  ‘You, sir!’ He tugged at the miller’s beard. ‘You said this was the way!’

  The miller opened his red-rimmed eyes and glared fiercely at the knight. ‘Let go of my beard, sir!’

  ‘Surtees I will!’ The knight let go then drew his sword. He brought its blade flat down on the miller’s shoulder.

  ‘We shouldn’t have listened to him,’ the friar piped up.

  ‘Well, you did,’ declared the yeoman, Sir Godfrey’s loyal retainer.

  It had all begun that morning. They had started out, merry enough with the sun rising and all refreshed after leaving St Botolph’s Priory. They were on the road to Canterbury and the miller had announced in a booming voice that they would pass near Demonhurst Copse, reputedly one of the most haunted woods in Kent. Full of good ale and meat from the priory kitchens, the pilgrims had all demanded to be taken there. After all, wasn’t the weather good, the sun strong, the trackways firm beneath their horses’ hooves? Moreover, the carpenter’s tale the previous night full of ghosts, demons and sprites, had fired their imaginations. Matters had not been helped when they had stopped at the White Horse tavern and the miller had indulged in some tantalising tales about Demonhurst. Sir Godfrey had objected, so had his son, his pretty face framed by golden locks. The yeoman also had shaken his head but, led on by that imp of Satan the summoner and the gap-toothed, merry-faced wife of Bath, the pilgrims had taken a vote: they would spend that night at Demonhurst.

  They had left the main highway and journeyed along the lonely, winding lanes of Kent. The miller, of course, had filled his wineskin at the White Horse only to empty it in generous slurps. He had lost his wits and they had lost their way. Now darkness was falling. A cold breeze had sprung up and where was Demonhurst Copse?

  ‘By the rood!’ the flaxen-haired pardoner screeched, pushing his horse up beside the knight’s. ‘You have led us a merry jig, you golden-thumbed rascal!’

  The miller just belched. He would have maintained his surliness but Sir Godfrey Evesden’s ice-blue eyes held his. A killing man, the miller thought, his fuddled mind now clearing; Sir Godfrey did not tolerate japes or jests at his expense.

  ‘You have led us here, sir!’ the knight hissed through clenched teeth. ‘Night is falling. We are cold, we are hungry, we are saddle-sore.’

  The miller turned in the saddle. He stared down the lane thronged with pilgrims jostling on their tired mounts. The taverner approached, confident that the knight would protect him from the miller’s fierce rages.

  ‘Sir Godfrey speaks the truth,’ he barked. ‘I did not welcome your suggestions, sir.’

  ‘Shut up, you mealy-mouthed ale master!’ the miller spat back. ‘You wouldn’t know a firkin from a cask or a tit from a-’ Sir Godfrey’s sword slipped nearer his neck.

  The miller caught the reproving eye of the lady prioress seated on her palfrey, still clasping that bloody lap dog. Behind her was the pale-faced monk, cowl pulled up. He was the only one who took pleasure out of the chaos caused: red lips parted, those white, jagged teeth jutting down like a dog’s! The miller shivered. He was frightened of no one but the monk terrified him – ever since Sir Godfrey had told that story about the blood-drinkers! Ah well, the miller concluded, it was time he showed these pious noddle-pates that he wasn’t as drunk as they thought. He turned with a creak in the saddle and pointed across the great field to his left. Thrust up from the earth, like some Satanic pillars, stood a huge copse of copper beech, oak, sycamore, rowan and ash.

  ‘Have a good look at that, you country sirs! See the many different varieties of tree? That’s because it’s ancient. There be Demonhurst Copse. I have brought you to it and Heaven help us if we spend the night there!’

  The message was repeated down the line of pilgrims; they all stared across the field. The sun was now a fiery disc, casting out a strange, eerie glow. It lit the ploughed field and made the copse more threatening against the dark-blue night sky.

  ‘Pray to the good Lord,’ the man of law whispered to the franklin. ‘Sir, perhaps this was not a good idea.’

  ‘Do you think he’s lying?’ The franklin, with his snowywhite beard, adjusted the silken purse on his brocaded belt.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ the man of law replied. ‘Our miller may be sottish in his ways but he has sharp wits. I have heard of Demonhurst. But, come, it’s either there or sleeping in the fields.’

  Sir Godfrey had already found a gap in the hedge. Led by him, the pilgrims streamed across the field. The night air felt cooler away from the protection of the hedges and as they drew closer, the copse seemed taller, more forbidding. Sir Godfrey’s hand fell to the pommel of his sword. His son came up beside him.

  ‘Does it remind you, Father?’

  ‘Yes, it does,’ Sir Godfrey replied, his mind going back to those sombre, heavily wooded valleys of Transylvania and Walachia. ‘Devil’s places’ he had called them, sprawling forests of eternal night, which housed all forms of horror. Sir Godfrey’s mouth became dry; he wished there was more sound from the trees.

  The rest of the pilgrims hung back. Sir Godfrey urged his horse into a canter, a show of defiance against his own fears and theirs. Among the trees the undergrowth grew thick and rich but there were trackways through. Silent as the graveyard! Sir Godfrey cursed as an owl hooted high in the branches and his horse became nervous at the cracking and the snapping among the bracken. The trees were ancient, moss-covered; their branches stretched out, interlacing with each other as if in quiet conspiracy against the sky. Sir Godfrey turned in the saddle.

  ‘Come on!’ he shouted. ‘This is where you wanted to rest, so rest ye will!’

  Led by the squire and the yeoman, the weary pilgrims entered this midnight place. All conversation died as if they wished to respect the hushed silence surrounding them. Sir Godfrey urged his war horse on. A skilled, trained animal, the destrier obeyed, although Sir Godfrey felt its muscles tense as if it was about to rear up and lash out as he had trained it to do whenever danger threatened. Here and there the trees thinned into small glades. A rabbit scurried across the path. Sir Godfrey’s horse whinnied in protest and the knight leaned down and patted it gently on the neck.

  ‘Now, now, sir.’

  He looked to the left and the right. In places such as this in Walachia and Moravia, those blood-drinkers, those creatures from Hell with their gargoyle faces, would spring an ambush. Sir Godfrey cursed; this was Kent, England’s fairest shire, yet his mind kept playing tricks. He thought h
e glimpsed shadows flitting through the trees; on one occasion some grotesque half-animal seemed to crouch on a branch but these were only phantasms of the mind, tricks of the light on twisted wood.

  ‘The forest of the damned,’ the yeoman whispered. ‘Sir Godfrey, how can we rest here?’

  As if in answer, the trees thinned again to reveal a broad glade still lit by the dying rays of the sun. At the far end a small brook gurgled, the grass was green and high, lush fodder for their horses. Wild flowers coloured the ground: bogbean, primrose, field pansy, even some milkwort which, Sir Godfrey knew, shouldn’t be blooming for another month. It was a quiet, tranquil place which brought cries of appreciation from his companions.

  Mine Host urged his horse forward. ‘We can sleep here.’

  ‘Yes, we can,’ Sir Godfrey agreed. He wished to impose order, drive away the terrors they had experienced since entering the copse. ‘Come on now!’ he called, clapping his hands.

  Soon the glade was filled with noise and bustle. Sir Godfrey directed the pilgrims as if they were a troop of royal archers in enemy country. Horse lines were established. The yeoman took his sword and began to cut some of the grass. The miller, pardoner and summoner helped, piling the grass up. The horses were gathered and hobbled. The cook took a leather bucket and carried water along the horse line. Saddles were stacked, panniers, saddlebags arranged in a tidy heap. Fresh water was drawn from the brook for cooking and for washing. The glade was divided, one half for the women, the other for the men. Some of the men volunteered to stand watch.

  The yeoman went out into the woods and, within the hour, he was back with three snared hares. The camp fire grew, providing light and warmth; a brand was taken and a smaller, cooking fire lit. The hares were quickly gutted, herbs picked and the glade was soon full of the savoury smells of cooking. Bread and wineskins were drawn from the common supplies, pewter and tin cups shared out. There were not enough traunchers to go round so some used great leaves or pieces of wood. The parson led the prayers, a hymn was sung and then the pilgrims sat in a circle round the fire eating the succulent roasted meat, their cups filled with ale or wine. Contentment flowed. The pilgrims relaxed, ignoring the tendrils of mist creeping through the trees into the clearing.

  ‘We shall make an early start tomorrow,’ Sir Godfrey announced. ‘This is a place worth visiting but in future perhaps we should keep to the main highway.’

  A murmur of assent greeted his words, particularly from the more venerable of his companions.

  ‘It is an eerie place,’ the pardoner declared in a high-pitched voice, wiping his greasy fingers on his jerkin and staining the relics which hung on a string round his neck. The fellow didn’t care. He had tried to sell some of these tawdry objects but his companions had been unimpressed by his bags of so-called Papal Bulls, Indulgences, and various precious relics.

  ‘Yes,’ the summoner agreed, his mouth full of half-chewed meat. ‘Why is it haunted?’

  The miller burped, grasped his bagpipes and blew a long blast, a ghoulish, bone-jarring sound which awakened their fears. He lowered the bagpipes. ‘Many years ago,’ he began, ‘when William the Norman came to England, the local fyrd-’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked the wife of Bath, picking at her teeth.

  ‘The local fighting men,’ the clerk of Oxford answered.

  Sir Godfrey glanced at him in surprise. The clerk was usually as quiet as a mouse. He wore a threadbare jerkin, patched hose and scuffed boots, and his cloak had more rents in it than it had cloth but he was neat and clean. His black hair showed early signs of grey and his shaven face always looked slightly sad. He constantly narrowed his eyes as if his sight was poor. A valuable copy of Aristotle’s Metaphysics accompanied him everywhere.

  ‘As I was saying,’ the miller drew himself up, ‘the local people rose in rebellion but the Normans crushed them with fire and sword. The survivors, men, women and children, sheltered here. Their leader went out with a cross to beg for mercy but according to the legends the Normans struck him down, charged into Demonhurst and butchered all the survivors here in this clearing.’ He paused and stared over his shoulder at the gathering night. ‘All butchered!’ he repeated in a dramatic whisper. ‘The grass was ankle-deep in blood. At night you can still hear their cries for pity, the terrible groans of the dying.’ He leaned forward, his face like that of a gargoyle in the dancing firelight: popping blue eyes and red, spade-like beard. ‘They say the corpses lie buried in this very glade, which is why the grass and flowers grow so lush.’

  ‘We shouldn’t have come here,’ quavered the prioress.

  ‘Oh, fiddlesticks!’ the wife of Bath scoffed. ‘I’ve stayed in more frightening places!’

  ‘Do you think ghosts do exist?’ the friar asked. ‘I mean, Holy Mother Church preaches that when we die, we go to Heaven or Hell or wait in fiery torment in Purgatory.’

  The pilgrims shifted and moved. The fire was bright, the sparks jumping up like souls escaping the very torment the friar had described.

  ‘Well, we know there are ghosts,’ the man of law declared importantly. ‘Does not Holy Scripture relate how the Apostles thought Christ was a ghost when he came walking to them across the water?’

  ‘True, true,’ the taverner agreed. ‘And some of the stories we have heard,’ he smiled across at the poor priest sitting next to his brother the ploughman, ‘have mentioned ghosts which are as real as the trees around us.’

  ‘I wonder what they are like,’ the reeve murmured. ‘I mean, look around you, good pilgrims. Night has crept in. Darkness covers the face of the earth. But the mist…’ An owl screeched and made them all jump. ‘Is it really mist or the souls of those who died here?’ The reeve nodded. ‘I do wonder what it is like to be a ghost.’

  ‘I can tell you,’ said the clerk of Oxford, staring into the fire as if lost in memories.

  ‘Now, there’s a tale!’ the miller exclaimed. ‘I don’t know about you, good sirs and ladies, but I am not yet ready for sleep. Will you tell us, sir?’ He looked at the clerk. ‘You know our custom? During the day a merry tale but at night one to chill the bones and freeze the blood.’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ chorused the rest of the pilgrims. The clerk stared across at Sir Godfrey. ‘It is a tale of love and death and, yes, it may well chill the blood!’ He eased his legs. ‘And in this place I must tell you it and make my full confession.’

  PART I

  The Clerk’s Tale

  Chapter 1

  Ravenscroft Castle stood on a small crag, a brooding, rocky presence not far from Blackwater River outside the town of Maldon in Essex. Ravenscroft had been built in an age when God and his saints slept, when Stephen and Mathilda waged relentless civil war. It was built for both defence and attack with a square donjon, or keep, soaring up to the sky, defended by a lofty curtain wall and rounded towers. A massive yawning barbican defended the gate which could only be approached over the drawbridge across a broad, stinking moat. Nevertheless, in the year of Our Lord 1381, Beatrice Arrowner, just past her seventeenth birthday, had no thoughts of war or strife. It was May Day, when all the townspeople of Maldon honoured the Blessed Virgin Mary, God’s pure candle who brought forth the light of the world.

  Maypoles had been set up on various greens. Troubadours and troupes of travelling actors had arrived, and stalls and booths had been erected on the common land. Oxen, pig, hare and pheasant were being roasted over spits turned by sweaty, grimy-faced little boys who had been paid a penny to make sure the flesh didn’t char and to baste the succulent meat with herbs drenched in oil. Indeed, Maldon was full of the mouth-watering smell of roasting meat. The townspeople had put on their best raiment and, even though it was a work day tomorrow, ale and beer were being freely drunk and in the evening the wild dancing would begin. Beatrice, however, had decided to ignore all this. She had left her uncle and aunt, the owners of the Golden Tabard tavern which stood on the outskirts of Maldon, and gone up the dusty trackway to Ravenscroft. For Beatrice this was a splendid da
y; the sky seemed bluer, the grass greener, the bluebells more magnificent and the air rich with the sweet smells of early summer.

  Beatrice had raided the oak chests, taken flour and baked bread and pastries which were now in her wicker basket protected from the flies and heat by a damp linen cloth. Today she would have her own celebration. The Constable of the castle, Sir John Grasse, his wife Anne, Father Aylred the chaplain and Theobald Vavasour the physician were to join her and her beloved, the clerk Ralph Mortimer, for a meal on the castle green. Ralph’s boon companion Adam and his wife Marisa had also been invited.

  Beatrice tossed back her long, dark hair – ‘black as the night’ was how Ralph described it. Really she should wear a wimple or veil; Catherine, her aunt, was always lecturing her to do so but Beatrice defied her. Ralph wrote poems about her hair, and about her white skin and sea-grey eyes. Beatrice was in love. Ralph was dearer to her than life itself. Others wondered why, especially the bully-boys and swaggerers who thronged the taproom of the Golden Tabard. They would eye Ralph from head to toe and mutter under their breath about dusty, bare-arsed clerks but Ralph didn’t mind. He was sweet-tempered in looks, sweet-tempered by nature; he had close-cropped, dark hair and rather short-sighted, green eyes. Beatrice had met him at a May Fair two years ago. Aunt Catherine and Uncle Robert, her official guardians since she was a child, had disapproved at first but Ralph had charmed them. He was courtly in his ways, always paying for whatever he ate and, now and again, bringing them small gifts – a beeswax candle or a jar of honey from the castle beehives.

  Beatrice suddenly started. She’d reached the castle drawbridge without even noticing it. The guard on duty was sleeping in the shadows, helmet off, spear resting against the wall. And why shouldn’t he? True, the peasants in the shires had been threatening revolt and sedition but this was May Day and Sir John Grasse, an old soldier, was a kindly man, no real stickler for discipline. He knew when to bark and when to hold his peace. The Constable preferred to leave all military matters to Beardsmore, his burly sergeant-at-arms. And yet where was he? Still grieving for poor Phoebe? Who had murdered that unfortunate young woman?