Ghostly Murders Read online

  ‘I have heard of that family!’ Sir Richard exclaimed.

  The young man smiled and picked up his scabbard. Across the family insignia was a black bar sinister.

  ‘I must make it very clear,’ Tibault said liltingly, ‘that I am a by-blow, illegitimate; how you English say, born on the wrong side of the blanket.’ He smiled. ‘And you?’

  ‘Lord Richard Montalt. This is my priest, Father Philip.’

  The young man, hands on his stomach, sketched a bow.

  ‘Sir Richard, I must congratulate you. If I had known Scawsby was such a prickly hedgehog I wouldn’t have come.’ He gestured to his men. ‘They think we were betrayed. Why were you waiting? Such a clever trap!’

  ‘You weren’t betrayed,’ Philip replied. ‘I and others stumbled on your camp yesterday evening. We killed two of your scouts.’

  The Frenchman closed his eyes and laughed. He then translated what was said to the rest of his men. Tibault made his way through them to stand before Sir Richard.

  ‘I thought they had got lost. I really did. My lieutenant, he said we should search for them.’ He blew his cheeks out. ‘He was right and now he’s dead. I was wrong and I am alive though not for long, eh, Sir Richard?’

  ‘Your treasure, your harness and your horses,’ Montalt replied, ‘are already ours. But you won’t hang. The priest here,’ he smiled grimly, ‘won’t allow it. You have my word, you won’t be killed. It’s to Rochester and Canterbury for you. Weeks in some cold dungeon, then you can either be ransomed or exchanged for Englishmen in France.’ Sir Richard drew in his breath. ‘It doesn’t really matter to me but tell your men that if any of them try to escape they will be killed on the spot!’

  The young Frenchman translated quickly to his companions. There were smiles and sighs. Philip, studying them more closely, was glad that he had intervened. They were French, the enemy, but they were men with wives, sisters, lovers, families. They had probably come to England to wreak revenge for what had happened in France.

  ‘You’ll be well looked after,’ Philip declared. ‘But I beg you, Monsieur, tell none of your men to try and escape. They will be cut down or hanged out of hand whilst the marshes of Kent trap the unwary.’

  ‘Why did you come here?’ Sir Richard asked. ‘Oh, I know Scawsby is a prosperous place but there are many such villages in Kent. Why this one? Why now?’

  ‘We carry letters of Marque,’ Tibault answered. ‘From the Provost of Boulogne. Our task is to harass English shipping in the Narrow Seas and attack the enemy wherever possible.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Sir Richard replied testily. ‘But why Scawsby? Monsieur, I am no fool. I have served as a soldier. I have shown you great compassion. I deserve a better answer.’

  Apparently one of Tibault’s men could also understand English and, relieved that he wasn’t going to hang, abruptly shouted at Tibault. Philip could only fathom a little French but he caught the word ‘treasure’, as did Montalt.

  ‘What treasure?’ Philip asked abruptly. He seized the Frenchman’s wrist. ‘Sir, you dabble in waters you know little about. What treasure could possibly lie in Scawsby? Don’t lie, you owe us your life!’

  ‘Not here,’ Chasny murmured.

  Sir Richard agreed. He and Philip escorted Tibault out of the cemetery and on to the porch of the church. Tibault sat down, stretching out his legs.

  ‘It’s good to be away from my men. If you English don’t kill me they probably would. This has been a disaster. We were supposed to attack Scawsby, then ride fast, eastwards, back to the coast. We have three galleys and further out at sea stands a cog waiting to accompany us.’

  ‘The sheriff will seize your galleys,’ Sir Richard answered drily. ‘And I doubt if you’ll spend Yuletide in France.’

  ‘Can I have something to drink?’

  Philip went outside, got a blackjack of ale and brought it back. The Frenchman drank it greedily.

  ‘I never thought your ale would taste so sweet.’

  ‘I am tired,’ Philip spoke up. ‘Monsieur Tibault, I am tired of waiting, why did you come here? What is this about treasure?’

  ‘Ah, very well, what does it matter? I am of the Chasny family, albeit a by-blow. Ever since I was a boy, in the Chasny family there have been stories, vague rumours, legends about a great treasure which should have come to our families but didn’t.’

  ‘Continue,’ Philip ordered, sitting down opposite him.

  Tibault looked round the church. ‘This is a strange place, gloomy and dark, just like the story we were told. Anyway, according to this, in 1308, Philip Capet, King of France, launched an attack upon the Templar Order. Any soldier monk belonging to it was arrested, imprisoned, tortured and killed. There was, at the time, a leading French Templar in England. His name was Sir Guillaume Chasny or, as you say, William Chasny. You English were not so speedy in the destruction of the Order. Sir William was supposed to leave the Temple in London, make his way across Kent and take ship to France. Apparently there was a plan to bring the treasure from London with him and hand it over to the Chasnys in France for safe keeping.’ Tibault pulled a face.

  ‘Of course, he never reached the coast,’ Philip intervened.

  ‘No, he did not. Now the French king, through his secret agents, not to mention the Chasny family, tried to find out what had happened.’ He smiled thinly. ‘I believe the English Crown was equally curious and equally frustrated.’ He paused. ‘However, one thing became apparent. In all the documents I have seen, both in the royal archives in Paris as well as those letters held by my family, Sir William reached, or was on the road to, Scawsby when he suddenly disappeared. We also know that the English Crown believed,’ he glanced up at Sir Richard, ‘that your ancestor and either some or all of the men of Scawsby were involved in the destruction of Sir William and his entourage.’ He shrugged. ‘The end of the legend is this: here in Scawsby lie the treasures of the Temple which,’ he spread his hands and grinned boyishly, ‘by God’s right, and by all that is legal, should be ours!’

  ‘Aye,’ Sir Richard replied tartly. ‘And I understand that it is snowing in hell and the Lord Satan will sing “Sanctus, Sanctus”.’ He stood up over the Frenchman. ‘You, sir, are a pirate and a freebooter. You came to pillage and to burn.’

  ‘True, Richard, yet didn’t you do the same in France? I have seen the work of the English écorcheurs there. Yes, my men were here for profit but, I was here for a treasure that belongs to my family. I was born a bastard but I’ll die a Chasny. Can you imagine what would have happened if I’d returned to France with this great treasure?’ He pulled a face. ‘If a man succeeds who cares about his origins?’ He clambered to his feet. ‘That is all I can tell you.’

  ‘You’ll be kept in the manor,’ Sir Richard spoke up. ‘You and all those who are able. I have your word you’ll not try to escape?’

  Sir Tibault held a hand up. ‘I swear to God in this holy place.’ He glanced round. ‘Or perhaps not so holy. I have never been in a church like this. Anyway, the corpses of my dead?’

  ‘I will take care of them,’ Philip replied. ‘They will be buried in the common grave but I will sing a Mass for them and bless their corpses. What happens to their souls is up to God.’

  Sir Richard and Tibault left. Philip went and sat at the foot of the pillar staring into the darkness. He always believed that heaven ruled and God, in his infinite way, guided even the minute affairs of men. So it was with this terrible attack. Philip was certain that he had been guided into Scawsby woods, that he had been meant to discover the Frenchmen’s camp.

  ‘So, what do we have here?’ he murmured. ‘On the one hand, a presence of evil, but on the other God-saving work. If I had not gone into the woods, Scawsby would now be a sea of fire from one end to the other.’

  ‘Are you talking to yourself, Brother?’

  Philip turned. Edmund and Stephen stood in the doorway.

  ‘Just saying a prayer: thanksgiving for deliverance.’

  Stephen pointed with
his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Your parishioners are already celebrating. The French have been led off. Sir Richard says that today the people can celebrate. Tomorrow will be a boon day. There will be no work in the manor or in the fields, only a Mass of celebration followed by a feast.’

  ‘Sir Richard’s shrewd.’ Philip got to his feet. ‘Come on, Brother, we have other work to do. The French dead must be collected and buried.’

  ‘Where?’ Stephen asked curiously.

  ‘Why,’ Philip replied. ‘In the cemetery. The people asked for a sign of God’s approval for building the new church. Now they have it. The French dead will be buried and left in the old cemetery. The parishioners will be given a new one.’

  ‘They are already calling you the Saviour of Scawsby,’ Edmund joked.

  ‘I suppose they’ll call me a lot of things,’ Philip replied drily. ‘But the burial of the dead is a great corporal act of mercy. I want it done before the corpses begin to stink and my parishioners are too drunk to wield a shovel!’

  As it was, Philip found little trouble in getting his parishioners to help him. The flush of victory had now receded. Sober minds prevailed and the parishioners were as eager as he to collect the corpses and bring them into the cemetery. The women and children were kept indoors and it was dusk before the sorry business was finished. Philip watched the line of corpses grow. He forgot about the mystery and the curses, the legends and the fables. The sight of a long line of dead young men was pitiful. Some of their wounds were terrible: throats slashed whilst many bore the devastating and terrible effects of the long bow, arrows in their heads, faces or buried deep in their bellies and chests.

  Piers the verderer returned from Scawsby woods. He announced that the horses of the Frenchmen and their treasure had been taken to the manor. The verderer and some of his companions stayed to help the priest search for corpses. Late in the afternoon, Philip ordered a rest and Roheisia brought out jugs of ale and some bread which she’d baked. The men sat around joking and laughing, oblivious to the corpses. They ate and drank to celebrate their own survival. Philip returned to the Priest’s house and took down the parish ledger. He turned to the section written up by Romanel, those curious entries about the dead of 1308. In the margin, as in many such ledgers, the priest also indicated in what part of the cemetery these corpses had been buried. Philip satisfied himself and went out. He took the labourers to the eastern part of the cemetery, not far from the coffin woman’s hut, and ordered a large, broad trench to be dug. Ignoring Edmund’s questioning look, Philip ordered the trench to be dug deeper and broader than need be.

  ‘It will cut a swathe across the cemetery,’ he whispered. ‘Any coffins that have to be removed, will be.’

  Torches were lit. The labourers put mufflers across their noses and mouths and began the work. Darkness fell. The digging continued. Now and again they would come across a coffin, the crumbling remains of some long-dead parishioner but no questions were asked. This was regarded as a derelict part of the cemetery.

  Grave stones and crosses had long disappeared. No one could remember a parishioner being buried there in living memory. As the pit broadened and began to move across the cemetery, Philip put on his stole, brought out his Asperges rod and bucket and ordered the corpses of the dead French to be interred. Every so often the digging stopped, Philip would intone the ‘De Profundis’ and the ‘Requiem’, sprinkle the corpses with holy water, order the earth to be filled in, then the labourers would go back to their work. The night drew on. It was a garish sight. The cemetery, usually so lonely, so sombre, especially at night, was now lit by flickering pitch torches and echoed to the noise of axe, pick and the shouts and grunts of men. No one objected. They all knew, from the days of the Great Plague, how necessary it was for the speedy burial of the dead. The coffin woman came out. For a while she sat and watched them but then she went into the church to continue her lonely vigil before the altar.

  Sir Richard Montalt also came down. Philip explained what he was doing.

  ‘It’s best if we act quickly,’ he declared. ‘No questions asked. This is an area once used by the priest Romanel to bury his parishioners, so God knows what we might find.’

  Sir Richard agreed and then, almost as if to echo the priest’s words, Piers came running over.

  ‘Father, Sir Richard, you’d best come and see this!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Empty coffins!’

  Philip and Sir Richard hurried across. Three coffins had been pulled out of the trench.

  ‘They were so heavy,’ Piers remarked. ‘One of the lids fell off.’

  Philip ordered torches to be brought and crouched down. The coffins were empty of any human remains but full of rocks and soil.

  ‘Corpus non invenitur,’ he muttered.

  ‘What was that?’ Sir Richard asked.

  ‘It’s in the parish ledger,’ Philip replied, getting to his feet. ‘It’s Latin for a body could not be found. But why all this mummery? Why bury a coffin with rocks and soil in it? Three in number?’

  Edmund and Stephen came over, to join them. Sir Richard told Piers to tell the labourers to continue digging.

  ‘Why should Romanel do that?’ Philip asked. ‘Why should he go to such lengths?’

  ‘It sometimes happens,’ Edmund replied. ‘If a man is lost at sea, or believed to be dead and his corpse cannot be found, the family will still have a requiem Mass.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard of that custom,’ Philip replied. ‘But usually they place some of the dead’s personal belongings in the coffin as a token memorial. Wait a minute now.’

  Crouching down, he studied the three coffins carefully. Many times the poor could not afford a coffin but were buried in canvas sheets. Philip studied the wood; it was good and thick, able to withstand age and decay. He noticed the coffins were uniformly oblong.

  ‘They are not coffins,’ Philip declared. ‘They are arrow chests.’

  Helped by Sir Richard, Stephen and Edmund, the priest pushed one of the coffins sideways until the earth fell out. They heard a clink. Philip saw something glint in the torch light. He scrabbled amongst the dirt.

  ‘Swords and daggers!’ Edmund exclaimed.

  The other coffins were emptied. All around them the noise of digging stopped as Piers and his men realised something extraordinary was happening. Philip ordered the weapons, swords, daggers, even a small two-headed axe, to be collected together and brought on to the church steps. Buckets of water were brought to clean the mud off. Piers shouted that they had found another such coffin, two more in fact. The pile of arms on the church steps grew. A conical helmet with a broad, flat noseguard: shirts of chain mail and, despite the decay of the years, a tabard, tattered and rotting, but still bearing the remnant of the Templar cross.

  ‘This is proof!’ Philip exclaimed excitedly. ‘Don’t you realise, Sir Richard!’

  ‘That evil man!’ the manor lord exclaimed. ‘What a terrible sin. The priest must have led that attack on the Templars. They must have trapped them out on the marshes and killed them – but what about their corpses?’

  ‘I know where they put them,’ Philip intervened. ‘You can’t ride into Scawsby with a dozen corpses. That evil priest had their bodies stripped. The bodies were taken to High Mount. The ancient tombs were emptied of their bones, which were thrown down a well and replaced with the wounded corpses of these soldier monks.’ Philip tapped a helmet with the tip of his finger. ‘They must have known the English Crown would be searching for Sir William Chasny. Romanel, and probably your ancestor, God forgive him, took the dead men’s weapons, put them into arrow chests and buried them deep in the cemetery.’

  ‘Oh no! Oh miserere . . . !’

  Philip whirled round. The coffin woman had come into the church and was now staring at the arms piled on the steps. She gave another scream and fled into the night.

  Words between the pilgrims

  The pilgrims sitting round the fire drew a little closer.

 
; ‘Devil’s tooth!’ the Reeve whispered. ‘This is a strange tale of heaven and hell.’

  The Poor Priest just stared into the flames of the fire. The pilgrims had built this up, the Knight ensuring that dried-out branches kept the flames merry and bright. The Knight swept out, stretching his fingers. Had he not served in the eastern march, fought the fierce Prussians and Slavs as well as the Turks of North Africa? He had hunted and been hunted by the Strigoi, the living dead, along the gloomy, wet valleys of the Danube. The Knight was certainly not a timid man but he was uneasy. Oh, the ruins provided shelter and warmth, the air was still thick with the savoury odours of their meal whilst their breath was sweet with the taste of wine. True, the Poor Priest’s tale was chilling but Sir Godfrey’s unease was deeper than this. Outside the mist swirled, like some angry malevolent spirit trying to break in, to wrap its tendrils round their throats, to snuff out their lives like the wicks of a candle. And there was more than this: no owl hooted, no nightjar chattered, no frogs croaked in protest. Why? Sir Godfrey scratched his chin. He wanted to draw his sword and go out there. He was sure someone, something was watching them.

  The Reeve, however, had been whispering to the Cook, who now looked across the fire at the Poor Priest.

  ‘Is this tale true, Father?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’ the Ploughman spoke up.

  ‘I have been to Scawsby,’ the Reeve replied. ‘There is no church where you describe it, though there is a small monastery of Capuchins.’ He glanced quickly at the Friar and the Monk. ‘Devout men who pray continuously to the good Lord Jesus. Not like some . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Mine Host broke in. ‘You said you’d been to Scawsby?’

  ‘Aye, there’s no church there but there’s a lovely one at High Mount and the Montalt family . . .’

  ‘Hush!’ The Poor Priest brought a finger to his lips. He glanced across at Sir Godfrey. ‘You are uneasy, sir?’

  ‘No, no, Father. My son and I know the Montalts. I’ll be honest, the fight at Scawsby . . .’