Free HAUNT OF MURDER, A by P. C. Doherty Page B

miller hastened to obey.
    The summoner, his pimples even brighter in the firelight, staggered to his feet and stared across at the clerk. ‘How do you know all this?’
    ‘He didn’t say it was true,’ the squire pointed out.
    ‘Well, is it true?’ the summoner demanded, his voice shrill.
    ‘It depends,’ said the clerk, ‘what you mean by true.’
    ‘That’s no answer,’ the summoner replied aggressively.
    The clerk stared across at their leader. Sir Godfrey was studying him closely. The knight did not wish to intervene even though he was a man who had experienced the twilight world of demons. He had hunted the murderous blood-drinkers scattered throughout Europe from the shores of the Bosphorus to the cold, icy wastes of Norway. Yet that was his personal struggle. He was also special emissary for the Crown and the Archbishop of Canterbury and often attended hushed, closed meetings in certain chambers at the House of Secrets in London. Beside him his son, the squire, stirred.
    ‘Father,’ he whispered. ‘Weren’t you sent to Ravenscroft Castle?’
    ‘Hush now,’ his father responded.
    He sat and listened as the summoner continued to question the clerk. For some strange reason the summoner seemed most perturbed by the story. The knight smiled grimly to himself. His son was right, he had been sent to Ravenscroft Castle, and it was only a matter of time before someone recognised the name Goodman Winthrop. After all, the tax collector had been the scourge of the southern shires.

    The taverner raised his fat, cheery face. ‘Sir!’ he shouted at the summoner. ‘Will you shut up!’ He stretched out his hands towards the flames. ‘I know of Ravenscroft Castle and I also know of two people called Robert and Catherine Arrowner who owned a tavern named the Golden Tabard.’
    ‘But if the tale is true,’ the pardoner exclaimed, ‘it concerns us. Good ladies, gentle sirs, look around you.’
    They did so, staring into the mist-cloying darkness.
    ‘The miller said this place was haunted,’ the pardoner continued. ‘Does that mean the dead are all around us now?’
    ‘Oh, spare the thought and don’t tickle my imagination!’ the wife of Bath squeaked. She just wished she hadn’t turned away from the flames. The trees stood like menacing sentinels around them. And that mist! Did it bring more to this silent grove than just the cold night air?
    ‘It could be true,’ the prioress’s priest spoke up. Usually this handsome, florid-faced man kept his own counsel. ‘I believe death is like entering a mansion house; each chamber is full of new worlds.’ He smiled at the clerk. ‘I am much taken by your description, sir.’ He paused as an owl hooted. ‘And before this night is done, perhaps you’ll be kind enough to tell us where this story came from.’
    ‘Perhaps I will,’ the clerk muttered. ‘But listen now, gentle sirs and ladies. True, the darkness is deep, a mist has swirled in through the trees and the owl keeps its lonely vigil. Yet these are not real terrors.’ He glanced away. ‘Not like the ones to come.’

Chapter 1
    Ralph Mortimer sat in Devil’s Spinney, his back to an oak tree. He watched a squirrel clamber between fallen branches and scrabble up the trunk of one of the ancient oaks. Ralph wiped the tears from his eyes and pushed the wineskin away.
    ‘I’ve drunk enough,’ he muttered. ‘And that’s no help.’
    A few hours earlier he had attended Beatrice’s funeral in the small cemetery in the far corner of the castle near the rabbit warren. Her aunt and uncle had attended, Theobald Vavasour, Adam and Marisa, and of course Sir John Grasse and Lady Anne. Father Aylred had sung the Requiem Mass and then the corpse had been taken out on a bier and lowered into the shallow grave. The carpenter had put together a crude cross and Sir John had solemnly promised that it would be replaced, within the month, by a stone plinth bearing Beatrice’s name.
    It was only when the grave was