Frobisher's Savage Read online

  “Where are the bodies?” the magistrate demanded. Matthew pointed the way, and the knight went in. He pulled back the covering of John Crookback’s face; then did the same to Susanna’s.

  The crowd had inched forward and was now pressing to see what the magistrate saw. At the revealing of the dead woman, there were a few cries of anguish from those among the group who had known her well. Agnes’s voice was raised above the din of the multitude: “Oh my dear father and sister and brother!”

  “She’s also been stabbed,” Sir Thomas said, looking at the bloody bodice and pulling it down to have a look at the wounds in Susanna Crookback’s breasts, which, laid out as she was, were as flat as a boy’s.

  No one protested the indecency of this exposure. Like her husband and children, Susanna Crookback in death had become public business, her rights to privacy gone with her living breath.

  Sir Thomas did not look at the children, but turned to Matthew abruptly. “Where’s the youth they call Nicholas, the one who was spared?”

  Nicholas was standing by Joan near the wagon. Before Matthew could point him out, someone had thrust the boy forward and two other of the town’s citizens had taken it upon themselves to bring the son of John Crookback to the magistrate, as though his guilt had already been determined and there was little left but to present him for execution.

  Nicholas looked terrified, Matthew supposed as much at being hauled before the lord of the manor as by the crowd. When he came to where Sir Thomas was he all but fell upon his knees before the magistrate. Somewhere he had lost his hat, and his shock of unruly yellow hair flew every which way.

  Sir Thomas said nothing but stared at Nicholas curiously. Nicholas trembled and would not look at the knight. He turned his head slightly; Matthew followed his gaze and saw Adam Nemo standing in the crowd.

  ‘ How is it with you, lad?” Sir Thomas asked.

  “The boy does not speak,” Matthew interjected, surprised that Sir Thomas’s informants had not told him that. But perhaps the knight only wanted to verify the boy’s infirmity for himself.

  Sir Thomas nodded. “Has it been so since birth?”

  “It has.”

  “Is he simple as well?”

  “He is, Your Honor,” said Matthew.

  “He is evil-brained,” a shrill voice called from the crowd. It was Mildred’s voice.

  Sir Thomas turned to look at Mildred, who moved forward until she stood beside her brother.

  “This is my father’s son, by his second wife, Sir Thomas. He was ever loved by my father. Now see how my father is served. Stabbed and drowned, and my little brother and sister too, and Nicholas is spared.”

  She pointed to the body of her father as though expecting him to rise from the table on which he had been laid and join in the denunciation of his son and heir.

  “He has their very blood upon his jerkin, as Sir Thomas may see,” the second daughter, Agnes, said shrilly. “I warrant he and his minion”—she cast a baleful eye on Adam—“have done this deed in consort, whereupon the twain will thereafter set up housekeeping in the house of my father, their benefactor, and his long-suffering wife, may God send her peace.”

  Cries of “Shame!” and calls for justice came from all around at these words. Sir Thomas, who had listened patiently to Agnes’s charges, turned to Matthew and for the first time addressed him by name. “Master Stock, what evidence is there beyond this poor woman’s accusation and the bloody jerkin? I assume the boy was not himself wounded, and that the blood is indeed his mother’s, or perhaps his father’s or one of the children’s.”

  “He cannot speak to say whose blood it is,” Matthew said. “Neither to deny or affirm. In his case, silence does not give consent to these charges, since he is dumb.”

  “Irrefutable logic, Master Stock,” Sir Thomas said. “There were no signs of brigands, no footprints or aught left after to signal the presence of strangers?”

  “No, Your Honor. There was too great a multitude at the farm, tramping about, after the murder was discovered. There was silver plate taken, according to report. I know not what else of value, so that a housebreaking may have moved those who did this.”

  Sir Thomas’s face darkened in disapproval. “It is ever thus. Tomorrow we shall return to the farm and search it thoroughly. John Crookback was reputed to be a man of means, although but a yeoman farmer. Let it be early, before dawn, and before the curious can collect there to look upon the scene or carry off evidence.”

  “Sir Thomas,” Mildred said. “Our father’s wealth was in his land; he had little else but the plate, which indeed is gone. Rumors to the contrary are but the false gossip of jealous neighbors.”

  “Well,” Sir Thomas said, ignoring this latest outburst and keeping his eyes fixed on the subject of Mildred’s accusations, “we shall see what we shall see. In the meantime, keep young Nicholas in close custody, Master Stock, if only to protect him against grieved relations and others who would usurp the queen’s justice with a rash act.”

  “And these dead, what of them, Sir Thomas?” Matthew asked.

  “Let Martin Day inspect with finger and eye to determine exactly the cause of death, the number of wounds and what kind, and aught else of import. Let every material fact be noted. This crime must draw much attention, and I would not be faulted for my own conduct in the matter. As for the bodies, let them be seen here tomorrow by anyone who wishes. Perhaps the sad spectacle will quicken the conscience of the malefactor or some other who can provide us knowledge of his identity.”

  Matthew said all these things would be carried out. Then Sir Thomas looked around and addressed the multitude. “Good people, now in the queen’s name, go to your homes. Justice will be done in this sad business. You will have opportunity to see for yourselves what evil the devil can put in the hearts of men and, I trust, see too how God will avenge it.”

  The knight spoke in a clear, high voice that carried over the crowd. There was a mumble of discontent at this, especially from the winebibbers of the taverns, and several voices asked how the town was to be protected and whether the alarm should be raised in neighboring towns or the watch called out. Matthew feared for a moment that even Sir Thomas’s command was not enough to bring order to the assembly.

  “Do not be afraid,” Sir Thomas said in a calm but authoritative voice. “My men will keep the peace in Chelmsford this night. Let no one go abroad from this hour on, save he thinks little of his life. Go to your homes and God bless you all. I declare tomorrow a day of mourning for the dead. There shall be no work at all, but as if a holy day.”

  This announcement seemed to pacify the crowd; it fell silent, and yet still no one moved to comply with the knight’s command. Then Sir Thomas made a motion to the servants who had accompanied him, and they began to stir with their horses and cry out that Sir Thomas’s commands must be obeyed, and the street cleared forthwith.

  At this there was a general movement of the people toward their homes. But Matthew could see his fellow townsmen were disappointed. Despite the promise that the next day a viewing of the corpses would be permitted, nothing had been resolved, and he knew too that there would be a great fear among the people for their own safety.

  Sir Thomas turned to Matthew. “Your neighbors have decided to be wise in this, Master Stock, and so must you. Look to the duties that have fallen upon you as a result of Simon Hunt’s death. In the meantime I will cast about among my friends for someone with more experience in these matters to lead the investigation. ”

  The unruly, noisy gathering of the people had reminded Adam of how it was when Frobisher had first brought him to England. How he had been paraded up and down and stared at, wondered at, and sometimes mocked, like a three-legged cow

  or bearded woman, even though then he had no understanding of the strange tongue of these stranger, pale people with their round light eyes like those of the blind. He had felt a widening fear as he followed the dead-laden wagon into town, comforted only in that his friend was at his sid
e. Occasionally his hand brushed Nicholas’s, but they exchanged no glances, as though the deaths were as much a cause of shame to them as of grief.

  A double vision played in Adam’s mind. He saw Nicholas’s family as though they were alive. He saw the father, the tall Englishman who had brought him to Chelmsford. Crookback had always treated him kindly, had arranged for his service in Master Burton’s great house and welcomed his visits to the farm. And the mother, less generous in her attentions, but not hostile or suspicious. And the two little ones—the angel children with the flaxen hair and ruddy complexions of their race. Was it possible that these spirits of the air were the leaden things that the wagon bore? He could not reconcile the two visions. He could not believe that he would not see Nicholas’s family again, hale and hearty as before.

  But for all his amazement at what had suddenly befallen, there was yet another emotion that seized him as he walked. This was fear. Fear for Nicholas, whom he already saw was under suspicion, had tightened in his breast and constricted his throat until he could hardly breathe. And there was fear for himself too—as he saw the hostile gazes aimed at him because he was, even after all these years, a stranger. It was as though he were not one of God’s children but a creature somehow different, and his neighbors’ hatred of this difference had been there all this time and had waited for just such an event to reveal itself.

  Adam had hung back in the shadows, beyond the torchlight, especially after the great man came with his horses and the crowd had submitted to his authority and the suspicious, fearful eyes were fixed elsewhere. He wished the day might have been undone, that he could start again, arriving at the farm to find Nicholas and his family well. But he had seen the dead and knew such a wish was vain. This thing would not be undone by willing it so; not even the Englishman’s God could undo events and make them whole again.

  When the people were sent home, the clothier’s wife had come up to him and said in a kind voice, “You must come to our house for the night. You and Nicholas.”

  When Adam questioned the need, the clothier’s wife told him it should not be otherwise. “Jeroboam says you must not return to Burton Court. The household servants are beside themselves with dread. Jeroboam says the master’s house will be locked up securely. Their fear is beyond reason, I know, but besides, my husband must ask you more questions. Tomorrow, not tonight. We’re all tired unto death now, everyone. Come with me.”

  Adam looked at Nicholas, who was standing close to the clothier and the stonemason and looking back at him with the desperate expression of one adrift at sea and unable to make for land again. Adam’s heart sank. He made no signal, but the clothier’s wife caught the momentary exchange of glances with his friend.

  She said, “Do not worry, Adam. My husband will bring Nicholas along later. I understand that you are friends. Friends must not be divided at a time like this. I’ll find a place in my house for you both. These dark circumstances behoove us to put on mourning garments, yet you twain will be safer there than in your own beds.”

  He allowed himself to be led by the woman, moving down the street toward the clothier’s house as though he were in a dream.

  Joan had found beds for her two guests in an upstairs chamber tucked under the eaves. It was small but clean. Then she came downstairs to where Matthew sat in the kitchen, his elbows upon the trencher table that aside from the gaping hearth was the room’s chief ornament. His head was so far bent over the table that she supposed for a moment that he was asleep or at

  prayer, neither of which, she thought, considering the circumstances, was unfitting.

  “What’s the matter, husband?” she asked, sitting at his side but realizing how silly the question was as soon as it had tripped off her tongue.

  Matthew rubbed his forehead the way he did when he was perplexed. “The parson thinks I’m mad for bringing Nicholas to my own house for the night. He thinks even Adam should be placed in bonds and guard here or conveyed to Colchester Gaol.”

  “Does he?” Joan said, bridling at the report, for she often found fault with Master Stowe’s sermons and thought him a timid little man at a loss to find a hat big enough to fit his head. “Does he think either dangerous? Have they been charged with a crime? Has either made a motion to flee? Certainly he can see what moves John Crookback’s daughters to their accusing words. Their purpose is as plain as the noses on their faces: They have ever been ashamed of their brother because of his infirmity, and where there is such shame, resentment is its kin. Now, it takes no doctor of the laws to understand that Nicholas will inherit the farm where otherwise it might fall to them and their husbands.”

  Matthew looked up. “That’s a serious charge, Joan. To think that greed would cause them to accuse their brother unjustly.”

  “It was seriously meant, husband,” Joan said. “I know how these matters fall out. It is ever seen. Human goodness is no deep river but a shallow stream that will come near running dry when it crosses opportunity. Crookback Farm is good soil and plenty. Everyone says John Crookback had more wealth than he showed, that he lived simply to cover it up. Who knows what treasure is buried in his field or cemented in the chimney?”

  “Idle tales, for my money,” Matthew said.

  She could see how tired he was, heartsick too. But she was determined to make her point. “Neither of the daughters is a saint. Few hearts are devoid of greed, when there’s the smell of a rich inheritance. I know them both and know what I hear"

  “Gossip. You women—”

  “We women indeed!” Joan said rising to the bait. “If you men had ears to hear as well as mouths to command, you would learn a thing or two about this town you think you rule in your manly wisdom. There’s more about you than meets the eye.”

  He looked at her and smiled thinly. “I see you will not be satisfied to let me go to bed before you’ve had your say, wife. So I will be patient.”

  “I mean only that there are few women in this town more hungry for the wealth of this world than are Mildred and Agnes. Both complain that their new husbands provide less than their wives deserve. Now, I do not deny their grief at the murder of their father and stepmother and their siblings. Who would not grieve at such a spectacle? But Crookback Farm inherited, say by the older, would enable them to build as grand a house as this town affords. Everyone knows that both Sir Thomas and Master Burton have coveted the land forever, since it lies between both their grounds. But John Crookback would not sell his patrimony, some said for sheer obstinacy.”

  “All these tales I have heard myself, spoken time out of mind in every alehouse in town,” Matthew said. “Where’s the special wisdom you women have garnered among yourselves? Tell me that.”

  “Don’t belittle woman’s wisdom, husband. It has saved many of your sex from the hangman’s noose, as you well know.” She leaned forward conspiratorially; her voice fell to a whisper, as though she really was afraid that her words would be overheard. “John Crookback’s will—as I am informed by Agnes Profytt herself, and who would know better?—provides that his son Nicholas inherit, with the younger brother as guardian if Nicholas has not the capacity.”

  “But his brother was only a lad, ’’ Matthew said.

  “John Crookback thought Nicholas would live to be a full man, and his younger likewise. Alice—”

  “Alice?”

  “Yes, our Alice tells me that John Crookback ever believed that Nicholas would be made right by some miracle. Since he believed it was God’s hand that struck him deaf and dumb he trusted that his ears and mouth would be opened by a similar act.”

  Matthew remembered that Alice, the Stocks’ cook, was a distant cousin of the Crookbacks. “And so the inheritance—”

  “Is as Agnes proclaimed, ” Joan continued, “fallen to Nicholas, although Alice says that Agnes and Mildred had many times urged their father to change his will.”

  “But is Nicholas so cold of heart to kill his parents and brother and sister for land that would fall to him in the course of time
in any case?”

  Joan said she could not believe Nicholas could have any conception of what it meant to inherit the farm or to own it. “No,” she said. “If I read faces aright, Nicholas is one in whom there is no guile. Were it otherwise, I would not endure his presence in the house. Not with daughter Elizabeth just upstairs.”

  Matthew agreed. He could see no fault in Nicholas—at least, none to warrant his arrest for murder. The boy seemed mild-mannered and shy. Very much like Adam, his older friend, who was every whit as strange in his own way. As for the scandalous accusations made by Agnes regarding vile practices, he thought that that must proceed from Agnes’s overweening resentment of her father’s favoritism. John Crookback doted upon his son, had long befriended Adam. There seemed nothing irregular there.

  “Come, Joan. I must to bed,” Matthew said with a broad yawn, so that the last word was unnaturally prolonged. “I relieve William Dees before cockcrow at the Sessions House. Sir Thomas would not have the bodies left unguarded for fear some mischief be done them.”

  “Why, what kind of mischief?” Joan asked, rising from the table and taking the candle in her hand.

  “The Crookbacks have found in death that celebrity that country living denied them in life. If news of this outrage does not spread to London by noon tomorrow I am no true man. Think what relics of the deceased would bring—a lock of hair, a shoe, shirt, or body part itself? Why, one of the children’s bodies might be carried off. These deaths are no private matter but the town’s business, perhaps even the queen’s.” “Disgusting,” she said.

  “Nonetheless true.”

  “Will the stonemason be enough to guard the bodies?” she asked.

  “Sufficient. His apprentice keeps him company. The two were playing at cards when I left them.”

  He took the candle from her hand and looked into her face, which by candlelight seemed drawn and sad. “Don’t worry,” he said. “All will be well. Simon Hunt picked an unfortunate time to go to his reward. He has left me with a larger task than ever he had in his constableship.”