Frobisher's Savage Read online

  “Go, Adam, speak the truth. Be not afraid,” Matthew Stock whispered, pointing to where he was to stand by Nicholas at the thing that looked like a preacher’s pulpit.

  Adam made no reply to this counsel but only nodded and went to take his place. He lifted his jaw and focused his eyes on the clothier and then on the stem countenance of the coroner, who regarded him with the mixture of curiosity and distaste to which Adam Nemo had grown inured during his years among the English.

  “Tell us your name, fellow,” Vernon said.

  “I am called Adam Nemo.”

  “Say it again, that the jurymen can hear it.”

  “Adam Nemo, if it please Your Honor.”

  “And your vocation?”

  “A household servant to Master Arthur Burton of Burton Court.”

  “You must speak up, man. Don’t whisper.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “I am not a lord.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How many years have you been in Arthur Burton’s service?”

  “Near twenty, if it please Your Honor.”

  “You speak with an accent. From whence come you?”

  As the coroner asked his questions, his clerk wrote down Adam’s answers. Which were easy to give, Adam thought, except for the answer to the last question. Where indeed was he from? His native place had a name he had almost forgotten, a name in his own birth tongue. He thought of the name. Now it sounded like grunting even to him, and he knew that to utter it would only create bewilderment and perhaps render him guiltier in the eyes of this hostile company.

  “I am from an island. An island in the northern seas. Sir Martin Frobisher brought me from there, many years ago.”

  An island, yes, and larger than this one, he suspected. An island of neverending white in which the seasons brought no glorious progress of changing scene and temperature but perpetual snow and forlorn view. Adam realized that on speaking this he had answered truthfully—for the first time in years. His heart almost stopped beating at the realization of this fact, but he was relieved to find that his confession seemed to have no particular significance to coroner or his jury.

  So he had exposed himself, but no harm done. His courage rallied a little, yet he was still unnerved at being the center of so much attention.

  The coroner asked Adam if he could communicate with Nicholas by signs.

  “Sometimes, sir.”

  “Only sometimes?”

  Adam caught the incredulity in the question.

  “Well, let us put your skill to the test,” Vernon said. “Ask this young man if he was present when his parents and brother and sister were slain.”

  It was the question Adam had asked of Nicholas himself but he thought it wise to comply. He made therefore the same gestures, repeating them until he could tell from the expression in Nicholas’s eyes that he understood.

  Nicholas nodded affirmatively; a murmur passed through the crowd.

  “Ask the witness whether he saw the man or men who murdered his parents, brother, and sister,” Vernon said, intensifying his voice like a lesser actor conscious that for one brief moment he is center stage.

  This question Adam found more difficult to express in gestures. He tried different motions with his hands and movements of his head and eyes and got a nod or two from Nicholas as response, but he was unsure as to whether Nicholas’s answer corresponded to his own question or to some other.

  “If he saw, and the murderer is in this place,” Sir Thomas interrupted impatiently, “can he point him out? Can you tell him to point out the murderer with his finger?”

  “I cannot be satisfied, Your Honor, that he understands the question put to him,” Adam said turning to face the magistrate.

  “Well then, sirrah, make him understand,” Sir Thomas snapped. “You two are friends, and you do speak to each other in this curious way.”

  Which thing was true, Adam knew, but how could he describe communication that even he only partly understood? The truth was that the two of them shared feelings rather than thoughts, things that could not have been put into words had Nicholas Crookback been the most eloquent orator in England. Information such as the coroner sought was not feeling; it was comprised of ideas, of words. Adam’s friendship with Nicholas had not involved a transfer of information. Their own distinctive language, if that was what it was, had no vocabulary for such an exchange.

  “Try again, Adam Nemo,” Sir Thomas said, before Vernon, his little eyes flashing angrily, pointed out to the lord of the manor that he, Vernon, and not Mildmay—be he knight of the manor or no—was in charge of the inquest.

  “Well, then, proceed with dispatch,” Sir Thomas shot back. “This matter need not take all the night.”

  Adam saw Sir Thomas lean over to make some comment to his friends among the gentry, who all seemed to be amused by the conflict between him and the coroner and firmly on the side of the magistrate.

  Adam, confused by this dispute between two men he considered to be in the same camp, made another effort. He used his fingers to signal the number of the dead and then, putting his hand over his brow as though shielding his eyes from the sun, asked Nicholas if he had seen him who had killed them.

  Nicholas responded with a shake of his head.

  At that instant a shrill female voice Adam recognized as Agnes Profytt’s burst from the crowd: “Well may you deny you saw the murderer, Nicholas Crookback. You may not be gifted with speech and yet you are no fool, for who can see himself? So, rightly you proclaim by your dropped head that you saw no one.”

  Vernon responded sharply to this outburst, telling Agnes to be silent until her turn came.

  ‘‘I cannot endure his lies, Your Honor,” Agnes said. “It is wrong, and this honorable court aids and abets his mischief.”

  “This is not a court, Mistress Profytt,” Vernon said in placating tones, “but an inquest. Our purpose is not to determine guilt but to establish by what means these unfortunates died. I pray you be patient until we have heard all the evidence.”

  This request seemed to have its intended purpose. Adam saw Agnes Profytt standing near the front of those who had been asked to testify. She folded her arms in a gesture of acceptance, but her little black eyes flashed defiantly. Leaning to the side, she whispered something in the ear of her sister.

  Adam made one more attempt to make Nicholas understand, but it was futile. Nicholas simply stared back, apparently confused by his stepsister’s anger and uncertain of what role he played in these events. Adam dropped his hands to his side in a gesture of defeat.

  “It appears we shall have no evidence given by this man,” said Vernon to Sir Thomas. “Let us move on, then, and not waste further time. You may sit down,” he said to Nicholas, sighing heavily.

  Adam took Nicholas by the arm and began to lead him away. “No,” said Vernon. “You remain, Adam Nemo.”

  Adam stayed where he was and looked at the coroner and then at the faces of the jurymen, almost all of whom he had seen before, but not one of whom he counted as a friend. These were for the most part the honest burghers of the town, who regarded themselves a cut above a household servant. Their faces now were stem and disapproving, and he was suddenly conscious again of how different he must appear to them, how outlandish must seem his origins and, to their way of thinking, his feelings. Perhaps they held him to blame for

  the fact that Nicholas could not be made to understand questions that must have been perfectly obvious to any soul with half a brain, for he knew that not everyone in town regarded Nicholas as being feebleminded as well as deaf and dumb. Or, perhaps like Agnes Profytt, they suspected him of being Nicholas’s accomplice.

  “Tell us what you found when you came to Crookback Farm yesterday morning? What hour of the day was it?’’

  “It was morning, sir, about ten or eleven of the clock.” “How could you know that with such precision?”

  “The servants at the Court do go to church at that hour—” “But not you?” V
ernon asked sharply. “You do not go to church as the law requires?”

  “I go, sir, but not yesterday.”

  “Wherefore not?”

  “Jeroboam, who commands us in the master’s absence, said I was to stay with the maids sir, who were sick abed and unable to go to church. He wanted some man to be there.” “And how was it then that you left your duty as watchman at Burton Court to walk three miles to the farm? Is this how you obey Jeroboam’s commands?”

  Adam was about to say that the maids weren’t sick, but only feigning so that they might stay home and make merry, but he thought the better of it. They would be called to testily then, and not wishing to be fined they would surely deny his words and make him out to be a liar. He decided it would be better were he merely regarded as disobedient.

  “Will you answer the question, Adam Nemo?”

  “With Jeroboam gone and the maids sick there was none to stay me, sir.”

  “I see,” said Vernon. “Well, I suppose it is too much to expect of servants these days that they obey without someone to watch them at each moment. Proceed, then; tell us then what you found at the farm.”

  “I found the house all quiet—”

  “Speak up, man! The jury must hear.”

  “I found the house silent, Your Honor, the dog was dead in the yard. There was blood splattered on the wall of the parlor. And Nicholas was huddled in a comer, as pale as death and quivering. He took me to the well.”

  “How is it he knew where the bodies were?”

  Adam started to answer, but Mildmay interrupted. “This strange fellow is no more capable of knowing what Nicholas Crookback knew or did not than the wretched boy is to tell it.”

  “With all due respect, Sir Thomas,” Vernon answered. “We shall not know he does not know until he is asked.”

  Sir Thomas let out a loud sigh of exasperation.

  Adam looked from coroner to magistrate, unsure as to whom to respond to. Deciding it should be the coroner, he said, “He may not have seen the bodies put there, sir, but he knew where they were. I looked down the well and saw no water reflected, as ordinarily I could.”

  “You saw no bodies, then, yourself?”

  “Not until later, when William Dees fetched them forth on his back.”

  “Then how did you know there was a murder done if you saw no bodies and Nicholas Crookback lacked wit to tell you?”

  At this question there was a murmur of voices among those assembled, even the jurymen, who had been as quiet as if in church until this point.

  Adam’s mouth went dry; he heard his voice tremble, although he tried to control it. Matthew Stock had told him to speak the plain truth, which truth he had told. Then why was that not enough? Why, did his truth sound like dissembling, even to himself?

  “I saw the blood on the walls of the parlor and on Nicholas. There was too the dog that was much loved of John Crookback. When Nicholas led me to the well, I looked down and could not see the water. There was something there, like a shadow. I knew not what it was. I could always see my own reflection in the surface of the water below, as in a glass, but there was nothing there to be seen.”

  “Whereupon you came straightway to the church, where you should have been before, and broadcast news of murder, although you claim to have seen no proof thereof.”

  “If I may speak, Sir Thomas,” Adam heard Matthew Stock say behind him. “Adam Nemo never said there was murder done at the farm, only that something terrible had happened there and that we should come. Those of us who followed after him knew only that and nothing more until we ourselves discovered the dead where they had been cast.”

  “I would still fain know how he even knew that in the absence of visible evidence.”

  “He saw the blood,” Matthew Stock said.

  “Let Adam Nemo answer!” the coroner said.

  “I did see the blood, Master Vernon,” Adam said. “It was all upon the walls of the parlor, and fresh. I could tell by Nicholas’s face that violence had been done. When he took me to the well and I could not see my image back again, I knew what it was he showed me, although I could not see it with my eyes.”

  “You simply knew, then?”

  “I knew what it was that was there, although I could not see it,” Adam said again.

  Vernon leaned over to whisper something to his clerk, and there was silence for a pace.

  “Did you ever quarrel with John Crookback?”

  “Never, sir. He liked me well.”

  “He made no objection to your friendship with his son, or to the fact that you, a servant of another, spent time idly at the farm.”

  “He seemed most grateful that his son had a friend.”

  “And what of the rest of the family—Susanna and the children? Did they approve or disapprove?”

  “They were never my enemies, nor I theirs.”

  Vernon whispered more words to his clerk, then he told Adam he could return to his place and he asked William Dees to come forward.

  “State your name, fellow,” the coroner said when the stonemason stood before him.

  “William Dees of Chelmsford, stonemason.”

  Vernon asked Dees if he was any relation to Arthur Dees of Colchester; William said he was not.

  “I understand it was you who climbed down into the well to bring the bodies up.”

  “I did, sir,”

  “At whose behest?”

  “At Master Stock’s and the parson’s, who said I should do it because I was strongest amongst them.”

  “Did they say what you were to find below?”

  The stonemason paused; then he said, “Now that you ask, they did not, only that I was to go down and see what was in the well. Master Stock said there was something there and we needed to see what it was. We all suspected murder, you see, sir, because of the blood, sir. And so nobody was surprised that there were bodies at the bottom of the well, because murder is what we thought had happened.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “Where, Your Honor?”

  “In the well. What, are you simpleminded then that you balk at my questions?”

  “May his soul rest in peace, it was John Crookback, sir. I brought him up first upon my back, and a heavy load he was. Then his wife thereafter, and last the poor innocent babes, who were hardly a load at all.”

  “So you were the first to see the bodies, that is, to know indeed that they were there.”

  “God bless me, I was, Your Honor.”

  Vernon nodded, said that it was an act of Christian charity that the stonemason had done for the dead, and that Dees was excused.

  Vernon next called Agnes Profytt to come forth, which she did, her head thrown back proudly and her high pointed breasts before her like banners. There was first a great stirring of persons standing in front of her, none of whom seemed eager to grant her room to advance.

  “You are the dead man’s daughter, I understand?” Vernon asked when Agnes was where Adam had stood before.

  “I am, sir,” Agnes said, and looked accusingly at Nicholas with her little black eyes, which Adam thought were like an animal’s, quick and shrewd and dangerous.

  “The hour is late. Tell us, therefore, what you have to tell us.”

  “I will speak briefly,” Agnes said, lifting her chin but still focusing her attention on her half brother, who was not looking at her but at the ground with what seemed a kind of shamefastness. “Adam Nemo has not spoken truly. My half brother and my father and stepmother had many difficulties, and with my siblings, God rest them in heaven, Nicholas had the more. Why should there not have been trouble, given how different he is from the rest of us? He bore a curse of God from the day he was bom, for that he cannot hear or speak must surely mean some odious thing. Nevertheless, I leave that to the learned to say.”

  “What do you mean, Mistress Profytt, by ‘trouble’?” Vernon asked. “What manner of trouble was this? Dissension of the ordinary kind, perhaps, such as parents often have with their childre
n?”

  Agnes drew her eyes from Nicholas and turned her head to face Sir Thomas. “I know not what is ordinary in other households, but I know what I saw as child and virgin in my father’s house. Who are better witnesses than I or my dear sister, who will agree to every word I speak? My father and his son by his second wife were ever at odds, and on this I will swear before this assembly and before God.”

  With this, Agnes gave a little snort of triumph, folded her arms before her, and flashed her black eyes as she had done before.

  “Are you saying, then, Mistress Profytt, that Nicholas Crookback murdered his father, your stepmother, and your siblings?”

  A great quiet fell upon the crowd awaiting Agnes’s answer. She did not respond at once but seemed to hold her breath, looking upward to the ceiling as though she were transfixed by some vision. Then she said, “I say no more, Master Vernon, than I have said. Yet I think it passing strange that of my family, Nicholas alone survives and will tell no tale, not even make a dumb show, of which I know right well he is fully capable. Why does he not make a sign if he is innocent? And if the blood is not upon his hands, why does he not point the finger at him who did this?”

  Agnes herself pointed to where the bodies lay. There was a loud murmur of voices, indicating to Adam that many in the assembly were in agreement with her.

  Agnes withdrew and her sister Mildred was now called forth. Vernon asked her the same questions he had put to Agnes, and as Agnes had said she would, Mildred confirmed her sister’s account of how there had been trouble between father and son but was equally vague as to what this trouble was. Then Vernon called Matthew to come forth, which the clothier did.