"And what said she about her mistress, pray?"
But the constable's question was pre-empted by the sight of the Welsh girl hurrying up the road. When she saw'the two men standing together, she stopped abruptly, as though puzzled, then she continued on toward them.
Matthew had paid the girl little mind when he had first seen her in the hall. Now he observed in her expression a fierce determination and concern which gave the simple lines of her face a more womanly character. He noticed that when they met the lovers did not embrace but stood awkwardly apart, the player with his thumbs inserted in his belt, and the maid clutching the basket she carried as though it were a newborn child she was afraid to drop.
Big Tod spoke first. "You have come at last, and about time, too."
The girl said nothing. Matthew could now see that her eyes were red and swollen from weeping. The player continued: "I have told the constable here of our wedding plans, so he knows we are about to leave this place. But he would still have some words with you before we may be on our way."
"The wind is turning cold again," Matthew said. "Let us walk toward the hedge to do our talking. I do know that you have merry business before you and would not impede its progress. I promise I shall make quick work of my words."
The three walked a short distance to where a hedge of oak and hawthorn broke the monotony of the fields. Matthew began directly, determining her origin, her conduct' in the house, and her reason for leaving Lady Saltmarsh's employ. At the last question she hesitated, and then Big Tod burst in to reaffirm their betrothal. Matthew could read no denial in her face, only an uneasiness which he took as a sign of her eagerness to be off.
"Were you much in her ladyship's company?" Matthew said.
"I was her maid. My duties were to look after her linen, to help her to dress and undress, to empty the chamber pot each morning, and fetch whatever was wanted from below."
The constable decided to phrase his next question carefully. "Did you ever see her with the players' boy, Richard Mull?"
A look of astonishment crossed the girl's face. Now he was certain he had found something. Without giving her a chance to respond, he honed his question to an even finer point.
"Did you ever find Richard Mull and your mistress in close company?"
"I do not know what you mean, sir," she replied weakly.
"I mean," Matthew explained patiently, "did you ever observe that her fondness for the boy was what it ought not to have been?"
The girl and player exchanged glances. In the man's expression, Matthew thought he detected a warning.
" 'Tis not a maid's place to pry into her mistress's business," the girl replied, her eyes to the ground. "If my lady did aught but what would please her husband, I know it not."
At this, Big Tod took up her cause. "You can see, Constable, that her mind is elsewhere now. She is an honest girl, not one to carry tales or pry. Now we best be on our way."
Matthew looked at the two standing before him. They seemed after all a likely couple. Indeed, they reminded him of Joan and himself before their own marriage years before. He decided not to delay them with more questions. "I thank you for what you have said, and wish Godspeed to both. May you be as happy as my wife aqd me these twenty years."
The three walked toward the road together and were bidding farewell again when they heard the horsemen coming across the fields. Matthew turned to see Saltmarsh's secretary astride one of the horses and the surly groom, Zerubbabel Edwards, on the other.
Varnell shouted at them to stand, and reined in his horse, sharply. "Hold the girl," he said.
"By whose command?" Big Tod responded angrily.
"I would put to you the same question, Master Secretary," Matthew said. "Is the girl not free then?"
"She's not, but bound for five years, only two of which she has served."
Matthew looked to the girl, whose face was blank with terror. "Is what the man says true, girl, are you bound?"
The girl stood speechless, bent over and suddenly old. He walked toward her and pried her hand loose from the player's arm. Big Tod stared at the ground dejectedly.
"I have no choice but to surrender you to your lawful master. Such is the law," Matthew said.
The words brought Big Tod back to life. He grabbed the girl and looked threateningly at the other men. "She shall not go with you," he thundered, his right hand firmly on the dagger at his side.
"You will keep the peace," Matthew Stock said firmly, seeing the groom on the point of drawing his own blade.
He turned to look at the Welsh girl and the player. "Do either of you wish now to tell me if there be any reason why the girl should fear to return to the Hall?"
The girl began to weep, Big Tod pulled her to him protectively. The groom glowered and unsheathed a sword, while the big player looked as if he would need little urging to throttle the man had he the chance.
"These two," Matthew began in an official tone, "I arrest and charge with resistance to an officer of the law and breaking the peace. You two interfere at your peril, for though she be runaway, my charge takes the precedence of Sir Henry's. As for you, my man," Matthew continued, looking sternly toward the groomsman, "I will leave you for Master Varnell to rule. See to it that Sir Henry knows of this. I will present these two to him tomorrow with my charge."
Varnell and the groom exchanged glances but made no further show of force. Then the secretary pulled up on his reins and the two rode away.
The girl began to weep again. Matthew said, "That's the last we'll see of that pair today. Tomorrow may be a different story. Come now with me. Your arrest is no jest. My wife and I will find a place for you beside our fire."
Nine
JOAN'S nimble fingers plied her needle until the ornate filigree of lace was done. Then she examined her work with satisfaction and laid it aside, her eyelids half closed as though heavy with sleep.
But she was not asleep, not even drowsy. She had been thinking about the murder, and the more she thought the more confused she became. A good housewife, she had a passion for neatness; she would have put the world in order had she the doing of it within her power. But everything to do with Richard Mull and his dreadful death was askew in her mind. She envisioned it all as though it were an array of tragic scenes like the pageant wagons she had seen as a child on holidays, each one with its own dramatized story. She could not connect the sordid murder with the finery of the Hall, Richard Mull with Cecilia Saltmarsh, the horrible hostler with Sir Henry, the dandified secretary and the priest with the dark eyes and long face. Yet she was sure that somewhere at the hall the motive for Richard Mull's death squatted like a toad half buried in the muddy bottom of a pond.
Determining the motive, she realized, depended on making sense of relationships—what the boy had been to Sir Henry, what to his lady. Cecilia Saltmarsh was a young woman, beautiful and polished. Perhaps she had grown weary of her husband's neglect and had taken the young actor as her lover. Perhaps Sir Henry had discovered the same and ordered the boy's death. Or, she speculated further, Lady Saltmarsh herself might have been the offended party. She may have found the boy unfaithful with another—perhaps the girl at the inn—and given commands. Great ladies, she knew, had often done as much. Jealousy might enrage a saint.
Then her imagination shaped events in another way. What if Sir Henry had lusted after the boy himself? The idea was repugnant to her. It would never have occurred to her had the play not suggested it as she watched the aged Jupiter dandle Ganymede upon his knee. Sir Henry may have promoted the entertainment of the players so that he might be nearer to his unnatural love. Perhaps the boy refused outright—or perhaps he complied. Either response might provoke a murder, she thought, especially had the boy threatened to reveal the knight's passion.
Presently these fancies dissolved; she discarded them as simple and perverse. She felt guilty for even thinking them, as though the very idea of the act tainted her own soul. Besides, she thought, country knights might find eas
ier ways to undo their rivals than making a public spectacle of their private affairs, especially if the knight were also magistrate. Such, she had heard, worked much by poison, always had their murders done by other hands, and paid well that their victims' bodies were never found or, if so, not to be distinguished from poor folk died of the fever and unburied. It also came hard to her to think of how such a tall man as Sir Henry was to come to play the cuckold to a stripling, hardly man enough to give a grown woman pleasure.
She retreated from this particular line of thought as she might have withdrawn in distaste from the sight of a flyblown cat before her door.
The man who entered at that moment with her husband she recognized as one of the players. At his side was a thin girl of about her daughter's age with dark features twisted with apprehension and fear. She might be fair, Joan thought, had her mouth been shaped by another humor. At once she thought of the player and the girl as a pair, an impression immediately confirmed by her husband, who introduced them as betrothed, but only after he first somewhat awkwardly inquired of the girl her name. She was Gwen Mair of Carmarthen.
Joan said, "You are far from home, child."
"I have taken this man and maid into custody," Matthew was saying, motioning them both to chairs by the fire. "To keep them out of the Hall for the night. On the morrow they may be about their own business."
"Why, what have they done, pray?" Joan asked with sudden alarm, for she wanted no felons within her door, no matter how innocent the two might appear by their faces.
"It is but a stratagem," Matthew explained matter-of-factly, removing his cloak and making himself comfortable by the fire. "Peter Varnell and the groom from the Hall tried to force the girl to return, saying she was a runaway. They came upon us with horses. But if she can prove she is free and clear, they'll have no cause to hold her."
"Aye, and she can so prove," Big Tod said, speaking for the first time since they had entered the room.
"If so, nothing more will come of it. You'll be safe here tonight. Tomorrow you may be on your way." Matthew called for Betty, who led the couple to the spare bedchamber above.
"Now, my husband," Joan said, "pray tell what has happened since you left me so down^ist this morning. You seem lively enough now."
Matthew placed another log on the fire and resumed his chair opposite Joan's. He began to relate his discovery. Joan listened with interest, interrupting him occasionally with a question or exclamation.
"The piece of leatherwork I found was from one of Sir Henry's saddles. It bore his initial, carved skillfully into the leather.
"Then it was Sir Henry's horses in the wood." she concluded.
"Indeed, his horses, but who was the stranger? That's the question."
"Well at least you have connected the murder with the Hall and that's a great thing."
"Save that I no longer have the evidence. Stupidly I allowed the groom to have it and was of no stomach to demand its return, not without the watch behind me."
Matthew and Joan watched the fire grow great on the hearth and then decline. Later Big Tod and Gwen joined them in a simple supper. Gwen ate but a speak of meat, but Big Tod consumed a whole capon and much ale to wash it down. Danger seemed to have made him ravenous. Joan sought to draw Gwen out of her gloom with cheery proverbs or recollections of her own young womanhood, but Gwen sat pensive, her mind full of dark images.
When supper was done, the four gathered by the kitchen fire and after each was seated comfortably close Matthew began his questions:
"Today when I asked you about affairs at the Hall you told me nothing. I knew then your silence was out of fear, and though you are fearful still you are now among friends who wish you well."
Gwen turned her blue eyes toward the constable and shifted uneasily in her chair. Big Tod extended his hand and gave hers an encouraging pat.
"Tell Master Stock what you told me," Big Tod urged gently.
Gwen looked up at him, not so much out of reluctance to speak as from uncertainty as to how to begin.
"Aye, about what you saw with your mistress and the boy—and about Sir Henry too."
Then the girl, her eyes fixed upon the fire as though in a trance, related to them all what she had previously told Big Tod.
Varnell grimaced, mopped the sweat from his brow, and sent the groom to see to the horses. He knew Sir Henry would not take his failure lightly; but then, he considered, he would not have made matters better had he rushed the constable and taken the girl by force. Besides, he saw no need to risk breaking his skull in a fight.
He found Saltmarsh alone, sitting comfortably with a book. "You have brought the girl? " the knight asked without lifting his eyes from the page.
The secretary's voice trembled uncontrollably. "We were prevented, sir. The constable and one of the players made bold resistance. We feared to shed blood on such slight grounds."
"The constable made resistance?" Saltmarsh asked incredulously.
"Indeed, sir. He held that his own charge of their breaking the Queen's peace took precedence above yours. He has taken both of them into custody and boasts that he will keep them there until tomorrow when he can determine the truth of the girl's condition."
Saltmarsh shoved the book aside and walked angrily to the window. Peter Varnell shuddered, relieved to find his employer's wrath directed to some other person. After several moments of silence, Saltmarsh said simply, "You may go. Mind you, Master Varnell, learn courage of some woman. You have much need of such before you can serve me."
Stung to the quick, Peter Varnell bowed cringingly. "I shall study as you direct," he said, feeling his way from the room as though his eyesight were obscured by a heavy mist.
When the door was closed behind him, he suppressed a curse and nursed his confusion by gnawing upon his thumb until the pain brought him to his senses. He turned abruptly and made for Cecilia Saltmarsh's chamber.
The new girl admitted him, plump aiffl ruddy-faced and new enough still in the house to treat him with proper fear. She ushered him into the bedchamber where Varnell found the mistress of Saltmarsh Hall reclining on her bed. The lady greeted him, and he came quickly to his point. "You asked me lately if I were willing to be of service to you— You wanted to know about the boy, and said you would reward me as I deserved. Do you still hold to that?"
"That would depend," she said eyeing him curiously. She dismissed the girl, rose from the bed, and invited him to sit. "Now speak, Master Varnell, what have you?"
He spoke hurriedly, still so enraged at Saltmarsh that he cared nothing for the consequences. "Your husband commanded the boy's murder. He ordered me to hire the hostler to the work. I went to the inn as I have done before to fetch the boy. He came willingly, suspecting nothing more than the prospect of your entertainment. When we arrived where I had left the horses, the hostler sprang from his place of concealment, seized the boy about the neck, and dispatched him. It was over quickly. I helped the hostler carry the body back to the stable. When the players retired there later they were too weary or drunk to find anything but their own beds in the straw."
Varnell paused, breathless. Cecilia Saltmarsh's face was white, she groaned a little, and then looked at Varnell with a steady gaze.
"I speak God's truth." he said.
"I have no doubt of that.'Tis too simple and likely to be otherwise." *
She sighed heavily and walked to her window. For a while she said nothing. Varnell waited, not daring to open his mouth again. Then she said, "You have confessed to murder, Master Varnell. What am I to think? I would ask you why you did it, but it would be a vain question. Yet now that I consider it, why should I believe all of what you have said? My husband commanded the death? You say that indeed, but how can I be sure that you did not conceive what you have just now admitted to have executed. You've wedged yourself into a narrow place, Master Secretary. A confessed murderer, now wishing to implicate his master? What proof have you that you and the hostler acted on my husband's orders and not out of y
our own malice?"
She looked at him strangely. Varnell shuddered and his heart began to race again. He tried to think clearly. What proof was there? Saltmarsh had suborned him privately with an account of the knight's motives to which Varnell had given but a single ear, since the secretary had detested the boy already and was glad to be of use anyway. Something about a husband's jealousy and a wife's indiscretion. Plausible enough, Varnell had thought; and the act had not offended his own conscience since the hostler was to strike the actual blow, not Varnell.
"I wonder," she said icily, "that you should so traduce your master as to convey to his wife such a wicked story as this to cover your own crime."
"My lady—"
"Indeed—and your master's wife."
Her eyes blazed with anger. Varnell sat stunned, struggling to hold back tears and shaking uncontrollably. He protested, "I never intended ... I thought you had no great love for your husband—"
"You thought—!" She turned abruptly. Varnell remained seated, not daring to move. When she turned again, her face seemed transformed. There was no anger visible, only a steady gaze of contempt. Varnell withered under it. He wished himself dead in his grave.
"Get out."
He didn't move; his legs wouldn't move.
"I said, get out. My husband will know of this."
"Please, lady-"
"Nothing you could say or do will please me now. You have betrayed your master with this false account and betrayed me as well in thinking I should so wish to know of my husband's private affairs as to procure your service."
"I'll take my leave, then," he managed to say. His mouth was dry, as though he had not drunk for a week. His heart beat violently and he could feel beads of sweat upon his brow even though the chamber was cold.
He stumbled from the room, blind with fear, bumping into the serving girl who had bee*n waiting outside the chamber. The girl looked up at him with wide eyes and seeing the terror in his face shrunk from him. He pushed her aside and started down the passageway, not sure where he would go, when he heard Cecilia Saltmarsh call. He stopped and turned. His mistress was standing there staring after him. Her face had changed again; to his amazement she seemed unmoved, calm, as though their interview had been a dream from which he had now awakened. She beckoned him to return to her. "Perhaps I have misjudged you," she said softly. She glared at the girl, who quicklyran off, and Varnell followed Cecilia Saltmarsh back into her bedchamber.
The Player's Boy is Dead Page 11
