Frobisher's Savage

by Leonard Tourney

  “Keep your children quiet, will you? I have not slept all the night.”

  His wife came to stand in the doorway, and folding her arms over her bony chest, she regarded her husband with a scowl. He looked at her and thought that she did indeed look ill. Her complexion was the texture and color of oatmeal. There was no meat on her body, and lately she had begun to smell bad. He imagined she would die soon and then he would be left with the children, for whom he had no strong affection but looked upon as creatures foisted on him by a trick of nature, a punishment for venery. He should need a new wife to care for that brood, besides which his wife had not served him as a wife should for many a month, with her aches and pains and whining about them at all hours; sometimes he was so rank with lust he could hardly stand it and would happily have taken up with some whore but for the cost and a dread of the French pox, which was all over the town, according to rumor.

  He leaned back on the bed and thought about eligible women, thinking it a sad thing that Agnes Profytt had married before he was widowed, for she was a ripe wench with a lickerish eye and skin like velvet, and for all the sharpness of her tongue, Dees supposed himself man enough to tame her. And now, Dees thought, Agnes should share in Crookback Farm, one male heir being dead and the other likely to meet the same fate when the law took its probable course.

  From the attic window of the clothier’s house Adam Nemo looked down into the street, but cautiously, so as to not be seen. The clothier’s wife had told him he was to remain indoors, he and Nicholas, until they were wanted, which she said they would surely be later at the coroner’s inquiry. She had explained it all carefully when the pleasant-faced cook of the family had brought the two men their breakfast of cheese, bread, and good strong ale. The clothier’s wife had said nothing about remaining hidden, although Adam somehow knew concealment was wise. He could hear excited voices in the street, which was full again, as full as it had been the night before. All of the shops were closed by Sir Thomas Mildmay’s order, yet Adam had never before seen so many strangers in the town.

  Nicholas sat not on the bed but at its foot, his head resting on his arms. From time to time he wept softly while Adam stroked his head and hummed, as he had not thought of doing in a very long time, a song he did not remember the words to, only the melody. About midmorning, Nicholas no longer wept, neither did he move, but stared at the wall opposite him as though there were visions passing before his eyes.

  Adam leaned toward his friend and touched his shoulder. Nicholas turned to look at him. Adam held up four fingers and then made a vigorous slashing motion with his fist, the imaginary knife. He pointed to his eye, and made an expression of puzzlement.

  A look of painful comprehension momentarily crossed Nicholas’s face, and then he cast his eyes down again, and Adam knew Nicholas had not seen the murders. He had been spared that, at least. Only the aftermath had he witnessed, horrible enough.

  Adam Nemo turned away and remembered . . .

  The larger of the Englishmen brought him down as he tried to escape, a giant golden-bearded man whose eyes flashed angrily and who beat upon him and perhaps would have killed him with his blows had their chief not called him off The chief was Martin Frobisher, Adam later learned, when the garbled sounds coming from the alien mouths became words with meanings. He had never learned the brutal man's name. He knew none of their names save Frobisher's and Crookback's, because he had to do with them later, and could remember none of their faces except Frobisher's and Crookback's and, yes, the brutal man's. Nor could he remember any of the faces of his own people, although sometimes he beat upon his own head in wordless fury to bring them back.

  Chapter 6

  The press of bodies around the Sessions House, more like the clamor of market day than a grave legal proceeding, was so considerable that it was only by the blast of a trumpet that enough decorum was obtained for the coroner’s inquest to commence. And even then there was a long delay while Sir Thomas and the coroner, Edmund Vernon, a youngish gentleman with nervous eyes, fresh in his office, debated whether fourteen jurors would be sufficient, as Sir Thomas argued, or eighteen were required, as Vernon maintained. This issue was finally resolved in compromise, that the jury should split the difference between the two positions and sixteen jurors be chosen.

  Another hour passed while a jury was selected, a process made more difficult by Sir Thomas’s anxiety that all jurymen should be free of prejudice against the deceased family, and the legion of clamoring volunteers who offered themselves for the duty and had periodically to be silenced by threats from both Vernon and Sir Thomas. Thereafter, another hour passed while the two gentlemen discussed who should give evidence and whether Nicholas Crookback, being deaf and dumb and mentally unsound as a consequence, was a competent witness.

  On that point it was decided that competent or no, he should be made to appear, and Adam Nemo, and William Dees as well, because he had brought the bodies up from the well, and likewise the deceased’s daughter, Agnes Profytt, who had made a special request to speak, for she said she had evidence to give and would not be denied, if she must go door to door otherwise.

  Matthew observed while all this was going on, then went to his house to fetch Nicholas and Adam Nemo and returned with them.

  By the time this was done Vernon suggested that the hour was so late the inquest might as well be held over until the next day. To this Sir Thomas objected strenuously, saying that the townsfolk had already enjoyed one holiday over the murders and that two in a row would induce such idleness that there would be no working for the remainder of the week.

  “We shall have to meet past dark, then,” said Vernon, with a shake of his head. There followed a lengthy discussion between the two men as to whether it was lawful to hold a coroner’s inquest in the nighttime, with Vernon noting that he could find no precedent for it, and Sir Thomas insisting that an inquest might be held at any hour so long as there was honor to the queen and good order in the proceedings. Finally, Sir Thomas prevailed over Vernon’s objections.

  “Then let there be torches,” Sir Thomas said, with a look of disapproval at Vernon, whom everyone saw he disliked. “I have no reason to believe that your deliberations will be as protracted as was the impaneling of these worthy men. ”

  The jury of sixteen men were all from Chelmsford and Moulsham. Matthew Stock knew every one, and his wife, his children, his dog. Honest men, good Christians, men of business for the most part but a few farmers too. Were some matter of his being judged he would not have minded such a jury. And yet he wondered if their deliberations would be quite as simple as Sir Thomas supposed. He worried what Agnes Profytt would say, how she might stir up the more that which seemed already stirred enough.

  Matthew asked Joan, who had returned to the Sessions House with him, to bring him his supper and something for Nicholas and Adam, for he said he thought it too risky to move the two up and down the street again, not with the town full of strangers and everyone curious about Nicholas and Master Burton’s servant and struggling to catch sight of them.

  “You shall have no decent meal in a basket, husband. Can you not leave them in another’s charge?”

  “Whose?” he asked, looking at her helplessly. “Besides, I dare not leave again. Not with this multitude abroad.”

  At six o’clock Sir Thomas returned with his men, bearing so many torches that one might have thought it daylight in the market cross. The whole town seemed to be on fire, and this extraordinary illumination in streets that were customarily dark after sundown seemed to increase the general excitement. The people, anxious that they should not lose their places, had hardly moved. There was a great deal of jostling, boisterous laughter, visiting with friends, and hawking of food, for the tavemkeepers and other tradesmen, seizing the opportunity, had sold meat pies, bread, and other dainties at high prices, despite Sir Thomas’s declaration that the day should be a holiday. It seemed to Matthew that every brothel and alehouse in Chelmsford and Moulsham had emptied itself into the
street.

  It was as raucous and unruly an assembly as he had ever seen in his town, and the spectacle amazed and terrified him. He was a small, unprepossessing man whose recently delegated charge was little recognized beyond the town precincts, and yet here he found himself an image of authority whom others now depended upon to maintain order. What was he to do if riot erupted? Call out the watch? The citizenry of which it was composed would no doubt be participants in the rioting.

  His only resource was the large number of armed servants

  Sir Thomas had brought in from the manor, and their presence did little to lessen the confusion and danger presented by so many crowded into the market cross. Besides which, they were under Sir Thomas’s command, not Matthew s. Yet during the intervening hour no less than five of his fellow townspeople came to him claiming that they had been victims of pickpurses, and he personally broke up two fistfights between apprentices, aided a woman who had fainted from the press of bodies, chastized a drunken apprentice for pissing on the cobbles, and was called upon to resolve a dispute about a broken window and silence one barking dog so annoying to those around him that there were cries on all sides for his master to shut the creature up or see him hanged on the very spot. The master, a large ugly man somewhat resembling his beast, threatened to cudgel the first citizen that so much as sullied the dog’s fur, but Matthew knew the man from the cloth trade and, after an earnest entreaty, prevailed upon the man to take the noisy animal home.

  Sir Thomas ordered that another blast be sounded on the trumpet, and then a second and third, and was about, he said, to proclaim the assembly a public riot when the noise abated, and a hush of anticipation settled over the crowd. The magistrate looked at Vernon, who seemed to have been very upset by the disorder, and told him to commence the inquest.

  The jury was now called forth and provided with benches to sit upon, as were the gentlemen present. A long trencher table and chairs had been brought from nearby houses and set up for the coroner, Vernon, and his clerk, whose name was Ruggles, and for Sir Thomas. Chairs were also provided for a few of Sir Thomas’s friends, who had come to see the excitement, who Matthew had heard had actually paid for their seats. Matthew and one alderman and the sixteen jurymen, being of less social importance, were provided only stools, which were arranged at a right angle to the table where the coroner, Ruggles the clerk, and Sir Thomas sat. The chairs for the gentlemen observers were set up opposite, so a great U was created, in the middle of which the bodies of the dead were laid out, covered now with cerecloth.

  Directly in front of the coroner’s table a speaker’s stand had been set up for the witnesses. Even with this arrangement, it was difficult for the audience to see or hear, the ceiling being so low and the pillars obstructing the view on three of the sides. There were a number of complaints about this, but it was so clear that nothing could be done, most of the crowd seemed content just to be within earshot and those beyond merely to be present at an event that was sure to be spoken of for years to come.

  The jury having taken their oaths before, Vernon now announced what everyone knew, that the purpose of the assembly was to inquire into the deaths of John Crookback, yeoman, his wife, and their two children. He got the name of the boy wrong and was corrected by a number of the jurymen who had known the Crookbacks well enough to be intimate with these details. Then Vernon asked Martin Day, who was a physician, to stand before the jury and explain the cause of death.

  Day, a hearty man in his sixties with a thick, barrel-shaped body and gray hair that he wore down his back, was one of the few persons in the county with any claim to medical training beyond home remedies—he was a frequent witness at coroner’s inquests, and his ability to identify a cause of death amazed Matthew, who had been a juryman himself on more than one occasion.

  “You have examined these bodies?” Vernon asked.

  “I have, sir.”

  “And found?”

  “The man, John Crookback, died from being stabbed with dagger or poniard, thrice in the chest and once in the throat. He lost a great deal of blood from these wounds.”

  “He did not drown, then, in the well?”

  “He would have been dead before,” said Day, looking from the coroner to the body in question, as though the response would reanimate the corpse to verify the physician’s assessment.

  “And the wife?”

  “Stuck with a like instrument, in the shoulder, chest, arm, and belly. Which wounds might have proved fatal had she not been drowned. She was a sickly woman, not hale like her husband.”

  Day continued by describing the wounds of the two children, which Matthew could scarcely bear to hear and which provoked those in the assembly to cry “Shame!” and “God help us.” The children, Day said, had died of drowning, although both had been stabbed repeatedly.

  “You conclude, then,” said Sir Thomas, “that these deaths were murder and not the result of self-inflicted wounds or of accident or misadventure?”

  “They could have hardly been other than murder,” Day said, “No man could stab himself in such a manner. He would have fainted before the second or third thrust. Besides, there are the circumstances of their disposition—I mean the fact they were found at the bottom of the well. For Crookback to stab himself, his wife, and his children and then throw himself and two children into the well would be a feat beyond Will Kempe’s skill.”

  A sprinkling of nervous laughter followed upon mention of this famous clown’s name, although Day had made it in utter seriousness, and then the coroner told Day he was excused. The coroner’s clerk removed the cloths from the bodies and the jury was instructed to inspect the wounds for themselves, which they did with a good deal of eagerness; there was as well much craning of necks to have a view among the gentry present.

  Matthew turned his attention at this time to the jurymen as they inspected the bodies. He noticed that they appeared more curious than horrified due, no doubt, to the fact that there must be few among them who had not seen worse spectacles: rotting heads stuck upon pikes, decaying corpses still dangling from the hangman’s tree, an occasional horror left in a ditch to bloat and molder because no one would take responsibility for its decent burial. He knew it was not a gentle age in which he lived, and England not a gentle country, although he would not have traded it for any other he knew of in Christendom. They were fellow citizens of the victims filing past, and did it not make a difference when the horror had been visited on one’s own neighbor? Did that not bring the specter of untimely death much closer and a cold grip of fear to every heart?

  Matthew watched the faces of the jury for signs of these emotions, and for something else too—guilt. For he was persuaded by Joan’s reasoning that the crime against John Crookback and his family had not been incidental to housebreaking and larceny; no, the theft of the silver plate had been a ruse to hide the real provocation. Crookback had known his enemy. The murderer was no passing stranger, but someone of the town—maybe even one of the jurymen themselves.

  So Matthew scrutinized faces, half ashamed of his own suspicion, his ability to transform friend and neighbor into suspects in so vile and unspeakable a violation of God’s sanctions. But he saw nothing beyond what he might have expected. Were his friends, say Tom Deal the scrivener or Jack Terrill the goldsmith, guilty of much more than a morbid curiosity stronger than compassion, or of a strong stomach for the gruesome? Could the actual murderer have looked upon his victims’ bodies and not cried out in spiritual torment, his very soul wrenched by conviction of his damnation? What were the strictures of the queen’s law compared to the indictment and judgment of God? Could one of the jurymen have been the author of this horror? Would heaven have permitted such cruel irony?

  The last juror had seen the body and there was general concurrence with Day’s opinion that the Crookbacks were dead, had been stabbed, and three of them drowned as well. Sir Thomas asked specifically if any of them supposed the deaths to have been caused by any other hand than a murderer’s,
and no one spoke up in disagreement with the consensus.

  Then Sir Thomas called Nicholas Crookback to come forward.

  For Nicholas, no stool had been provided. He had been sitting on the floor of the Sessions House directly behind Matthew, so still and motionless that Matthew would not have noticed his presence had the boy not occupied so central a position in the case. At the name, Matthew rose and turned, making a motion for Nicholas to rise and follow.

  During the jury’s inspection of the bodies the audience had grown noisier, as whispers swelled to a steady murmuring, but upon Nicholas’s taking his position, the crowd fell into a great stillness. Being newly appointed and not native of Chelmsford, Vernon had not known the Crookbacks, and although Matthew and Sir Thomas had acquainted him with Nicholas Crookback’s infirmity, Vernon treated him as though he were fully capable of both speech and hearing, asking him to state his name, his place of residence, and his relationship to the deceased persons, none of which questions Nicholas seemed to comprehend at all.

  “He cannot speak or hear, sir,” Matthew said.

  “Can he be made to understand with signs, then?”

  Matthew admitted he did not know. “He has a friend who is here, Master Vernon. His name is Adam Nemo, a servant of Master Burton of Burton Court. Perhaps he can make this boy understand your questions.”

  There were no circumstances in which a legal proceeding would have been to Adam Nemo anything but confusion and threat. He hated hissing, barking, bellowing crowds now as he had hated them twenty years before, when out of the professed goodness of his heart, John Crookback—it had been almost as many years since Adam had inquired into the motives of the mariner turned farmer—had borne him away to the relative peace and blessed obscurity of the Essex countryside, covering his escape with the ingenious fiction that Adam was as dead as his namesake. Then Crookback had seen to his placement in the great house at Burton Court, so that his fellow servants could forget, if they ever knew, from what foreign clime he had come and how alien to his blood was the verdant island of Britain. No, for this atmosphere of legal wrangling, of rancor and punishment Adam had no stomach. He crouched down low behind the clothier’s stool, wishing himself to be dead and buried rather than to have to suffer before the public these proceedings, the significance of which he was not sure he understood, and which were as vexing to anticipate as were snarling dogs and body lice.