At this comment several voices were raised in protest. One man said he had had dealings with Matthew Stock and that he was as honest as the day was long, whereupon Sawyer said that the days did not seem the length they used to be and there was an outburst of general laughter at this witticism.
After this, Killigrew ushered Vernon up the stairs, with Vernon limping along like an old soldier although he could not have been more than five and twenty. The rest of the men continued to talk, the discussion focusing on where the fugitives might have gone and how they should be treated when they were found and whether Matthew Stock was to be trusted or no.
Toward midnight, Killigrew gave a mighty yawn and announced that he was dog tired and that his store of liquor was exhausted. He said it was time for bed, ignored the few voices of protest, woke roughly those who had fallen asleep at the bar or at tables, and held the door open as most of his customers filed out to make their way home, wherever home was. Then he extinguished the lamps, and with candle in hand led the gentlemen who had rented lodgings up the stairs, praying they would not be disappointed at the furnishings, which even he acknowledged as being meager.
As he went upstairs he thought about the next day, wondering if he would be summoned. He thought of himself as hale and hearty for his age of fifty; on the other hand, he had no stomach for a march into the snowy wilderness. His body didn’t take the cold as it used to. He remembered the joy with which his customers had heard that the hue and cry was to be raised and wondered again if the men understood what they were getting themselves into.
The snow was falling so thick and fast that Adam could hardly see where they went. Both the wind and the danger of being seen had made the carrying of a lantern inadvisable, even if they had had one. He kept one arm extended before him, groping in the whiteness like a blind man. With the other he held firmly to Nicholas, determined that they should not be parted.
He was sure of his direction, but not his destination. He was heading north, but what would they find there? His instincts told him only that the howling gale was more friendly to him than a roof over his head in Chelmsford.
Adam had never seen such a storm in England, an island of mild winters, more damp than frigid. But the unusually cold, blank landscape reminded him of his native island, and he remembered things he had not remembered in years.
He had been fishing with his brother, in the little leather boats the English so marveled at, the boats that enclosed a man around the waist, the boats that made his people look half human, half boat. A storm had come up over the island, blowing down viciously off the ice until it nearly took his breath from him and his extremities were almost past feeling. He remembered his brother’s wanting. The sea had become choppy, the wind whipping it into a foamy chaos. Adam’s boat was sturdily made. He had built it himself, and its design and artful construction coupled with Adam’s experienced handling of it kept him alive for a long time, a long time after his brother whose name he could almost remember disappeared in a great swollen mountain of water.
Adam had brought himself and his craft to a haven in the rock where a cliff protected him from the wind, and the sea was calmer. He remembered sitting in the crevice, not daring to get out of the boat, although there was a shelf of rock at hand that would allow him to do so. He had not wanted to think about his brother; he had not wanted to accept the certainty that his brother could not have survived so mighty a wave. He understood the strength of the storm, but he had let his brother die.
He had let his brother die.
He led Nicholas by the hand, from time to time shouting words of encouragement. He had not forgotten that Nicholas was imprisoned in a world of silence, but he was enough of a Christian to know that miracles sometime happened. If this storm itself was prodigious in its fury, why could these untoward circumstances not unleash something long stifled in Nicholas’s body? And so he called out, but there was no answer, and sometimes the snow was so thick he could hardly see his companion’s face or its expression of wordless terror and confusion.
Chapter 10
It was inevitable that William Dees should be chosen to go with them; he was strong and dependable, he had voiced strong opinions, and Matthew could trust him to be of a mind to go, since John Crookback had been his friend. Besides, Dees would be able to bring word to others, saving Matthew the trouble of tramping all over town with the hue and cry.
The wind had died sometime during the night but the snow was falling still, and rooftops, cobbles, and fields beyond were robed in a ghastly whiteness that struck Matthew to the quick of his soul when he saw it in the foredawn moonlight. There would be no need for torch or lantern, for his way would be clear enough. Matthew had made himself warm with as much clothing as he could put on his back; leather-gloved and muffled in the heaviest wool, he left only enough of his face exposed to be able to see. He had drunk long and deeply of the hot caudle, hoping it would warm his belly and protect him, but he was hardly ready for the appalling cold when he stepped forth into the street.
Joan had wept when she wished him Godspeed at the threshold. She had a fearful look in her eyes that had made his courage almost fail. He went out the door into the softly falling snow with a heavy heart and a fervent promise on his lips that if he ever came home again he would do so resolved to be a better man, if it killed him to be so.
He had been right about Dees, who was already up and about when Matthew, having trudged all the way to the end of the town, had knocked at his door. Smoke poured forth from his chimney, and standing on the doorstep Matthew could hear the voices of Dees’s wife and children within and he could smell something savory cooking for the family’s breakfast.
Matthew had to say who he was, given that so little of him showed forth from his garb, and then told the stonemason outright what was needed. In no time at all Dees was ready to go, encased in a cloak heavier than Matthew’s own and with a fur hat pulled down so as nearly to be one with his beard.
“Sir Thomas will provide us with horses,” Matthew said.
“Well he might,” Dees said. “It will make travel the easier in these drifts. It is the worst snow I can remember.” Dees had no sword but did possess, he said, a crossbow and six arrows with forked arrowheads, a knife as sharp as a razor, and an arm as strong as any man’s in Chelmsford. Matthew knew the claim was true. He had seen Dees shoot and knew that the stonemason had been suspected of poaching deer in the neighborhood. Matthew himself had brought no weapon beyond his knife. He had none in his house, not liking them very much and having no skill with bow, sword, or pistol. He supposed the fugitives would offer little resistance, and he himself was wary of weapons in inexperienced hands. Was it not as likely that one or another good honest townsman would shoot himself in the foot—or worse, shoot his neighbor—as that weapons would be needed to bring Nicholas and Adam to ground?
“Sir Thomas will also furnish some weapons, and of course the gentleman in the company will be armed.” Matthew gave the names of six other men of the town and asked him to pass the word among them. “We will gather at the market cross. Sir Thomas would leave at dawn and wants all in readiness.”
From William’s house, Matthew proceeded to Abraham Pierce the grocer’s and then on to the home of William Fytche, mercer. Fytche made the excuse of being sick abed, a condition his wife confirmed, although Matthew suspected the sickness was a pretense to avoid going out-of-doors. Fytche was ever complaining about the cold even in the milder weather of May or June.
On another occasion Matthew would have investigated the excuse with more care and had the mercer dragged from his fireside if need be; there was simply no time now.
Each of the men summoned was then asked to pass the word to three others, and by five o’clock more than thirty men were in the upper room of the manor court house, where a huge fire was roaring and the men all standing around talking about the murders and what direction the fugitives might have taken. Also present was a group of about the same number of men, demanding to
know why they hadn’t been included in the company.
“Sir Thomas wants a small number of men. More manageable, he says,” Matthew explained to those not chosen, who blamed him for their having been excluded and grumbled that they could not see why they were not as good as the next man for such service.
Within the half hour Sir Thomas and Fuller arrived, and Master Vernon from the other end of town, where, he complained, he’d spent a horrid night at a filthy alehouse, on a mattress so full of vermin that he had not slept a wink. His complaint was greeted with a great burst of laughter from Sir Thomas. The knight said Vernon had chosen an odd time to fall from grace—the alehouse was hardly better than a brothel and everyone in town knew it. “Are you sure what was stirring was vermin, not some hot whore?” the magistrate asked with a derisive grin.
This question, to which those present responded with another great burst of laughter, sat very poorly with Vernon. He gave Sir Thomas an ill look and marched off to talk to Dees, who was shooting dice with the grocer. Matthew had watched the exchange between Vernon and Sir Thomas and thought it bode no good for the whole enterprise, promising as it did a continuation of the acrimony between the two men. Besides, how far could they travel in the snow, even on horseback? With snow still falling, there would be no tracks that would not have been covered within minutes of their making. Nicholas and Adam Nemo could hide in a hedge or thicket and the search party might pass by within a few feet and never see them. Further, there wasn’t any real proof that the men had left town: No one had ordered the town searched.
It was growing light when the last few stragglers reported for duty. One of these was Matthew’s apprentice Peter Bench, whom Matthew had chosen because he trusted Peter as much as he trusted any man and because Matthew doubted there would be any business the next few days, given the weather. What business there was, Joan and Elizabeth could handle well enough, since they knew cloth almost as well as he.
Peter was not terribly happy about his summons. A tall, quiet young man, he disliked violence or the prospect thereof and was of so inoffensive a disposition that Matthew was hard put to get him to set a mousetrap. But Matthew knew Peter would voice no complaint. Peter arrived in the company of Hugh Profytt and Miles Carew, the sons-in-law of Crookback. Matthew had chosen them not so much for their hardihood as to meet the predictable objection of Agnes Profytt that kinsmen of the deceased had been excluded from the hue and cry by some insidious design to frustrate her rightful revenge. But neither Hugh Profytt nor Miles Carew appeared vengeful in their demeanor. Hugh Profytt seemed no more pleased about the summons than was Peter Bench, but Miles Carew greeted everyone boisterously. He seemed excited at the prospect of the trek through the snow.
The magistrate now addressed the company and gave them their instructions. He said he would take charge of one half of the men and he put his friend Fuller over the other half, dividing his servants, of whom there were about ten, between the two companies.
Sir Thomas assembled his forces with remarkable dispatch, as though he wanted to show Vernon how such matters might be expeditiously handled, and there seemed to Matthew to be neither rhyme nor reason to his choice. Matthew, along with Vernon, Peter Bench, the sons-in-law of the Crookbacks, and William Dees were placed under the command of Fuller, which appointment Matthew regretted because he would have much sooner been with the magistrate; he felt distinctly uncomfortable around Vernon and especially around the Crookback sons-in-law. Matthew was sure the two young men would report every detail of his behavior to Agnes Profytt and her supporters.
And then there was Sawyer, the beggar redeemed from poor clothes and public contempt by his new celebrity as a witness against the fugitives. Matthew had almost missed him in the growing crowd of excited men, where he now seemed to be regarded as a townsman. He had not been Matthew’s choice. To Matthew his presence was no help in the present circumstances, and he felt a twinge of resentment at one who had wormed his way into public affection with a tissue of probable lies, one who was no better than a vagabond and likely thief that under other circumstances would have been driven from town as a danger to public safety. Vernon or Sir Thomas must have invited him, Matthew supposed, and indeed Matthew learned through a comment of the magistrate’s servants that Sawyer was there through Sir Thomas’s express command.
Sawyer was outfitted better than he deserved to be, in a good warm coat and boots that rose high on his calf and gloves of good leather. Other men, perhaps most in the troop, were more poorly garbed, although they had decent callings, honored the queen, and contributed to the good of the town. Not so with Sawyer, who had earned a patron. His expenses were being provided for; at the thought, Matthew felt another surge of disgust.
“My company will take the road to London and the regions thereabout,” Sir Thomas called out loudly. “Master Fuller’s party will search to the north. Whoever finds the fugitives will send word to the other party. My own servants shall have their pistols, and each of the others shall have a horse and those who have not their own will have a sword or pistol provided them.”
There was a good stir of excitement at this announcement, and the animated talk that had subsided at Sir Thomas’s words now resumed, with several of the men complaining that they were not good riders and declaring that they hoped they might have gentle animals to bear them. Most voices, however, expressed the need for swords, for almost every one of the townsmen wanted one, although Matthew guessed that few knew little about using them other than which end to hold on to. None of the men had been soldiers that he knew of; almost all were peaceable men like himself. Matthew wondered if this was a posse comitatus setting forth or an army anticipating an opposing force of equal magnitude. Nearly forty armed men, evenly divided into two companies, was considerable strength to bring against a soft household servant and a mere boy who, for all Matthew knew, had no weapons at all and neither inclination nor skill to use them. Was there not something singularly unfair about a lion setting out to stalk a rabbit?
Yet Matthew kept these reservations to himself.
Fuller spoke up to say this was a very good plan that Sir Thomas had conceived and several of the magistrate’s servants said by God it was a good plan, but Matthew remembered that Fuller had recommended it himself and he had grave doubts as to whether any plan could deal with the seemingly insurmountable problem of the snow. There would be no tracks to follow as long as the snow continued to fall, and one could see only a short distance. It all seemed a futile effort to him, who continued to doubt that Nicholas or Adam had anything to do with the murders. He imagined ail the company lost in the white wilderness, foundering waist-deep in drifts, the horses having run off or broken their legs because of the ice.
It was an hour before the two companies were mounted and armed, during which time there was a great exchanging of horses and weapons among the townsmen, some of whom now demonstrated how unaccustomed they were to riding the beasts, struggling to mount them and stay in the saddle. This was a spectacle that provoked not a little laughter from Sir Thomas’s servants until their master reprimanded them for it, and it gave equal pleasure to the townspeople who despite the weather had come outdoors to watch the proceedings.
Fuller, sitting very heavily on a horse Matthew thought much too small for the load it bore, seemed happy to be in command. He was dressed in a long black cloak of beaver on which the falling snow had created little white splotches, and his face was unmuffled and ruddy, as severe in its expression as though etched in stone, although Matthew didn’t know whether Fuller’s firmly set mouth demonstrated grim determination or an effort to control chattering teeth. He disposed his troops behind him with an easy confidence, giving orders in short bursts of speech that went generally unheeded, such an air of excitement there was. At his waist was a sword in a scabbard and a belt of fine-tooled leather that Matthew surmised must have cost a great sum.
A trumpet sounded, and Mildmay started out with his company. The crowd watching cheered wildly; then Fuller
gave an order for his own men to move, pointing his hand in the direction they were to go, and another great cheer went up, but many of the wives and daughters of those in the two companies seemed struck with grief.
Among these was Joan. Matthew spotted her as he passed by his shop. She was standing with the door open looking out and the cold air coming in, watching him as he rode by. He raised his hand in farewell and smiled as much as he could bring himself to, but Joan only nodded. Elizabeth, her arm around her mother, waved and smiled back and called out to heaven to spare her father and the company. Joan made no gesture and spoke no words at all. She just stood there with a stricken look, as though she were frozen solid, letting the cold in and the heat out and not seeming to care a whit.
The sight of Matthew wrapped up almost beyond recognition in his heaviest cloak and his face muffled like a Saracen moved Joan to more than pity. He was in the thick of the troop, which rode three abreast; for that reason she almost missed seeing him.
The troop blurred in her vision. Her husband seemed so small atop the horse. Men and their mounts fused into a single black body moving through the town like a great beast, the rattle of their trappings and the hoofbeats of the horses muffled on the snow-covered cobbles. She did not cheer with the others, did not call out as the other women had done to their men. Everything she had to say she had said before—the admonitions, the vows of love—and now it was more than she could do to restrain the tears, which would surely have frozen on her face were her cheeks not earlier warmed by the fire. That husband could not tell wife when he would return was hard; worse still was that he could not be sure whither he was bound. Vernon and his men vanished; it was if the snow had swallowed them up and would not deliver them forth again. Yes, she thought, that was the worst of it.
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