Frobisher's Savage

by Leonard Tourney

  The manor house of Sir Thomas Mildmay was larger and grander than the house of his own master, but Adam Nemo had little opportunity or inclination to admire its masonry or number its bristling chimneys. Exhausted, bruised, and terrified even more than before his capture, he wished the assizes finished and his sentence given and the rope bum on his neck. His innocence mattered nothing to him now. He had little sense left of the injustice of the charge against him and less hatred for his captors and detractors, but only a desire to be finished with the English and their ways. If he could not return to his own land the way he had come, he would return perhaps in death. His immortal soul would sing among the crags and ice, sail upon the wind and dive to the green depths of the sea. It would be free of the insanity of his present life.

  Dusk came as they arrived at the house, under heavily armed guard and bound as they had been when they were brought into Chelmsford and paraded before the townspeople. Their warders, a half dozen of the servants of Sir Thomas, treated the prisoners roughly, cursing them and spitting at them, and on one occasion threatening to cut off their manly parts, but then he who was chief among them called the others to order and the threats ceased. Adam and Nicholas were roughly ushered through a side door of the house and then immediately conveyed to a dark cellar, where they were shoved into a cramped, windowless cell and their manacles were removed. These unpleasant surroundings assured Adam that for all the impressiveness of the manor house his present accommodations amounted to nothing more than a prison, where he would languish along with his companion at the magistrate’s pleasure.

  This impression was no sooner formed then qualified, however, for shortly after being placed in his cell he heard an exchange of orders, and then the servant who had been in charge of their imprisonment returned, seized Nicholas, and bore him away, with Adam too exhausted from his flight and bruised by his capture to protest or question the man as to where his friend was being taken.

  After that he sat a long time in the darkness, cold and hungry, but neither candle nor food was brought to relieve his distress. In addition, the blows administered by the stonemason in his capture caused him considerable discomfort, and had he been of a womanly disposition he would have wept.

  Instead, he drew into himself, pulling himself up into a ball, as much for consolation as for warmth. He thought of Nicholas. Why had he been removed from the cell? Where was he now, and in what wretched state of loneliness and despair? The thought of his friend and his circumstances was as great a pain to him as his own miserable condition, and he would have cried out to one of the gods—either him to whom the English prayed or to one of the deities of his own people—but in his exhaustion and despair he could not find enough faith in anything to utter a word.

  Chapter 14

  Matthew slept like the dead all the night, so exhausted he was, but Joan tossed fitfully and had horrible dreams of impenetrable woods and the savage beasts that dwell there. Toward morning she had a nightmare of such vividness that she came awake with a start, trembling like poor Jack Potts, who often sat begging at the market cross.

  It was a dream about Adam Nemo, in which she saw him twisting about on the hangman’s rope, his face all swollen and his eyes bulging and his black swollen tongue protruding like an eel’s head. Then Adam was cut down, cut down by the boy Nicholas, who in the dream could not only speak but sing. The voice he had was like her own husband’s sweet tenor, a rivulet of pure sound.

  In the dream Nicholas sang all the time while he was removing the corpse from the gibbet. Then at the terrifying end of the vision, Nicholas placed the body on a platform that Joan realized was an altar and said the words the parson used when he administered the holy communion: Take and eat. This is my body and blood which was shed for you.

  She awoke in such a frightful state she could not remember Nicholas’s song, only the words he spoke above the body: Take and eat.

  She could hardly wait for Matthew to awake so she could tell him of the dream and ask him what he supposed it to mean. For were not all dreams of some significance? Were they not a means by which either God or the devil conveyed dark truths to the dreamer, warning of things to come or revealing that which is obscured in the waking life? Who, Joan considered, believed otherwise? To dispute the purpose of dreams was hardly better than atheism, to her way of thinking.

  But she could hardly begin her account of her dream when Matthew compelled her to hear the dream he had had, despite his appearance of dreamlessness, which had some of the same horrid features as hers.

  “I was never so thankful as to find myself awake and in my own bed,” he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and beseeching her to light a candle, for it was not yet dawn. “I was again in the snow, but you were with me, riding on another horse, a black, sweating gelding with fiery eyes. Yet you managed him well, sitting very proudly, dressed in your green gown with the embroidered front, while I was bundled up against the cold.”

  “Was I not shivering to be so dressed in such weather?” she asked.

  “It might have been midsummer for all the discomfort you displayed. You rode boldly forth. In the dream we were seeking Adam and Nicholas, but there were only the two of us. Then we came upon a forest, larger and darker than the deer park, so that it seemed impossible to find a way therein. We rode round and round about.”

  Joan said that the dream did not sound as fearful as he had claimed.

  “But the worst was yet to come. Against my counsel you rode into the forest; all of a sudden you did, and I never saw an opening at all. The trees swallowed you up, and I could hear your horse’s breathing and hear your voice beckoning to me to follow but could see nothing but the trees, which as I have said grew so closely together as to be woven into one solid fabric.”

  “And this made you afraid?” she asked, rather hoping that Matthew had revealed the entirety of the dream, for his account was beginning to make her flesh crawl and she was now more than ready to forgo this exchange of dreams and rather bury the memory of them in the clear light of day. Getting out of bed, she lit a candle. The timorous flame did little to dissipate her melancholy. She crawled back under the covers, drawing close to him.

  “You called for help,” he said.

  “Was I in danger, then?”

  “You were.”

  “What, of being lost?.”

  “You weren’t lost. You had been attacked.”

  “By brigands? By Adam or Nicholas?”

  “No.”

  She heard the tremor in his voice and knew that he was not finding it easy to convey his dream to her. It was no wonder, given it was a dream of the forest. The forest was no place of refuge or repose, but of confusion and isolation and the terrors that went with them. Satan, it was said, dwelt in the forest, which was why witches congregated there to practice unspeakable rituals.

  She patted his thigh and said, “It is better to tell me than to keep this thing in your heart. Fear not, husband. It is a dream you speak of, not reality.”

  Matthew hesitated; she waited. Then he said, “You called out that you were attacked by dead men.”

  “Dead men!”

  “Men without flesh upon their bones.”

  Joan felt a great fear when he said this. Matthew’s dream had been truly terrible. What could it mean? For a few moments she made no response. Then she said, “You are right, then, husband. That is the most grisly dream, if I was so used, that ever I heard.”

  “And you told me their names.”

  “Which were?”

  “John Crookback, you said, and Ralph Hawking.”

  “John Crookback we know,” she said, “and yet I trust his body, having been buried within the week, is not yet so rotten. But who is this Ralph Hawking? I remember no such name.”

  “Nor I, and yet you said Ralph Hawking in the dream. I recall it as though you said it no more than a few minutes ago.” “How did the dream end, Matthew? I trow you came to rescue me like a good husband.”

  “I would have do
ne so, had I been able, Joan,” Matthew said. “That was the worst part. I could not find a way into that dismal wood. Yet you called out in full voice. Then your screams became the weaker, like the twitter of birds. I tried the harder but to no avail.”

  “That was the whole of it? The dream, I mean?”

  “Is it not enough?”

  “I suppose it could have been worse,” she said, thinking of her own dream but now firmly decided to save the telling of it for another occasion. To herself she prayed for light to come to dissipate her gloom.

  “I suppose it could. Yet it was bad enough. I woke with my heart pounding and was never so happy when I reached out and found you in bed beside me,” he said again, “safe from dead men and dismal woods.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Better a warm bed than a dismal forest any day. I would be spared the dead men, too.”

  He did not respond as she hoped to her attempt at wit, which was, she realized, a feeble effort, meant to revive her naturally buoyant spirits. That both she and her husband could have dreams of similar character only convinced her the more of their prophetic purpose. The question in her mind now was whether they proceeded from heaven or from hell—whether they were shadows of things to come or clues to the mysteries of the past.

  “Let’s pray, husband,” she said just as the room began to grow light, “that God in heaven may dispel the melancholy that these visions of the night have wrought and save our souls from whatever evil they may portend. ”

  “Yes, let’s do,” he said. They knelt beside their bed. First Matthew prayed and then Joan and then Matthew again.

  It was market day. After breakfast Joan got her basket, and with Alice as her companion she went out into the street and headed toward the market cross. This widening of the cobbled street made of the Sessions House a little island and on Thursdays tradesmen and farmers of the shire sold their wares from booths set up for the occasion. Since it was winter, both booths and customers were far apart indeed, although there were some neighbors walking amid the stalls. As she passed by she greeted most, for she was well known in the town, but was surprised to find her friendly greetings were not returned with the warmth to which she was accustomed. Instead she detected an aloofness in the response of several of her friends that mystified and disturbed her mightily. She gave Alice instructions as to what to look for among the stalls and returned home.

  Midmomings Matthew spent in his shop, often working at his accounts or helping customers to select from among the rich store of cloth, for which Essex was famous. As she entered she found him sitting upon his high stool, his big ledger open and Peter Bench at his side. Matthew was explaining something to his apprentice, and ordinarily Joan would not have interrupted, but so upset was she from having been shunned by persons she had known all her life that she could not refrain.

  “Matthew, something has happened.”

  Matthew looked up suddenly, and seeing her expression was troubled, he sent Peter off to the rear of the house to fetch some cloth stored there. He regarded Joan with a mixture of curiosity and concern and led her into the kitchen, where they sat down at the table across from one another. Matthew took Joan’s hand, taking off the gloves she had neglected to remove in her haste to report whatever it was she had to report.

  “Why what’s the matter, Joan?” he said, rubbing her hands in his own to warm them. “Is it another murder? Are our friends dead?”

  She assured him that to her knowledge neither of the catastrophes he mentioned had occurred. She said, “I was walking in the market, among the booths, and saw Sarah Bright and Jane Dale and greeted them both.”

  “And what if you did?” Matthew said, a puzzled look upon his face. “That’s no new thing. The two women you mention are so much about, it would be a wonder if you did not see them.”

  “They said never a word, neither one.”

  “Now for those two that is a wonder,” he said, smiling.

  “This is no jape, Matthew,” she said.

  “I see it is not, but I still do not understand what you are complaining of.”

  “I greeted the twain with a friendly wave, such as this.” Joan made a little wave Matthew recognized as a distinctive gesture. “Neither responded with word or wave but turned quickly away, shunning me as though I were a leper.”

  “Are you sure they saw you?”

  “Of course I am sure,” she said impatiently. “I am not blind. My eyes are, if anything, better than your own.”

  Matthew acknowledged that her eyesight was superior to his; she had proved it time and time again. “If you were shunned by acquaintances of such long standing I cannot begin to comprehend the cause. What offense have you committed to be so treated, or I?”

  Their discourse on this topic was now interrupted by the arrival of Alice. This followed so quickly upon Joan’s own return that she was amazed, for Alice ever loved good gossip and might be depended on to stay two hours or more in doing what might have been done in a quarter of the time.

  “Back so soon?” Joan said as the cook came into the kitchen, put the basket on the table, and placed her hands on her hips in an attitude of exasperation and dismay. Joan knew at once that something was amiss.

  “I have been given an earful of fresh news,” Alice said, “that sticks in my craw like a fish bone. You, Mistress Stock, are a part of the tale, as is my shiftless husband. That he should be preyed upon by idle minds is hardly beyond his deserts, for he wastes time in a tavern rather than seeking work within his ability. But that you should be so used ...” She shook her head.

  “How have I been used?” Joan exclaimed, hardly able to wait until Alice would bring out the substance of her report.

  “By Sarah Bright, who said you pried into her business, inquiring of sundry persons regarding scandals in her family.” “Which thing I never did!” Joan exclaimed, amazed that such a lie should be told of her.

  “And from Mistress Dale I heard a similar tune: that you did peek and poke about in the town, at every door. And that you thought the murderers caught were never such, but that the real murderer was one of them, She advised me to leave your employ—she asked that I come cook for her.”

  “The shameless hussy,” Joan said. “These are base lies and the work of an enemy of more wit than Jane Dale may boast of, for a sheep has more good sense than she. It is doubtful this mischief was given birth in her addled brain.”

  “Did either woman say who did tell them these tales?” Matthew asked.

  “They did not, Master Stock, but would say only that they were mightily offended by your wife’s suspicions, that they were as blameless as could be, and that neither would ever speak to Joan again, nor would they make purchases at your shop but would off to some other clothier to satisfy their needs.”

  “You are right; this is serious business, Joan,” Matthew said. She nodded and turned back to Alice, who was still breathing heavily from the haste of her return. “I don’t suppose either of my erstwhile friends made mention of Agnes Profytt.” Alice thought for a few moments and then said, “Why I believe Jane did. Yes, she did mention Mistress Profytt’s name, and the name of my husband and of Master Barber, the old man who lives at the end of the street.”

  “This is Agnes Profytt’s doing,” Joan said, looking at Matthew with dangerous eyes. “Don’t try to tell me it is not. And do not say you told me so, that this trouble would not have come if I been Mistress Compliant and stayed home. I have the right to walk the streets of my own town as I please and when I please, murderers or no, and to ask reasonable questions of my neighbors in matters in which I have some interest. And what of greater interest than my husband’s very life? I mean the dangers you faced in the hue and cry.”

  Matthew agreed that she did, but his agreement did little to pacify Joan. She could not restrain her anger. “This woman is hardly better than a witch, for while she may not call upon the powers of darkness yet her malice knows no bounds. This is not grief for her dead father and siblings that moves
her—all the world knows how she regarded him, and her stepmother the more. Where there was such a deal of resentment before, why should anyone find a blooming love now for those poor murdered wretches? No, I say, husband, this is not about grief. It is about greed, and jealousy, and boundless envy and pride, and God knows what other vices of the heart.”

  “Whatever it is about,” Matthew said, “she must be stopped, or we shall have no friends nor be trusted in our own town. Her tongue is a flaming organ; it will set all Chelmsford on fire.”

  “You should go to the magistrate,” Joan said. “Sir Thomas will set things right. These women need to know that I have made no inquiries regarding them and hold no suspicions of their probity. And Sir Thomas must know that you do not work to undermine his authority or his actions.”

  Joan was now so wrought up by this malicious gossip against her and Matthew that she could no longer sit at table. She stood and began pacing the stone floor of the kitchen in a fury, while Matthew sat very quiet, thinking, and Alice remained where she stood, her arms still akimbo and her normally cheerful countenance glowering over the offense done her beloved mistress.

  “My husband is also a target of these whisperers,” Alice said.

  “How so?” asked Matthew.

  Alice’s expression changed. She seemed reluctant to speak.

  Picking up the hesitation of her servant, Joan stopped her restless patrol and urged Alice to answer the question Matthew had put to her, for she said she wanted to hear all the unsavory accusations made, whether against her and Matthew or against Alice’s own husband. “Let us have no secrets between us,” she said. “We are all defamed. We must join together. Fear to tell us nothing.”