The men all laughed nervously, and Adam was somewhat relieved to learn that the explosion he had heard had not heralded the death of his friend.
“Can he speak in his native tongue,” said the servant with the womanly face and hair.
“We shall see,” said the big man. He walked into the cell and, seizing Adam under the arms, lifted him off the ground as though he weighed nothing. Adam’s heart lodged in his throat.
“Speak the tongue you were bom to, you monkey-face,” the big man commanded through clenched teeth. His breath was very bad, and the man’s body odor was almost as foul as the chamber pot. “Do not deny me, or you’ll be sorry.”
“Did Sir Thomas give you permission so to use me?” Adam managed to say.
The big man’s eyes glared at this. He lowered Adam slowly to the ground but did not release the pressure on his sides, which was as painful as it was humiliating.
“I suppose you’ll tell him, will you? If you do, you’ll be sorry. You’ll wish you were hanged yesterday and already buried. I’ll make what little is left of your life so miserable you’ll wish you were never bom in that godforsaken country whence you came.”
The big man squeezed more tightly, and Adam feared his chest would be crushed.
“Speak your savage tongue,’ he said, “so that my friend here can have joy of it. ”
Adam tried to remember. No words would come to mind. The big man squeezed harder, and now Adam knew he could not speak even if he had willed it. He had no breath. He felt the sudden sharp agony of a rib snapping. The intense pain dissolved into blackness.
In that blackness he felt no more pain but heard voices, English voices raised over a field of ice.
Crookback, let the man be!
Chapter 15
“Husband, what shall we do?”
Matthew sighed heavily and sat down on the stool. He rested his forehead in his hand. “Grow old and die before our time,” he said, and then he laughed a short bitter laugh that was half a choking sob and had not a whit of humor in it. He looked up with tears in his eyes.
She went to him and put her arm around his shoulder and pulled his head to her breast. “I pray you, do not lose your faith, husband,” she said, “or fall victim to these melancholy thoughts of death and dying. You have done no wrong in this matter but have had wrong done unto you. God forgive me if I have been the cause of some of it. I should have obeyed. I should have stayed at home yesterday, or at least kept my doubts to myself. Yet you will win Sir Thomas’s trust again, I know you will.”
“You are not to blame, Joan,” he said, straightening a little. “This is Agnes Profytt’s doing, just as you surmised. If I weep womanishly, it is not out of guilt but frustration. My hands are tied. I am slapped in the face. Your inquiries must cease. We must have naught to do with the Profytts or the Carews or even with Alice’s husband, for we shall be watched now, and the first breach of Sir Thomas’s command will bring punishment on our heads. As it stands, my business may be ruined by these vicious tales of Agnes’s.”
“God forbid it comes to that,” Joan said. “Of Essex clothiers you are prince. No one knows his trade better than you, or is more deservedly praised for honest dealing. These troubles will pass.”
“The town has a long memory,” Matthew said.
Joan could not deny it. The town did indeed have a long memory. Old scandals were remembered for generations; old wrongs were righted by the victims’ grandchildren. Master Fuller had condemned the savages for their vengefulness; how were so-called Christians any better, after all was said and done?
“Besides, your theory stands more to reason than it did.”
She wondered at this; her husband had seemed only half persuaded before. Now, when he had more reason to disbelieve, he had become converted. Why? she wanted to know.
“My dream of yesternight,” he said. “The one that put such fear in me. It came to me when the gentleman were here, all of a sudden.”
“You dreamed the dream again?” she asked, marveling.
“No, the name that neither of us could remember having heard before, the name of one of your attackers. John Crookback was the one, and the other name was Ralph Hawking.”
She nodded, remembering that he had told her this.
“While Master Fuller spoke of the savages and their ways, I remembered where I had heard the name. It was the letter we found in Crookback’s chest. Ralph Hawking was he to whom the letter was sent; the assayer assured him that the black stones contained gold.”
“Why yes, so it was. It was so plain the letter must mean something, concealed as it was.”
“But Sir Thomas dismissed its importance, convinced as he was that Adam Nemo and Nicholas were the murderers.”
“We should have kept it for ourselves, for all the good it did. Sir Thomas thought nothing of it.”
“Yes, when the name came to me, I thought, why should I dream of it were it not of some strange meaning, as we first supposed? John Crookback threatens you, because his murder plagues us. My dream yoked the two men together. They are both threats, and now I believe as do you that the explanation of these murders is found in the past—in Frobisher’s voyage and in the bringing of Adam Nemo to England and then to Chelmsford—and in John Crookback’s inheritance.”
Joan said she was glad beyond words to have her own opinion shared by him. “You asked what we must do before, and now I know,” Matthew told her.
“And that is?”
“We must sort this riddle out ourselves, for it will not be done for us. If I am ever to regain Sir Thomas’s trust and vindicate our name, it must be shown that we have been right all along—that Adam Nemo and Nicholas Crookback are innocent.”
“Do you dare disobey Sir Thomas’s command that we have no more to do with these matters?” she asked.
“I must,” he said. He told her a plan.
After supper Joan pointed out that if they went their separate ways they would attract less attention. Matthew wanted to visit Crookback Farm again; Joan was bent on finding out more about the witnesses in the matter of John Crookback’s inheritance and had concocted an excuse to visit William Dees and his wife. “I can go now and carry her some fresh bread for herself and her children. She is sick, I have heard. My visit will be construed as nothing more sinister than a mission of mercy. Her husband may tell us something about this Ralph Hawking, for William knew John Crookback in those old days. ”
“And I will go to the farmstead,” Matthew said. “It has been deserted since the murders. Who would prowl around there at night? I want another peek at John Crookback’s bedchamber. We may have overlooked something.”
“What would that be?” she asked, because he spoke as though he already knew.
“Something that tells us more about this Ralph Hawking. John Crookback possessed his letter; is it not possible he had other things of the man’s?”
William Dees and his family lived at the other end of town from the Stocks; his house was more modest, and his shop in a shed attached to the rear. The stonemason had married somewhat late in life, and Joan did not know his wife well, since she had come from another town and was rumored to have been a harlot before her repentance. A slight, pale woman with thin arms and legs and the doleful expression of one who has been forewarned of an early death, she seemed to have been sickly all the days of their marriage. In matters physical, then, she was a stark contrast to her large, muscular husband, who was the very image of health even though his age surpassed hers by a dozen years or more. Joan knew that at an earlier time Dees had been fond of Susanna Crookback, and yet he and John had been friends and often companions, proving to her satisfaction that old enmities did not always endure.
The stonemason answered the door when she knocked and seemed more than a little surprised to see her.
“I have come to pay my respects to your good wife, if that is not displeasing to you,” Joan said. She showed him the basket she carried, told him it contained bread and sweetmeats for
their supper.
“Why should it be?” Dees answered, He motioned for her to come in.
I thought that perhaps after this morning—”
“Oh think nothing of that,” Dees answered agreeably. “A little misunderstanding. Exaggerated by the those who should know better. I bear you no grudges, Mistress Stock, nor your good husband, who gave decent service to us during the hue and cry.”
Relieved that he had no resentment toward her, Joan went in and found his wife, whose name was Esther, sitting on a stool by the fire. At her feet slept one of her children, a little girl of four or five. Joan could hear the other children, two older boys, in an adjoining room.
Dees shut the door to the room where his sons played and said to his wife, “Esther, Joan Stock has come to see how you do. She has brought a little present.”
Esther Dees was wrapped in a heavy if threadbare cloak; only her small, round face peered out at Joan. The woman’s eyes were so pale as to be almost colorless. She tried to smile in response to her husband’s introduction, but her attempt amounted to nothing more than a slight parting of the lips. That she was seriously ill was obvious, and painful for Joan to behold.
Joan bent over to take the woman’s hands, which despite the fire in the hearth were as cold as ice. “How do you do, Esther?” she said, “I heard you were sick and now see that the report is true.”
“It is true,” she said. “Thank God my good husband is here to take care of me and the children, else we would perish this cruel winter.”
Joan looked up at Dees, who was standing behind his wife protectively. The fire whose heat had failed to warm his wife’s hands had so warmed him as to cause him to sweat, for rivulets ran down his forehead into his thick beard. Looking at his massive chest, and sturdy legs, she wondered if William were still using Esther as a wife, or if he had forgone his privilege. The man must be immense, she thought, and the wife seemed such a frail thing, hardly able to bear the weight of her own body, much less his upon her. Joan had not heard that Dees frequented the brothels of the town, of which there were a disgracefully large number.
A little bench also stood before the fire. On this Joan sat while Dees remained standing. For a few minutes Joan chatted about the weather, avoiding the subject of the murders for fear of betraying her true motive for the visit.
Then, addressing Dees, “I was most happy to see you in Sir Thomas’s company this morning,” she said as airily as she might.
“Why is that?” Dees said.
“So that my doubts might be laid to rest. It’s true I wondered whether John Crookback might be Abraham’s true heir, but when I learned you were among those who swore it was so, my doubts were satisfied, since I know you to be an honest man.”
“The matter was settled nearly twenty years ago,” Dees said with sudden bitterness. “John Crookback was my friend in my youth. He remained so until the day he was murdered by his idiot son and that savage that Master Burton kept as a servant. No one knew John Crookback as well as I, not even his wives. ’ ’
“I understand he had an old friend who also testified,” Joan said.
“I would not call Richard Hull an old friend, if that’s he of whom you speak, Mistress Stock,” said Dees.
“Oh, I meant Ralph Hawking,” Joan said.
Dees started at the name and then said, “I do not know anyone of that name, Mistress Stock. If John Crookback had such a friend it was in the days when he was at sea, not in Chelmsford.”
“Marry, I think it was at sea,” Joan said.
“How did you come by the name?” Dees asked.
“My husband found it in a letter of John Crookback’s when we searched the house at Crookback Farm for Sir Thomas. The letter was addressed to Ralph Hawking; because Crookback kept the letter along with other personal things, Matthew supposed that the two men were friends.”
“That might be, I don’t know,” Dees said. “What personal things might those have been, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Now Joan was not sure what she should say and indeed wondered if she had said too much already. Her greatest concern was to stand clear of any talk of the Profytts and Carews, talk that might create the impression that she possessed a desire to incriminate either family. She decided that she could afford to be direct.
“My husband found a chest in which your friend kept his private papers. It was there he discovered this letter from an assayer addressed to Ralph Hawking, and your friend’s will.”
“Where is the chest now?” Dees asked.
“Still at the farm,” Joan said. “Unless Sir Thomas has taken it for evidence.
“As I say, John may have known this Ralph Hawking while he was with Frobisher,” Dees said.
There was a note of finality in the stonemason’s voice that suggested to Joan that she had asked too many questions, and that were she to ask more the true purpose of her visit would be too obvious for her host to ignore. “Well,” she said, rising and looking down at Esther. “May God bless you and make you soon well, and your good children too.”
“The children and I are well,” Dees said. “Only my wife is sick.”
There was so much pride in his assertion that Joan felt a sudden dislike for the man, who before had always seemed an agreeable sort.
When Joan returned home she recounted to Matthew her visit to the stonemason’s house, describing the lamentable condition of the wife and reporting every word that William Dees had said in response to her questions about Ralph Hawking.
“He denied ever having known such a one. He suggested Hawking might have been a friend from Crookback’s days as a mariner.”
“Which may be the absolute truth,” Matthew observed.
“So my expedition came to nothing,” she said. “Dees was most forthright. He irked me only in being so proud of his radiant health when his wife is sickly. I like not that quality in a man—no, nor in a woman either.”
“If the John Crookback we knew was not the true son of Abraham Crookback, it is quite possible that Dees was as much deceived as was Richard Hull, or any of the others who affirmed him to be who he claimed to be,” Matthew said.
She asked him if he still intended to go to Crookback Farm, and when he said he did, her feelings were mixed. How safe was it to travel the distance to the farm, much less to search it in the dark? “The murderer is still at large,” she said.
‘‘And he will remain so if we do nothing. Sir Thomas is content with his present understanding. Certain it is that he will remain so until we can give him cause to believe otherwise.”
Mildred Carew had sent her husband on an errand after dark, and he had stopped on the way back at a tavern to drink with his friends and regale them with the story of how the upstart clothier had been humiliated by Sir Thomas. It was a good story indeed, and in the retelling, Miles had magnified his own part in the mortifying proceedings to such a degree that it was now he who had denounced the clothier and wrought his abject apology for having cast aspersions on the Carews and seeking to question the magistrate’s conclusion. It was proving a popular story among the rougher crowd of the town, who generally envied the merchants, but even the more respectable of the tavern’s patrons found the story absorbing, and all were wanting something of interest to talk about since it now appeared the murderers of Joh n Crookback and family were identified and imprisoned.
It was on his way home that Miles Carew saw a figure come out of the clothier’s shop and almost immediately dart into an alley. Suspicious, he followed a little ways until he was convinced the figure was the clothier himself, and Miles surmised by his furtive movements that he was up to something he wished to conceal.
He was almost relieved to have discovered this, for he badly wanted a new tale with which he might divert his wife’s predictable anger at his lingering at the tavern. He reported what he had seen as soon as he walked in the door, before Mildred could lash him with her tongue for his tardiness.
‘‘Where was he bound, do you think, and
at this time of the night when all are indoors?” Mildred asked.
“I have no idea, but he walked as one careful not to be seen,” her husband answered, relieved that the issue of his delay had been overlooked. ‘‘Like one up to no good. Like one sneaking into some chicken coop for a free supper. ’ ’
“That doesn’t sound like our clothier. He is an ass, yet honest to a fault.”
“Honest?” exclaimed Miles Carew. “Why just this day you railed at him for his lies against your father?”
Mildred looked at her husband from under heavy lids. “The child stirs within me, husband. Pray don’t contradict my words,” she said in a flat, threatening voice.
Miles said nothing but stared moodily into the fire.
She then asked him why he had stayed so long on his errand. She told him she could smell the wine upon his breath when he entered and asked did he think for one minute she was fooled by his idle tales of Matthew Stock’s sinister comings and goings?
Miles Carew looked at his wife’s shrewish expression and her bloated body and uttered an uncharacteristic curse and condemnation of the married state. Then he bolted from the house before his wife could have the last word.
Matthew carried a little brass lantern beneath his great cloak but did not light it until he was long past the town. There was a moon rising, and the light of that whimsical orb reflected off the patches of remaining snow in the desolate fields. Some time later he saw the shadowy outline of Crookback Farm, and in its solemn presence he began to wonder about the wisdom of his plan. The spirits of the murdered were said to walk the places where they died, and Matthew had some concern for that. His other worry concerned the living—whoever it was who had cut and slashed the bodies of the Crookbacks and then stuffed them down the well so heartlessly. But he saw no sign of life, nor any spirits either, only the looming farmhouse and the bams. The silence was so profound that his own footfalls seemed to profane it.
The door of the farmhouse was open, as though the house had stood waiting during the days since the murders for someone to come in and take care of it. Matthew raised the lantern and entered.
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