He was not surprised to find that little had changed, nor were there signs of anything having been removed. Even the bloodstains remained on the walls of the chamber in which the slaughter had occurred. He went at once to the upper part of the house and into the bedchamber that had been Crookback’s and his wife’s. The chest in which he had found Crookback’s will and the letter to Ralph Hawking was where he had left it, at the foot of the big four-poster bed, although the lid was open and he was sure he had left it closed. Perhaps, he thought, Joan had opened the chest after he had left, or maybe someone else had been in the room. Doubtless Agnes and her sister, bent on harvesting every last item of value to leave nothing for thieves.
He placed the lantern on the floor next to the tall cabinet against one wall of the chamber and opened the cabinet’s doors. He pushed Susanna’s clothing aside to expose the back of the cabinet and thumped upon the wood, listening for an echo indicating a cavity behind. The wood seemed solid. Further inspection of the cabinet, including some artfully made sliding shelves, which revealed nothing more than the stockings of both husband and wife, handkerchiefs, other small items of dress. All disappointing. Matthew began to wonder if his expedition had really been worth the trouble when he might have been home in his own bed.
He set his lantern down and pulled the cabinet out from the wall to reveal beneath it fistfuls of dust and mouse droppings and in the pale wattling behind it a long, gray water stain stretching from the ceiling to the floor. He stood there looking at the stain, breathing deeply, for the wardrobe was solid and heavy and he wondered how it had ever been carried up those narrow stairs. Then he noticed the planks of the floor, how they were irregularly configured in this place with short pieces and long side by side, unlike the rest of the floor, where the planks were a good six to eight feet in length, and uniform. He thought that the wardrobe might have been positioned to cover the irregularity and was about to push it back into its place when it occurred to him that it might be a trapdoor rather than bad carpentry.
He raised the lantern to have a better view and then got down on his knees in the dust. Running his fingers over the planks, he found a widening of the grooves between them, which allowed him to take hold of a section of the planking and lift it.
Revealed was a shallow cavity the length and breadth of a small coffin, constructed between the rafters of the room below and the floor of the present chamber, and from its exact conformity and neat fit, built by design rather than occurring by happenstance. Inside was a folded cloth. Matthew reached down and drew it slowly aside, his heart beating with anticipation.
He was almost relieved at what he found, for after all that had happened he feared to find something as gruesome as what had already been discovered at the cursed place. Instead, he saw a small arsenal, which John Crookback—for he assumed it was he and not his old father before him—had carefully preserved against dust and the depredations of rats and spiders. There was a sword in its scabbard, a brace of pistols, and two leather bags, one of which proved to contain powder and the other balls for the pistols. There was also a pair of knives, a dagger and a poniard. The poniard had a jeweled pommel and must have been worth something, but the dagger, which was a common piece such as sailors wore, had carved in its haft the initials R.H.
Ralph Hawking, Matthew thought.
Matthew held the lantern more directly over the hiding-place to determine if he had missed anything and had concluded he had not when he heard the creak on the stairs. He held his breath.
Footfalls.
Had he had more time he might have used Crookback’s sword to defend against the sudden rush that came out of the darkness too fast for him to identify or repel. He felt a great stab of pain in his left shoulder, and then a blow to his cheek so savage that he was blinded by it, and then another blow to his head, which sent him reeling against the wall and into an unconsciousness as deep as death.
The big man with the red hair and brawny arms was to be Adam’s warder. He came three times during the day, bringing water and sometimes food. The chamber pot was never emptied, so the stench continued to nauseate. The big man taunted him about it, telling him to drink deep of the pot if he could not abide the food, but when Adam’s food came it was meager fare and half eaten already. It was obvious the big man was eating it, more out of malice than hunger, Adam reckoned, given the man’s robust condition. He looked fed quite well enough as it was.
“Your darling will not eat now,” said the man when he came to Adam’s cell past dark, Adam thought, although in the windowless, stinking room it was hard to tell. “He cannot hear, he cannot speak, and now he cannot eat.”
The man said this in a singsong voice, grinning malevolently. The voice made Adam’s flesh crawl. He resolved not to eat either; he and Nicholas would die together. Powerless against their enemies, they could at least exert power over their own bodies. If the Christian god did not understand, then perhaps Adam would find compassion among the gods of his own people.
He thought much about Nicholas, more fearful for his friend’s fate than for his own, and the longing he felt to see and touch the boy was almost more than he could bear. Sometimes, however, his thoughts would find their way from Nicholas to his own earlier life, and he would wrestle with the mystery which plagued him. Crookback, let the man be.
Why had Frobisher called out Crookback’s name when it had been Hawking who had been the attacker, more vicious in his assault than a mad dog. And why had Hawking responded? In the excitement of the moment had Frobisher confused the men who looked so much alike they might have been brothers?
Then of a sudden it came to Adam—what he had been struggling to remember and comprehend since the Crookback murders had disturbed his long forgetfulness. Frobisher had not called out the wrong name on the day of Adam’s capture. His brutal assailant had in truth been John Crookback. And Adam’s benefactor had been Ralph Hawking.
For a moment the image of the two men merged, then divided into two again. Unaccustomed to English faces and hearing only the gibberish of a foreign tongue, Adam had of course confused the names and the men too, both tall and wellmuscled, with golden beards and faces raw with wind and cold. So alike they might have been brothers.
The rest of the story now followed with a sharp clarity that left him almost breathless at its audacity and larcenousness. It had been Crookback, not Hawking, who had died in London in the tavern brawl of 1576, his skull crushed like a musk-melon. Hawking, not Crookback, it was, who had gone from London to Essex, assuming his friend’s identity and thereby inheriting a prosperous farm; Hawking not Crookback who had been encumbered with two simpering babes who were his own flesh, not Crookback’s, and a dark youth from terra incognita still too mind-boggled by the strangeness of scene and ignorant of English to discern or expose the imposture. It had been a curious retinue designed to make Ralph Hawking’s imposture all the more probable, since it was well known in the town that Crookback the boy had run off to sea and sailed with Frobisher. Adam and the two girls must have been authenticating evidence, presenting the would-be heir as an honest widower and a charitable guardian of Frobisher’s savage. Why should he have been thought other than he seemed?
And thus Ralph Hawking had commenced a new life as John Crookback; married Susanna; fathered three more children, had grown old; had been murdered; had been buried under the Crookback name, and of his true identity none in Chelmsford had been the wiser.
Except perhaps one, Adam thought. There had been one who was wise, as the devil is wise, one who had known the truth, one who done wickedness because of what he knew.
Chapter 16
Elizabeth, anxious, had asked where her father had gone. Joan told her only that he had gone to visit someone at the end of the street. On some business, she said, looking away quickly so that the daughter would not catch the deception in the mother’s face. Joan had been vague as to the details, not wanting to get into a lengthy explanation of Matthew’s theories about the murders, not all of wh
ich she shared.
But Joan’s reticence only piqued Elizabeth’s curiosity. Elizabeth asked who it was he’d gone to visit, and Joan had avoided a lie by changing the subject to a chore that her daughter had neglected. They quibbled about that, mother and daughter, and Joan had resolved the dispute with a sharp reproof that brought tears to Elizabeth’s eyes.
Afterwards, they made peace between them, and Elizabeth went to bed, but Joan sat still in the kitchen waiting for Matthew to return and feeling guilty. Why had she not told Elizabeth the truth? Why had she spoken sharply over an inconsequential oversight? Elizabeth was the best of daughters, the only one of her children who had survived birth. Joan sighed heavily and felt a deep remorse. She prayed for Matthew’s safety, for his venture out into the night seemed now to have been made with reckless disregard for common sense, which dictated that a cold, dark night was no time for excursions into the countryside.
She hadn’t realized how tired she was, and after a while, the kitchen being so amply warmed by the fire, she dozed.
Joan came awake with a start, almost toppling from the chair. She was chilled to the bone, so much so that she had to put on the vest she had removed earlier because of the heat in the kitchen, but even that did not help. Her cheeks and forehead were clammy and cold. She stoked the fire, and it grew large and generous in the grate, and still, although more than warm enough before, she could not get warm again.
A shadow passed before her eyes, clouding her vision. Joan feared she was about to faint. She heard Matthew’s voice.
Somehow she knew her husband was not in the room with her and yet still the voice was unmistakable, proceeding mysteriously out of the thin air. The voice was weak and far away, more a whimper than a cry, and it spoke her name, repeating it again and again.
“Matthew?” she said aloud. “Matthew?” But there was no one to hear.
Her knees buckled beneath her, and she sank to the floor, feeling colder than ever, her head swimming and her vision blocked by the shadows that kept passing before her. She tried to wave them away, rubbing her eyes; she slapped her face to restore her vision. Nothing helped. She continued to hear the voice.
And then there was silence.
She knew what had come upon her. All her life she had been subject to such seizures. She called them “glimmerings,” waking dreams. They warned her of danger to herself or to others, and it was to her husband’s credit that, informed of them, he never belittled their significance or disputed the interpretations she gave of them.
The glimmering had passed. Her vision was restored, and she felt her flesh grow warm even as she noticed this transformation. She knew what the glimmering meant: The voice she had heard, with its mute appeal for help, left little doubt in her mind.
She went straightway to wake up Peter Bench. She was shaking him into awareness when she heard the clamor of the church bells.
The plunge into space was what revived him, a splaying of limbs his salvation from further descent. That and the miracle of a purchase on an irregularity in the otherwise smooth shaft of Crookback’s well.
So he was not to be drowned like an unwanted kitten, but by grace saved, preserved a little while longer at least, to suffer cold and starvation, and the slow agony of loss of blood, for he could feel it in his hair, warm and moist.
He was pendulous like a bat, bent nearly double and pressed against the cold, hard stones, struggling not to lose his grip, every muscle in arm and leg aching and taut as a bow-string. He groaned and struggled to get himself upright, stifling his sobs and remembering now what had happened.
Who had done this to him but the very murderer he had sought—a truth he felt now in his racked bones, even as he felt the agony of his fear? It had been a man by the strength of him, for no woman had flown at him with such maniacal fury, or hit him with such brutal force. And no passing stranger had carried him unconscious to the well to stuff him where the other victims had been obscenely stuffed, their bodies all bloody and left for the water to disfigure beyond what the knife had done. What had the murderer been doing lurking about at the scene of his treachery? Perhaps, Matthew considered, he had been followed to the farm. An easy task on such a night. Matthew had been discreet in leaving the town, not so much after he had hit the high road, lighting his lantern and moving along swiftly, not looking behind him, this being no casual amble through the darkness but full of purpose and anxiety.
He was not sure but that his assailant waited above at the well’s brim, listening for sounds of life below. Hearing them, would he then throw stones or some heavy object to give quietus to this new victim? Matthew waited what seemed a very long time, listening himself. In his cramped position, with his head bent back and but a few inches above the water he could not see above him to that aperture that opened to the night sky, the few dim stars, and what remained at this hour of the crescent moon, although he longed for such a hopeful view. He wondered if it would be obscured by a face, looming above the hole like a second moon, malevolent and eager to realize completely an evil intent.
After a while, hearing nothing above, feeling the blood pounding in his head and finding the cold most efficient in numbing his extremities despite his gloves and boots, Matthew struggled to improve his situation. At least he could try to get himself upright and not remain in so torturous a position. The maneuver was not easy, and he could not now stifle the cries of pain as he drove his fingers into the slight crevices of the slippery stones, which were round and smooth as masonry, and that he remembered from a brighter and happier day were as wondrously black as obsidian.
Adam was already asleep when Faulkbome, as Adam had heard his companions call him, brought supper. The hulking jailer bellowed out that supper was served, and Adam awoke to a dish of something lukewarm and stinking thrust beneath his nose.
Faulkbome laughed his deep throaty laugh. “It’s the cook’s specialty,” he said. “Roast of a bull’s testicle garnished with his offal.”
Adam pushed it away, causing some of the delicacy to drip upon the server. Faulkbome cursed, flung the dish in the corner, and stingingly boxed Adam’s ears.
“Sir Thomas shall learn of your abuse,” Adam said, getting himself to his feet again, realizing at once that the threat was both useless and dangerous.
Faulkbome glowered. “If he does, it will be your word against mine—the word of a murderer and malcontent against that of a trusted servant. Now which word, miserable monkey, think you my master will credit?”
Faulkbome raised his hand to administer another blow, but he was interrupted by the sound of a sudden cry of alarm in the passage.
The big man turned swiftly to see what it was, and the young flaxen-haired servant with the red lips rushed in, breathing heavily, and by the light of his lamp all pale with fright.
“The dummy has strung himself up,” he gasped. “He’s as dead as Methusalah.”
“Impossible,” Faulkbome said, casting a contemptuous look at the younger man. “He had no rope. ”
“He did it with his hose. He used his hose, he did,” gasped the young servant. “The dummy ripped them apart and tied the pieces together and fashioned him a noose and strung it from the beam. Come see for yourself, if you don’t believe it. He’s naked as a kite from the waist down.”
“The devil he did,” exclaimed Faulkbome.
“Sir Thomas will not be pleased,” said the young servant. “He left the men in our charge. Shall we not answer for this?”
“By Christ, he did leave us in charge,” said Faulkbome, “And we’ve looked after them well but had no expectation of this. If we have to answer for it, we’ll say we did our duty faithfully.”
“Oh, he’s a terrible sight to behold,” said the young servant.
Faulkbome pushed past the younger man to see for himself, in his haste leaving the door to Adam’s cell ajar.
To Adam the message brought by the young servant, which his antagonist had rushed off to confirm, had the quality of one of the tales Jeroboam
used to tell at Burton Hall when the grouchy steward wanted to put the fear of God into the credulous serving girls. Adam did not believe it, refused to do so. But the open door he could see and therefore believe. He sprung to his feet and to the door and into the passage and raced down the same, glimpsing only as he passed the two servants bending over a body with bare white legs he knew as well as his own so that what he had not believed now he could not deny further.
The wail that would have betrayed his passing he suppressed, saying in his mind as he fled, What I see is not real It is not real
But he knew it was. Nicholas had managed to escape without him, keeping his counsel to the end.
Adam felt the grief gathering about him with such strength that he could hardly breathe. The energy that would have gone into the cry of rage and despair went into his lungs and legs. With a strength incredible to him, given his bruises and his self-imposed fast, he ran out of the house, where looking above him and finding in the heavens the star that signaled north, he set his course.
The fire that had begun in Master Barber’s grate and spread so quickly had quite engulfed the old man before he could wake in his chair. Smoke belched from the windows and into the street, filling the starry night sky with cinders and ash and the smell of destruction and death. The fire was observed by the Widow Peters, whose son set the town bells clanging shortly past nine o’clock. Within minutes the whole house was a conflagration and the one next to it as well, that owned by John Gordon. All the men in the town turned out, even those haunting the brothels and taverns, and most of the women, if not to help fight the blaze then to form an appreciative audience for those who did.
Joan and Elizabeth, who was roused from her sleep by the hurly-burly of the alarm and the cries of fire, came to see too. There was a great fear the flames would spread from thatch to thatch and take all the houses on the north side of the street and perhaps the whole town before it was done.
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