15 The Sempster's Tale Read online

  ‘Then how did he—“ Master Grene started.

  ‘Can we go elsewhere with this talk?“ Father Walter asked. ”It’s unseemly over the poor boy’s body.“ Though he sounded as if it were less the unseemliness that troubled him than his own sickness at it all.

  ‘I’ve seen what I need to see,“ Master Crane said. ”When Sir Richard has viewed the body…“

  ‘I wonder where his clothing is,“ Frevisse said mildly, as if more to herself than anyone. ”He wouldn’t have been brought here naked.“

  From the stairway a man none of them had heard coming declared loudly, “Where in the name of blessed Saint Lucy are your lights?”

  ‘Sir Richard,“ Master Crane said, raising the lantern he held. ”We were waiting for you to illumine us.“

  ‘Humph,“ Sir Richard said in return. He came into what lantern-light there was, a man not so tall as Frevisse, with a thin, weatherworn face and a swordsman’s walk that suggested his knighthood was more than an easy courtesy. He was so surely the under-crowner there was no need for anyone to say so, but despite one way and another he must have seen bodies enough, at sight of Hal’s he grimaced and swore, then said to Frevisse, ”Your pardon, my lady,“ and added over his shoulder to Mistress Blakhall in the shadows, now standing a little apart from Master Weir, ”Yours, too, I pray you,“ before he glared at Master Crane and demanded, ”Should these women be seeing this?“

  ‘They should not, no,“ Master Weir agreed quickly. ”I’ll see them out.“

  He made to take Mistress Blakhall toward the stairs, but Frevisse said to Sir Richard, “We were just wondering where the boy’s clothing was.”

  ‘Well?“ Sir Richard asked at Master Crane, and at his clerk Master Crane said, ”Take the lantern and look through the crypt.“

  As the clerk obeyed, Sir Richard said, “Now tell me what we have here.”

  By the lantern’s bobbing light Frevisse saw Mistress Blakhall and Master Weir were at the stairs waiting for her, but she stayed where she was, listening as Master Crane detailed what had been so far been said, with a hard look that silenced Brother Michael when he started to speak. He did tell the friar’s assertion, though, and Father Tomas’ answer to it, and although Sir Richard listened closely, Frevisse thought he no more leaped at accepting Brother Michael’s accusation than Master Crane had.

  ‘I’ve found them,“ Lewes said from the farthest corner of the crypt.

  ‘Bring them here,“ Sir Richard ordered, pointing to the floor near the body. ”I’ll take your lantern.“

  He went and took it from him, and Lewes picked up the clothing in its heap and brought to put down beside the body. Standing over him with the lantern, Sir Richard ordered, “Sort through it. See what’s there and what isn’t.”

  While everyone watched, the clerk went through the clothing naming each thing as he found it. Everything was there that might be expected—undergarments, hosen, shoes, shirt, an apprentice’s plain tunic. The tunic and shirt stayed stiffly wadded together, though, when the clerk handled them, and Sir Richard said, “Unfold them.”

  As Lewes pulled apart the stiffened folds, a small, gold-gleaming cross on a chain fell to the floor. “Not robbery, then, if that’s still here,” Master Crane said as Father Tomas bent to pick it up.

  ‘The only robbery was of his life,“ Brother Michael said sharply. ”I tell you this was—“

  ‘We know what you say it was,“ Sir Richard interrupted. ”Father Tomas says otherwise. That leaves the question still open. Master Grene, was that the boy’s cross?“

  Father Tomas held it out to Master Grene, who only looked at it and said, “Yes. It was his father’s.”

  The clerk held the blood-stiffened tunic up in the lantern-light for them to see, and Sir Richard said, “By that, he looks to have been stabbed in the back. Turn him over.”

  Master Crane knelt down and eased the body onto its side. In the lantern-light three black-mouthed dagger wounds showed below the shoulder blades, two to the heart-side, one to the other.

  ‘Made sure of him, didn’t they?“ Sir Richard said. He shifted the lantern and looked at the earthen floor. ”Did it here. That’s blood darkening the dirt.“ He pointed with one forefinger, outlining the stained area that spread from beneath the body, unnoticed in the shadowy light until now. ”Stabbed him, stripped him, mangled the body while it was lying in its own blood.“

  Master Crane had bent for a closer look at the back of the head. “He was struck here, too. Clubbed, by the look of it. Hard enough to split the skin but…” He felt at the wound. “No, the skull’s not caved in. He would likely have been unconscious but not dead. It was the stabbing that finished him.” He eased the body down again and stood up. “I’ll get more light down here, and we’ll finish looking to see if the murderer left aught else, but we can move the body now, can’t we?”

  ‘Yes. Best look through the church, too,“ Sir Richard said. ”Unless he came down here of his own will and then was killed, he was most likely struck down in the church, rather than out in the street. Easier to get the body into the crypt unseen from the church than the street.“ Sir Richard pointed at the bloodied ground beside the corpse. ”Who knelt there?“ Without waiting for an answer, he bent over and poked with his finger at a slight, rounded hollow indented in the hard earth. ”Not done today,“ he said. ”That was done while the dirt was blood-softened, by the murderer kneeling to his work.“ Standing up, he added mordantly, ”All we need do is to find someone who had one of his hosen, or his tunic, or his gown bloodied at the knee five days ago. That shouldn’t be hard in London.“

  As Father Tomas bent and laid the cross gently on the boy’s maimed chest, Frevisse turned away, having seen enough, and followed Mistress Blakhall and Master Weir from the crypt, to pause, blinking, at the top of the stairs while her eyes grew used to daylight again. For probably the same reason Master Weir and Mistress Blakhall were stopped, too, standing apart from each other now as Mistress Blakhall said miserably, “What am I going to tell Pernell that won’t kill her to hear it?”

  ‘That it is her son,“ Frevisse said. ”That he’s been dead several days and looks to have been stabbed. That he died quickly and knew nothing. More than that she doesn’t need to hear.“

  ‘There’ll be talk. If not from us, she’ll hear the worst from someone else.“

  ‘Use that she has to keep to her rooms from now until her baby’s birth,“ Frevisse returned. ”Tell Mistress Hercy enough so that she’ll see no one sees her and that the servants don’t talk where Mistress Grene can hear them.“

  ‘It would be best, too, that Hal be kept here,“ said Master Weir. ”That the body be readied for burial and buried straightaway. The fewer who see him, the better.“

  Mistress Blakhall closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her forehead. “There was never harm in him, ever. Why would someone…”

  ‘Let it go for now,“ Master Weir interrupted gently, firmly. ”Before anything, Mistress Grene needs to be protected.“

  Lowering her hands, Mistress Blakhall took a deep breath and said steadily enough that Frevisse believed her, “I’ll do what needs doing.”

  Frevisse looked to Master Weir. “If I see Mistress Blakhall to the Grenes‘, will you stay to tell Master Grene that we think this is all his wife should hear?”

  ‘I’ll tell him now, but do you wait and I’ll see you back there. There’ll be people wanting to question you.“

  Frevisse accepted that with a nod, willing to add his help to the Naylors‘; and she took the chance as soon as he was gone to say to Mistress Blakhall, “I’ll come to your house tomorrow for the gold. Will that do?”

  ‘Tomorrow. Yes. Tomorrow,“ Mistress Blakhall said, as if unable quite to believe in tomorrow just now.

  ‘In the early afternoon,“ Frevisse said.

  ‘Yes. Then.“

  Master Weir returned, Father Tomas with him, and Frevisse was glad of the chance to tell the priest, “That was bravely done, facing down t
he friar.”

  ‘I likely did little good,“ Father Tomas said doubtingly.

  ‘You did what good you could,“ Master Weir said. ”Not that there’s hope of changing that friar’s mind,“ he added dryly. ”He too much wants to believe in his Jews. But you gave Master Crane grounds for holding off talk of ’ritual murder‘ and that’s to the good.“ Smiling, he added to Frevisse, ”You joined in boldly, too.“

  ‘I don’t like the willful use of ignorance as a weapon,“ she answered.

  ‘I hardly think Brother Michael is ignorant,“ said Master Weir. ”He gives every sign of being very learned.“

  ‘I don’t doubt he’s learned,“ Frevisse returned, not bothering to keep her anger from her words. ”But he’s not learned enough to wonder why any Jews secretly here in London would announce they were here, let be by something so ugly as this murder. Besides that, I’ve never seen any reason why Jews would commit such blasphemous murders in the first place, and this one wasn’t even done rightly for the ’ritual murder‘ it was supposed to be.“

  Supposed to be.

  There was something to wonder. Why would someone have wanted it to seem a murder done by Jews at all?

  She thought she saw the same question quicken in Master Weir’s face, but before she could say anything, Father Tomas murmured something about satisfying his fellows’ curiosity and went away toward the men gathered farther up the nave, and Master Weir started them toward the outer door where a crowd and questions would have to be faced. And then the dead boy’s mother.

  Chapter 12

  The Naylors and Master Weir saw Frevisse and Mistress Blakhall through the people still waiting in the churchyard, Master Naylor clearing the way, looking more grim than usual, Master Weir keeping himself between Mistress Blakhall and everyone, a steadying hand on her elbow, while Dickon shoved people away on Frevisse’s other side. Questions were being called at them, and to someone who called her by name Mistress Blakhall answered, “It’s Hal, yes. He was stabbed.”

  Her few words spread through the crowd, turning people to exclaim to one another, and with most of the gawkers choosing to stay at the church, they went faster once out of the churchyard, Frevisse and Mistress Blakhall with their heads down, answering nothing, Master Naylor and Master Weir merely telling people there was nothing else to tell. At the house, when the servant keeping guard at the gate had let them in and shut the door hard behind them, Master Weir asked, “Wyett, you’ve let in no one else?”

  ‘None, Master Weir. Is it Hal?“

  ‘It’s Hal, yes.“

  As the man crossed himself, Mistress Blakhall said, “We have to go to Pernell.”

  But Master Naylor said to Frevisse, “Your pardon, my lady. With the rebels into Southwark, it would be well for you and Dame Juliana to be back in St. Helen’s as soon as might be, until we see how things are going to go.”

  ‘James and Rafe have been down to Hay Wharf,“ Wyett said eagerly. ”They say there’s nothing happening across river. No burning or anything.“ He was near to sounding disappointed.

  Still directly at Frevisse, Master Naylor repeated, “It would be well for you to be back in St. Helen’s. Whatever needs doing here, others can do.”

  And was none of her business anyway, he did not add aloud, but she heard it clearly enough. Heard, too, that he was past arguing over the matter. He would have her and Dame Juliana back in St. Helen’s or make enough trouble over it she would wish she had gone. But she meant to make no argument—not so much because of the rebels, but because the day had been long and she was tiring and others could better do what would have to be done here.

  Besides that, Mistress Blakhall was saying, “You’ve already done beyond measure, going with me to the church as you did. Wait here, and I’ll send Dame Juliana out to you.”

  More than willing not to see Mistress Grene in her grief, Frevisse thanked her, and when Mistress Blakhall and Master Weir were gone away across the yard beyond hearing him— and not caring that the man Wyett could—Master Naylor turned on Frevisse and said, “The rebels are too close now.

  We should be more than at St. Helen’s. We should be out of London.“

  Trying to appease both him and her own worry, she said, “The rebels can’t cross the river, and surely the king will have to do something now it’s come to this.”

  ‘We’ll have to wait for time to prove the truth of ’they can’t‘ and ’he will‘,“ Master Naylor snapped. ”For myself, I’d rather not be here to see how it plays out.“

  Neither would she, but the best she could offer was, “I promise you, the instant we can leave, we will.”

  ‘Supposing we can when that time comes,“ Master Naylor said back at her.

  The more stiffly because her own feelings so nearly matched his, she answered, “We’ll simply have to see how things go this next day and so.” And was greatly thankful to see Dame Juliana hurrying from the house.

  She joined them at the gate with, “Was it her son? Mistress Blakhall said you were waiting, and I didn’t stay to ask anything.”

  ‘It was,“ Frevisse said, and Dame Juliana signed herself with the cross, but Master Naylor was already herding them out the gate. He then set a pace back to St. Helen’s that had them nigh to breathless but at the nunnery’s gateway as the bells began to ring for Vespers. Dame Juliana thanked Master Naylor, who bade her welcome and good evening with a bow to them both but no look at all at Frevisse. Too wise to go against his father’s humour, Dickon had been quiet the while, but as he straightened from his own bow to them, he gave Frevisse a quick smile before turning to follow his father away. For him the rebels were an unlooked-for adventure, and because nothing and no one about the dead boy was known to him, Frevisse did not begrudge him his somewhat lighter heart. She only envied him for it.

  She hoped to find refuge in Vespers, but did not. Even in the first psalm her mind was going too many ways other than into quiet. Around her and with her the voices rose: “Beatus, quicumque times Dominum, qui ambulas in vüs ejus… beatus eris et bene tibi erit…” Happy, all you that fear the Lord, who walk in his ways… Happy will you be and good will be to you…

  But neither happiness nor good had come to the boy Hal, and surely he had never done anything so far out of the Lord’s ways to deserve that death and what came afterward. It did not matter that she knew full well that what came to someone too often seemed to match nothing in their life to earn it. It didn’t matter that she knew the psalm’s promised happiness and goodness were the happiness and goodness given by God after this world. Knowing a thing and being at peace with it were too often two different things, and today most certainly she could not reconcile them. For now, as the Office neared its end and the nuns chanted from one side of the choir, “Oremus pro fidelibus defunctis”—We entreat for the faithful dead.—and the other side answered, “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis,”—Give eternal rest to them, Lord, and perpetual light shine on them—pray for the dead boy’s soul was all she could do.

  After Vespers and supper came the hour of recreation in the nunnery’s garden before Compline. Dame Juliana walked in talk with some of the nuns along the paths between the summer-flourishing beds of flowers and herbs, but Frevisse knew she would better let her thoughts run now than later and went aside to one of the turf-topped benches, to sit with a book laid open on her lap, hoping that if she looked to be reading she’d be left alone. Not that her thoughts did more than circle, she soon found. What bedeviled her was knowing too much and yet not enough. The questions she wanted to ask were Sir Richard’s and Master Crane’s to do because the places and people of young Hal’s life were all beyond her reach, and she might as well set her mind to accepting the whole matter was over and done for her. She told herself she was willing enough to that. She told herself she would even succeed at letting it go. That she might as well let it go because there was nothing she could do.

  And instead found herself thinking about Brother Michael.
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br />   There in the garden’s peace, she could almost not believe in the ugly fears he had conjured with his talk of secret Jews and ritual murder. Fears not of Jews and what he charged against them, but of what might come if the Inquisition was set strongly going in England. Granted, heresy must not be allowed to thrive, destroying souls, but Frevisse in her childhood spent wandering with her parents had seen a little of the Inquisition’s work. Had understood, even as a child, that despite what good the Inquisition might do, there were men among the inquisitors for whom the love of wielding power of life and death over others was stronger than their desire toward the salvation of souls. To save a soul meant less to them than their pleasure in decreeing men’s destruction. “And the death-wielders’ numbers are growing,” her father had said once, when the small band of players with whom he and her mother and she were presently traveling were sheltering through a rainy night in a barn somewhere in France, having left a town by one gateway as the Inquisition in the form of five Dominican friars rode in through another. Frevisse still remembered the firelight on tired faces, the rustle of rain on the roof, the warmth of her mother’s arms around her. Remembered what her father had said because the word “death-wielders” had stayed with her.

  She did not like how readily Brother Michael had accused Jews of the boy Hal’s death. She was willing—barely—to grant there might be Jews secretly living in London, pretending to be Christian. There had been the bread she had seen on Mistress Blakhall’s table, for one thing. But a braided bread-loaf was too little to build long thoughts on. Worth more thought was Father Tomas. He had very possibly earned the friar’s dislike and certainly opened himself to the friar’s questions if Brother Michael kept eager to his Jew-hunt. What she had protested in the crypt was true—popes had steadily decreed, one after another, that the accusations of ritual murder by Jews were false—but those repeated decrees had stopped neither the belief nor the butcheries, and Frevisse doubted they would stop Brother Michael. His ambition to find out heretics and Jews looked to be too strong. And whatever the friar did or didn’t do, there would be those who saw Father Tomas differently now that his Jewish parentage was known. She welcomed the small bell ringing to Compline and obeyed it with the hope she would succeed in Compline’s prayers where she had failed at Vespers, that she would sink deep enough into their peace to quiet all her thoughts and let her sleep deep tonight and without dreams.