15 The Sempster's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  If the latter, then love of God hadn’t been enough to keep her from prying where she had not needed to, Anne thought with an unexpected flare of anger at her. It was her questions and well-wittedness more than anything that had pulled apart the strands of seeming from the strands of truth, to find an ugliness so deep that Anne had a sharp half-wish it had never been found out. She accepted Raulyn’s guilt because Daved did, but it was still only words to her, not something in which she fully believed, so that setting the cost of never having known it against the cost in deeper heartbreak and loss there would be now, where was the gain in having the truth?

  Or would not knowing have cost more in the longer run?

  There was no way to know, and wanting away from that unwanted wondering, Anne altogether opened the door and went into the parlor. Dame Frevisse turned toward her, became only a faceless shape in the darkness. Anne, hoping she was as faceless, sat down beside her. They neither of them spoke. The night was still just then, nothing to be heard but a distant scruff of sound that might have been almost anything. Dame Frevisse seemed willing to stay silent, went back to looking out the window again, but Anne, without knowing she was going to, asked in an anguished whisper, “These murders. How could Raulyn bring himself to them? If he did.”

  Readily enough that she must have already been this way in her own mind, Dame Frevisse answered, “My guess is that he’s so narrow a man he sees only how he wants a thing to be and never why it shouldn’t be that way. He sees only himself clearly. Everyone else’s worth depends on how well they serve his ends. If it’s their death best serves him, then they should be dead.”

  ‘But how could he bring himself to kill Hal? The friar, yes. But Hal.“

  ‘I doubt he had to ’bring‘ himself to kill Hal. Once he decided Hal dead was worth more to him than Hal alive, he simply made his plan and did it. Probably his only qualm was for his own safety. A blind belief in the Tightness of his own greed probably made it easy.“ She paused, then added, ”He very likely enjoyed it, too.“

  ‘Enjoyed it?“ Anne echoed. ”Killing Hal, you mean?“

  ‘Killing him, yes. The power of life and death. Or of death, anyway. Having so much of what he desires in life, Raulyn may very possibly have now discovered the pleasures of death. There was an arrogance in the way he killed Brother Michael, as if he thought that having done murder that way once and been unfound, he could kill the same way again and be as safe. That people would be too blind to see how alike the murders were. He’ll be in a fury at being found out. At the wrong we’ve done him by finding him out.“

  ‘The wrong done him?“

  ‘As he sees it, the wrong in this won’t be his but ours, for daring to ruin his plans,“ Dame Frevisse said evenly.

  ‘And you have no doubt of him?“

  ‘None.“

  Anne had wanted comfort of some sort and been given none. “It’s going to be terrible,” she whispered.

  ‘It is,“ Dame Frevisse agreed, still gazing out the window. ”That’s how it too often is when lies can no longer be lived in.“

  Anne stiffened.

  ‘The only thing worse,“ Dame Frevisse went quietly on, still not looking at her, ”is living in the lies themselves.“

  Anne drew a short, hissed breath, then fiercely whispered, “I won’t give up Daved. No matter what is said or what happens, I won’t.”

  ‘And when the time comes,“ Dame Frevisse said with a quietness worse than any open challenge, ”that it isn’t a matter of choice but of necessity—what then?“

  Frevisse waited, but Anne Blakhall made her no answer, only sat staring at her through a long and wordless moment before standing abruptly up and disappearing into the bedchamber again.

  Frevisse was not happy to be left to her own thoughts. They were not the best of companions. She had kept night-vigils before now and knew how the hours passed at their own pace whether she was impatient with them or not. So she had learned patience and that prayer was the best way to pass them; but tonight thoughts came, not prayers, and while some were of London’s danger and many were of the gold still hung from her neck in unceasing remembrance of how many troubles besides present ones there were, mostly her thoughts were of the crowded misery and fears all around her tonight, both in this house and beyond it.

  She was trying yet again to pray, though the only words that came were “Dies amara valde calamitatis et miseriae…” —Very bitter day of calamity and misery… —when the parlor’s darkness moved, and her heart lurched with unbidden fear that it was Raulyn come up the stairs so silently she had not heard him. Then she knew the shadow-shape was Daved Weir, and as he came toward her, one hand raised, warning her to silence, her heart found its pace again. Until he leaned close to her and said, hardly above a whisper, “Come with me. Raulyn is dead.”

  Chapter 28

  Later, Frevisse would think that to have gone so trustingly with Daved Weir could have been foolishness, but at the time she did not question him until they were at the foot of the parlor stairs and then only asked, “What’s happened?”

  ‘Mistress Hercy,“ Daved said, and his grimness was enough that Frevisse asked nothing else, simply followed him into the hall and toward the solar and then up a stairway near it to the bedchamber where Anne must have been last night. Upon a time, it had likely been the house’s best, and by day when full of sunlight was probably still a pleasant room, but tonight, in darkness and with the jerking light of a single candle with untrimmed wick j uttering black shadows of bed and chest and chair among the roof beams and in and out of corners, it was a darksome place; and on the chair in almost the room’s middle Mistress Hercy was sitting staring at nothing on the floor in front of her.

  Frevisse stopped at the candlelight’s edge, unwilling to go nearer until she understood more. Daved, a little farther into the room, said, “He’s there. On the bed.”

  There was indeed a still shape among the bedcurtains’ shadows, and still unwillingly Frevisse went forward to see him better. Fully clothed save for his shoes, he was lying in a tangle of bedcover and sheet, and there was no mistaking his quietness for sleep. Even aside from the eyes’ empty stare and the gaping mouth, there was a sprawl and twist and slackness to him that had nothing to do with sleep, and Frevisse had the odd sideways thought that he had seemed goodly featured when alive but he was ugly now and empty—as if showing himself more truly in death than he had in life. She knew she was deliberately keeping her wild, sickened rush of feelings at bay behind carefully chosen thoughts as she said, “He was stabbed once. To the heart.”

  ‘To the heart,“ Daved agreed. ”And only the once.“

  She turned to Mistress Hercy and found the woman had lifted her eyes and was looking at her, the candlelight harsh on her stoney face.

  ‘You killed him?“ Frevisse asked.

  Mistress Hercy drew a slow, deep breath, straightened her back, lifted her head, and said firmly, “I killed him. Yes.”

  ‘In his sleep,“ Frevisse said, not asking.

  But Mistress Hercy answered, her voice hard, “No. I wanted him to know he was going to die.”

  ‘He didn’t lie there and let you kill him,“ Frevisse said.

  ‘No,“ Mistress Hercy agreed, and that seemed the end of what she meant to say. She returned to staring at the floor, and the terrible quiet of death closed over the room again, until she suddenly went on, ”I waited for him. When he came off his turn at street-watch, I was in the screens passage as if by chance. I told him how tired he looked and that he should go to my chamber to sleep, that he could sleep undisturbed here and the bed was better. I said I’d bring him some wine. He liked his comforts. He came here, and I waited a little, then brought the wine I’d readied for him. With Pernell’s sleeping draught.“ She frowned a little. ”There’s not much left for Pernell now.“

  ‘We can get more from an apothecary,“ Daved said gently.

  Mistress Hercy made a slight nod, but her gaze did not shift from the floor and again t
here was the silence before she went on, “I feared he’d taste something was amiss, but he didn’t. He drank it all at almost a gulp. Swilled it so quickly he probably didn’t taste even the wine. He thanked me.” Mistress Hercy’s lips twisted with a bitterness that had nothing to do with smiling. “I said he was welcome. Then I waited outside the door. When I heard he was asleep I came in and shoved at his shoulder. If I’d waited longer for the draught to work, I’d not been able to wake him at all, but he woke up enough. I stood there with the knife held over him so he could see it in the candlelight. When he understood… when he started to move a hand to stop me… I…” She gave up words on a shuddered breath and from her lap lifted a broad-bladed kitchen knife—clean of blood as any careful housewife would keep a blade after use, Frevisse thought, still trying to hold at bay the ugliness of it all.

  ‘Like this,“ Mistress Hercy said, took hold of the knife’s plain wooden handle with both hands, and drove the blade downward, only into air this time but with much the force she must have driven it into Raulyn’s body. Then she sat back, folded her hands still holding the knife into her lap again, and said, ”That way.“ But now she shuddered, and for the first time nightmare came into her voice. ”I thought he’d just be dead, but he wasn’t. He jerked. He kicked and he twisted. He…“ She drew and let out a deep, shuddering breath. ”Then he died. He’s dead.“

  Evenly Daved said, “Death sometimes takes a man that way. But you made a clean kill of it. As sure a stroke as any I’ve seen.”

  ‘Too clean,“ Mistress Hercy said coldly. ”He should have hurt for longer.“

  ‘That would have been good,“ Daved agreed. ”But not wise. Now we have to do something with his body. It can’t be found here.“

  For a moment Mistress Hercy made no answer or move. Then she raised her head and looked at him. “What?”

  ‘We can’t leave him here to be found,“ Daved said patiently. ”We have to decide what to do about him.“

  ‘Is that why you fetched me here?“ Frevisse asked, hearing her words scale upward with disbelief.

  ‘Do you want Mistress Hercy to die for doing this?“ Daved asked.

  A wide array of things she could say back at him rushed into Frevisse’s mind. Out of them she chose, “Raulyn was never found guilty under law. He was never given chance to answer any accusation against him. Now you want to hide his death.”

  ‘With all we learned and found, do you doubt his guilt?“ Daved asked.

  ‘No.“

  ‘Nor do I. So.“ As if that settled all questions about the matter.

  It did not, and Frevisse demanded at him, “How do you come to be here at all? Mistress Hercy didn’t come for you, surely.”

  ‘When I came off my watch in the rearyard, I met Mistress Hercy in the screens passage. We spoke. She seemed not herself, but none of us presently are, and I went up to my bed. A little later I heard her speaking to Raulyn below me and thought he would soon come up. He didn’t. I slept a little, not deeply, and came full awake wondering what was wrong. You know how it can be? How a thought can work along below outright thinking, then be there suddenly, full and certain? There had been something in the way Mistress Hercy had been, and then Raulyn had not come to bed. Something felt wrong. I went looking for one or the other of them and found this. Now we need to conceal it.“

  Frevisse tucked her hands firmly into her opposite sleeves and lifted her chin. “What you want is that Mistress Hercy be kept from the law that would have to deal with her according to her crime for the crime it is, in despite of what Raulyn’s crimes were.”

  Daved gave a small, single nod.

  ‘You’d claim,“ Frevisse said, ”that we should do it for the sake of keeping the wrongs Raulyn did from going further and to spare Pernell worse pain than Raulyn’s plain death will be.“

  Still Daved said nothing. He did not have to. She had said it for him, and she turned on Mistress Hercy and demanded, “What did you mean to do after you killed him? Did you have any thought on that at all?”

  ‘I meant to sit here until someone found me,“ Mistress Hercy said simply. ”Then say I killed him, yes, but that I don’t know why.“

  ‘They’d hang you then,“ Frevisse said harshly. ”Or find you mad and put you into Bethlam hospital with other mad people.“

  ‘Yes.“ Mistress Hercy had already accepted that.

  ‘And Pernell?“ Frevisse snapped.

  ‘Better she grieve for us both than know what he did. Better she lose us than lose everything and maybe come to hate her children because they’re his.“

  And Daved wanted… what? Not to make everything right, surely, Frevisse thought with fierce impatience. Everything was gone too far past any hope of “right.” To make it less bad, then, and God help her, she understood why. There was law and there was justice. If either of those was well-served here, the innocent would suffer the worst. And she turned a look that was mostly a glare on Daved and asked, “She’s supposing, too, that you and I and Anne will say nothing about Raulyn’s murders.”

  ‘She is, yes.“

  ‘You won’t, will you?“ Mistress Hercy asked, alarmed.

  Frevisse shifted her glare to her. “What would be the point of it now?”

  There had to be law—to keep the world from the kind of chaos Cade and his rebels had brought into London—but giving Mistress Hercy to the law would leave Pernell—who was guilty of nothing—with naught but grief and three orphans. Knowing what she was going to choose, Frevisse tried to believe she made her choice out of Pernell’s need, not from her own deep dislike of Raulyn, who deserved to be dead, because no one deserved to be dead this way, with no hope of the soul’s salvation. For that wrong against him Mistress Hercy would have to answer; but let it be to her priest in confession, not to the law, Frevisse thought; and said, “It will have to be you, Master Weir, who sees to having his body out of here.”

  ‘I’ll find a way to that,“ Daved said. ”What we need first to do—“

  He broke off and moved with a suddenness to the bed, pulling the near curtain across it and swinging around to face the doorway all in a single movement, so that he was standing as if he had not moved at all, with one hand raised to hold Frevisse and Mistress Hercy silent as he asked, “Who’s there on the stairs?”

  Anne had slept a little and awoken uncertain of the hour and restless enough she had not dared stay with still deeply sleeping Lucie and Pernell. Finding Dame Frevisse gone from the parlor, she had gone restlessly downstairs into the silence there, hesitated, then come in search of Mistress Hercy. For comfort? For company? Simply for some place else to be, rather than parlor or bedchamber? She didn’t know but had hardly started up the stairs when Daved demanded who was there and now she stood on the threshold, startled to find him, Mistress Hercy, and Dame Frevisse all there together, all looking at her as if she should not be.

  Then Daved crossed to her as Mistress Hercy stood up, asking sharply, “Is it Pernell? Has her birthing started?”

  Letting Daved, his hold too tight on her arm, draw her farther into the room, Anne said, “She’s sleeping. She and Lucie both. I only thought, when I found Dame Frevisse gone…” She did not clearly know what she had thought, but looking at all their faces she asked, “What’s amiss? What’s happened?”

  With no effort to ease it, Daved answered, “Mistress Hercy has killed Raulyn.”

  Anne gasped. But even as she made to deny it, she knew by Daved’s grip on her and the look on his face that there was no time for the indulgence of refusing to believe him, and she forced herself to steady, so that Daved, seeing she had, let her go and said, “We’re deciding now how to be rid of his body and hide what she’s done. For now, I say we wrap it in a sheet and stow it under the bed here. By your leave, of course, Mistress Hercy.”

  ‘Of course,“ she said. ”Yes, of course.“ The frozen resignation of despair was leaving her. Daved had given her hope, thin though it was, and beginning to shiver, she gave the bed a sudden, frightened lo
ok. ”Blood. If he’s bled through to the mattress, we’ll never…“

  ‘I’ll see,“ said Daved. ”Anne, see to her while I do.“

  More than willing to be told what to do, Anne took a cloak hanging from a wall-pole and laid it around Mistress Hercy’s shivering shoulders. Mistress Hercy grabbed one of her hands and held on, while at the bed Daved straightened Raulyn’s body and partly rolled it over, then said, “All’s well. The blade didn’t go through him.”

  Mistress Hercy began to retch, and Anne hurriedly threw the cloak aside, helped her to her feet and to the basin on a table beside the door, keeping a steadying arm around her while she lost whatever of supper had been still in her stomach. Afterward, while Mistress Hercy washed her face, all the while saying under her breath, over and over, “God have mercy, Christ have mercy,” Anne looked over her shoulder to where Daved and Dame Frevisse were finishing wrapping Raulyn’s body in one of the bed’s sheets.

  Raulyn’s body.

  In some part of herself she did not believe that was Raulyn there—laughing, gallant, jest-laden Raulyn—a dead body wrapped into a sheet, with Daved now lifting it to the floor and thrusting it with no particular care out of sight under the bed. It wasn’t Raulyn and none of this was happening. It was all nightmare. Everything for two days past was nightmare. When was she going to awake from it?