The Sempster's Tale

by Margaret Frazer

  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 there 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 D
aved, 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 look. ”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?

  Plainly not yet. As she led Mistress Hercy back to the chair, Dame Frevisse and Daved finished straightening the bedcover over the bed, with Dame Frevisse asking him when they were done, “You have some thought of how to have him out of here with no one knowing?”

  ‘London is going to rise against Cade and his rebels within a day, I would guess,“ Daved answered. ”If we can keep Raulyn’s body hidden until then, and when the trouble starts send most of the household men out to the fight and gather the women upstairs to the parlor…“ He paused with that a question to Mistress Hercy. She nodded it could be done. ”… that gives me a clear way to shift Raulyn’s body away, out of the house.“ He looked to Dame Frevisse. ”Perhaps with your men’s help?“

  ‘No,“ she said flatly.

  Daved accepted that without question and went on, “We’ll set them to guard the front gate then, leaving the rearyard to me. Some guard has to be kept, and the fight isn’t ours. That’s reason enough to explain why we don’t join in. I’ll take Raulyn’s body out, away somewhere, and leave it in a street or alley as if he was killed there. There’ll be bodies enough no one is likely to ask close questions about his.”

  Mistress Hercy had been regathering both her wits and her strength while he talked. Now she nodded and said, “That could work. Yes. We’ll make it work.”

  ‘Understand,“ Daved said, his voice hard. ”All of today you will have to seem as if nothing has happened or is going to happen. All of you. If we’re found out, if Pernell ever knows, all of this is for naught.“

  ‘We’ll do what has to be done,“ Mistress Hercy said. With hope, her will had come back. ”All of us.“

  ‘Then do you and Dame Frevisse go away now to your beds. Sleep if you can. At least lie down and rest or you’ll be no use to Pernell or even yourselves this day.“

  Mistress Hercy stood up, this time without Anne’s help, but said suddenly, “The knife.” She looked around to where it had fallen. “It has to go back to the kitchen.”

  ‘I’ll see to it,“ Daved answered, taking it up and putting it through his belt at his back before he started for the stairs, saying, ”Put out the candle.“ Dame Frevisse did, and in the instant darkness Daved ordered, ”Give your eyes a moment to be used to it, then come.“

  They did, Anne standing aside to let Mistress Hercy and Dame Frevisse feel their way from the room and down the stairs ahead of her. Behind her, Daved closed the door with a small snick of the latch. In the hall the starlight through the unshuttered windows lessened the darkness enough for her to see the two women going away from her, but she stayed where she was, no word needed between her and Daved as he drew her into the solar.

  With the door shut, they were as alone as they could hope to be, and still with no word between them, he guided her to the room’s middle, turned her toward him, and took her in his arms. Wordless, they held to each other for a long, long moment, until Anne lifted her face to him and they kissed with a hunger not simply for each other but for comfort and some promise of safety that neither of them could give, until Anne pulled back a very little, drew a long, trembling breath, and said, hushed as if there were someone else there to hear her, “He’s truly dead and she truly did it? This isn’t a bad dream in a bad night’s sleep?”

  ‘He’s truly dead and she truly did it,“ Daved said quietly. ”Nor are we sleeping.“

  ‘Pernell…“

  But the mere thought of Pernell kept Anne from going on. It was for Daved to say gently, “It’s better she have this grief than the grief of knowing what Raulyn had done. He could not be left to go free, knowing what we know about him. But how could Pernell have lived with knowing her children had been fathered on her by the man who murdered her son? Mistress Hercy saw it clearly enough. There was no other way than this.”

  ‘I know,“ Anne whispered. ”But Raulyn… I can’t make it hold true in my mind that he killed the friars and Hal, too.“

  ‘I know,“ Daved said, the words hard and bitten. ”I’ve had to work at holding to it. I thought he was my friend. I’ve trusted my life to him here.“

  Anne wished she could see his face, the better to guess how deeply his pain went, but all she could offer was, “He never meant for Brother Michael to know of you. He never meant.”

  Harshly, tightening his hold on her, Daved said, “He never meant that, no. What he meant was to have me gone so he could have his chance at you. What he meant was to open his way to greater wealth through Lucie’s marriage. What he meant was to keep himself safe by way of the friar’s death. Everything he did was for himself. At least when Mistress Hercy killed, it was for someone else.”

  Anne nodded, understanding all that, and leaned her head against him. Gently against her hair he said, “Pernell will have grief but never know all the worst. For that, your silence as well as Mistress Hercy’s and the nun’s will be needed. Can you do it?”

  ‘Along with all else I keep silent about?“ Anne gave a single, broken laugh. ”Oh, surely.“ But the tears of her fear and misery were too close behind that laugh, and Daved gathered her more closely to him and for a long moment that was enough, simply to have him holding her.

  But it was not enough when so much else was still unspoken, and against her hair he said softly, “You know that when this is done—as soon as I’ve done this thing—I’ll leave London. Make my way to the coast, probably, and take ship from there. Away from England.”

  Holding more tightly to him, Anne whispered, “Yes.”

  ‘Let be whatever questions there will be about Raulyn’s death, all that the friar found out against me may come out. I do not count on Master Naylor to keep silent on it, once other dange
r is past. I must not be here if he tells.“

  ‘I know,“ she whispered.

  ‘You know that I’ll not…“ There was a break in Daved’s voice that matched whatever was breaking inside of her; but despite her silent willing of him to say nothing more, he went on, ”You know that when I leave, I’ll not be back soon.“

  For a long moment Anne held off from answering that, then said quietly against his chest, “If ever.”

  A longer silence passed between them then before Daved agreed as quietly, “If ever. Yes.”

  Chapter 29

  There was upset in the morning when Raulyn was nowhere to be found and those who had kept the gates swore he had come in and not gone out. Mistress Hercy fixed a hard look on Pers and declared someone had not been looking when he had. Pers protested loudly he’d kept good watch last night, which seemed to fix in everyone’s mind that he had not and that their master had gone out for reasons of his own and would come back when he would, it was none of their business.