“The town has records,” he said. “At least it should if they have not been burned or destroyed by mice. But I kept my own. Habit I suppose. I was always a record keeper, ever since my youth, when my father taught me to read.
It took the old man several minutes to find what he was looking for. “Yes,” he said, drawing the single syllable out, “here it is. In the matter of the will of Abraham Crookback, farmer. The heir designate was his son, John Crookback, mariner.”
“And the witnesses? Are they named in your book?”
“Yes. There was Philip Vernon, William Dees, Stephen Clarence, Richard Hull, and Dorcas Millichap.”
Joan had known Vernon and Clarence. Both were dead now. Vernon was the father of the man who was now coroner, a gentleman of some weight in the neighborhood. Clarence had been the father of the woman who would become John Crookback’s second wife. Only Richard Hull and William Dees remained alive. But what of Dorcas Millichap, of whom Joan had never heard?
“Who was Dorcas Millichap?” she asked.
“A woman who once was a servant in the father’s home,” the old man answered promptly. “Each of the men affirmed that it was John Crookback who presented himself.”
“Even though they had not seen him in years.”
“As I said, John Crookback answered questions sufficient to satisfy all of them. Here, I will read it to you myself.” The old man held the book close to his eyes, straining to read the script. “ ‘Sundry persons presented themselves to question the heir and were satisfied by his answers, which showed a most, a most. . .’ ” He peered at the word. “Yes, ‘a most sufficient knowledge of his father’s character and habits.’ ”
Joan asked. “Was there anyone at the inquest who challenged John Crookback’s identity?”
The old man thought for a long time, then he said that there had been a challenge, someone had doubted the man was Abraham Crookback’s son. But as to the question that had been debated, he finally admitted he could not remember what that question was. There had been so many questions over the years, so many witnesses, so much testimony regarding so many things. The scrivener seemed almost ashamed at his failure.
Dorothy then said that her grandfather was weary, and Joan understood that she had overstayed her welcome. She left the house with a distinct sense of unease. She felt she had learned something of value from Thomas Barber, but was unsure what it was. There had been some doubt obviously as to whether the man presenting himself as John Crookback was indeed he; had it been otherwise, there would have not been a hearing. Someone had contested his identity. Who? For what reason? She felt she needed to know more and resolved to ask William Dees and Master Vernon upon their return. Surely Dees would remember the hearing, and Master Vernon, who had been too young to remember the actual event, might recall something his father had said.
Adam Nemo built a small fire, having found amid the ruined timbers an ample supply of kindling that had survived when the house had burned. In his imagination he dreamed of a tower of flame, radiating such warmth as to melt the snow that had drifted in through the paneless windows and where the wall of the manor had crumbled under the intensity of the earlier conflagration, but to make too much smoke would not be wise; its trace would be seen readily in the sharp, clear stillness that had emerged since the snow had stopped.
He and Nicholas sat close until feeling had returned to Adam’s hands and feet. Then he motioned to Nicholas his intent to find something for them to eat. The boy, still listless, seemed to understand and even smiled thinly. Adam wondered what scenes of carnage were passing before Nicholas’s eyes as he sat in his silence, scenes making hunger and terror of capture lesser concerns.
Within a short time he had built and set several traps, and one had yielded a hare of sufficient size to feed them. But he had left tracks in the snow, and his efforts to cover them did not appear to him very successful. If snow fell again, it would be well for them; if not, it would be otherwise. He constantly surveyed the white fields below him, but for all he could see he and his friend might have been the last men on earth.
Solitude did not bother him as it did the English, who were unnerved by it. In his own land of ice he had hunted larger prey than hares and often alone, moving nimbly over the rocks and ice. Alone, he had thought about his gods, sometimes sensed their presence in the sky and sea. The English had snatched from him the deities of his birth, so that he hardly remembered their names, as they had taken from him his own true name. They had replaced them with their own god, who was one, not many. The difference did not seem to be as important to him as it was to them.
But he did not hurry back to where Nicholas was. He found pleasure in being alone in the snow. He was remembering what he had forgotten, regaining what had been taken. He said his true name aloud and he remembered the name of the god of the winter sky and said a prayer, hoping that his neglect would be forgiven and that both his god and the god of the English would understand.
He was climbing up over the breached wall when he remembered something else—the thing that Frobisher had said when he called the brutal sailor off, and in so doing spared Adam’s life—Crookback! Frobisher had cried. But surely the memory was wrong. And yet as Adam thought of the event it was as if he could hear Frobisher’s hoarse voice snap, Crookback! Let him be. You’ll kill him, you bloody devil.
Adam heard the words as clearly as though they had been spoken not a moment before. But they made no sense. Crookback had been in the boat. Crookback had treated him kindly. Crookback had never thrown him to the ice and beaten him.
For a moment he wondered if he had been deliberately deceived. Perhaps his gods were indeed angry, perhaps they too had played with his memory. He had, after all, forsaken them for so many years. He shuddered, not so much because of the cold as from fear of the gods. He was a divided man now, neither English nor of the people. What was he? How could he supplicate his gods, and what did the false memory mean?
Chapter 12
Matthew led his men to the edge of a field and then alongside a low stone wall, only the top of which could be seen for the snow. They rode in single file so that the horses in the rear could take advantage of the tracks of those ahead, moving very slowly; Matthew told them there was no hurry. No one talked during this time. Then they came to a break in the fence and crossed over to a neighboring field. The ruin of the manor house rose above them, and not a soul stirring for anything that Matthew could see.
It was Hugh Profytt who suggested the fugitives might be hiding in the ruins. The other men who heard the comment agreed that the manor would make a fine place of concealment. Part of the house retained its roof and walls. The manor gave a good view of the surrounding countryside, elevated as it was. Matthew thought that was the trouble. If the two men were within the ruin, would they not see Matthew and his men approaching? Would they not flee in the opposite direction? Was the effort it would take to ride up the hillside worth the trouble?
A heaviness of spirit swallowed him up. He wished that like his timid neighbor he had pled illness as an excuse to stay home.
Hugh Profytt said he thought the manor was worth a try. The red-faced young man looked at Matthew with a critical expression. “But I suppose you think otherwise,” he said.
“Well,” Matthew said, “we have little to lose.”
Profytt was plainly surprised by Matthew’s agreement. “I thought that because you have been defending the two from the beginning you might be reluctant to pursue your duty, Master Stock.”
“I am not reluctant to pursue my duty, Master Profytt. I know my duty and have my instructions and intend to carry them out, with God’s help.” Matthew said this very stonily. He looked at Profytt and then at the other three men. They were clearly made uncomfortable by the sudden tension, especially Peter, whose mild, good nature was ever disturbed by discord.
Profytt said, “Four dead and murdered is a grim harvest to go unheeded. You seem to care little for that fact, Matthew Stock. You would hav
e us all home and warm while these miscreants range the countryside. God knows who they will murder next, and if our own families are safe. ”
That said, Profytt urged his horse forward, as though he were assuming command, but Matthew reached out and grabbed his arm.
“If we are to advance, we should do so in good order,” Matthew said in the same stem voice, but his teeth chattering a little. “Master Fuller put me at your head. Will you dispute with his choice?”
Profytt looked at Matthew for a moment with baleful eyes, then swore an oath under his breath. He looked at the other men, and finding no support in their expressions, he drew his horse back and made an exaggerated gesture of obeisance. “As Your Worship commands,” Profytt said.
Matthew decided to ignore the insolence but now was sure Hugh Profytt was his enemy. The young man was thoroughly of his wife’s party, just as Matthew feared, but why should Matthew have supposed it might be otherwise? Were not man and wife one flesh? Profytt would be watching Matthew’s every move. Matthew’s actions would be reported in Chelmsford—or more probably, misreported; his judgment would be accounted evidence of an undue sympathy for the accused men. That’s how it would be, he was sure of it. Matthew was glad to have Peter in his company, and Abraham Pierce. Pierce too could be trusted to tell the truth.
Matthew motioned for the men to advance, warning them in a whisper to keep as quiet as possible. The snow would muffle the horses’ hooves, but the human voice would carry even farther in the stillness. If Nicholas and Adam were hiding in the ruin, they might not see the approaching band, but they certainly could hear them. Matthew prayed the fugitives were not there. He also prayed that if they were, there would be no bloodshed in their taking.
When Joan returned to her house, she sat for a long time in the kitchen in a brown study. She recalled every word that had been spoken in her two conversations of the morning, recalled them all twice over, and had the unshakable feeling that she had taken in something important but wasn’t sure what it was. From time to time she interrupted these meditations to think of Matthew, where he might be and how cold and forlorn in the cruel snow. But she also thought of Nicholas and Adam and felt pity for them too, for nothing she had learned had removed from her heart the conviction that the two men were falsely accused. And yet she knew too that the murders had something to do with Adam, his strange origins and even stranger existence in a land not his own.
After about an hour Elizabeth came down from upstairs, and mother and daughter talked. Joan told Elizabeth she had set out to see Richard Hull and the old town clerk, Thomas Barber. Elizabeth expressed dismay that her mother had gone abroad, and what was worse, in express defiance of her father’s orders.
“Your father does not order,” Joan said. “He admonishes.”
“Is it not the same, Mother? I fear for you. The town is not safe.”
Joan looked into her daughter’s concerned face. “An admonishment,” Joan said slowly, “falls some deal short of a command. It is counsel. Which may be heeded or not, as long as it be considered. And I did consider it.”
“And chose to do the contrary,” Elizabeth said,
“I did. I do not deny it. I had good reason.”
Elizabeth wanted to know what the good reason was, but she did not ask skeptically. Joan told her what Richard Hull had said and what she had learned from Thomas Barber. Elizabeth listened intently but confessed confusion at last; she wanted to know what these ancient matters and disputes had to do with murders that had happened within the week.
“I don’t know,” Joan admitted. “Something. I have yet to learn just what.”
“I think Father follows the truer path,” Elizabeth observed, making the face she made when she was trying to be wise. “For he tracks the men accused. Even if they are innocent, as you and he believe, yet may they have knowledge that will reveal all, making these dark matters plain.”
“I don’t know that that is so,” Joan observed, nettled a little at her daughter’s taking an opposite stance. “Men are strange, foolish creatures. They follow routine as though there were no other way to accomplish a thing. A man is accused of a crime and flees, men give hue and cry and pursue. The flea doth bite and the dog scratches; it is as simple as that. Yet it is not so simple, this ferreting out of truth. It is not so simple.” Elizabeth went to the window and looked out. She observed that the sun had begun to melt the snow. “The men will have an easier time of their search if the snow melts,” she said, turning to look at her mother. “They will have full advantage of their horses. Nicholas and Adam Nemo will be on foot. They will be quickly taken. Neither man can likely disguise himself, being as they are both strange and curious.”
Yes, Joan agreed in her own mind, the two would be more readily taken if the snow melted. But what then?
Elizabeth left her, and Joan returned to her somber meditations on the past and how its heavy hand might have left its imprint on the present. She recalled what Elizabeth had said about the fugitives. They were a queer pair—a foreign-looking man and a boy who could neither hear nor speak and who was a seeming idiot. In her mind’s eye she imagined how they might disguise themselves and could think of nothing that would not in set them just as much apart from the ordinary run of Englishmen. If Adam and Nicholas had been of that breed—having English features and complexions, and without infirmity—the outcome might be different. They might lose themselves in any crowd, and no pursuer would have been the wiser. A thousand disguises would have offered protection from discovery.
But it could not be so for these twain.
Then she thought about John Crookback. Maturity—which altered voice, face, and stature—had conferred upon him the best of disguises. The sheer forgetfulness of his neighbors had been an ally in the effort, for his reappearance would not, she reasoned, have occasioned any question about his identity as the true son of Abraham Crookback had someone not perceived a difference between the man and the memory of the boy. And even so, four or five had remembered and claimed it was truly he.
Was the objection raised by some heir presumptive? Master Barber and Alice’s husband had affirmed that there was none. Or was it some busybody with a grudge against the son? Yet he left as a boy. Who would bear a grudge against a mere youth?
And what, she thought further, if the John Crookback who returned from sea was a false John Crookback? Were these honest witnesses to his identity liars then, or merely deceived by an imposter who resembled the true prodigal and had acquired by some means a store of knowledge to verify his identity? Crookback Farm was a valuable property, even in those earlier days. Its soil was rich, its prospect of the surrounding countryside fair, and the house and bam were soundly built.
And yet even if this vision of things were true, what had it to do with the murder of the same man and his wife and children twenty years later?
Why, it might not have anything to do with it at all.
She had reached this point in her conjectures when there was a knocking at her door. Rising to answer, she heard the familiar voices of several of the men who lived in the street. They were the watch, they said, wanting to know if everything was well within the clothier’s house. They had been appointed to go door to door, given that the murderers were afoot.
“All is well in this house,” Joan announced, not wanting to open the door for the cold.
But she realized it was not so when they had gone on. All could not be well in such confusion of mind and heart as she found herself in, worried for the two men who had been guests beneath her roof and whom she still believed innocent, and concerned at the same time for a husband who pursued them.
She went back to her kitchen, surrendering herself to the thoughts that plagued her and would let her accomplish no meaningful housework. She knew she was but a wife, no officer of the law or member of the watch, and yet she felt compelled to dig into the mystery herself. She resolved to speak to William Dees upon his return. Perhaps the stonemason would remember something from that o
ld dispute that even the prodigious memory and records of Thomas Barber had not contained.
Something had awakened Adam. The same dream as before, a dream as puzzling to him as the Crookback murders, and dream and murderers were somehow associated in his mind in a way he did not understand. Had he not awakened, Adam would not have seen the men until it was too late to flee. He had gotten up from beside his friend and in standing he had seen beyond the ruined wall to the white plain below him, seen the black specks that were surely men, not cattle, for what cowherd in his right mind would have been driving his charges on such a day? That is how Adam Nemo knew they were men—men on horseback, and men who must have no other intent than pursuit, for if the road was perilous for cattle, humans could hardly be eager to travel it, save their travel had some desperate purpose.
He drew Nicholas up from the little fire, where he had been crouched on his haunches, to show him the men, then extinguished the blaze with snow. After a few minutes the men were close enough to count. There were five, and they had left the road and were riding across the field and up the slope that led to the house. Adam recognized the man in the lead: It was the clothier Matthew Stock, Adam was sure. Which left the issue of the purpose of this little company in no doubt.
“They shall not take us,” Adam said aloud for them both. He grabbed Nicholas’s wrist and headed toward the wood.
While Matthew had seen no smoke, yet he smelled it, and for the first time since setting out, he felt there might be something to Profytt’s instinct that the ruined manor was inhabited by the fugitives. Matthew was concerned, however, when he saw Profytt draw the pistol he had been issued from the interior of his coat, and he broke his own rule of silence to admonish him to put it away. He felt sure the men they sought were not armed; there would be no need of pistols.
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