The Sempster's Tale (32 page)

‘Not if he had seen Raulyn take Pers’ place,“ Daved said. ”He could within reason assume Raulyn would sometime go to fetch Pers back to duty, leaving the gate unguarded for that while.“

‘And in readiness for that, lured the friar from the solar, struck him unconscious…“

‘So there would be no blood in the house to show it was done there.“

‘Then waited, hidden somewhere with the unconscious body, until Master Grene left the gate, carried the friar to the gate and out, laid him down, stabbed him, slipped back inside the yard and to the house, all without being seen, in the time it took Master Grene to waken Pers and come into the yard again.“ Dame Frevisse’s voice was gone dry with her deep doubt of all that.

‘And he would maybe have had to set the body down to open the gate, too,“ Daved said, matching her doubt. ”One thing, though—we’re only supposing it was someone already here who did it, rather than someone from outside.“

‘You think someone came in? How? Over the rooftops?“

‘Or over the wall. It’s not beyond possibility for someone moving carefully and keeping low to come over a wall in darkness unseen and move silently through shadows.“

‘You speak as someone who knows,“ Dame Frevisse said.

Daved did not answer except to meet her sharp look and slightly smile. After a moment she gave him a narrow smile back, and with a start, Anne saw they were both enjoying their sharp trade of thoughts. And likewise saw that however far apart their lives were in most ways, here in this quest they were met on ground they both knew.

‘So,“ Dame Frevisse said, ”you’re saying we now have to think that maybe someone came from outside, wanting the friar dead and knowing the house well enough to find him.“ She did not sound as if she thought that very likely.

‘Finding him would be none so hard,“ Daved said. ”He could likely be heard talking by anyone who chose to hear, either through the window or the door. And, yes, I see my uncle is to be suspected here.“

‘I take it, though,“ Dame Frevisse said, ”from what you’t say upstairs, that Brother Michael made no exclamation of surprise when he saw whoever was at the solar’s door. Which means that whoever was there was someone he could reasonably expect to be there.“

‘One other thing,“ Daved said. ”We’ve supposed that whoever put him outside the gate came back inside. They may not have. Is someone missing from here today? But,“ he added before she could answer that, ”if they were going to leave anyway and thereby announce their guilt, why bother with killing him outside when they could have done it with less trouble inside? Thus, his murderer is most likely still here.“

‘Except we’ve also been supposing that Brother Michael was carried out the gate,“ Dame Frevisse said. ”He could have been persuaded to go out, then struck down, then stabbed.“

‘Again, though,“ Daved said, ”we come up against it having to be done when no one was be at the gate.“

‘That, yes.“

They both fell silent. Overhead, feet were passing—people going back and forth as breakfast happened. Somewhere was daylight, the beginning of another day of near-siege and worry, and Anne wished she were there, with things no worse than they had been yesterday, instead of here in the shadows with new death in front of her and fear for Daved wrapping ever more closely around her.

‘I’d like,“ said Daved, ”to see the wound that killed him.“

‘It’s in his back,“ Dame Frevisse answered, raising a hand to gesture Master Naylor forward.

Father Tomas raised his head. “You aren’t going to strip him, are you? Not here, like this.”

‘No,“ Daved said quietingly. ”I only want to see where the wound is placed. Has anyone done that?“

‘Not yet,“ Dame Frevisse said. She had slipped the cross from under Brother Michael’s hands and now stepped back
w
give Master Naylor and Daved space to ease Brother Michael’s body over. Anne took one of the candles from its pricket and brought it where the light would fall better on the friar’s back, taking care to keep from looking straight at him herself. Daved crouched down to him, though, and Dame Frevisse bent forward readily, and Daved said, ”He was stabbed more than once.“ And after pause, ”Four times. You see?“

‘Four times,“ Dame Frevisse agreed. ”Yes.“

‘None straight to the heart,“ Daved said. ”But together enough to do the work.“

‘Master Naylor,“ Dame Frevisse said, looking up at him. ”Would you, now that there’s light enough and hopefully before too many people have passed, go see how much blood there is on the paving outside the gate? Let’s be more certain that’s where he was actually killed.“

‘Because if it was not,“ Daved said, ”then somewhere there is likely a quantity of blood besides what’s soaked into his robe, and that might tell us something.“

Master Naylor gave a slight, curt bow and left. Daved started to roll the body onto its back again, but Dame Frevisse caught at the dead right hand, said, “Wait,” and held it into the candlelight to see it better.

‘What?“ Daved asked. Both he and Father Tomas shifted to look, too.

‘His fingers,“ Dame Frevisse said. ”There’s blood on them.“

‘Blood?“ Daved said, puzzled. ”His own?“

‘Lay him on his back again,“ Father Tomas said, suddenly firm with command. Daved did, and the priest took the candle from Anne and held it so the light fell full on Brother Michael’s face. ”There,“ said Father Tomas. ”On his forehead. He signed himself with the cross there.“

Even Anne leaned nearer to see. Because the body should not be washed until the crowner or at least a constable had seen it, there was still street-dirt on the friar’s face and so the cross was not readily seen, but it was there on his brow, small and uneven and undeniably in blood, darkened though it was by now.

Very softly Dame Frevisse said, “He came enough to his senses to grope at the pain in his back. Enough to know he was dying.”

‘But why didn’t he cry out?“ Father Tomas said. ”Even dying, why didn’t he cry out for help?“

‘He was stabbed at least twice into his lungs,“ Daved said grimly. ”They were probably filling with blood. He could make no cry that would be heard.“

‘All he could do,“ Dame Frevisse said, ”struggling to breathe and guessing he was dying, was sign himself with the cross. In hope of his soul’s salvation.“

Father Tomas turned to put the candle back on its pricket. In the shifting light, Dame Frevisse laid Brother Michael’s wooden cross on his chest again, was laying his hands over it when Daved said quietly, “It was not a skilled killing.”

Dame Frevisse paused, then lifted her head to meet his gaze and said as quietly, “No more than was Hal’s.”

In the deeper quiet that followed, they went on looking at each other, nothing alike in any outward seeming, but at that moment looking very alike in the way their thoughts were running fast behind their eyes.

Never had Anne felt further from Daved. How did he come to know so much of stealth and wounds and killing? She’d known she knew only a little of his life. Was maybe what she knew not merely little but the very least part? And was she the least part of the least part? How very, very little part she was in his life at all?

Chapter 22

More aware of the cellar’s darkness all around her than she had been, Frevisse lowered her gaze from Daved’s, back to the friar’s body. She had learned all she was likely to learn from it. It was only another darkness now, like the darkness of the cellar, the life put out the way the candles’ light would, in a while, be put out. With the difference that the candles could be relighted when they were next needed, but there was no use left to Brother Michael’s body. It was only dross and waste, to be buried before its decay became an offense.

Against that thought, though, had to be set the knowing that when the candles were burned out, they were utterly gone, vanished as if they had never been, but in the Last Days, when God’s final Judgment came, all of mankind’s bodies would be called forth, the souls returned to them for their eternity in Heaven or in Hell.

She wondered sometimes why, since the body was such an undesirable thing—unceasingly demanding, treacherous in its desires, a constant barrier between the soul and freedom—souls had to return to them at Judgment Day. She had never presumed to ask that of a priest, had settled for supposing it was because when God created bodies and souls at the beginning of all, he had meant them to be one, and at the Last Judgment their unity—lost by Eve’s and Adam’s fall from grace—would be restored.

Except for those damned to Hell forever. Their bodies restored to them would never be a blessing, only eternal torment, and that was a thought with which she was never easy, save at moments like this when her anger burned deep at whoever would make such cold and willful deaths as these of the friar and the boy Hal.

Except that neither murder had been cold. Their bodies had been stabbed and stabbed again as if for the pleasure of it, for the pleasure in the power to do it. And that someone had killed with pleasure—had maybe even killed for pleasure—and with no care for what pain he brought to anyone else was a fearful thought.

Someone like that might well deserve Hell’s torments for all of eternity.

And that these two murders were so much the same fairly ended the possibility that the boy’s murder and the friar’s were by chance or different people. Instead, even not knowing the why behind the murders, she had to think the murderer was likely someone here among them, and she stood up with a fierce desire to be away from the cellar’s crowding shadows, into clean air and light. “I’m done here,” she said and started toward the stairs.

‘What if I choose simply to leave here after all?“ Daved asked, staying where he was. ”You’re the only one likely to give order to stop me. Would you?“

‘I thought you were determined to stay.“

‘Would you order your men to stop me? I’m after all a Jew and maybe a murderer twice over.“

‘Daved,“ Anne said in distress.

Frevisse, understanding his challenge, met it straight on. “Even if I believed in ritual killings of Christian children by Jews, I doubt you’re fool enough to do it here in London, nor have I heard any reason why you’d want Hal dead. Therefore, I have no reason to lay his murder on you. You might well have killed Brother Michael. He was your deadly foe. But the manner of his killing does not set well with you having done it. And you were bound and helpless when he died and therefore are clear of it that way, too.”

‘Which settles the likelihood of my being a murderer. What of my being a Jew?“

‘I’ve told you I’ve no quarrel with you because of that, whatever the Inquisition claims to the contrary. That you’re here at all is flat against England’s law, and that is another matter, but given the misguidance and corruption of England’s laws these past years and the chaos into which London is presently fallen because of it, I do not find myself at all moved toward denouncing you on that front, either.“

‘And the matter between Mistress Blakhall and myself?“

Frevisse held silent, considering her answer before finally saying, “It’s not for me to judge. Lest I be judged.”

Something in her answers must have satisfied him, because he said, “It wasn’t Mistress Blakhall who cut me loose.”

‘Daved!“ Anne protested.

He slipped a small knife from the inside of his left sleeve and held it out for Frevisse to take. It was small, hardly more than the length of a man’s finger and some of that was the bone hilt, but the blade looked to be sharp enough.

‘I set to work to win free as soon as the friar left me,“ Daved said. ”I’d only just finished when Mistress Blakhall came in.“

Frevisse gave back the knife. “Those ropes weren’t thin. It would have taken a lengthy time with a blade that small to cut yourself free, supposing you could reach the knife or ropes at all.”

‘There are ways to keep from being tied too tightly,“ Daved answered evenly. ”Also a skill to tying men so they can’t move at all. I have the first skill. Your Master Naylor does not have the second. So the business was not so hard as it might have been.“