A Play of Heresy (21 page)

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Authors: Margaret Frazer

BOOK: A Play of Heresy
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From the doorway the man said, his voice shaking as the horror of it began to go deeper into him, “I should go for the bailiffs, shouldn’t I? I should have gone for them first. But I knew you were just across the way. I thought . . . I thought . . .” He probably had not known what he was thinking, had simply wanted not to be alone in this, had wanted someone to know besides himself.
“Yes,” Burbage said tightly. “This is for the bailiffs and the crowner.” It was to be noted he did not say a priest. He turned sharply around to add, “But no one else. Not his family. Not yet.”
“Yes. Right enough. Yes,” the man agreed, already in retreat, then gone.
Left alone with the body, neither Joliffe nor Burbage immediately looked at it again, Burbage keeping his gaze outward to the yard, Joliffe looking elsewhere. He was beginning to remember the problems that would come from having let himself be a first finder of a corpse. By law, being a first finder laid certain duties on a man that could not be avoided. Sebastian would not be pleased. Or maybe, over all, he would be. If this was self-murder, their problem of bringing Ned Eme to justice for two murders was done. Except Sebastian’s interest was not so much in justice as in Lollards.
Then Joliffe’s mind tripped on itself and tracked backward.
If
it was self-murder?
“Should we take him down?” Burbage asked, still looking outward from the shed, then answered himself before Joliffe could. “No. Best wait for the bailiffs and crowner. If he’s in town. The crowner. He might be. The bailiffs will know.”
Burbage was talking to cover the dreadful silence of the hanging man behind them. Joliffe made some sort of agreeing sound, no more wishing to look at Ned than Burbage was. That did not stop him looking inward at other things, though, and that “if” was taking harder hold in his mind.
He understood well enough how Judas’ hanging would be faked in the play. The rope would be already set, one end wrapped around a double-pronged hook on the upright, the other end with the noose looped back to lay along the crosspiece, held up by a plain hook so that all the man playing Judas need do as he said his final speech of despair and guilt was loose the noose and put it around his neck. “Demons” would be there, capering “invisibly” around him, mimicking joy at his damnation, one of them merrily helping him put the noose around his neck as if to hurry his destruction but in truth making sure it was safely fastened into the harness the man playing Judas wore under his clothing, a harness that kept the rope from truly throttling him as he flung himself off the edge of the wagon.
Had it been in despair and guilt matching Judas’ that Ned Eme had put this noose around his neck, no harness to save him, and stepped off the wagon’s edge? How far into despair and guilt did a man have to be for that, knowing neither the fall nor the noose would break his neck and he would slowly strangle to his death? And how great would his despair be if—having committed to such sin and agony—a man wanted, too late, to undo it?
As a man could have undone it here, Joliffe saw with an abrupt jerk of his thoughts. He looked around at the gallows and body to be sure. Yes. Here if a man’s mind changed—if after all he had a last moment loss of determination to die, he
could
save himself. The cross-arm of the gallows-tree was short. If a hanging man reached out, he could easily grab the upright timber, pull himself to it, and wrap an arm around it, holding himself safe while he loosed the rope from his neck. Whoever played Judas of course would do no such thing, might feign a broken neck, would probably thrash and jerk a little to thrill the onlookers, then go limp in “death.”
Ned, though, had put the noose around his neck, stepped or thrown himself off the wagon, and hung there without any last moment desire to live after all.
Joliffe heard himself ask aloud, “Why here?”
Burbage gave a shuddering shrug. “Is one place better than another to damn your soul to Hell? The true question is why did he do it at all?”
Joliffe offered hesitantly, “There’s a woman who won’t have him.”
“When it comes to it, it’s always a woman. Anna Deyster this time.”
“It’s not a secret, then, that he had hope of her.”
“Not a secret he wanted her. I wouldn’t have said there was much hope of it myself, but I gather he wouldn’t be told.” Burbage glanced over his left shoulder at the hanging body, jerked his gaze away, crossed himself. “Only, Christ have mercy, he must have come to believe it after all.” Then with sharp urgency he exclaimed, “Christ’s bones! You’re going to have to tell Master Sendell he’s lost his Gabriel!”
That jarred a different thought into Joliffe’s mind. Saint Genesius, patron saint of players, how distracted was he to have thought first of Sebastian’s displeasure and only now, belatedly, of what Ned Eme’s death meant to the play? How much of himself had he lost with becoming Bishop Beaufort’s man?
Or should the question be: how much of himself had he found that otherwise he might never have?
And was that finding a good thing or an ill?
But true ill was Ned Eme’s soul damned to Hell for self-murder. Of course if Joliffe and Sebastian had it right, then Ned was already damned for the murders of Robyn Kydwa and his man, but at least while he lived, there could always have been hope of repentance, confession, absolution by the Church, and the saving of his soul from Hell if not his body from the law. Now both his body and soul were lost. Joliffe began to say the one prayer that seemed presently of greatest use. Christ have mercy. God have mercy. Christ have mercy. Over and over. Mercy not only on Ned Eme’s soul, but on the hearts of all those whose grief would be all the worse for him dying this hopeless way.
The man who had got them into this returned with one of the bailiffs and the crowner—“We were dining together,” the crowner said grumpily—and word the other bailiff was being sought.
That much explained, the crowner gave a nod to Burbage, said, “Master Burbage. I regret I can’t say good evening to you, since openly it’s not,” and shifted his look to Joliffe. “You I don’t know.”
Burbage said who he was before Joliffe could answer for himself.
“Why is he here?” the crowner asked, not hostile, simply wanting what he had a right to know.
Joliffe, seeing Burbage start to wonder the same thing now that someone thought to ask it, said quickly, “We were already missing one man at rehearsal. When Master Burbage made to leave, I wanted to be sure it wouldn’t be for long. Or, if it was, I could go back to tell Master Sendell the reason.”
That sounded good. He could nearly believe it himself. The crowner accepted it, anyway. So did Burbage.
The bailiff, standing near at hand, staring into the shed the while, said, “The fellow looks dead from here well enough. Do we have to look closer?”
“I do,” the crowner said. “Then you’ll have to help take him down.”
The bailiff grimaced but said nothing. The crowner went into the shed for his closer look. Joliffe approved the way he took in the place in general as he approached the body. The time he then spent looking at the body itself was short but reasonable. He even circled it although that meant squeezing against the shed’s wooden wall to pass the body on that side. His foot slipped on something there and he lurched, nearly grabbed at a hanging leg for support but caught his hand back and steadied on his feet without help.
He came out of the shed, saying, “He can come down now. Best have it done before the light fails further.”
His gaze went between Joliffe’s and Burbage’s shoulders toward the gate and sharpened in a way that made both of them look around. Burbage said, “Oh, no,” and moved to head off young Hew just sliding past the barely open gate.
The boy called at him and Joliffe together, “Master Sendell wants to know where you got yourselves away to and why you’re not back yet.” He had to have already taken in the gathering of men in the yard but hopefully was unable to see past them before Burbage reached him and turned him back toward the gate with a hand on his shoulder. He did not seem to know the crowner and bailiff for who they were, since he took whatever Burbage said to him and went out the gate without any backward craning of his neck for a longer look at anything.
Burbage came back saying, “Saints! That was a near thing. I told him to say we’d be there shortly.” He looked to the crowner as if hoping to have that confirmed.
The crowner started, “I’ll need men to carry—” He broke off as two men came into the yard and instead said to the bailiff, “Here’s your fellow and the man I sent for him. With them and”—he nodded at the man who had come for Burbage—“him, there’s enough to carry the body to my place. You can be the one who goes to tell the dead man’s people. You know where they live?”
The bailiff granted glumly that he did.
“Then we can get back to our practice,” Burbage ventured hopefully, gesturing at Joliffe and himself.
“Best you do,” the crowner granted. “The inquest will be at my place tomorrow, ninth hour. You three as first finders will be there.” An order, not a request. Burbage, the man who had come for him, and Joliffe all nodded their acceptance. The crowner added, “But don’t talk about this anymore than need be.”
“Master Sendell—he’s heading our play—the Weavers Guild’s play—he has to be told,” Joliffe said. “Ned Eme had a part in it.”
“Blessed Saint Michael!” Burbage sounded as if he had just added a new horror to all the rest, “His brother is part of our company!”
“I leave it to you, then, whether to tell him what’s happened or else just that he should get himself home,” the crowner said.
Burbage and Joliffe accepted that with other bows and willingly escaped, even if it was only escape from one miserable matter to another, with now Sendell and Richard Eme to be faced and told. They split the duty. Burbage went to Richard, presently sitting in talk on one side of the yard with Master Smale and Powet. Joliffe went the other way, to Sendell who was in talk with Cecily, with Dick standing between them, his arms out-stretched while they pulled and shifted Christ’s over-robe around on him.
“Like that then should keep the white robe hidden until we want it seen,” Sendell was saying before he saw Joliffe. His frown was somewhere between irked and worried, as if he were ready not to be angry if Joliffe’s reason for disappearing was sufficient. He finished with Cecily and Dick by saying, “It’s good. You’re going to look very right, Dick. Thank you, Cecily”—then turned to Joliffe with—“Well?”
Joliffe made a small beckon of his head to draw Sendell aside. Across the yard, Richard Eme had risen from the bench and was leaving, hopefully to go home rather than to the yard across the way. In no manner should any man see his brother the way Ned was now.
Looking from Joliffe to Richard Eme as he went out the gate and back to Joliffe as they moved beyond anyone overhearing them, Sendell demanded, with worry now definitely taking the upper hand, “What is it?” And then with the sharp-wittedness of alarm exclaimed, “It’s Ned Eme, isn’t it? Something has happened to him. What? How bad is it?”
Joliffe told him.
Chapter 16
 
T
he next day began gray, with low clouds and scudding rain, well suited to Joliffe’s dark humour and, he did not doubt, to a number of other people’s. It had been bad enough, seeing Ned Eme hanging there. Today he would have to look at his body again and did not care even for the thought of that.
Then there would be the possible wreck of the play to deal with.
After Richard Eme had left them, Sendell had perforce told everyone else why and let them all go, too, having no hope of any more rehearsing them just then. Joliffe and Burbage had stayed longer for Cecily to mark where their robes would be hemmed. Powet and Dick had waited, too, to help carry home the weighty bundles of almost finished clothing when she had done. Dick had tried to ask questions of Joliffe and Burbage. They had given him no more than shakes of their heads, refusing, until Powet told Dick to hush. Cecily had worked silently, her head bent low, and with no sign of tears. Joliffe had to suppose Ned Eme must not have been much to her, but then why should he have been? She did not know he had probably been her brother’s murderer.
When she had finished, and she and Powet and Dick had left, Sendell had said dully to Joliffe and Burbage, “That was a waste of time, though, wasn’t it? The play is done. No Gabriel, and likely Richard Eme will be unwilling to go on with either of his parts, and it’s over-late to get anyone else who’s any good to take them.”
Joliffe had had no comfort to offer; he had been already thinking much the same, but Burbage said, “I think you need not count Richard out. I think that, given a few days, he’ll be able to set aside whatever grief he has for his brother sufficiently to go on with the play. They never much liked each other, and you’ve maybe noted he does dearly love self-display.”
That was harsh, but it had a true enough ring to it that Sendell had given a grudging grunt of almost-laughter. Rubbing at his face with weariness and discouragement, he had said, “Well then, we’ll see. That leaves Gabriel.” Only then did he give way to the despairing question that always came with any self-murder. “Why did he do such a fool thing?”
Since there was rarely a sufficient answer to that and none at all this time, neither Joliffe and Burbage had given any. Now in the gray morning Joliffe set himself to seem as ordinary and honest a citizen as he could, dressing in his soberly best doublet and unmended hosen. He let Rose straighten his collar and comb down the back of his hair for him, told Piers no, he could not come, too, and went his way to the inquest. Burbage having told Joliffe last night where the crowner lived on Hill Street, he had no trouble finding the house. Of course the finding was made easier because Burbage was standing at the front steps leading up from the street to its main door and greeted him with a glumness that matched Joliffe’s own.

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