A Play of Heresy (22 page)
Authors: Margaret Frazer
“I had Master Eme around to me at dawn today,” he said. “He wanted what I could tell him about finding Ned’s body. He wanted to come to the inquest, too. To know all, he said.”
“Nobody ever truly wants to know all,” Joliffe said, which was somewhat lacking in truth, given the breadth of his own curiosity at life. “Did you talk him away from it?”
“I did. I think it was his wife wanted him to come anyway.”
“She’ll make Richard come instead.”
“You think she will?”
“He’s coming along the street behind you.”
Burbage looked over his shoulder and muttered something but joined Joliffe in putting the best faces to it they could as Richard Eme joined them. Properly in mourning black, he was deeply solemn and—to Joliffe’s mind—altogether too aware of the moment as he accepted their condolences. He was playing “the grieving brother,” Joliffe thought before he was able to curb the unkindness. Unkindness did not make it untrue, though. But neither did it mean Richard’s grief was false. It was just that people whose feelings ran not very deeply often did not know the difference between the form of feeling a thing and truly feeling it. Judging from how Richard played his parts in the play, his feelings did not run deeply; they merely washed shallowly over his good opinion of himself.
“Here’s Master Waldeve,” Burbage said as they were joined by the man who had come for him after finding Ned. Glum greetings were exchanged all around. Then Burbage said, “Not there,” as Richard made to go up the steps to the front door. “Down here.” Pointing to the half dozen steps to the house’s cellar.
“They put him in the cellar?” Richard said with an edge of outrage. “They put my brother in the
cellar
?”
cellar
?”
“It was there or the stable,” Burbage snapped. “Master Grevile’s wife doesn’t want bodies in her house. They put your brother where best they could.”
“Given he can’t be in any church,” Master Waldeve said, low-voiced but meaning to be heard. It served; Richard Eme was instantly silent.
That was the next hard thing his family would have to face and then live with all the rest of their lives—that for self-murderers the rites of Christian funeral and burial in hallowed ground were forbidden, leaving little likelihood of salvation, no matter how many Masses might be bought for their souls, supposing a priest could be persuaded to such prayers at all. To add to the misery, in some places—but rarely in England—the body was refused any burial at all, was dragged through the town, and was thrown into a ditch or river or out with the town’s rubbish; and everywhere a self-murderer’s goods and property were forfeited to his overlord and lost to his family, just as for any other homicide, whether of self or someone else.
The four men went in silence down the steps. The door was standing open, a servant waiting just inside. The cellar was a series of narrow, columned bays holding up the house above it. As to be expected, it was cool and damp and dark, with shadowed shapes of stored goods along its length. Only the bay nearest the door had been kept clear, with a shroud-covered shape lying long on a trestle table in the middle of it and racks of candles set to either side. Only one candle was burning as the men came in, but the servant nodded to the nearest rack, said, “You can light them, if you will, while I fetch Master Grevile,” and went away toward a patch of light marking the inside stairs.
Keeping busy lighting candles was better than standing with nothing else to do except avoid looking at the shrouded shape. Joliffe moved before the others could, but after he had lighted the first few, Burbage took one of the burning ones and went to light the other rack. They were finishing as Master Grevile joined them, the same servant with him but another man, too, who must be his clerk, given he was carrying what he needed to write down what would pass here.
“Gentlemen,” the crowner said, including Joliffe in his nod. He being an officer of the crown, they all bowed in return. Straightening, Joliffe saw he was giving a long look at Richard Eme as if half-thinking to challenge why he was here. If he was, he thought other of it and only said, “Adam, take down the names of who is here. Note who are come as first finders and who is here to witness. If you will say your names, please.”
They obliged. Then Master Grevile directed his servant with a silent nod to uncover the body. The man folded the shroud in even folds toward the foot of the table. Ned’s body had been stripped. When the servant had done, the body lay there naked in the steady candlelight. Someone had done what could be done to better the misshapen face. Save for that and the scraped line of the rope around the neck there was nothing dreadful for Richard Eme to avoid reporting to his family. No terrible gashes. Nothing crushed and mangled. Hopefully he would have sense enough to lie about the rest to his parents and sister. Ned’s parents and sister.
Master Grevile, the crowner, said, “Shall we begin? Is this the man you saw hanging in the smiths’ pageant house yestereven?”
Master Waldeve, Burbage, and Joliffe confirmed that it was.
“How would you judge that he died?”
“By hanging,” Master Waldeve said. Burbage and Joliffe spoke their agreement.
“You found him suspended from a beam by a rope around his neck and strangled,” the crowner said.
“That’s the way of it, yes,” Master Waldeve agreed. Burbage and Joliffe nodded.
“Please examine the body closely to confirm there are no other wounds or signs of violence on it.”
Joliffe moved to the far side of the table. Burbage and Master Waldeve stayed together. Richard Eme kept his distance. It was first finders and other immediate witnesses, if need be, who served for the crowner’s jury to determine if an unexpected death was natural or by misadventure or murder. If it were natural or by misadventure, the crowner’s ruling ended the matter. If it were determined to be murder, it became the sheriff’s business. Here, though, the verdict would have to be self-murder and not a matter for the sheriff in the end.
No, in the end there would simply be endless grief for a son lost not just for this lifetime but for eternity, his soul damned.
But then it was already damned for the two murders he had done. Alive, he might have come to repent them, done penance, gained absolution and thereby the salvation of his soul. He could never do that now.
Always continuing to suppose he
had
done the murders. But why else, if not in despair and guilt, would he have hung himself? Surely not because Anna Deyster had not yet accepted his suit, when he could still have had hope of her.
had
done the murders. But why else, if not in despair and guilt, would he have hung himself? Surely not because Anna Deyster had not yet accepted his suit, when he could still have had hope of her.
While Master Waldeve, Burbage, and Joliffe obediently looked more closely at the body, with the crowner’s servant obligingly rolling it on its side so they could see its back, too, Master Grevile asked, “Master Eme, since you are here and can be asked, perhaps sparing your parents my questions later, is there any known reason in your family why your brother should have taken his own life?”
The answer came sharp and harsh. “He thought himself in love with a woman who continued to refuse him.”
“Was it marriage he offered, or—” The crowner let the question trail off discreetly.
“Marriage,” Richard Eme snapped. “Marriage many times over. He gave her gifts. He implored her for her love. He must have finally despaired. It’s her that brought him to this.”
Burbage said back at Eme with some of Eme’s own sharpness, “She learned only days ago that the man she hoped to marry was dead. Ned had no business trying for her so soon. Nor any business despairing so soon, either.”
“Well, he
did
try and he
did
despair,” Richard Eme snapped back. He gestured at the corpse to make his point. “He hung himself. Anyone can see it. Is there aught else for me to see or do here?”
did
try and he
did
despair,” Richard Eme snapped back. He gestured at the corpse to make his point. “He hung himself. Anyone can see it. Is there aught else for me to see or do here?”
“Can you say when you last saw your brother?” Master Grevile asked.
“At supper two nights ago. At home.”
“What was his humour then?”
Richard shrugged and shook his head. “Good enough. Much as usual. Or so he made it seem.”
“Thank you. We need nothing else from you at present.”
“Then I’ll go.” He started to, as an after-thought turned back, made the sign of the cross at his brother’s body, shook his head at the hopelessness of it, and left with the haste of someone glad to be away.
A slight silence stayed behind him, ended by Burbage saying, “That accords well with Ned having done it sometime in the night before last. Given how the rigor was passed off by the time he was found.”
“So it’s to be a verdict of self-murder then, is it?” Master Waldeve said.
“Is it?” asked the crowner.
Burbage and Master Waldeve looked at him, somewhat uncertain.
“Um,” said Joliffe.
Everyone looked at him, including the clerk raising his head from the parchment on the writing board he held and the servant long since drawn back into the shadow of one of the pillars.
“You have some doubt?” Master Grevile said. His tone neither encouraged nor discouraged.
“Those.” Joliffe pointed at the corpse’s trunk.
“What?” Burbage asked.
Joliffe unwillingly stepped closer and pointed, without touching, at a round bruise about an inch wide, low on Ned’s right rib. Then at another and another—a scatter of more than half a dozen all over his upper body. “Bruises,” he said. “On his back, too.”
The crowner jerked his head for his servant to roll the body sideways again. While the man did, Joliffe fetched a candle from the nearest rack and held it where it cast clear light over Ned’s back. There were more of the round bruises there, a half dozen perhaps.
“Odd,” said Master Waldeve unwillingly.
The servant lay the body down again and stepped back. So did Joliffe. Looking at him, the crowner asked, “So? What do you make of it?”
Joliffe looked at Burbage and Master Waldeve. They both shook their heads, frowning with uncertainty. “A pole?” Joliffe suggested. “A flat-ended, round pole about an inch thick?”
“Such as rolled under my foot in the shed when I was looking at the body,” Master Grevile said evenly.
Joliffe gave him a sharp look.
Burbage said, “But that would mean—” He broke off, unwilling to say what those bruises meant.
“Look at his hands,” the crowner said.
Ned’s arms were laid along his sides, his hands flat on the table. Master Waldeve went forward, picked up the nearer one, exclaimed with a kind of horror, and hurriedly set it down again. “What?” Joliffe and Burbage exclaimed together, Joliffe reaching out and lifting the same hand. The wordless sound he made in his turn was more pained than horrified, although he was both. Setting it carefully down again, he said, “It’s broken.” He looked at the crowner. “It feels like all its bones are broken.”
“If not all, then nearly all. The other one, too,” the crowner said. “And the forearm on the other side.”
“But there’s the fingernails,” said Joliffe, now making himself take closer look. “They’re torn. Broken. There’s dried blood on some of the tips. Like he’d—” He broke off much as Burbage had done, almost not wanting his mind to go where it was going.
“Like maybe he clawed at the wood wall there in the shed, trying to grab hold in the first moment of swinging off the wagon,” the crowner said.
“But if he had changed his mind about hanging himself after he’d started,” Burbage said, “the post that holds the crossbeam was in his reach. At arm’s length, yes, but in reach. Or, even better, he could have reached up and grabbed the crossbeam and held on to that one-armed while loosening the noose with his—” He broke off again, this time with a wordless choking sound as the parts of it all came together in his mind.
The way they already had in Joliffe’s.
Chapter 17
“
S
omeone else was there. Someone who broke his hands so he couldn’t hold to anything and save himself,” Joliffe said.
S
omeone else was there. Someone who broke his hands so he couldn’t hold to anything and save himself,” Joliffe said.
Master Waldeve protested, “But still he could have wrapped his legs around the post there. The crossbeam is so short, he only had to twist his body and wrap his legs around that and hold himself up while he loosened the rope enough to call for—” His words trailed off, leaving his mouth half open as his wits caught up to the impossibility of that.
Joliffe, harsh-voiced, said it anyway. “Except he couldn’t come at the post, because someone pushed him away with a pole. After breaking his hands, probably by beating on them with maybe the same pole when he surely tried to grab hold to save himself, they pushed him away from reaching it even with his legs and kept pushing at him until the rope finally throttled him.”
Throttling could be a slow death or a quick. Of late Joliffe had been taught ways to kill a man quickly by throttling—silently, too, if he did it skillfully enough, he had been told. His own hope was that he never had occasion to find out how skilled he was, because he deeply doubted his willingness ever to do it. But there had likewise been a time when he had hoped never to dagger a man to death, and that hope was now a lost one. As for throttling—Ned’s had surely not been quick. Hangmen who were paid to be skilled knew how to make a knot rightly, how to set it just so on a man, and what fall was sufficient when he was pushed off that his neck would break on the instant, making a quick end of him. All that took goodwill as well as skill on the hangman’s part. Both the goodwill and skill being often missing, most hangings did not end easily or quickly, nor did most who came to see men hanged want it over quickly. The desperate thrash and twist of the dying man’s body as it fought to stay alive against the slow strangling of the rope was what they came to see. If more than one man were being hanged at a time, wagers could be laid on which would die the first and which last the longest, with cheers and groans from the onlookers as they won or lost. Sometimes there was sufficient sympathy for the condemned man—or woman, often when it was a woman—that the hangman was allowed, even welcomed, to grab hold on the dangling legs and pull hard down, shortening the struggle, hurrying the death.
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