“Nay, madam.” He rubbed his leg. “He was murdered.”
He answered me as plainly as I asked, more plainly, for my voice was so light and airy, I thought not it would carry the width of the room.
“How came he to be murdered?” I said.
“He had the misfortune to somewhat resemble me in countenance,” he said.
I sat down on the coverlid-drap’d press. Dead. I had never thought him dead.
“I fell into some trouble with the queen,” he said at last. “I had … done her a service now and then. It made me overbold. Thinking myself safe from the fire, I spoke in jest of things that had got other men burnt, and was arrested. I fled to friends, asking their help to transport me to France. They told me to lie secretly in London at a certain house until they had arranged passage for me, but when they came, they said that it was all accomplished. The man was dead, and I was free to take his name for mine own.”
His hand clutched the bedpost. “They had killed your husband, madam, at a little inn in Deptford and said I was the murdered man, not he. They testified that I had fought them over the reckoning of the bill, and they, in self-defense, had stabbed me. They told me this with pride, as of a job well-done.”
He stood, clasping the bedpost as it were a walking stick. “The queen’s anger would have passed. The murder never. Your husband has had his revenge on me, madam. He took my life as sure as I took his.”
I heard a sound from out the room. I waited, listening. I went, treading softly, into the gallery, but there was no one on the stairs, only the sound of laughter from below, and Drayton’s voice. I came back in the room.
“How came my husband to that inn?” I asked.
“They lured him thence with promise of a part to play. He being an actor, they had seen him on the stage and marked his likeness to me. They passed a whole day with him ere they killed him, drawing him out with wine and questions, what were his habits, who his friends, that I might better play the masquerade. He did not tell them that he had a wife and children.” He paced the narrow space between the bed and my skirts, and turned and paced again. “They even coaxed him to sign his name to a paper that I might copy it.”
“And your deception succeeded?”
“Yes. The lodgings where I had stayed that fortnight since were his. I had already fool’d the owner of the house and all the neighbors without intention.” There was another gust of laughter from below.
“What happened to your friends?”
“My friends,” he said bitterly. “They were acquitted. Walsingham found me not overgrateful for his help and Poley’s and has not seen me since. Skeres is in prison. Of Frizer, I know not. I heard that he was dead, but one cannot believe all that one hears.”
“And none knew you?”
“No.” He sat him down again. “I have been he this twenty years, and been not found out. Until now.” He smiled a little. “What would you have me do, madam, now you have caught me out? Leave you in peace as I found you? I could away tomorrow, called to London, and not return. Or publicly confess my crime. What would you? I will do what you command.”
“What’s all this?” Drayton’s voice bellowed from the stairs. “How now? The coverlet already off the bed? The host and his wife off to slumber so soon?” He lumbered into the room. “The dinner’s not yet served, though you two feast your eyes upon each other.” He laughed, and his very stomach shook with it, but when he turned his eyes to me, there was no laughter in them. “Good madam, I know we have dallied long upon the road, but tell me not ’tis time for bed so soon, supper missed, and all the trenchers cleared away. Tell me not that, or you shall break my heart.”
He had stood up when Drayton came in, taking the weight of his body on his bad leg as if it were some lesson in pain, but he looked not at Drayton.
“For God’s sake, come, man!” Drayton said, plucking at his arm. “I grow thinner by the minute!”
“Master Drayton, you are a most importunate guest,” he said, looking at me.
“Whatever it is you speak of, sure it bears waiting till after supper.”
“Yes,” I said, “it hath already waited a long time.”
• • •
“I am so cold,” he said. I knelt beside the chest and took a quilt from out it. He raised himself to watch me. “What keep you in that chest now?”
I lay the quilt over him. “Sheets and pillowcoats and candles.”
“ ’Tis better so,” he said. “Hast thou burned them all?”
“Aye, husband.”
“I copied out his name so oft it was almost my own, but they are in my hand. If any come for them, you must say you burned them with the bedding when I died.”
“I hear a sound upon the stairs,” I said. I hastened to the door. “I am glad you’ve come, son-in-law,” I said softly. “His fever is worse.”
John set a lidded cup upon the press and put his hand upon my husband’s brow. “Thou hast a fever.”
“I feel no fever,” he said. He spoke through chattering teeth. “I am as two people lying side by side in the bed, both like to freeze. A little sack would warm me.”
“I have somewhat for you better than sack.” He slid his hand behind my husband’s head to raise him to sitting. I put the pillows behind. “Drink you this.”
“What is it?”
“A decoction of herbs. Flavored with cloves and syrup of violets. Come, father-in-law,” John said kindly. “ ’Twill help your fever.”
He drank a swallow. “Vile potion!” he said. “Why did you not pour it in my ear and be done with it?” His hands shivered so that the liquid splashed onto the bedclothes, but he drank it down and gave the cup to John.
“Would you lie down again, husband?” I said, my hand to the pillows.
“Nay, leave them,” he said. “ ’Tis easier to breathe.”
“Is there naught else I can do to help him?” I said, drawing John aside.
“See he hath warm coverings and clean bedding.”
“ ’Tis freshly changed, and the featherbed on the bed new. I made it with my own hands.”
“The second-best bed,” my husband said, and turned, and slept.
We went downstairs, Drayton between us like a father who has caught his children kissing in a corner, prattling of beds and supper so that we could not speak. “Come, man,” Drayton said, “you’ve not had any sack from your own bowl.”
The board was already laid. Judith was spreading the cloth, Joan bringing in the salts, little Elizabeth laying the spoons. Joan said, “You once again would steal my brother from me, Anne. You never were so affectionate in the old days.”
I know not what I answered her, nor what I did, whether I served the fowl first or the sugar-meats, nor what I ate. All I could think of was that my husband was dead. I had not guessed that, through all the years when no word came and Old John cursed me for a shrew that had driven him away. I had not guessed it e’en when Old John nailed the coat of arms above the door of our new house.
I had thought mayhap my husband had suffered us to be stolen by a thief, as a careless man will let his pocket be picked, or that he’d lost us gaming, staking us all as he had staked my mother’s plate, and the winner would come to claim us, house and all. But he had not. He had been murdered and laid in someone else’s grave.
He sat at the head of the table, Drayton beside him. Drayton would not allow Elizabeth to be sent from table after she said her grace, but bade her sit on his broad knee. He talked and talked, following one story with another.
Joan sulked and preened by turns. Judith sat between Fox and Frill, feeding first one, then the other, her smiles and glances. “Remember you your father?” the Fox asked. “Had he a limp then?”
She answered him, all innocence, the way her father must have answered his assassins. He would have seen only what his desire showed him, ’twas ever his failing. And his father’s, who could not see a stranger’s face, so blinded was he by the colors of his coat of arms. His sister’s failing, too, who could not e’en see over a starch’d ruff. All blind, and he the worst. He would not even have seen the knife blade coming.