A Play of Dux Moraud

by Margaret Frazer

  He’d sometimes wondered why men were not supposed to prize their virginity as highly, but that was a question beside the present point and he set it aside. And after all, Mariena’s lust did not necessarily mean her virginity was gone. Joliffe had met with lustful virgins before now. But the very fact she showed her lust so openly cast a different light on her. And on her mother’s coldness to her. And maybe on her father’s readiness to make her a husband’s problem instead of his. Supposing they knew about her game. They might not.

  Joliffe would willingly wager that if Mariena were up to mischief, her father would be the last to know, and it was perfectly possible Lady Benedicta’s irk at her today was nothing more than impatience over the bother of the new gown. To judge by Sia’s words, though, the servants knew about her; but Joliffe was very sure that if he were a servant here, he’d not be the one to tell Sir Edmund or Lady Benedicta about their daughter. Indeed, he would not. It might be wrong to “kill the messenger,” but it happened anyway.

  But if Mariena’s lusting was unknown, why this haste to marry her to Amyas Breche? Was it for other reasons altogether, with lust having nothing to do with it?

  Remembering Mariena’s body pressed against his as she passed him, Joliffe was willing to warrant that lust came into it somewhere.

  Had she gone beyond bounds with John Harcourt in expectation of their marriage and now must be married as best as she could be, rather than as well as she might have been? That would somewhat account for Sir Edmund’s haste and her mother’s unhappiness.

  Or had John Harcourt found out more about her than was good to know and been about to refuse the marriage? The disgrace that would have followed that might have given someone reason to murder him. If he had been murdered. Which he might not have been.

  Either way, it did not explain Master Wyot’s unwillingness to marry her. The Harcourt betrothal and purposed marriage had come after his refusal. Had he refused Mariena because he knew too much about her? But if that were so, wouldn’t he have warned the Breches against her? Or, if there were a secret worth murder, wouldn’t Wyot have been dead before John Harcourt?

  He must have refused the marriage for another reason or reasons and knew nothing about Mariena’s lust. And most likely John Harcourt’s death had been simply one of life’s mischances. And Amyas Breche was going to get more with his wife than he bargained for.

  And that, Joliffe concluded, left it all no business of his. His thinking had seen him across the manor-yard to the far end of the stables from the cart-yard. Just as bakehouse and dairy, granary and flour-store were gathered near the kitchen, and the carpentry and other craftsmen’s sheds clustered together, so byre and stable and hay-store had their own part of the yard and he found the cow byre easily enough—a long shed enclosed above but open below along most of one side. This time of year the milch cows would be grazing in the harvested fields through the day, only brought in for evening milking and the night, too, with the weather so wet, so the byre was presently bare of cows and the packed-earth floor was cleared and clean, but its use was given away by the line of stanchions with chains and rings along the rear wall for tethering the cows, each with a hayrack into which hay from the loft could be dropped though long gaps in the loft’s floor.

  Set near the gate but behind other buildings, the byre could be approached from several ways unseen, which might be among the things that recommended it. Joliffe doubted that much mattered, though, given the loft’s use must be an open secret. The ladder was there, as Sia had said. Joliffe pulled the red cloth from his sleeve and draped it over one of the upper rungs, thinking as he turned away that there must be honor among the lustful if that was sufficient to secure the place for a night.

  He was only slightly discomfited to find a stableman leaning on a pitchfork at the far end of the byre, grinning big-toothed at him.

  Joliffe grinned back.

  “Sia, is it?” the man said with a nod toward the ladder.

  Since the man didn’t sound or look about to fly into a jealous rage, Joliffe admitted, “Sia. Yes. Did she leave her name on me?” He touched his cheek questioningly as if feeling for a mark.

  The man chuckled. “Easier than that. The red is hers. Avice uses blue. Tabby has green, see.”

  “What about you?”

  The man grinned wider. “Us stable-fellows have our own loft, don’t we?”

  Joliffe had traveled much these past few years and been a good many places, but he had never known any manor so easily, openly libidinous. Did Sir Edmund have any thought of what went on? The steward must, if he were worth anything, but he must be gathering no leyrwite—the fine for lechery, owed to the lord of a manor as his right—in the manor-court, because then Father Morice would know of it, too, and surely make more trouble than there was any sign of being. And Sir Edmund must not know, because Joliffe had yet to meet or hear of a lord who knowingly forwent anything owed to him. Yet judging by Sia and this man’s easiness about it, it must be open, and therefore Master Hanney the steward must know and accept it. For a bribe? For a share in it? Surely his place as a knight’s steward was worth more than that?

  With the uneasy certainty that he was gathering pieces he did not know how to use, Joliffe said, matching the man’s lightness, “There’s enough for everyone then, and good times all around?”

  “I’d not say there’s ever enough, like.” The man gave a leering wink. “Never is, is there? That Sia, for one. If she did it as much as she talks about it, she’d never have time for her right work here.”

  Joliffe straightened in pretended dismay. “She’s leading me on?”

  “Nah,” the man scoffed. “She’ll have you. She likes fresh meat. Her and that Avice toss a coin, they do, to see who goes after a new man here. Must be she won you, eh?”

  The man laughed and Joliffe laughed with him and leaned a shoulder against a post, to show he was ready to talk. Being won on a coin toss was not quite how he had seen things between Sia and himself, but he said easily, to keep the man talking, “Not that I’d be the loser either way, Sia or Avice?”

  “That you’d not.”

  “So, Master Henney turns a blind eye to all of this?”

  “Must do. Never asked him,” the man said, then chuckled at what he must assume was his own wit.

  “Sir Edmund ever take his share?”

  The man guffawed. “Not him. He keeps a narrow line, he does. Takes his due in the marriage bed and let’s it go at that. For all the good that does him.”

  The sideways swipe at Lady Benedicta took Joliffe by surprise. The little he had seen her and Sir Edmund together, they had seemed courteous enough with each other. Deliberately, he drew the man on with, “She’s not all she might be for him?”

  “It’s not what she is but what she’s been that maybe keeps him wondering. If you take my meaning.”

  Joliffe did not and shook his head to say so.

  The man shifted happily, settling to tell a good story to someone who hadn’t heard it. “It was years back and I was a boy then, but there’s some as might best know who say she had her day of swiving where she shouldn’t. Not married all that long, she took on with a man that was friend to her husband. Not so good a friend as he might have been, seems. The thing is”—the man grinned, all his teeth showing—“this ‘friend’ was father of that same John Harcourt as was going to marry Sir Edmund’s daughter this summer past. Nobody knows how far it went with my lady, but it must have gone somewhere because it cooled things between her and Sir Edmund right enough, not to say between him and his ‘friend,’ too. It was years between the girl being born and young Master Will, with no babies between.”

  “That happens,” Joliffe said easily.

  “Oh, aye, it does, but talk is that there was no bedding between Sir Edmund and Lady Benedicta in all that time as would make those babies.”

  A thing servants would know almost as well as the couple themselves, Joliffe thought. “And now?” he asked.

  The man shrugg
ed. “They made up, seems like. First there was the boy, then a string of dead-borns. Been a few years since even the last of those, though, so likely they’ve given over trying for another son. Pity, that is, now it looks like it’ll be a wonder they keep Master Will, the way things’ve been going.”

  “Why?” Joliffe asked as if alarm wasn’t suddenly prickling inside him. “He doesn’t look to be sickly.”

  “Not so much sickly as ill-fortuned. A fall on the stairs last spring. Sick on his food twice this summer. That tumble today.” The fellow shook his head. “He’s not going to last, the way things are going.”

  The man’s regrets looked to be no deeper than a flea-bite, but they kept him talking, and Joliffe said with feigned lightness, “Today was a loose girth. That happens.”

  “It does, and Bert’s been talked to about it, never fear.”

  “He swears he made it tight enough, though, doesn’t he?” Joliffe said, making a jest of it.

  “Course he does,” the other man agreed with a laugh. He shifted the pitchfork from one hand to the other. “I’d best be back to work or I’ll be the next one talked to.”

  “Ah, well,” Joliffe said, more lightly than he felt, “a fall on boggy ground never hurt anybody much, so no harm done in the long run.”

  “Would have been harm done if he’d fallen ten feet sooner. There was rocks there, Matt from the mews says.”

  The man had started to leave. Joliffe joined him. “Rocks? He nearly fell on rocks?”

  “The hunt ranged upstream to where’s there’s rough ground. Rocks cropping out and such like. They were just riding off it when Master William went down. Like I said, could have been bad. Here. I’ll show a short way back to the cart-yard.”

  He led Joliffe behind the haystack beside the cow byre and into the dung-yard beyond it. A dung cart was standing there, its rear toward the heap, and the fellow must have been shifting the heaped dung and straw from stable and byres into it when he saw Joliffe go past. It was the time of year for spreading dung over the fields ready for the autumn plowing and planting, if only the rain stopped long enough for there to be an autumn plowing and planting. The man pointed to a gap between the back of the stable and the manor’s wall behind it. “That’ll take you.”

  He was so willing with talk that Joliffe would have liked to lead him on to something more about Sir Edmund—what sort of master he was, how he was with his neighbors, how had he taken John Harcourt’s death—but could think of no unobvious way to do it, so simply thanked him and made to go.

  But the man asked, “You fellows doing something tonight will make us laugh like last night?” and Joliffe paused long enough to answer, “We’re going to try,” then—because the man looked so hopeful for laughter—made him a flourished bow, so low and over-done that the man burst into laughter. Joliffe backed away, making another, lesser bow, turned, and with a skip and quick-step left him still laughing.

  Which was the way Basset said was the best way to leave, because, “If nothing else, folk don’t tend to throw things when they’re laughing. Except maybe coins, and that’s all right.”

  The way behind the stable was narrow, well-used enough the dirt was packed hard-down and—overhung by the stable’s eaves—not so muddy as it might have been. It would be bastard-dark there after nightfall, but if he brought the small lantern with him . . .

  He would rather have thought about tonight, but Will intruded on that pleasantness. Did the boy’s troubles these past few months—two falls and two bouts of sickness—mean anything besides a run of ill-fortune? That happened, Joliffe knew. Though things were supposed to run in threes and now there had been four. Unless Will was starting on a second set of three, which seemed unfair of Fate.

  When had John Harcourt died? Sometime this year and not long ago. Before or after Will’s “accidents” had begun?

  Joliffe caught himself on the wry twist he had given to “accidents.” Was he turning too readily suspicious of things he could leave alone? But Lord Lovell had sent him here to be suspicious. Lord Lovell had felt there was something wrong about John Harcourt’s death, and now Will’s accidents felt wrong to Joliffe. If he could find why they felt wrong, he would feel far better, he thought.

  He wondered how much talk he could get from Sia tonight, before or else after their pleasure together.

  All was peaceful in the cartshed. Basset was still seated on the piled cushions, but leaning back against the cartwheel, dozing. Piers and Gil were sitting on the shafts of another cart farther along the shed, Piers holding what looked to be a script and Gil apparently learning lines. Rose was gone somewhere, and Ellis was sitting on his heels beside the firepit, nursing sticks into a small fire under a kettle of water on a long-legged trivet.

  Joliffe squatted down beside him and said, low enough not to wake Basset, “I’m to pass word on to you that there’s a wench here is taken with your looks.”

  Ellis cast a quick look around to be sure Rose wasn’t somehow behind him and asked with open interest, “Is there?”

  “Avice. She’ll be looking for a chance to wiggle her hips come-hither at you.”

  Ellis’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “How do you know that?”

  “Because her friend wiggled her hips come-hither at me, and when I hithered, she told me as much.” Watching Ellis’s face, he added for pure—or not so pure—mischief, “They tossed a coin to see which of them would get which of us. Avice lost.”

  “I’d say she won,” Ellis shot back, then caught up to the rest of that and protested, “They never tossed a coin.”

  “If the stableman was saying true, the two take turns on who tries for likely men around here. They tossed a coin for us, seems like.”

  Ellis frowned. “I don’t know I like that.”

  “The question is,” Joliffe said, “whether you like what’s offered. If you do, I doubt you’ll mind the rest.” And added with a wide smile, “Either way, just keep in mind the cow byre is bespoke for tonight.”

  Leaving Ellis swearing under his breath, Joliffe stood up and left him. He had seen Basset open one eye while he talked with Ellis. It was closed again, but when Joliffe sat down beside him, Basset said, eyes still closed, “Now that you’re done corrupting Ellis, what did Lady Benedicta say to our purposed plays?”

  “Your ears are working well. How are your aches and pains?”

  “Better. I’m just being lazy now. Lady Benedicta?”

  While Joliffe told him she had approved of everything but wanted no lewdness, Ellis shoved a clutch of sticks on the fire, stood up, and left the cart-yard.

  Basset opened his eyes to watch him go, then said, “Rose won’t thank you for leading him into evil ways.”

  “I’ve more likely kept him out of them. I doubt he likes being chosen on a coin toss. He wants to be loved for himself, does Ellis.”

  “And you don’t?” Basset asked dryly.

  “The likelihood of being loved for myself is so slight that I content myself with what I can get instead.”

  “Idiot,” Basset said, friendliwise; and then, serious, “Learn anything else we might want to know?”

  Serious, too, Joliffe told him everything he had seen and heard and guessed in Lady Benedicta’s chamber, then what had happened with Mariena on the stairs afterwards, and then with Sia, to explain how he came to be at the cow byre, finishing with what the stablehand had told him about Lady Benedicta and about Will’s several mishaps.

  Having heard him to the end, Basset considered a while, then said, “There’s nothing out of the ordinary about it all. Boys have mishaps and sometimes are ill. Wives can be unfaithful. Daughters can be like mothers. And never a mention of John Harcourt’s death in it all.” He cocked an eyebrow at Joliffe. “And yet?”

  Glad to say it aloud, Joliffe said, “And yet there’s something doesn’t feel right.”

  “Which puts us no further ahead than when Lord Lovell set us to this.”

  “Except there seems no reason to be worried for A
myas Breche’s safety. No one’s objecting to the marriage.”

  “Did anyone object to the Harcourt marriage?”

  Joliffe frowned. “Not that I’ve heard.”

  “We’ve heard altogether too little about it, seems to me. You’re going to meet this Sia of yours tonight? See what you can find out from her.”

  “Yes, that’s likely. ‘I’m passionately joyed to be with you. What about John Harcourt’s death?’”

  Matching his dryness, Basset suggested, “Try for somewhat more subtle than that, if you can. Meanwhile, think about what you’ve found out so far, on the chance you’ve found out more than you know.”

  Joliffe made a face.

  Basset made one back at him and pointed out, “It’s your thinking got us into this business, so don’t stop now.”

  “What I think is that there’s nothing to be found out.”

  “That’s what you think. But you feel differently. Just as my Lord Lovell does.”

  “What about you? What do you think? Or feel?”

  Basset settled back against the wheel and folded his hands over his stomach, closed his eyes, and said, “I think I feel glad to be an old man too stiff in his joints for climbing into the loft of cow byres even if I was asked.”

  Joliffe snorted in derision and went to fetch his writing box from the cart. There was maybe just time before supper to work a while on Dux Moraud. So much of the play depended on the mindless, conscienceless drive of lust that surely after this afternoon he could find some new sight into the duke’s sins.

  Chapter 9

  Ellis and Rose returned to the cartshed together, looking happy in each other’s company. Ellis was carrying a basket of wet clothing that showed Rose had been to the manor’s laundry, taking the chance of laundry tubs and plentiful hot water to do more than scrub and rinse the company’s clothes in a large bucket or a clean stream; and while Ellis strung a rope from the cart to a peg in the shed wall, she put up the low frame near the fire to begin the tedious business of drying everything.