A Play of Dux Moraud

by Margaret Frazer

  Since Basset would be saying all that when the time came for it, Joliffe chose not to burden Gil with it just yet and settled for saying, “What will maybe help you best now is to remember that you’re not learning to be a girl. You’re learning to seem a girl. Just as you’re learning the skills that will help you seem to be a saint and a tragic lover and everything else you’ll ever play. You’ll find no better master for teaching you that than Basset.” Easily, careful not to come too heavy-handed about it, he added, “But if you aren’t willing to seem to be anything and everything, you’ve no business being a player at all.”

  He hoped it was a good thing that Gil made no answer to that, merely looked deeply thoughtful the rest of the way back to the cartshed. There, despite Basset looked to be right about a drier afternoon—the clouds were thinning, streaks of blue beginning to appear among them—Piers wailed when Basset, still seated on the piled cushions but looking somewhat less ill-eased, said he and Gil were still to take Tisbe out to her grazing this afternoon.

  “We’ve just been walking our legs off,” he protested. “You want us to walk more?”

  “You can ride Tisbe out and Gil can ride her back if you’re feeling feeble,” his grandfather said.

  “She’s bony! Her spine cuts right into me!”

  “Then you can walk,” Basset said pleasantly. “Your choice. Just get on with it.”

  “It’s Joliffe’s turn to take her!”

  “I need to talk with Joliffe.”

  “Gil needs more lessons.”

  “Gil will have them, but not just now.” Basset pointed firmly away. “Go.”

  Gil already had Tisbe untied and was waiting, the mare nuzzling and nibbling at his shoulder to show she was ready if no one else was. Piers tried one more time, pitiful now. “I didn’t have much dinner, you know.”

  “Good,” his grandfather said. “You’re getting soft. This will toughen you up for the road we’ll be on again in a few days.”

  Scuffling and put upon, Piers joined Gil and Tisbe and they went. For a moment Basset waited, probably half-expecting Piers would pop back with one last try. The carpenter was at work; the tap-tap-tap of wooden pegs being gently hammered into holes suggested he was joining something. It was a small, friendly sound, as sounds went, and when it was plain that Piers was not coming back, Basset said, as if one of them had commented on the tapping, “That isn’t bad. He was sawing ere dinner. That wears worse on the ear. Mariena was at dinner, by the way. She looked much recovered. Amyas hovered most attentively.”

  “How was everyone else?” Joliffe asked.

  “I would say tired.”

  “Did you learn aught from Father Morice?”

  “If he didn’t, it wasn’t by lack of trying,” Ellis grumbled from where he stood on the other side of the firepit.

  “We had a pleasant talk,” Basset said. “Thank you, too, for asking how I do.”

  “You’re doing far better,” Joliffe said, “or you wouldn’t have so much enjoyed thwarting Piers. Did you learn aught from Father Morice?”

  “He’s not a happy man. I think he’s not very good at priesting.”

  “He wouldn’t be the first,” said Ellis.

  “Hush,” said Rose. She was sitting near him, sewing in her lap. She reached out and tugged gently at the hem of his tunic. “Sit down here with me. They’re only doing what they have to do.”

  “It’s going to get us into trouble,” Ellis complained.

  “We’re players,” said Basset smoothly. “We’re always in trouble, one way or another. The thing with this trouble is that we have Lord Lovell behind us and I don’t doubt we’ll be in worse trouble if we don’t please him.”

  Ellis made a wordless mutter in answer to that and gave way to Rose’s pull, sitting down beside her and taking up a stick to poke angrily into the fire. Rose leaned over and kissed his cheek, then drew him sideways to lean his head on her shoulder. There he eased, shutting his eyes with a sigh, and she returned to her sewing.

  Not to disturb the peace more than need be, Basset said quietly, “He’s not very good at being a priest and unhappily he knows it. I’d judge he would have been happier as someone’s clerk, but somebody was probably ambitious for him and here he is.”

  “I thought there was more unhappiness in him than that,” Rose said quietly, still stitching. “When you made talk about Mariena’s marriage, he should have been happier that it’s all but done with.”

  “Why should he be happy or unhappy about it?” Joliffe asked lightly. “It’s not his marriage.”

  Without opening his eyes or shifting from Rose’s shoulder, Ellis said, “What he sounded about it was relieved.”

  Joliffe wordlessly asked Basset with raised eyebrows if that was true.

  Basset slowly nodded that it was.

  “Maybe relieved, yes,” Rose said. “But unhappy about something else, then.”

  “There was naught seemed wrong about him when you first met him in the village, was there?” Joliffe asked Basset.

  “We were two strangers talking about plays. I didn’t note anything in particular.” Basset thought a moment. “He drank quickly and deeply and drank some more after that as soon as he sat down. That could have mellowed him.”

  “By St. Thomas the Doubter,” Ellis said impatiently, “you two want to find trouble.” He started to lift his head from Rose’s shoulder, but she left off her sewing to curve her hand around the side of his face and hold him there, whispering something in his ear that quieted him again.

  Lowering his voice as if that would be enough not to rouse Ellis despite he could still hear everything, Joliffe said, “So he’s relieved about this marriage but unhappy about something. Were you able to find out why the Harcourt marriage-talks were so much harder than these seem to have been?”

  “When I made comment that I’d heard they had been, all he said was, yes, they had been, and went very glum, I thought. I didn’t see how to have more out of him.”

  “He probably didn’t like that marriage because he’s heard Lady Benedicta is supposed to have affaired with this John Harcourt’s father years ago. A marriage that way maybe seemed not right.”

  “If Sir Edmund could countenance it, what was it to him?” Basset said.

  “Maybe Sir Edmund hasn’t heard about his wife.”

  Basset grunted disbelief of that.

  “Or,” Joliffe tried, “maybe he doesn’t believe it. Or he doesn’t care.”

  “Any of that’s possible,” Basset granted. “The thing is, he wanted the marriage.”

  Rose had gone back to sewing. Without looking up from her stitching, she asked, “When did Lady Benedicta ‘affair’ with this man? Could Father Morice have feared Mariena and this boy were half-brother and -sister?”

  “That’s been thought of,” Joliffe said, “but the alewife says Mariena was born well more than nine months afterward.”

  “She knows so unerringly when matters ended between Lady Benedicta and this man?” Basset asked.

  “It had to do with Sir Edmund being gone to Westminster and then coming home. So far as the village thinks, everything happened between then and no talk of anything more between them.”

  “How much afterward was Mariena born?” Rose asked.

  “I don’t know,” Joliffe said.

  “You might try to find that out. There is such a thing as a nine-and-a-half-months child.”

  Both Joliffe and Basset paused on that thought. Then Joliffe said slowly, “That would mean Sir Edmund didn’t know of the affair, had no suspicion the girl might not be his own.”

  “But Lady Benedicta would have known,” Basset pointed out.

  “But we’ve not heard she ever protested against the Harcourt marriage, have we?” Joliffe asked.

  “None,” Basset confirmed. “Nor could Father Morice have suspected aught was wrong or he would have protested it.”

  “If he only suspected it, he might have kept quiet,” Joliffe said. “If he only suspected, he
might have . . .” He broke off, considering what he had been about to say.

  Basset finished for him. “He might have made as many difficulties about the marriage as possible.”

  “Which we know he did,” Joliffe said.

  “Though that doesn’t mean Mariena isn’t Sir Edmund’s daughter,” Rose put in.

  “You were just saying . . .” Ellis started to protest without lifting his head or opening his eyes.

  “I was just saying Joliffe should find out something, that’s all. She could well be Sir Edmund’s daughter and not half-sister to this John Harcourt, and Father Morice still feel uneasy about them marrying after what maybe—only maybe, mind you—passed between Lady Benedicta and this John Harcourt’s father.”

  To Joliffe, that Lady Benedicta had not resisted the Harcourt marriage was strong sign she had seen no problem with it. If indeed she had affaired with John Harcourt’s father, however briefly, she perhaps still had strong enough feelings about him that she had welcomed her daughter marrying his son as a fulfilling of . . . what? A lost love? A lost lust?

  “Heed,” said Basset quietly as Will came around the corner of the carpenter shed.

  Will was smiling, but his hurry slowed and his smile faded as his quick look took in that neither Piers nor Gil were there. Understanding his look, Basset said, “They’ve taken our mare out to graze while the rain holds off. They’ll be sorry to have missed you. Will you pardon me not standing up?”

  Ellis, Rose, and Joliffe had already risen to their feet, Ellis and Joliffe bowing, Rose making a curtsy. Will waved an easy acknowledgment that excused Basset doing the same while he said, “You’re not practicing anything today?”

  “Done this morning, I fear,” said Basset.

  “Oh.” Will sighed his disappointment. “You’d have to stop anyway, I suppose. My mother sent me to ask if someone of you could come to sing or play music or something for her and the others while they’re sewing Mariena’s new gown.”

  Joliffe gave him deep bow. “That will be me, and most assuredly I’ll come and with pleasure. Give me but leave to fetch my lute and then you may show me the way.”

  Joliffe’s excess of manners brought back Will’s smile. “They’re where they were yesterday. You can find them well enough. I’m going to go find Piers and Gil.”

  “Before anybody catches you to run more errands?” Basset asked, conspirator to escaping prisoner.

  “Before anybody catches me for anything,” Will said.

  “Would you like,” Basset offered, “to stay here and I’ll tell you all the stories my grandson is tired of hearing but I’m not tired of telling?”

  Already started to turn away, Will missed the sharp looks Joliffe, Rose, and Ellis all gave Basset; and by the time Will turned back, asking, “Stories?,” their faces were as bland as Basset’s, and Joliffe was going to the cart for his lute.

  “Stories,” Basset assured him. “Come sit here beside me. Take Joliffe’s cushion.”

  Basset was well away into a tale of King Arthur as Joliffe left the cartshed, his lute hung around his shoulder and easier in mind than he would have been if Will was not there safe with Basset and the others instead of gone off alone in search of Piers and Gil. Unhappily, that ease of mind told him how deeply his suspicion was set that all was not as right as it might be here at the manor of Deneby.

  Chapter 14

  For those who were only minstrels, with no need to be aught else, their trade truly was to sing for their suppers. Players crossed a wider range of skills, it serving a company well to have as many skills as possible among its people, to meet whatever an occasion brought. Joliffe, going up the curve of the tower stairs toward Lady Benedicta’s chamber, was wondering what this occasion would bring.

  If nothing else, it would give him another chance to see how things went among the womenfolk here and how better Mariena was or was not.

  The door to the chamber stood open, but as Joliffe neared it, the silence from the chamber beyond was so complete that he wondered briefly if the women had left, had maybe gone up to take the air on the tower’s top or some such thing, and he would have to follow them. As he reached the doorway, though, he saw Lady Benedicta and Idonea Wyot were on the window bench, where the weakling sunlight fell most strongly, while Mariena sat on a chair nearby, to Joliffe’s eyes seeming none the worse for her night’s illness. They were all of them stitching at the rich blue cloth of Mariena’s new gown, and at his light knock they all looked toward him—Idonea Wyot with what seemed hopeful relief; Mariena eagerly, probably glad for any diversion; Lady Benedicta with the same cold nothing as yesterday. But she remembered his name, saying, “Joliffe, is it not? Come in. We’re in need of something to pass this sewing time for us less tediously. You sing, I take it?”

  Joliffe made her a respectful bow. “You will be the judge of that, my lady.”

  With the narrowest of smiles, she nodded agreement and gestured for him to sit on the chest at the bedfoot. That put him at an angle to them rather than fully facing, which did not matter since it was his singing they wanted, not his face, while by looking sidewise from his lowered eyes he could see them all well enough. Bent over his lute while bringing it into tune, he said, watching them, “We were all sorry to hear of my lady’s trouble in the night. I hope she’s well-recovered?”

  Mariena opened her mouth to reply, but Lady Benedicta said first, coldly, “It was a passing indigestion, nothing more, with too much made of it.”

  Mariena closed her mouth into a tight line and said nothing.

  Stroking the lute’s strings, finding they were ready, Joliffe said mildly, “Something she ate then.”

  Lady Benedicta gave him a sharp look, followed by an equally sharp glance at her daughter, who met her look darkly, not hiding her anger. At what?

  Idonea Wyot merely huddled further over her sewing, shoulders curved forward and head down as if readying for a storm, while Joliffe went on easily, “Is there aught you’d care to hear first, my ladies?”

  Again, Mariena made to answer. Again Lady Benedicta cut her off, saying, “I leave it to you.”

  Again Mariena’s mouth tightened over in-held words. Was she subdued by her night’s ordeal? Or was she for some reason become wary of her mother? She had certainly not been wary of her before. If she was now, why was she? John Harcourt had fallen ill and died here. Now Mariena had been ill. She hadn’t died, though. And why would her mother want her dead anyway, however much dislike there seemed to be between them? Why even want her ill, for that matter, given the trouble it had surely caused for most of the night? But then, come to it, why would Lady Benedicta have wanted John Harcourt dead?

  He had yet to find why John Harcourt might have been murdered, let alone by whom. But he noted that “yet” in his thought, even as he started to sing a song he thought matched the women’s grey and lowering humour, that seeming the better way to go, rather than against them. His voice low and sad to match the words as he sang, “Alone walking, in thought ’plaining, sore sighing, death wishing both early and late . . .”

  There were a good many verses, useful for those times when one was particularly ready to feel miserable, but watching the women, Joliffe judged by the sixth one that they were ready for a change and let the song fade away into a quietness of plucked strings before suddenly thrumming forward into the merry, “Of a rose, a lovely rose, of a rose I sing a song. Listen, hearken, both old and young, how the rose even now hath sprung . . .”

  Words and music skipped quick as sunlight over rippling water, and the women were caught by surprise. Idonea Wyot raised her head, looking on the edge of laughter. Mariena dropped her sewing and clapped her hands with delight. Lady Benedicta, who had been paused at her sewing, looking away out the window, turned back to the room, almost smiling. But a moment later Mariena shoved her sewing to the floor and sprang to her feet and into a dance, arms out-stretched as she twirled to the wide middle of the room, her long skirts and dark hair flaring out around her. Her
suddenness so immediately matched the music that Joliffe forgot he meant to seem seeing nothing and lifted his head, watching her and smiling as he sang.

  But Lady Benedicta said, “Mariena.”

  Only the word and not loudly, but it was an order that stopped Mariena where she was, arms and skirts falling straight, her hair swirled partly forward over one shoulder. Momentarily mother and daughter stared at one another, no liking in either of their looks. Then Mariena threw up her head and defiantly spun around one more time, back to the chair, where she flung herself down and glared at her mother, her arms folded and her hair partly over her face.

  Coldly, Lady Benedicta said, “Put back your hair and take up your sewing.”

  Mariena shoved back her hair from her face with both hands, then folded her arms again, defying the rest of her mother’s order. Lady Benedicta with gaze fixed on her said evenly, “Idonea, put down your sewing,” putting down her own on her lap with a finality that said she would not take it up again until she was obeyed. “If we have to sew on this gown of yours,” she said at Mariena, “you will sew, too. If you do not, no one does.”

  The stare between mother and daughter held a long while this time with Idonea Wyot and Joliffe frozen in wary watching of them before Mariena gave way with a toss of her shoulders and grabbed her sewing from the floor. Without comment, Lady Benedicta took up her own and Idonea followed and Joliffe carefully began to set quiet, light notes into the taut silence, only gradually weaving his way back toward a song while thinking how much more alike to each other Lady Benedicta and Mariena were than he had heretofore thought. Lady Benedicta’s will was the stronger, but that only came from more years of practice at it, Joliffe suspected. Beyond that, both she and Mariena were passionate in their different ways—Mariena’s passion still raw and open while Lady Benedicta’s passion was . . . Joliffe watched his fingers on the lute’s strings rather than the women while he considered Lady Benedicta. Her passion must have run hot once upon a time, but if passion could be said to run cold, he suspected hers still ran, no longer with fire but with the force of ice.