A Play of Dux Moraud

by Margaret Frazer

  The woods went on dripping. He went on waiting, and at the end it was the servant who came alert first to the hut’s door finally opening, had straightened in his saddle and was giving a long look all around the clearing as if in careful watch when Sir Edmund came out, head bowed to go under the low lintel. Clear of the doorway, Sir Edmund straightened, too, looked all around and then at his servant, who nodded in silent answer to whatever silent question Sir Edmund had asked. Sir Edmund turned back, held out his hand, and led Mariena from the hut and toward the horses.

  The servant was dismounted by the time they reached him. Sir Edmund took his own horse’s reins from the man and drew it aside for room to swing himself into his saddle, leaving the man to hold Mariena’s horse for her to mount, his back to them both, so that so far as Mariena knew, there was no one to see her brush her hand along the servant’s thigh as she went past him. Her hand lingered just long enough to leave no doubt she did it on purpose. From where he crouched, Joliffe saw the man’s back stiffen and his head twitch toward Sir Edmund to be sure he did not see it, while Mariena, as coolly as if she had done nothing, swung up into her saddle and was settling her skirts when her father turned his horse toward her.

  The servant remounted his own horse, and with no word among them, they rode away, not back the way they had come but on along the track that Joliffe supposed would finally bring them out somewhere near the manor.

  He was supposing other things, too, and didn’t like his suppositions. They kept him where he was until he was well assured Sir Edmund and the others were truly gone and not coming back. Only then did he stand up and even then waited a little longer, listening, before he left hiding and crossed the track and clearing to the hut. He did not expect it to be locked and it was not. A simple pull of the latch string loosed the latch and let him in, bent over as Sir Edmund had been as he stepped across the threshold, then standing up straight under the low, bare-raftered roof to look around, not able to see much in the gloom. There was a shuttered window in the rear wall, though. Making his way around the small, expected hearth in the middle of the floor, he opened it and with that and the light from the open door he could see enough.

  Not that there was much to see. The walls were almost as bare inside as out and the floor was hard-trodden dirt. Enough dry kindling and logs to see a man through a wet night were stacked against the wall just inside the door, and two crudely made joint stools squatted beside the hearth. The small pile of ashes there was cold, though, when he put a hand over them. Sir Edmund had not bothered with a fire nor—to judge by the unmarred dust on the box of candlestubs Joliffe found beside an empty, equally dusty candlestick on a shelf fastened to one side wall—had he bothered with more light than he might have had through the window, supposing he had opened it.

  The only other things in the hut were a bed and its bedding and a pole fastened between two of the posts of the wall beside it. The bed itself was no more than could be expected in such a place, a pegged-together wooden frame on short legs and strung with rope to hold up the coarse-clothed mattress thickly stuffed with probably straw. There was a blanket thrown over it, another blanket carelessly tossed at its foot, a thin pillow, probably straw-stuffed, too, at its other end. That was all, but Joliffe stood looking at the bed a somewhat long while before he went to it and with reluctance ran his hand down the middle of the blanket covering the mattress.

  He was willing to believe it was only his imagination that said it was still faintly warm, but his movements were slow with thought as he first ran a hand along the wall pole, then took up the blanket from the bedfoot, shook it out, folded it, and hung it over the pole; did the same with the other blanket; then hung the mattress, too, and propped the pillow beside it. That was how a woodsman who sometimes used the hut or any sensible passer-by who sheltered there a while would have left them. Hanging them up lessened the next-user’s chance of finding mice nesting in the mattress straw or pillow and holes eaten in the blankets. That the wall pole had been free of dust except near its ends made him think they had been hanging there. He likewise thought it likely that neither Sir Edmund nor Mariena would take the trouble to put them back after making use of them.

  The question he did not want to ask was why they had made use of them at all. Or for what.

  Chapter 17

  When Joliffe retreated from the hut, making sure of the latch as he went, nothing was changed outside. The woods still dripped but the sky was not gone back to and rain yet. He had to acknowledge darkly that the increased gloom was all inside himself. He had not much thought ahead about what he might find out by following Sir Edmund. He had only thought he might find out something. And even if he had thought ahead, he would not have thought to find out this—not if he was right in his suspicion of what use Sir Edmund and Mariena had made of the hut and its bed.

  The irony that he just now should be working on Dux Moraud—a play about a father’s ill “love” for his daughter—did not escape him.

  Momentarily, he was diverted by watching his mind try to turn away from his suspicion, near though it was to certainty. Because what else would they have been doing there? Anything but that, he wanted to tell himself. It was a thought almost unthinkable and yet he was thinking it, even while trying hard to think of some other reason they had been there.

  But he could not.

  He gathered sticks savagely as he went back along the path and through the woods to Tisbe. He found her still grazing peacefully where he had left her, and she kept on grazing while he bundled the sticks onto her back, then gathered up his writing box. Only when he had loosed her hobbles and taken up her lead rope did she raise her head and huff a heavy sigh.

  “I know,” he said as he turned them around toward the trackway. “I feel the same way. Over-burdened and under-fed. Though in a different sense, mind you. Over-burdened with thought and under-fed with answers. And with better reason than you have, my girl. Those sticks weigh next to nothing and you’ve been grabbing grass for quite a while, so don’t go huffing at me.”

  To show there were no hard feelings, Tisbe butted her head solidly against his shoulder.

  “Yes,” Joliffe agreed.

  They were somewhat halfway back to the manor gateway when he looked up from watching his feet walk—he could shut off quite a bit of other thought by watching his feet walk—to find Rose and Ellis coming toward him. Because they were making no great haste, were in talk, their heads near together, he had no stir of alarm.

  Neither was he surprised when Ellis lifted his head, saw him, and called, “There you are,” as if Joliffe had been deliberately invisible from them until then.

  “And there you are,” Joliffe returned. “What I’m wondering is why.”

  “To find you,” Ellis said, “and if ever there was a less rewarding errand . . .”

  Rose poked him in the side and said, “We’re here to hurry you back. The play’s changed for tonight.”

  Joliffe had reached them by then and at Ellis’ words instinctively increased his pace manorward, asking, “Changed to what? Why?”

  “There’s some of the wedding guests started to arrive,” Ellis said disgustedly. “A day early. They’re somebody who matters enough that Lady Benedicta sent to ask Basset if we would do one of our better, longer plays tonight.”

  Joliffe groaned.

  “So Basset has decided we’ll do the Robin and Marian tonight instead of tomorrow,” Ellis said. “With Gil as the Sheriff’s Evil Knight.”

  Joliffe turned a hard stare on him. “What Evil Knight?”

  “The one you’re supposed to write a few lines for between now and then.”

  “Is Gil ready for this?”

  “Basset thinks so.”

  “Should we invoke St. Jude or St. Genesius, do you think?” The patron saint of desperate causes and the patron saint of players.

  “Both,” Ellis said darkly.

  Rose laughed at him and stretched to kiss his cheek. Joliffe, perfectly aware she had not come
for the pleasure of his company but for the chance to be alone with Ellis a little, tugged Tisbe’s halter and walked faster, letting them fall behind him, willing to give them a while more with each other, not least because he hoped Rose would sweeten Ellis out of his dark humour, but also to begin his thinking about what to write that Gil could quickly learn and hopefully not forget. Did Basset know what he was doing, pitching the boy into it like this?

  Joliffe supposed they would find out before the evening was done. To the good was that in the meanwhile he would be kept too busy to think about what he did not want to think about.

  Rose overtook him as they reached the cart-yard and took Tisbe’s lead rope from him as Basset said from beside the cart, “Good. You’re here. Get to work.”

  Not bothering to retreat to his corner, Joliffe sat down with a token grumble and his back against a cartwheel, settling his writing box on his lap. Basset was working to better Gil’s knightly stance and swagger, one of their false swords hung from his hip so he could learn to move with it. “Without hurting yourself or someone else before you’ve even drawn it from its sheath,” Basset had said to Joliffe when teaching him the same thing. For a mercy, Gil looked to be a quick study at it—better than he was with skirts, anyway, Joliffe thought, then set to the business of adding a part for him to the straight-forward tale of Robin (Ellis) and Marian (Joliffe), happy in their Sherwood life until she goes to the village and is seized by the lustful Sheriff (Basset). A Village Boy (Piers) warns Robin, who comes to her rescue, fights the Sheriff after brave speeches by both of them, kills him, and saves fair Marian.

  So where could an Evil Knight come into it? Joliffe decided the simplest way was to have the Evil Knight follow the evil Sheriff into the village and turn one of the Sheriff ’s lines into a question—“Is she not fair to see?”—to which the Evil Knight could reply, “Aye, she is, my lord.” Then, with the Sheriff saying, as he already did, “And yet more fair to hold, I warrant you,” the play was back to itself. Unfortunately, that left the Evil Knight standing there, doing nothing, so Joliffe added in that while Robin and the Sheriff fought, the Evil Knight circled around and seized Marian as if for himself. Then she would cry out, Robin would turn and run the Knight through with his sword, the Village Boy would cry warning as the Sheriff tried to kill Robin from behind, Robin would turn again and kill the Sheriff.

  There. Simple.

  All they need do now was learn it, practice it, teach Gil how to “die,” and hope for the best. All before suppertime.

  Ellis was right. Best to pray to both St. Jude and St. Genesius.

  He showed Basset what he had done. Basset said, “Good,” and they set to Gil learning it.

  “Just follow me into the playing place,” Basset told him. “Stand there. Say your line. Don’t do anything else until Ellis and I have exchanged, say, five blows.” He and Ellis mimed their fight without swords in hand. “Keep count,” Basset said. “Five blows. Then circle left. Like that, yes, and come behind Joliffe and seize him around the waist with your left arm, keeping your body just enough aside to the right that Ellis can stab his sword between you and Joliffe without danger of Robin killing Marian instead of you. Ellis, don’t even think it. Yes, Gil, just like that. Good. Ellis.”

  Ellis feigned a long sword thrust toward Gil.

  “Now clutch your side and drop dead, Gil,” Basset said. “No, just drop and lie still. Don’t twitch and writhe. Drop and be dead. Do it again. Yes.”

  There was nothing like the dread of failure to urge quick learning. They ran Gil’s part in the play four times with him, until Basset granted, “It goes none so bad. None so bad at all. You’ll do, Gil. Just keep your head and you’ll do. Now you and Piers go and fetch our supper. It must be nigh time for it.”

  Only when they were well gone did he ask Ellis, Joliffe, and Rose together, “What do you think? Have I courted, wooed, and won disaster with this?”

  “Probably,” Ellis growled.

  Rose yet again poked him in the ribs and chided, “The boy was good. You know he was. Say it.”

  Ellis caught her hand and granted, smiling, “He was good. Better than he has any right to be.” He shook his head at Basset. “Damn my toe, but I think you may pull this off.”

  “Unless he goes cold when there are lookers-on,” Joliffe said.

  “He hasn’t yet,” Basset said.

  “Let’s hope he doesn’t start tonight,” Ellis grumbled.

  Everyone ignored him, Basset saying, “Joliffe, did you get any further on with Dux Moraud this afternoon? I’m starting to look forward to starting work on it if Gil goes on shaping as he is.”

  That play with its incestuous duke and his daughter was close to the last thing Joliffe wanted to think about, but he said evenly, “I’m still not around the problem of his repentance at the end. It won’t come believable for me.”

  “I remember he repents but not for certain how he comes to it,” Basset said. “To conceal his sin with his daughter, he’s had her kill their baby and her mother. He goes to church and is confronted and accused by a miraculous statue. He repents and tells his daughter he forswears his sin. That’s the way of it, isn’t it?”

  “It is, as it stands now,” Joliffe said. “I’m thinking to change it so he and his daughter go to church together and the saint’s statue comes to life and strikes the girl horribly dead and damned. Devils drag off her shrieking soul and the duke is horrified into instant repentance, says some things, and the saint declares him saved.”

  “You mean,” Rose said with coldly, “the girl dies and is damned but the duke is given chance to repent and saves his soul, even though he’s the one who corrupted her? Why should she be damned and he be saved? Who’s fault was their sinning anyway?”

  Joliffe gave her a wry look. “That’s something to think on, yes.”

  “She’s damned,” said Ellis, “because she’s the greater sinner. Besides the incest, she killed her mother and her baby.”

  “As I remember it,” Rose snapped back, “it’s her father who orders her to both murders. He doesn’t even have the guts to do it himself. Besides the incest and corrupting his daughter’s innocence, he’s a coward as well.”

  Sounding suddenly wary of what he might have stirred up, Ellis carefully granted, “It could be seen that way.” On the rare times that Rose broke into open argument over something, no one liked to be in her way.

  Not only at Ellis but at all of them she said sharply, “Even setting aside his cowardice and despite what she did and he didn’t, he’s a man. Since you men argue that men are higher in God’s creation than women . . .”

  All three men threw up protesting hands at that, Basset saying quickly, “Not us. No. We’ve never claimed that, no. Someone else, but not us!”

  Scorning his protest, Rose went on, “You men claim you’re nearer to God than women, that it’s all the fault of Woman that Mankind fell. So why, if women are so imperfect, is Eve more at fault that she succumbed to the Devil’s wiles, when Adam simply gave way to her? If men are so much the better, his fall was the greater because he gave way under far less temptation than she did and so his sin is the greater and . . .”

  “Yes,” her father agreed hurriedly. “You’re right. We can see that. I . . .”

  Rose went right on, demanding at him in particular, “Then in this Dux Moraud play, why should the girl be seen the greater sinner when it was the duke who led her innocence into sin, corrupted her goodness into evil? Tell me that.”

  “Ah!” Basset said with the air of a man grasping at a straw. “You see there’s God’s mercy at work. The duke is in greater need of salvation and is given the chance to repent and . . .”

  Able to see what was coming, Joliffe was already stepping backward in open retreat as Rose snapped with growing anger, “And the girl is damned for eternity, despite his was the greater sin. It must be because I’m a weak-headed woman that I don’t quite see the fairness of that.”

  Basset and Ellis made haste t
o agree they did not see it either.

  “So you,” she said, pointing her finger at Joliffe, “are going to fix that, aren’t you?”

  Still backing away, his hands already up in surrender, Joliffe said, “I’m trying. I swear I am.”

  Basset and Ellis nodded in hurried agreement. Rose swept them all with a look of disgust, as if even their surrender was insufficient apology for being men, and turned away to tend the fire.

  Leaving Basset and Ellis to what they would, Joliffe retreated all the way to his corner beyond the cart, taking his writing box with him. There must be some delay at the kitchen, that the boys were not back yet, and he made a show of having out paper and pen and ink as if at work already to meet Rose’s demand. He would have worked gladly, too, but his thoughts slid away to the worse thing in his mind.

  If, as he feared, it was incest between Sir Edmund and Mariena, what different look did that give to what he so far knew? For one thing, it could explain the prolonged dealing before agreement was made for John Harcourt to marry Mariena. If Sir Edmund intended to keep Mariena for himself, it could also explain why Harcourt was murdered. But then why move on so quickly to dealing for another marriage? And why was it Will, rather than Amyas Breche, who had come close to grief these several times, while nothing had befallen Amyas?

  Yet. There was still time for it to happen. Not much time, though. Not with only three more days until the wedding.

  But there was still the possibility that Harcourt’s death was only by chance, or even—if purposed—it was for some other reason than Sir Edmund’s secret. What that purpose might have been, Joliffe had no thought on at all, but either way, it would mean Amyas was in no danger. That did not mean he wasn’t, though; and none of those possibilities answered why Will was having “accidents.” Could they be for someone’s revenge against Sir Edmund for John Harcourt’s death or some other reason? To increase Mariena’s inheritance? For some reason to which Joliffe had no clue?