A Play of Dux Moraud

by Margaret Frazer

  Very like Lady Benedicta, he thought.

  Another time he might have followed that thought, but there was no time now. Besides the soaking ground, the only place to sit in the garden was an unsheltered wooden bench, where Lord Lovell had chosen not to sit. Instead, he was standing, looking down at a crumpled plant long since beaten by weather into nothing recognizable, and he gave up his contemplation of it without probable regret as he turned, waved that his man could leave them, then waited where he was while Basset and Joliffe came to him, saying as they bowed low, “I ask your pardon for meeting you nowhere better than this. It seems to be the only private place on the manor at present, but it’s a condemnedly damp and cold one, so let’s make this go quickly. I gather from Sir Edmund that you’ve well pleased everyone here.”

  “We’ve hoped so, my lord,” Basset said.

  “Has Gil given satisfaction? Or is he as hopeless as you feared he would be?”

  So he had not been fooled by the good front Basset had put on taking the boy, but giving that part of it no outward heed, Basset said full-heartedly, “He’s all and perhaps more than could be hoped for. He learns quickly and does well. In truth, he bids to be so good, I’ve considered again your offer to apprentice him to us and think to accept it now, if your lordship allows, lest he be wooed away to another company before his time.”

  “He’s that good, is he? His mother hoped he’d have failed by now and I would bring him back to her. She’ll be displeased.” But Lord Lovell was not. Far from it. “Yes, I think we can draw up apprentice-papers for him. What of the other matter?”

  “That’s best told by Master Ripon,” Basset said and stepped aside with another bow.

  Left facing Lord Lovell, Joliffe thought: Right; take the good, leave me the bad.

  But he had to admit the bad was fairly his, and as Lord Lovell’s heed shifted to him, he bowed again, playing for time despite he knew that time would make no difference. Whether said soon or late, what he had to say was not going to be welcomed.

  “You’ve found out something?” Lord Lovell prompted. “Or nothing?”

  “Something,” Joliffe said, and there being no way into it but straight, went on, “But about much more than John Harcourt’s death.” From there, keeping his voice flat and bare of outward feeling, he told it all as nakedly as he might, both what he had learned outright and what he had made of it, including warning that he might have it all the wrong way on.

  After a time Lord Lovell ceased to watch his face, instead stood looking at the path between them, and went on looking at it a while longer after Joliffe had finished. Joliffe and Basset exchanged glances but waited in silence, until finally Lord Lovell looked up from his thinking and said, “God’s blood and bones. Should it be Lady Benedicta we first talk to, do you think?”

  Joliffe was unused to being asked by a lord what he thought, but since he agreed that was where they should begin, he said, “If your lordship wishes it.”

  Already started for the garden’s gate, Lord Lovell said, “Come then. You’ll have to be there for it.”

  In some small corner of himself, Joliffe thought he would rather not be there for it, but mostly he would not have missed learning how true his guesses were for half the world. For the whole world he might have forgone it, but not for less—and since no one was offering him the world or anything else, he followed Lord Lovell from the garden, with Basset now coming last. Lord Lovell’s man was waiting outside the gate, and Lord Lovell sent him off to find where Lady Benedicta presently was, saying, “Tell her I’d have private word with her.”

  The man went at a run toward the hall. Following at a steady stride, Lord Lovell was just past the steps to the tower when his man came running back to say Lady Benedicta was taking the air atop the tower with Lady Lovell. Should he go up and bid her come down?

  Lord Lovell gave the doubtful sky a doubtful look—the mid-day hint of sun had faded away behind lowering grey clouds—but said, “No. I’ll go up to her,” and turned aside for the stairs up to the tower doorway.

  Joliffe, mindful it might be better if Lord Lovell did not know of Basset’s aching stiffness, said quickly, “By your leave, my lord, would it be best if less rather than more were there when you talk with her? Would Master Basset do better not to come?”

  Lord Lovell paused, then granted, “Yes. She might talk the easier. Master Basset, if you would be so good as to leave us.”

  “My lord,” Basset said with a bow; and gave Joliffe a single small nod of thanks when Lord Lovell was turned away again. Joliffe returned the nod before following Lord Lovell up the stairs and into the tower. Inside the doorway, Lord Lovell said at Joliffe, “You lead.” Joliffe bowed and started up the long curve of stairs while behind him Lord Lovell turned back long enough to say something to his man still following them. In answer the man bowed and disappeared out the door, and with Lord Lovell at his heels, Joliffe kept on up the stairs.

  Passing the open doorway to Lady Benedicta’s chamber, Joliffe glimpsed why she might have chosen to go to the tower’s top for a time, crowded as the room was with the bright talk and quick laughter of a great many—or maybe only six or so—women come as guests for the wedding. If Lady Benedicta was as little given to laughter and talk as Joliffe had thus far seen her, that merry group could well have been wearing on her.

  As he stepped out on the tower’s roof, though, he saw that it was more than weariness had taken her there. The roof, round like the tower, was low-pitched, coming to a point in its middle, with around its outer edge a narrow walkway made of wooden slats fixed to wooden rails over the guttering that carried rainwater away to drain through the holes through the base of the outer wall. Since no Deneby lord had ever paid the royal fee for right to embattle his tower, that outer wall was not the high and crenellated battlement it might have been but merely low, with its flat top making a goodly place to sit, which was what Lady Lovell and Lady Benedicta were doing there. Almost as far from the door as they could be, they were seated side by side on cushions they must have brought with them, Lady Benedicta with her head bowed, one hand covering her eyes, with Lady Lovell holding her other hand and looking worriedly at her.

  They both looked toward Joliffe as he came through the doorway, and knowing he was not going to be welcomed for himself, he stepped quickly aside for Lord Lovell to go past him. Lord Lovell did and the women stood up to curtsy, his wife looking faintly surprised but Lady Benedicta’s face blank of anything but courtesy, not even sign of the tears Joliffe had thought she must be hiding behind her hand.

  “My lord?” said Lady Lovell, still holding Lady Benedicta by the hand. From what Joliffe knew of her, she was a lively, kindly woman. If her kindness held good against what was coming, he would be glad she was here, sorry as he was for everything else.

  But sorry saved no one, and when Lord Lovell said, “My ladies,” in a way that warned he was not pleasantly here, his wife took double hold on Lady Benedicta’s hand with both her own and asked, “What is it?”

  “A question first,” said Lord Lovell. “Lady Benedicta, is Mariena your daughter?”

  With a little bewilderment and open surprise, Lady Benedicta said, “Yes.”

  “And Will is your son?”

  “Yes.” Firmly and even-voiced, with her guard now up between her surprise and him.

  “And John Harcourt the elder was your lover years ago.”

  Braced for many things, she was not braced for that. She stiffened, then lifted her head higher and said, “Yes. And for it I’ve done such penance as my priest required of me.”

  Lady Lovell seemed unsurprised by that, but Joliffe had already gathered that Lady Benedicta and her lover had never been much of a secret. And now others were coming up the stairs, their voices ahead of them, and he moved well aside from the door, around the walkway’s curve, as Lord Lovell, hearing them as well, turned toward the doorway.

  Will came out first, bounding with eagerness but pausing to make a creditable bow to Lord a
nd Lady Lovell before his mother held out her free hand to him and said, “Come here, Will.”

  Will started to obey, turning sideways to go past Joliffe on the narrow way between the slant of the roof and the outer wall, but maybe suddenly not certain everything was well because he stopped half-way between Joliffe and his mother, just as Mariena came out the doorway in her turn. She took in everyone with quick-eyed curiosity even while she curtseyed to Lord and Lady Lovell before she had to shift toward Joliffe, who had to shift farther along to make room for Sir Edmund now following her onto the walkway. He, too, bowed, and said with the ease of a man with an open conscience, “We’ve quite a gathering here.” Adding with a glance cast at the sky, “We’re likely to be wet before long, though, my lord.”

  Lord Lovell, not diverted by either courtesy or weather, said, “A question, Sir Edmund. Is Mariena your daughter?”

  Openly taken a-back by the question, Sir Edmund said, “Sir?” Then, as certainly as Lady Benedicta had, he answered, “Yes. Of course she is.”

  “And Will is your son.”

  More strongly despite he was beginning to look confused and maybe wary, Sir Edmund said again, “Yes.”

  Lord Lovell looked from him to Lady Benedicta and back again. “Then the lies have begun.”

  “I think Will should not be here for this,” said Lady Benedicta.

  “I didn’t ask for him to come,” Lord Lovell said. “Sir Edmund?”

  “Since you’d asked for Mariena and me, I saw no harm,” Sir Edmund answered. “Now . . .” He looked quickly between his wife and Lord Lovell. Whatever he saw there, he seemed to change from what he had been going to say and said instead with a kind of muted defiance, “No. Let him stay. Let’s all hear whatever this is.” He looked at Joliffe. “But what’s he here for?”

  “For my reasons,” Lord Lovell said. “Now. Sir Edmund, the man you first chose for your daughter to marry was the son of your wife’s lover, yes?”

  That seemed to take no one by surprise, not even Will. Stiffly but with no sign he was uneased, Sir Edmund said, “He had not been her lover for a long time past, and anyway the man is dead.”

  “So is his son now.” Lord Lovell looked to Lady Benedicta. “That was your doing, wasn’t it?”

  Her face became a rigid mask, Lady Benedicta held silent, not even protesting her innocence.

  But Lord Lovell had not waited for her answer, had returned his look to Sir Edmund and challenged, “The thing is—Mariena is not your daughter, is she?”

  Sir Edmund had taken talk of his wife’s lover with no particular feeling, but drew a sudden inward hiss of breath before declaring sharply, “She is, sir.”

  “What you intended,” Lord Lovell said as if he had said nothing, “was to marry your supposed daughter to her own half-brother. In deliberate revenge for your wife’s faithlessness, yes?”

  Joliffe was maybe the only one near enough to Mariena to hear her soft gasp at that. Standing aside as he was from everyone, he was able to see them all save Mariena, turned too much away from him for him to see her face, but her rigid back and that soft gasp told much as Sir Edmund said fiercely, “That’s a foul thing to say, my lord. I protest it.”

  Lord Lovell, ignoring his protest, turned back to Lady Benedicta, challenging her now with, “To keep your daughter from that marriage, you poisoned young Harcourt. You killed him. Gave a cruel death to a young man who’d never done you harm.”

  After a moment of silent stare at him, Lady Benedicta said, “You claim to know much, my lord.”

  “I know enough,” he returned. Despite he knew little, he sounded very otherwise.

  It was as fine a play of feigned confidence as Joliffe had ever seen. Whether it would have sufficed against Sir Edmund and Lady Benedicta he didn’t have chance to learn, because Mariena cried out at her mother, “You know you killed him! We all know it! You hated I’d be happy with him and so you killed him!”

  Like a taut-held bow set suddenly free by its bowstring breaking, Lady Benedicta turned on her, snarling, all the mask gone. “You blind, idiot fool! I did it to keep you from mortal sin! From incest with your own brother!” She pointed at Sir Edmund. “A sin he meant to set you to for yet more revenge on me.”

  “I loved John Harcourt!” Mariena screamed at her.

  “You lusted for him,” her mother flung back scornfully. “You’ve never loved anything. All you’ve ever felt is lust. You even lust for him.” She jerked her head at Sir Edmund. “And he . . .”

  Sir Edmund cut sharply into her words. “I didn’t know Harcourt was her brother. If you had told me . . .”

  “You knew,” Lady Benedicta said back at him. “You’ve always known Mariena isn’t your daughter. You knew better than anyone that we shared nothing but a bed in the while when she was conceived. Or for years afterward.”

  “You’d sworn you’d never see Harcourt again,” Sir Edmund said, cold and harsh. “But you went off that one more time, like a bitch in heat, and—”

  “You knew she’s not your daughter,” Lady Benedicta flung back at him. “From the very first you knew. That was the only forgivable part of your starting to lust for her when she was barely twelve. Too proud to bed servants, oh, yes, you were that. But your twelve-year-old daughter . . .”

  “Your bastard!” Sir Edmund said. “And for all she was hot and ready even then, at twelve, I never had her!”

  Raw with scorn and anger, Lady Benedicta said back, “I’ll grant you that. You had me instead. Instead of her, you rutted me and I had to let you, to keep you from her.”

  “At least it finally got me a son!”

  In their freed hatred for each other they had forgotten everything else. Even when Sir Edmund made to move past Lord Lovell, to circle the roof toward his wife, and Lord Lovell put out an arm, stopping him at the same moment Lady Lovell moved away from Lady Benedicta to put herself as barrier if Sir Edmund had come farther, neither Sir Edmund nor Lady Benedicta gave either of them heed except Sir Edmund stayed where he was, still hurling his hatred at his wife with, “That’s the one good thing you’ve ever done for me. My Will.”

  “He’s mine, too!”

  “But after that all you’ve been good for is dead babies. Making love to you was like making love to a log, and all I got for it were dead babies. And her?” He flung a hand toward Mariena without looking at her. “That precious daughter of your lover? I caught her, age fifteen, with a squire’s hand in her gown and her own hand between his thighs. I beat him and—”

  “And probably had yourself in Mariena’s bed before the day was out,” Lady Benedicta said at him. “That’s about when it started between you, wasn’t it? Though I didn’t know until far too late. It’s you I should have killed instead of John Harcourt!”

  “But they burn wives who kill husbands, don’t they?” Sir Edmund said back at her. “And nobody would believe it was any accident if I suddenly sickened and died. You’d have been burned within a month. Besides”—he jerked his head toward Mariena—“she enjoys it. She’s as hot for it as you are cold.”

  “She enjoys it and it keeps you out of me!” Lady Benedicta said. “But to marry her off to her own half-brother . . .”

  Sir Edmund laughed. “God’s blood, I loved the thought of that! I would have married her to him, let them have their sport, and then told the world I’d found out too late they were brother and sister, half and half. He’d be ruined by the foulness. I’d never been able to ruin his father but that would have done for the son! And you I’d finally be able to put close-confined into a nunnery, no one to say me nay, and Mariena I’d have back all for myself again for as long as I wanted!”

  “But I wanted John Harcourt!” Mariena cried out. “I loved him!”

  Sir Edmund and Lady Benedicta both looked at her almost blankly, as if only now they remembered there was anyone but themselves here to hear their hatred. Then Lady Benedicta cried back at her with angry despair, “He was your brother! Don’t you understand that? You couldn’t hav
e him! It would have been incest!”

  “Incest is nothing! I’d already done incest!” Mariena pointed at Sir Edmund. “With him. I . . .” She stopped, turned her look from her mother to Sir Edmund to her mother again, then back to Sir Edmund, staring now, her mouth open in a way that would have been laughable any other time or place; and Joliffe realized that only now had she caught up to what they had been saying. Still staring at Sir Edmund, she said almost blankly, “You’re not my father.”

  He laughed, cruel and hard at her. “No, my dear fool. I’m not your father. It’s never been incest between us. Only lust.”

  “But we . . . when we . . .” She looked back to Lady Benedicta. Her voice and face hardened. “It was supposed to hurt you, what we did. That I’d bed with my father. But you knew he wasn’t.”

  Lady Benedicta shook her head and said with sudden, crushing sadness, “Mariena, the only thing that hurts me, besides you hate me, is your foolish lusting, and from that I couldn’t save you.”

  “You knew he wasn’t my father!” Mariena shrilled. “You knew it and you’ve been laughing at me for it!”

  “Mariena, there has never been anything about you I’ve laughed at,” Lady Benedicta said with the weariness of a heart and mind worn almost to nothing with enduring. “I swear, believe me, that I’ve never laughed at you.”

  But Mariena was beyond hearing anything except herself. She shoved past Joliffe as if he were a thing in her way, not a person; pushed him so hard aside with a hand on his chest that the back of his knees caught on the low wall of the battlement and he sat abruptly down as she passed him, crying at her mother and back at Sir Edmund, “You’ve both laughed at me! Both of you! You’ve laughed at me and used me!” And at Sir Edmund, “You never loved me!”

  No more than she had ever loved either of them or done other than use them, too. But what she did was always different than what was done to her, Joliffe thought. At least in her own mind. But she was near to Will, still standing caught between all the angers around him. And she grabbed him and with her anger’s strength swung him onto the wall, facing outward, a shove away from falling, crying out in her rage, “All you’ve ever cared about is him! I’ve always wanted him dead and now he’s going to be!”