A Play of Knaves

by Margaret Frazer

  For now.

  His stride did not falter but his mind did.

  For now?

  From where had that thought come?

  And if not this life, then what? He knew full well how many might-have-beens he had slid away from in his life thus far because none of them had been what he wanted, nor had he seen any others that would suit and serve him better than this one did.

  So why the “for now”?

  They passed Master Ashewell’s manor gate without seeing anyone except a dog that came out to bark at them with all the gladness of having something to do, but by the time they were going steeply up into Ashewell village, the mist was thinning and people in the street called out and waved as they passed, with no sight of Father Hewgo to spoil anyone’s pleasure. On the village’s far side, with the mist fast vanishing and the sun beginning to break yellow through it, they took the road westward, their plan being to perform at Swindon before the day was out and spend the night there. None of them took particular note of a horse closing on them at a canter from behind. There was room enough on the road here for a rider to pass them without trouble.

  Except the rider slowed to a trot as he passed them, then swung his horse into Tisbe’s way and brought his horse to a stop.

  He was no one they knew. Tisbe stopped without need of Joliffe telling her, and he knew that behind the cart Ellis, walking with Rose until then, would be moving closer to the cart’s back, ready to grab out and toss the clubs to them if need be; but on Tisbe’s other side Basset was saying with no apparent alarm at all despite he would be as ready for trouble as the rest of them, “You want us for something, sir?”

  “You’re the players were in Master Ashewell’s pasture last night?” the rider demanded.

  By now Joliffe had taken in the fellow had no sword, only the usual dagger at his belt. Nor was there any sound of other men moving in ambush on them. Whatever this was, it wasn’t likely robbery or assault, and with probably the same thought, Basset asked somewhat more boldly, “You are . . . ?”

  “Master Kyping’s man. He sent me to find you. You are the players?”

  “We are,” Basset said.

  “Then on Master Kyping’s order you’re to go back to the field where you were and stay there.”

  “What’s happened?” Basset asked sharply; and well he might, because something surely had.

  And back at him with matching sharpness, the man said, “John Medcote was found murdered this morning hardly half a mile from where you were.”

  Chapter 11

  There being neither point nor use to making trouble about going back, the players made none, and when the man saw they were going to give him no argument, his manner eased enough for him to offer, “If we go on a little way and turn off the high road the next chance there is, I can show you side ways and save you turning right around and going back on your tracks.”

  “Will they be wide enough for our cart, sir?” Basset asked.

  “They’re wide enough for haywains. Should do for your cart.”

  Joliffe was weighing as fast as Basset surely was how much trouble they might be in, with Medcote dead and close to their camp. Strangers were always better to blame for trouble than someone everyone knew. Even with a lord’s name to their company, they were still folk not in the right way of things to most men’s minds, and therefore likely capable of anything and therefore always easiest to blame. But Basset always held that it was best to be at least outwardly friendly to anyone with possible authority, pointing out—sometimes through gritted teeth—“It’s being better they like us than not.” So here and now, as Joliffe set Tisbe forward again and the man brought his own horse around to walk beside them, Basset asked easily, “You’re from around here, then, you know the ways so well?”

  “Born and bred over Uffington way and in Master Kyping’s service these three years.”

  “So you know who doesn’t like whom around here,” Basset said.

  The man barked a short laugh. “What you’re asking is who didn’t like John Medcote, yes? Ha! I’d be hard put to it to say who did like him around here. You’ve not much to fear there. Master Kyping’ll be looking at more than you.”

  “Medcote didn’t seem to get on well even with his own priest,” Joliffe prompted.

  The man short-laughed again. “Only when it suited the pair of them to make someone else miserable between them.”

  “His own household didn’t seem pleasant with itself either when we were there,” Basset said.

  “It wouldn’t be. Medcote and his son were like Medcote and the priest—hell on everyone else when they worked together, hell on each other when they fell out. Here’s where we turn.”

  The lane he showed them into dropped at a long slant and talk stopped until they had Tisbe and the cart at the bottom and on level again. But then the man took up where he’d left off with, “Not that Hal Medcote doesn’t raise hell fifteen different ways that have nothing to do with his father. I wouldn’t care to cross either of the women either. It’s said Anela Medcote has a hand like a man when it comes to whipping a servant.”

  “Must make it hard to keep servants,” Joliffe said.

  “Medcote has—had his ways. He’d get someone in debt to him and then make them work it off in his household. Cheap wages, that. That’s how he kept some of them there, anyway.”

  “Must make for an angry household,” Basset said.

  “From what I’ve heard and seen, Medcote liked angry. Got someone too angry this time, though, it seems.”

  So there would be suspects enough besides themselves, and plenty of them with better reason for wanting Medcote dead than could be found for them. With luck, Kyping wanted them back only for the form of the thing, to ask his questions and then let them go on their way.

  With luck and the weight of being Lord Lovell’s players on their side.

  Kyping’s man left them at the gateway to Grescumb Field with promise that Master Kyping would be along when he could be. A promise open-ended enough to mean there was no telling how long they would be here now they were back, and as he brought Tisbe to a halt with their cart where it had been before, Joliffe felt slightly unsettled at the wrongness of being here at all so soon after leaving. They never turned back on their tracks like this. A place left behind was a place left behind until maybe they came that way again some other month or, more likely, year. Here they had been gone so short a time that the grass had not begun to straighten around their erstwhile firepit.

  Joliffe shook his head to shake the strangeness of it down to the bottom of his mind and asked Basset, “Shall I unharness Tisbe or not?”

  With no need to seem at ease and pleasant now Kyping’s man had gone, Basset openly grouched, “May as well, since there’s no saying how long we’ll be kept here.”

  Ellis knelt and started to pry the turves out of the firepit with his dagger, muttering angrily, “May as well plan to be here for the night at least. No one’s likely to make hurry over us.”

  Very quietly, Rose told Piers and Gil, “Firewood and water, please.”

  Piers, unusually silent and with no bounce to his step, headed toward the trees. Most of his growing up had been spent in the company’s dark years, when they had been without a lord’s protection. He knew how bad trouble could be for players.

  Gil, older by a few years but far younger in the company, cast uncertain, uneasy glances among them all but asked no questions as he took the bucket hanging under the cart and started for the stream.

  Rose, still very quiet, said to her father, “I was going to buy food along the way today. We’re somewhat short. Should I go into the village, do you think?”

  Basset shook his head against that. “Best none of us go anywhere. And maybe especially into the village just now. Whatever you have at hand will have to do for today at least.”

  Ellis was wrong, though, about no one making hurry over them. The morning’s mist was all burned away but the sun was not nearly to its midday height whe
n Kyping rode into the pasture. The man who had fetched the players back was with him, but Kyping stopped just inside the gateway, dismounted, gave his reins to his man, and came on alone and a-foot.

  Joliffe was away to one side, brushing Tisbe more for his comfort than hers. Giving her a final pat, he strolled back to join Basset, Ellis, and Rose beside the small fire and the kettle where some of their dried beef was gently seething, both to soften the stuff that otherwise was hardly better to chew than plain leather and to add a little savor to the dried beans seething with them. On the other side of the cart, Gil and Piers broke off their game of mumble-the-peg—a game even Piers found it hard to cheat at—and came to join the others.

  Kyping began well enough, saying he regretted having to order their return, but it was easier for him than having to ride after them, not knowing when he’d be free of other questioning to do so.

  “Besides it being better to have your best suspects close to hand,” Basset said evenly, there being no use in letting Kyping think they were fools.

  “Yes,” Kyping agreed, accepting that as evenly as Basset said it.

  “A question of our own before yours,” Basset said. “Why are we talking to you rather than whoever is constable here?”

  “Because he went six days ago with his wife to show off their newborn to his mother in Swindon. I’ve sent someone to fetch him, and none too happy he’s going to be about it. Meantime, I’m serving in his place and am none too happy about it either.”

  “Your man said Medcote was murdered close by here,” Basset said. “Shall we start off by our declaring we heard nothing.”

  “You may as well. It’s not likely you would have heard anything. It happened half a mile away and in the woods along the stream and I doubt there was much noise about it. So, where were all of you last night?”

  “Here,” Basset answered. “All of us. All night.”

  Kyping gave a one-sided grin. “The expected answer, yes. You didn’t see anyone, hear anything? Last night? This morning?”

  Mostly they all shook their heads, but Piers said, “I did. This morning I saw a man go past in the lane. Going that way.” He pointed toward Ashewell’s.

  The players all looked at him in surprise. “You did?” said Rose. “You never said.”

  “How?” Joliffe asked. “Until almost before we left, the mist was still so thick that way we couldn’t see the hedge or the lane.”

  “He was running around,” said Ellis. “Remember? Making stupid noises.”

  Paying that no heed, Piers said to Kyping, “I was close to the gate and this man went by. He stopped and stared at me half a moment, and I stopped and stared at him. Then he went on. He walked fast.”

  “So would I if someone came capering madly out of a mist at me,” Ellis muttered.

  “Did you know him? Was he someone you’d seen before?” Kyping asked.

  “No. I didn’t know him and I hadn’t ever seen him.”

  “Can you tell me what he looked like, what he was wearing?”

  “He was wearing a yellow tunic,” Piers answered with firm confidence. “He had a brown—I think it was brown; dark but not black anyway—sleeveless surcoat over it, and plain shoes.”

  “Nothing on his head?”

  Piers frowned into his memory and finally said, “A hood. You know—the kind that just covers the shoulders and comes up to cover the head. It was brown like the surcoat, only not the same brown.”

  “That was a lot to see in so little a while,” Kyping said.

  Proud of himself and enjoying being the center of things, Piers said, “I like clothes, so I note them. Not that these were much. Just common and not very good.” He hesitated, then added, “Or maybe they were good once but they’re old now. But maybe still his good-wear ones?”

  “Why didn’t you say you’d seen him?” Basset asked.

  Piers shrugged. “He wasn’t anyone. Just someone off to his morning work.”

  “Can you say better when this was?” Kyping asked.

  Piers shrugged again. “The sun was a little up so there was light all glowing through the mist, but the mist wasn’t shifting yet.”

  Kyping nodded as if he were thinking as much as listening. He thought a little longer, then asked, looking from face to face at all of them, “Why haven’t any of you said anything about how she”—he nodded at Rose, not knowing her name—“was supposed to meet with Medcote last night, there where his body was found?”

  Quickly, Rose said, “Because none of them knew about it. He wanted it. I didn’t. I refused him and didn’t see need of making trouble by telling it to anyone else.”

  The others’ turns of head toward her in surprise at the lie served as well to seem the surprise of men who had known nothing about the business at all.

  “You didn’t go?” Kyping prodded.

  “I did not,” Rose answered firmly.

  “How do you know of it?” Joliffe asked.

  “His son told me. And his wife.”

  “His wife?” Ellis echoed incredulously. “She knew and she told you?”

  “Seems Medcote didn’t trouble to make secret his doings that way.” Kyping swung a sharp look around at them all as he added, “Hal Medcote says he and his father were here three days ago. Friday, it would have been.”

  Joliffe felt Gil stiffen beside him and guessed his fists had clenched because Kyping looked down at them and then at Gil’s face and asked, “Yes?” in a way that told he meant to have an answer.

  Gil, looking surprised at having betrayed himself, stared back at him.

  Kyping prompted him, “You were here?”

  Gil looked at Basset, who nodded and said, “Just tell him.”

  Looking back to Kyping, Gil answered, “They thought Rose was alone here because I was gone to the stream. When I came out of the trees, Medcote was being lewd at her. She was frightened and backing away from him and Hal Medcote was sitting on his horse, laughing. When they saw me, when they saw she wasn’t alone, they left off and rode away.”

  Kyping looked to Rose. “That was the way of it?”

  “Yes. Except I was angry as well as frightened.”

  “Were threats made or blows given?”

  “There was nothing like that, no.”

  Kyping looked to Basset. “You played at their house that night. Was there any trouble then?”

  “None,” Basset said.

  “Nor any other trouble with Medcote since you came?”

  “None. Nor would I say what passed on Friday or yesterday was ‘trouble’ so much as the kind of bother we meet with sometimes. Nothing new and nothing to kill anyone about.”

  With a wry turn to one side of his mouth, Kyping looked around at them all again and said, “That all seems well enough so far as it goes. The trouble is you’re players, aren’t you? It’s your business to seem other than you are. Yesterday I saw just how good you are at that, so how am I to know you’re not all lying now?”

  There was hardly a safe answer to make to that, and none of them said anything, merely went on looking back at him.

  Kyping gave almost a laugh, shrugged, and said, “So. Unless I learn you’re in some way lying to me, that’s the end of it so far as the business concerns you.”

  “And we can go on our way?” Basset asked.

  “Better if you don’t. The crowner will surely want to ask these same questions all over again for himself.” The crowner being the king’s officer charged with deciding whether a sudden death was accidental or should come under the law. “I’ve sent for him, but it’s never easy to say where my man will find him or how long he’ll take to come.” Since a shire had few crowners, they were often from home about their work. Kyping hesitated, then said, “Besides that, I’d like you to do more of what you’ve done already—ask questions and see what you can learn of things not likely to come my way.”

  So he wanted them to be his allies as well as suspects, Joliffe thought, and bowed with everyone else as Basset said, “Gladly,
sir.”

  With a slight bow of his own head, Kyping said, “My thanks. Until later, then.”

  He turned and started back toward the horses and his waiting man. Joliffe took a step after him, then sent a quick, questioning look at Basset. Basset nodded for him to go on, and Joliffe overtook Kyping midway across the field. Kyping stopped, turning toward him with a questioning look, and Joliffe asked, “Where were you last night, that you came here on foot?”

  Kyping showed grimly humoured understanding of the question. “Well asked, I suppose. I live somewhat beyond Faringdon and chose to stay last night at Master Ashewell’s. His wife is a cousin of my mother’s.”

  “Did you ask him about Medcote trying to force a marriage on Nicholas and why he hadn’t refused it out of hand?”

  “Not then. Not yet. I wanted to find out what else might be a-foot before I started that hare.”

  “Now you’ll have to.”

  “Now I’ll have to.”

  “At least, since you were there last night, you can say Ashewell safely was, too, and he can do as much for you,” Joliffe tried.

  “Not surely, for either of us. After we all went to our beds, I don’t know who can say where anyone was.”

  “Not Mistress Ashewell for her husband?”

  “She’ll say he was with her and never left, won’t she?”

  “Probably. But you never know with wives. Or husbands, come to that. Do you suppose she was no happier than Master Ashewell was at thought of her son marrying Medcote’s daughter?”

  “I’ve never noted anything friendly that way. The Medcotes are not a well-liked family, as you’ve surely noted. Which means, unfortunately, that I don’t lack people who were maybe willing to kill him.”