A Play of Knaves

by Margaret Frazer

  “I don’t know!” Sy exclaimed. “Come!”

  Ellis surely would not have, but at that moment the girl Claire came from the house and toward them, nearly but not quite running, her skirts lifted out of her feet’s way and fear very open on her young face. “Sy, hurry them!” she said. “It’s Mother. I’m afraid . . .” But she gave up on Sy without a pause, going past him to Ellis, so desperate that she laid a hand on his arm as she pleaded up at him with fear and tears in her eyes, “Come and make her think of something else. She’s so frightened, listening to them. She’s going to make herself sick. Please come.”

  Joliffe knew they were lost. Ellis would likely have held out against Sy and almost any other man, but a pleading girl with tears in her eyes . . . In fairness, Joliffe had to admit that he started toward the hall in the same moment Ellis did. Nor was Gil behindhand, or Piers. Though Piers did not count. He liked trouble. But for the rest of us, Joliffe thought, we’re idiots. He also thought it was unfortunate that understanding they were idiots was not the same as stopping being idiots.

  With a gasped, “Thank you,” Claire let go of Ellis and made to lead them inside, but Joliffe put out a hand to pause her, asking, “Where are they quarreling at? In the hall?”

  “In the orchard. Beyond the garden. Father took them out there to be away. But we can hear them yelling.”

  Joliffe wanted to ask again, “About what?” but more to the necessary point Ellis said, “Where’s your mother?”

  Claire was going forward again and they followed her as she answered, “In the solar. Will you sing to her or something? Anything to turn her mind.”

  She had them into the hall now. With its old hearth in the middle of the floor and smoke-blackened beams, it was raised above its former humbleness by a table set across its upper end, covered with a white linen cloth and set with good pewter dishes, waiting for a meal that had not happened yet. At the hall’s other end two women servants were standing by a doorway to probably the kitchen, hand-wringing and looking worried. Claire pointed Sy toward them, saying, “Make sure they don’t let supper spoil,” but headed herself toward a door that had to lead into the new range of rooms where the solar would be.

  “Wait,” said Ellis. “We need a moment.”

  They surely did, having no thought of what they were going to do, and they clumped together, heads close in quick talk. It was always best to have a thing practiced and certain before they played it, but they were also practiced at making up something on the moment—a needed skill when playing the streets with no certainty of what could happen next—and it took few words before Piers handed the tabor and pipes to Gil and hitched at his tunic and hosen to be sure they were loose enough, while Ellis said to Claire, “The solar is right through there?” beckoning his head toward the door beyond the table.

  “Yes.”

  “You go in first,” Ellis said. “Say, ‘The players are here,’ step well aside from the door without looking back, and after that go along with whatever we do. Yes?”

  Tears gone and eyes wide, Claire nodded.

  “Go on then,” Ellis said with his warmest smile. The rest of them smiled, too, all showing cheerful confidence and no sign of how much of it was feigned.

  Claire nodded again and went. They heard her say stiffly, “The players are here, Mother,” and saw her step aside. Ellis tapped Piers on the shoulder and Piers darted through the doorway, paused for a quick bow that gave him time to see where everyone and the furnishings were, then flung himself forward into a somersault that ended with him walking on his hands, legs up in the air. There were women’s startled gasps and half a laugh, but by then Ellis had strode into the room in Piers’ wake. He slapped Piers’ feet, toppling Piers into a sprawl on the floor where he sat glaring up at Ellis as Ellis declared, one hand flung out, the other laid on his heart, “Ladies fair and ladies fine, I come . . .”

  Behind him, Gil set up a firm rat-a-tat on the tabor and a tootle on the pipes and jigged into the room, followed by Joliffe with his lute at the ready. The solar was a long room, with unglazed windows at either end and against one wall steep stairs leading to the room above it. Through the nearer window streamed the evening’s last light, warm over the brown-tiled floor, the bright, tasseled cushions on a bench, the polished pewter pitcher and goblets on a small table. Little might have been done to change the old house into the hall, but much had been lavished here to make this new room into a place of comfort.

  But through the far window—toward the orchard, Joliffe presumed—two men’s raised, angry voices battered at what should have been the room’s ease. Near the room’s one chair, Geretruda Gosyn stood with her hands wringing at each other while Mistress Ashewell looked to be either steadying her or else urging her to the chair.

  What Joliffe instantly wanted was to be where he could hear what was being said so angrily between the men, but Gil was busily jigging around the room, drumming and tootling, and Joliffe carried onward as he was supposed to do, elbowing Ellis aside in mid-declaration and hitting a firm strum across his lute as he did, saying louder than Ellis, “Ladies fair and ladies fine . . .”

  Ellis, outrage in every line of him, first turned a glare on him, then gave him a hard shove on the shoulder. Joliffe tilted sideways, teetering on one foot. His arms flailed briefly to bring him back to the balance he was never in true danger of losing, and then he made a return shove at Ellis, who made to shove him back, but Piers had “recovered” from his sprawl and now, still sitting on the floor, grabbed hold of Ellis’ near leg and pretended to sink his teeth into it. Ellis jerked free with a yell and began to hop around on one foot, holding his “hurt” leg. Joliffe tossed his lute to Gil, who was already thrusting the pipes through his belt to have his hands free to catch it skillfully just as Ellis “blundered” into Joliffe and they both went down in a tangled heap, almost on top of Piers, who yelped and scrambled away, then dove back in to grab Ellis’ leg again and worry at it like a determined puppy.

  While they were busy at that, Gil, well aside from the fray, struck a fine pose and a pretty flurry of notes from the lute, and began to sing the sweet spring song of summer coming in with cuckoo’s call and lambs and all. That brought an end to Joliffe and Ellis’ “fighting.” Still entangled, they glared up at Gil, then struggled to free themselves from each other, trying to recover their dignity and taking up the song in round as they climbed to their feet. Only Piers remained determinedly oblivious, still clinging and pretending to puppy-worry at Ellis’ leg until Ellis took him by the belt and lifted him bodily from the floor, breaking Piers’ hold. Piers, defeated, gave up and, hanging there, began to sing, too, his clear, bright voice blending with the rest of theirs. Ellis set him on his feet, and with all discord vanished, the four of them finished the song, with first Gil dropping away, then Ellis, then Joliffe, leaving Piers to sing alone, sweetly bringing it to an end and silence.

  By then Geretruda had sunk onto the chair and now held out a hand to Piers, saying, “Sweet boy. Come here.”

  Used to women being charmed by his fair curls and sweet face—“Fooled like birds by a snare,” was how Ellis put it—Piers went forward, bowed, and then knelt on one knee before her, looking up at her, all bright eyes and innocence. She laid a hand on his curls and said again, “Sweet boy.”

  At the church ale yesterday Joliffe had thought Geretruda Gosyn looked frail. Today she was gone past frail to outright ill, was gray-faced, with the skin drawn in and hollowed under her cheeks and at her temples, and the hand she put out to Piers’ curls more thin, ridged bones than flesh. Whatever was amiss with her, it was not something come on her suddenly but was an old foe in a fight that she was losing, Joliffe thought.

  But for that moment she was smiling, her eyes soft with the pleasure of laughter and Piers’ singing, and Claire and Mistress Ashewell, too, were both smiling, maybe more at the sick woman’s pleasure than with their own but eased along with her out of the tautness there had been.

  And then Walter Go
syn slammed in through the doorway at the room’s far end, saying backward over his shoulder as he came, “No! Once more and finally, no! The only thing you’re welcome to is to get out of here and not come back!”

  Behind him, Hal Medcote came in far less vehemently, no sign of anger on him, saying, “I’m only saying it as something for you to think on.” He smiled. “Before the crowner comes.”

  Gosyn turned on him. “So you’ve said, and I’m saying right back at you, if that’s a threat, it’s a threat you can keep to yourself. You’re not laying hand on a single thing of mine.”

  Geretruda started up from her chair. All her ease and pleasure gone, she went toward them, crying at her husband, “Please don’t! Please!”

  Claire went after her as Gosyn turned from Hal Medcote to say, still raging, “Do you know what he wants now? He wants Claire!”

  Geretruda clutched one hand to the base of her throat. “What?”

  Ashewell, just come through the doorway behind Hal, said with anger only barely more controlled than Gosyn’s, “And he still wants that Nicholas should marry Eleanor. He’s as mad as his father was.”

  The players had all drawn aside and toward the room’s far end when the men had burst in, but not so far that Joliffe did not see the desperate look that passed between Claire, now holding to her mother to steady her, and Nicholas Ashewell, just come in behind his father.

  “He says it doesn’t even matter to him,” Gosyn stormed, “that maybe one of us—Ashewell or me—killed his father!”

  “Haven’t I thought of doing it myself sometimes?” Hal said lightly. His voice took on a slightly harder edge. “Nor did he ever let anything stand in the way of his own profit, did my father, and what man doesn’t want his son to follow in his footsteps?”

  Joliffe had to admire Hal Medcote’s boldness. Not many men would seek a bride while saying he thought her father was possibly a murderer, and on the same day that he’d found his father’s murdered body. That could be dimwittedness rather than boldness, of course, but Joliffe doubted there was anything dim about Hal Medcote’s wits.

  “Besides,” Hal went on, smiling, “if we settle this before the crowner comes, then we’ll all be family together, with less suspicions likely to fall our way.”

  Gosyn’s hands were fists, kept at his side only by harsh will, Joliffe thought, but whatever answer Gosyn might have made was stopped by Geretruda saying, her hand still clutched to her throat, “Is it truly so ill a thought? If Nicholas is going to marry Eleanor, why not Claire for Hal?”

  Claire cried out in protest, Nicholas jerked forward a step, and Ashewell’s face darkened with the answer he was going to give that, but it was Gosyn who swore, “By God’s beard, are you gone mad, woman?”

  Geretruda began to cry weakly.

  “I’ll leave you to it, shall I?” Hal Medcote said to everyone, all friendliwise, then came away from the men and to Claire and, before she could stop him, took her hand, raised it, and kissed it. She tried to twist free, but he kept hold on her long enough to make her meet his gaze as he said, “It’s all for you, my lovely. Be sure of that,” before he let her go.

  As Claire snatched her hand behind her, safe away from him, he made a bow to Geretruda; and despite he likely saw from the corner of his eye that only Ashewell’s grip on Gosyn’s arm was holding Gosyn back, he made a bow to Mistress Ashewell, too, and left the solar with the easy assurance of a welcomed guest.

  Geretruda began to sink toward the floor. Gosyn wrenched free of Ashewell, not to follow Hal but to go to her. So did Mistress Ashewell, and between them they helped her to the chair again while Claire hurried to pour what looked to be cider from a pitcher into one of the goblets. Her mother took the goblet gratefully but Claire had to steady and help her lift it so she could drink.

  Ill as she was—and everyone knowing it—why had Gosyn been foolish enough to have his quarrel with Hal Medcote within her hearing and afterward bring it into the house? Joliffe wondered.

  Almost as if Rose were there, he could hear her saying, “Men!”

  The cider had brought a trace of color into Geretruda’s face. She let Claire take the goblet and reached a hand to take hold on her husband’s sleeve, asking faint-voiced and a little querulously, “But why not Hal for Claire? He’s well-formed, well-mannered, has lands enough. If Nicholas is to marry Eleanor . . .”

  Claire and Nicholas shared another desperate look across the room, while Gosyn said with muted fury, trying for gentle with his wife but mostly failing, “I wouldn’t sell a dog to Hal Medcote. He’s . . .”

  Mistress Ashewell cut in over him, saying clearly and firmly, “Supper must be ready by now. Shouldn’t we go to it?” It was a question with command behind it as she came to take Geretruda by one arm and around the shoulders, helping her to her feet while adding gently, “You’ll feel the better for food, Truda. We all will. Come now. All this talk will keep for later.” She sent a look past Geretruda to the husbands that dared them to say otherwise.

  Neither man took her dare. With something like good grace, however forced, they left the solar for the hall, save at the doorway Geretruda said something to Mistress Ashewell, who nodded, gave her into Gosyn’s keeping, and turned back to the players, who were keeping very quiet as well as out of the way.

  “Fellows,” Mistress Ashewell said, and they all bowed and Ellis stepped forward, asking, “Mistress?”

  “You’ll still play for us tonight, I hope?”

  He made her another low bow. “We will.”

  “Since I doubt our talk will be worth much, you can begin as soon as the food is on the table. You’re going to divert us with something light of heart, I hope?”

  Again there was more command than question in that, and Ellis answered, “Assuredly, my lady.”

  She bent her head in approval and left them. They looked at one another in a silence that admitted nothing of their thoughts. Then Joliffe said, “Well then, let’s go make merry, shall we?”

  Chapter 15

  As the players had found out often enough before now, it was one thing to “make merry” themselves and altogether another thing to make others merry. That evening in Gosyn’s hall they succeeded very little at the latter. The fall-about excesses of The Baker’s Cake brought some of the servants at the lower table to quickly smothered laughter and wary glances up the hall at Gosyn at the high table where almost the only laughter was from Geretruda and not so much as if she were truly diverted as that she was determined to be.

  Mistress Ashewell attempted laughter, too, and seemed to try to bring her husband to it as well, laying a hand on his arm, but while he put one of his own hands over hers it was only briefly. Mostly he dug at his food, frowning at either it or his thoughts. Gosyn did the same. Nor did Joliffe ever see either young Nicholas or Claire more than glance up from their plates.

  What else he noted was that, unlike the supper at Ashewell’s manor, when Nicholas and Claire had sat side by side, here they were set at opposite ends of the table from each other, well apart. Was that a sign that decisions were already being made by someone as to how things were going to go?

  The players made their bows at the end to some happy clapping and some table-rapping from the servants but only scattered, half-attending applause from the high table. Gosyn did stand, though, and hold out coins that Ellis went to take with thanks and a deep bow.

  “They were well-earned,” Gosyn said.

  They had been, Joliffe thought, though the work looked to have been mostly wasted, especially on Gosyn.

  Smiling with determined pleasure, Geretruda said, “If you go to the kitchen, there’ll be supper for you, too.”

  Ellis bowed again with more thanks, rejoined the others, and with much bowing and flourishing of hats by Ellis, Joliffe, and Gil, and with Piers doing back-flips after them the length of the hall, they made their retreat, escaping out the door at the foot of the hall into a small room that looked to serve as butlery and pantry together.

  One
of the women servants at the lower table had scurried out of the hall ahead of them and now stood at another door on the other side of the room, smiling and beckoning them to come in, leading them through to the kitchen itself. Beginning to bustle around it, she said happily, “That was great good sport. I could have laughed myself half-sick if they weren’t all so down and dark-humoured up the hall.”

  Ellis, Gil, and Piers sat themselves on a bench, watching with interest as she sliced thick pieces of bread on the worktable. Joliffe stayed on his feet, leaning against the wall, and asked, “Are they often that down-mouthed?”

  The woman said with a regretful shake of her head, “No. It’s only this little while, what with one thing and another, things have gone so sour.”

  “Your mistress being ill can’t help,” Joliffe ventured.

  Beginning to spread soft young cheese on the bread slices, the woman made a tching sound. “That’s sad, that is. We’ve all been hoping it was a winter thing and it’d pass off, that she’d better with the spring and be herself again. Seems more and more she won’t though. Master will be beside himself if she . . . if it goes to the bad.”

  “Pray God it won’t,” Joliffe said, certain though he was, by every sign, that it would.

  “We’ve prayed, right enough. In Lent, Master even sent one of the men to Saint Swithin’s shrine with an offering, but we’ve seen no help from it. Here you are.”

  She handed the slices of bread and young cheese to them all, with a particular smile at Piers and a quick tousle of his fair curls. He smiled his sweetest smile at her, then looked with faint longing toward a pot on the hearth and said, “That smells right good, mistress.”

  The woman laughed at him. “That’s next, and some cider to follow.”

  Piers gave her his best bright-sweet-boy smile and she tousled his hair some more before she turned away toward some wooden bowls on a shelf. She wasn’t to know he hated having his hair tousled, but the players all did and Joliffe grinned at him behind her back. Piers stuck out his tongue. Ellis made a hissing sound at both of them and Gil smothered a laugh.