A Play of Knaves

by Margaret Frazer

  Had best be tomorrow, given how long Medcote’s body had lain out, waiting for its grave.

  As hoof-fall and the creak of the cart disappeared, the players all faced back to the fire where the flames were beginning to show brighter as dusk came on; and despite everything he had intended, Joliffe asked, “Did Eleanor Medcote and Kyping come here together this afternoon?”

  Everyone looked at him. For a moment no one answered. Then Basset said, “He was here. She came afterward. She must have had some purpose for coming, but maybe because he was here she never said.”

  “No,” said Rose. “I saw her. She didn’t mean to come here. She was riding past when she looked through the gateway and saw Kyping. She drew rein, hesitated, then turned in.” Rose paused, then added, “If I was asked, I’d say she was pleased to see Kyping. I could almost think she had been looking for him.”

  “She was more likely going to the Ashewells,” Ellis pointed out. “To see her boy-husband to be.”

  “She would have ridden on then, not come in,” Rose returned. “Master Kyping hadn’t seen her. There was no need to turn in.”

  “And she rode away with Kyping,” Joliffe said. “They went the same way away and it wasn’t toward Ashewell’s place.”

  “Because she was hoping to see Nicholas Ashewell secretly, and couldn’t once she’d met Kyping,” Ellis tried.

  “No one meets anyone secretly by taking a servant with them,” Joliffe said. “And she didn’t have to turn in here when she saw Kyping.”

  “Good enough,” Ellis said grumpily. “She wasn’t bound for the Ashewells. She was looking for Kyping and she found him. You’ve some sharp thought as to why, probably.”

  Joliffe did not. It was Rose who said, “Because she’d rather have him than Nicholas Ashewell. And Kyping wants her.” She gave a hard look around at them all, daring them to disbelieve her, adding with open scorn, “It’s not my fault you’re blind. You could see it in how they tried not to look at one another and couldn’t help themselves.”

  Ellis foolishly made a small snort of disbelief, but Joliffe said slowly, “And there was the way Kyping talked this morning of the wrongs her father had done her. He was angry about it. Yes.”

  “He cared,” Rose said. “You could hear it. He cared more about it than there was need to, I thought. Then seeing them here together, I saw more. The caring is on her side, too.”

  Joliffe started to say, “Then that . . .” but broke off, deciding his next thought was best left unsaid—that if there was something between Eleanor Medcote and Kyping, then Kyping was one more man with good reason to want John Medcote dead.

  Chapter 18

  In the morning, not much past first full light, Kyping’s man came with word that Medcote’s funeral would be at midmorning and the inquest directly after it.

  “Seems the crowner doesn’t want matters to get any more cold than they already are,” the man said. “He’s driving everyone double-fast about it and has Father Hewgo’s back up at his wanting the inquest in the church if the weather doesn’t hold.” They all cast eyes at the lightly clouded morning sky that might or might not turn to rain, depending on which way the wind veered, and the man added, “Otherwise, it’s to be in the churchyard for the press of folk there’s likely going to be.”

  When he was gone, Basset said, “Probably best we’re there for the funeral as well as the inquest. Surely best we wear our Lovell tabards, too, and, Rose, your Lovell gown.”

  This past winter she had made herself a gown parti-colored in Lovell red and yellow like the men’s tabards, to make better show of their arrivals at any place greater than a village. This time it would serve to keep clear in the crowner’s mind that she was as surely in the Lovell service as the men.

  “Who’s to stay with the cart and Tisbe?” Ellis asked.

  “Piers and Gil,” Basset answered.

  “Hai!” Piers protested. “Why should we miss everything?”

  “Because you’re the youngest and least needed at the inquest,” Basset said.

  “But the funeral!”

  “You’re not needed there either,” Joliffe pointed out. “It’s not you they’re burying.”

  Gil helped with, “We’ll play at merels, Piers, and this time I’ll win more than once out of ten.”

  “You won’t,” said Piers with satisfied surety, and by the time the rest of them left, he and Gil were quarreling happily over the gameboard.

  As Kyping’s man had supposed, there was a goodly crowd for the funeral, more than enough to fill the church. The Ashewells and the Gosyns, as near neighbors to the deceased, were surely in the church itself, but the players willingly stayed outside, keeping together in a corner of the churchyard. Some questioning looks were thrown their way, but no one showed especial suspicion or anger at them and they were left to themselves. All that was to the good. Either none of them were favored to be Medcote’s murderer or else, as the alewife had said, everyone was too pleased to have Medcote dead to care much who had done it.

  Joliffe kept that thought to himself, it not being good to goad Ellis when the players were keeping the solemn but unworried faces of innocent people at a sad occasion.

  On the other hand, they might be the most solemn people in the churchyard. In the wide space used for the plays three days ago, a table, a tall stool, and some benches, probably brought from nearby houses, were being set for the inquest, but with the black-draped solemnity of the funeral Mass shut away in the church, there was much easy talk among everyone waiting in the churchyard, no one looking to be cast down in grief. In token of the time, voices were mostly held low and what laughter there was brief and rare. Too, heads stayed turned away from the mound of newly dug earth beside the open, waiting grave at the far end of the churchyard.

  Whose choice had it been for Medcote not to be buried in the church—family’s or priest’s? Joliffe wondered. Maybe it had been Medcote’s own, made sometime and remembered now. At least his grave was close outside the chancel, in what some thought was more holy ground than other in a churchyard, being close to the altar and the Mass. If that were true, Medcote would be far closer to holiness in death than he had been in life, Joliffe thought, then tried, briefly, to repent of that uncharitable thought, failed, and let it go. There were some things not worth the struggle, and repenting of uncharitable thoughts about Medcote was one of them.

  He had been looking for Jack Hammond but did not see him. He would have to be here for the inquest, surely, if only to testify he had seen nothing and no one when he passed along the lane on Monday morning, so very likely he was among those who had been able to crowd into the church. Wat Offington was in sight, though, clotted together with several other men and some women who looked to be their wives just outside the churchyard gate. Whatever they were saying, it was not to anyone’s good if their sullen looks and sometimes angry gestures were anything by which to go. Certainly, solemn was not what they were or were even pretending to be, and Joliffe’s thought was that they would have done better to stay at home at their work than be here, maybe hoping for trouble.

  They made none, though, nor did anyone else. When Medcote’s body was carried from the church in solemn procession, quiet fell over the whole gathering and people drew back, clearing the way to the grave. Joliffe noted with mild surprise that although Master Ashewell and Gosyn were among those who came from the church, neither Mistress Ashewell nor Geretruda Gosyn were there, nor Claire, nor Nicholas. Geretruda might be too ill to come and Claire had stayed with her, he supposed. Or maybe, for all of them, avoiding Hal and Eleanor Medcote was worth the risk of offending Anela Medcote by their absence.

  The crowd’s quiet held while Father Hewgo went through the graveside ceremonies, his voice crabbed and terse across the churchyard as if Medcote offended him as much in death as in life.

  More likely, Joliffe thought, was that Father Hewgo had no charity of heart for anyone, dead or living. How did such a man become a priest?

  Or had becomi
ng a priest made him that way?

  There was another thought on which Joliffe would rather not dwell because the less thought spent on Father Hewgo the better. But it did not go away. Had Father Hewgo at some time wanted his priesthood, only to find too late that he was wrong for it and then lacked the grace to make the best of it, once his priestly vows were taken and irrevocable? A bad choice badly kept had been the damnation of many a man and woman. To keep a bad choice well despite everything took more courage than many people had. Lacking that courage, they often took the weakling’s way instead—taking vengeance on their life for their pain, looking not for healing but to make others hurt as they were hurting.

  Joliffe could remember when he had come too near to making a bad choice for his own life. He had escaped and therefore never had to learn how well or ill he would have done at living with that wrong choice. He could pray to all the saints there were that he would have made the best of it instead of the worst if he had come to it, but because he didn’t know how he would have done, he had no right to despise those who did choose wrongly—only those who willfully made the worst of their wrong choice.

  Across the churchyard, Medcote’s body was lowered into the grave. As was expected of her, his widow took up a handful of dirt from the waiting mound and dropped it into the grave. With how much regret? Joliffe wondered. Or was it with relief to be done and rid of him?

  Anela turned and moved away from the grave, her daughter and son on either side of her. Way was made for them but not out of the churchyard as it might have been if Medcote’s death had been an ordinary one. Instead, they went to take their places on one of the benches set for the crowner’s inquest. That was a courtesy given to the bereaved family. The other benches were taken by six village men and Master Kyping, to serve as jurors because they were presumed to know enough about such facts as there were to make a judgment. Everyone else had to stand, with the crowner’s men and Master Kyping’s seeing to it that those who would be witnesses were brought to the fore, including the players.

  That done, the crowner, who had been waiting out of the way at the church door, came forward to take his place at the table. He was a well-bulked man with sharp eyes and a thin mouth who was surely already well-informed by Kyping of who everyone was and their part in the business. He eyed the players with especial interest, particularly Ellis, which was worrying. Joliffe had encountered crowners both careful in their office and not, and even one who had preferred to send facts altogether to the devil if he could, choosing who was guilty by who best suited him, then trying to ram his decision down a jury’s throat.

  If things went that way here, then Gil would be away to Minster Lovell before sundown, Joliffe supposed, having seen Basset take him aside and talk to him a while this morning with several nods toward Tisbe. Joliffe did not envy him that ride, if things came to it. Tisbe had the gait of a spavined donkey. And afterward so would Gil if he had to ride her very far.

  But it seemed this crowner played fair. He took charge of the inquest and moved it forward as if he were someone with no time to waste, never trying to make them say what he might want to hear but giving no one encouragement to wander in what they had to say. Even his questioning of the players was no sharper than of anyone else, with the matter between Rose and Medcote never brought up, only questions about whether any of the players had left the camp that night and whether they had heard anything or seen anyone. Since all they could say was “No” to all of that, the crowner was soon done with them. Either their Lovell tabards stood them in good stead or the man was fair-minded enough not to want to find someone—anyone—guilty, whatever the facts or lack of them were. Joliffe found himself thinking the latter was the more likely. But he was also thinking that in all likelihood the murderer was still here, either simply looking on or else among those the crowner actually questioned.

  It was a disquieting thought, the more so because if he or she was, they were playing their part of innocence as well as the players had played their parts on Sunday in this same place, because despite having listened and watched carefully, Joliffe heard and saw nothing from anyone under the crowner’s questioning that could not be put down to understandable unease at being there at all. In truth, if the crowner had wanted to go by outward signs of guilt, Jack Hammond would have been most in trouble, veering between badly hidden fright at being questioned by an officer of the king, resentment at being there at all, and unsteady anger at mostly everything and Medcote in particular. But his account of where he had been when Medcote was killed was repeated by his uncle and several others, and the crowner dismissed him with what Joliffe would have sworn was a deep and regretful sigh. But dismissed he was, and the crowner kept the business moving firmly forward, so that even with a pause for him to take his dinner at Father Hewgo’s, all was done—or as done as might be—before the clouds had finished thickening toward the promise of a late afternoon rain.

  In all that while Joliffe heard mostly what he had already heard for himself or from Kyping, and such new things as there were made no great difference before finally the crowner, with a glance at the dark blots of the first raindrops scattered on the table in front of him, asked the jurors what was their decision. With very little talk among themselves and glances of their own at the lowering clouds, the jurors declared that John Medcote’s death had been undoubted murder but they could not say who the murderer might be. The crowner accepted that, declared that the murderer was still to be sought by all means possible, let no man hide the truth should it be learned, on peril of his soul and the law’s displeasure. He waited for his clerk at the table’s end to finish pen-scratching, then declared, in the king’s name, the inquest at an end.

  As the gathering began to scatter, Basset went forward, hat in hand, to bow to the crowner and ask if the players had his leave to set on their travels again. Ellis, Rose, and Joliffe kept back, out of hearing, but by the crowner’s nod they guessed he gave his permission and were assured of it by the brightness of Basset’s eyes in his solemn face as he returned to them. They shared no words about it there, though, and they were well away from village and villagers and alone on the road, the rain misting too lightly down to make them hurry, before Basset said, “So that’s that. We’re done and free and clear.”

  “We’re on our way tomorrow, yes?” Ellis asked.

  “As soon as we can see the road,” Basset answered.

  Ellis did a few quick steps of one of the dances with which they sometimes ended a play. “Away, away, for a merry day. I won’t mind seeing the last of this place.”

  Nor would Joliffe, but despite he knew he should not, he said, “We still don’t know who killed Medcote.”

  “Nor do we care,” Ellis returned. “Medcote is a problem I’ll leave behind me without a second thought.”

  Rose, walking between Ellis and Joliffe, said, “It’s odd the crowner had no questions for Master Ashewell or for Gosyn, isn’t it? They were both there.”

  Basset answered, “So far as we’ve heard, Kyping found nothing that put them anywhere near Medcote that night. Lacking that, there wasn’t any point in asking them anything.”

  “By everything that was said at the inquest,” Joliffe said, “there wasn’t a more blameless lot of folk to be found anywhere in the world than here the night Medcote was killed.”

  “Just let the crowner keep us included among the blameless and I’ve no complaint,” Ellis growled.

  Basset declared, “Amen and thanks to Saint Genesius for that!” with a look at Joliffe that told him to agree or keep silent.

  Willing to let worry go, Joliffe heartily agreed, “Amen!” while Rose, smiling, slipped her hand into Ellis’.

  He lifted it and kissed it, and with all of them smiling together, they walked on, taking the good news back to Piers and Gil.

  They were not so quick away in the morning as Basset had declared they would be. First, they sat up somewhat late, all together in the tent once supper was done, out of the small rain and the evenin
g’s growing chill, in high enough good spirits they started to debate changing the way they meant to go from here. Since they were already off their usual way, Joliffe was for going farther away from it, maybe all the way to Gloucester or even swinging south to Dorset and Somerset for the sake of a change. Basset was half-inclined to agree but at the same time, “Maybe we’re better to curve back to our usual way and be satisfied with what lies different between here and there.”

  Ellis swung one way and another, and no one else had a firm thought on it, or much worry either. They were all merely enjoying the easy, unworried talk of familiar things, until at the last Basset declared he would decide in the morning which way they would go, and they settled contentedly to sleep under the light patter of rain on the tent’s canvas.

  The rain was still with them in the morning, making no one in haste to leave their blankets. Basset gave in first and only because necessity demanded it, and once they were all up, the gray, dripping morning gave no reason to linger over being on their way. Joliffe quickly downed his cold breakfast of bread, cheese, and ale, and left the others to theirs while he went to wipe Tisbe as dry as might be before putting on her harness.

  She was welcoming his attention to her when he heard Ellis say, low-voiced, “Damnation and the Devil’s tail,” and he looked around to see Kyping and his man riding through the gateway. He didn’t need to see Kyping’s face to echo inwardly Ellis’ oath. Nobody was likely to be riding out for pleasure in this dripping morning, and he left Tisbe and went to join the other players as Basset moved forward to meet Kyping, who did not dismount but sat grim-faced, looking down at Basset, then at the rest of them, then at Basset again before saying, “I suppose you’ve all been here all night and all together?”

  “We’ve been, yes,” Basset said, as grim as Kyping was. “What’s happened?”