A Play of Knaves

by Margaret Frazer

  Joliffe gave a short bow at Hal and made to follow her, meaning to leave Hal to join the Ashewells and other mourners. But Hal flicked a hand at him, warning him back, and followed Claire himself. Joliffe, keeping to himself a small surge of anger, followed him in time to see Claire turn almost at bay between Hal and where her mother sat in her chair, hunched over with her arms wrapped around herself, rocking back and forth as if cradling her pain. Mistress Ashewell stood beside her, an arm around her shoulders, while another woman hovered near them, holding a cup she clearly wanted to give to Geretruda, who did not look up, either at them or at Claire, let alone at Hal or Joliffe.

  The other two women, though, stared, startled, at Hal, and Claire looked to be trying to find words angry enough to use on him. But Hal, as if neither she nor the other women were there, went to Geretruda and down on one knee in front of her, saying, “Good lady, we’re all in sorrow, my mother, my sister, and I, to hear your husband is dead.”

  Geretruda gave a shaken sob and rocked harder without raising her head.

  Hal laid a hand on her knee, bold beyond courtesy, and said, “Good lady, I was willing to be your son before. Let it be some comfort to you that I’m still willing. Please know there’s no need for you and Claire to bear everything alone, without a man here.”

  Mistress Ashewell hissed on an indrawn breath, but Geretruda was probably too far into her grief to understand much except her own pain. Joliffe’s guess was that all she truly took in of Hal’s words were “son” and “comfort” and “man.” What she surely heard was a promise of someone else’s strength to shelter her. She had been safe with her husband. He had been her strength, maybe always and surely since her disease came on her. If she understood she was dying, that must only add to her fear and need for comfort and someone’s strength—the comfort and strength of a “son”—and with a soft sob and barely raising her head, she put out a trembling hand that Hal seized and held in both of his.

  Claire, as if it were more than she could bear to see, turned and fled to the solar’s far door, not the one back into the hall but the one Joliffe had supposed was to the garden. She fumbled the latch as if hardly able to see it, then was gone, leaving the door open behind her.

  Hal, seeming to give Claire no heed, was rising from his knee, drawing a joint stool close to let him sit beside Geretruda, still holding her hand and saying something to her too low for Joliffe to hear.

  Leaving Geretruda to him and the women, Joliffe followed Claire.

  He had been right that there would be a garden there. It was a small one tucked along the back of the hall with a young growth of herbs and early flowers in its four square beds, but he hardly noted even that much about it because Claire was already gone from it, out the narrow gap in the low withy fence along its far side and into the orchard there. He saw her slender, black-gowned shape going away among the black trunks of the trees under their spring froth of pale blossoms, and he followed her, but not quickly now, able to guess where she was going.

  Like the garden, the orchard was not large, perhaps twenty trees. As a young boy Joliffe had spent tedious afternoons in an uncle’s even smaller orchard, enforcedly listening to him go happily on at length about his cherry, apple, and pear trees. Whether he wanted to or not, Joliffe knew something about orchard-keeping because of that and was able to see that here every tree was well-pruned and in health. He remembered what Kyping had said—that this had been Gosyn’s first purchase of land when he began to better himself. A small beginning, maybe, but one that Gosyn had valued to the very end.

  In truth, looked at against the wider world, all of Gosyn’s success could be measured as small compared to some, but that did not lessen what he had done. Where many others never tried at all, he had succeeded in bettering his family’s place in the world; nor was there way to say how much more he would have done if he had been left to live his life out. But he had not been left, and Joliffe found Claire at a far corner of the orchard, standing at the edge of a trampled stretch of grass not far from where a shallow stream made the orchard’s boundary, very probably the same stream he had forded on the other side of the village and the one that flowed past the players’ field.

  He had not tried to follow her quietly, but her back was to him, and from several trees away he could guess by her bowed head and shaking shoulders that her sobbing had likely covered his footfall; and he stopped where he was, slipped his lute around, and stroked a run of notes from it as light as the petal-fall from one of the trees.

  Claire instantly turned, almost as sharply as if it had been Hal Medcote’s voice she’d heard instead of the lute, but her alarm and anger faded as she saw Joliffe. Turning away from him, she said, “Go back to my mother. You’re not needed here.”

  He was used to being spoken to as a servant. After all, he served. But he was not a hireling and that gave him some choice of which orders he obeyed and which he did not, and still stroking now-sad notes from the lute, he went forward, saying, “This is where your father died, isn’t it?”

  “It’s where he was murdered,” Claire said with bitter force. “Go away.”

  Much of the trampling had to be from after Gosyn’s death, done by those who came to see and deal with the body. Because of it, Joliffe supposed he would have to depend on what Kyping had told him of what had happened between Gosyn and his murderer, but there was more than that to be seen. Just here, for perhaps a dozen yards along the stream that made the orchard’s boundary, the willows and alders had been cut away instead of being left as usual to keep the stream’s banks stable. Standing where he was now—a little behind and a little aside from Claire and looking outward and beyond the stream as she was—he had a clear view of an open field ploughed in long, broad strips where this year’s young wheat was a green haze over the dark soil.

  “Your father’s land?” he asked quietly.

  “My father’s land,” she agreed, not looking at him again but not ordering him away, either, as if he were not worth her bother to care whether he was there or not.

  Joliffe was willing to settle for that. He had followed her here on an unthinking urge to help someone in pain, but the urge was faded. There was no help he could give the girl, she being who she was and he being no one to her. But since he was here, there was no reason not to see all that he could. From what Kyping had said, Gosyn had walked in the orchard every evening, and here, where the trees were cleared along the stream, he must have stood on most or all of those evenings, looking out at his land. In triumph that it was his? Or for always renewed assurance he had succeeded? Or with thoughts of what he hoped to do next? Or simply with the quiet pleasure of knowing it was his?

  However it had been with him, Gosyn would never stand here again, with hope or fear or any thought at all.

  Had whoever killed him planned on him being here? Or had someone simply been late at work in the field, seen him, and on the sudden taken the chance at Gosyn with no forethought at all? This was the time of year for the first hoeing out of weeds among the crops and likewise when everyone was behind at all their work, there being so much of it that needed doing. It was not beyond thought that someone had been there in the field yesterevening and seen Gosyn. They might even have meant nothing more than to talk to him but instead had argued and given way to anger and ended by killing him instead.

  That would match with Wat Offington or someone else of his short-minded kind. Which part of the field was Offington’s to work? And who else had strips in sight of here? Had Kyping asked questions that way yet? He needed to, because even if someone had been there but was not the murderer, they might have seen someone or something that had not mattered then but would now.

  Joliffe’s momentary excitement at those possibilities went dull. By yesterday’s evening the rain had been small but steady. No one would have been at work in the fields. There very probably would have been no one outside to see anything. Only Gosyn taking his usual walk in his orchard no matter what the weather. Gosyn . . . and whoeve
r had come to kill him.

  With another thought, he went forward, past Claire to stand on the stream’s bank, looking across at the other side. Both banks were steep here, but not high. Hardly three feet, if that much. An easy drop into the stream, and to get out nothing more was needed than a hand braced on the bank for an easy vault up. Supposing the stream’s bottom here was not sucking mud. It did not look to be. The water was flowing fast and somewhat high from the rain but he could see its green, streaming water weeds and what looked a graveled bed.

  Behind him, not moved from where she had stopped, Claire said in a hollow voice, “There’s going to be too much rain again this year. That’s what my father thought. Another bad harvest.”

  Joliffe turned around. “We’ll have to pray not.”

  “For all the good prayer is likely to do,” said Claire with no particular feeling.

  She was dull with grief and probably hopelessness, Joliffe thought; but it had been anger that drove her from the solar, and anger would probably serve her better in the while to come than dullness would, so very deliberately he said, “Do you think Hal Medcote will wait the year of mourning before he marries you?”

  Claire gasped as if he had struck her. Color flooded her face and for a moment all the anger was there again, ready to be flailed against him. But either her control was better than so young a girl could be thought to have or she was further into hopelessness than she had seemed. Instead of an angry answer, she turned her head from him to stare away among the trees and said, “I told you to leave.”

  So she couldn’t be goaded. That would likely serve her well in time to come, too, but meanwhile she needed more, and Joliffe tried, “That your mother takes what comfort he offers doesn’t mean you have to marry him. You only have to refuse him and go on refusing him, no matter what anyone else chooses or does or says to you.”

  “‘Only’ refuse him,” Claire said with a bitterness that showed she knew full well how harsh and sustained a struggle such a refusing could bring on her. Anger warm in her voice and face again, she looked at Joliffe and mocked, “‘Only’ refuse him.”

  Lightly back at her, not feeling light at all—this was her life they were playing at—Joliffe said, “Better than being married to him, surely.”

  “Anything is better than being married to him!”

  “Well then.” Joliffe spread out one hand as if offering her what was perfectly plain. “There you are.”

  “Where?” she said back at him, still with fierce mockery. “I’m nowhere! Nowhere is where I am,” she said, and spun away from him on a sob and went at a harsh walk back toward the garden and the house.

  He was left wondering if he’d done any good at all. She had been a much-loved, much-loving daughter all of her life. Would she be able to stand against whatever her dying mother might want for her? If she remembered her father’s anger against Hal Medcote, maybe she would have strength enough to hold out against a dying woman’s wish. But only maybe.

  And if she didn’t?

  Then she would come to share, along with Nicholas Ashewell, whatever hell it was the Medcotes lived in, leaving little to pray for except God’s mercy on all their souls.

  He let thought of her go and instead stood frowning down at the trampled, torn ground between the trees nearest the stream. From what Kyping had said, Gosyn’s had been a messy death, but what blood there must have been was washed away here by the night’s rain. There was only the torn ground and grass. The blood there must have been on Gosyn’s murderer must be long since washed away, too. It was his bloody clothing that would be least easily rid of its evidence. Kyping had said nothing about it, but surely his men were questioning for anyone seen bloody as well as asking about bloody clothing or if someone had noted clothing unexpectedly washed.

  Of course in the rain there had been—and was going to be, Joliffe thought, cocking an eye at the re-clouding sky—someone could have washed his bloodied clothing and no one been the wiser about why it was wet. Nor could Kyping count on someone being willing to tell that someone of their family had come home last night bloody or with bloody clothing or that some of someone’s clothing was gone missing without explanation. So the chances of learning anything that way were slim, and the more that Joliffe thought on it, the more sure he was that Gosyn’s murder was no matter of chance. Gosyn was known to walk in his orchard at about the same time every day, come what may. Yesterday’s rain had served to make almost certain no one else would be out and about to see the murderer come and go, and that same rain had been enough to wash away any traces he might have left during that coming and going, as well as making no particular matter of his washed, wet clothing afterward to anyone who might have noted it. That was too many things working to the murderer’s favor for Joliffe to be willing to say it had all happened by unplanned chance. It might have, but he had to doubt it. It was easier to believe that someone had thought all that through ahead of time and only been waiting for the time to be right. Or maybe not planned well ahead but suddenly seen everything was in place at once and very deliberately seized the moment.

  “You. Player,” Hal Medcote said behind him.

  Behind him was not somewhere he wanted Hal Medcote to be, and with face and voice immediately both bland, Joliffe turned, saying, “Sir?”

  “You were here with Claire. Why? What passed between you?”

  There was both challenge and demand in Hal’s voice, and despite himself, Joliffe matched him, saying, “Nothing more than words and none of them of concern to you.”

  “Only words?” Hal demanded.

  “Only words.”

  Hal unexpectedly grinned. “Pity. You should try for more next time.”

  Too taken by surprise to hide it, Joliffe said, “What?”

  “More than words.” Hal came closer, dropping his voice as if they were suddenly friends sharing talk no one else should hear. “She thinks she doesn’t want to marry me, so likely she can be a fool other ways, too. You’ve probably a way with words and women. If you can get her into ‘trouble, ’ shall we say, I’ll make no trouble over it.”

  Only with a sharp lurch of his mind did Joliffe follow where Hal was going and in answer shaped his face to a knowing leer and said in a voice to match, “Because afterward I’ll be gone and you’ll still be here and she’ll have to marry you because there’ll be no one else to have her.”

  “You have it.”

  “You’d take on another man’s bastard for your own?”

  Hal answered that with a long look that by its cold emptiness said everything.

  No, he would not be raising anyone’s bastard as his own.

  Joliffe let a glitter come into his eyes that said he and Hal were men who understood each other. “I get the sport and you get the profit. Is that it?”

  “That’s it,” Hal agreed.

  With Claire no more than something to be used by each of them toward their own ends and never mind what happened to her because of it.

  Joliffe slightly bowed, putting mockery into the bow, and sly mockery and lust into his face and voice as he answered, “I’ll do what I can to serve you, sir. With pleasure.”

  Hal gave him a curt nod in return, as if accepting a servant’s willingness to serve, said, “Good then,” went away, back toward the house.

  Watching him go, Joliffe thought it was pity that looks couldn’t kill, because if they did, his own at Hal’s back would have here and now assured another murder.

  The one good thing was that if Hal Medcote believed he had set Joliffe on to wrong Claire, then he would not be immediately setting anyone else to it. Or taking steps himself—such as rape to insure she had no choice but to marry him as her ravisher.

  On second thought, Joliffe was glad looks did not kill. Hal deserved to be dead by some way other than quickly.

  Knowing that was a sinful thought did not lessen the heat behind it, and he moved away from thinking it, back to staring at the trampled ground, going again over thoughts he had already h
ad about how the murderer had come and gone and about his bloodied clothing.

  Or maybe there had been no clothing, he suddenly thought.

  If the whole business had indeed been thought out beforehand, the murderer had surely forethought that part of the problem, too. And had probably seen as plainly as Joliffe now did how to solve it.

  Chapter 21

  By finding his way away through the kitchen garden and around the rear byre-yard, Joliffe left Gosyn’s without encountering anyone except a surprised kitchen maid and a boy forking dung out of the byre. So there was that way into the orchard, too, but he wouldn’t choose it as a way to go if he was on his way to do a murder, or to leave by, either, if he wanted to be secret at it. Besides that, the byre-yard opened onto the village street, in clear view of half the houses there.

  He had his whole walk back to the camp to change his mind about what he meant to do. There was, after all, no need for him to do it. He could tell his suspicion to Kyping and let it be his trouble. He could forget the matter altogether as something with nothing to do with him and leave it behind him when they all moved on, which could be as soon as tomorrow if the crowner accepted they had nothing to do with the business and let them go. After that he would never come back here and all of it would fade from memory like so many other places the players had been and never returned to.

  The trouble was that he knew his memory better than that. It was not kind enough to him. It had a way of suddenly tossing up things long unremembered that he would willingly have left unremembered. He still wished he could forget the time he had pushed his brother into mud and spoiled his new tunic and made him cry and their mother angry to tears. That had been when he was all of maybe eight years old, but the memory still rose up sometimes and made him feel his guilt and shame all over again. If he did nothing here, how long would that guilt and shame ride with him through his life? It did not bear considering. If nothing else, he had to tell Kyping what he thought.