A Play of Knaves

by Margaret Frazer

  But if he was going to do that, why not do the rest? Besides, it was his thought, and who was likely to carry it through better than he would? Besides that, if he were being fully honest with himself—a policy of doubtful worth but one he seemed unable to break as often as he would like—his curiosity would not be satisfied by leaving the attempt to someone else.

  At camp he told the others as little as need be of how things were at Gosyn’s and certainly not of Hal Medcote’s offer, then went to Tisbe grazing along the edge of the woods. She acknowledged him by lifting her head and swinging it to bump against his chest and afterward stood willingly while he untangled and combed her forelock with his fingers and checked her feet to be sure her hoofs were clean and uncracked, her shoes still firmly nailed. He had done as much yesterday in readiness for the leaving today that hadn’t happened; it assuredly didn’t need doing again today, and Tisbe’s patience ran out with her last hoof. When he let it go, she set it down with an impatient stamp and moved away from him, flicking her tail to be sure he understood her displeasure.

  He did and slapped her rump apologetically, knowing he had been wasting her time as well as his, delaying what he meant to do next, doubting he should do it and knowing that his doubt wouldn’t stop him. She drifted away in pursuit of better grass. Seeing Basset strolling toward him, he stayed where he was, and Basset, joining him, nodded toward Tisbe as if saying something about her while saying instead, “What are you thinking to do?”

  “Do?” Joliffe echoed, trying for innocence.

  Even as he said it, he heard he had over-played the innocence. Basset, as tuned as he was to subtleties of voice, said firmly at him, “Yes. Do.”

  So Joliffe told him, with voice low and their backs to the others, and when he finished, Basset gave him a doubting look and asked, “You think you have to do this thing, rather than just tell Kyping and let him set someone else to do it?”

  “Yes.”

  Basset answered that with a long look before finally he said, “Best get on with it then,” and went away, back to the others.

  Joliffe, as if necessity called, went the other way, into the trees. There, out of sight of everyone, he sat down beside the stream and took off his shoes and hosen, fastened his shoes together by their straps and buckles and hung them and his hosen around his neck. He could only hope his doublet was short enough to stay dry because he was not minded to strip down to his shirt in the afternoon’s damp chill with its returned threat of rain. Not that he was going to be very dry anyway, he supposed as he waded into the stream. The water flowed cold around his bare legs and he stood for a moment, considering, before turning upstream. Only later and if need be would he go downstream, toward Gosyn’s manor.

  It was later than he wished when he came to Gosyn’s orchard, with twilight already thick among the trees under the overcast of clouds hiding what would soon be sunset. He would be going back to camp in the dark but at least he had found out what he wanted to know. And a little more besides.

  From the shadows among the trees above him on the streambank someone said, “So. Was it worth it?”

  Joliffe caught back his almost-lost balance before he glared up at Kyping and complained, “You might have coughed or something, rather than nearly frightening me off my feet.”

  “I did think of moaning like Gosyn’s ghost,” Kyping returned, holding down a hand to help him up the bank. “I spared you that.”

  “My thanks for it.” Joliffe sat down on the trampled grass and began to dry his legs with one end of one of his hosen. “And, yes, it was worth it.”

  Kyping sat down on his heels, facing him. “You found the murderer came and went by way of the stream?”

  “You had that same thought, too?”

  “I did. You’ve saved me or someone else the wet walk. He did come that way then?”

  “I’d swear someone came that way lately. There are broken branches a few places where there need not be except if someone grabbed them as they waded past, and two places at least where someone has been up and down the bank where there wasn’t a crossing place.” Joliffe began to pull on his hosen. His still-damp legs did not make it easy, but it was better than being chilled. “It could have been a poacher or someone else with reason to be going wading, but I doubt it. You know where this stream runs? Besides past where we’re camped?”

  “Yes,” Kyping said.

  “I followed it upstream before I followed it down. It’s easy going the whole way. Mostly shallow, with none of the deep pools so deep they can’t be waded, and alder and willow thick-growing almost everywhere along its banks. There’s breaks for cattle to water and fords for wagons to cross, but with a little care to make certain no one was around, those could be passed well enough unseen.”

  “By someone coming here from upstream while it was still light yesterday,” Kyping said. “Harder to see his way going back after Gosyn was killed and dark was coming down.”

  Now standing to tie his hosen to the points under his doublet, Joliffe said, “But still possible, and he wouldn’t have had to stay in the stream all the way, once dark was come. Keeping close to the trees most places would have been enough, I’d guess. And when he was far enough away he could take to any streamside path there was.”

  “Likely true,” Kyping granted. “The trouble is that we’ve only proved we’re good at guessing and that someone could have come that way, not that anyone did or that if they did, that it was the murderer.”

  “There’s one thing.” Joliffe went on tying his hosen, waiting for Kyping to ask, “What?” Kyping did not. Joliffe finished tying his hosen, pulled down his doublet, looked at the bailiff, and said, “I found some of his clothing.”

  Kyping’s interest quickened. “You did? Where? How do you know it’s his?”

  “It’s somebody’s, anyway, and there can’t be too many people who lately troubled to hide a pair of bloodied under-braies under a bit of pulled-down bank along this stream.”

  “A man’s under-braies?”

  “With blood on them. I think they were shoved into a hollow bit of bank behind tree roots, but with the rain overnight more of the bank slid away. Another good rain and the tree will be down. As it is, there was white enough of the braies showing to catch my eye.”

  Kyping’s eyes were shifting back and forth with the quickness of his thoughts as he caught up to where Joliffe already was. “He came down the stream naked except for his braies. That way there’d be no explanation of wet clothes needed afterward. But the braies were too bloodied to wash clean, so he left them.”

  “And even if they would wash clean, he couldn’t wear them home soaking wet under his other clothes.”

  “Yes. So he left them. Sometime some servant will be upbraided for losing or stealing them, but that won’t matter to him. Where are these braies?”

  “I left them where they were.”

  Kyping nodded sharp approval. “They aren’t sufficient proof, but they’re something.”

  “A question. Do you think both these murders were done by the same man?”

  Kyping blinked with surprise. “I do, yes. Don’t you?”

  “Oh, most assuredly I do. I likewise think he enjoyed the killing. Both deaths could have been done cleanly. Neither of them was.”

  “As if he wanted to feel his victim dying under him. Yes,” Kyping said, looking as if he had bitten down on something rotten and could not spit it out.

  Joliffe agreed with that rottenness. To murder someone was ugly enough. To take deliberate pleasure in the killing was far worse. But he kept his voice even as he said, “I think we likewise share certainty who it is.”

  “Yes,” Kyping said again, his face hard. “I think we do. So. What do we do now?”

  Chapter 22

  The next day was a long one, with not much to be done and nowhere for any of the players to go after Piers went on one errand with a message at Joliffe’s asking and returned. Joliffe spent some of the time currying Tisbe, and much of the time sitt
ing alone beside the stream.

  He had told Basset what he was going to do because that was as necessary as Basset’s answer to it was expected.

  “Joliffe, this isn’t yours to do. Leave it to Kyping and the crowner.”

  “They won’t be able to prove it without this.”

  “Let them set someone else to it, then. It doesn’t have to be you.”

  “It has to be someone who can make him believe it.” Joliffe had smiled and spread his arms, acting a bold assurance he wished he felt. “Who better than a player for that? And who better than me?”

  Basset, probably believing neither the boldness nor the assurance, had looked at him for a long moment before finally saying, “Just mind you keep yourself alive. I’ve in mind a play on Sir Gawain the Gallant I want you to write for us. You’ll do better at it if you’re not dead.”

  “Write a play or be dead,” Joliffe had said consideringly. “You set a hard choice, Master Basset.”

  Basset had humphed at him and gone away, and whatever he told the others, it was probably not altogether the truth but sufficient that they neither troubled Joliffe’s solitude during the day nor questioned where he was going when he left them about an hour before what would pass for sunset in the overcast afternoon’s end.

  Only Rose followed him a little ways toward the gateway to say, laying a hand briefly on his arm, “Whatever you’re about, be careful, yes?”

  Not bothering with the lie a smile would be, Joliffe looked down at her and said as quietly as she had, “Yes,” and went heart-warmed on his way. He might have only a very, very small corner of the world where he belonged and only a very few people to whom it mattered much whether he was alive or dead, but it was a corner of his choosing and they were his own people and he did not mean to die and lose them.

  Despite that, he knew he was on his way to do one of the stupidest things he had ever done, nor was he such a fool as not to be afraid of what he meant to do. But afraid was what he must not seem to be, and that was why he took care to be early to where John Medcote had died, to be leaning easily against a tree, one foot braced back against it, his arms crossed on his chest, softly whistling, when Hal Medcote came from among the trees along the stream.

  From yesterday Joliffe knew of the slight path that ran there. It was not secret or, by daylight, a particularly hidden way to come from the Medcote manor. But then—today at least—Hal wasn’t in need of hiding or a secret way to go.

  Joliffe straightened from the tree and stood waiting as Hal came toward him. They neither of them gave the other any greeting. Joliffe was careful to keep his hand away from his belt-hung dagger, but Hal’s hand was resting on the hilt of his own as he stopped a few feet away and said with a hard wariness, “You can’t have had your way with Claire yet. What’s this for?”

  Meeting his roughness with roughness, Joliffe said, “It’s for talk about these murders you’ve done.”

  He was watching Hal’s eyes. They momentarily widened, then narrowed as Hal answered harshly, “That’s an ill thing to accuse a man of.”

  “They’re ill things to have done,” Joliffe answered back. “Especially when you’re so poor at hiding your guilt.”

  “None so poor. No one but you has looked at me for being guilty.”

  “They’ve looked,” Joliffe returned. “But they keep missing the needed piece.” He pointed at the stream purling quietly to itself a few yards away.

  Hal flicked a glance that way, but his gaze was fixed on Joliffe again as he said, making a challenge of it, “That means something?”

  “It means you maybe came by way of the path when you came to kill your father, but when you went to kill Gosyn, you went along the stream from here. That’s why no one saw you on any road or anywhere.”

  “That,” said Hal with slow and deliberate insult, “is stupid past imagining.”

  “Stupid perhaps, but not past imagining,” Joliffe returned. “I’ve imagined it, haven’t I?”

  “You’re a fool of a player and no one will believe you.”

  “Did you know you still smelled faintly of tansy-herb yesterday when you were at Gosyn’s with your ‘sympathy’ and ‘pity’? You’d rubbed yourself with it the day before, to keep the midges and all off you when you went naked along the stream, didn’t you? Or not quite naked.”

  Keeping his gaze as much on Hal as Hal’s was fixed on him, he turned enough to take the wadded cloth from the fork of the tree he had kept carefully hidden behind him until then, and with careless scorn tossed the under-braies to the ground at Hal’s feet. “Yours, I’ll warrant.”

  Hal stared down at the small, dirty bundle for a silent moment. When he raised his head, his face was tight with anger and so was his voice as he said, “Whatever it is, it isn’t mine. Even if it was, it proves nothing.”

  “It proves something.” If nothing else, it proved how little Hal liked being shown he was less well-witted than he thought he was. “It proves the crowner will have to take a closer look at you, and when he does, I warrant he’ll see more than you want seen.”

  Hal was staring at him in much the way Joliffe had seen a man stare at a cow when trying to decide whether to sell or butcher it. Needing more from Hal than that, he said, deliberately scoffing, “But these two aren’t your only murders, are they? You killed your uncle, too, didn’t you?”

  Blank surprise at that sudden accusation momentarily swept calculation from Hal’s face before, all unexpectedly, he laughed aloud, then declared delightedly, “Wrong! I only helped.”

  “Helped?” Joliffe jeered. “Helped your father, I suppose.”

  With warm, mocking approval Hal said, “There you’re right.”

  “It wasn’t Nicholas who killed him at all, was it?”

  “Nicholas? No, but it’s been good sport goading him with it all these years. Old Francis was bettering from the scratch the little idiot had given him. My mother had even had the physician in from Faringdon just as if there was a point to keeping him alive. I don’t know what the brew was the man left, but it had to be thinned with water or wine or ale or cider before giving it or it would be strong enough to kill. So one day when almost all the household was gone to church, I watched my father pour a full draught of it, and when he took it in to Francis, I followed him.” Hal was smiling at the memory. “Francis didn’t want it. He said it wasn’t time to have another draught. But he took it, started to drink it, knew it was wrong, and tried to put the cup aside. My father grabbed his hands and shoved him back against the pillows and forced the cup to his mouth. Francis was weak from the blood he’d lost but not so weak he couldn’t struggle. My father saw me in the doorway and yelled for me to help hold him down. I wasn’t so well-grown to be much use, but I threw myself over Francis’ legs so they couldn’t thrash, and that let Father straddle him on the bed, pinning his arms so Father had both hands free to force the drink into him, then hold his mouth shut so he couldn’t spew or yell for help. Whatever the drink was, it worked fast. He gave over trying to kick free, and began to twist with the pain instead. When he was past crying out, with his eyes rolled back in his head and all, Father got off him, and stood there watching while he shuddered and spasmed and twitched and finally”—Hal smiled at the warm memory—“died. I’ve never forgotten how it felt to have him die under me like that.”

  His throat was so tight with sickened anger that Joliffe had to work to say evenly, “You stayed across his legs while you watched him die.”

  “Watched and felt,” Hal corrected, still with warm pleasure. “There’s no feeling of power like feeling a man die because you’ve killed him. Killing in the hunt doesn’t touch it.”

  “That’s why you killed your father the way you did. And Gosyn.” Joliffe’s loathing made his words thick. “So you could feel them die.”

  “Yes.” Still smiling, Hal took a step toward Joliffe. “But now that I’ve admitted all that, I have to assume you want money from me to keep your mouth shut?”

  Holding where he
was against the urge to draw back as from filth or a plague-carrier, Joliffe said with wholly false ease, “Money would serve well that way, yes.”

  “So will this,” Hal answered.

  And despite Joliffe had kept steady watch on his eyes, there was still too little warning as Hal had his dagger from its sheath and drove it in under Joliffe’s lower ribs.

  Or would have, except the dagger struck and slid sideways on Master Ashewell’s steel breastplate under Joliffe’s doublet. And then Joliffe had hold on Hal’s wrist with one hand and with his other had his own dagger out and its point under Hal’s chin, pressing in where neck met jaw, freezing Hal where he was.

  Then Kyping was there, crashing from hiding, swearing at Hal, himself, and Joliffe. Neither Joliffe nor Hal moved, staring into each other’s eyes for any flicker of intent until Kyping grabbed Hal’s dagger away and threw it on the ground. Only when he had jerked Hal’s hands behind him, to begin tying them with a readied piece of rope, did Joliffe take a step back, his gaze still locked with Hal’s and his dagger still ready but no longer at Hal’s throat.

  “Damn you,” Hal said at him.

  “You first,” Joliffe returned and was not jesting. Nonetheless he was diverted, in a side corner of his mind, by their angers at each other—his own at Hal for having so coldly tried to kill him; Hal’s at him for not being dead.

  Thus were men’s desires so often contrary to one another’s, Joliffe silently granted with mock regret.

  Past Hal’s shoulder, Kyping said, “You’d be the damned one if we’d not thought to ask that breastplate of Master Ashewell.”

  “True,” Joliffe agreed. He fingered the slice in his doublet and the shirt under it. For several reasons Rose was going to be displeased with him about those. But not as displeased as she would have been if he’d lacked the breastplate.

  Kyping gave a final hard jerk on the rope that drove Hal into an answering jerk of pain, breaking his eyes’ hold on Joliffe even before Kyping shoved him to his knees, saying to Joliffe, “Keep him there. I’ll get my horse.”