A Play of Heresy (14 page)

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Authors: Margaret Frazer

BOOK: A Play of Heresy
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Joliffe never altogether accepted any claim of ignorance from Sebastian but outwardly always seemed to and only asked, “What, then, if I need help here or . . .”
“Best you don’t need any.”
“. . . or want to pass on word about anything?”
“Wait until I’m back. Or if I don’t come back, take it you know to where.” He stirred as if about to rise. “Now I’d best set way back Bristol-ward. No use to my lingering hereabouts.”
Belatedly thinking of it, Joliffe asked, “What about you as first finder of Kydwa’s body? Won’t you be wanted here?”
Sebastian shrugged. “Some fellow with a dun yellow beard and a ragged-edged hood paid a boy here in Coventry to take a sealed message to the crowner. The boy was to say the fellow didn’t have time to find out the crowner himself and that’s why he’d paid the boy to do it.”
“Then you followed the boy to be sure he did it.”
“Surely.”
“And the fellow in a dun yellow beard and a ragged-edged hood won’t be seen again.”
“Not here in Coventry,” Sebastian said with great satisfaction.
The one thing that Joliffe had been able to show him was the usefulness of skillful disguise. Sebastian had taken to it warily at first but quickly found out its usefulness and was become good at it. Joliffe suspected it was the added layer of deception that pleased Sebastian most: he was not someone who wanted to be known by anyone in any way.
They both rose, done here and making ready to leave, except Joliffe asked with another belated thought, “It was only Kydwa’s body you reported. Nothing about the servant. That’s to let the murderer think he’s got away with his hope the servant will be blamed, yes?”
“That’s it,” Sebastian agreed. “Let the stinking Lollards think they’re safe and maybe they’ll be enough careless we can find them out. I mean to learn what I can of their stirrings in Bristol while I’m finding out who was there from Coventry one side or the other of the murders. A link there could lead back to any Lollards thinking about making trouble here.”
Joliffe nodded despite he was not as altogether ready as Sebastian to assume Lollardy was the reason behind it all. He knew too much of what else was going on among lords and gentry now the Earl of Warwick’s hand no longer held so tightly hereabouts to be altogether ready to let them go by the way in this. That meant a double watching out for anyone who might not want him to know more, either about Lollards
or
what some lord or other might be into.
They paused in the tavern doorway, Sebastian eyeing the heavily clouded sky that promised the present pause in the rain was only momentary, and a sudden other question came to Joliffe.
“About that brush pile where you found the first body and then the stream bank—were those just luckily there for the murderer when he happened to need them?”
“I suppose so, ye—” Sebastian broke off that
yes
, his eyes abruptly narrowing to a glare at Joliffe. “Or maybe not. And if not, then—”
He stopped, looking as if he were mentally chewing over his thoughts. Joliffe said them for him. “Or did the murderer know of the brush pile and the stream bank aforetime and plan to make use of them?”
“They were nowhere near any road or lane,” Sebastian said. His eyes were shifting swiftly side to side as if he were trying to catch hold of all his thoughts as they sped past. “So if he knew of them, he must be someone of the place. Or else someone with reason to be familiar there.”
“Or else a stranger who took the time and chance to search around,” Joliffe offered.
Sebastian shook his head against that but granted aloud, “Maybe. That will be the sheriff’s look-for. He’ll almost surely ask around about any strangers seen thereabouts a few weeks ago. Me—I want to know whose land it is, who’s the lord of it. If one of his officers was there nigh the right time, that would be someone to have a long look at. Especially if the fellow or his lord is any way linked to Coventry or Lollards.”
“Ask, too, who owns neighboring land.”
“That, too. Aye. That, too.” Sebastian was turning away as he said it, was walking away by the time he finished, not troubling with any farewell. But he never troubled with farewells. Joliffe had once wondered if that was because in the work they shared a “farewell” could all too easily be a last one. Had wondered it once, then refused to think on it again. Not that, going the other way from Sebastian now, the thoughts he took with him were any more comfortable. The murderer they now sought seemed not to be skilled at killing, seemed not to be someone trained to it. Still, he had been able to kill two men together, had seemingly had Fortune on his side all the way in the matter, able not only to kill them but then to hide their bodies without being caught at it.
What of the blood, Joliffe suddenly thought. With all of that, wouldn’t the murderer have bloodied his clothing, and if he had, would not someone have noted that and now maybe remember it? It would be useful if someone did. Or remembered that someone no longer wore his familiar clothing or else suddenly had new clothing for no good reason.
No, that latter was too thin a tether to follow. When Kydwa and his man had been killed was not far off Eastertide, when those who could commonly got new clothing, after a winter’s wear had worn out last year’s garments. Or, if the murderer had truly thought well ahead, he could have simply got from a fripperer whatever he wore when he killed the men, then buried the bloodied clothing somewhere and never been seen in it at all.
That
would have been the way to do it. So had he?
Joliffe saw no likely way of finding out, one way or the other. Between them, he and Sebastian had questions in plenty and not much in the way of answers. Or, on his own side, next to nothing in the way of answers and no certainty how to start after them. On that account alone, he was glad he had something else to do this afternoon instead of brood about it all, having learned that often and often he got better answers out of himself not by prodding, poking, and worrying at a problem straight on but by letting a tangled matter sink down to behind his thoughts while he got on with other things.
Today at least that was just as well, because last evening he had agreed to spend some of this afternoon helping Master Burbage with readying his little devils for the Harrowing of Hell. He suspected that by the time he had finished with them—or they had finished with him—thinking about murder might be a pleasant pastime.
He curved back toward the now-familiar Earl Street by less familiar streets that took him past high-spired Holy Trinity church and toward St. Michael’s with its unfinished spire that would surely challenge, if not out-top, Coventry’s other two. The low-trailing clouds seemed close to skimming the point of Holy Trinity’s spire, but the rain was only spattering down, untroublesome, as Joliffe curved around the east end of St. Michael’s with its bow of tall, stone-traceried windows and headed down a lane he knew would bring him into Earl Street. He was hurrying a little, uncertain if he were somewhat late but meaning to take time to buy at least a meat pasty on his way. He was not minded to deal with Piers and the others on an empty belly.
A man coming out of a doorway a few yards ahead of him said with pleased surprise, “Hai! Master Joliffe!”
“Master Burbage,” Joliffe said in return, adding as a boy younger and smaller than Piers followed Burbage into the street, “Your son? One of the devils?”
Burbage gave the boy a slight, affectionate shake by one shoulder. “That’s him. Son
and
devil, often as not.” The boy grinned and let his father’s hand stay where it was, not shrugging it away as Piers would likely have done, as they went on along the lane with Joliffe, to turn into Earl Street. Or was it already become Jordan Well here? Joliffe did not trouble to ask; it was enough to know they were bound for Mill Lane again. He did buy a pasty from a woman selling them from a tray along the street and ate it while they went on, Burbage explaining along the way how the smiths and girdlers and several other guilds had their pageant houses off a shared yard.
“That means there’s some working around who can use the yard when,” Burbage said. “Mostly it’s the smiths who have it, what with them having the Passion and Crucifixion and Pontius Pilate and Judas hanging himself and Herod and all.”
“Their Herod is really good,” young Burbage said excitedly. “I mean good at being bad. He’s been Herod for the smiths how many times, Da?”
“This will be his third and, yes, he’s very good at it. Knows how far to go without he goes too far.” He smiled at Joliffe over his son’s head. “I’ve warned Basset he’ll have to watch out for his Herod. He’s one of them that want to go altogether mad.”
“So Basset has said.”
What Basset had said
in full
was “If I left him to it, he’d be on his back rolling around on the wagon, kicking his heels and squalling. I told him he can stomp and flail but if he tried more than that I’d put a bit, bridle, and reins on him until he learned better.”
Joliffe had asked, “Is he the kind who will do what you say until he’s got lookers-on and then do what he wants?”
“I’ve told him that if he does, I’ll have his guild fine him to within an inch of his life.”
“Did he believe you?”
“Oh yes,” Basset had said grimly enough that Joliffe, for one, believed him, and very probably his Herod did, too. Or did if he had any good sense at all.
No one ever seemed put off that Herod was played by someone different in every play, with three or more different Herods rolling past as the pageants shifted from site to site. Not to mention all the different Christs, Marys, Josephs, and Apostles there were from play to play. The odd thing Joliffe had noted the time he had been taken as a youngling to see the Corpus Christi plays done at York, long before he became a player himself, was that having so many different Christs and all meant that instead of the lookers-on becoming attached to the player of Christ, they attached to the story instead, and to the meanings beyond the story.
Burbage was saying, “The rest of us with our plays can do our practicing well enough with someone’s hall or house yard most of the time, until things get harried near the end, but there’s no trouble with using the yard this afternoon.”
“The Smiths Guild, they got in a player from London to do their play for them,” young Burbage offered excitedly. He looked up mischievously at his father. “Last year they had to make do with my da.”
“Oh, aye, and a sorry mess I made of it, surely,” Burbage said good-humouredly.
“You didn’t!” his son declared with fierce loyalty. “You’re as good as that London fellow is. Every bit. Better!”
“I’ll settle for as good,” Burbage said, smiling.
They had reached the double gates to the yard. They were wide and high-arched, making rolling the pageant wagons out and in easier, Joliffe thought. They were closed for now, of course, but the small door set into the right hand one was standing open, and Burbage’s son skipped ahead and in. Joliffe and Burbage followed him. Counting Burbage’s son, five demons were already there, scattering from what had probably been a friendly scuffling at each other in the middle of the yard. Piers and another boy were just coming out of an alleyway at the yard’s other side. Joliffe supposed, without much thinking about it, that it must go to whatever was behind the long shed that ran most of that side of the yard. It also crossed his mind to wonder what Piers had been up to. Not trouble, hopefully. No hunt seemed to be on his trail anyway.
Another open-sided shed made up a second side to the yard, while sheds with doors hung with heavy locks closed the other two sides. Four large wagons were backed into the open-sided sheds, bare yet of anything built on them for their plays. Burbage, maybe seeing Joliffe’s look all around or maybe just still explaining everything, said, “They’ll be hauled out into the yard next week and everything built on them then. What’s needed for that is stored in the other sheds, along with such things as don’t need better keeping and haven’t been taken elsewhere. I’ve the key for ours if you want to start with the spears and all. Can haul out the hellmouth, too, if you want that today.
“Not today, no,” Joliffe said. The hellmouth would be a large monster-head, painted in colors suitable to Hell, its mouth gaping large enough for the Devil and his devils to go in and out, and eventually for the Souls called to salvation by Christ to come forth. Before dealing with that, there were other things to be done with the young devils, who had heard the offer of spears and, led by Piers, were setting up a chant of “Spears! Spears!” doubtless in eager hope of having weapons put into their hands.
Master Burbage settled them down, made Joliffe known to them, named each boy to him, and stepped aside, leaving Joliffe to it. Joliffe, bracing himself, said, “First, you have to learn to fall down. Stand a full five feet and more apart from each other.” Which would serve to stop their present elbowing and shoulder-butting at each other. “Now, Piers, you’ve been taught I know . . .”
“Why do we have to know how to fall down?” demanded the boy who had come in with Piers. Burbage’s older son, Joliffe had gathered. “We’re devils!”
He started to prance and grimace, and likely the others would have joined him at it, except Piers for once proved useful instead of troublesome by saying as he came to stand beside Joliffe, “We have to learn to fall because Christ is going to strike us all down and we’ll have to writhe and everything, only we have to fall down without hurting ourselves. Like this—
only don’t do it until Master Joliffe shows you how
!” he ordered.

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