A Play of Heresy (19 page)
Authors: Margaret Frazer
He nonetheless found himself a little startled at how deeply he had taken to the habit of secrecy, even with someone supposedly his ally. Supposing that a fellow spy was indeed to be thought of as an ally and not simply as a fellow spy.
There was something twisted around on itself about that thought. He supposed he would have to think on it later. For now, it was enough that he carefully overtook Sebastian just as Sebastian reached the tavern. As expected, Sebastian entered with a step aside from the doorway, that he not be outlined against the light and to have a wall at his back while he paused to make quick surveyance of who was there and to be on the flank of anyone who might follow him in. He must have momentarily wondered why he did not see Joliffe, but Joliffe in the same moment went past the doorway, turned, and thumb-shot a small strawberry off the side of his finger, past Sebastian’s nose with the accuracy of a misspent youth. Sebastian spun to face him, starting into a crouch, a dagger suddenly in his hand that had not come from the sheath at his hip.
Seeing Joliffe, he swore, straightened, and disappeared the dagger. “Fool. I could have gutted you before I knew it was you.”
“That’s why I kept well out of reach,” Joliffe returned lightly. Sebastian was the longer-experienced of the two of them, but that was no reason to let him think he could have it all his own way.
Or else every bit the reason not to let him think it.
Either way, they both threw a quick, shared look around the room to see who was there and had noted them. To their good fortune, only one man besides the tapster was there, on a bench in a far corner, peering at them in a bleary way that suggested he was somewhat too far into his drinking to be sure what he had seen. Trouble, or just two friends playing the fools? Something of the same doubt—but clearer—was warily on the tapster’s face, and Sebastian laughed and slapped a hand down on Joliffe’s shoulder, giving him a friendly shake and saying lightly, “Well enough. You win.” As if there had been some merry wager between them. “I’ll pay the penny this time around.”
They got their ale and sat on a bench well away from the only other drinker, in a corner that would leave them private from anyone else who might come in, as inevitably others did while they drank and talked, looking outwardly at ease despite what they were saying to each other.
Sebastian began it, asking as soon as they had sat, “So. What have you learned? Anything to the purpose? Anything that shows Lollards are part of this?”
“Any Lollards here are lying quiet and very low.”
“Like adders,” Sebastian muttered.
“Even adders only strike when troubled or affrighted.”
“Nobody was frighting them seven years ago.”
“Ah,” Joliffe returned, “but the fools that were making trouble then paid for their foolishness—many of them with their necks. The ones that are left want nothing more than to be left in peace.”
“Until the fools still among them again start to think they have a chance.”
Knowing this was not a debate he was likely to win—nor needed to—Joliffe let it go, settled for saying, “As that may be, I’ve found out nothing that warns they’re stirring now. I’m supposing you knew Kydwa’s mother was a Lollard.”
Sebastian accepted that with a grudging nod and, “Ruined her family with it, yes. So. What else?”
Joliffe told him. When he had done, Sebastian at first said nothing, just stood up and took their cups to be refilled. Only when he had returned and sat again did he say, “That, then, is as far as you’ve got? This Ned Eme is your only choice for maybe guilty?”
Joliffe bit back the urge to snap a curt and angry answer to that, keeping himself to no more than saying somewhat dryly, “I’ve been somewhat over-busy with why I came to Coventry at all. The plays, remember. I’ve gone about, listening as much as I’ve been able wherever I reasonably can. There’s been nothing to hear. It’s only by chance I have anything at all. Have you got better?”
Sebastian gave the narrow twist of lips that served him for a smile. “What I’ve got is a better that’s all the better because it matches with yours. I’ve someone in Bristol who watches for who comes and goes there, and when, and why, if he can learn that, too. Merchants and others worth the noting. There were several who came from Coventry in the while that matters. The next thing that mattered was when they left here, and you tell me about this Ned Eme that left Coventry several days before Kydwa did. Yet, according to my Bristol man, he didn’t arrive in Bristol until the day I was looking for Kydwa to come.”
“Kydwa was delayed in leaving here. I’ve learned that. Shouldn’t you have thought to see him several days before then?”
“Kydwa could come to Bristol any time he wanted, so long as he was there the particular day set for us to meet. It wouldn’t have mattered to me if he were there earlier, so long as he was there that day. He wasn’t, of course. But likewise this Ned Eme, leaving here before Kydwa, should have arrived in Bristol sooner than he did. That lends to wondering why.”
Joliffe granted that with a nod but had to say, “It’s thin, though, and goes nowhere to proving anything. He could have had reason to linger along the way.”
Sebastian’s rattish eyes glittered. “But there’s the other thing I learned. That manor where the bodies were hidden—it’s held by a Coventry man named Master Eme.”
Chapter 14
J
oliffe took in that bit of information with a jolt deep in his guts and was still finding his way to some response when Sebastian said with less satisfaction, “Not that that suffices to prove anything. Even if we find out this Ned Eme was there, his claim would be he was simply seeing to something for his father.”
oliffe took in that bit of information with a jolt deep in his guts and was still finding his way to some response when Sebastian said with less satisfaction, “Not that that suffices to prove anything. Even if we find out this Ned Eme was there, his claim would be he was simply seeing to something for his father.”
“Which he might have been,” Joliffe pointed out in fairness. “And there’s the reason, all honest enough, why he was late in coming to Bristol.”
Sebastian gave a grudging nod of agreement but nonetheless added, “That’s not to say he didn’t do the murders.”
“No,” Joliffe had to agree. “Even if he was there for an honest reason, it still gave him chance to know where and when he’d have the best chance to deal with Robyn Kydwa and his man with no one to see it happen.”
Even as he said it, he remembered the surprising beauty of Ned’s voice twining with young Hew’s in the Angels’ song, and his hand gracefully outstretched in blessing when, as Gabriel, he spoke with Mary. To think of that hand murdering . . .
“And where to hide their bodies after it was done,” he said, the feeling in his belly now of sickness.
“That, too. And where it was safe to hide them and himself during the day, since he likely would wait until dark to do the rest.”
“Although that’s not to say he did any of it,” Joliffe tried.
“Found out someone else who was gone from here at the right time, have you?” Sebastian asked acidly. “And knew the place where the bodies were put? And had reason to kill Kydwa?”
“It’s not much of a reason,” Joliffe said. “Jealousy over a woman.”
He heard the foolishness of saying that even as he said it. People stupid enough to murder someone were stupid enough to murder for jealousy as readily as for any other reason.
Sebastian matched his thought with a mocking laugh and, “It’s as good as any other. Not that it may be the reason—or only reason in this.” He seemed to grudge granting that. “You’ve said the Emes are some of your ‘quiet’ Lollards. What if they aren’t? What if Kydwa found them out—them or some others of their kind—and had to be ‘quieted’ in his turn?”
“That’s—possible.” If nothing else, it gave a better reason—a reason that could at least pass for “better” than plain, idiot jealousy—for killing Kydwa and his man. Having gathered the various wide-ranging strands of his thoughts, Joliffe said, “Right enough, then. It’s Ned Eme we have to look at more nearly. One thing, though. We’ve a week until Corpus Christi and doing the plays. Even if we get the full proof we need against him, can we hold off using it until after then? He’s needed in the play I’m in, and there’s no likelihood he’ll run, since he has no thought of being suspected.”
Sebastian regarded him with a look both dour and mocking. “We can wait. The servant can go on rotting as readily where he is as somewhere else.” Joliffe winced at that as Sebastian had meant him to, while Sebastian went on, “Always supposing we find proof enough to satisfy a jury. Any thoughts how to do that?”
“None,” Joliffe said. “I’ve made no effort to be friends with him. Mayhap I’ll have to.” Or—Saint Genesius forbid—with Richard Eme.
Practice that evening was strange from start to end for Joliffe. What he did outwardly had little to do with where his mind was, which was pity for more reasons than one, first and foremost being that Sendell had decreed they would run the entire play without stop for the first time, beginning at the beginning and going straight through to the end. “So we can see the shape of it. To see how well it plays as a whole,” he told them all before they began, adding aside to Joliffe in an undertone, “To see if it plays at all.”
Deep in work that had been going well, Sendell had been free of that manner of gloom these past days. Given the beating his life had taken these past years, for the gloom to come again now and again was no surprise, but Joliffe might have taken more note of it surfacing again if he had not been so wound into his thoughts and the effort not to show them. Happily, Sendell was given no grounds for gloom. The two Prophets kept up the pace of their speeches, Joliffe having at last goaded Richard Eme into moving his words along instead of wallowing in them. Simeon in his turn gave his speech just the right weight that Joliffe should have time, when the time came they had their playing garb, to change from Prophet to Ane. His time with Simeon done, he returned to a bench, watched Simeon and his Clerk carry through their parts at a goodly pace, then had to school his face to carefully nothing but interest while Ned as the angel Gabriel spoke with Mary.
As Gabriel Ned was competent and smooth, not exciting but a very satisfactory angel. Tom Maydeford played Mary as sweet and strong, remaining humble before God’s messenger while knowing the wrapped bundle of supposed child in her arms gave her high place in the world. The lighter word-play between her and Joseph made relief from the solemnity of what went before it, with Tom and Powet playing perfectly Mary’s affection for Joseph and his love for his young wife even as he gently vexed her. It made more touching Joseph’s honest complaint of utter weariness when he was left alone to find the doves they must take to the temple. But Hew as the Angel brought the small cage with its (false) doves to him and renewed his strength.
At the Temple, Simeon, Ane, the Clerk, Mary, Joseph, and the Angels carried through their parts almost faultlessly. Simeon fumbled one of his long speeches but recovered and kept going with no need to be prompted, and when time came for singing of the Nunc Dimittis, the soaring of Gabriel’s voice in antiphon to Simeon’s made Joliffe’s chest clench. How could Ned, standing there with hands spread in blessing toward them all, singing with such piercing beauty, be guilty of what everything seemed to say he was? And yet . . . and yet . . .
Mary and Joseph left the playing space. On the wagon itself, they would go into the stage house, to wait out of sight while Simeon, Ane, and the Clerk finished and left in their turn, the town musician with his organ playing Temple-solemn music as they went but a moment later changing it to something merrier for Mary and Joseph to return, now with the young Jesus beside them, twelve years old and visiting Jerusalem for the first time.
Their going out would leave room in the stage house for Master Smale to be helped into a Doctor’s long, full robe over his Clerk’s garb, readying him to go out with Burbage and Richard Eme. That was going to take adroit shifting and some practice for all of them—including two Angels and their wings—to fit into the stage house’s cramped space, but tonight there was no need, and as Mary, Joseph, and young Jesus moved into the playing space, Joliffe looked around for Ned Eme. Like it or not, time was come to strike up better acquaintance with him.
Not liking it at all, Joliffe had braced himself to suggest they go out for a drink tonight when they were done here, and so he was disconcerted not to see Ned anywhere in the yard. Thinking he was probably gone to the jakes, Joliffe watched Burbage, Richard Eme, and Master Smale readying to move into the playing space as the Doctors and forgot Ned for the while, the more easily because the Doctors were not playing as smoothly as they might have. Neither Burbage nor Master Smale were at ease with their words yet. Burbage missed out an entire middle part of one of his speeches, which threw Dick off balance for his own next one, it coming sooner than he was set for it. They fumbled and faltered but did not lose place entirely and, importantly, kept going, so that at the end Sendell said, “None so bad at all. Well done with your save, Dick.” The boy stood straighter, glowing with the praise. “Burbage . . .”
Burbage, easily able to know what was coming, held up both hands in surrender. “I’ll have every word fixed into my head by next practice. I swear it.”
Sendell nodded his satisfaction with that and turned to give a wide smile around at all of them. They were waiting for what else he had to say and surely tomorrow he would have suggestions and corrections and additions to make, but for now he settled wisely on straight praise, saying, “It’s coming together. We’ve a very good play despite it all. The tavern keepers are going to be very displeased with us.” That brought laughter all around, as he surely meant it to, and he set them free, sending them home feeling good about themselves and their work.
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