A Play of Isaac (16 page)

“Sleeping, maybe.”

“Maybe. Couldn’t say. It’s a very straight thrust, though. Not as if he were fighting it off.”

Master Barentyne looked up from leaning over his clerk’s shoulder and explained to Master Penteney, “Master Sampson has been the Oxford crowner’s clerk since forever. Crowners come and crowners go and my cousin says that if they’ve any sense, they listen to what Sampson tells them.”

“His knuckles on the right hand are scraped,” Joliffe said. From the side of his eye he saw Ellis’s arm twitch as if barely held back from elbowing him to keep quiet. “And there’s a bruise on his chin.”

Master Sampson looked at Leonard’s chin and agreed, “There is.”

“Like someone hit him,” Joliffe suggested.

Master Sampson looked up from under his brows, maybe not liking help with his work, but instead of answering, he picked up the dead man’s right hand for a better look and said, “They’re scraped, right enough.”

“Like he’d hit someone,” Joliffe said. Ellis’s elbow twitched again.

“Or something,” the clerk said. “There’s the possibility it was something he hit instead of someone.” He felt along the sides of the dead man’s head and under it. “There’s a lump here, on the back. Someone hit him maybe.”

He gave Joliffe a look but Joliffe left it to Master Barentyne to say, “Or he fell. He was fighting with someone, hit them, was then hit in the jaw himself and knocked down, maybe knocked out. Then someone stabbed him and robbed him. That would be possible.”

“But why was he dumped here?” Master Penteney demanded. “Because you can see he wasn’t killed here. There’s not any blood except on him.”

“He looks to have been dragged,” Joliffe said. “There’s mud on his heels.”

Both Ellis and Master Sampson gave him hard looks, with Ellis’s look, at least, suggesting the next murder might be of him; but Master Barentyne bent over to see Leonard’s feet, touched the mud caked on the soft-leather heels of his thin-soled boots, and said, “It’s dried but, yes, he must have been dragged through mud sometime, once he was down and probably dead.” Master Barentyne straightened and looked around the yard. There were no muddy places. “Master Sampson, would you check the way outside the rear gate there, please you? See if there’s any mud in sight.”

Sampson immediately stood up and went. Joliffe held silent despite that he knew the lane’s hard-trammeled earth had been dust-dry yesterday and there had been no rain to change it. Master Barentyne looked at the players. “None of you heard anything in the night?”

“Only the usual stableyard noises early on,” Basset answered. “Then I slept and didn’t wake until dawn.”

Joliffe and Ellis said the same.

“None of you had to relieve yourselves in the night? That could give us some thought of when the body was left here.”

Joliffe, Ellis, and Basset all shook their heads.

“There’s just the three of you?” Master Barentyne asked.

“And my daughter and her son. He’s nine years old,” Basset said. “They’ve neither of them said they heard anything either.”

“I’ll ask them anyway. Not that there was likely much to hear.” Because soft-soled shoes or boots made little sound even on cobbles, let alone the packed earth of this end of the yard. The laying down of a body need not be loud either, if care was taken. “Do you keep a guard here in the yard at night, Master Penteney?”

“Not this time of year. There’s nothing in particular to steal and anything there may be is locked up. Master Barentyne. I have guests coming to stay. From sometime this afternoon until Sunday, Lord and Lady Lovell are to be here. Tonight I’m feasting them and Master Gascoigne and some of the others of the University. These men are to perform a play for us all.” He indicated Basset, Ellis, and Joliffe. “Much though this man’s death is to be regretted, it would be a great help if his body could be taken away and if your questions wait until later.”

“There’s no trouble about having the body away,” Master Barentyne said easily. “If you could loan me two men to do it, I’ll take it with me when I go.”

“My thanks.”

“The questions aren’t so easily set aside, though. The sooner they’re asked the better. I think I can have them soon done, though. Within the hour probably. Will that do well enough?”

Master Penteney said that it would. Joliffe was beginning to form a good opinion of Master Barentyne, with a growing suspicion that he was not actually of Oxford; he lacked the deference he likely would otherwise have had toward a man of Master Penteney’s wealth and importance. He was respectful, yes, but out of courtesy rather than necessity, Joliffe thought. He was not someone who had to worry over Master Penteney troubling his life once he was out of office.

“I doubt we’ll find this Leonard was murdered here,” Master Barentyne was saying. “My questioning will mostly be elsewhere, I think, and leave you untroubled. Anything there, Master Sampson?” he asked of the returning clerk.

“No mud, sir, and the ground is too hard and dry for any tracks that might mean anything.”

“Worse luck. Rain all spring and dry weather just now. Here’s what we’re going to do, because Master Penteney is expecting Lord and Lady Lovell today and we want to be out of the way before they come. When Master Crauford is done with the stablemen, two of them can carry the body away. By your leave?” he paused to ask Master Penteney, who nodded ready agreement. Master Barentyne went on, “While we’re waiting for that, I’m asking you to stay with the body while I go through the players’ things to see if there’s any evidence there they had anything to do with this. While I do that, Master Penteney is going to ready his household for whatever questions Master Crauford and I will then be asking them. If you please, sir?” he added to Master Penteney, who again bent his head in agreement.

Since their agreement was not going to be asked, Joliffe and Ellis simply stepped aside to let Basset lead Master Barentyne into the barn ahead of them. Rose had surely been listening. She was just inside the door, curtsying to Master Barentyne as Joliffe and Ellis entered. Standing beside her, Piers was looking fierce and did not bow until his mother, rising from her curtsy, slapped him on the back.

He bowed then, still scowling. Master Barentyne, pretending not to notice, said to her, “I beg your pardon, but I have to look through your belongings. Will you help me, that I do no harm to anything?”

Rose’s stiffly courteous face eased a little. “Gladly, sir.”

He turned to Basset, Ellis, and Joliffe. “First, though, may I see your daggers? And would you set the doors wider open, to give more light?” he asked of Piers.

With a slight shove from his mother, Piers went to do it while the three players unsheathed their daggers and held them out, hilts forward. Master Barentyne took them one by one and looked at each of them closely, especially near where the blade met the crossguard, the most likely place for blood to be left after a careless cleaning.

That done and nothing found, Master Barentyne went through their various hampers and the cart with Rose’s help. He was quick at it but thorough and careful. He was on the last hamper, dragged from the far inside of the cart, packed with properties they did not need this week, when Joliffe gave way to his curiosity and asked, “So you think mayhap one of us—or several of us—was drunk enough to have killed this man and left his body lying outside our own door, but had wit enough to get rid of all the other evidence?”

Master Barentyne looked up from the folded clothing in the basket and smiled. “No, I don’t think that. If you’d been drunk enough to leave the body lying there, I doubt you’d have had wit enough even to clean your daggers. Besides, none of you stink of drink this morning and you’d have to be stinking drunk to leave your victim’s body at your own door. I’m only searching your goods so I can say afterwards that, no, there was no sign any of you had done it or even sign any of you had been drunk enough to do it.”

“So you don’t think it’s one of us at all,” said Piers indignantly.

“No.”

Piers glared. “Then why bother us like this?”

“Because it’s not enough that I think a thing. I have to show others, too, that it wasn’t likely to have been any of you, no matter how much somebody might want it to be. Which very likely someone does, or the body wouldn’t have been left here.”

“Oh,” said Piers a little blankly, seeing what he had not seen before.

“You believe the body was moved here, then. For certain,” Basset said.

“For certain,” Master Barentyne agreed. “Unless I can think of some other way mud got on his heels that way, and where the rest of the blood went.”

Chapter 10

Finished with their belongings, Master Barentyne wandered through the rest of the barn, back and forth from one side to the other its whole length, presumably looking for mud, blood, or a discarded dagger but more for the form of the business than as if he expected to find anything. The players stayed where they were near the cart, watching him, saying nothing, waiting for him to finish and Joliffe thinking that despite how quickly, seemingly casually Master Barentyne went at his looking, he would have missed nothing if it had been there to find.

Thankfully, nothing was. Master Barentyne finished his search and came back to where they waited. “How long do you mean to be in Oxford?” he asked Basset.

“We perform at St. Michael Northgate on Corpus Christi and will likely stay at least a day longer before taking to the road again.”

“Here?”

“By Master Penteney’s leave, yes.”

Master Barentyne turned to Rose. “My apologies to you, mistress, for your trouble, and my thanks for your help.”

“You’ve been all kindness, sir,” Rose said back with a low curtsy.

Master Barentyne slightly bowed his head to her, then to Basset who in return bowed deeply but plainly, not spending a flourish he probably judged would be wasted on someone not likely to be impressed. Master Barentyne likewise nodded to Ellis and Joliffe, who likewise bowed. Then he left. Not needing to be told, Piers followed him to the doors, and when he had gone out, pulled one of them shut and the other almost shut, then waited, as they were all waiting, until they heard Master Barentyne begin to give orders for the body to be moved.

Assured by that that the man was indeed done with them, Basset heaved a great sigh. “That’s it then. Unless something goes woeful wrong, we’re off that hook. Thank St. Genesius for fair-minded men and may he send more of them our way. Right. To
The Pride of Life.
”

No one protested being set to work. By not going into breakfast, they avoided the talk and questions there surely would have been, and work made a welcome refuge from thinking about anything else. They went at it with a will, keeping to it all the morning until by dinner’s time even Basset was well-satisfied.

At the best, dinner would not have been much today, what with the whole household readying for tonight’s feast. Even so, Joliffe guessed the thin-gravied, poorly seasoned stew ladled onto thick slabs of hard bread set at each place was mostly due to the morning’s upset having reached the kitchen. Fairly enough, the Penteneys at the high table did not look to have much more, and oddly almost everyone seemed in good spirits. Leonard’s death seemed to have darkened nobody’s day, but that there was not even talk of it by anyone made Joliffe suppose that Master Penteney had warned his people off being distracted by it, must have even forbidden open talk of it, the business of readying for Lord and Lady Lovell being of more importance than an unknown dead man in their yard, by happenstance.

Only Lewis at the high table looked out of sorts, but that seemed to have nothing to do with the murder. He was restless, and over and over through the meal looked to be complaining at Simon and Kathryn beside him, pointing at Piers and making a show of not wanting his food. Once he started to slide down from his seat as if to make escape under the table but Simon and Kathyrn both caught him by the arms and Matthew stepped forward to help pull him, wiggling, back onto the bench. Mistress Penteney leaned forward then to say something at him and after that Lewis sat still, although his chin was sunk nearly to the tabletop and his lower lip thrust out, proclaiming his feelings no matter what he did not say or do.

At the end of eating, Master Penteney rose at his place to say he regretted the scant fare but trusted they all knew why. “I promise you,” he said, “that there will be more than enough for all and everyone tonight.”

That was greeted with raised cups and the laughter of a household well-pleased with their master and easily trusting his word. That he made no mention of the murder settled Joliffe’s thought that he had forbidden talk of it for the time being. That left Joliffe, when grace was done and he and the others left the hall, to worry if Basset was going to keep them as hard at it this afternoon as he had through this morning; but when they were in the yard Basset said, “We did good work this morning. Unless we all lose our wits between now and tonight, the play ought to go well. What I think we must needs do now is see how things are at St. Michael’s. Sire John promised their scaffold would be up by now. We should see where we play tomorrow before we’re there to do it.”

No one quarreled with that. Piers was sent to fetch the men’s hats from the barn and very shortly they were headed down Magdalen Street and through the North Gate into the town. Once through the gateway, the church’s west tower was close to the left around the corner, the church stretching beyond it along the street there, with its churchyard at the far end for a fair distance farther, separated from the street and its eastward neighbors by a tall wall, with the town wall for its rear side.

As Basset had hoped, the scaffold was indeed standing in the churchyard, set close to the town wall to leave room in plenty between it and the street for an audience. It looked encouragingly sturdy, made of heavy timbers and thick floorboards, with the playing platform maybe six feet above the ground and reached from behind by stairs almost steep enough to be a ladder. It was a good-sized stage, larger than their own, measuring maybe fifteen feet by fifteen feet, with the back third framed by wooden posts and crosspieces from which curtains would hang to hide the back of the stage from the audience. An elderly man, long in his age-bent limbs and short of teeth, was seated on a joint stool in the shade beneath it, leaning on a heavy-headed wooden club. He narrowed his eyes as they came toward him, hefted the club up to lie across his lap, and crabbed at them as they came near, “The play is tomorrow and ye’ve no business here before then.”