A Play of Knaves (17 page)

Then for a few days all would be well. Until her conscience began to shove against her happiness again.

The only thing worse than a woman with a conscience, Joliffe thought, was a man without one.

And that was not true and he did not believe it. It was merely one of those things that sounded more clever than it was. And he immediately wondered how he could sometime use it in a play.

Then he wondered if it might be more than his life was worth if Rose took it badly.

Tisbe had grazed herself to the edge of the firelight, maybe wanting their company, but now she raised her head to stare into the darkness toward the gate as if seeing something there. An instant silence fell among the players, and into it Basset said quietly, “Joliffe.”

Joliffe needed no more. He was nearest the cart. With seeming ease, he rose and went to its open back as if to fetch something of no great matter but putting himself in reach of the thick wooden clubs kept in a rack against the cart’s inner wall, to be quickly in reach whenever there was need. Let him see a need and he’d have them tossed one after another to the other players in seconds. He couldn’t juggle but he could toss clubs, and his hand was already resting on one when Master Kyping walked into the firelight.

Joliffe left the cart and sauntered back to the fire as the rest of the company stood up, bowing with the rest of them as Master Kyping reached them, nodded in return, and asked, “May I join you for a time?”

Basset waved to his own cushions and stepped aside, saying, “By all means, sir.”

Master Kyping waved him back to them and sat down cross-legged on the other side of the fire, holding his hands out to the warmth and saying, “There was no good time to talk to you today. I’ve had word from my lady abbess of St. Mary’s that Lady Lovell had offered the help of her players in learning something about our troubles here, and since I suppose you’ll be leaving early come the morning, tonight seemed a good time to ask if you’d had any success.”

“Indeed, sir,” said Basset. He and the rest of them had all sat down again with every outward sign of ease, Piers with his head now on his mother’s lap and already mostly back to sleep. “Lady Lovell did honor us with that task. I hope that gave no offense.” Because not every man would care to have unasked help thrust on him.

“No offense at all,” Master Kyping answered with a smile. “I take what help I can and gladly. Have you learned aught beyond what’s openly known?”

“We think we have,” Basset said.

“And guessed some things, too,” Joliffe added.

Master Kyping looked to him. “I take guesses.” He looked back to Basset. “So?”

“So I don’t know that we’ve learned anything you don’t already know. There’s little secret about all the dislikes running every which way among folk here, that’s sure.”

“Too sure,” Master Kyping agreed.

“Master Ashewell seems the least trouble among them.”

“He is. He’s done well beyond the ordinary, but has a lighter hand and maybe more wits to him than either Walter Gosyn or John Medcote.”

“He’s good friends with Gosyn, though?” Basset asked.

“They’ve known each other all their lives here, yes.”

“But despite that, the servant-talk is that Master Ashewell is thinking of marrying Nicholas to Medcote’s daughter,” Joliffe said.

Master Kyping snapped his head around to look at him, eyes narrowed. “What?”

“So an Ashewell servant says,” Basset said. “That Medcote wants it and Master Ashewell is maybe thinking to do it, and that neither Mistress Ashewell nor Nicholas is pleased about it.”

“I wouldn’t think they would be,” Master Kyping said. “There’s no love lost between the two families. Young Nicholas married to Eleanor? That would be more like throwing a baby to a wildcat than a marriage. But you say there’s talk that way among Ashewell’s servants?”

“Some talk, yes,” Basset said.

From the side of his eye Joliffe tried to tell if that reminder had made any harm between Rose and Ellis but could not tell, while Master Kyping said thoughtfully, “Something is wrong there, right enough, if Master Ashewell didn’t refuse out of hand an offer like that from Medcote. If he hasn’t, I have to wonder why. It would go far to explaining something of what I’ve felt building here without being able to put hand to.”

“I wonder if Gosyn knows about it?” Joliffe said mildly. “I’d have thought a match between his daughter and Master Ashewell’s son more likely.”

“Yes. That’s what we’ve all thought.” Master Kyping looked back and forth from Joliffe to Basset and around at the others. “Aught else?”

Basset answered, “From something said between Nicholas and Claire, it seems Hal Medcote is angling for her and she doesn’t like it.”

“Her father won’t like it either, if Hal Medcote means more than a jest about it,” Master Kyping said grimly.

“She seems to think he does, but from what was said, his father favors it no more than Gosyn is likely to,” Basset said.

“That helps.” Master Kyping was grim about it. “There’d be three kinds of hell let loose if Medcote and Gosyn set up to quarrel over something like that. Not that Hal Medcote can’t make hell all by himself. You’re sure Claire wasn’t taken with thought of him? He’s good-looking enough to turn women’s heads.”

“I think she said he made her flesh crawl,” Joliffe offered. “And she didn’t look pleased with his attention today, if you saw that.”

“Yes. I did see.” Master Kyping gave a sharp nod, as if satisfied of something. “Good enough. And anything else?”

“Nothing else that isn’t open for everyone,” Basset said.

“Well, you’ve given me more than I had before and enough to go on, certainly. My thanks.” Master Kyping rose to go. The players stood up, too. “I’ll see to Lady Lovell knowing you’ve done well by things here. Good journeying tomorrow.”

Basset thanked him for that, adding, “Good fortune to you, too.”

“With this lot I’ll likely need it,” Master Kyping said with a grim half-laugh and walked away into the darkness.

The night was clear; beyond the firelight there was starlight enough for him to see his way, but, “I wonder where he’s going to,” said Joliffe. “He didn’t ride. I heard no horse.”

“Just so he’s gone and tomorrow we can go,” said Ellis. He stretched his arms wide and yawned. “I’m for bed.”

He held his hand out to Rose, who took it and let him draw her close. He said something softly in her ear. She nodded, and while the others did their final readying for sleep, he brought his bedding and hers from the tent and went to spread them under the cart.

No one was fool enough to say anything. Leading Piers, more asleep than awake, Basset and Gil went to their own blankets in the tent, while Joliffe lingered to bank the fire for the night, bringing the darkness in around him, so that he stood for a few moments, waiting for his eyes to grow used to only starlight before turning for the tent himself. With the fire out, the stars were a thick wash of pale light across the sky, and when he looked toward the hills, the White Horse was faintly there, and he raised one hand in salute to it before ducking into the tent.

 
He slept heavily and only reluctantly came awake to pale light through the tent’s canvas when the others began to stir and shift and crawl from their blankets. He resisted doing as much himself until Gil set back one flap to go outside, and said, “Oh. Euw.”

Basset echoed that, and Joliffe unburrowed his head to see a thick mist hiding the world beyond half a dozen yards away. The only brightness was from the flames that Rose was encouraging under a pot hung over the fire. “Something warm to set us on our way, I thought,” she said as Basset, Joliffe, Gil, and Piers joined her. “Even if only oatmeal.”

Basset gave a yawning stretch and asked, “Where’s Ellis gone?”

“Down to the stream. I’m supposing he’ll find his way back through this.”

“If I find him wandering, I’ll point him the right way,” Joliffe promised, took a towel from the two warming on the drying rack beside the fire, and set off to where he had to suppose the stream still was. The mist wreathed lightly among the trees and he heard the purl of water well before he saw it. Ellis, coming toward him, loomed dark-shaped out of the gray-whiteness, and Joliffe said as they passed, “It turned chill last night. Did you keep warm enough?”

“Shut it and put the bar across it,” Ellis said pleasantly and kept going.

“Double that from me, whelp,” Basset said cheerfully, closer behind than Joliffe had thought he was. He lightly slapped the back of Joliffe’s head, and Joliffe grinned, neither harmed nor chastened but making show of rubbing his head.

The morning’s first necessities seen to, the players mostly gathered around the fire to their breakfast of oat pottage. Only Piers among them was enjoying the damply shrouded morning, running in long loops out of and into sight through the mist, making strange noises for the sake of hearing what the mist did to them, until he came too close and his grandfather collared him, saying, “Finish eating so we can clear and get on the road.”

“It’s too hard to see for us to start out yet,” Piers protested.

“We’re not going at a mad gallop,” Basset said. “We’ll do well enough.”

“And if need be,” added Ellis, “we can always send you ahead to fall into any pits there may be before we get to them.”

Done with eating, they did what little was needed to be on their way. The tent, heavy with damp, was the worst part of it. Wherever they stopped and however they stayed tonight, they would have to have it out to dry lest it mold. While the others wrestled with it, Joliffe got Tisbe into harness and hitched to the cart. She showed her displeasure at that by butting her head into his chest, but he assured her, “No, truly, you know you’ll be glad to be on the road again. You were starting to find all this eating dull, weren’t you?” She butted him again, and not as if she agreed with him, but when the time came she leaned into the harness and pulled the cart bumping out of the field and into the lane willingly enough, turning to the left at Joliffe’s lead.

Behind them, they left the pasture near to what it had been when they came, with the grassy turfs replaced in the firepit and nothing to show they had been there but the matted-down grass of their camp and the cropped stretches of Tisbe’s grazing. The first would soon straighten and the rest grow and there would be nothing to show they had been there, nothing left but their memory of the place, and that would soon blur and be lost among fading memories of uncounted other places they had been. Walking at Tisbe’s head into the white wall of mist that obscured their way as surely as time obscured the future, Joliffe admitted to himself, not for the first time, that it was an odd life but it suited and satisfied him.

For now.

His stride did not falter but his mind did.

For now?

From where had that thought come?

And if not this life, then what? He knew full well how many might-have-beens he had slid away from in his life thus far because none of them had been what he wanted, nor had he seen any others that would suit and serve him better than this one did.

So why the “for now”?

They passed Master Ashewell’s manor gate without seeing anyone except a dog that came out to bark at them with all the gladness of having something to do, but by the time they were going steeply up into Ashewell village, the mist was thinning and people in the street called out and waved as they passed, with no sight of Father Hewgo to spoil anyone’s pleasure. On the village’s far side, with the mist fast vanishing and the sun beginning to break yellow through it, they took the road westward, their plan being to perform at Swindon before the day was out and spend the night there. None of them took particular note of a horse closing on them at a canter from behind. There was room enough on the road here for a rider to pass them without trouble.

Except the rider slowed to a trot as he passed them, then swung his horse into Tisbe’s way and brought his horse to a stop.

He was no one they knew. Tisbe stopped without need of Joliffe telling her, and he knew that behind the cart Ellis, walking with Rose until then, would be moving closer to the cart’s back, ready to grab out and toss the clubs to them if need be; but on Tisbe’s other side Basset was saying with no apparent alarm at all despite he would be as ready for trouble as the rest of them, “You want us for something, sir?”

“You’re the players were in Master Ashewell’s pasture last night?” the rider demanded.

By now Joliffe had taken in the fellow had no sword, only the usual dagger at his belt. Nor was there any sound of other men moving in ambush on them. Whatever this was, it wasn’t likely robbery or assault, and with probably the same thought, Basset asked somewhat more boldly, “You are . . . ?”

“Master Kyping’s man. He sent me to find you. You
are
the players?”

“We are,” Basset said.

“Then on Master Kyping’s order you’re to go back to the field where you were and stay there.”

“What’s happened?” Basset asked sharply; and well he might, because something surely had.

And back at him with matching sharpness, the man said, “John Medcote was found murdered this morning hardly half a mile from where you were.”

Chapter 11

There being neither point nor use to making trouble about going back, the players made none, and when the man saw they were going to give him no argument, his manner eased enough for him to offer, “If we go on a little way and turn off the high road the next chance there is, I can show you side ways and save you turning right around and going back on your tracks.”

“Will they be wide enough for our cart, sir?” Basset asked.

“They’re wide enough for haywains. Should do for your cart.”

Joliffe was weighing as fast as Basset surely was how much trouble they might be in, with Medcote dead and close to their camp. Strangers were always better to blame for trouble than someone everyone knew. Even with a lord’s name to their company, they were still folk not in the right way of things to most men’s minds, and therefore likely capable of anything and therefore always easiest to blame. But Basset always held that it was best to be at least outwardly friendly to anyone with possible authority, pointing out—sometimes through gritted teeth—“It’s being better they like us than not.” So here and now, as Joliffe set Tisbe forward again and the man brought his own horse around to walk beside them, Basset asked easily, “You’re from around here, then, you know the ways so well?”