A Play of Knaves (21 page)

“Ah,” said Basset, still with easy confidence. “But you see we’re not likely to be the least trouble. We’re Lord Lovell’s men, and he’s likely to be loathe to lose us to a crowner’s convenience.”

“Aye. That’s true enough,” Sy granted. “You being Lord Lovell’s men was why my master was wondering if you’d play for his folk at all. Though he said if you’d play for Medcote, you’d play for anyone. Not that he meant that any bad way, look you,” he quickly added.

Rose handed a thick-cut piece of bread and an equally thick-cut piece of cheese to Joliffe, saying, “These are from Master Gosyn’s wife. She took thought we might be short of food, having been turned back on our way.”

Joliffe took the food gratefully, saying, “If his wife sends us new bread and fine cheese, Gosyn can say whatever he wants about us, good or bad.”

“She’s a fine hand in the dairy,” Sy said, proud as if her accomplishments were his own. But he leaned toward Joliffe with a different eagerness and asked, lowering his voice, “Ya’ve seen him, then? Medcote? He’s dead, surely?”

“Dead surely,” Joliffe assured him. Hungry, he would have rather eaten than talked, but to give Sy what he wanted, he told what he had seen. He would have been telling the other players by now anyway, so it made not that great a difference, except with a different audience, he put more into the telling than he otherwise might have.

Sy was pleased at the end, anyway, sitting back like a man satisfied after a full meal, saying with a shake of his head, “Drowned and dead. Who would have thought it?”

“Everyone’s glad to be quit of him, I gather,” Joliffe said.

“You’d be hard put to find a man—or probably a woman either—with a good thing to say of him,” Sy said. “Nor will the rest of the Medcote lot be missed if they pack up after the funeral and take themselves back where they came from. But they won’t,” he added glumly. “They got their claws into Francis Brook’s lands and won’t be giving it up.”

“I thought the manor came to Anela Medcote by right after her cousin’s death,” Joliffe said, half making it a question.

“It did.” No matter how much Sy grudged granting it. “Shouldn’t ever have come to him dying, though. He was bettering from his hurt. You heard how that was?”

“Young Nicholas Ashewell wounded him by chance, yes,” Basset said.

“By chance it surely was.” Sy was as fierce on that as if Basset had said otherwise. “There’s never been harm in that boy and everybody knows it. It wasn’t even much of a wound, I heard, and Brook was bettering. That’s what was being said. Then here come his kin, that Anela and the rest, and next anyone knows, Francis Brook is dead, his heart given out or some such thing and no one there to say differently.”

“No one was there when he died?” Basset asked. “He was left alone, you mean? That can’t be right.”

“It was Our Lady’s day in harvest. Most were gone to church, and when they came back, it was over with him.”

“Most were to church?” Joliffe prompted.

“Save for a few servants and Medcote and young Hal.” Sy laid a finger aside his nose with a knowing look. “Nothing to be proved then or afterward, but there was talk then and there’s talk now. And whether there was anything untoward or not in Francis Brook dying the way he did, the Medcotes didn’t waste more time on mourning than they had to. Were moved in, bag and baggage, before Holy Rood Day, just see if they weren’t. Now if they’d just go as quickly, that would be something to sing about.”

“Jack Hammond wouldn’t be minding, anyway,” Joliffe said easily.

Sy gave a crow of laughter. “Jack Hammond? He’d lead the rough music that saw them out of town.”

“But doesn’t Master Gosyn have his trouble, too, with a villein who doesn’t want to know his place?” Joliffe said, still easily.

From the corner of his eye he saw Ellis start and cut short a gesture probably meant to tell him to shut up, but Sy answered without hesitation, “Wat Offington. Him and a few others, too, that think Gosyn has made what he has of his life over their backs, not seeing the fault is theirs, not Gosyn’s, if he’s made much of what was his and they’ve made little with theirs.”

“Instead of stirring each other up to trouble,” Basset said.

“That’s the way of it,” Sy agreed heartily.

“Folk don’t seem to resent Master Ashewell, though,” Joliffe said.

“Ah, well, he’s another matter, isn’t he? He went off to war and made his fortune and nobody can quarrel with that, can they? He’s a quieter man, too. Always trying to cool things instead of stir them up.”

“You’d think that would be Father Hewgo’s place,” Joliffe said innocently. “Him being the priest here and all. Peace and God’s love and all.”

Sy bent over on another loud laugh and had to straighten and catch his breath before he could protest, still laughing, “Ah, you’ve seen enough of him to know better than that! Coals to kindling is that man. What Medcote doesn’t stir up, Father Hewgo does. He’s forever at Jack and Wat and George Lamb to ‘cease to trouble their masters,’ as he puts it. Like that’d be enough to settle those three.”

“George Lamb?” Basset asked.

“He’s fellow with Wat Offington in thinking he’s hard done by. Wants to buy out of his boon work but hasn’t the money for it. Might have if he and Wat didn’t spend so much at the alehouse washing their wrongs in ale. Thinks Gosyn ought to let him have what he wants for what he can pay, not what the work is worth.” Sy stood up. “Ah, they’re all of a kind, those three, but maybe matters will settle a bit without Medcote to stir them up every chance there was.”

“Why would Medcote be doing that?” Joliffe asked from where he still sat. “If Wat and this George aren’t his men?”

“For the sport of it. To keep old Gosyn stirred up. No love lost there.”

“So,” said Basset, “we’d do as well with a merry play tonight as a sorrowful one?”

“No need for sorrow with us over Medcote’s death,” Sy assured him and started away.

Ellis called after him, “Will there be supper in it for us?”

“Sure to be,” Sy said over his shoulder cheerfully. “There’s nothing mean about my master!”

The players held silent among themselves until Sy had disappeared into the lane. With him gone, Joliffe was about to say that Walter Gosyn looked to be liked by his household folk, anyway, but Ellis burst out at both him and Basset, “Lord god of madmen, you two never give it up, do you? We’ve done what Lady Lovell asked of us. All we have to do now is keep our mouths shut and our heads down until we’re let go from here. But there you sat, asking every question that came into your heads!”

“It was just friendly, common curiosity, that’s all,” Joliffe protested.

“Hah!” Ellis returned.

“Leave off. The both of you,” said Basset. “We all want to be somewhere else other than here, but here is where we are, and since we are, it’s better that we know more than less.”

“On the chance we’ll need to know that more,” Rose said quietly.

She laid a hand on Ellis’ knee. Looking to her, he laid one of his own hands over hers, then clasped it, stood up, and pulled her to her feet with, “Let’s go for a walk, you and I. But not you,” he added at Piers.

Before Piers, already half-way to his feet, could protest that, his grandfather caught his hand, pulled him back down, and clamped him firmly to his side with an arm around his shoulders, saying, “That’s right. You and Gil can help Joliffe and I argue out what play we’ll do tonight.”

“Brave Bevis
!
”
Gil said promptly, he having a well-sized part in that one.

“St. Nicholas and the Boys
!
”
Piers returned on his own behalf.

“I do like the part in that one where the evil innkeeper grinds the two boys into sausages,” Joliffe said, then added thoughtfully, “though I’ve thought it would be even better if we left out the part where St. Nicholas turns them back into boys.”

“Hai!” Piers protested.

Ellis and Rose had disappeared down the path toward the stream by then. Basset tossed possibilities for tonight’s play back and forth with Gil and Piers for a while but ended by saying, “I’ll make up my mind in a while. For now, Piers, why don’t you finally show Gil how you cheat at merels.”

Gil crowed, “Ah-ha! I thought you must, you win so often at it!” while Piers protested, all vast and injured innocence, “I don’t! I’m just better at it than anyone else, that’s all.” Free of Basset’s hold, he stood up and started for the cart where the merels gameboard was kept with his own few things. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

Gil shared a grin with Basset and Joliffe, and they returned it, all of them knowing the diversion would keep Piers happily occupied a goodly while. But neither Basset nor Joliffe made immediate use of being left to themselves; instead they sat in silence a while, Joliffe finishing his share of the bread and cheese while Basset gazed away at the sky in apparent idleness. Gil and Piers were well into their game on the far side of the cart before Basset said, still gazing at the sky, “So. What do you think about Medcote’s death?”

“Rose and Piers and probably Gil are safe from suspicion of doing it. They haven’t the weight or strength.”

Basset cocked his head and a look at him. “Which leaves you and me and Ellis if the crowner wants to turn on us. Except we can each claim none of us left here last night.”

“Not that anyone need believe we’re telling the truth about that,” Joliffe pointed out, although it was a thing Basset knew as well as he did. The little silence between them came back until Joliffe added, “I do like our company being Lord Lovell’s.”

Basset nodded on a sigh of unspoken agreement with that. In their years without a patron they had had more than one narrow slide out of trouble, and sometimes they had not made that slide unscathed. But being shielded by Lord Lovell’s name did not mean they should rest easy, and Joliffe said, “At least by everything we’ve heard it’s sure there are plenty of others willing to have Medcote dead.”

“What you’re wondering is which of them it was did for him,” Basset said.

“So are you,” Joliffe returned.

Rather than deny that, Basset began to count on his fingers, “Jack Hammond, Walter Gosyn, Master Ashewell, maybe Nicholas Ashewell—”

“If I was threatened with marrying Eleanor Medcote, I’d be tempted to murder, surely,” Joliffe said thoughtfully. “Though it would make more sense to kill her than her father, I would think.”

“Shut up, Joliffe,” Basset said without heat and went on with his count. “Medcote’s wife, tired of his ways.”

“Eleanor, tired of her father making use of her to his own ends?” Joliffe suggested. “She looks to be a strong young woman. More likely than her mother to match Medcote’s strength, I’d think.”

“The same can be said, and more so, for her brother.”

“He and his father didn’t seem at odds, though. Seemed even to work hand-in-glove together. Why would Hal kill him? And why now?”

“To inherit? With us at hand and readily blamed? After all, Hal is the one who’ll gain the immediate most by his father’s death.”

“True enough. I’d like to know where he was last night.”

“And where Gosyn, Ashewell, and Jack Hammond were, and all the others who don’t mind Medcote is dead,” Basset said. “Kyping has his work cut out for him.”

“It would help to know if the murder was planned and Medcote was stalked to where he was killed, or if someone merely happened on him and took the chance.”

“Which isn’t something anyone is likely to know until the murderer is caught.”

“Too true for comfort. Still, it would help to know who knew for certain where Medcote would be last night. I wonder, too—” Joliffe broke off. What he had suddenly wondered was whether the murderer had meant to kill Rose, too, if she had been there, to make both deaths look more surely Ellis’ doing. That being altogether a thought best left unsaid to Basset, he said instead, “—who gains besides Hal Medcote.”

“The rest of the family, glad to be rid of him,” Basset said. “Not every murder has to be for a large reason. Quite a small reason will do as well for some people.”

“Being rid of Medcote would seem a large reason to me.” Joliffe thought for a moment, then added, “It seems less of a gain for both the Ashewells and Gosyn. Hal is all too likely to keep on with his father’s demand for the Ashewell marriage for Eleanor, and now he’s clear to move openly for Claire for himself.”

“As you said, for the Ashewells at least, killing the daughter would have been better sense,” Basset said, with no jest to the thought.

“What about her?” Joliffe said.

“What about her?” Basset echoed.

“For the murderer. We’ve agreed she might have the strength to hold Medcote down, if she got that blow to his jaw in first.”

“That’s hardly a woman’s blow. A fist to a man’s jaw?”

Joliffe touched his own jaw lightly in memory and said, “There’s some women who do. If they mean business enough.”

Basset’s face lightened with interest just short of open laughter. “Who? When?”

“A long time ago,” Joliffe said with dignity, “and that’s all that I’m telling.”

Basset did laugh then.

Ignoring him, Joliffe went on, “Or else Mistress Eleanor has a lover. Someone she wants who also wants her. And she got word to him of where Medcote would be last night, and this lover killed him in the hope that with Medcote dead he’ll have Eleanor.”

“Unless Hal still wants the Ashewell marriage,” Basset pointed out.

“That’s something I’ve wondered on,” said Joliffe. “She’s a widow. Why wasn’t she free to marry as she chose? As a widow, she should have her own say over her life.”

“Maybe she does want to marry Nicholas Ashewell.”

“Or she may think Hal will be better to sway than their father was. Medcote kept a heavy hand on everybody. Maybe the only way past him was—”

“—over his dead body,” Basset finished. “Unfortunately, we’ve no thought of who this putative lover might be, do we?”