A Play of Knaves (27 page)

Joliffe feigned choking halfway through a sip of ale, swallowed hurriedly, and said, “Thoughts? You mean . . .” He broke off, preferring she say it.

“I mean the word was that Francis Brook was on the mend. The bird-bolt had no more than scraped along the side of his neck. It was the blood he’d lost was the trouble and that’s why he was kept to bed. But he was getting his strength back, see, and then he was dead and nobody was in the house when he died but Medcote and some servants. And young Hal as was a half-grown boy then.”

“Where was everyone else?”

“It was Assumption Day in harvest. Everyone was gone to the church who could be. The servant that had been tending Brook went out to the well to draw some water, it being hot and Brook a little fevered. She had some trouble with the rope being in a tangle somehow, and when she came back, there was Brook lying dead in his bed. Heart failed him, it was said, and there was nothing to prove differently. Nor could she say Medcote had been near him while she was out.”

“But folk thought otherwise,” Joliffe said.

“Folk thought otherwise.”

“Why wasn’t Medcote or Hal at church with the rest?”

“There was another priest here then, and Medcote had already quarreled with him, so Medcote wouldn’t go, and little Hal was already his father’s boy and wouldn’t go either. A pair they were even then, and no good at the core, either of them.”

“What became of the servant?”

“Her? She moved on that next Michaelmas when her hire was done. Went Swindon way, I think. Nor was she the only one not to linger there, then or since. The Medcotes don’t keep servants long.”

“How are the present ones taking Medcote’s death?”

The alewife gave a throaty chuckle. “There’s no great grief going on there, that’s sure. Not among the servants nor the rest of them.”

“Has there been talk about how Medcote came to be where he was when he was killed?”

“Gone out to meet some woman,” the alewife said scornfully. “That’s what they’re saying he said. Me, I can see him saying that just to goad his wife, when all the time he was up to some other devilment, though I don’t know what.”

That was good, then, if there was no talk of Rose, just of some woman and apparently doubt about even that. To see what else there might be, Joliffe tried, “I’ve heard there was a quarrel between Medcote and his wife the night he was killed. What’s said about that?”

“Nothing particular that I’ve heard. Bitter words may have been passed, but from what’s said, those were common enough. I’d have thought they were long past outright quarreling. Why waste the time when she knew his ways well enough to know there was no changing him?”

Joliffe had a moment’s pity for Anela Medcote, cursed with a quarrel-hearted husband, a son who matched him, and a cold daughter. Despite them all, she had dealt fairly enough with the players that one time, which was reason enough for Joliffe to consider better of her than some might. Come to that, though, her daughter had seemed none so harsh either. So maybe it was best to remember it was easy enough to talk about someone, but knowing what was in their heart was another matter altogether.

Though he had a fairly sure thought of what was in Hal Medcote’s heart and did not like it. Where his father’s death could have been a chance to begin a healing of all the angers and wrongs Medcote had done, Hal looked set instead on deepening and spreading the ugliness.

He was forming a question about Hal when Gil set his emptied cup aside and asked, “Should we be seeing about food now?”

He sounded so much like Ellis when Ellis had had enough of Joliffe making questions that Joliffe had to hold back from laughing while obediently turning the talk toward food and where they might buy some in the village. The alewife was as helpful there as with her ale, glad to fill their bottle while telling them who had done baking that morning and that her daughter-in-law had some new cheese from a cow that had calved early. Paying her with coins and thanks, they went on their quest and had better fortune with it than Rose had hoped for. The only loaves anyone would sell them were a coarse mix of rye and barley, but this end of the year few in the village were likely to have better, and they were surely better than none. Besides that, the daughter-in-law was pleased to sell some of her new cheese and she was even persuaded, by Joliffe’s ready talk and a few more coins, to part with some meat from a newly butchered lamb she had been readying for her household’s supper.

“So you’d better get yourselves away with it, before they find out what I’ve done,” she jested at them as she gave it over, wrapped in rhubarb leaves.

Taking it with a bow like a courtier receiving largess from royal hands, Joliffe said, “It is the more precious for being received from your fair hands. I will betray you to no one, good my lady.”

She blushed and laughed and told him and Gil to get on their way. They went and were well outside the village before Gil said of a sudden, “That was a lot of talk you had from the alewife. You set out to find things out and you did.” He grinned. “It’s a good thing it was me instead of Ellis with you.”

Joliffe matched his grin. “Yes.”

“Did you find out anything? That helps, I mean.”

“Nothing that helps. Not yet anyway. Maybe if I have a chance to learn more there’ll be pieces that fit, but nothing does yet.”

“Oh.”

Gil was disappointed by that, but it was the truth. If he had found out anything that helped, Joliffe did not know it yet, and what surprised him was how little he cared. If the players were given leave to go within the hour, he would go with a free heart, completely willing to leave Medcote’s death unsolved behind him.

He only hoped they were given leave to go before someone murdered Hal Medcote, who looked as likely to it as ever his father had been.

With the field hidden from the lane by the hedge, it was only as they came to the gateway that Gil said, “Uh-oh,” and Joliffe silently echoed him.

Midway between gate and camp, Basset and Ellis were standing in talk with four riders. New trouble—that was Joliffe’s first thought, before he saw two of the riders were Kyping and Kyping’s man. Old trouble then.

Or maybe new to go with them, because the third rider was Eleanor Medcote. The fourth, though, looked to be only a servant, probably companioning her.

Joliffe handed the share of the food he had been carrying to Gil, saying, “Take this to Rose,” who was still at the fire, tending to something in the pot on its trivet over the coals. Piers was nowhere in sight, and Joliffe added, “Find Piers if you can,” following the players’ sure urge to draw together when there might be trouble.

Gil obeyed without pause or question, circling the riders to go to Rose while Joliffe went forward to join Basset and Ellis. Kyping was just gathering up his reins as if to go but returned Joliffe’s bow with a bend of his head while saying to Basset, “That was all. I just wanted you to know word is the crowner will be here before sundown.”

“Hopefully in time to view my father’s body so we can move it today,” Eleanor Medcote said.

Joliffe could not tell whether it was bitterness or restrained anger in her voice. But why not both? he thought. Why limit her when she had reasons enough for both? And wanting to know more of her mind, he bowed to her and said, “May I offer regret for your loss, my lady?”

As a player, he had small business offering her anything but his service and not even that at present, when such other matters were in hand, and she looked at him, surprised, before saying, graciously enough, “Thank you.”

Kyping was starting to turn his horse away and she gathering up her own reins to go with him. Ignoring that, Joliffe said in the bright voice of someone too stupid to know he’s saying the wrong thing at the very wrong time, “But perhaps we’ll be asked back to play at your wedding and your brother’s? A double wedding perchance?”

The sudden, sickened look on Eleanor’s face betrayed much. So did the sudden anger on Kyping’s. Seeming to misread hers and not see his, Joliffe said with distress, “My apology, my lady. Is your brother’s suit likely to go astray, then?”

Eleanor’s sickened look hardened on the instant into anger deeper than Kyping’s. Her voice raw with bitterness, she answered, “Oh, Hal will get Claire if he wants her. Hal generally gets what he wants.” She harshly pulled her horse around, adding as she set heels to its flanks, “Even to having Father out of his way.”

She rode off, her servant behind her, and Joliffe, despite feeling the daggers of Ellis’ gaze on him, said to Kyping in seeming contrition, “I’m sorry. I should have thought better before saying anything.”

Turning his horse to follow Eleanor’s, Kyping said curtly, “Best have Basset tell you the rest.” Then he was away, too, his man with him.

Joliffe, watching them go rather than turning to meet Ellis’ glare, said thoughtfully, “I’d not say she’s deep in grief. Would you?”

“What I’d say,” Ellis snapped, “was that you need your head held in the stream like Medcote’s was. Leave off with the questions, can’t you?”

Joliffe gave up patience and pretense, looked at him, and snapped back in matching anger, “I will when you give up womaning your way across the countryside.”

Ellis’ head jerked back as if he had been slapped and his mouth opened but no instant answer came; and Joliffe turned on Basset and demanded, “So what ‘rest’ did Kyping mean you were to tell me?”

In his usual way of “oil on troubled waters,” Basset said evenly, as if there were no anger anywhere around him, “Kyping has just found out—and it seems Hal Medcote took delight in telling him—that his father a year or so ago saw to all his property being put in his name and Hal’s, so that despite he’s dead, Hal will have to pay no fine for having everything, being owner with him instead of heir.”

“But isn’t that what Jack Hammond and his father did?” Joliffe asked. “And Medcote refused it and was forcing Hammond into paying the fine to inherit anyway and doubling it or some such thing?”

“Yes,” Basset said.

Ellis had apparently decided answering Joliffe was not worth it. He was stalking away, not back to the cart or Rose but toward the woods along the stream. To wear off his ill-humour by thrashing the trees or water or something, Joliffe hoped, but was more interested in saying to Basset, “So Medcote had done the very same thing for himself and Hal that he was refusing to allow to Hammond. ‘Hypocrite’ doesn’t come close to describing him, does it?”

“It doesn’t,” Basset agreed. He started back toward the fire, asking as Joliffe fell into step beside him, “What did you bring back in the way of food? Rose looks happy.”

Joliffe told him how well they had succeeded in the village and took pleasure in Rose’s delight at fresh meat. She had sent Gil and Piers to find some wild garlic and any other herbs to make the lamb more savory in the cooking. While Joliffe set up the spit to roast the meat, they came back with what they had gathered, and in a while Ellis returned, too, not openly angry anymore and bringing a piece of wood that he settled to carving. With Piers hanging over his shoulder making suggestions of what he should be making and Rose happy at her cooking and the rest of them sitting at rest, there was a contented time then—one of the small times when nothing of great matter was happening, when simply being was enough. They were together and at ease and for just now in need of nothing but what they had.

For the sake and pleasure of that peace, Joliffe kept quiet. No one wanted to hear the questions still wandering in his mind. In truth, he was tired of his questions, too, and why not leave off them altogether, because what was the point of them? The crowner was finally here, would ask his questions, hold his inquest, and maybe as soon as sometime tomorrow give them leave to go. Then they would be away from here within the hour, even if they had to travel by moonlight, Joliffe thought, and that would be the last he would need ever even to think anymore about all this ugliness. The people to whom it mattered would sort it out or sink in it, however it might happen to go, but assuredly none of it would matter to him anymore.

They had finished eating, had praised Rose until her face glowed more with pleasure than with the fire’s warmth, and were all still sitting around the fire, too satisfied to bother with any tasks so late in the day, when the sound of more than several hoof-falls in the lane turned all their heads that way, to watch as several riders, then a flat, horse-pulled cart with a long, canvas-wrapped bundle on it went past the gateway, headed villageward.

“The crowner, his folk, and Medcote’s body,” Basset said.

“Kyping was with them,” Ellis said.

Several more riders followed the cart, Hal Medcote riding alone, his mother and sister riding side by side behind him. Two servants brought up the rear. A small procession seeing Medcote’s body to the church. If the inquest did not get in the way, the funeral and burial would likely be tomorrow.

Had best be tomorrow, given how long Medcote’s body had lain out, waiting for its grave.

As hoof-fall and the creak of the cart disappeared, the players all faced back to the fire where the flames were beginning to show brighter as dusk came on; and despite everything he had intended, Joliffe asked, “Did Eleanor Medcote and Kyping come here together this afternoon?”

Everyone looked at him. For a moment no one answered. Then Basset said, “He was here. She came afterward. She must have had some purpose for coming, but maybe because he was here she never said.”

“No,” said Rose. “I saw her. She didn’t mean to come here. She was riding past when she looked through the gateway and saw Kyping. She drew rein, hesitated, then turned in.” Rose paused, then added, “If I was asked, I’d say she was pleased to see Kyping. I could almost think she had been looking for him.”

“She was more likely going to the Ashewells,” Ellis pointed out. “To see her boy-husband to be.”