A Play of Knaves (31 page)

That would match with Wat Offington or someone else of his short-minded kind. Which part of the field was Offington’s to work? And who else had strips in sight of here? Had Kyping asked questions that way yet? He needed to, because even if someone had been there but was not the murderer, they might have seen someone or something that had not mattered then but would now.

Joliffe’s momentary excitement at those possibilities went dull. By yesterday’s evening the rain had been small but steady. No one would have been at work in the fields. There very probably would have been no one outside to see anything. Only Gosyn taking his usual walk in his orchard no matter what the weather. Gosyn . . . and whoever had come to kill him.

With another thought, he went forward, past Claire to stand on the stream’s bank, looking across at the other side. Both banks were steep here, but not high. Hardly three feet, if that much. An easy drop into the stream, and to get out nothing more was needed than a hand braced on the bank for an easy vault up. Supposing the stream’s bottom here was not sucking mud. It did not look to be. The water was flowing fast and somewhat high from the rain but he could see its green, streaming water weeds and what looked a graveled bed.

Behind him, not moved from where she had stopped, Claire said in a hollow voice, “There’s going to be too much rain again this year. That’s what my father thought. Another bad harvest.”

Joliffe turned around. “We’ll have to pray not.”

“For all the good prayer is likely to do,” said Claire with no particular feeling.

She was dull with grief and probably hopelessness, Joliffe thought; but it had been anger that drove her from the solar, and anger would probably serve her better in the while to come than dullness would, so very deliberately he said, “Do you think Hal Medcote will wait the year of mourning before he marries you?”

Claire gasped as if he had struck her. Color flooded her face and for a moment all the anger was there again, ready to be flailed against him. But either her control was better than so young a girl could be thought to have or she was further into hopelessness than she had seemed. Instead of an angry answer, she turned her head from him to stare away among the trees and said, “I told you to leave.”

So she couldn’t be goaded. That would likely serve her well in time to come, too, but meanwhile she needed more, and Joliffe tried, “That your mother takes what comfort he offers doesn’t mean you have to marry him. You only have to refuse him and go on refusing him, no matter what anyone else chooses or does or says to you.”

“‘Only’ refuse him,” Claire said with a bitterness that showed she knew full well how harsh and sustained a struggle such a refusing could bring on her. Anger warm in her voice and face again, she looked at Joliffe and mocked, “‘Only’ refuse him.”

Lightly back at her, not feeling light at all—this was her life they were playing at—Joliffe said, “Better than being married to him, surely.”

“Anything is better than being married to him!”

“Well then.” Joliffe spread out one hand as if offering her what was perfectly plain. “There you are.”

“Where?” she said back at him, still with fierce mockery. “I’m nowhere! Nowhere is where I am,” she said, and spun away from him on a sob and went at a harsh walk back toward the garden and the house.

He was left wondering if he’d done any good at all. She had been a much-loved, much-loving daughter all of her life. Would she be able to stand against whatever her dying mother might want for her? If she remembered her father’s anger against Hal Medcote, maybe she would have strength enough to hold out against a dying woman’s wish. But only maybe.

And if she didn’t?

Then she would come to share, along with Nicholas Ashewell, whatever hell it was the Medcotes lived in, leaving little to pray for except God’s mercy on all their souls.

He let thought of her go and instead stood frowning down at the trampled, torn ground between the trees nearest the stream. From what Kyping had said, Gosyn’s had been a messy death, but what blood there must have been was washed away here by the night’s rain. There was only the torn ground and grass. The blood there must have been on Gosyn’s murderer must be long since washed away, too. It was his bloody clothing that would be least easily rid of its evidence. Kyping had said nothing about it, but surely his men were questioning for anyone seen bloody as well as asking about bloody clothing or if someone had noted clothing unexpectedly washed.

Of course in the rain there had been—and was going to be, Joliffe thought, cocking an eye at the re-clouding sky—someone could have washed his bloodied clothing and no one been the wiser about why it was wet. Nor could Kyping count on someone being willing to tell that someone of their family had come home last night bloody or with bloody clothing or that some of someone’s clothing was gone missing without explanation. So the chances of learning anything that way were slim, and the more that Joliffe thought on it, the more sure he was that Gosyn’s murder was no matter of chance. Gosyn was known to walk in his orchard at about the same time every day, come what may. Yesterday’s rain had served to make almost certain no one else would be out and about to see the murderer come and go, and that same rain had been enough to wash away any traces he might have left during that coming and going, as well as making no particular matter of his washed, wet clothing afterward to anyone who might have noted it. That was too many things working to the murderer’s favor for Joliffe to be willing to say it had all happened by unplanned chance. It might have, but he had to doubt it. It was easier to believe that someone had thought all that through ahead of time and only been waiting for the time to be right. Or maybe not planned well ahead but suddenly seen everything was in place at once and very deliberately seized the moment.

“You. Player,” Hal Medcote said behind him.

Behind him was not somewhere he wanted Hal Medcote to be, and with face and voice immediately both bland, Joliffe turned, saying, “Sir?”

“You were here with Claire. Why? What passed between you?”

There was both challenge and demand in Hal’s voice, and despite himself, Joliffe matched him, saying, “Nothing more than words and none of them of concern to you.”

“Only words?” Hal demanded.

“Only words.”

Hal unexpectedly grinned. “Pity. You should try for more next time.”

Too taken by surprise to hide it, Joliffe said, “What?”

“More than words.” Hal came closer, dropping his voice as if they were suddenly friends sharing talk no one else should hear. “She thinks she doesn’t want to marry me, so likely she can be a fool other ways, too. You’ve probably a way with words and women. If you can get her into ‘trouble, ’ shall we say, I’ll make no trouble over it.”

Only with a sharp lurch of his mind did Joliffe follow where Hal was going and in answer shaped his face to a knowing leer and said in a voice to match, “Because afterward I’ll be gone and you’ll still be here and she’ll have to marry you because there’ll be no one else to have her.”

“You have it.”

“You’d take on another man’s bastard for your own?”

Hal answered that with a long look that by its cold emptiness said everything.

No, he would not be raising anyone’s bastard as his own.

Joliffe let a glitter come into his eyes that said he and Hal were men who understood each other. “I get the sport and you get the profit. Is that it?”

“That’s it,” Hal agreed.

With Claire no more than something to be used by each of them toward their own ends and never mind what happened to her because of it.

Joliffe slightly bowed, putting mockery into the bow, and sly mockery and lust into his face and voice as he answered, “I’ll do what I can to serve you, sir. With pleasure.”

Hal gave him a curt nod in return, as if accepting a servant’s willingness to serve, said, “Good then,” went away, back toward the house.

Watching him go, Joliffe thought it was pity that looks couldn’t kill, because if they did, his own at Hal’s back would have here and now assured another murder.

The one good thing was that if Hal Medcote believed he had set Joliffe on to wrong Claire, then he would not be immediately setting anyone else to it. Or taking steps himself—such as rape to insure she had no choice but to marry him as her ravisher.

On second thought, Joliffe was glad looks did not kill. Hal deserved to be dead by some way other than quickly.

Knowing that was a sinful thought did not lessen the heat behind it, and he moved away from thinking it, back to staring at the trampled ground, going again over thoughts he had already had about how the murderer had come and gone and about his bloodied clothing.

Or maybe there had been no clothing, he suddenly thought.

If the whole business had indeed been thought out beforehand, the murderer had surely forethought that part of the problem, too. And had probably seen as plainly as Joliffe now did how to solve it.

Chapter 21

By finding his way away through the kitchen garden and around the rear byre-yard, Joliffe left Gosyn’s without encountering anyone except a surprised kitchen maid and a boy forking dung out of the byre. So there was that way into the orchard, too, but he wouldn’t choose it as a way to go if he was on his way to do a murder, or to leave by, either, if he wanted to be secret at it. Besides that, the byre-yard opened onto the village street, in clear view of half the houses there.

He had his whole walk back to the camp to change his mind about what he meant to do. There was, after all, no need for him to do it. He could tell his suspicion to Kyping and let it be his trouble. He could forget the matter altogether as something with nothing to do with him and leave it behind him when they all moved on, which could be as soon as tomorrow if the crowner accepted they had nothing to do with the business and let them go. After that he would never come back here and all of it would fade from memory like so many other places the players had been and never returned to.

The trouble was that he knew his memory better than that. It was not kind enough to him. It had a way of suddenly tossing up things long unremembered that he would willingly have left unremembered. He still wished he could forget the time he had pushed his brother into mud and spoiled his new tunic and made him cry and their mother angry to tears. That had been when he was all of maybe eight years old, but the memory still rose up sometimes and made him feel his guilt and shame all over again. If he did nothing here, how long would
that
guilt and shame ride with him through his life? It did not bear considering. If nothing else, he had to tell Kyping what he thought.

But if he was going to do that, why not do the rest? Besides, it was his thought, and who was likely to carry it through better than he would? Besides that, if he were being fully honest with himself—a policy of doubtful worth but one he seemed unable to break as often as he would like—his curiosity would not be satisfied by leaving the attempt to someone else.

At camp he told the others as little as need be of how things were at Gosyn’s and certainly not of Hal Medcote’s offer, then went to Tisbe grazing along the edge of the woods. She acknowledged him by lifting her head and swinging it to bump against his chest and afterward stood willingly while he untangled and combed her forelock with his fingers and checked her feet to be sure her hoofs were clean and uncracked, her shoes still firmly nailed. He had done as much yesterday in readiness for the leaving today that hadn’t happened; it assuredly didn’t need doing again today, and Tisbe’s patience ran out with her last hoof. When he let it go, she set it down with an impatient stamp and moved away from him, flicking her tail to be sure he understood her displeasure.

He did and slapped her rump apologetically, knowing he had been wasting her time as well as his, delaying what he meant to do next, doubting he should do it and knowing that his doubt wouldn’t stop him. She drifted away in pursuit of better grass. Seeing Basset strolling toward him, he stayed where he was, and Basset, joining him, nodded toward Tisbe as if saying something about her while saying instead, “What are you thinking to do?”

“Do?” Joliffe echoed, trying for innocence.

Even as he said it, he heard he had over-played the innocence. Basset, as tuned as he was to subtleties of voice, said firmly at him, “Yes. Do.”

So Joliffe told him, with voice low and their backs to the others, and when he finished, Basset gave him a doubting look and asked, “You think you have to do this thing, rather than just tell Kyping and let him set someone else to do it?”

“Yes.”

Basset answered that with a long look before finally he said, “Best get on with it then,” and went away, back to the others.

Joliffe, as if necessity called, went the other way, into the trees. There, out of sight of everyone, he sat down beside the stream and took off his shoes and hosen, fastened his shoes together by their straps and buckles and hung them and his hosen around his neck. He could only hope his doublet was short enough to stay dry because he was not minded to strip down to his shirt in the afternoon’s damp chill with its returned threat of rain. Not that he was going to be very dry anyway, he supposed as he waded into the stream. The water flowed cold around his bare legs and he stood for a moment, considering, before turning upstream. Only later and if need be would he go downstream, toward Gosyn’s manor.

It was later than he wished when he came to Gosyn’s orchard, with twilight already thick among the trees under the overcast of clouds hiding what would soon be sunset. He would be going back to camp in the dark but at least he had found out what he wanted to know. And a little more besides.

From the shadows among the trees above him on the streambank someone said, “So. Was it worth it?”

Joliffe caught back his almost-lost balance before he glared up at Kyping and complained, “You might have coughed or something, rather than nearly frightening me off my feet.”