A Play of Knaves (7 page)

“I know why he does it,” she snapped, maybe as angry at her hurt as she was at Ellis, Joliffe thought. “What I don’t understand is why he
has
to. You never do. Why must he?”

Basset held off his answer for a long moment before finally saying carefully, “Rose, I had your mother’s love and whole heart, and she had mine. After that, to have less isn’t bearable. If I could find the same—no, there’ll never be the same, but if I found something like to it—that would be different. But to settle for less . . . no.”

“Then tell me, why is Ellis able to make do with less?” Rose demanded.

Basset hesitated again. Seeming to be looking only at the fire, Joliffe was watching them both, sorry for their mutual pain, unable to help. And finally Basset answered gently, “Rose, it’s different with every man, surely, but I think with Ellis it comes down to he’s able to make do with less because he’s never had a whole heart and a full love given to him.”

“I can’t give him more than I do!” Rose cried softly, mindful of Piers and Gil too nearby in the tent but angry with her pain. “I shouldn’t give him even what I do. We shouldn’t even have what we have! But I do love him. With my whole heart I love him. But I can’t . . . we shouldn’t . . .” She broke off, choking on tears she did not mean to shed.

Quickly, trying for comfort, Basset said, “I know. Ellis knows. It’s just that sometimes . . . sometimes knowing isn’t enough.”

“No,” Rose agreed sharply and suddenly her tears seemed gone a deadly distance away. “Sometimes knowing is
not
enough. Not for me any more than for Ellis. Which might be something he’d better start to think on if he doesn’t want to lose me altogether. Now you’d both do well to go to bed. No, I’ll see to the fire,” she added at Joliffe as he moved to bank it for the night. “Just go.”

Willing to escape, Joliffe stood up quickly and started away with Basset, then turned back and said with attempted lightness, “If it helps, Rose, just think that it’s a lack of wits with Ellis rather than a lack of love.”

From where she was laying turf onto the coals, Rose snapped back at him, “You’ve no place to talk. You do as much as he does when you have the chance, meaning you must lack wits, too.”

“Ah, there’s a difference,” Joliffe returned. “I have no one woman all my own to love the way he does, do I?”

“True,” Rose granted tartly. She lifted her head, her face mostly in shadow but with enough upward cast of low red light from the dying fire for him to see her bitter smile. “God in his mercy has spared some poor woman
that
misery.”

Joliffe clutched a hand over his heart as if she had given him a hard blow there, said lightly, “Well struck, my lady. Well struck,” and ducked to safety in the tent.

Chapter 4

The morning was cool, with mist writhed thickly along the stream and thinly across the meadow, so that both the fire—roused from its banked coals into flames again—and the hearty breakfast of last night’s trenchers were welcome. More welcome than Ellis was, that was sure.

He had come back sometime in the night. His settling into his blankets had disturbed Joliffe’s sleep only a little, and if anyone else awoke, they had said no more to him than Joliffe did. The trouble was that this morning there was still no one speaking to him. It wasn’t anger on the men’s part, merely wariness. None of them wanted to find himself between Ellis and whatever anger Rose had stored against him.

That Ellis brought a defiant strut to the morning did not help. Nor did Joliffe by saying aside to Basset, just loud enough for both Ellis and Gil to hear, “Being cock of the walk doesn’t keep the cockerel out of the stew pot when the time comes.”

That earned him a glare from both Ellis and Basset, while Gil had to turn laughter into a choking cough that brought him a sharp look from Rose as if maybe considering him for a dose of hot honey water. But she kept to her stiff silence as she saw to her morning work with no look at all—so far as Joliffe saw—at Ellis, who in his turn seemed in no hurry to have her “see” him.

They all knew she could keep in that silence for hours, and if everyone was fortunate, she would, for her own sake as well as Ellis’, Joliffe thought, because better cold silence than hot words that could not be taken back when the anger was gone.

It was while they were gathered about the fire, taking turns at toasting their shares of the trenchers and passing around the leather bottle of ale, that Ellis broke under the strain of her silence and said somewhat too loudly and too near defiantly, “I learned a few things last night.”

Hard though it was, Joliffe held back from saying, She must have been good; I thought you knew it all.

Ellis, oblivious, went on, “I found out there’s bad blood between the Ashewells and the Medcotes. Bad blood as in murder.”

That got him looked at by everyone save Rose, who went on tending to the trencher presently toasting as if he had said nothing at all.

A little lessened by that, Ellis said, “Or a chance-death anyway. Not outright murder, like. Young Nicholas Ashewell killed the cousin of Medcote’s wife a few years back, when he was nine years old or thereabouts.”

“When Nicholas was nine years old?” Basset asked. “That’s young to have been killing someone.”

“Seems he was out birding with a small crossbow, bird-shooting along the stream here, the way boys do. This cousin happened by, just riding the bounds of his land that meet up with Ashewell’s not far off, and took a birding-bolt just under one collarbone.”

“That was a killing wound?” Joliffe said. “From a birding-bolt?”

“He didn’t die right off. Seems he must have been bleeding inwardly, though. He died of a sudden a few days later, just when it was thought he was on the mend.”

“It would have been manslaughter more than murder,” Basset said. “And Nicholas was over-young to be tried, yes? He must have got his pardon,” it being usual for a child who killed someone to be arrested but afterward to have the king’s pardon, being below the years of discretion when a person could be held to account for their acts. Unless deliberate malice could be proven, of course.

“He was pardoned surely and no trouble about it,” Ellis said. “He ran for help as soon as he saw what he’d done. No one thought there was intent about it. Hasn’t made for friendlihood between the Ashewells and Medcotes, though.” Ellis gave a short snort. “Should have, you’d think. It was by way of the cousin dying that Medcote’s wife inherited the manor here, being the nearest heir. Before then, Medcote kept a butchering place in Wantage. Had no land at all. Now he holds a manor. Not that he and his are much liked. There’s those that still call him Butcher John behind his back.”

This was the kind of talk that could help in finding out the things for which Lady Lovell had sent them here, and Basset prompted, “He’s not liked?”

“Not him or his wife or their son or their daughter,” Ellis said, pleased with himself. “Medcote takes a high hand with everything, and like we’ve heard, he and that priest tend to work as one in most things, with Father Hewgo no better liked than he is, from what Titha says. She says all that makes it odd that . . .” Realizing he should have named no names, he stopped short, too late, as Rose snapped the long-handled toasting fork toward him, flipping the trencher at him so that he had to catch it or be hit in the chest. He did catch it but had to juggle it, hot and greasy, from hand to hand, protesting while he did, “Hai! What’s that for?”

That was another stupid thing to say, Joliffe thought, but fortunately for Ellis, Rose did not trouble to answer as Basset hurriedly asked, “Makes it odd what?”

With the bread now in one hand, Ellis left off sucking the sore, greasy fingers of his other one to say sullenly, “That maybe Medcote wants to marry his daughter to Nicholas Ashewell, and Master Ashewell is maybe thinking to do it.”

From what he had seen yesterday, Joliffe would not have thought there was that kind of liking between the men, but it was Basset who said doubtfully, “That’s several ‘maybes’ there.”

Ellis shrugged. “Ashewell’s been heard saying something about it to his wife, and she’s been downcast of late, and Nicholas, too, as if maybe he’s been told and doesn’t like it either.”

“It’s servant-talk then, this maybe-marriage?” Basset asked, not disparaging it for that. Servant-talk was often the surest way for the players to learn what was likely to sit well in a household they were to play for and, as importantly, what might
not
sit well.

“Servant-talk,” Ellis agreed, “and not meant for them or anyone to know, seems like. That’s the feel I had from . . .” Far too late he saw the peril in what he had been about to say and shifted to, “. . . it,” with a wary sideways look at Rose.

Rose, still giving him no look at all, left the fire, picked up the water bucket, and walked away toward the stream, eloquently leaving them all behind her in a shared silence of guilt.

Which wasn’t fair, Joliffe wanted to protest—
he
hadn’t done anything. But likely at this moment just being men was enough to damn them all in Rose’s eyes.

“Go help your mother,” Basset said to Piers.

Throwing a baleful look at Ellis, Piers scrambled to his feet and went, making clear on whose side he was, and it wasn’t Ellis’.

For his part, Ellis looked ready to take refuge in sullenness, probably beginning to feel as wronged as Rose did. In hope of heading that off, Joliffe said to Basset, “You think this could be the trouble the bailiff hasn’t been able to put his finger on?”

“I’d guess it’s likely,” Basset granted. “It’s something to keep our ears out for, anyway.”

“If the Ashewells don’t like the thought,” Gil said, “why can’t Master Ashewell just say no to the offer and there’s an end?”

“A good question,” Joliffe said.

“If I was asked,” said Basset, “I’d have thought a marriage between young Nicholas and that Gosyn’s girl more likely, what with the families looking so friendly together yesterday.”

“That’s what Titha said, too,” Ellis said. “Seems that’s what most people have thought. More than that, a marriage to Medcote’s girl would do Ashewell’s friendship with Gosyn no good. Gosyn is on the outs with Medcote over sheep-grazing rights hereabouts. Medcote got the lease Gosyn has had for years. Out-bid for it to the abbey’s steward and took it right out from under Gosyn. So there’s bad blood there.”

“You must not have been much use to Titha if she did all this talking,” Joliffe said.

Ellis bristled. “I was use enough. It was between whiles of it that we talked.”

“Oh, ‘whiles of it,’” Joliffe baited. “What time was it you crawled to your bed, anyway?”

“Leave off, Joliffe,” Basset said, too used to them both to rise even to irk about it. “Ellis, what else did she have to tell?”

“What more do you want?” Ellis protested. “There’s an old murder between the Ashewells and Medcotes. Medcote maybe wants a marriage that maybe Ashewell doesn’t. Gosyn and Ashewell are friendly. Gosyn and Medcote aren’t. That’s something more than anyone else of you has gathered.”

“What about the priest?” Basset asked. “How does he figure into it all?”

“Not as a peacemaker, I’ll warrant,” said Joliffe.

“You don’t much talk of priests at a time like Titha and I were having,” Ellis said. Boasted. “There was only what she said about him and Medcote, and that we knew already. So. Is all that enough to satisfy this bailiff that we’ve done as Lady Lovell asked? Will it clear us of the business, do you think?”

Basset sat staring at the fire, rubbing the knuckles of one hand while answering slowly, “That Gosyn is angry over losing the grazing rights can’t be a secret to anyone. The marriage business, though, that’s something, since it seems Ashewell and Medcote are trying to keep it to themselves. That could well be what the bailiff was hearing rumbles of. Yes, Ellis, you may have done our duty for us. If we chance to hear more while we’re here, well and good. If we don’t, what you’ve brought us should serve well enough to go on with. Well done.”

“Which is what I trust Titha said to him, too,” Joliffe said.

“Leave off with her,” Ellis snapped.

Basset clapped his hands down on his knees and went on briskly, “But we’re still here for three more days and have yet to decide what we’ll do for the church ale.”

“Something short, sweet, and easy,” Ellis said.

“I don’t know,” Basset said thoughtfully. “I’m still thinking on it.”

Uneasy at what Basset might be thinking, Joliffe said, “Whatever we do, we’ll probably have little thanks from Father Hewwwwgo for it.”

Ellis snapped, “Leave off with the ‘Hewwwgo,’ too, will you?”

“That was probably the other thing Titha said,” Joliffe grinned, and added in a shrill girl’s voice, “‘Leave off, Ellis.’”

Ellis looked around for something to throw.

Not waiting for him to find it, Joliffe went to see how Tisbe did.

If Basset had not already planned for them to do more than be about camp all day, he would probably have come up with the thought now, as much to have Ellis away from Rose for the day as any other reason. As it was, he shortly announced that he and Ellis, Joliffe, and Piers should be on their way to Faringdon, to play at places along the way and there to draw folk to Sunday’s church ale. “The more there, the merrier,” he said.

“The more there, the larger our share of the take at the day’s end,” said Ellis.

Gil started to protest, “Why can’t I . . .”

Basset stopped him with, “No, Gil. You’re not coming. Your ankle can do with that much more mending since there’s chance for it, and the cart and all shouldn’t be left to only Rose the day long. We’ll only be doing our lighter street work anyway. The juggling and suchlike, to draw people’s heed and laughter and leave them wanting more, so they’ll come on Sunday.”

Given no choice, Gil watched, disgruntled, while Ellis, Joliffe, and Piers changed into their bright, parti-colored playing garb and Basset put on his Lovell tabard, and set out, with Rose waving good-bye to at least Basset, Joliffe, and Piers. As soon as Ellis raised his hand with the others to wave back, she dropped her own hand and turned away.