A Play of Piety (32 page)

“He claimed her belief the ginger would make her sick caused her to be so,” Master Osburne said evenly, not giving away his own thought on the matter. He held out the empty cup. “Thank Sister Ursula for me. When Master Goldin finishes, tell him that I’m here.”

Knowing dismissal when he heard it and suspecting the crowner had timed his drinking to end with his questioning, Joliffe took the cup, slightly bowed, and had taken his first step away when Master Osburne said, still even-voiced, “You, of course, never knew Aylton, never had anything to do with him until here, did you?”

Joliffe paused for a startled moment, then said, “No. Never.”

He waited for what more the crowner might ask. When there was nothing, he finished leaving. In the kitchen Rose and the sisters, except for Sister Letice, were readying the men’s supper. As he came in, they paused their work to look at him, intent with unasked questions while leaving it to Sister Ursula to say, restrainedly, “He kept you in talk.”

“He wanted a servant’s eye view of the Thorncoffyns and the hospital.”

“Of us,” Sister Margaret said, more bluntly.

“Of me, too,” Joliffe quickly added.

“Did he say anything about this apothecary?” Sister Ursula asked.

“Nothing.”

“He’s a long while with Sister Letice,” Sister Petronilla said, and worried looks passed among them all, but Sister Ursula said, “There’s nothing we can do about it. So best we get on with supper.”

The bell was just being rung for Vespers when Sister Letice and Master Goldin at last came into the kitchen together, showing none of the unease the sisters had been suffering. Instead, they were in earnest, eager, smiling talk together, apparently about whether thyme compounded with vinegar or thyme compounded with burnt salt was better against headache, sounding like two people sharing an interest and even a respect for one another’s skill. Certainly Master Goldin did not sound as if he were condescending to her, and when he had paused to ask after Master Osburne and been told where he was, he and Sister Letice went instantly back to their talk and out the rear door together.

“Well,” said Sister Ursula with some degree of surprise when they were gone.

Master Osburne shortly came into the kitchen, gave Sister Ursula thanks for her patience and the ale, said that Master Goldin and Sister Letice were gone to see the garden, and went on his own way.

“Well,” said Sister Ursula again.

“Very well indeed,” Sister Petronilla said, widely smiling.

Rose was gone, Vespers was done, the men had their suppers, and the women and Joliffe were gathered around the table for their own before Sister Letice returned, now alone.

Sister Margaret immediately asked, with everyone else’s curiosity, “This Master Goldin found nothing that troubled him?”

“No. He approved of everything.” Sister Letice’s voice and face were alight with unfamiliar happiness. “He told me things, too. He’s promised to send a distillation that he says works well against some high fevers.”

“What about the poison?” Sister Margaret asked.

“Arsenic.”

In the utter silence that answered the blunt word, Sister Letice, surprised, looked around at everyone’s startled stares fixed on her. “Well, it had to be something,” she said, then went on eagerly, “He says it’s surely arsenic. He says it can be had as a powder that can be mixed into a sugar syrup and the ginger then soaked in it. If the ginger was already candied, doing that would make it even sweeter and the more likely someone would be to eat all the more of it.”

“The more likely Mistress Thorncoffyn would, for a certainty,” Sister Margaret said.

“That’s what I said to him,” Sister Letice agreed happily.

“Where would someone come by arsenic?” Joliffe asked at the same moment Sister Ursula asked, “What
is
arsenic?”

With the same gladness of knowing something new, Sister Letice said, “Master Goldin says it’s some sort of a mineral and has to be dug out of the ground. He says it’s not found here or even much seen.”

With none of Sister Letice’s gladness, Sister Petronilla said, “It’s had from the East but is become more used here of late.” She had been a merchant’s wife, Joliffe remembered. “Taken slightly, it serves to whiten a woman’s skin. Beyond that, it’s good only for poisoning.”

“That’s what Master Goldin said,” Sister Letice said. “He said, too, it isn’t readily come by and he couldn’t guess who beyond an apothecary would have it anywhere here. Oh, and he said it could be stirred into a drink, too, he supposed, but beyond doubt the ginger was poisoned.”

“What did he say of you trying it yourself?” Sister Ursula asked.

Sister Letice ducked her head to and said in a rush that did not hide her pleasure, “He said it was foolishly done but very likely what he would have tried himself.”

Sister Petronilla put an arm around her shoulders in a quick, approving embrace, smiling, while Sister Margaret declared, “Foolish, yes, but courageous, too,” and Sister Ursula said, more soberly, “So he’s done what Master Osburne wanted of him,” sharing a look with Joliffe that said she was wondering what came next.

Since he was wondering the same, he had no answer for her.

 

 

When Jack had said Mistress Thorncoffyn’s carriage would come sometime on the morrow, he had probably not meant
dawn
on the morrow, but that was when it rumbled up to the hospital gates with tired horses and a pair of drivers who had made use of clear moonlight to drive all night under the goad of whatever sharp order Mistress Thorncoffyn had sent.

The sisters and Joliffe knew of it when Idany came into the kitchen soon thereafter to demand Joliffe’s help in loading Mistress Thorncoffyn’s belongings into it. Sister Ursula refused, saying he was the hospital’s servant, not Mistress Thorncoffyn’s, and had too many duties at this hour to be spared. Idany left in high displeasure. Sister Ursula hummed a little, happily.

There was no keeping from the men in the hall the scuff and thudding of things being moved through the foreporch that began while they were breaking their fast. Told what was happening, they took more interest in looking at Mistress Thorncoffyn and Idany when they came to Mass than in the Mass itself. Joliffe took interest in the fact that Geoffrey was not let off seeing things into the carriage even for Mass. It seemed Mistress Thorncoffyn was
very
determined to be away as soon as might be.

Of Master Hewstere in the midst of all that there was no sign.

After Mass, the boy Will came to tell Sister Ursula that Master Soule wished to see her. She went, and all the sisters and Joliffe lingered in the kitchen with Rose instead of getting on with their morning tasks, to hear what Master Soule had wanted. She came back very shortly to say Master Soule was in great displeasure, having had a message from Master Hewstere brought to him just before Mass, to say the physician was resigning from the hospital to accompany Mistress Thorncoffyn in her need.

“Master Soule is not best pleased,” Sister Ursula said, “despite I assured him that we shall do well enough until someone else can be found.”

“Or even better,” Sister Margaret said, low-voiced. No one said otherwise.

But still they were not done with Mistress Thorncoffyn. At mid-morning, as Joliffe was stacking firewood beside the rear door, Idany came into the kitchen and declared at Sister Ursula, “My lady is ready to leave now. You’re to come bid her farewell for courtesy’s sake. All of you,” she added at the other sisters, dropped her gaze to Heinrich under the table, and amended coldly, “Nearly all.”

Coldly in return, Sister Ursula said, “Such of us as are free to come will do so.”

Idany looked on the verge of challenging that, then must have thought better and settled for a sharp nod before leaving.

Sister Ursula looked around. Everyone looked back from their various tasks and made no move, until Joliffe said cheerfully, “I’ll come, if you like.”

“That should do very well to show our courtesy,” Sister Ursula said. “Come. We wouldn’t want to miss seeing her leave.”

Even so, they were too late to bid her a direct farewell. By the time they came, in no great haste, to the foreporch, Mistress Thorncoffyn was already in the yard, crossing toward her carriage, held up by Geoffrey on one side and stabbing her staff into the yard’s dust on her other. The carriage was perhaps three times the length of the players’ cart, with high wooden sides and a tall canvas tilt curved over it on half-hoops. The thing had been turned, undoubtedly very awkwardly in the narrowness of the yard, so it and its four horses were facing toward the gate, its open rear toward Mistress Thorncoffyn as she stomped toward it. From what Joliffe could see of the shadowed inside, more than half the carriage was crammed with chests and bags, with Mistress Thorncoffyn’s chair last, facing the carriage’s rear. Willow hampers set on cushions were strapped to the carriage’s sides the remaining length, the yapping from them telling where Mistress Thorncoffyn’s dogs were. Idany stood between them, at the top of the steep steps from the ground to the carriage.

So only Mistress Thorncoffyn remained to be loaded, and Joliffe was more than glad that task was Geoffrey’s and the man waiting at the foot of the steps, one of the drivers, Joliffe supposed. Mistress Thorncoffyn gave them small help, lifting one foot enough to stomp it onto the bottom step herself but depending on Geoffrey and the man to heave her up sufficiently for her other foot to join it. They had to repeat the effort step by step, with the men’s gasping for breath and occasional grunt almost lost under Mistress Thorncoffyn’s own bellows-breathing. When she was at the last step, Idany reached out to take hold on her out-held hands and hauled her forward as the men gave a final heave upward. With that, she was into the carriage, and while the driver dropped down from the steps and made for the front of the carriage, Geoffrey kept at his grandmother’s side, helping Idany take her forward, turn her, and loose her to drop into her chair.

Joliffe hoped all her long, intense indulgence in too much food was worth the trouble and humiliation her body was now become to her and everyone around her.

Geoffrey came out of the carriage and went to his horse tied close by, while Idany set to being sure her mistress was comfortable. Her own place was probably the pile of cushions on the floor beside the chair. Mistress Thorncoffyn, for her part, glared out of the carriage’s shadows at Sister Ursula and Joliffe but offered no more of thanks or good-bye to them than they did to her as the driver cracked a whip over the horses. They leaned into their harness and the carriage rolled ponderously forward. Beyond the gateway, the turn into the road seemed to take forever but was done at last. Then, as the carriage rolled from sight and Jack began to swing the gate shut, Master Hewstere rode past, leading a pack-pony. He did not look aside but simply went.

So they were gone. All of them. Mistress Thorncoffyn, her dogs, Idany, Geoffrey, Master Hewstere. Joliffe wondered if it was only in his imagination that a relieved peace was already settling over everything almost as quickly as the dust raised by their going had settled in the yard behind them. The gate thudded shut.

“There,” said Sister Ursula, as if at a task well done, and turned away.

Turning with her, Joliffe saw Sister Margaret had joined them after all. Or not quite joined them but stayed well back in the shadows of the foreporch, able to see but probably unseen. Which Joliffe guessed meant she was not as indifferent to her son and erstwhile mother-in-law as she chose to seem, and as she joined them in going back into the hospital, Sister Ursula asked her, not altogether lightly, “Are you wishing she ends up in a ditch with a broken wheel and has to spend a night in a hedge?”

Not lightly at all but with an underlay of sadness that took Joliffe by surprise, Sister Margaret said, “I don’t wish anything at her. With all the harm she’s done to herself, what would be the point in harming
my
self by wishing more on her? What’s hard is knowing she’s out there in the world again, monsterful and cruel and never believing anything but good of herself.”

It was not Joliffe’s place, as a servant, to answer something not said to him, but Sister Ursula made no reply either. Perhaps she felt as Joliffe did—that Sister Margaret’s words were a very serviceable epitaph for a woman still alive but already dead in so many ways.

 

 

The tray Joliffe carried up to Master Soule a while later had only the one meal on it. That had happened a few times since Joliffe had come, when the physician had been elsewhere for a day or sometimes two. This time, though, was different: Master Hewstere would not be coming back.

Unless, of course, he fell out with Mistress Thorncoffyn and returned.

Supposing someone else had not been found for his place before then.

Joliffe scratched at the open door and at Master Soule’s summons went into the room. The master was standing at the open window through which a warm breeze was wafting, a book open in his hand. From all Joliffe had seen of him—or, rather, from how little Joliffe had seen of him—he was a solitary man, not much given to a need for company beyond his mid-day talk with Master Hewstere, but today perhaps he was feeling the first loss of even that little, because as Joliffe set the tray on the table, the master said, “Jack tells me you are well-read. That you even read Latin.”

“Sir,” Joliffe said with a slight bow and a servant’s voice, surprised into wariness.

“Did you at some time study to be a priest?”

“A clerk, sir. I at one time thought to be a clerk.” Which was not altogether a lie. One bitter winter, when he and his brothers were too much outside and too often chilled to the bones while his father’s clerk sat inside with a brazier beside him to keep the ink and his fingers supple, Joliffe had strongly thought about the benefits of being a clerk. He had been about age nine, he thought, and the ambition had died with the first spring weather, but he had had it.