A Play of Dux Moraud (12 page)

He thought he hid how much that disconcerted him, while she said, “My daughter is lovely, yes.”

Joliffe held back from saying, “Lovely is as lovely does.” Settled for silently bowing.

And that should have been the end of it, but Lady Benedicta went on coldly, “Unfortunately, she is not entirely happy at marrying someone who gives her no title. She had counted on being a lady, like her mother. But it’s somewhat too late for that.”

Before Joliffe quite sorted out whether Lady Benedicta meant both of the possible meanings to the last part of that, she went on, “So. What does Master Basset purpose for our pleasure?”

He gave himself over to business. Lady Benedicta heard him out, then questioned him more closely about what the players intended for this evening. “It will not go to ribaldry?” she asked.

“Nothing beyond the most mild, my lady,” Joliffe assured her, silently setting himself to warn Basset and Ellis. “Master Basset was wondering about the wedding feast, though.”

“I want to laugh,” Mariena said from the windowseat.

“I’m certain you will,” her mother returned without looking at her.

It not being his place to hear such things, Joliffe seemed not to and went on, “Master Basset had thought
Griselda the Patient
might serve.”

“I know the story, but tell me how you play it,” Lady Benedicta directed.

“Might I say it quietly?” Joliffe asked. “Rather than give all away to everyone?”

Barely lifting her hand from her lap, Lady Benedicta made a beckon for him to come nearer. Leaving the joint stool, Joliffe did and knelt on one knee beside her, not minded to stand bent over while he talked low-voiced to her. Thus far he judged her a stiff, ungenerous woman, curt of words and doing her duty toward her son without show of particular affection. He half-expected her to give him trouble for trouble’s sake over what he told her, but she did not and her few questions were well-made and to the point. Only at the end did she raise her voice to say, just loudly enough to carry across the chamber, “
Griselda the Patient
sounds satisfactory indeed. Though there are some who won’t agree.”

She did not look toward Mariena as she said it, but Joliffe and probably no one else in the chamber had doubt where the words were aimed. Mariena jerked her head up from her sewing as if about to answer sharply, but Lady Benedicta forestalled her, saying in the same raised voice to Sia and the other maid, just finishing with emptying the tub, “Thank you. You may go. Tell Fulk and Gefri to come when they can to take it away.”

Mariena threw aside her sewing, stood up, and without asking her mother’s leave, went out of the chamber while the maids were curtsying to Lady Benedicta, who ignored her daughter, only saying to Joliffe while the maids gathered up the buckets and towels and left, “Please tell Master Basset I’m well-content with what you’ve told me. If there’s aught that your company needs, either toward the plays or your comfort, let me hear of it.”

Joliffe rose to his feet and bowed his thanks, was about to assure they were well-content when he saw Will looking sad-eyed at him over the furred edge of the vast cloak, and said before he thought better of it, “One thing, my lady. Your son has taken interest in what we do. May he have leave to keep us company sometimes while we’re here?” And added in inspired after-thought, “With his tutor, if that would make it better.”

Lady Benedicta looked from him to Will sitting suddenly straighter and brighter-eyed, and for the first time the possibility of a smile lightened her own face. It did not quite happen but she was near to it and said, “Father Morice might enjoy the respite after the work we’ve put him to of late. Yes. Will may spend time with you if he wishes.”

Will shot to his feet, exclaiming gladly, “Mother!”

“Sit down. You’ll let a draught under the cloak and take a chill,” she ordered at him. He sat, still beaming, and she said to Joliffe, “It will be for Master Basset to say whether Will is in the way or not, and for him to send Will away when he wishes.” She looked at Will. “Understood?” He nodded eagerly. She returned her look to Joliffe, who noted for the first time her fine eyes, deep-set and dark, before she dismissed him with a nod of her own. He bowed again and withdrew, hearing her say behind him as he started down the stairs, “Idonea, how goes the sleeve?”

He was on the curve of the stairs beyond sight of anyone at their head or foot when he met Mariena coming up. In the stone-walled narrownness he stepped as much aside as he could, flattening his back to the wall to let her pass. Though she had to turn sideways, too, there was room for her to pass without touching him but she did—and more than touched. She brushed her body, her breasts, and hips across his, for a moment paused with her fine-boned, beautiful face upturned to his, her lips slightly parted, inviting a kiss he might have given except he was so startled he only stared at her in the instant before her gaze fell and she went on, with the slightest of smiles at the corner of her mouth and a sidelong look back at him from under her lowered lids before the curve of the stairs took her from sight.

Swallowing thickly, shaken by how easily she had raised him, he went uncomfortably downward, only to meet Sia on the last curve of the stairs. He would rather not have dealt with her just then and would have gone past when she stepped aside, out of his way, but she put out her arm, barring him from going down, and said, “She was waiting for you, you know.”

“And so were you,” Joliffe said lightly; and because Sia was almost as near to him as Mariena had been and her face was turned up to him the same way, he kissed her. The kiss turned into more than he had meant it to be, with Sia’s arms coming around his waist and her body leaning into his, pressing him back against the wall.

He was the first to break it off, but Sia, still leaning against him, smiled up into his face with a sigh of satisfaction. “There now,” she said. “That’s better.”

Joliffe took her by the shoulders and set her back from him as much as the stairs allowed. “I have to go.”

Sia continued to lean into his hands so that he could not let her go lest she fall against him again. Mellow with pleasure, she said, “It’s no matter, you know. We’re used to getting her leavings, the other girls and me.”

“Leavings?” Joliffe asked.

Sia twitched her head the way Mariena had gone, up the stairs. “Hers. She does like she did with you. For the sport of it. Heats men to where they don’t know whether they’re coming or going. Never satisfies them, just heats them. They’re easy to have then.” Sia wiggled a little, wanting to be close again. Because he couldn’t be sure he’d hear anyone coming, Joliffe kept her where she was and she went on, “These past few years, while she’s had suitors here now and again, some of us have gathered a pretty lot of coins helping them ease their longings. If you know what I mean.”

He’d have to be both gelded and stupid not to know what she meant and he said, smiling, “I’m no wealthy suitor come to woo. I’ve no coins to give you.”

“You’re fair-bodied enough with a face I don’t mind kissing”—Sia slipped free of his hands, came close, and kissed him again to prove it—“that I’ll have you for my own pleasure and no need for coins.”

Enough was enough—and he’d not nearly had enough. “Where?” he asked. “And when?” Since here and now surely did not suit.

“Tonight after supper. There’s a loft above the cow byre. Behind the stables. Can you find it?”

“I’ll find it.”

“Here.” She pulled a square of red cloth from inside the front of her gown. “If you go now and leave this on the ladder, it means the loft is bespoke for tonight. Then we’ll be sure of it.”

She gave him the cloth, warm from her body, and another kiss to go with it, then was gone down the stairs, leaving him with the thought that lust seemed very well served here.

Chapter 8

Joliffe took his time going the rest of the way down the stairs, tucking the red cloth out of sight up his sleeve as he went. Outside the tower’s doorway, he paused at the stair-head and saw Sia well away along the open gallery running outside the wing of rooms beyond the tower before he went the other way, down the stairs to the yard and in search of the cow byre, although his thoughts were mostly busy elsewhere than with Sia.

Until now, he had vaguely considered Sir Edmund’s willingness to marry his daughter lower than he might have as simply a matter of money. Merchants tended to be wealthier than lords these days, and though lords and the Church might find that against the right way of things, they could not change it and so made what use of it they could to their own ends, the way Sir Edmund had used Harry Wyot. But an only daughter—and a beautiful one, at that—was another matter. Sir Edmund’s first choice for her had been a knight’s son, and surely there were other marriages as good as that to be had. Joliffe had somewhat wondered why this haste toward a merchant-marriage. Now he had to wonder if it was because of a need for haste. There had been no maiden moderation in Mariena’s encounter with him on the stairs. Had she lost what women were supposed to prize the most?

He’d sometimes wondered why men were not supposed to prize their virginity as highly, but that was a question beside the present point and he set it aside. And after all, Mariena’s lust did not necessarily mean her virginity was gone. Joliffe had met with lustful virgins before now. But the very fact she showed her lust so openly cast a different light on her. And on her mother’s coldness to her. And maybe on her father’s readiness to make her a husband’s problem instead of his. Supposing they knew about her game. They might not.

Joliffe would willingly wager that if Mariena were up to mischief, her father would be the last to know, and it was perfectly possible Lady Benedicta’s irk at her today was nothing more than impatience over the bother of the new gown. To judge by Sia’s words, though, the servants knew about her; but Joliffe was very sure that if he were a servant here, he’d not be the one to tell Sir Edmund or Lady Benedicta about their daughter. Indeed, he would not. It might be wrong to “kill the messenger,” but it happened anyway.

But if Mariena’s lusting was unknown, why this haste to marry her to Amyas Breche? Was it for other reasons altogether, with lust having nothing to do with it?

Remembering Mariena’s body pressed against his as she passed him, Joliffe was willing to warrant that lust came into it somewhere.

Had she gone beyond bounds with John Harcourt in expectation of their marriage and now must be married as best as she could be, rather than as well as she might have been? That would somewhat account for Sir Edmund’s haste and her mother’s unhappiness.

Or had John Harcourt found out more about her than was good to know and been about to refuse the marriage? The disgrace that would have followed that might have given someone reason to murder him. If he had been murdered. Which he might not have been.

Either way, it did not explain Master Wyot’s unwillingness to marry her. The Harcourt betrothal and purposed marriage had come after his refusal. Had he refused Mariena because he knew too much about her? But if that were so, wouldn’t he have warned the Breches against her? Or, if there were a secret worth murder, wouldn’t Wyot have been dead before John Harcourt?

He must have refused the marriage for another reason or reasons and knew nothing about Mariena’s lust. And most likely John Harcourt’s death had been simply one of life’s mischances. And Amyas Breche was going to get more with his wife than he bargained for.

And that, Joliffe concluded, left it all no business of his. His thinking had seen him across the manor-yard to the far end of the stables from the cart-yard. Just as bakehouse and dairy, granary and flour-store were gathered near the kitchen, and the carpentry and other craftsmen’s sheds clustered together, so byre and stable and hay-store had their own part of the yard and he found the cow byre easily enough—a long shed enclosed above but open below along most of one side. This time of year the milch cows would be grazing in the harvested fields through the day, only brought in for evening milking and the night, too, with the weather so wet, so the byre was presently bare of cows and the packed-earth floor was cleared and clean, but its use was given away by the line of stanchions with chains and rings along the rear wall for tethering the cows, each with a hayrack into which hay from the loft could be dropped though long gaps in the loft’s floor.

Set near the gate but behind other buildings, the byre could be approached from several ways unseen, which might be among the things that recommended it. Joliffe doubted that much mattered, though, given the loft’s use must be an open secret. The ladder was there, as Sia had said. Joliffe pulled the red cloth from his sleeve and draped it over one of the upper rungs, thinking as he turned away that there must be honor among the lustful if that was sufficient to secure the place for a night.

He was only slightly discomfited to find a stableman leaning on a pitchfork at the far end of the byre, grinning big-toothed at him.

Joliffe grinned back.

“Sia, is it?” the man said with a nod toward the ladder.

Since the man didn’t sound or look about to fly into a jealous rage, Joliffe admitted, “Sia. Yes. Did she leave her name on me?” He touched his cheek questioningly as if feeling for a mark.

The man chuckled. “Easier than that. The red is hers. Avice uses blue. Tabby has green, see.”

“What about you?”

The man grinned wider. “Us stable-fellows have our own loft, don’t we?”

Joliffe had traveled much these past few years and been a good many places, but he had never known any manor so easily, openly libidinous. Did Sir Edmund have any thought of what went on? The steward must, if he were worth anything, but he must be gathering no leyrwite—the fine for lechery, owed to the lord of a manor as his right—in the manor-court, because then Father Morice would know of it, too, and surely make more trouble than there was any sign of being. And Sir Edmund must not know, because Joliffe had yet to meet or hear of a lord who knowingly forwent anything owed to him. Yet judging by Sia and this man’s easiness about it, it must be open, and therefore Master Hanney the steward must know and accept it. For a bribe? For a share in it? Surely his place as a knight’s steward was worth more than that?