A Play of Dux Moraud (26 page)

Joliffe groaned.

“So Basset has decided we’ll do the
Robin and Marian
tonight instead of tomorrow,” Ellis said. “With Gil as the Sheriff’s Evil Knight.”

Joliffe turned a hard stare on him. “What Evil Knight?”

“The one you’re supposed to write a few lines for between now and then.”

“Is Gil ready for this?”

“Basset thinks so.”

“Should we invoke St. Jude or St. Genesius, do you think?” The patron saint of desperate causes and the patron saint of players.

“Both,” Ellis said darkly.

Rose laughed at him and stretched to kiss his cheek. Joliffe, perfectly aware she had not come for the pleasure of his company but for the chance to be alone with Ellis a little, tugged Tisbe’s halter and walked faster, letting them fall behind him, willing to give them a while more with each other, not least because he hoped Rose would sweeten Ellis out of his dark humour, but also to begin his thinking about what to write that Gil could quickly learn and hopefully not forget. Did Basset know what he was doing, pitching the boy into it like this?

Joliffe supposed they would find out before the evening was done. To the good was that in the meanwhile he would be kept too busy to think about what he did not want to think about.

Rose overtook him as they reached the cart-yard and took Tisbe’s lead rope from him as Basset said from beside the cart, “Good. You’re here. Get to work.”

Not bothering to retreat to his corner, Joliffe sat down with a token grumble and his back against a cartwheel, settling his writing box on his lap. Basset was working to better Gil’s knightly stance and swagger, one of their false swords hung from his hip so he could learn to move with it. “Without hurting yourself or someone else before you’ve even drawn it from its sheath,” Basset had said to Joliffe when teaching him the same thing. For a mercy, Gil looked to be a quick study at it—better than he was with skirts, anyway, Joliffe thought, then set to the business of adding a part for him to the straight-forward tale of Robin (Ellis) and Marian (Joliffe), happy in their Sherwood life until she goes to the village and is seized by the lustful Sheriff (Basset). A Village Boy (Piers) warns Robin, who comes to her rescue, fights the Sheriff after brave speeches by both of them, kills him, and saves fair Marian.

So where could an Evil Knight come into it? Joliffe decided the simplest way was to have the Evil Knight follow the evil Sheriff into the village and turn one of the Sheriff ’s lines into a question—“Is she not fair to see?”—to which the Evil Knight could reply, “Aye, she is, my lord.” Then, with the Sheriff saying, as he already did, “And yet more fair to hold, I warrant you,” the play was back to itself. Unfortunately, that left the Evil Knight standing there, doing nothing, so Joliffe added in that while Robin and the Sheriff fought, the Evil Knight circled around and seized Marian as if for himself. Then she would cry out, Robin would turn and run the Knight through with his sword, the Village Boy would cry warning as the Sheriff tried to kill Robin from behind, Robin would turn again and kill the Sheriff.

There. Simple.

All they need do now was learn it, practice it, teach Gil how to “die,” and hope for the best. All before suppertime.

Ellis was right. Best to pray to
both
St. Jude and St. Genesius.

He showed Basset what he had done. Basset said, “Good,” and they set to Gil learning it.

“Just follow me into the playing place,” Basset told him. “Stand there. Say your line. Don’t do anything else until Ellis and I have exchanged, say, five blows.” He and Ellis mimed their fight without swords in hand. “Keep count,” Basset said. “Five blows. Then circle left. Like that, yes, and come behind Joliffe and seize him around the waist with your left arm, keeping your body just enough aside to the right that Ellis can stab his sword between you and Joliffe without danger of Robin killing Marian instead of you. Ellis, don’t even think it. Yes, Gil, just like that. Good. Ellis.”

Ellis feigned a long sword thrust toward Gil.

“Now clutch your side and drop dead, Gil,” Basset said. “No, just drop and lie still. Don’t twitch and writhe. Drop and be dead. Do it again. Yes.”

There was nothing like the dread of failure to urge quick learning. They ran Gil’s part in the play four times with him, until Basset granted, “It goes none so bad. None so bad at all. You’ll do, Gil. Just keep your head and you’ll do. Now you and Piers go and fetch our supper. It must be nigh time for it.”

Only when they were well gone did he ask Ellis, Joliffe, and Rose together, “What do you think? Have I courted, wooed, and won disaster with this?”

“Probably,” Ellis growled.

Rose yet again poked him in the ribs and chided, “The boy was good. You know he was. Say it.”

Ellis caught her hand and granted, smiling, “He was good. Better than he has any right to be.” He shook his head at Basset. “Damn my toe, but I think you may pull this off.”

“Unless he goes cold when there are lookers-on,” Joliffe said.

“He hasn’t yet,” Basset said.

“Let’s hope he doesn’t start tonight,” Ellis grumbled.

Everyone ignored him, Basset saying, “Joliffe, did you get any further on with
Dux Moraud
this afternoon? I’m starting to look forward to starting work on it if Gil goes on shaping as he is.”

That play with its incestuous duke and his daughter was close to the last thing Joliffe wanted to think about, but he said evenly, “I’m still not around the problem of his repentance at the end. It won’t come believable for me.”

“I remember he repents but not for certain how he comes to it,” Basset said. “To conceal his sin with his daughter, he’s had her kill their baby and her mother. He goes to church and is confronted and accused by a miraculous statue. He repents and tells his daughter he forswears his sin. That’s the way of it, isn’t it?”

“It is, as it stands now,” Joliffe said. “I’m thinking to change it so he and his daughter go to church together and the saint’s statue comes to life and strikes the girl horribly dead and damned. Devils drag off her shrieking soul and the duke is horrified into instant repentance, says some things, and the saint declares him saved.”

“You mean,” Rose said with coldly, “the girl dies and is damned but the duke is given chance to repent and saves his soul, even though he’s the one who corrupted her? Why should she be damned and he be saved? Who’s fault was their sinning anyway?”

Joliffe gave her a wry look. “That’s something to think on, yes.”

“She’s damned,” said Ellis, “because she’s the greater sinner. Besides the incest, she killed her mother and her baby.”

“As I remember it,” Rose snapped back, “it’s her father who orders her to both murders. He doesn’t even have the guts to do it himself. Besides the incest and corrupting his daughter’s innocence, he’s a coward as well.”

Sounding suddenly wary of what he might have stirred up, Ellis carefully granted, “It could be seen that way.” On the rare times that Rose broke into open argument over something, no one liked to be in her way.

Not only at Ellis but at all of them she said sharply, “Even setting aside his cowardice and despite what she did and he didn’t, he’s a man. Since you men argue that men are higher in God’s creation than women . . .”

All three men threw up protesting hands at that, Basset saying quickly, “Not us. No. We’ve never claimed that, no. Someone else, but not us!”

Scorning his protest, Rose went on, “You men claim you’re nearer to God than women, that it’s all the fault of Woman that Mankind fell. So why, if women are so imperfect, is Eve more at fault that she succumbed to the Devil’s wiles, when Adam simply gave way to her? If men are so much the better, his fall was the greater because he gave way under far less temptation than she did and so
his
sin is the greater and . . .”

“Yes,” her father agreed hurriedly. “You’re right. We can see that. I . . .”

Rose went right on, demanding at him in particular, “Then in this
Dux Moraud
play, why should the girl be seen the greater sinner when it was the duke who led her innocence into sin, corrupted her goodness into evil? Tell me that.”

“Ah!” Basset said with the air of a man grasping at a straw. “You see there’s God’s mercy at work. The duke is in greater need of salvation and is given the chance to repent and . . .”

Able to see what was coming, Joliffe was already stepping backward in open retreat as Rose snapped with growing anger, “And the girl is damned for eternity, despite his was the greater sin. It must be because I’m a weak-headed woman that I don’t quite see the fairness of that.”

Basset and Ellis made haste to agree they did not see it either.

“So
you,
” she said, pointing her finger at Joliffe, “are going to
fix
that, aren’t you?”

Still backing away, his hands already up in surrender, Joliffe said, “I’m trying. I swear I am.”

Basset and Ellis nodded in hurried agreement. Rose swept them all with a look of disgust, as if even their surrender was insufficient apology for being men, and turned away to tend the fire.

Leaving Basset and Ellis to what they would, Joliffe retreated all the way to his corner beyond the cart, taking his writing box with him. There must be some delay at the kitchen, that the boys were not back yet, and he made a show of having out paper and pen and ink as if at work already to meet Rose’s demand. He would have worked gladly, too, but his thoughts slid away to the worse thing in his mind.

If, as he feared, it was incest between Sir Edmund and Mariena, what different look did that give to what he so far knew? For one thing, it could explain the prolonged dealing before agreement was made for John Harcourt to marry Mariena. If Sir Edmund intended to keep Mariena for himself, it could also explain why Harcourt was murdered. But then why move on so quickly to dealing for another marriage? And why was it Will, rather than Amyas Breche, who had come close to grief these several times, while nothing had befallen Amyas?

Yet. There was still time for it to happen. Not much time, though. Not with only three more days until the wedding.

But there was still the possibility that Harcourt’s death was only by chance, or even—if purposed—it was for some other reason than Sir Edmund’s secret. What that purpose might have been, Joliffe had no thought on at all, but either way, it would mean Amyas was in no danger. That did not mean he wasn’t, though; and none of those possibilities answered why Will was having “accidents.” Could they be for someone’s revenge against Sir Edmund for John Harcourt’s death or some other reason? To increase Mariena’s inheritance? For some reason to which Joliffe had no clue?

Did Lady Benedicta know what was between her husband and daughter?

That was a thought Joliffe had been keeping shy of but now faced. Because if Lady Benedicta did know, then complications only increased. It would explain the lack of love between mother and daughter—or, no, it didn’t, because it was said they had never done well together. But it could explain Mariena’s sudden sickness the other night. Lady Benedicta could have poisoned her. It was a possibility. There was enough else apparently awry here, it was not that far from reasonable to think she might.

But why only slightly poison her? Or why at all? Lady Benedicta reputedly had no attachment to either her husband or daughter. If she knew, or suspected, what there was between them—if there really was something—would she care enough to bother making Mariena suffer for it? Or, to take it another way, would she have been satisfied with making her suffer so little? Or could there have been another reason to do it?

Such as Will’s bad fall that day.

Looked at from that way, there was some sense to what had been happening, both to Will
and
about Mariena’s sickness. She was the one who would most benefit from her brother’s death. Let him be dead and she was heir to Deneby. That she would be willing to his death was an ill thought, but Joliffe found he could think it of her fairly easily. And if Lady Benedicta suspected the same about her, then, yes, he could readily see her warning Mariena off her purpose with threat of death against herself.

But why John Harcourt’s death? To judge by how readily he had set to talks so soon after Harcourt’s death, Sir Edmund apparently had no objection to Mariena marrying, so he was unlikely to have killed the man. And Mariena was said to have been eager to the marriage, with no apparent gain by his death. And Lady Benedicta reputedly would be glad to have the girl gone. So if Harcourt’s death had not been murder at all, then Amyas was safe enough, and what business did Joliffe have in wondering about the rest?

Maybe no business at all, but he knew, regretfully, that was not going to stop him now. They had all, except for Will, become suddenly fools to him. Sir Edmund. Lady Benedicta. Mariena. They were all carrying on like poor actors in a bad play. Cold, angry mother. Hot-loined, possibly murderous daughter. Incestous father. Joliffe supposed that if he were a priest he’d have to take them seriously. And if someone wrote a play of them, it would have to be a tragedy. But to him—looking at their miserable blundering about without a clear thought about the rights or wrongs of anything they felt or did—the whole business looked a farce.

Unless John Harcourt truly had been murdered and someone truly was trying to kill Will and there was actually incest between Sir Edmund and Mariena.

Not farce then, no. Plain tragedy.

When Lord Lovell came, he would have to be told it all, Joliffe supposed, to make of it what he would. Joliffe only hoped to be well away from here as soon as might be after that.

Piers and Gil came back with deep bowls of stew, thick brown bread, lumps of cheese, and a tale of an irate cook and the kitchen in chaos, all plans upset because of the two knights and their ladies who had arrived before their time.

“If it was my household,” Rose said as they finished their meal, “I’d not be doing somersaults to make them think the better of me. They’d have what we were going to have and be happy with it or not, as pleased them.”