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Authors: Margaret Frazer

BOOK: A Play of Heresy
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“For the sake of pity, let him be, Mother!” Herry exclaimed like a man pushed to his limit. “Better he never understands. Leave him what peace he has left!”
The woman who must be Powet’s niece Mistress Byfeld stood sharply up and turned on her son. “And when he starts to wonder where Robyn is, starts asking when he’s coming home? What then?
Then
we tell him Robyn is never coming home?”
“Tell him anything then,” Herry said back desperately. “It won’t matter. He won’t remember. Let him
be
, Mother.” And to his sobbing sister, “Anna,
please
.”
Powet snatched his hat off a peg beside the door with one hand while putting his other on Joliffe’s chest, pushing him backward from the doorway, saying desperately, “There’s nothing I can do here anymore. Let’s go.”
Joliffe went with him willingly, wanting escape from there almost as much as Powet did but even more wanting escape from the chill foreboding cramping at the base of his gut. He was never comfortable when Fortune, that treacherous goddess with her wheel that rolled you high only so she could roll you low, seemed to play suddenly into his hands. The mourning behind him was for a man expected home a week or more ago and now found dead, and Joliffe was afraid of the answer even as he questioned Powet, “Who’s dead? Who is—who was this Robyn?”
Pulling his hat hard onto his head as they came out the door and turned up the street, Powet said, grief in his voice, “Robyn Kydwa. Robert. Old John Kydwa’s only son. Cecily’s brother. Never even got to Bristol, the sheriff said. Not to judge by how long he’s been dead. All this while we’ve been expecting him home, and he’s been dead. Saint Michael have mercy.”
The cold in Joliffe clamped more tightly. So Sebastian’s Master Kydwa was found, and he was dead, just as Sebastian had feared.
Joliffe was trying to untangle questions to ask that would not jar against the grieving he and Powet had just left behind, then was spared the need as Powet suddenly slowed out of his rapid walk, shambled to a stop, and stood shaking his bowed head side to side as if in denial of it all, saying, “The boy was trying so hard. No. No boy. He’s only Anna’s age, but he left off being a boy seven years ago. That fool mother of his took that along with all the rest. And now this.”
“His mother?” Joliffe asked, truly perplexed.
Powet, grim-faced, started walking again but slowly now under the weight of his thoughts and grief. “His mother. She ruined them all. Thought herself a Lollard. Was always thinking herself one thing or another and then was friends with Alice Garton at just the wrong time. That’s what did it when all the trouble came. You remember when some of the stupider among the Lollards thought it was time to throw over the Church and government and all?”
“I remember.”
“Well, this Alice Garton was stupider than most because she should have known better. She and her husband both. They’d tried this same foolishness before, back in the late King Henry’s time, God keep his soul. You remember then? No, you’d hardly been born then, if at all. It was bad. Let it go at that. The Gartons survived it when many didn’t. Wealthy they were. Owned places here in Coventry and land outside it as well as being mercers and drapers, too. Ralph learned his lesson, but Alice—” He shook his head. “She didn’t.”
They were near where Much Park Street met Jordan Well. It would take very little time to be back to Mill Lane, so to give him more time for the talking he wanted to do, Joliffe took Powet’s arm and steered him to the window of an ale shop, sat him down on a waiting bench, fetched two cups of ale, gave one to Powet, and asked, to keep him talking, “So this Alice Garton didn’t learn her lesson and got mixed up with the rebels seven years ago and took Mistress Kydwa with her. Was that the way of it?”
“Fairly much. They didn’t take to the roads or wave weapons about of course. But money—that’s what they gave to help the rebels and didn’t trouble to hide it. They cut off her head for it.”
Joliffe choked on a mouthful of ale, swallowed it hurriedly, and said, “The rebels killed them? This Alice Garton and Mistress Kydwa?”
“Nay. Not the rebels. The government. The justices had to find her guilty—Mistress Garton, that is. When it was all over and the arrests began and then the trials. A bad time all around.”
A memory turned over in Joliffe’s head. Basset, believing the late winter rumors of trouble coming around Coventry and Oxford, had had the company well away to the southwest, into Dorset and Somerset, staying there until nearly autumn to be sure of keeping clear of it all. From that distance they had heard things only piecemeal and uncertainly and, yes, among the less likely rumors had been one that a woman was among the rebels executed.
“High treason,” Powet said broodingly. “That’s what the justices said it was and they had it right. As lawyers say, she had ‘sought to encompass the government’s overthrow’ and this was the second time. That’s what did it. They could have hung her, mind you. She wasn’t noble. They could have, by law, had her drawn and hung and quartered. Seen that way, the beheading was a mercy. Quick and all. Never done to a woman before, so far as anyone remembered. Better than hanging if the man is good with the blade, and this one was. So it was a mercy. The others they hung.”
Powet drank deep then, taking most of the ale at once. While he was wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, Joliffe took the chance to ask, “And Mistress Kydwa?”
“She wasn’t so deep into it all as Alice Garton was. Not twice-guilty either, the way Mistress Garton surely was. John Kydwa beggared himself to pay lawyers and fines and bribes to get her clear. He’d been doing well as a mercer, but that finished him. It didn’t help that his brother—his brother was a tailor—was among those who were caught and brought to trial and hung. He was right guilty, was Thomas Kydwa. There were witnesses to what he had done and no way to have bought mercy for him, but I think old John Kydwa thought maybe saving his wife had cost him his brother. Then not many months after it all, she died. Just fell ill and died. Or lost interest in being alive, some said. And there Kydwa was, left with a ruined business and no wife and no brother. He struggled on for a while, but you saw him there in my niece’s kitchen. That’s how he’s been these four years or so. Now there’s this.”
Chapter 9
 
P
owet stood up from the bench, held out a hand for Joliffe’s cup, asked, “Another?”
Joliffe gave over his cup but said, caught between duties, “We should be taking ourselves to Master Sendell.”
“We should that,” Powet agreed and handed both cups back to the alewife without asking for more. “Let’s go, then. I want my mind somewhere else anyway.”
Joliffe did not and said as they started off, “It was good of your niece—Mistress Byfeld?—to give the Kydwas somewhere to stay.”
“Aye. Her mother and John Kydwa’s were friends of some sort. I remember hearing the two mothers even talked of marrying Johanna and John to each other, but in the end what looked to be better matches were found. Seemed better at the time anyway. Was for Johanna, any rate. She’s a widow but with four children living and a good head for the business her husband and she built up. Nor it’s no hardship having Cecily in the house. She does more than what’s asked of her and is a fetching little thing. If Herry had sense that way, he’d be thinking of marrying her, but he’s been inclined to the Emes’ girl. Goditha. Pretty as she is foolish.”
“Ned and Richard’s sister,” Joliffe said, in hope of keeping it all straight in his head.
“That’s her. Not that Johanna or the Emes are likely to agree to anything that way.” Powet lowered his voice and leaned a little toward Joliffe to say quietly, “There’s just the whiff of the Lollardy about the Emes, look you. Not so much as to force the priest to take heed of them and nothing to have any of the family in trouble then or now, but it’s there. We can be friends easy enough but nothing further. Johanna wouldn’t have any marriage for Herry that way and I doubt the Emes want one, either.”
Cautious to make his curiosity seem light, Joliffe said, “I thought I’d heard Lollards were against plays and players. Mockers of God’s creation. Mockers of the divine. All that manner of thing.”
“They wouldn’t live long in Coventry crying havoc against our plays,” Powet said easily. “Nay, it’s only the worst of them that go that far with things. Same sort as think they can overthrow the king and lords and Church and all. I’d guess most have naught against it at all, just enjoy suchlike with the rest of us.”
“Come to it, I don’t suppose there are many Lollards left here,” Joliffe tried, not supposing that at all but trying for what Powet might know. “Not after everything seven years ago.”
“Oh, I think they’re still here and about,” Powet said. “It’s the loud ones that suffered. The quiet ones go as they did before, maybe all the happier for being persecuted. Proves they’re important, that they’re persecuted. Don’t see that fleas are persecuted, too, and still aren’t anything more than a small-brained bother.”
Come to the yard in Mill Lane, Joliffe had no time left for having more from Powet, but he was satisfied with what he had and shoved the gate open and strode in, announcing, “Found him and it’s not his fault he’s late, so pray let him live, Master Sendell!”
“That depends on why it isn’t his fault and if he has any of his lines learned,” Sendell returned.
“Tell them,” Joliffe said, stepping aside to shut the gate while letting Powet go forward.
Powet gave his news curtly, making as little as might be of it. So Joliffe was taken by surprise by Ned Eme, slumped at ease on one of the benches until then, springing to his feet to exclaim, “Dead? What about George? Is he found, too?”
“Not a word of him,” Powet said. “Seems only Robyn is found.”
“It can’t be George killed and robbed him!” Ned declared. “I’ll not believe that!” His face shifted from startled to dismayed. “Holy Saint Michael, Anna must be beside herself in grief. Master Sendell, can you be done with me for now?”
Sendell managed, “For now, yes, but . . .” before Ned was away, jerking open the gate and bolting from the yard.
“Has always had a mind to Anna,” Powet said glumly, by way of something like explanation.
“Who’s this George?” Joliffe asked.
“George Wyston. Been servant to the Kydwas for years. Is all but another son to old John. Sure, he’s not murdered Robyn. Ned’s a fool.”
“Could we come back to the play now?” Sendell asked with the patience of a director who did not want to be patient much longer.
 
 
The next morning, deliberately out and about in hope that Sebastian was somewhere near and looking for him, Joliffe had no surprise at all when someone in the jostle of the market crowd along Cross Cheaping near Coventry’s market cross bumped into him from behind and slipped a scrap of paper into his hand. He did not look around. As he had been told when being taught the trick, “If you’re not
both
subtle, then it’s all a waste, isn’t it?”
Besides, he had found no one more subtle than Sebastian and doubted that—even if he had looked around—he would have found him out of the crowd. Instead he turned into the first narrow side street and only around its first sideways jog paused and read what few words were on the bit of paper. St. Michael. St. Thomas’ chapel. Now.
Well, that was clear enough. Joliffe swung around and headed for St. Michael’s church with its tall, unfinished tower.
For a parish church, the place was huge. The nave was six bays long, with arcaded aisles along both sides, an aisled chancel beyond that, and any number of chapels with their altars and arrays of candles set about here and there. Joliffe wandered until he found St. Thomas’ chapel. Sebastian was there, sitting on the stone ledge along the wall, seemingly with all his gaze and heed on the carved wooden screen and statues of Saint Thomas, Christ, other saints, and a few angels for good measure behind the altar. Being Sebastian, he was surely also aware of every movement within his range of sight outside the chapel. Never a trusting man was Sebastian. Ever. When Joliffe came in, he stood up, bowed to the altar while crossing himself, and left, all without ever seeming to look at Joliffe. Joliffe, never looking directly at him, either, went through the business of kneeling before the altar and making what could have been a semblance of brief prayer except, so long as he was there, he made more than a semblance, praying, “Bless this work we are about, if it is work that should be done.”
After all, it hardly seemed right to ask God’s blessing on work that should
not
be done. The trouble lay in having only notoriously fallible human judgment to use in deciding. But finding out a murderer was surely a thing that should be done, and Joliffe rose, bowed, crossed himself, left the chapel, and not unexpectedly found Sebastian propped on the splayed plinth of one of the pillars not far off, head craned back in seeming study of the paintings of saints and angels along the length of the nave’s wooden ceiling. Because naves, like church porches, were places where folk commonly came and went, meeting friends and standing about in talk, there was nothing to remark in Joliffe pausing beside Sebastian and saying, pointing randomly at something on the ceiling, “Word came yesterday your missing man has been found. Was it you that did it?”

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