A Play of Heresy (27 page)
Authors: Margaret Frazer
“It is,” Joliffe called back and shifted to loose the cover while Piers demanded at his grandfather, “How did you know?”
“The cover was tied from the inside, dolt,” Ellis said.
“Dolt yourself,” Piers shot back. “You didn’t see it either until Grandfather said something.”
He was ducking the cuff Ellis aimed at his head as Joliffe slid out of the cart. Seeing Piers, he exclaimed, “Boy, you’re muddy to your knees and wet to the waist. Rose is going to throttle you after Ellis gets done beating on you.”
“But I caught a fish!” Piers declared, knowing as well as Joliffe did that Ellis’ cuffs were never hard and his mother would let no one beat him. “I left it with the cook just now. This big!” He held his hands an unlikely distance apart. Basset shook his head in silent declaration that he was not going to comment, but Ellis said, “Hah! Not nearly.” Piers protested it was, and the two of them headed for the stairs in lively argument.
Basset, lingering while Joliffe tied the cart’s cover closed again, asked quietly enough not to be overheard, “How goes it?”
“Oddly.”
“You’re done with the matter of this hanging?”
“It wasn’t self-murder, so no, it’s not as easily finished with as I thought it would be.”
Basset paused before saying, “Not self-murder. Nor accident, I take it.”
“Nor accident,” Joliffe grimly agreed.
Basset took that in silently and must have decided to let it go, because as he led the way up the stairs, he asked, “How is the play doing? Is Sendell holding his own against it? All he says when I’ve happened to meet him is ‘It’s not as bad as it looked like being.’”
“He’s better than holding his own. He has the thing working like a proper play instead of a limping lump of words.”
“Has he found another Archangel Gabriel?”
“I haven’t seen him to ask.” Time enough to find out, for good or ill, when he got to practice tonight.
At that point he and Basset had to turn sideways and press against the stairway wall as Rose marched Piers down on his way to the well in the yard for a thorough washing. Piers was whining. Rose was grimly silent. Neither man presumed to say anything until they were gone. Then Joliffe said as they continued up the stairs, “Now it’s your turn to tell me how things go with your play.”
Basset surely knew that for the unsubtle way to turn the talk that it was, but he played up to it, saying grandly, “In a word—splendidiously.” They came off the stairs in deep talk about horses for the Magi. Ellis and Gil joined in that, and except for Rose asking, when she came back with a scrubbed and chastened Piers, how things had gone with the crowner, and Joliffe answering, “Well enough. No trouble,” there was nothing else said about Ned’s death, which suited Joliffe more than well enough.
It was inevitably otherwise at practice that evening. Joliffe went to the yard deliberately early with the thought that if Sendell had not found someone to be Gabriel yet, his spirits would almost surely be in need of some manner of bolstering before facing the rest of the players, but he found himself forestalled. Not only were Powet and Dick already there, but a third man as well, whom Sendell announced triumphantly would be their Gabriel. As it happened, he was the Gabriel who had quit the play early on, clearing the part for Ned. “I told him the play is better beyond anything any of us had ever thought it could be,” Powet said from the wagon where they were working Joseph’s and Gabriel’s lines together. “So he agreed. He doesn’t have quite Ned’s voice for the singing but he’ll do well enough.”
Joliffe’s welcome to their new Gabriel was as wholehearted as his relief at the intent, calm way Sendell was getting on with things. In a while he found chance to ask Sendell in a very low voice, “Have you heard if Richard Eme will come tonight?”
“He sent word he’ll be here, Saint Genesius bless him,” Sendell answered, making no effort to hide his relief and never taking his eyes off his players. “And Tom will be here soon to practice as Mary with our Gabriel. Everything is holding together.”
It seemed to be indeed. Leaving Sendell to it, Joliffe went to sit beside Dick, slumped glumly on one of the benches well aside from the wagon, playing cat’s cradle with a long piece of string. He muttered what must have been greeting, sullen though it was, and stayed intent on his game. Joliffe ventured, “Your uncle brought you to make sure you came, and you’re not happy about it?”
Dick gave twist of one wrist and a flutter of fingers, and the string between his hands took on a different pattern. “I’m not a baby, to forget where I’m supposed to be,” he grumped.
Making a not-difficult guess, Joliffe said, “Things not good at home?”
Dick shot him a hard glance, then relented and said, “Rotten. First Robyn. Now Ned. But I don’t see why Anna has to jaw at
me
.” He took up a shrill mimicking of a woman’s voice. “ ‘Don’t go blithering what you don’t know anything about. Don’t be a fool and talk about what you don’t understand.’” He replaced the mimicking with bitterness. “It’s not
my
fault if she never gets married again.”
me
.” He took up a shrill mimicking of a woman’s voice. “ ‘Don’t go blithering what you don’t know anything about. Don’t be a fool and talk about what you don’t understand.’” He replaced the mimicking with bitterness. “It’s not
my
fault if she never gets married again.”
“Does she want to get married again?”
“She wanted to marry Robyn. I think she meant it when she said she didn’t want to marry Ned. But she could have changed her mind. Now she can’t.” He missed a loop in the string and whatever he had been making fell apart into a tangle in his hands. He made an impatient sound, wadded it all together, thought better of it, and started to untangle the mess. But still aggrieved, he said, “She
was
angry at Ned the other day, no matter what she says.”
was
angry at Ned the other day, no matter what she says.”
“Why do you think she says she wasn’t?” Joliffe asked lightly.
Dick shrugged a shoulder to show he either did not care or did not know, but after all could not resist the flattery of being asked what he thought. “Maybe she feels bad she made him feel bad enough he killed himself?” So word had not spread to the Byfeld household yet that Ned had not died of his own will, Joliffe noted. Still absently trying to untangle the string, Dick said, “I mean—” He broke off, frowning over either the string or what he meant, then went on, “I mean she sounded like she really, truly meant she was never going to forgive him. He must have believed her.”
“Is that what she said?” Joliffe asked, sounding carefully barely interested. “That she was never going to forgive him?”
Dick gave a nodding shrug.
“Forgive what?” Joliffe asked.
The string fell out of its tangle into an open loop again. “Don’t know.” Dick started another cradle. “Maybe Uncle Eustace heard. He was ahead of me coming along the passage. But she
was
angry, no matter what she says. She went out the back door so fast she nearly knocked old Master Kydwa off his feet. Cecily was just bringing him back in. Anna almost shoved them both over on her way out.”
was
angry, no matter what she says. She went out the back door so fast she nearly knocked old Master Kydwa off his feet. Cecily was just bringing him back in. Anna almost shoved them both over on her way out.”
“And Ned? Was he angry, too?”
Dick paused, hands and fingers going still in the midst of some different twisting of his string. “I don’t know,” he said, sounding as if he had not thought about it before. “He just looked . . . odd?”
“Who?” said Powet. Joliffe had been too intent on Dick, and Dick too intent on his string, to see Powet had finished his work with Gabriel and crossed the yard to join them. He sat down on Dick’s other side and nodded back to the wagon where Tom had taken his place with Gabriel. “He’s going to be fine. Who looked odd? Not me, I hope?”
“Ned,” Dick said. “The other day when Anna was angry at him in the kitchen.”
Powet gave a weary, impatient sigh. “I’ve told you. Whatever passed between them is best left untalked of. Things are bad enough without people saying your sister drove a man to his death.”
Dick made a grumpy sound and kept his heed on his string. Catching Powet’s gaze across the boy’s hunched shoulders, Joliffe said levelly, “She didn’t drive him to his death.”
“Of course she didn’t,” Powet said stoutly. “If he was fool enough to hang himself, it’s nobody’s fault but—”
Holding Powet’s gaze, Joliffe made a small, denying shake of his head.
Powet broke off, held silent a moment, his stare fixed to Joliffe’s. He tried again, slowly, “If he hung himself—” and stopped. Again Joliffe shook his head.
Powet’s eyes widened slightly. Dick, still watching his hands and the string and missing all their by-play, finished what he thought was his uncle’s thought, saying, “Then he’s damned to Hell, isn’t he?”
Powet stood up and walked away. Watching him go, Joliffe said, “Yes.”
He stood up and walked the other way from Powet, giving himself the look of someone practicing his lines. But of course it was not of his lines he was thinking. He had given nothing away to Powet that Powet would not hear again when Richard Eme arrived. The Emes, in their mingled grief and relief, would not be holding back in letting it be known Ned had not died by his own hand, that they were freed of the double burden of his damnation and their shame. At least until such time it came out that he had murdered two other men.
Supposing it was ever proved he had.
Supposing he had.
But that would be an entirely different shame, coming as it did with hope that prayers and Masses might save his soul after all.
So nothing had been lost by letting Powet know the truth, and something had been gained. The trouble was that Joliffe was not sure what. That Ned’s death was not self-murder had meant something to Powet. Something more than simple surprise. Dismay? Fear? Alarm? So many different feelings might be read into that widening of the eyes and abrupt moving away, but what was the why of any of them?
Powet had been very quiet through all the bailiff’s questioning of his family today. Because he had nothing to add to what was being said? Or because he knew something he was taking care not to say?
Joliffe stopped circling and made himself ask the question at the center of all that wondering.
What reason could Powet have had to kill Ned Eme?
The ready answer to that was: none.
Then Joliffe had to ask how willing was he to accept that ready answer, and the answer to that was: not at all.
So...
Where that “so” might have gone was broken off by most of the other players arriving in a clump, followed by much relieved welcoming of their new Gabriel and some muted jeering at him that he had chosen to come back now he had heard they had a good play on their hands. Too much awareness of the dark why behind him being there kept much true merriment from their jeering, but their relief and welcome were real enough, although even those broke off when Richard Eme came into the yard a few moments later, alone and all in mourning black.
A part of Joliffe’s mind dryly assessed how Richard Eme’s late entering was well-timed, drawing every set of eyes in the yard to him as it did. Another part of Joliffe’s mind promptly chided him for so uncharitable a thought. Making his entering notable was probably the last thing from Richard Eme’s mind.
Or maybe it was not. Watching him cross the yard toward the others clustered at the wagon, Joliffe shifted his thought. He would not deny Richard Eme was grieving, but at the same time there was that about him that told he was very aware of being a dead man’s brother and of the heed that brought him. As with his playing, there was insufficient heart under it to make it feel true. The trouble was not that he did not feel: the trouble was that he did not feel deeply—that his feelings stayed comfortably within shallow depths that never tore and tossed him, even in grief for a dead brother.
Joliffe, well aware of how he himself too often felt things far too deeply for any comfort—as if he had one layer of skin too few between him and the world—had never been able to decide whether he was the better or the worse for that. There were assuredly times he could have done with feeling less, but if he had, he would not be who he was, and did he want that?
Only sometimes.
Richard Eme had been accepting everyone’s first awkward sympathies with becoming gratitude, but now looked at Burbage and around to Joliffe lingering on the edge of it all and exclaimed, surprised, “You haven’t told them?”
“There’s not been chance,” said Burbage. “We’ve only all just come and there’s been—” He waved a hand at Gabriel.
Richard Eme took a step back, spread his arms halfway out like a priest about to give benediction, and said, “Ned didn’t die by his own hand! He can have funeral and be buried in holy ground. The bailiff told us. He didn’t kill himself. It was murder.”
What had been murmured sympathies turned to exclaims, fairly evenly divided between relief that Ned’s soul was safe and startlement at thought of murder. Joliffe, unsure of the first and no longer startled by the latter, kept silent. He only answered the questions turned to him for why Richard Eme had expected him to have given them the news that it was murder, then was saved from questions about the murder itself by Sendell saying, “Enough for now. We need to set to work. Master Eme, since you’re here, we’ll run from the beginning.”
Chapter 21
T
his being their first time on the pageant wagon itself, with stairs to consider and the need to pattern people’s going out of and into the stage house—the place being small enough to make such considerations very necessary—the practice went unevenly, with more thought on how and when and where to move than on what was being said. That was as it should be, and Sendell kept all going along well, given against what he had to work. Sometime during the while Joliffe was watching Powet as Joseph forget most of his lines with Mary, Cecily Kydwa came quietly into the yard, her arms laden with the players’ garb. She slipped along the wall to a bench where she busied herself with laying out the clothing, each set of garb in a carefully folded pile of its own. That done, she sat down to sew on Mary’s blue gown.
his being their first time on the pageant wagon itself, with stairs to consider and the need to pattern people’s going out of and into the stage house—the place being small enough to make such considerations very necessary—the practice went unevenly, with more thought on how and when and where to move than on what was being said. That was as it should be, and Sendell kept all going along well, given against what he had to work. Sometime during the while Joliffe was watching Powet as Joseph forget most of his lines with Mary, Cecily Kydwa came quietly into the yard, her arms laden with the players’ garb. She slipped along the wall to a bench where she busied herself with laying out the clothing, each set of garb in a carefully folded pile of its own. That done, she sat down to sew on Mary’s blue gown.
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