A Play of Isaac (28 page)

Basset began to herd Joliffe and Rose and Ellis, still holding on to Piers, toward the door. They were not needed here. They were better out of the way. But before they were clear Mistress Penteney suddenly broke into great, shattered, helpless sobbing. Her legs gave way and she would have collapsed to the floor except Master Penteney grabbed and held her; but he was hardly in better case and they might both have fallen except that Rose and Basset moved swiftly, Rose catching Mistress Penteney away from her husband, Basset taking steadying hold on Master Penteney.

Kathryn and Simon had come to their feet with Mistress Penteney’s first cry. Now Simon came to help Basset guide Master Penteney back to his chair while Rose and Kathyrn gently sat Mistress Penteney into the other one. Her storm of sobbing was already done. Instead, in a stricken silence that was almost worse, she was starting to shake, and Kathryn had gone to the table and was pouring wine for her when a soberly gowned man and an equally soberly clad servant carrying a flat box appeared in the doorway.

They might as well have carried a sign announcing themselves: a doctor and his man, even before the man exclaimed, “St. Luke’s mercy, Penteney! What’s been happening here?” He was already crossing toward Lewis. “Why didn’t you send for me, man? I had to hear it from my neighbor when he came home and wanted my help.”

“We did send for you,” Master Penteney said. “You didn’t come.”

“I didn’t come because nobody came for me.”

“I sent . . .” Mistress Penteney started but stopped, shook her head. “I don’t know. I told someone to go, one of the servants.” Her voice was rising with distress. “But I don’t remember who. It was all happening so fast. It was all so . . .”

Rose took the goblet of wine from Kathryn and pushed it into Mistress Penteney’s hands, urging her to drink, while the doctor said, leaning over Lewis with his back to her, “Whoever it was, they didn’t come.” He had felt at Lewis’s throat by then, was opening his eyes to peer at them, then looked into his mouth, laid a hand on his chest—a fairly useless set of gestures at this point but something to do to earn his fee, Joliffe supposed. The man shook his head and turned away. “He’s dead, I fear. The strain was too great on his heart. I take it there wasn’t time to give him the mixture?”

“Yes,” Mistress Penteney said a little shrilly. “I gave it to him.” She pulled the packet from her sleeve and held it out. “Just as you said. Here.”

The doctor took and unfolded the paper, sniffed at presumably the remains of whatever powder it held, touched it with a moistened finger and tasted it.

“It’s what you gave me!” Mistress Penteney said. “I didn’t make a mistake!”

“No, no, no, of course not,” the man quickly soothed. “I was only seeing if it had gone stale or some other thing but, no, it’s fine. The sickness was simply too much for his heart to bear. It could have happened any time, for any reason. We all knew that. You must not distress yourself over this, my lady. Give her more wine, Kathryn, while I see to your father.”

As the doctor turned around, Basset quietly asked Master Penteney, “May we leave?” Master Penteney nodded that they might, and Rose instantly left Mistress Penteney and moved toward the door, holding out her hand for Piers, who still had his face turned away from Lewis and both hands fisted into Ellis’s doublet. He let go one hand to take hold of his mother’s and left the room clinging to both her and Ellis. Basset followed, with Joliffe coming last, hearing Mistress Penteney behind him saying shrilly, “It’s the Lollards. They poisoned us. They did this. They meant to kill us all!”

Servants were still cleaning in the great hall. All the tableware and linens were gone now and some men were taking the tables down, shifting the tops to lean against one wall and the trestles to brace them there, while women were starting to scrub the floor. Master Richard must have passed through with Geva without saying anything, and moving swiftly, the players almost escaped unquestioned, too. Only one woman, as they reached the screens passage, had chance to ask, “What’s happening in there? How is it with Master Penteney? He was bad taken. Worse than anyone, I think.”

“Master Penteney is bettering. He’s much better,” Basset said and swung around her and away.

In the yard the tall gates to the street had been shut and all of the lanterns but one were out and it was guttering, throwing more shadows than light. There was enough moonlight, though, by which to cross the yard and no one around to stop them with more questions. Basset had to fumble the key at the lock but soon enough they were inside the barn, the door left open and their eyes soon used to the dark as they felt their way to laying out their beds in the hurried silence of wanting to be done with the day.

It was Rose who spoke first with, for her, unusually open worry. “It was only the food, you think? Not plague of some kind? Or . . . poison?”

“Nobody would be getting over it so fast if it were some kind of plague,” Basset answered. “No, it was the food.”

“Lewis died,” Piers said faintly.

“You’ve seen dead folk before now,” Rose said, not unkindly.

“I haven’t seen them die,” Piers whispered.

“You saw that man hanged in Huntingdon last year,” Ellis reminded.

As if he’d been accused of something, Piers protested, “He was a thief and he’d tried to set a barn on fire and . . .” His voice fumbled and went unsteady. “And we didn’t know him.”

Ellis reached out and put an arm around him, wordlessly holding him close for a moment, before Rose said, kneeling near them, “There. Your bed’s ready, Piers. Come and lie down.”

Piers went willingly, slipping under the blanket that the cooling night made welcome. Rose tucked it closer around him and settled to sit beside him a while. As she started to murmur some soft sleep-song, Ellis came to sit on the boy’s other side and just barely in the shadows Joliffe could see him start to stroke Piers’s hair.

Settling into his own mattress and blanket, Joliffe wished he had someone to stroke his hair and sing him to sleep, too.

He awoke in the morning to the same questions that had gone to bed with him. He would just as soon they went away but they stayed as he arose and dressed. The first and very obvious one was whether the sickness had been an accident or somehow by someone’s doing, as Mistress Penteney had wildly accused. If by accident, then there was no particular need for much in the way of questions. Contrariwise, if someone had done it deliberately, there were too many questions, beginning with who and going on to why and how.

Mistress Penteney thought it had been done purposefully, had cried out against Lollards. Joliffe supposed they were as good as anyone else to accuse, especially with all the present fears against them. But why would they? A misguided revenge for Hubert Leonard’s death maybe?

That was maybe a pointless question. Who could guess how a heretic’s mind would work? If they could have a go at rising up against the king and all—and they’d already done that more than once—what else would they be fool enough to try?

But setting aside the question of who, if it was deliberant poisoning
how
had it been done? In the food or drink surely, but what would cause that much vomiting? The doctor or any apothecary could answer that and there was a start, and then questions could be asked about how much and where it could have been got in quantity. Always supposing something had been deliberately used.

But why was he even bothering to wonder? Thank St. Genesius, none of the players had been hurt by it.

Yet,
his mind treacherously added.

Because, as with Leonard’s death, they would be the first and easiest to blame if anyone decided blame had to be given.

So better he go looking for someone to blame before someone started blaming them.

Gone in his own thoughts, he had not been paying much heed to what was going on or being said around him. Piers was unusually quiet and the others talking in low voices, until Basset burst out, “Damnation! We may as well take up a house here. We’re never going to get out of Oxford the way things are going!”

His vehemence startled the others to silence and Joliffe to attention, not knowing from what the outburst had come. Then Rose said hesitantly, “There won’t be trouble over this. Some food went bad and people got sick. It happens.”

“Someone died,” Basset said curtly. “That brings the crowner into it. Again. Twice to the same house in under a week. That’s not good. And here we are, ready to be blamed.”

So his mind had been going the same way as Joliffe’s, but Rose said, “You heard the doctor last night. Lewis’s heart could have gone at any time. The sickness was an ill-chance and Lewis’s dying not strange. There won’t be trouble over it.” She sounded as if she fully believed it, and Basset grumbled under his breath to silence. He raised a hand to comb his sleep-rumpled hair and winced.

“Here,” Rose said, holding out her hand. “Let me if your arm is bothering you.”

Grumbling more, Basset gave her his comb and sat down. He rarely admitted to his arthritics and, when forced to do so, was never gracious about it.

At the wash-bucket beside the cart, Ellis gave Piers’s shoulder a shove. “What are you so quiet about? Picked up your grandfather’s mopes, have you?”

“No,” Piers snarled, rounding on him. His face was wet from washing but the red around his eyes suggested there had been tears not long ago. “I’m being sorry Lewis is dead. That’s more than any of you are doing.”

He grabbed up the towel and wiped his face ferociously dry while no one answered him until Rose said gently, “You shouldn’t mind about Lewis. Not on his account, anyway. You’ll miss him because he was a friend but he’s gone to heaven, surely, and he’s happy.”

Piers stared at her stubbornly. “He was happy here, too. And is he still going to be stupid in heaven, or will God give him his wits back?”

“He was simple, not stupid, Piers,” Basset said. “You’ve said it yourself. You knew him. He was simple but what wits he had, he used well. I’ve known people with more wits who used them worse.
That’s
what stupid is.”

“Will he have more wits in heaven and be like everyone else?” Piers demanded. “Will he even get to heaven? There wasn’t time to shrive him full properly last night.”

No one had quick answer to that, but finally Joliffe said, “We can’t know, but for one thing, heaven isn’t about wits. It’s about how pure your soul is and I think that Lewis was far ahead of most folk with that, shriven or not.”

Still fiercely, Piers said, “That’s all right then,” and disappeared behind the towel again.

Breakfast was scant in the great hall, and so was the welcome. Over the past few days the players had become familiar enough that people had begun to forget to stand off from them. Today people were standing off again and, “It’s started,” Ellis said into his ale cup.

They took as little time over their eating as they could and were going out when the household’s chamberlain met them in the screens passage to tell them stiffly, “The crowner will be here before too long. You’re not to go off anywhere. He’ll want to talk to you.”

They gave him a respectful bow of acceptance. Then they all had to move from the way of several servants going past, bearing trays well-laden with covered bowls and dishes. Breakfasts for the Penteneys and the Lovells in their own chambers, surely, which reminded Joliffe to ask before the chamberlain could go his own way, “Will my Lord and Lady Lovell be leaving or staying?”

The chamberlain fixed him with a hard look. “They were set to stay until Sunday and they will.”

Joliffe thanked him and followed the others into the yard where Ellis turned on him with, “What was that for?”

“Just trying to judge how fast things might be going to the bad. If the Lovells moved out to less troubled lodgings, it would make worse talk against the Penteneys.”

“And if they stay,” Basset said, “it shows Lord Lovell thinks all that’s happened is no more than bad chance and nothing of blame on Master Penteney.”

“What about us?” Ellis said. “What are we to do?”

“What we were going to do anyway,” Basset answered. “Wait until the crowner wants us. It would hardly be seemly for us to play the streets today.”

So wait they did, though not so long as they feared. Piers hung about outside the barn and reported when the crowner and his people came. “Same fellow as before,” he said, and that was good, Joliffe thought. Master Barentyne had not seemed given to judging players guilty simply because they were players.

“That doctor has come, and a couple of men with him,” Piers soon added, and soon after that one of the crowner’s men came to bid them to the house, too.

It seemed this was not yet a formal inquest. They were led to Master Penteney’s study, where all was much as it had been the first time Joliffe was there. Lord and Lady Lovell were seated in the chairs; the doctor and his man were standing nearby; Master Barentyne was standing in front of the desk, leaving his clerk to sit behind it, waiting with pens and paper and ink to write down whatever was said. The Penteneys were at the window, Master and Mistress Penteney sitting on the seat there, Mistress Geva beside them, her hand held by Mistress Penteney while Master Richard stood at her other side, a steadying hand on her shoulder. Kathryn stood next to him with Simon beside her.

They looked what they were: a close-bound family no longer off-balanced by Lewis’s strangeness.

And yet they likewise looked . . . Joliffe sought the word. They looked diminished, lessened without Lewis, who had brimmed with pleasures happily shared with anyone around him. Lewis’s life and all his brimming happiness were gone and they were the less for it.

Whether they fully knew that yet or not, Matthew, standing a few paces beyond Simon, looked as if he did. He also looked as if he had spent the night in grief rather than sleep. Maybe he had kept watch beside Lewis’s body, which made sense; he had been probably the one person best able to do it, since he’d not been sick with the others last night, Joliffe remembered. Attending on Lewis, he wouldn’t have eaten any of the meal in the hall.