A Play of Piety (12 page)

The sisters returned from the hall, and there was no more time for talk except that Rose, as she readied to leave, made chance to say to Joliffe, with a smile as mischievous as any Piers might have, “Good sleeping to you.”

He thanked her warily, and by the time he finally lay down on the bed in his small room that night, he understood the mischief in her wish well enough. After the men were given their supper—bread a little toasted, then broken into bits into the bowls, with warm milk poured over it—the sisters, the children, and Joliffe had their own in the kitchen. Then the men’s trays were cleared back to the kitchen, and Joliffe took to the scullery again as Father Richard began Compline—the Office of prayers and psalms that closed a day—in the chapel for the men, while Sister Petronilla saw the children to bed in the dorter and in the kitchen the other sisters readied the men’s evening sleeping draught.

Leaving the evening pot and the bowls to dry in the scullery and bringing the cleaned cups as he had been told to do, Joliffe went back into the kitchen. Sister Letice was gone now. Seeing him look around for her, Sister Ursula said, “With you here, she’s able again to spend this last while of daylight seeing to the garden while we settle the men for the night. Set out the cups on the tray.”

Joliffe did, and Sister Margaret filled them. At her bidding, he then took up the tray and followed the two women into the hall, where he kept to the aisle between the beds, and the sisters went from bed to bed, giving each man his cup and sharing small talk with each of them. At the far end of the hall, Sister Ursula had to help the fevered John Oxyn with his drink. While she did, Sister Margaret went along the hall again, back and forth from bed to bed, taking a last look at each man, making sure they were as comfortable as might be, and drawing the curtains between the beds to give them privacy for the night.

Joliffe watched and listened, waiting to see for what Sister Ursula might next want him and deeply interested by the concern and care she and Sister Margaret were showing for each man.

Sister Margaret finished and left the hall. Sister Ursula said something, kindly-voiced, to John Oxyn and helped him settle, then made beckon for Joliffe to follow her from the hall to the passage toward the foreporch. There, shutting the door to the hall, she stopped and said, “The door at the hall’s upper end must be left open, and the door to your room, too, that you may hear anyone who needs you in the night.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Sister. We’ve no time for being ladies here,” she said, but with a smile. “You are on duty every night. We take night-duty turn and turnabout. Tonight it’s Sister Letice who will sleep in the pantry off the kitchen. You’re to call for her if there’s anything beyond what you can do for the men. You do understand?”

“Yes.” What he likewise understood was that a restless night for the men would be an unrested night for him.

“For now, see to lighting the hall’s night-candle and then you had best go to bed, to better your chances of enough sleep, should there be need of you in the night.”

Joliffe had already foreseen that, and after a day full of newness he not only welcomed the thought of bed as soon as might be, but thought sleep would readily come. At least he was hoping so as he bowed. Sister Ursula bent her head in return and went away toward the dorter, while he returned to the kitchen for a light for the night-candle.

Sister Letice was just coming in by the outer door, Father Richard with her. She had so far been the quietest of the sisters, saying little that Joliffe had heard, but she was talking eagerly enough now, saying, in the obvious middle of something, “Have you noted, too, how much Iankyn’s breathing has eased since Sister Margaret added anise, of all things, to the electuary? It’s eased his lungs far more than we dared hope.”

“I’ve noted that, and that John’s fever seems to have less hold on him.” Father Richard smiled down at her. “That’s as much your doing as anyone’s. It was you who found the cuckoo sorrel that Sister Margaret wanted, and you who makes it into the decoction.”

Sister Letice smiled up at him but by a little shift of her shoulders seemed trying to slide out from under his praise. “It was Sister Margaret who searched out that it might be useful.”

“But it was you who found the plant itself,” Father Richard said firmly. “There’s no wrong in taking praise you deserve.”

Sister Letice answered, tapping him on the front of his black priest’s robe with a firm forefinger, “Mind that you remember that as well.”

The lightness went from the priest as completely as from a snuffed lamp. “I remember what I must,” he said, stepping back from her. He made the sign of the cross in blessing at, first, her and then toward Joliffe. “May everyone within this place sleep peacefully tonight.”

“And you, also,” Sister Letice returned gently, her momentary merriment gone.

“If God grants,” Father Richard said and went away toward the roofed walk, presumably to leave the hospital by way of the foreporch.

Watching him go, Sister Letice said sadly, “He’s wearing himself away with work and won’t listen.” She sighed, gave that small setting-aside shift of her shoulders again, and said, “But we can hope his prayer for a peaceful night will be granted us. Good sleeping to you, Joliffe.”

“And to you, sister,” he returned, but could not help wondering what was between her and Father Richard, that they were so easy together, familiar in a way with one another that none of the other sisters seemed to be with him as their priest.

Please, Joliffe thought—don’t let there be secrets here that I don’t want to know.

Chapter 10

S
o far as all went with the men in the hall, it was a peaceful night, but sometime in the dark hours Joliffe spasmed awake from a deep dream, his body knotted in fear, not knowing where he was for a long, black, heart-drubbing moment, until memory roused. Slowly, near to painfully, he shoved the dream away to the dark corner from where it came, and lay listening for anything beyond his dream that might have awakened him. There was nothing. Whatever the hour was, the darkness and stillness were of undisturbed night, and he forced his breathing to steady and his body to ease until he lay unknotted again. The mercy was that the dreams did not come every night. The last few nights he had been free of them altogether, but too many nights since he returned from France they were there, a nightmare twisting together of dream and memory that brought him awake taut with the fears of a fight long since lost. He had no thought of how to stop them. All he could do was deal with himself in their aftermath, and now, staring into the darkness, he began to run silently through his mind the words of the longest play he knew, filling his mind with words, giving weight to every one until at some unheeded point weariness drew his eyes closed and he slid back into sleep.

It was honest morning when he awoke again, to a day that proved, at first, to go much as yesterday had gone for him. There were the same chores—bed-pots to empty and clean, trays to carry and collect, sheets to change, firewood to fetch, scullery work to do—but at least no early demands from Mistress Thorncoffyn. Instead, today it was Master Hewstere who broke the day’s even flow. Going his morning round of the men with Sister Margaret, he said aloud his surprise at Iankyn’s claim to a quiet night. Joliffe, sweeping with a long-bristled broom at the hall’s far end, heard Sister Margaret explain what she had done and saw Master Hewstere draw himself up like an affronted cockerel.

“You did wrong, sister. I’ve warned you before about your prideful attempts to share in what is beyond you. I warn you again. I grant that he did well in the night
this
night, but his stars were favorable to that without you ignorantly meddled. Trying something uncertain as you did, you might have countered the good there was for him in the stars.”

Sister Margaret took what he said with bowed head and a murmured, “As you say, sir,” and continued the round with him, while Joliffe swept to Basset’s bed and asked, low-voiced, “What was he thinking—giving her that set-down in front of everyone?”

“Best place to give it,” Basset answered. Like Joliffe, he had one eye on the doctor and Sister Margaret to be sure their backs stayed turned. “Keeps it in our minds that he’s the master of medicines here, not her.”

“But if . . .”

“Joliffe,” Basset chided. “Joliffe, Joliffe, Joliffe.” He took on the well-rounded tones of a grand preacher. “Master Hewstere draws on the wisdom of the heavens, is guided in all he does by the stars and sun and moon in their God-set courses. Sister Margaret knows no more than earthly ways.”

“Earthly ways like the one that helped that fellow to a quiet night.”

“All I know,” said Basset, back to his own voice, “is that I’m not taking another clyster from him, no matter what he orders. Rubbing with whatever oils Sister Margaret has made have done me better good than any of that. Speaking of rubbing—” He held out a bare foot and waggled it at Joliffe.

Taking on a deep country peasant’s thick voice, Joliffe backed off, saying, “Aw’ve no orders that way, mawster. ’Tis the broom Aw’m set to here,” and busily swept his way out the near hall door, leaving Basset chuckling behind him.

Even aside from Basset’s foot, Joliffe made quicker work of the sweeping than he might have, to be back in the kitchen when Sister Margaret returned. Master Hewstere was gone to what was apparently his daily attendance on Mistress Thorncoffyn, and as Joliffe had hoped, Sister Margaret gave way to what she felt, telling the others what Master Hewstere had said, then mocking furiously, “Uncertain, he said! Something that’s been used time out of mind by herb-wives! I had it from Iankyn’s aunt because I wasn’t too proud—too
learned—
to ask what had been done for him in other years. The only difference this year is that, with his grandmother dead and the harvest and all, no one else had the time to brew it and tend to him as she would do.”

“But what now?” Sister Letice asked. “If Master Hewstere is against it . . .”

“If Master Hewstere is against it, then Master Hewstere doesn’t have to know about it,” Sister Margaret snapped. “I doubt Iankyn will tell. Do you have sufficient supplies of the sorrel?”

“Oh, yes.”

“There then,” Sister Margaret said. Which seemed to settle it.

But later in the morning, sour-faced Idany stalked into the kitchen to demand she come to Mistress Thorncoffyn to explain why she had displeased Master Hewstere.

Joliffe was helping Rose lift a heavy kettle onto the hook above the fire. They traded looks, Rose lifting her eyebrows to him, but Sister Margaret said, while she went on decisively slicing carrots, “Tell your mistress—again—that I no longer come to her beck and call.”

Idany’s face drew in like a wrinkled date. “Mistress Thorncoffyn wants you to know she’ll not have disrespect to a doctor in her hospital. She wants . . .”

On the far side of the worktable, without pausing at chopping an onion, Sister Ursula interrupted, “Mistress Thorncoffyn forgets—again—that this is not her hospital. The wardens, not her, have last say over us and what is done here. She is here as guest, not mistress. Now unless you want to make yourself useful by cutting some carrots, take yourself out of our way.”

Idany gave an offended gasp. Everyone ignored her. She tried a wordless exclaim of anger to no better response. Altogether thwarted, she stalked out. When she was gone, Sister Ursula said calmly, “Sister Margaret, would you care to help Sister Letice in the garden for a while now?”

With matching calm, Sister Margaret said, “I think perhaps I would,” laid aside her knife, and went out, wiping her hands on her apron as she went.

“Joliffe, finish the carrots,” Sister Ursula directed.

So he was at the worktable when Mistress Thorncoffyn surged into the kitchen, her company of dogs scampering around her, and demanded furiously, “Where is Sister Margaret?”

Sister Ursula courteously laid down her knife before answering, “Gone out to help Sister Letice in the garden.”

“She was here. I sent for her. I want to see her.”

“She has her duties and should not be kept from them,” Sister Ursula said evenly.

“She offended Master Hewstere!”

“And he has rebuked her. There is an end to the matter.” Still evenly, and on the likely chance that Mistress Thorncoffyn needed it said more than once, Sister Ursula repeated, “An end.”

Joliffe, watching as best he could while keeping his head down, saw Mistress Thorncoffyn’s wide-fleshed face turn red. She looked to be working through several layers of anger, none of which she seemed to find sufficient words for, because finally she ordered at the dogs busily snuffling into every corner of the kitchen, “Fawn, Fox, Kydd, Swan, Falcon! Come!” and heaved herself around and away.

When her heavy tread, the thud of her staff, and the last click of doggie toenails were gone, Sister Ursula took up her knife, saying, “Joliffe, go and tell Sister Margaret it’s safe to return. Or she’s welcome to stay, if Sister Letice can use her help longer.”

Joliffe had gathered by now, from talk around him, that most mornings after Mass Sister Letice worked with her herbs, either in the garden or the stillroom. Her skill with them was welcome, since they provided both medicine and changing savors to the daily pottages. Besides, the bee-humming garden in the warm morning sun, with its flowers and all the greens of the various herbs along its graveled paths, was a pleasant place to be, Joliffe thought. Presently, Sister Letice was gathering some yellow-flowered herb into a basket, while Sister Margaret sat on a bench tying some other herb into bunches before laying them carefully into another basket. She was much calmer-faced than when she had left the kitchen, making Joliffe suspect Sister Ursula had sent her here as much to be soothed as to avoid Mistress Thorncoffyn. Nor was she in any hurry to leave; to Joliffe’s message, she said, “If there’s no immediate need of me, I think I’ll stay here a time, yes.”