A Play of Piety (13 page)

Sister Ursula received Joliffe’s return message with a nod of easy acceptance and no comment, and the day went on its way.

The next few days went their ways, too. Joliffe grew more used to his work. He did not dream again—at least not the kind of dreaming that threw him awake—but that might have been because that one night’s solid sleep proved to be uncommon. More usually, twice or thrice each night one man and another seemed to have need of him, or need for him to summon whichever of the sisters was sleeping near that night. There never seemed any chance to see how much more friendly Amice might be, and Joliffe regretted that, but he did sit and talk with Basset a few times, and almost hour by hour his respect for the sisters grew—for their hard work and for their easy trust in one another and not least for their quietly deft handling of Master Soule and Master Hewstere who supposedly were over them in all things about the hospital and the men’s care. Master Hewstere, because he came and went, could be listened to and his directions followed or altered after he had left. In truth, both the patients and the other sisters seemed to trust Sister Margaret’s decisions more than his, if it came to a choice between. More than that, she tended to the men as if each one mattered in himself, while Master Hewstere rarely stooped from a physician’s dignity to lay so much as hand on a forehead to feel for fever. So the women bowed their heads and said “Yes” to whatever he decreed, then went Sister Margaret’s way when he was gone. There were even times, after all, when she agreed with what he ordered.

Master Soule might have been more trouble, being there in the hospital all the while, but he did not seem inclined to direct the women too closely. He did his daily duties in the chapel, and Sister Ursula went in late afternoons to tell him how the day had been and take counsel with him about any problems beyond the ordinary. Other than that he kept to himself. Or would have, if allowed. Among Mistress Thorncoffyn’s continued small tyrannies and occasional large demands were summons to Master Soule to spend time with her, sometimes in an afternoon, often in an evening.

Joliffe kept his curiosity to himself until an evening when, as Sister Ursula and Sister Margaret were settling the men for the night, Master Soule came from the sacristy, started across the hall, paused to bow to the altar, and went out the other door, into the passageway that would take him either to the kitchen or else to the roofed walk. Since he had his private way from the hospital, from the sacristy through his own small garden and an alleyway to the road, and because Joliffe had never seen him anywhere near the kitchen, the guess had to be that the master was on his way to Mistress Thorncoffyn, which—to Joliffe’s mind—accounted for his look of a man grimly determined on grace in the face of martyrdom.

Since he had never looked anything but grim the times Joliffe had seen him going to or coming from Mistress Thorncoffyn, Joliffe could not help but wonder why he suffered her company. Couldn’t he refuse it?

Joliffe took the only way he knew to find out, saying to Sister Ursula as they left the hall, it being her turn at night-duty, “Master Soule and Mistress Thorncoffyn do well together, it seems.”

“To her mind they do,” Sister Ursula granted.

“Not to his?”

Sister Ursula gave him a sideways, upward look, then said, “She enjoys putting questions to him about God and the world and all, then arguing at him over his answers. Somehow I doubt Master Soule enjoys that as much as she must. As something of a patron to the hospital, she has to be endured. He’ll be freed from her soon, though, when her grandson comes. She has small interest in anyone else when he’s here. Saint Giles be thanked.”

Sunday came with its half-day rest for the harvesters, giving families chance to visit their folk in the hospital. For Basset, that meant Ellis, Gil, and Piers came. Joliffe joined them briefly. It was good to jibe with Ellis again and be as rude to Piers as Piers was to him. Good, too, to see Gil include old Tom in the next bed, who had no one of his own come to see him because he had no one of his own left, Sister Petronilla had told Joliffe, adding, “He’s going to be sorry to see your friend leave.”

“Basset
is
going to altogether mend, then?” Joliffe had taken the chance to ask.

Sister Petronilla had looked surprised. “Oh, yes. Sister Margaret is sure of it. Until the next flare comes, of course.”

“The next? It will happen again?”

She had looked concerned that he did not know that. “Not for years perhaps, but yes, almost surely. Sister Margaret has never known this manner of thing to burn itself out entirely.”

If Basset knew that, he had not said. Nor had Rose. Nor was there any telling what Ellis, Gil, and Piers knew, jesting and laughing with Basset over his “life of ease and quiet,” Gil reminding him of the saying that “ease can lead to vice” and Basset answering, “I can but hope so,” as Joliffe left them to carry Jack’s dinner to the gatehouse.

These past few days he had been carrying his own along with Jack’s, for the two of them to sit in talk together while they ate. He had loaned his small book of Hoccleve’s poems, as he had promised, and Jack was now copying them out for himself. So there was that as well as other books to talk of, and yesterday Jack had asked him about his life as a player. Until then, Joliffe had avoided talk that way, not knowing how much a man this much imprisoned by his twisted body would want to hear about a player’s far roaming, but when he had answered Jack’s questions only a little even then, Jack had guessed at his uncertainty and said, “I do truly like to hear about farther away than here. It’s my mind that keeps me company most hours of the day. The more I have in it, the more company I have.”

So Joliffe had answered more freely, and today meant to see if he could make Jack laugh at things Piers had got up to now and again, doubting there was much to bring Jack to laughter in his life, for all that he seemed a cheerful enough man on the whole. Assuredly, as Joliffe came into his room, he looked cheerful enough as he turned from the roadward window and said, “I have to wonder if Father Richard knows what goes on beyond the churchyard’s charnel house.”

Crossing the room to set the tray on the shelf that served for a table, Joliffe asked, “Goes on? I can’t imagine much goes on at a charnel house.” Where the bones of those long dead were kept when their grave-place in the yard was needed for someone newly gone.

“Not in it, to be sure,” Jack agreed lightly. “But there’s a sheltered place between it and the yew hedge, out of sight of everywhere. Anyone coming by way of the stile from the field path stands a good chance of reaching it unnoted, and once they’re there, no one can see them.”

“Except you?”

“Not even me. So I know no more what goes on there than Father Richard does, I suppose. But when I see first a man and then a woman go there, all careful there’s no one in sight to see them, and they don’t come out for a while and a while, I can’t help what suspicions well up in my mind.”

“Suspicions are a difficult thing to keep from welling,” Joliffe granted. Having set the tray down, he took Jack’s place at the window as Jack moved to see what was under the cloth today. Not but what it surely was going to be pottage as usual—all vegetables today—and bread and cheese. “Someone is there now?”

“They are. It’s not even as if I’m looking in their windows, seeing this,” Jack complained. “I’m looking out my own.” But the complaint was lightly made, as was so much that Jack said, as if he found life a lighter thing than the burden his twisted body must make it. Now, as Joliffe joined him at the shelf, he asked, “How out of joint is Mistress Thorncoffyn’s nose at all the visitors come to see other folk today?”

“She’s summoned Sister Ursula to her three times about one thing and another, and sent complaint to Sister Petronilla about the boys’ noise in the garth.”

“But should anyone say aught about her yapping dogs—” Jack left the sentence hanging, no need to finish it. “How is her . . . it’s her stomach this time, isn’t it?”

They had begun to eat. Joliffe nodded around a mouthful of bread, swallowed, and answered more fully, “And her leg. She wants hot poultices for it. Master Hewstere wants cold. Sister Margaret thinks it would do best if she walked more and kept it raised while she sits, but neither Master Hewstere nor Mistress Thorncoffyn has asked Sister Margaret’s thought on it.”

“Nor will they,” Jack said. He was soaking the end of his bread in the pottage, “She always has some ailment when she comes here. Something that needs Master Hewstere’s heed and much waiting on by the sisters. Or as much as their tolerance will give her. It’s been her leg before this, and her headaches several times, and now her digestion.”

“Hai!” someone shouted from below the window. “Old halt and humble!” The bell jangled from someone jerking hard on its rope. “Get this gate open!”

Jack gave a sharp sigh. “Now here’s the other ‘ailment’ she brings on us. Her unblessed grandson.”

Chapter 11

J
ack made to start toward the stairs, but Joliffe said, “I’ll go. There’s no need to stop your dinner since I’m here.” Jack’s thanks followed him as he went out. The bell was jangling again and went on jangling as he hurried down the stairs. Whoever had hold of the rope seemed not to care Jack could only come so fast and no faster, no matter what their impatience. As it was, Joliffe jerked the slightly open gate a little more open suddenly enough that the horseman beyond it was startled into a sharp answering jerk on his reins, making his horse throw up its head and back a few steps away. Forced to let go the bell rope, ending its jangle, he demanded angrily down at Joliffe, “Who are you?”

“Presently the one who’s going to finish opening the gate for you,” Joliffe returned. “So leave off the bell.” He swung the gate wide aside, stepping backward with it, then—expecting what came next—stepping farther back, out of reach as the horseman, riding past, cut sideways at him with a stiff riding whip. Having spent much time in the past few months being lessoned to dodge blows, doing it now was no great matter. The difficulty was in holding back from following through on the lessoning—in not grabbing the fellow’s careless arm and jerking him from his saddle to the ground, momentarily helpless against whatever Joliffe could choose to do to him.

Joliffe did succeed in holding back, then half-wished he had given way as the man jerked his horse to a harsh halt and demanded, “Where’s old Jack?”

As curtly, Joliffe said back, “Minding to other business. What’s yours here?”

Not that he could not guess. The fellow was in the full glow of health and in need of no charity if his thigh-short green doublet, smooth-fitted yellow hosen, calf-high riding boots of dyed red leather, and the well-blooded horse were anything to go by. More than that, the darkly red hair showing below his in-fashion hat of padded headroll trailing a liripipe flung over one shoulder told the rest even before he said, no less sharply and ignoring Joliffe’s question, “I suppose my grandmother is still here?” Making it sound as if it would be Joliffe’s fault if she were not.

Not ready to take fault for that or anything else, Joliffe returned, “I could probably tell you that if I knew who your grandmother is.”

So far he had given no heed to the second rider sitting his horse quietly behind the first because the man had made no move to add to the foolishness. Now, though, bringing his horse a little more forward, he said, courteously enough, “She’s Mistress Cisily Thorncoffyn and surely she’s here.”

“Surely she is,” Joliffe agreed, equally courteously to him. He looked back to the grandson, who was close enough to Jack in age to have no business calling him old. “And your name would be—?”

For answer he received “Take a kick in your cullions, you fool,” as Thorncoffyn put his spurs to his horse’s flank and rode sharply forward into the yard.

Feeling that his duty was somehow done by having irked him, Joliffe gave a shadow-bow toward his back. Was ready to give a better one to the second man as he, too, rode forward, but he surprised Joliffe by briefly drawing rein to say, “On the likelihood you’ll need his name later, he’s Master Geoffrey Thorncoffyn.”

“And you, sir?” Not simply a servant. To judge by the good cut of his clothing, sober-colored though it was, he was, at the least, a clerk or household officer.

“Master Aylton. Her steward.” And jestingly, “May I have leave to pass?”

Joliffe gave a sweep of one arm and somewhat of a bow to usher him into the yard and thought he heard the steward softly laugh as he rode past toward where Geoffrey had already dismounted, flung his reins at a ringed post, and was going into the hospital.

Thinking Master Aylton must be a patient man to put up with Geoffrey Thorncoffyn for any length of time, Joliffe went back up the stairs. He found Jack at the window overlooking the yard, where he must have heard all of what passed because he said, widely smiling, “You’ve upset the puppy.”