A Play of Piety (19 page)

“A long way to walk for a petty revenge,” Master Soule murmured.

Master Aylton darted an angry glance at him but went on strongly to Mistress Thorncoffyn, “What have they got to show against me? Nothing except words. I’ve done well for you all these three years I’ve been your steward, and they’ve been hard years as you well know, my lady.”

“Aye, m’lady,” Cawdry cut in. “That’s what he said. That we’ve had these several famine years, so now there’s a good one, and some of the profit skimmed away into his pouch instead of yours wouldn’t show like it might have in other times.”

“Words,” Master Aylton said. “All they have against me are words.”

Wyke had been loosening the drawstring of his belt pouch and now pulled out a folded piece of parchment. “There’s this, m’lady. From Henry Multon. He’s bailiff at . . .”

“I know Harry Multon,” Mistress Thorncoffyn snapped. “Have known him for years.” She shoved her staff at Geoffrey, who took it while she snatched the parchment from Wyke.

As she unfolded it and started to read, Wyke went on with a kind of trudging certainty that had probably done as much as anything to get his village through the past few hard years, “We stopped there on our way here to ask him if Master Aylton had done the same with him. He would have come with us, but his wife was in the midst of childing. So he had the priest write this out and witness he’d swore it’s true.”

“He was going to go to you himself, even without we’d come,” Cawdry said. “But there’s the harvest and his wife about to bear and all. That’s what kept him back.”

Master Aylton said, furious, “You suborned him to this. Or else
he’s
behind it all and suborned
you
!”

Suborn might be more than either man knew but they understood the accusation and Cawdry answered resentfully, “We’ve done what needed doing, that’s all. We’re no liars, none of us.”

“Aylton,” Geoffrey said, sounding as if he were following a thought just now forming in his mind. “It was you said there’d be no reason I shouldn’t linger in St. Neots. You encouraged me to it.”

“As if you needed encouraging,” the steward snapped.

“You did,” Geoffrey said, becoming more certain. “And the day and night we were at Multon’s, you pointed me toward that wench, and you stayed up with Multon after I went—” He became aware his grandmother had switched her glare from Aylton to him again. “Um,” he said and stopped.

Mistress Thorncoffyn returned her glare to Aylton as Master Soule ventured, “This might be better talked over in a more private place. I would . . .”

Mistress Thorncoffyn waved the parchment at Aylton. “This says what they say it says. I’ve known Harry Multon, boy and man. Longer than I’ve known you, that’s sure. I take his word over yours. Take these men’s, too, if he vouches for them. You’ve been looking to cheat me, Aylton!” She shoved the parchment at his face. He put up both hands to protect himself. She pushed the parchment into them and grabbed her staff away from Geoffrey.

Aylton, fumbling with the parchment, did not see the first blow coming. Mistress Thorncoffyn’s staff cracked along the side of his head and he staggered sideways. Dropping the parchment, he put up his hands to protect his head from her next blow, but she swung in below his raised arms, thudding the staff hard against his ribs, staggering him again as cries of alarm broke out all around them, Idany drawing back, exclaiming, “No! No!” while Geoffrey tried to catch his grandmother’s arm and Cawdry did the same and Wyke stepped back well out of reach of any chance blow.

Master Soule was ordering, “No! Not here! My lady!” but retreating, too. It was Master Hewstere who moved to catch the staggering Aylton and barely missed being hit by Mistress Thorncoffyn’s next blow as it came down onto Aylton’s right shoulder, driving the steward to his knees and opening his head for a blow that would have probably knocked him insensible or maybe plain killed him except Geoffrey got tight hold on her arm and pulled her around and away from Aylton as Cawdry twisted the staff from her hand. Scarlet-faced and panting as after a hard run, Mistress Thorncoffyn gave up the assault and sagged against Geoffrey. He straddled his legs, bracing to take her weight.

Aylton stayed on his knees, moaning and holding himself around the ribs. He moaned worse as Master Hewstere made to raise him to his feet but did stand, albeit bent over and still moaning. The physician looked around and said at Ellis as the largest man there not part of the trouble, “Come. Help.”

While Ellis went to help hold up the bent and moaning Aylton, the other players started backing away, Gil drawing gawking Piers with him, crowding aside from Sister Ursula as she came past them purposefully, saying, “Best lay him here, Master Hewstere,” pointing to the bed that had been Lyttle’s. “Master Thorncoffyn, also best is that you and Idany take your grandmother back to her chamber.”

The other sisters had begun to move among the beds at the hall’s other end, telling what had happened to those who had not clearly seen and heard, making light of it and soothing. Master Soule was shepherding Cawdry and Wyke toward Jack at the door, making sounds about seeing them out and recommending they stay at the inn just along the street while things were sorted out here.

The players left them all to it, making good their escape into the sacristy, where Ellis shortly joined them, not needed once Aylton was to bed. With all their well-honed instincts to get away from trouble—little though any was likely to come their way out of this one—they quickly and with no talk changed into their own clothing and packed their garb into the hamper for carrying back to the cart. They had given up expectation of ale and maybe something to eat as extra reward for performing. After all, they had got coins when the likelihood had seemed they would not, meaning they were still ahead. But they had failed to take account of Sister Ursula’s firm hand on matters. As they went into the kitchen on their way to the back door, Gil and Ellis carrying the hamper between them, Rose was setting out wooden cups and a pottery pitcher at one end of the long table and beckoned to them, saying, “You’re not forgotten. Sister Ursula said you were to have your due.”

Sister Letice was at the table’s other end, mixing herbs with a broad wooden spoon into a thick paste in a bowl. Beside her, a length of linen cloth lay ready to wrap it into probably several poultices. Catching Joliffe’s look at them, Rose said, “Whether anything is broken or not, there’ll be bruises.”

“And a headache,” Joliffe said.

Sister Petronilla came in. “She wants something for her heart and something to steady her breathing. She’s heaving for air like a man who’s run a mile when he shouldn’t have.”

Sister Letice handed the broad spoon to her and nodded at the linen cloths. “I’ll fetch what she needs. You make the poultices.”

She disappeared into the stillroom. Sister Petronilla, doing as she was bid, said to the players in her serene, firm way, “We all enjoyed your play. Thank you for it very much.”

“Heinrich, too?” Joliffe asked.

“He sat quietly through it. I’ve put them in your room for now. Out of the way until things settle. I hope it’s no matter Daveth meant to take your lute in hand? He says it helps Heinrich to hear it.”

“He has gentle hands. It’s no trouble if it helps,” Joliffe assured her.

Sister Margaret came in. To everyone’s asking looks she answered, “Master Hewstere says Aylton has a rib or so probably cracked, but not his skull, and his shoulder is only deeply bruised, not broken.”

“That’s all to the good then,” said Sister Petronilla.

“I’m none so sure about his skull, though. The bone is not broken inward, but I’d not swear it’s uncracked, and there could be an inward bruising of the brain. I don’t think we can know that for a while yet, if there is. Joliffe, when you tend him, keep watch that his pupils stay even. If the blacks of his eyes go uneven, that tells there’s something wrong beyond what poultices can outward do.”

Joliffe nodded that he understood and offered, for what ease there was in it, “It would likely have been worse if Mistress Thorncoffyn hadn’t been so close she never had a full swing at him.”

Sister Petronilla, now spreading the herb-mess onto one of the linen cloths, said, “He’ll be looking at worse in a different way before she’s done with him if he’s been looking to cheat her the way those men say.”

“He will that,” Sister Margaret agreed. “Or maybe to save the cost of lawyers and courts, she’ll be satisfied by having Geoffrey simply finish her beating of him.”

She did not sound, to Joliffe’s ear, as if she were altogether jesting.

Chapter 15

T
he evening busyness of Vespers and supper went not much differently from usual despite everyone’s sharp awareness of Aylton sometimes softly moaning behind the curtains drawn to hide his bed. Joliffe, bringing his supper, found him lying on his side with legs drawn up and head tucked down, curled in on his undoubted pain in side and head and shoulder. He had been undressed down to his shirt. The poultices and the bandages holding them to his ribs and shoulder were lumps under the shirt’s fine linen, while another bandage wrapped his head, holding a third poultice there. Joliffe had no chance to see his eyes as Sister Margaret had bid. Aylton opened them only so far as needed to see who was there and why, then shut them again and slightly moved one hand in a gesture that refused the food.

Joliffe set the bowl and bread on the little table beside the bed, carefully quiet, as if even the clunk of wooden bowl on wooden table might jar the man to more pain, and said, “One of the sisters or I will come later to see about feeding it to you.”

Aylton made a sound that meant nothing and did not stir. The easy-mannered, pleasant-worded steward was vanished, utterly gone from this undressed, bandaged, disheveled man in pain. Pain at its worst tended to cancel all else in a man, and Aylton was assuredly in pain that was mostly of the body at present, but Joliffe suspected there had to be a strong current of fear-pain in his mind, too, over what Mistress Thorncoffyn would purpose against him next. However well Aylton healed or did not heal, Joliffe doubted she would be satisfied with a beating as sufficient punishment for attempting to cheat her. More than likely, she would set the law on him.

Had she thought yet that he could set the law on her, too, because of the beating? Not that it would matter much to her. At the most, that would probably come to her having to pay a fine that she could readily afford, while Aylton almost surely could not afford whatever more her wrath might bring down on him. On the whole, he had more reasons than his aching body to lie there and groan.

Handing Basset his supper, Joliffe slid a look to the curtain hiding Aylton, questioning. Basset answered with a silent nod, agreeing they would not trouble the man with their voices, but no one among the other men in the hall had any care to spare Aylton their talk. Any of them who had not directly suffered himself from a corrupt steward in their time knew stories enough of others who had and were gladly telling them to each other. Joliffe, returning to the kitchen, was thankful the players had not played
The Steward and the Devil
today, because in it he would have been the Devil who took the Steward to Hell at the end, and the jesting at him now about when he would take Aylton away would have surely become tedious both for him and Aylton.

Joliffe was clearing the supper dishes to the scullery, Master Soule could be heard saying Compline in the chapel, and the sisters were finishing their own supper when there was a hurried padding of feet in the passageway, bringing Idany at a rush into the kitchen demanding as she came, “My lady is in pain. You.” At Joliffe. “Go for Master Hewstere. Tell him her stomach is cramping worse than ever, the pain worse than it has been.” And at Sister Letice, qualms against her apparently forgotten, “She needs something to help her. Be quick at it!”

Sister Letice looked to Sister Ursula, who nodded. As Sister Letice started for the stillroom, Joliffe heard her saying mostly under her breath, “Mallow. No, not at this season. Mint? Horehound, yes,” while he asked at Sister Ursula, “Where’s Master Hewstere likely to be now?”

“Home. He lives three houses beyond the church.”

“Hurry!” Idany ordered, and because for once she sounded truly urgent rather than merely sharp, Joliffe hurried. In the foreporch passage, he took a quick look through the doorways to Mistress Thorncoffyn’s rooms as he passed, left open by Idany in her haste, and saw the woman sitting bent forward in her broad chair to as nearly double as she could go. Her arms were wrapped across the bulge of her belly, and Geoffrey was bent over her, his arms around her shoulders, either to comfort or brace her as she gave a groaning cry long and loud enough it followed Joliffe into the yard. The pain in that cry was real and deep, and Joliffe broke into a run.

Master Hewstere answered his own door at Joliffe’s heavy knocking. At Joliffe’s quick telling of Idany’s message, he bid Joliffe return to say he was coming, only he needed to gather some things. Joliffe bowed and returned to the hospital at a run, to find Idany hovering with wringing hands in the inner doorway of Mistress Thorncoffyn’s rooms.

Sister Ursula and Sister Letice were already there, with Sister Ursula and Geoffrey on either side of Mistress Thorncoffyn, trying to steady and maybe comfort her while Sister Letice hovered close, holding a cup.

At Joliffe’s word that Master Hewstere was coming, Idany gave an impatient exclamation, shoved him from her way, and hurried out. Joliffe wondered if maybe she was intent on dragging the physician faster if he would not hurry on his own. It was his own chance to escape, but he did not take it, held by sight of Mistress Thorncoffyn suddenly straightening and straining backward in her chair, head thrown back as if she were trying to pull away from the pain in her guts clutched under her hands. Sister Letice leaned over her, trying to hold the cup to her lips, but Mistress Thorncoffyn, eyes and mouth tightly shut, twisted her head from side to side, refusing.