A Play of Piety (22 page)

“Umph,” said Emme. “That’s like enough. Would rather deal with men decently dead on a bed, where they ought to be, than gone astray and some place he might get his hands dirty.”

“His luck missed him this time. John Credy wasn’t having it. So—” She beckoned her head toward the shed. She fixed a look on Joliffe. “Are you done here?”

“Nearly.” There was still the water to raise from the well.

She nodded and went away. At the shed, the constable and bailiff were lifting the body onto the trestle table they had made. Father Richard had stationed himself to one side, still praying. Master Hewstere was as yet keeping his distance. The man whom Joliffe did not know had slid down onto his heels with his back against the wall of the neighboring shed, his box set on the cobbles beside him. Emme waved to him; he waved back. Joliffe asked, “Who’s he?”

“Dick Denton. He’s barber-surgeon hereabout. John Credy must want to go a bit deeper with things,” Emme said. She chuckled at her own jest as she turned around to her work. Amice, making a small sound of disgust, followed her. Joliffe with a small, agreeing groan turned toward the well. “Deeper” meant slicing Aylton’s body open to see what could be learned there, and since no physician with any respect for himself cared to dirty his hands on a body—most especially dead ones—barbers, with the sharp-bladed razors and the basin of their trade, were called on to do cutting and sewing when nobler medicines were not enough. There were even guilds of barber-surgeons, to make plain their double calling. In some places abroad there were schools, Joliffe knew, where surgery was taught as a learned skill, but men with that learning were mostly only to be found in such places as London and York and Paris. For most folk it was their plain barber-surgeon who was to hand to do the ugly work to which physicians would never stoop.

Finished with filling the large laundry kettles and woefully behind on his other morning duties, Joliffe knew it was time he returned to them but somehow found himself strolling across the yard and sitting down on his own heels beside the barber. They traded friendly nods, and Joliffe asked quietly, tipping his head toward the shed where Master Hewstere had now joined Credy and Borton at the body, “What do you hear from there?”

The man was at ease about it, happy to talk. “They haven’t found anything more than the bruises he got yesterday, seems. When it’s my turn, I’ll be looking to see if the skull is cracked more than Master Clean-Hands thinks it is. Something like that will kill a man slow but sure and not show much. Then Credy wants me to see if there’s water in his lungs or not. Doesn’t think the fellow looks for sure like he drowned. Be interesting to see.” He grinned with broad mischief. “You want to watch?”

Joliffe had not a moment’s hesitation at grinning back and answering, “No. Best I get back to my right work, come to that.” He stood up. “When you’re done, they’ll likely let you wash there.” He nodded at the laundry.

“Oh, aye. Emme is cousin to me. She’ll see me clean.”

They traded final, friendly nods, and Joliffe—all too aware of how far ahead the morning had gone—finally returned to the kitchen. The sisters were gathered around the table, chopping vegetables; Heinrich was with his wooden spoon under the table; Rose was stirring a pot over the fire. He immediately apologized to Sister Ursula for being so late back. Continuing to reduce an onion to small pieces, she answered, undisturbed, “Rose said you would likely be a while.”

Joliffe shot a look at Rose. She stayed very occupied with her stirring.

“So I thought I would leave you to it,” Sister Ursula continued. “That way you can tell us what is toward. No one else is likely to. So. What have they found so far?”

“There’s no sign yet he died by other than plain ill-luck.”

Sister Ursula let the onion rest; Sister Petronilla stopped cutting carrots; Sister Letice paused at chopping herbs. Sister Margaret, her knife poised above the cabbage she was slicing, joined their look at him and asked, pointedly and for all of them, “Yet?”

Quite aware of how sharp these women were, he said, “From what’s said so far, there are only yesterday’s hurts on his body. The constable wants the barber—Denton?” The women’s heads all nodded. “Wants him to see if maybe the blow to Master Aylton’s head was worse than Master Hewstere thinks it was, and to make sure there’s water in his lungs to show he drowned. If there’s water in his lungs or the blow to his head was worse than it seemed, then likely that will be the end of it. Maybe the constable or crowner will want to know when he left the hospital. Maybe he’ll even ask why all the other men slept soundly after their night-drinks but Aylton did not.”

“Because he never drank it,” Sister Ursula said. “I left it for him, remember, but this morning . . .”

“. . . we found he’d poured it into his bed-pot when we came to empty them,” Sister Petronilla said.

Instantly guilty, Joliffe said, “I’m sorry about the bed-pots. I . . .”

“We’ve had to do the bed-pots before this,” Sister Petronilla said serenely. “Did us no harm at all. Daveth and I scrubbed the breakfast bowls and mugs, too.”

“It’s no matter,” Sister Ursula assured him. The wicked merriment she sometimes betrayed glinted briefly. “Not if you can go on telling us what we might not otherwise hear about all this, to recompense whatever work you slack.”

“So long as you don’t slack too much,” Sister Margaret put in.

“I’ll not,” Joliffe rashly promised. After all, his duties in the hall would let him draw talk about last night from the other men, on the chance they might not all have slept as thoroughly as the women thought they had. Someone among them might help him with his worry over how Aylton had left the hospital. That was the way his curiosity was turned now. The shortest way from the hall to the garden and the stream there would have taken Aylton past his own door, and since France and after these past months of training he did not sleep either as easily or as deeply as he used to. He would have awakened at the slightest sound of someone moving anywhere near his door. The stealth of a footfall meant to go unheard past his door would have jerked him awake.

Nor did he doubt that if Aylton had left the hall by the door into the sacristy and tried to cut through the pantry to the kitchen, Sister Margaret would have awakened. So Aylton must have gone through the sacristy and out by way of Master Soule’s small, private garden. Someone would have to ask Master Soule if the door to the garden had been locked or barred or on the latch last night and whether it had still been that way this morning.

Idany’s all-too-familiar tread along the passageway warned she was coming. Sister Ursula gave a deep and resigned sigh, laid down her knife, and began to wipe her hands on her apron. Idany, coming into the kitchen, had something of the same resigned air and only said heavily, instead of with her usual sharp demand, “Do you know where Master Hewstere is? My lady wants him to come. One of the dogs is sick.”

Chapter 17

S
ent to fetch the physician, Joliffe was glad to see him coming out of the shed and Denton readying to go in. When told why he was wanted, Master Hewstere said disgustedly, “One of her
dogs
. It’s not enough she eats whatever she chooses, pleasuring the gross matter of the body against all common sense, no matter what I say of how the body’s humours must be balanced. And she feeds those dogs the same way. You, come with me on the chance I have to send for something.” He stalked, still muttering, toward the hospital. His tiredness after his long night had likely betrayed him into saying all that for someone as nothing as Joliffe to hear and surely among the following mutters Joliffe was not meant to hear, “The
exceedingly
gross matter of her body.”

Joliffe did not care what Master Hewstere muttered. His own thoughts were gone back to the problem of Aylton. The steward must have left the hall by way of the sacristy and through Master Soule’s small garden, but if so, then why had he come around to go through the kitchen garden? It made little sense. From Master Soule’s garden and from there to the road into town, to the inn and his horse that were his most likely goals, the simplest way was along the alley that ran along the master’s garden and that side of the hospital. At one of its ends, the alley opened onto the road itself. At the other, it met the cart lane that ran between the rear-yard and the fields beyond. Maybe Aylton had been wary of taking the road, though he could have probably gone unseen that way in the deep dark if he held off until late enough in the night.

The other way, the one he must have chosen, was by the cart track behind the hospital. By it, he would have come to one of the side ways into town, closer to the inn with less time to be seen on the road. Well enough. But if that was what he intended, why had he left the cart track for the hospital’s rear-yard and gone almost its full length, almost back to the hospital—the one place he had most reason to be away from—to reach the alley into the kitchen garden? Did he know the players were camped in the orchard near the cart track and feared to go past them? But why would he think there was less risk in circling back close to the hospital than going past the players, unlikely to trouble about someone going along the cart track if that someone did not trouble them?

The one sure thing was that he must have meant to go through the orchard. That was the only reason Joliffe could see for him having gone the way he did. But that would have simply brought him back to the road no more than a little closer to town than if he had gone straight there along the alley outside Master Soule’s garden. Had he feared Jack seeing him from the gatehouse? In the middle of the night? In the deep dark? The hospital did not keep a lantern burning by the gate all night. Even if Jack saw a man-shape passing by, Jack would not have known who it was.

His choice must have made sense to Aylton, but it did not to Joliffe. Not sufficient sense. Not sense sufficient for him to stop wondering about it. Because if Aylton dying where he did did not make sense, could there be something else wrong about his death? Something more than plain mischance?

Joliffe’s thoughts were taken away from Aylton by sight of Mistress Thorncoffyn as he followed Master Hewstere into her chamber. She was sitting in her wide chair, wrapped in a violently yellow bedrobe, her hair bound up under a coiled cloth, and the past night’s misery showing in the great slump of her body and her face’s paleness, under-shadowed at the eyes by gray. One of her dogs was cuddled under each of her over-fleshed arms. Two others were crouched against her skirts at her feet. The ill one lay twitching and whimpering in a cushioned basket on the chest at the bedfoot, with Idany hovering beside it and Geoffrey standing a few feet away with a look on his face that could have been either pained sympathy or else an attempt to hide disgust.

“It’s Kydd,” Mistress Thorncoffyn said at Master Hewstere, her voice weak but her fierceness still there. “He’s in pain. Make him well.”

“If I can, my lady.” Master Hewstere made a bow that included both her and Geoffrey and went to the dog. Joliffe, not needing to be told to keep out of the way, stopped just inside the door, watching from there as Master Hewstere briefly handled and slightly prodded at the dog before stepping back and saying with no shading of doubt, “He’s dying. There’s nothing I can do.”

Geoffrey went quickly to his grandmother, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder as she flung back, “I won’t have it. There’s something you can do. Do it.”

“My lady, I can’t stop death.”

“You had better!” She made to rise but had strength only to lurch a little forward in her chair before sinking back, gasping.

Geoffrey, hand still on her shoulder, said, “Grandmother, some things aren’t possible.”

“But he was well as any of them yesterday!” she wailed. “Why is he dying?” Tears rose in her eyes, and the broad bulges of her bosom heaved with coming sobs. “
Why
?”

With a practiced sympathy meant to slide oil-smooth and soothing over someone else’s grief, Master Hewstere said, “Death comes in its own way, in its own time, my lady. It’s all as God wills.”

Idany, not soothing at all, declared from beside the bed, “It’s the candied ginger. That’s what’s done it.”

“But ginger is
good
for the stomach,” Mistress Thorncoffyn protested at the same time Master Hewstere exclaimed, “You fed
ginger
to the dog?”

“Not of purpose,” Geoffrey said in hurried defense. “She dropped a piece. Kydd gobbled it before anyone could stop him. They’re all used to her dropping treats and bits to them. He thought it was for him.”

And had gulped it down too fast to taste it, Joliffe supposed, because he could not imagine any dog chewing through a sharp-tanged piece of even sugar-soaked candied ginger on purpose.

“A dog’s gut is not made to take ginger,” Master Hewstere pronounced. “It’s undoubtedly lodged in his bowels. There’s surely nothing to be done.”

Kydd writhed and moaned as if to make his point the plainer. Mistress Thorncoffyn moaned, too, and cried out, “A purgative would do it! Give him a purgative.”

“Since his bowel is obstructed by the undigested matter, a dose of anything strong enough to shift it would kill him in even worse pain.”

Kydd writhed and yelped. Mistress Thorncoffyn clutched the two other dogs to her more tightly. “At least ease his pain,” she moaned.

“That I can do,” Master Hewstere said. “You,” he ordered at Joliffe. “Move the basket to that table,” pointing to the one midway between the bed and door.

As Joliffe moved to obey, Idany went quickly to clear a place among the table’s clutter of things, then retreated to her lady’s other side from Geoffrey. Joliffe carried and set down the basket as carefully as he could, to jar the dog as little as might be, then withdrew to the door again. Master Hewstere, coming toward the table, reached inside his long physician’s robe as if to find something in an inner pocket or pouch, but brought his hand out empty as he put himself with his back to Mistress Thorncoffyn and the others—Idany offering a handkerchief for the tears rolling over Mistress Thorncoffyn’s cheeks; Geoffrey still making useless soothing sounds. Only Joliffe could see how Master Hewstere put his hands to the whimpering Kydd’s small head, lifted it slightly, and gave a sharp twist.