A Play of Piety (27 page)

“I can’t help it!” She seized the handkerchief that Idany held out to her and mopped at her face and nose. “He sacrificed himself for me! He ate that ginger to warn me!”

Now standing on the far side of the hole, Father Richard said curtly, with the deep disgust on his face and in his voice, “We will pray,” and bowed his head.

Mistress Thorncoffyn, Geoffrey, and Idany did likewise. Joliffe contented himself with wondering which prayers meant for the passing of human souls Father Richard meant to use—and whether the use of them this way was blasphemous.

He did not have to wonder long as Father Richard began, “Lord of Mercy, grant that our souls—and this woman’s above all—be lightened of the burden of greed for earthly pleasures, and hers most particularly of its willingness to cruelty for the sake of showing her power over others and her pride in . . .”

Mistress Thorncoffyn’s head snapped up, her mouth working with an outrage seeking for words until she burst out, “You hedge-bred mamzer! You dare—” She broke off, gasped for air, then raged onward. “. . . you
dare
say that at me in my grief, in my . . .”

With scorn and years of in-held fury, Father Richard said back at her, “Your grief is an offense to God. If no one else will tell you so, I do! You grieve for that dog instead of for all the people you’ve made to suffer from your”—he sought for the word—“your
monstrous
centering on yourself. Even your dog’s death you use to no better end than seeking other people’s pity for you!”

Mistress Thorncoffyn gaped and gasped with breast-heaving fury, unable to find words, but Geoffrey said furiously, “You’re here to pray what she wants prayed, priest. You’ll pray or . . .”

“I’ve prayed all the prayers I’m going to pray here! For her or you or that dead animal there!”

Geoffrey let go his grandmother. Fists clenched, he took a threatening step forward. “You’ll pray what you’re told to pray!”

Idany grabbed to steady her mistress. Joliffe stayed where he was, not minded to get in anyone’s way. The two men were close enough in age and size to maybe make a fairly even fight between them. Certainly Father Richard was not quailing from Geoffrey’s threat, but finding out whether Geoffrey would have gone so far as to strike a priest was forestalled by Master Osburne saying, level-voiced and quietly warning, “Good masters.”

Father Richard must have seen the crowner coming. His fixed gaze on Geoffrey did not waver, but everyone else looked sharply around to where the crowner stood several trees away, his clerk behind him.

Mistress Thorncoffyn, unbalanced by her own sudden movement, began to sway perilously. Idany gave a frightened yelp. Geoffrey quickly put her aside and grabbed his grandmother’s arm himself as Joliffe sprang to her other side with the sudden horrible thought of the struggle it would be to get Mistress Thorncoffyn up from the ground if she fell. Happily, she did not fall, instead took hard hold on Geoffrey’s arm and said fiercely, “He’s a priest. Don’t touch him.” And added with a gimlet stare at Father Richard, “There are other ways.”

“All of which you undoubtedly know and have used on others,” the priest said back at her, then to Master Osburne, “Do you need me for anything?”

“Not presently. If you want to leave, do.”

Father Richard bowed his head in thanks to him, turned, and went away toward the road and the gate there, the shortest way back to his church, while Geoffrey said at Master Osburne, “My grandmother needs to return to her bed.”

“Of course,” the crowner granted courteously.

Indeed, Mistress Thorncoffyn’s moon of a face was gone from pasty to an unhealthy dark red, and as Geoffrey and Joliffe labored to turn her toward the hospital, Geoffrey ordered, “Idany, find Master Hewstere. Let him know she needs him.” Idany bobbed a curtsy and scurried away. Geoffrey, giving a nod back at the grave, asked his grandmother, “What of finishing here?”

“You can come back to it,” Mistress Thorncoffyn snapped and lumbered onward.

Master Osburne stepped well aside from her way but Joliffe saw him watching her with a look that seemed to Joliffe sharp with more than the plain curiosity her deformity could call forth from any onlooker. What was the crowner thinking? That if he ended by having to charge her with manslaughter, she was going to be unwieldy to take into custody?

That brought a new thought. Despite all her strained centering on herself, Mistress Thorncoffyn was no fool. She had to know what trouble Aylton’s death could cause for her. Was she hoping to forestall that trouble by making all this trouble of her own with the poisoned ginger and her violent illness last night?

The supposedly poisoned ginger.

There was an unsettling thought. Some of it was assuredly poisoned, but she had handed that piece to Piers yesterday, and Idany had given Sister Ursula the one that sickened Sister Letice. What if those had been deliberately poisoned toward deceiving . . .

No, because that would mean she had deliberately poisoned Kydd, too, and Joliffe could not see her doing that to one of her dogs.

Or could he? Mistress Thorncoffyn used her wildly swinging humours to keep everyone around her off balance. Would she go so far as to use one of her dogs to the same end? And Kydd may not have been meant to die, only be very ill, like his mistress. After all, Hewstere had been the actual cause of the dog’s death, not any poison.

All those thoughts had possibility. And she could have used some safer means than poison to make herself ill last night. The one great stumble in that was that Joliffe could not see her deliberately making herself as ill as she had been last night. Although that could have been a miscalculation on her part.

But there was a second stumble, too. If all this was somehow to turn aside trouble over beating Aylton yesterday, how did she come to have this poison, whatever it was, with her?

No, the best likelihood was that the ginger had been a true and clever attempt by someone to poison her. As Rose had said, the more poisoned ginger she gobbled to settle her stomach, the more ill she would feel and the more ginger she would probably eat, working herself toward what had to have been the desired end—her death.

Except—why do it here, with Hewstere and the sisters so ready to hand to tend her?

Unless Hewstere was working together with whoever meant to have her dead. After all, who better to help her along the way than her physician, able to see to her dying while seeming to seek her healing?

Except Hewstere was unlikely to want Mistress Thorncoffyn dead. Every sign was that she was increasingly, willingly dependent on him, and a wealthy patron was much the same as a goose who gave golden eggs. Dead was the last thing he would want her to be.

Maybe whoever poisoned the ginger did not want her dead, had only wanted her very ill, and therefore had done it here where she would have best help.

But where was the why to any of that? Of that he had no guess at all, and he lost track on his thoughts as he and Geoffrey labored Mistress Thorncoffyn across the stream and into the yard. She gave little help in the struggle except insofar as she did not fall full down. That was help enough, Joliffe supposed, since he was unsure how they would ever have hauled her upright again.

Master Osburne was following them, offering neither help nor comment until they were heaving Mistress Thorncoffyn up the single step to the foreporch. At that probably carefully chosen moment, he said, “I need to ask you more about your gift to your grandmother, Master Thorncoffyn.”

Geoffrey snarled, short-breathed, “What? Gift? Oh, the ginger. You’ve already asked me.”

“I’d started. Then I had to tell your grandmother why, you remember, and after that she was so”—Master Osburne seemed to seek the right word—“was so fretted I had to leave. From where did you have the ginger, Master Thorncoffyn?”

Intent on keeping his grandmother on her feet and going forward, Geoffrey panted, “That bastard Aylton got it.”

“You don’t know where he had it from?”

“He said something a while since about how she favors candied ginger and that I might want to gift her with some. I told him to see to getting me some. He did.”

They were in the passage now. Master Osburne went obligingly to open the outer of the doors to Mistress Thorncoffyn’s rooms ahead of them and waited until they had maneuvered her through before he said, “So it was Aylton who bought the ginger, not you?”

“I’ve said,” Geoffrey answered through shut teeth.

“I’ve been told you’ve said the ginger was brought yesterday by the common carrier.”

“Yes.”

“The carrier is still in town. I sent to have him asked if that was true. He says he brought nothing for either you or Master Aylton yesterday.”

Joliffe would have admired how skillfully Master Osburne timed that goad, except he was suddenly holding up Mistress Thorncoffyn alone as Geoffrey let her go and turned on the crowner, saying furiously, “He says that? I gave Aylton good coins to pay him! One of them is a liar and a cheat, and I’m willing to guess which one it is! If damned Aylton were here for me to get my hands on him . . .”

“But he isn’t,” Master Osburne said. “Is he?”

That brought Geoffrey to momentary silence, staring at him until Mistress Thorncoffyn, perhaps feeling Joliffe’s legs beginning to buckle under her leaning weight, snapped, “Geoffrey!”

Geoffrey whipped around and took hold on her again. Master Osburne again went ahead of them, now to open the bedchamber door. That brought her dogs scurrying from their beds, all trying to be with her at once while Geoffrey cursed at them as he and Joliffe struggled her into the room. From the doorway behind them, Master Osburne said, “I of course will have questions asked about where the ginger came from and about the poison.”

“Ask away!” Geoffrey flung back at him. “Get away, you miserable hounds! Aylton had it from somewhere. That’s all I know about it.”

“Not the bed,” Mistress Thorncoffyn gasped. “Chair.”

Glad not to face the complicated business of helping her to lie down, Joliffe helped steer her to her chair and, having heaved her around, let her go and stepped well clear as she collapsed backward into it with a groan and a grunt. He noted Geoffrey, too, took care to be well clear. A hand or arm crushed between her and any part of the chair would be no jest.

The dogs immediately clambered and scrambled up her, vying to lick her face in welcome. While she tried to wrap her arms around the wiggling mass of them, Master Osburne asked in the same even way he had been saying everything, “My lady, will you be going to Master Aylton’s funeral Mass?”

“No! His soul”—she paused on a gasp for air around thrusting dog-faces—“can’t rot fast enough—to suit me.” Still struggling with her dogs as much as for breath, she went on, “Geoffrey. I want a letter. To the bishop. Against that priest. Today.”

Joliffe, backing away toward the door, intent on escape, marveled despite himself at how much venom she could summon even while ill and distracted as she was. He had played in enough plays where the Sins and Virtues took part by their own names that he had no trouble naming her two greatest sins as Gluttony and Wrath, and could not help wondering which of them would be the one that finally carried her off.

Chapter 20

A
s Joliffe went along the covered walk toward the kitchen with his hands pressed to the small of his back in apology to his spine, he encountered Master Hewstere going rapidly the other way, trailed by Idany. He stepped aside with a bow of his head, was ignored by them both, and when they were past, went on his own way to the kitchen where he found Rose and all the sisters busy at readying supper. Even Sister Letice was there, albeit only sitting on a stool beside the hearth stirring weakly at something in a pot and looking wan. Although he supposed it was more than time that he do something of his neglected duties, the women had less interest in his help than in why Idany had come in such hurried search of Master Hewstere. That led of course to telling of Kydd’s burial, and for the sake of much-needed laughter among the women, he played, in turn, defiant Father Richard, raging Mistress Thorncoffyn, furious Geoffrey, and lurking crowner (which was unjust to Master Osburne who had been quite openly there). He kept a half-eye on Sister Letice, to be sure he did not offend about her brother, but she seemed almost triumphant on Father Richard’s behalf, sitting up a little straighter and exclaiming, “Oh, very good for him!”

“So that’s why Idany came scurrying in search of Master Hewstere,” Sister Ursula said when he had done.

“All angry at us that he wasn’t here in the kitchen,” said Sister Petronilla. “As if we’d lost him on purpose to spite her.”

“He being so often here in the kitchen,” Sister Margaret said scornfully. She raised her voice. “And here is Idany
again
.”

As if to cue, Idany stalked into the kitchen. Having heard, as she was meant to, she cast a sharp look at Sister Margaret but demanded at Sister Letice, “Master Hewstere wants whatever syrup of poppy you have.”

Matching her for curtness, Sister Letice said back at her, “I’ve none to give.”

“
None
?”

“None.”

With a glare around at everyone, Idany declared, “This is a very ill-run place,” and stalked out.

When she was well gone, Sister Margaret asked, concerned, “Are we truly out of all poppy?”

“No.” Sister Letice looked and sounded all weariness again. “We aren’t. She asked for
my
syrup of poppy.
I
don’t have any. What there is, is the hospital’s.”

Laughter rippled among the women, but Sister Letice looked to Sister Ursula with sudden guilt and said, “That may have been wrong of me. If Mistress Thorncoffyn needs the syrup to help her rest . . .”

“Then she can send somewhere for some,” Sister Ursula said firmly. “It’s costly, and she’d give neither thanks nor recompense for ours. We’ve little enough left as it is until the Michaelmas buying.” Meaning the great after-harvest buying of what would be needed through the coming winter months but could not be grown or made close at hand.