A Play of Piety (29 page)

“If you like,” she said with neither the rancor nor unease there might have been.

Distracted by that from his intended question, he asked instead, “You truly don’t care he helped his grandmother to cheat you out of what should be yours?”

Sister Margaret smiled. “When they cheated me out of what they thought I should want, they gave me chance at my true desire. I’m far happier here than I ever was as wife or mother or, God and all the saints know, daughter-in-law. What about my faithless, foolish son would you like to know?”

“Do you think he could pretend his deep concern for his grandmother while—” Joliffe broke off, not certain he could ask even a mother so openly uncaring: Is your son murderous?

Sister Margaret saved him the trouble. “While trying to kill her? No. He thinks himself subtle, but he’s not. It was one of the sorry things about watching him help his grandmother cheat me. She’s cunning enough in her low way, but with him I would have had to be a fool absolute not to see what he was at. No, strange though that may be, Geoffrey does truly care about his grandmother. I can see him doing something in a fit of temper, but in some secret, subtle way, with poison, never.” She took up some of the cleaned bowls. “Are these ready to be set back on the shelf?” In the warm kitchen where they would dry better than the damp scullery.

Joliffe nodded and she went away with them, a woman calm in her certainty of being where she should be.

All that should have remained to the day was the brief benediction of Compline’s prayers and the round of quieting drinks for the night, but while Joliffe was setting out the cups on their tray on the kitchen’s worktable, Master Osburne came in from the hallward passageway. Sister Petronilla was gone to see Daveth and Heinrich into bed, so it was Sister Ursula, Sister Margaret, and Sister Letice who paused to look questioningly at the crowner while Joliffe went on setting out the cups as Master Osburne said with what seemed his constant quiet courtesy, “By your leave, I thought I’d watch how matters went as the men are settled for the night, to have some thought of how it was with Master Aylton last night.”

Aylton’s last night, he did not add, but the words hung there, and Sister Ursula answered, “Of course,” as courteously as if she had choice in the matter. “Sister Letice, to begin with, tell him, pray, about the men’s drink.”

Sister Letice betrayed her unhappiness at that by her voice gone even quieter than usual and her eyes kept steadily down while she told Master Osburne what herbs she made into the syrup that was stirred into the men’s evening ale. To the crowner, she probably only seemed shy, but when she had finished, Sister Margaret forestalled what questions Master Osburne might have asked by suggesting he take a fingertip’s taste of the syrup. He did and said, surprised, “It’s sweet.”

“They drink it the more happily that way,” Sister Margaret said. “If we could afford mead, that would go smoothest of all, but we do with sweetening the ale.”

“They have this every night?”

“Every night,” Sister Ursula agreed. “A supper usually of bread and warmed milk, sometimes with cinnamon in coldest weather to warm the stomach. Then Compline. Then this drink. Which we should be taking to them now.”

That was gently said, but with under it a firmness that told the time was come for the women to get on with their evening duties; Master Soule’s voice at Compline’s prayers had stopped a little time ago. Master Osburne gave a slight bow acknowledging her authority and took himself aside while they finished readying the tray. That done, Sister Ursula said, “Sister Letice goes now, most evenings, to see that all is well in the herb garden while we go to the men. That’s what she did last evening. Tonight, though, I think she should go straight to her bed.”

Master Osburne gave Sister Letice a smile maybe meant to reassure her. “By all means, yes. She’s earned rest.”

Sister Letice, with her gaze still lowered, not seeing the smile, bobbed a curtsy toward him, and went away. Joliffe picked up the tray with the men’s drinks and followed Sister Ursula and Sister Margaret out of the kitchen. Master Osburne trailed them and in the hall was satisfied simply to stand by the door while the sisters went along the beds, Sister Margaret handing drinks to the men on the left, Sister Ursula to the men on the right, Joliffe keeping to the middle way with the tray. He had expected talk as usual between the men and sisters, and certainly curiosity toward the crowner, but either wariness at the presence of a king’s officer or something in the sisters’ faces kept them all quiet. Sideways looks went Master Osburne’s way but that was all, except that Basset, with his cup in his hand, raised his eyebrows to Joliffe as Sister Margaret turned away. Joliffe could do nothing in answer but lift his own eyebrows in return.

Across from him, John Oxyn, who had been so lost in fever when Joliffe first came, was lately able to sit up a little to drink, but with hands so unsteady with weakness that Sister Ursula paused to hold the cup and help him while Joliffe with the empty tray went up the hall to where Master Osburne waited, leaving Sister Margaret going from bed to bed to speak quietly to each of the men in turn, seeing that they were as comfortable as might be and in need of nothing for the night, then drawing the curtain between each bed as she moved on.

Master Osburne, watching her, asked Joliffe, “You will go where now? Or, rather, where did you go yester night?”

“I’ll shortly go to bed, just as I did then. We have long days here and sometimes disturbed nights. It’s best to sleep while I can.”

“Disturbed nights despite these sleeping draughts for the men?”

“The draughts are usually less strong than they were tonight and last night. Most of our days are not as unsettling as these have been.”

Sister Ursula joined them. Master Osburne turned his questioning to her. “Where do you go now?”

“To the dorter, to my bed. We all do at this hour, except for whoever is taking turn at sleeping down here.”

“As Sister Margaret did last night.”

“And as Sister Petronilla will tonight.”

“What about the cups? Do you leave them with the men?”

“We let the men finish drinking at their own pace, yes. Joliffe or one of us gathers them in the morning.”

Joliffe wondered if the crowner’s thought was the same as his own: that while drawing the curtains along each bed, a sister could make chance to say something privately to any of the men. It was not something he had ever had reason to think of before now.

“You give out the cups the same way each night, you to the right, Sister Margaret to the left?” Master Osburne asked.

“No. We try to change over, evening to evening, lest the men think there are favorites among them.”

“But always the two of you, not ever Sister Petronilla or Sister Letice?”

“Always the two of us. Sister Margaret as
medica
must be sure all is as well as may be with each of the men. My duty is to see that all else is as it should be at a day’s end. Neither task can be given off to someone else.”

“Last night it was you who gave Master Aylton his drink, but Sister Margaret would have spoken to him afterward.”

As if she saw nothing in the question, Sister Ursula said simply, “Yes.”

Because what
was
there to see in the question, Joliffe thought. Whoever gave him the drink, Aylton had not drunk it.

Because he was warned not to?

The thought jarred as Joliffe remembered how Sister Ursula had bent over Aylton’s curled, pain-taut body and spoken to him, telling him this was a drink to ease his pain and help him sleep. Could she then, in what had seemed a pause while she waited for him to answer, have added a very softly-said “Don’t drink it,” a warning gone easily unheard by anyone more than a few feet away, as Joliffe and the beds to either side had been.

But why would Sister Ursula have any interest in Aylton escaping his earned punishment? Or—Joliffe could not stop the thought—any interest in having him dead, supposing warning him from the drink was intended to lead to that? There seemed no likelihood to any of that, or, come to it, likelihood
any
of the sisters had interest in Aylton beyond caring for his hurts.

Joliffe, watching Sister Margaret as she drew the curtain beside Ned Knolles’ bed, wondered why Aylton had troubled to pour his drink into the bed-pot. No one checked to see if each man had drunk his. But Aylton had no way to know that, did he? So he had done what he could to seem to have drunk it. Because he feared someone—and not simply a sister doing her duty—would check to be sure he slept? Or because he
knew
someone would and wanted to deceive them? Had he been worried Geoffrey might seek him out in the night, not knowing Geoffrey’s night had been taken over by his grandmother’s illness? Had Aylton even known Mistress Thorncoffyn was ill? Or, if the poisoned ginger was his doing, had he been counting on her being ill and hoped it would give him his chance to flee? Let alone giving him added reason to flee, come to that.

Sister Margaret joined them. Master Osburne asked her and Sister Ursula together, “This is all then? You’re done for the night?”

“Unless someone needs us, yes,” Sister Margaret answered.

“My thanks for your patience. I’ve seen what I needed to see. I doubt I’ll have more questions this way.”

“We’ll be here if you do,” Sister Ursula replied calmly.

He bowed his head to them both, of course not including Joliffe, he being only a servant here. Sister Ursula and Sister Margaret bowed their heads in return, while Joliffe bowed more deeply, playing the servant and nonetheless aware of a final considering look from the crowner that said he was still part of the man’s calculations.

More than that, as the sisters went out the near door, Master Osburne did not. Instead, he went down the hall, and Joliffe, lingering, saw him pause at Basset’s bed and seem to say something, then wait as if hearing an answer before finally leaving by way of the door there.

Joliffe went to his own bed, not to settle but to wait until all was quiet, with Sister Petronilla gone to the pallet in the pantry, the other sisters to their dorter. In the silence and shadows then, he rose and went quiet-footed to the hall and in by the door near Basset’s bed. Since his duties included greasing door hinges, to make as little noise as might be when he or the sisters came and went in the night, he had little worry about being heard. Once in, he slid silently past the edge of the curtain at the head of Basset’s bed. The last lingering twilight through the hall’s high windows showed Basset lying full length on his back, hands folded on his chest, head a little raised on the pillow, eyes open and shifting sideways to acknowledge Joliffe was there without need to turn his head. Beyond him, along the hall, there were still restless murmurings and rustlings as some of the men moved about on their beds and talked through the curtains, but the bed beside Basset’s was still empty and across the way Oxyn’s deep and even breathing told he was already soundly sleeping. This being as alone as he and Basset were likely to get, Joliffe knelt beside the bed and said softly, “What did the crowner want with you?”

Basset made a small sound that might have been smothered mirth. “Good evening to you, too,” he mocked back softly. “He asked how Sister Ursula drew the curtains last night. He asked if it was in such a way as gave her chance to say something secretly to Aylton.”

“He asked that outright?”

“Outright.”

“Did she?”

“I didn’t take note of how she was drawing the curtains.”

“Is that what you said to him or what you truly noted?”

“Both, you distrustful louter.”

“What are the men saying about it all?”

“If they had aught to wager with, they’d be laying it that someone else is going to die soon. Mistress Thorncoffyn most likely. Tonight for choice.”

“God’s mercy,” Joliffe breathed. If he had been elsewhere, it would have been a loud oath at finding the men’s thoughts too near his own. Death came easily and fairly often in this place—the sisters among themselves privately doubted that Deke Credy would last much beyond the start of winter—but that was death in the common way of things, not violent death, not intended death. Those were another kind of death altogether, and once someone began intending deaths, where did it stop? Someone had set to poisoning Mistress Thorncoffyn—Aylton probably but there was no proof of it yet—but before poisoning was even suspected, Aylton himself had died, very possibly by murder. But why? By whom? And without knowing the reason for one murder, what were the chances of forestalling another?
If
Aylton’s death had been murder.
If
another was intended.
If
it was not Aylton but someone else who had poisoned the candied ginger.

Meaning Geoffrey. Because no matter what Sister Margaret claimed she believed about her son, Joliffe could imagine more reasons for Geoffrey to want both his grandmother and Aylton dead than could be conjured up for anyone else.

All this was one of the troubles with secret murder, done by cunning instead of in an open moment of rage with everyone to see it. Not knowing who had murdered, or why, made space to doubt almost everyone—what they said, what they did. As witness Master Osburne’s continued suspicion of me, Joliffe thought.

Aloud, still softly and not hiding he was frustrated, he said, “I’ve been watching, listening, asking questions all day, to no use yet. None of what I know goes together. All my thinking is getting me nowhere.”

“Happens a lot with folk,” Basset said. “Those that trouble with thinking at all.”

Joliffe shrugged acknowledgement of that truth but persisted, “The trouble is there’s no sense to Aylton being dead. Geoffrey Thorncoffyn is the only one with possible reason to want it, but only if he and Aylton were cheating his grandmother together, and even if they were, he was with her all last night while she was sick, with no chance at Aylton. It would help to find a link between Aylton’s death and the ginger. Geoffrey claims he thought of it as a gift to his grandmother because of something Aylton said, and that Aylton got it for him to give to her, with claim the carrier had brought it.”