A Play of Piety (3 page)

“They know one of our company had gone off on some private matter of his own, to do with family, we think. Now you’ve found us again. That’s all.”

Joliffe nodded approval of that. Tell enough but not too much and never more than need be—that had been one of the lessons in his just-past “schooling,” but also one that the players had long since learned for themselves. Ever on the move from place to place, landless and for many years lordless, they were usually welcomed for their skills wherever they went, but were always suspect as folk who did not belong anywhere. That had changed for the better when Lord Lovell had made them his company, with the right to wear his colors and carry his letters of protection, but the old habits of wariness—of keeping themselves to themselves—were still with them and likely always would be, because they would go on being strangers, not belonging to anywhere through which they passed. Which raised questions about this place they could not leave until Basset was healed, and Joliffe asked, “How is it here? Any trouble?”

Basset, more than anyone, understood the levels of questioning behind those plain ones and answered, “This is a good place. We’ve been treated well.” He shifted, stretching himself out on the bed again, a small groan betraying the effort’s pain as he settled against the pillows before going on. “There’s some better than others, just like anywhere, but on the whole, it’s a good place.”

A flicker of laughter behind Basset’s words made Joliffe wonder with light wariness what was not being said, but only said himself, jibing a little, “So here you are, Basset, sitting proud and prettily. What of the others?”

Basset settled himself more comfortably on the pillows and folded hands on his stomach in a way that Joliffe could only call self-satisfied. “Happily, it’s harvest time. There’s always need for more hands at harvest time. Ellis and Gil are doing fieldwork . . .”

“Ellis must be hating that,” Joliffe said with a grin.

“Don’t grin, my lad. You’ll likely find yourself there tomorrow,” Basset warned. “And don’t think Piers will let you take over from him. He has Tisbe in charge. We’ve hired her out to pull one of the harvest wains, with him to lead her to make sure too much isn’t asked of her.”

Seeing that he indeed was unlikely to wrest that fairly easy work from Piers, Joliffe resigned himself to the likelihood he would be bent-backed under the hot sun in some field tomorrow. “And Rose?” he asked.

“In the kitchen here. Content enough, from all she says.”

A little silence fell between them, full of much that neither of them wanted to say. To go past it, Joliffe reached out and took up the scroll that he saw now was one of the longer plays he had reworked for the company’s use. “Planning for when we move on?” he asked.

With a startling fierceness, Basset said, “Always.” Then he let go all pretense, his hands clenching into fists on the sheet beneath him as he added with deep and aching earnestness, “I’m truly doing all I can to get well and get us out of here. I truly am.”

In a gesture not usual between them, Joliffe put a hand over Basset’s near one. “I know,” he said. “It’s just a matter of waiting while you better. Then we’ll be on the move again.” He hoped. He very deeply hoped.

Chapter 2

F
rom somewhere along the line of stalls someone croaked loudly, “ ’Ware sister!”

As if guilty of something, Joliffe stood sharply up. Basset laughed at him. From the far end of the line of stalls a woman said, friendliwise and for everyone to hear, “You mind your tongue, Deke, or there’ll be gravel in your pottage next thing you know.”

That brought a scattering of laughter and croaking chuckles along the hall, and the old man beyond the curtain beside Basset’s bed called, “That’ll clear your bowels for you, Deke.”

Whoever was in the bed across from Basset’s moaned and began to mumble, sounding confused, his voice rising.

“There now,” the woman said in warning to everyone, yet kindly enough. Quiet-footed, she came hurriedly, with a soft rush of skirts, between the stalls to the moaning man’s bedside. She set the basket she had been carrying on the small table there and was taking something from it even while she bent over the man, saying something to him in a low, questioning voice. His head thrashed weakly side to side on his pillow, not so much in answer, Joliffe thought, as keeping time with his moaning. Despite the day’s warmth, he was covered to his naked upper chest by sheet and blanket. A white cloth wrapped around the crown of his head hid his hair. The woman laid a hand on his forehead, then along the side of his face, still talking to him, and he quieted a little. She took that for chance to unstopper the small vial she had taken from the basket. Using one hand under his chin to tilt his head a little back and then to draw his mouth open, she put the vial to his lips with her other hand and quickly tipped into him whatever it held, closed his mouth with her hand still under his chin and kept it closed, gentle but firm, to be sure of his swallowing whatever she had given him.

Watching her from across the way, seeing her from the back, Joliffe could nearly have thought her a well-grown girl, small-built as she was in height and all; but the deft, sure way she moved made him think she was a grown woman, and when she had settled the man against his pillows and smoothed the sheet and blanket over him, picked up her basket, and turned from the bed, Joliffe saw he was right. She wore a gray gown, plainly cut, with no excess of cloth, the sleeves straight, and the skirt somewhat short, leaving her plain-shoed feet clear. A white apron covered it from throat to below her knees, but she had neither wimple nor veil covering her neck and hair, only—like a servant—a long headkerchief over a close-fitted coif to hide her hair. But she was no servant, any more than she was a girl. She was a woman somewhere in her vigorous middle years, probably closer to Basset’s age than Joliffe’s, with brown, bright eyes sharp with confident intelligence as she took in Joliffe’s presence, assessed him, and said even as he started a bow to her, “You’re Thomas’ friend. The one he said might come.”

“I am, my lady.”

“Sister,” she said, putting aside the lady. “Sister Margaret.”

“Sister Margaret,” Joliffe repeated obediently, knowing that here “sister” meant not a nun but a nurse.

“And you?” she asked.

“Joliffe Norreys.” Because “Norreys” was the name he had been called by for these past three months and it came first to mind.

“Joliffe Norreys,” Sister Margaret repeated. “You are likely hungry and may want to wash off some of your travel and the day’s heat. I’ll be busy here in the hall this while, but if you go there”—she bent her head toward the hall’s far end—“and turn rightward, you should find your way to the kitchen easily enough. Sister Ursula will see to you then.”

“You’ll likely find Rose there, too,” said Basset.

Joliffe gave him a nod and Sister Margaret another bow and edged out of Basset’s stall. She stood aside while he did, but then went forward, saying, brisk with business, “Now, Thomas, how does it go with you this afternoon?”

Keeping his smile inward, Joliffe went away up the hall, making no haste of his going, giving anyone there as alert as Basset’s neighbor the chance to have sight of him if they wanted it. There were few enough pastimes here, he supposed, and he was used to diverting people in harder ways than this; but he also took the chance for a good look for himself to see in passing what there was to see. All the eight narrow beds had someone in them, all men, although no one else was sitting as up as Basset had been, and two were lying as flatly as the man just attended to by Sister Margaret and so maybe in as bad a case.

Joliffe wondered if there was a separate hall for women or if the place’s founder had only seen fit to provide for men. Anyway, the place was as cleanly kept as he had first thought, with no more smell of sickness than there had to be among so many bedridden men—most of them old men, he thought from his glances at the them as he went. Men come to the worn-out end of their days and fortunate to be here. Which probably added to the reasons Basset must hate being here. For all he had put a good face to it, being daily reminded he might be come, early, to the worn-out end of his own days could hardly be welcome.

The far end of the hall where—in an ordinary hall of a household—there might be a door or even two leading to the lord’s more private chambers, there was indeed a door toward one end of the wall, but in the wall’s middle a wide arch had been made, opening into a small chapel. Because a hospital was meant to be a place of healing for souls as well as of bodies, a priest or priests were as surely part of one as physicians and nursing-sisters were, and a chapel at the end of a hospital’s hall was the usual thing, its altar meant to be seen from every bed, as it would be here when the curtains beside each bed were pushed back, for every patient to see the priest at Mass for reminder that even if their bodies could not be saved, their souls might be.

The chapel was long for its width, windowless and flatceilinged, as if there might be a room above it, more evidence this place had not begun as a hospital but as someone’s manor hall. Despite that, the chapel was lovely; in shadow now, but by the small lamp hung from the blue-painted ceiling beams above the altar Joliffe could see painted on the white-plastered wall behind the altar the Virgin in her blue cloak and Saint Giles with his deer and arrow, while the Seven Corporeal Acts of Mercy covered the side walls.

He did not take closer look at them, only paused to bow to the altar and give a short prayer of thanks that Basset had come to this safe harbor in his need, before he went in search of the kitchen and, hopefully, Rose. A doorway standing open near the last bed on the right side of the hall led him into a short passage with doors standing open at either end. To his right was the roofed walk he had seen from its other end when coming from the yard, so he went left instead of back toward the yard, and beyond another doorway came indeed into the kitchen, a broad, high room with a heavy wooden work table square in its middle, a wide-hearthed fireplace in the farther wall, and a tall louver in the roof. A use-blackened kettle big enough to cook the pottages and gruels that were likely the main food of the patients here was hung from a swinging iron arm over the low fire on the hearth, and Rose was stirring whatever was in it with a large iron spoon, her back to him. He circled the table toward her, was nearly to her as she finished her stirring and turned from the kettle, spoon still in hand. Not having heard him coming, she cried out with surprise and swung the spoon back, ready to hit with it. In a life spent traveling, she had learned not to be helpless. But then she knew him and her exclaim turned to delight as she flung her arms around him, still holding the spoon, crying, “You found us!”

Surprised both at her great gladness and at his own at seeing her again, he hugged her back. Only as they stepped apart, Rose smiling up at him, did he see the other woman, watching them from a doorway on the room’s far end, eyebrows raised. She was maybe much the same age as Sister Margaret was and dressed likewise in a gray gown and white apron, plain coif and headkerchief. Another of the nursing-sisters then, Joliffe thought, with a pang that the gladness between him and Rose might be mistaken and Rose be in trouble for it, but as the woman came forward he saw the mischief twinkling in her dark eyes even before Rose said happily, “Sister Ursula! See who’s here!”

“Your missing lamb, come back to the flock,” Sister Ursula said, eyeing him up and down. “Certainly not the fatted calf. Are you hungry, fellow? There’s bread and cheese and new ale.” Even as she asked, she was fetching a loaf from one of the shelves along the wall where a line of other loaves waited, and she added with a nod of her head toward the bench beside the table, “Sit down. How long have you been on the road? Rose, bring him a cup.”

Joliffe sat. “Four days,” he said. Which was not quite true but would do.

“Nor eating well on the way?” Sister Ursula asked as she took up a knife lying ready to her hand on the table.

“Not so well,” Joliffe granted, although he had never gone hungry.

Sister Ursula deftly cut a thick slice from the bread and flipped it toward him from the knife’s blade, asking, “Name?”

“Joliffe Norreys,” he answered, catching the slice and not glancing at Rose, depending on her to show no more surprise at the name than Basset had.

“Are you willing to work?” Sister Ursula demanded as she returned the bread to its shelf.

Behind Sister Ursula’s back, he slid a look toward Rose, questioning what this was about as he answered, “Yes.”

Also behind Sister Ursula’s back, Rose gave him a shrug and a smile, while saying aloud, “Sister Ursula is huswife here in St. Giles. She sees to everything and everybody being as they should be.”

Now bringing a cloth-covered cheese on a cutting board to the table, Sister Ursula said, “I
try
to see to it, though there are times I think herding cats would be an easier task. Just now there’s Ivo gone off when he shouldn’t have, and I’m in need of someone to take his place.” She paused in cutting a large wedge from the cheese and gave Joliffe an assessing look. “You seem fit enough, but are you willing?”

Joliffe looked rapidly back and forth between her and Rose. “To work, yes,” he said. “At what? What did Ivo do?”

“Everything.” Sister Ursula impaled the cut of cheese with the knife and held it out to Joliffe. He took it from the knife point as she went on, “He was the extra pair of hands that’s always needed around a place. Someone to lift, shift, fetch, and carry. He’s gone off to seek his fortune somewhere, may he have a plague of boils, and there’s no one else to be had, they’re all at the harvest.”

She was returning the cheese to its place on a shelf, and Joliffe took the chance behind her back to question Rose with a look, asking whether this was a good offer or not. She gave him a quick, single nod, and when Sister Ursula turned back to him, he held off from the bread and cheese long enough to ask, “You mean I’d be working here around the hospital, not at the harvest?”