“
Robin and Marian
then?” Basset suggested. “That’s merry enough.”
Piers and Gil came back with their own Tisbe and firewood in time for the mid-day dinner. “Some of this is even dry,” Piers said, setting down the wood with an air of triumph, since dry wood for burning was always troublesome to have in wet weather. The trick was to have enough dry wood to burn to dry the wet enough to burn in its turn.
“You are both noble youths of exceeding skill and shall be rewarded as best beseemth,” Basset declared. From the direction of the great hall someone began to ring a handbell. “By being fed,” Basset finished. He stood up stiffly, with Ellis’ hand under his elbow to help him, but again he seemed to better as they walked toward the hall.
At dinner the talk was that all was finally settled about the marriage, agreement fully made, and that Sir Edmund, his family, and guests were to go hawking along the river this afternoon while Father Morice saw to everything being copied out several times over in a fair hand, to be signed this evening before witnesses.
The serving woman was still giving Joliffe enough heed to show she found him more interesting than all the talk of her master’s success, and at the meal’s end, while the players were leaving the hall, Ellis and Piers ahead in debate over something, and Rose talking with Gil, Basset said quietly to Joliffe, “Now’s the time, maybe, for you to hang about the kitchen yard and hear what you can there.”
Joliffe almost protested that. He had been thinking about what he might do to their
Robin and Marian
to include Gil, trying to guess how much of a part he could be trusted with just yet, so that spending time in idle servant talk instead did not appeal. But Basset was right. They had at least to try to find out what they could, to meet Lord Lovell’s behest. So instead of protest, he nodded agreement and drifted aside, leaving the others to go on without him.
No one seemed to note him as he strolled into the kitchen yard at the near end of the great hall. Separated from the main yard by a waist-high wattle fence, the kitchen’s yard was a world unto itself, with the tall-chimneyed kitchen linked by a covered walkway to the hall’s rear door and at its other side what was surely the bakehouse. Between kitchen and bakehouse was a stone-walled well sheltered under a low-pitched roof on tall posts. Joliffe strolled that way. Knowing better than to put himself into harm’s way in a kitchen where clean-up after a meal was going on, he leaned himself against one of the posts like someone with nothing else to do and nowhere else to be and waited.
He hadn’t waited long before a half-grown girl in a greasy apron came out the kitchen door, carrying a wooden bucket, coming to the well. She smiled shyly at him as she came and he smiled back and went to the well ahead of her, to send the bucket there down into the dark with a splash. He was winding it back up when she set her empty one on the well-rim and said, “You’re one of the players, aren’t you?”
“I am,” Joliffe agreed. He paused in drawing up the bucket to make her a small bow.
She smothered a smile with a dirty hand and made a small curtsy back to him. Joliffe swung the well’s dripping bucket to the well-edge and filled hers, let the well bucket go, and handed hers to her. She never took her eyes from him while he did but thanked him as she took it and then, openly deciding to be very brave, said, “I liked the play last night.”
“I’m glad you got to see it.”
The girl hesitated, decided to be even more bold, and asked, “You aren’t really a devil, though?” The part he had played in last night’s play. “Are you?”
“No more than I’m the blushing maiden you’ll see me pretend to be another of these nights,” Joliffe assured her, looking as benign as he possibly could.
The girl gave a bubbling laugh, said, “I’ll tell Sia you’re here,” and went away, back to the kitchen.
Little doubting who Sia was, Joliffe had almost no wait at all before the maidservant who’d been making bold at him in the hall came out, likewise carrying a bucket. Joliffe again sent the well’s bucket down and was drawing it up when Sia, with none of the girl’s shyness, joined him, standing with her hip hardly a handsbreadth away from his, not touching but temptingly close, just as her lips were temptingly close when she looked slantwise up at him from under her eyelashes and smiled with a sweetness that said she was here for more than water.
Joliffe returned her slantwise look and promise-of-something-more smile and said, “I’m supposed to find out what I can about the household, to help with better choosing what we’ll play for them. Will you talk with me a while?”
“Talk?” Her hip drifted slightly toward him, brushing against his doublet. “I’ll gladly talk.” Letting him know she’d gladly do more than that.
Aware of his own charms though he was, Joliffe thought her lust seemed a general thing rather than particular to him—as if he were a male-body to be used, rather than someone who, in himself, interested her at all. That was fair enough, though, he supposed, since he was here in like hope of using her. Albeit in a different sense from her clear intent for him. It relieved him of any scruple he might have had; he could hardly lead her on when she was already so far ahead of him, and smiling, he nodded for her to set her bucket on the well-rim, pulled the full bucket to him, and emptied it into hers, asking while he did, “Is everyone as pleased about this coming marriage as they seem to be? Can we count on happy folk when we perform?”
“Aye, they’re all pleased enough. Master Henney says Sir Edmund and Master Breche have come to an agreement that suits them both, so they’re happy. That Amyas likes the look of Mariena and doesn’t know better, so he’s happy . . .”
“Doesn’t know better?” Joliffe asked, smiling into her eyes.
“You know.” Sia shrugged one shoulder forward, in a way that shifted one of her breasts toward him. “She’s lovely. He’ll have her and a goodly dowry, too. What else does he have to think about it? He’ll find out,” Sia added darkly.
“Less lovely within than without?” Joliffe suggested.
“She likes her own way, let’s say.”
And who doesn’t? Joliffe thought. The trouble was that most couldn’t get their own way as often as they liked. “He’s not known her long, then?” he asked.
“Just these two weeks while Sir Edmund and Master Breche have been dealing here.”
“How did it come about, this dealing? Sir Edmund and Master Breche knew each other but Amyas hadn’t met Mariena?”
He had set the emptied bucket down beside hers, his hand still resting on its rim. Sia moved her hand from her bucket’s rim to his, just touching his fingertips with her own while she said, “They’ve only just met, too, Sir Edmund and Master Breche. It was Mistress Wyot’s father told Master Breche there was this chance of marrying up. Out of the town into the gentry, see.”
“Ah,” Joliffe said, sounding as if now he understood it all. He let his fingers stray forward onto hers and stroked gently along them to the back of her hand. “But if Sir Edmund is willing to marry his daughter that way, what about Harry Wyot? Wasn’t he Sir Edmund’s ward? Why wasn’t he married to Mariena? Wasn’t he rich enough?”
Sia gave a small, warm laugh. “He’s rich enough. But he wouldn’t.” She turned her hand over, took gentle hold on Joliffe’s, and drew it toward her. “He refused to marry her, flat out.”
“Sir Edmund didn’t hold his marriage-right then?” The right that let whoever held it choose whom an under-aged heir would marry—taking the profit from that marriage either by way of marrying a child of his own to the ward or selling the ward in marriage to someone else.
“He held it, right enough.” Sia was enjoying herself, tattling to someone for whom it was all new. “But Harry Wyot wouldn’t marry her. There was yelling about it, let me tell you. Sir Edmund swore he would and Harry swore he wouldn’t and it ended up he didn’t.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Knew her too well, very like. Was brought up here in the household from when he was half-grown. Lady Benedicta didn’t favor the marriage either, and that helped him. She maybe even warned him off it, we’ve thought.” Sia shifted so no one looking from kitchen or bakehouse could see as she laid Joliffe’s hand to her hip, her own hand over his to hold him there while she smiled into his eyes. “So Sir Edmund sold him to Master Coket of Cirencester for Master Coket’s daughter, this Idonea. Master Coket is a draper there and . . .” Sia leaned nearer Joliffe to say low in his ear, one breast touching him, “It’s said Sir Edmund owed him money and paid him off with Harry Wyot. Settled his debts and paid back Harry for refusing a knight’s daughter by sticking him with a merchant’s girl instead. Harry goes down and Idonea Coket comes up. They’re even still living with her family because he’s not of age yet.”
Despite Sia straightened away from him as she finished, Joliffe found he was having trouble keeping his mind to his questions but asked, “Harry Wyot didn’t object?”
Sia frowned, not at Joliffe’s hand now feeling at her hip but with thought. “He didn’t. It was more like he was glad of it. Of marrying her. And maybe of being away from here.”
“He’s back now, though.”
“That’s because he’s turned friends with this Amyas Breche in Cirencester. He’s here to keep him company.”
“I heard there was try at another marriage not so long ago.”
“Oh, now that was sad, it was.” Sia looked truly distressed. “That John Harcourt was as comely a young man as you could want. And mannerly.” For a moment, a dream of how things could be softened Sia’s voice with something besides lust, while Joliffe realized this was the first time he had heard the man’s name. Sia was gazing past him into the distance of some place she would never go and said softly, “It was something to see them together. Him all gallant and Mariena all loveliness.”
Another maidservant came out from the kitchen and started across the kitchen-yard toward them and Sia snapped back from her dreaming. “And then he died,” she said abruptly.
“Sia!” the other maid called in a hushed, urgent voice. “You’re missed. You’d best come back.”
Sia gave a put-upon sigh, leaned briefly into Joliffe’s hand on her hip, smiled into his face, and asked, “Later?”
“Later,” he promised. She started away. He held onto her skirt, stopping her. “The water?” he said.
With an impatient click of her tongue, she turned to take the bucket with her. The other maid reached them, saying, “Sia . . .”
“I know,” Sia said back and hurried away, sloshing water as she went.
The other maid lingered. Like Sia, she had a pretty enough face but was more full of body—someone easy to take hold on in bed, as the saying went. Before Joliffe could decide what her look of speculation at him meant, she asked, “That other player, the dark one, is he married to that woman with you?”
“Ellis? No, he’s not married.”
The maid gleamed a wide smile. “Tell him I’m not either but . . .”
“Avice!” Sia hissed loudly over her shoulder.
“Coming!” Avice shouted, then dropped her voice again to finish her message. “. . . but I like a warm bed, tell him.”
“A warm bed and a merry one?” Joliffe asked.
Avice’s smile widened. “A very merry one. You tell him.”
“I will. Mind if I remember it myself?”
Avice laughed and said merrily as she went away, “I wouldn’t mind, like, but Sia would.”
Chapter 7
As Joliffe left the kitchen yard, saddled horses were Joliffe left the kitchen yard, saddled horses were being led past the tower toward the long building beyond it, where Sir Edmund was coming down the stairs from the open upper gallery, graciously leading his wife by one hand, her other hand gathering her skirts away from her feet, with Master Breche behind them, then Amyas leading Mariena, followed by the Wyots, with Will coming last.
Off to their hawking, Joliffe supposed, and lingered in the kitchen-yard gateway to watch them. Knowing more about them than he had made that watching the more interesting. Sir Edmund lifted his wife up to her side-saddle and they spoke briefly, unsmiling but courteous enough. If Sia had it right and Lady Benedicta
had
opposed him over marrying their daughter to Harry Wyot, it meant Lady Benedicta had a mind of her own and used it, not necessarily to her husband’s good. That was something to hold in mind. That, and the fact they kept at least outward courtesy to each other.
Then there were Mariena and Amyas. Given they were all but betrothed, Joliffe had half-thought she would ride pillion behind him, an allowable familiarity; but Amyas was lifting her to her own saddle, while a stablehand waited with another horse for him. Whose choice was it that they ride apart, Joliffe wondered. Not Amyas’, certainly. His hands lingered on Mariena’s slender waist under her cloak once she was in the saddle. Her head was bare, her dark hair loosely braided, with soft tendrils already straying loose around her face. Even across the yard, her loveliness was a pleasure to gaze upon. Joliffe did not wonder that Amyas’ hands lingered as she leaned forward, her face briefly above and temptingly near his.
Then she straightened and he stepped back and turned hastily to his own horse, to mount and bring it close beside hers. Whoever’s choice it was that they ride apart, Joliffe doubted it was theirs. He guessed, too, not having heard otherwise, that she had accepted quietly her father’s several choices of husband for her: so despite her insistence on another wedding dress, Mariena must be biddable in most matters. About that new bridal gown, there was no way to know whether Amyas or Will was right—whether she was tender-hearted maiden or greedy girl—since neither a love-blinded youth nor a jealous little brother were likely to be a good judge. Watching her gather up her reins and turn her horse to follow her parents toward the gateway, Joliffe was willing to accept she was merely a soon-to-be-married young woman with presently very little choice about her life and therefore insisting on one of the few things she might most reasonably insist on—a new gown for her wedding. That Sia disliked her meant little. Given the difference between their lives, how could Sia not dislike her?