A Play of Piety (14 page)

“For which I shall feel everlasting shame. Sometime. Maybe. Is this his usual way?”

“When he’s in good humour, yes.”

“And when he’s in bad?”

“You’d best hope you never see it. He and his grandmother are a matched pair. You know he’s Sister Margaret’s son?”

Joliffe nodded. “And how she comes to be here instead of living a comfortable widow’s life, thanks to them.” He crossed the room to collect the tray and cups. “Time I was back. If I need to hide from them sometime, may I lie low here?”

“Surely, and be welcomed,” Jack said but without the laughter Joliffe had meant to have from him. As if Jack thought the need indeed might come.

By the afternoon’s end, Joliffe equally thought it might. Not, as he had expected, because of whatever unpleasantness Geoffrey chose to make, but because by then he had found that Geoffrey in high, fine humour could be as great a bother as Geoffrey arrogant and sharp. The mystery was why being in his grandmother’s company was enough to put him in fine humour. Or perhaps there was no mystery about it at all, given they seemed so much of a matching kind.

Sent from the kitchen to Mistress Thorncoffyn with her tray set with slices of new bread and a bowl of clear honey (“We give what courtesy we can,” Sister Ursula said. “That does not include cakes and fine wine.”), Joliffe was met by the usual pattering surge of small dogs and wholly unusual merry laughter from Mistress Thorncoffyn, at a guess from something Geoffrey had just said, because Idany was widely smiling as she opened the door.

She must have been on her way out, since Mistress Thorncoffyn called to her, “Wait. Let him set down the tray. Then he can go with you and help to fetch.”

She was on her chair, her face lightened with a smile and one of her meaty hands resting with affection on Geoffrey’s head as he sat on a low stool beside her, an arm leaned companionably across her knees. He straightened and took his arm away as Joliffe approached, and at her gesture Joliffe set the tray there instead, then bowed and retreated, following Idany from the room and outside and along the yard to one of the doorways along the buildings there. The door was padlocked, but Idany had the key, and after a short wrestling between the lock and key, she swung the door wide to a small room being used as a storeroom for several large chests. Lined against its walls, they were all painted on their fronts with a pattern of flourished
C
s and
T
s, and on the one flat-topped one was a medium-sized cask, bunged and spigoted.

Joliffe’s immediate thought was that if these were indeed all Mistress Thorncoffyn’s, in more ways than one she did not travel lightly.

He tried to be ashamed of that very poor jest at the woman’s deformity, but he failed. He had never been given to mocking what another person could not help—would never have made jest at Jack’s twisted body—but beyond Mistress Thorncoffyn’s outward misshapenness she too often showed her inward deformity, and that let his mockery against her come too easily, perhaps by way of a shield against the fear that she seemed to prefer people have of her.

Fear?

Joliffe would have looked longer at that unexpected thought, but Idany had used another key to unlock one of the chests and was taking a gracefully long-necked pitcher of fine pewter from it that she thrust at Joliffe, saying, “Here. Fill it there.” She tilted her head toward the cask. He took the pitcher, and as she turned to delve deeper into the chest, went to the cask, positioned the pitcher, and turned the spigot. Pale wine flowed out with a sweet smell that made him guess it was malmsey, and he could not help the thought of what a pity it was that all the sweetness in which Mistress Thorncoffyn indulged did not sweeten her nature.

Turning off the spigot, he caught the last drip on a fingertip that he quickly licked, enjoying the brief, rich taste, then turned back to Idany who had brought a tray and two goblets to match the pitcher out of the chest. Setting the goblets on the tray, she said, “Put the pitcher here. Then you can carry it to my lady. Now.”

Joliffe obeyed, understanding that by “it” she meant the tray, goblets, and pitcher, and that “now” meant while she locked chest and door again. So it was by himself that Joliffe returned to Mistress Thorncoffyn and Geoffrey who was leaning back on the stool, holding a piece of honeyed bread above one of the dogs for it to dance on its hind legs, begging, while the other dogs clustered in hope of their turn, except for one on Mistress Thorncoffyn’s lap, being fed bread in small bits. Wherever Master Aylton had been, he was here now, his hips leaned against the windowsill, his arms crossed as he answered an apparent question from Mistress Thorncoffyn with, “They’re not getting as much as I think they could off the west field there. The reeve claims it needs marling. I think he’s right.”

“But they want us to pay for the marl,” Geoffrey said and popped the bread into his own mouth, not the dog’s.

“Of course they do,” Mistress Thorncoffyn huffed. “Is there a way to claim the cost should be theirs, Constantine?”

“It’s demesne land,” Master Aylton answered. “So yours, not theirs.”

“Fine them for something,” Geoffrey said. “Pay for the marl out of that.”

Turning from setting the tray on the table, Joliffe saw Master Aylton shake his head doubtfully as he said, “We’ve used that ruse too lately there. If we do it again so soon, they’ll likely turn stubborn on us. If they start holding out on one thing and another, it could cost more than the marl would to begin with.”

Geoffrey tossed a piece of bread across the room, sending the dogs into a scramble after it. “Idiot peasants,” he muttered. He looked at Joliffe. “Pour the wine.”

Joliffe turned back to the table to obey. They went on discussing matters at one manor or another while he poured and took the goblets to them one by one. Mistress Thorncoffyn first, Geoffrey next, Master Aylton last. Only Master Aylton gave him a nod of thanks. With better duties to do than wait on them and glad of the escape, Joliffe left as Idany returned after what must have been a long struggle with the lock.

Away from Mistress Thorncoffyn’s rooms there seemed more air to breathe, and Joliffe wondered wryly if greed could be so strong it took the very air from others. But as he went along the covered walk to the kitchen, his mind went back to that momentary question about fear that had come to him in the storeroom. Was he indeed afraid of Mistress Thorncoffyn? Not merely irked by her, but fearful? A straight look at the thought said he was. Not of what she could do to him, because she had no power over him. He was the hospital’s servant, not hers. But there seemed a wish in her to take stranglehold on any lives that came within her power. To throttle and crush them to whatever shape she wanted. It was a nastiness that, given free rein, would taint and misshape everyone around her. And all the while she would be declaring it was to their good to be as she said they should be.

He chilled inwardly at thought of what she would surely have done here in St. Giles if she had had the power, or the sisters not stood out so firmly against her.

To the bad, her grandson looked to be a piece with her—not careless in what he did to others but deliberate in his enjoyment of his power over “lesser” beings, whether a servant opening a gate for him or that dog teased with a piece of honeyed bread. How had Sister Margaret come to have a son like him?

As surprising as that to Joliffe, now that he looked at it, was his own carelessness toward the both of them despite the danger he saw of them. They were the kind of people he had learned to be most wary of in his years as a player. Coming into Lord Lovell’s service had spared Basset’s company some of the trouble their sort could cause, because a lord’s men were not to be dealt with so lightly as lordless players, but the instinct of wariness had remained, engrained by too many years of deep necessity. Given that, where was that healthy wariness now? Had all he had learned and all that had happened in these few past months changed him that deeply?

And if that were so, then what else in him—besides what he guessed at—was changed?

Besides the obvious, he silently added, rubbing at his upper arm where the scar from last winter’s wound, well-healed though it was, still sometimes pulled and panged, reminding him of what he would rather have forgotten—what it felt like to kill a man.

Leaving the covered walk for the passageway toward the kitchen, he found Master Hewstere and Sister Letice there before him, the physician saying to her in his curt way, “Will there be sufficient of it this year? There’s likelihood of widespread illness to come when we’re in the sign of Capricorn, and it’s sovereign in that sign. We would do well to have sufficient of it.”

“It’s doing very well this summer, sir,” Sister Letice murmured with far less than her usual confidence about her herbs, and Joliffe saw her head was a little downward so that she was looking up at the doctor almost shyly, not like someone being challenged or berated but like . . .

Oh.

Sister Letice was the youngest of the sisters. Still young enough to have hopes and longings perhaps. Joliffe had refused to give much weight to the perhaps-over-friendliness he had seen between her and Father Richard. After all, he had an easy friendliness with all the sisters; there was likely nothing particular between him and Sister Letice. But here she was again, and while whatever feeling she might have for Father Richard could supposedly go nowhere, he being a priest, did she have hope of something more from Master Hewstere? Or at least a
longing
to hope for more, without hope, because Joliffe had seen nothing in the physician’s manner that showed any warmth toward her.

Not as there had been from Father Richard.

Master Hewstere swung around, away from her, seemed surprised to find Joliffe there, and went past him toward the covered walk (and probably Mistress Thorncoffyn) with a sweep of his wide gown that barely gave Joliffe time to make the deep bow due to someone so learned and far above him as a physician. By the time he straightened, Sister Letice was turned away and gone into the kitchen. He followed, since he was going there, too, and found Rose doing something at the hearth and Sister Petronilla mixing something in a bowl on the table under which Daveth was sitting cross-legged with Heinrich on his lap, the two of them gently rocking side to side. Or Daveth was gently rocking, carrying blank-faced Heinrich with him.

Sister Letice spoke quietly to Sister Petronilla, too low for Joliffe to hear, and went on across the kitchen and out the rear door. Because this was a time of day that usually found the boys in the garth, playing on the grass in sunlight for a while, Joliffe bent over to see them better, then straightened and questioned Sister Petronilla with a look.

“They don’t like Geoffrey Thorncoffyn,” she answered. “When he’s here, they won’t go where he might see them.”

“I’m in sympathy with that,” Joliffe said. “How long is he likely to stay?”

“A week perhaps, or until he and his grandmother quarrel. Whichever happens first.”

“They quarrel?”

“They enjoy it. They shout and are loud and sometimes throw things. Then he goes away. That part of their quarreling we always welcome.”

“Does he stay here in St. Giles with her?”

“For a blessing, he and Master Aylton put up at the town’s nearest inn.”

Her gaze went past Joliffe and her eyes widened. He spun around, not certain what could surprise her here, then joined her in surprise at sight of Master Soule just come into the kitchen from the passage. In his days here, Joliffe had never seen the master in the kitchen. The man’s curious look around it now suggested it was never anywhere he came, at least not often. He answered with a nod to Joliffe’s bow and Rose’s and Sister Petronilla’s curtsies, and with a small gesture stopped Daveth’s spasmed move to shift Heinrich and uncurl from under the table. “No need,” he said to the boy, and then to Sister Petronilla, “Have you been advised that Master Hewstere and I have been bid to dine with Mistress Thorncoffyn and so that I’ll need no supper from here?”

“No, sir,” Sister Petronilla said.

“I thought not.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He nodded silent acceptance of her thanks, and probably only Joliffe was near enough to hear him mutter as he left the kitchen, “And Saint Giles give me patience.”

For her part, Sister Petronilla, looking down at what she had been mixing, said to the world at large, “Well, we shall have a goodly supper tonight then.”

Chapter 12

N
ot that night but the next, another of the dark dreams twisted through Joliffe’s sleep, this one so bad that he wrenched from it with a dream-shout, to lie rigid and gasping while he gathered wits enough to tell himself he was safely where he should be, lying in clean darkness on the now-familiar narrow bed in the now-familiar narrow room in the now-familiar St. Giles, and although the bed might be as narrow as a grave, it was not one, and the hard drubbing of his heart in the merciful quiet proved that he was not dead. He was awake and safe. He was trying to kill no one.