A Play of Dux Moraud

by Margaret Frazer

  But neither did he think he could afford to offend her, since her smallest accusation against him would suffice to ruin him and probably take the rest of the players down with him. A great accusation would likely have him dead, and he did not want to find out which she would make if he refused whatever she was about to ask of him, but refuse her he surely had to do, despite her eyes were large and dark in the lamplight, her lovely mouth curved in a small smile, as she leaned closer to him and said softly, “Won’t you please me some more? Here? Now?” She raised her hand, made to touch his cheek.

  Joliffe had decided he was going to have a violent coughing fit right now, but by some small movement or look he maybe betrayed his unwillingness toward her more openly than he meant to, because Mariena’s face changed on the instant from lust to anger and her hand flew aside from his face and came back in a hard slap that jerked his head to the side.

  Then she flung away from him, exclaiming like a small child denied an expected treat, “Oh, I’m not in the humour for it. I don’t want you. Go away.” She threw herself onto her bed, her back against her pillows, her dark hair fanned out across them, her arms crossed tightly like a barrier between him and her. But with equal sharpness she ordered, “No. Stay. Play me something. That’s what you’re here for.” And at her waiting-maid, “Wine, you slow-footed whore,” despite the woman was already crossing the room to her with a silver-gilt goblet.

  Joliffe, his face stinging from the slap, took the first song that came into his mind, a half-bawdy tavern song. Mariena had seized the goblet and begun to drink before she caught the words of what he was singing. He saw her eyes go startled over the rim of the goblet. Then she choked and had to sit up, laughing and choking together, snatching the napkin Lesya brought, wiping at her chin while ordering Joliffe, “Go on. That’s what I want. Something that isn’t this place.”

  He sang and she drank. He followed the first song with another like it, and while Lesya filled her goblet again, Mariena waved him on to a third. He obeyed with a song that at the start seemed like the others but shifted into a quieter way before it finished, and from that one he went into a yet quieter one. His hope was that the music and wine would work together to lull her into sleep while he sang, and indeed as he softened his voice into “When the nightingale sings, the woods grow green,” Mariena settled a little deeper against her pillows, her eyes closed, the goblet resting on her stomach, held in both her hands.

  Lesya hovered not far off, probably to rescue the goblet should Mariena’s hold on it slacken, but Mariena’s hold held firm; and when Joliffe finished, “Sweet love, I pray you to love me an hour. I sing sadly of the one for whom I long,” on a soft and fading note, hoping she had faded to sleep with it, she patted the bed beside her without opening her eyes and said, “Come sit here.”

  He looked at Lesya, asking for help. She shrugged, then beckoned her head toward the bed. That was not the help he wanted, but keeping hold on his lute and his lute firmly between him and Mariena, he went to the bed and sat not quite so near as she had bade him. She opened her eyes and stared at him with an owlish effort that made him think she must have had more to drink than he had thought.

  “You play very well, player,” she said.

  He knew he played well enough, not very well; but if Mariana knew no better, well and good, and he made her a small bow and said, “Thank you, my lady.”

  Keeping her eyes on him, she held her goblet out to the side. Lesya stepped forward and took it, then stepped back. As if the goblet had removed itself and no one else was there at all, Mariena slid her hand onto Joliffe’s leg and asked softly, “Do you play women as well as the lute?”

  Evenly, he said, “I have been known to, yes, my lady.”

  Her hand slid over the curve of his thigh. He was just the little way too far away for her to reach where she plainly wanted to go but rather than order him nearer, she whispered, “Will you play me, player?”

  There were only two ways to go from that question, and since he most assuredly did not mean to go the one, he went the other, meeting her boldness with his own. “No, my lady, I will not.”

  Her hand, which had begun to stroke up and down his thigh, stopped. She went on staring at him, but rather than the harshness he had feared would come with his refusal, after a moment a small smile eased the tightness of lust from her mouth and she took back her hand, laid it with the other on her belly, and said, “Fairly answered,” closed her eyes again, was silent a moment, then said quietly, “Tell me, player, do you ever grow tired of being alive?”

  The question and its quiet threat took him by surprise, keeping him from any answer.

  Still quietly and without opening her eyes, Mariena said softly, “Don’t you grow tired of it? Tired of all life’s mess and disappointments?”

  He realized she was not making a threat. Instead, blur-brained with wine and sleepiness, she was maybe giving away her own most inward thoughts. Thoughts someone so young should not have. And he said, matching her quiet, “I’ve wearied many times over of life’s disappointments, yes. But of life itself? No, of that I’ve never wearied.”

  Mariena made a small sound that might have been a disbelieving laugh if there had been more strength to it. “The more fool you,” she murmured. She half-opened her eyes, smiled at him so slightly he hardly saw it, and said, “I wish you loved me, player,” before her eyes closed again and she rolled over and curled in on herself, gone suddenly, completely, into sleep, it seemed. But he did not move, nor did her waiting-maid until Mariena’s breathing had evened into what could only be sound sleep; and even then he only turned his head, careful not to shift the bed at all just yet, as he looked at Lesya and asked softly, “Well? What did you give her?”

  The woman shrugged. “A sleeping draught. Sir Edmund orders it.” She turned away to the table and started to pour some wine into a cup there.

  “Should you be drinking that?” Joliffe asked.

  “The potion is in her goblet before ever I pour the wine. It’s only to make her sleep, anyway. It does no harm.”

  “And it forestalls her craving after men,” Joliffe ventured, to see what the woman would say.

  Lesya had lifted the filled cup to her mouth but stopped, set the cup down, and turned on him in one swift movement, hissing, “Don’t ever say that. About her craving men. Don’t ever say it.”

  Joliffe held up his hands as if to show he surrendered and was unarmed.

  Lesya still stared at him, suspicion unassuaged, and snapped, “What makes you say it, anyway?”

  Joliffe stood up from the bed and strolled toward the table with an easy smile. “I’ve none so great opinion of myself that I expect women to fall into a passion for me as easily as she seems to have. That wasn’t love for me in her eyes just now. That was lust, and likely any man would have served.” And did Sir Edmund know how willing she was to lay hands—and maybe more—on other men and was that why he had her sent senseless to sleep at night to contain her wantonness? And be sure no one had her but himself?

  Eyeing him over the cup’s edge, Lesya drank deeply, lowered the cup, and said with another shrug, “Well enough then, yes. She has a lust for men maybe beyond the ordinary.” She shook a finger at Joliffe. “But if one word about her gets out, I’ll see to it it’s your guts that Sir Edmund gets.”

  Given that almost any man who came into Mariena’s reach probably knew about her, Joliffe thought that was hardly fair but did not say so, only caught Lesya’s hand and kissed it before she could pull away. “Her secret is safe with me.” Until he had chance to talk to Lord Lovell, he silently added. “And so is yours.”

  “Mine?” Lesya had been enjoying his kiss but now snatched her hand away. “What do you mean—mine?”

  “She doesn’t know you give her this sleeping draught to drink every night, does she?”

  “Of course she doesn’t! She’d tear my hair out if she knew I did it! And who says I do it every night?”

  Joliffe grinned as if they wer
e sharing a particularly good jest and said lightly, “I’d have you do every night if she were my daughter.” Since it seemed unlikely Lesya was going to offer him any of the wine, he sat down on the long-legged stool beside the table and started to stroke a quiet song from the lute, asking as if interested more in what his fingers were doing on the lute strings than in his question, “Does Lady Benedicta know what Sir Edmund has ordered?”

  “Lady Benedicta?” Lesya had finished her cup of wine, was starting to fill it again. What she had already downed was maybe serving to loosen her tongue. Or maybe she was just past caring what she said. “Lady Benedicta gives me the potion to give her.” She sat down on the chair and took another long drink. “There’s no harm in it. Lady Benedicta uses it herself.”

  Joliffe wondered if the woman was simple enough never to wonder what Lady Benedicta could do with that draught if she chose to change it. Did Lady Benedicta know what her daughter was—although she surely didn’t know what was between her and her father—or did she simply do her husband’s bidding without asking why?

  All outward innocence, he asked, “Lady Benedicta sleeps badly?”

  “Lady Benedicta? The nights she doesn’t have her draught she spends more hours walking the floor than in her bed, so Felicie, that’s her woman, says. It’s been worse lately, too. That John Harcourt was the image of his father, Felicie says.”

  “What’s his father to do with it?”

  Lesya gave a wary glance toward the bed, but the wine well and truly had hold on her tongue now and she leaned toward him to say in a lower voice, “He was her lover. Lady Benedicta’s. Years ago. John Harcourt’s father. It didn’t last long and the man’s dead, but it must have stirred her, to see his son that looked so much like him when he was something to her. And this John going to marry her daughter and then dying all sudden that way.” Lesya sat back and wetted her second-hand sorrow with a long drink.

  “Small wonder she doesn’t sleep well,” Joliffe said. “But John Harcourt’s death wasn’t an unlikely death, was it? I heard he was sickly youth and took a chill.” Lying through his teeth as he said it.

  Lesya hiccuped on unswallowed wine, swallowed quickly, and said, “Sickly? Not him. Fit as a stud stallion.” She gave a nod at Mariena. “Couldn’t keep her hands off him, she couldn’t, and you could see he wanted her, oh, yes.”

  Putting on a scandalized voice, Joliffe started, “But they never . . .” He made a suggestive gesture.

  Lesya scorned that thought. “Never. Sir Edmund knows my lady Mariena too well to give her chance for that.” The wine’s momentary ease went out of her. Her face fell into downward lines and she reached for the wine pitcher again, muttering, “Knows her far too well, he does.”

  Pretending he did not hear that, Joliffe asked lightly, “So how did he die then, this stallion-ready John Harcourt?”

  Lesya had enough wits left to turn willingly from Sir Edmund to that. “Nasty, it was. He started with a pain, then a flux that nothing stopped. Lady Benedicta did all she could but nothing helped. She’s good with herbs. If she couldn’t find a way to save him, there wasn’t any.”

  And if there was a way to kill him, she’d know it, too, Joliffe thought, but said, to keep the maid talking, “Did Mariena help nurse him?”

  “Her? Not so’s you’d note it,” Lesya scoffed. “She’s never bothered to learn aught like that.” Another deep drink of wine. “Never one for learning anything. Except of one sort. And that comes natural, like, no learning needed.”

  That raised another question to which Joliffe could guess the answer. In the usual way of things, servants weren’t given unstinted wine, supposing they got any wine at all, costly and troublesome as it was to get. Yet Lesya had no pause at downing this pitcher of it all by herself. Probably it was part of her payment for keeping secret what was between Sir Edmund and Mariena. Had Sir Edmund thought ahead to when the balance would shift from wine enough to keep her quiet to too much wine and a tongue she no longer controlled? Joliffe would wager he had—and about what would have to be done with her when that time came.

  That time might not be so far off, either. Lesya was sighing over her cup now, shaking her head as if under a weight of sorrow. “They would have been lovely together, my lady and John Harcourt. I’d have gone away with her when she left with him, too, and that would have been good. Good to be away from here. You don’t know. My brother is Sir Edmund’s man and he says we’re onto a good thing here, but I’m not . . . not . . . not”—shaking her head back and forth on each “not”—“. . . liking it anymore.”

  She was drinking herself drunk past being useful to him, Joliffe judged. She was not likely to tell him any more of much use before she was soused out of her wits into weeping uselessness, and readying to make his escape as gracefully as possible, Joliffe ran his fingers in a quick, closing way across the lute strings, gave a huge sigh of seeming-regret, and stood up, slinging the lute around to his back. “Well, I’d best be going. Tomorrow will be here soon enough.”

  Lesya caught hold of his doublet’s edge and smiled up at him. “My bed’s not as soft as hers,” she said, “but I can make it as warm for you.”

  Saint Mary Magdalene, save me, Joliffe thought, rather desperately smiling at her as he stepped back far enough that she had to let go his doublet or be pulled forward off the chair, saying while he did, “Alas, sweet maid, I am expected in my own bed. Otherwise . . .”

  Still retreating, he kissed his hand toward her and left “otherwise” hanging between them as he got altogether away, out the door and safe into the mist-cold night.

  Chapter 19

  With the mist and the hour’s lateness and carry-ing too much knowledge unsafe to have, Joliffe crossed the yard’s thick darkness between the few lanterns’ light with a constant watching all around him and a crawling unease up his back. Going into the thick, narrow blackness between carpenter’s shed and stable to reach the cart-yard was an effort of will because anything—anyone—could be waiting unseen in the dark there, dagger in hand. All of which was fool-worry because no one here knew that he knew anything beyond what he should, and so no one here had interest in having him dead; but that did not stop him letting out his pent breath when he came into the cart-yard and in sight of the low red glow of the players’ fire.

  He was surprised, though, that it had not been banked for the night before now. Was surprised, too, to find Basset sitting hunched almost over it, wrapped and hooded in his cloak. Everyone else seemed to be asleep, and when Joliffe had laid the lute into its case and into the cart, he went to sit on his heels beside Basset and ask, quiet-voiced, “All’s well?”

  “Well and very well with us,” Basset said back. “With you?”

  “Well enough.” But he said it too slowly, weighted with his thoughts.

  “You’ve learned something,” Basset said.

  “I’ve learned something,” Joliffe agreed. Several things, including how discouraging other people’s lust could be and to what depths of foolishness lust like Mariena’s could take someone. He had known something of foolishness’ faults before this, but none so deep as these. “Most importantly, Amyas is in danger.”

  “From whom?” Basset asked.

  “From Sir Edmund and Mariena both. But not until after he’s married her.”

  “Not before?” Basset asked. “You think then that Harcourt’s death was only chance?”

  “To my mind he was likely murdered, but I don’t have any proof he was, nor know why, and couldn’t swear to who did it.”

  “Ah,” said Basset dryly. “That’s helpful, isn’t it? What of Will?”

  “He’s probably safe for now.” But only if Sir Edmund was right in thinking Mariena was to blame for everything that had befallen the boy and she believed his threats. But if he was wrong? What if it was someone else than Mariena? Who? Lady Benedicta? Joliffe was certain against that—and equally certain she had used the bedtime draught to make Mariena ill as a warning after Will’s last “accident
.”

  But if not Lady Benedicta, then who?

  “So you think Harcourt was indeed murdered,” Basset said. “But Will is safe for now, and Amyas in no danger until after he’s married. Is that the way of it?”

  “Probably.” But only probably. The trouble was that he was more than half-way sure Lady Benedicta had poisoned John Harcourt to his death but did not know why and so there was no telling but what she might choose to kill Amyas, too, before his marriage, whatever her husband’s intention. But still the question was why would she want to prevent Mariena’s marriage. The more especially if she knew about the incest. But did she know? And even if she did, that did not answer much. The dislike between her and Mariena went back for years longer than the incest could have, and why, with finally the chance to be quit of Mariena, would she kill Harcourt? But if she had—or someone else had for a reason Joliffe equally did not see—then Amyas could be in danger the same way. Just as Will might still be if Sir Edmund was wrong about Mariena harming him and it was someone else entirely set on hurting, if not killing, him.

  Basset sighed and held his hands out over the fire’s glow. “It’s something to tell Lord Lovell anyway. He’ll do something about the marriage, I suppose. What to do about the rest will be his choice, too, and better him than us.”

  “Better never us at all,” Joliffe said. He was suddenly in a savage anger at everything. “I’ve had a vile, ugly evening.” Faced with lust he couldn’t return and wine he wasn’t offered. “I’m for sleep and to hell with it all.”

  He left Basset banking the fire, undressed barely enough, and slid into his blankets still seething with frustration and anger. The pieces of whatever was happening here were taking shape but they didn’t yet fit together. It maybe should have been enough that Amyas and Will were probably safe for now and the rest could be left to Lord Lovell, just as Basset had said, but that did not stop his thoughts from circling. There was Mariena’s frightened waiting-maid. She plainly served Sir Edmund rather than Mariena. She had to know their secret and probably saw to it that Sir Edmund knew whatever she knew of Mariena. That meant Sir Edmund would hear what had passed between her and Joliffe, so thanks be given to every celibate saint that he had done no more than what he had. Unless Lesya told Sir Edmund about the questions he had asked. Would it matter if Sir Edmund knew he knew about the sleeping draught? Maybe not, if Sir Edmund didn’t know Joliffe understood it was meant for a way to keep Mariena’s lust in check, and surely Lesya would keep that part of their talk to herself. He hoped. Did Lady Benedicta know the draught was for that, or did she truly think it was simply to make Mariena sleep well? Did she know her daughter lusted beyond the ordinary for men? Did she know of Mariena’s and Sir Edmund’s sin? Did she agree with her husband on what he intended for Amyas Breche, or did she know nothing of it? Had Sir Edmund wanted John Harcourt’s death, or had that been Lady Benedicta’s doing alone? Supposing she had done it. Supposing anyone had done it. But if she had done it, did Mariena know it? Was Mariena’s sin with her father partly in revenge for that treachery? Or had their lusting started even before that? How wide and deep did treacheries go among these people?