Most priests of villages and even small towns lived the double life of priest and landlord of whatever local land had been given to the parish church. The more fortunate priests could make a very comfortable life of it. The less fortunate did well to scrape by from one year to the next. John Smyth did not look to be among the latter. Not only was his house larger than any of his neighbors, it was newly thatched and all its front freshly plastered, with both windows of the out-thrust upper story glassed and the broad front door painted a warm red as yet unmarred by any winter. It was a rich man’s house in a place that looked unlikely to have many rich men, and Joliffe tied Rowan to the iron ring hung from a wooden post set in the street beside the door and knocked with confidence at the door. When dealing with the rich it was usually better to seem confident rather than craving.
He expected a servant would answer—this looked too fine a place for the priest to do his own door-answering— and indeed a thin older man with a chicken-scrawny neck and servant’s plain tunic did finally open the door, to give Joliffe a narrow-eyed stare that lacked the warmth of Christian welcome before he demanded, “What?”
Here was a servant looking to be offended at anyone who dared to darken his master’s doorstep, so in return Joliffe looked down his nose at him and said, “I need to speak to Father John.”
“Sire John,” the man snapped. “He’s Sire John.”
“A learned as well as holy man,” Joliffe said, smooth as oiled ice. “I’ll be most pleased, in my need, to meet him.
The man’s glare said he wanted to find fault with that, but unable to, he finally grunted, said, “You stay here until I’ve seen if he’ll see you,” and disappeared from the doorway, leaving the door barely open. Hardly a moment later he was back and made an ungracious gesture for Joliffe to come in. Joliffe went past him without thanks, into a pleasantly large room with a scrubbed board floor, stairs to the upper floor against one wall, a door to the probable kitchen at the back, and a wide, wooden-mullioned window facing the street. The walls were painted saffron-yellow, the roof beams a deep red that matched the outer door. On one long wall hung a painted hanging of St. John the Evangelist with his goblet and serpent, St. John the Baptist with his lamb, and St. John of Beverley with his shrine and cross-staff. Sire John must take his own name seriously, Joliffe thought. The end of the room away from the stairs was taken up with a beam-high aumbry of closed doors below and open shelves above. Because there was a slant-topped writing table near them, the open shelves might have held a scholar’s books but instead served to display an array of polished pewter plates, platters, goblets, and cups.
Beside the writing desk, there was a long-legged stool on which Joliffe doubted Sire John perched very often: the priest looked far too settled where he sat on a long, high-backed, well-cushioned bench near the middle of the room, holding in one hand a small plate with a thin-sliced apple, in the other hand an apple slice on its way to his mouth. Like the bench, he was well-cushioned—ample, one might say—and his priestly gown was austere only in being black, with nothing humble about its fine-woven wool.
No, he was not one of those priests who gave all to his people; and he might be plump where his servant was lean, but Joliffe, straightening from a respectful bow and meeting the priest’s eyes for the first time, suspected master and servant were of a kind—men unwelcoming to anyone who might want something of theirs, even if only time.
Since Joliffe wanted no more time in Sire John’s company than need be, that was well enough. Let Sire John tell him Vaughn had the packet and he would be out of here and away before the priest could finish bidding god-be-with-him. And he said with his best outward courtesy—the one that went somewhat less than skin deep, “Good sir, I’ve come for the packet your cousin Edward Burgate sent to you.”
Hand with apple slice still poised, Sire John said, “Have you?” He inserted the apple neatly into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “Well, you can’t have it.”
He delivered that with a flat certainty that suggested the Lord God himself would be as readily refused if he presumed to appear and ask for it—and that Sire John would take equal pleasure in the refusal.
“It’s gone?” Joliffe asked, still courteously.
“It’s not. It’s here.” Sire John was heavily self-satisfied about that. “It’s Edward’s. And there’s an end of it.”
Joliffe went to wary calculation. Vaughn had had time enough to reach here. If he had not, then something had gone wrong somewhere. But even as he thought that, Sire John went on with a smirk of pleasure, “I didn’t give it to that fellow two days ago and I’m not giving it to you. So go away.”
Joliffe took a quick breath, shifted his thoughts, and said, “Other fellow?”
“Other fellow. Two days ago. Here, like you are. Standing there asking for it.” Sire John held out the emptied plate. His man came, took it, and left the room while the priest went on. “Just as well I didn’t give it over to him. He was killed and robbed hardly a mile outside of town. He’s lying in the charnel house right now while we wait for the crowner to come view him and for someone to pay for burying him. We’ve sent to …”
“Your cousin is in dire trouble and that packet can save him,” Joliffe snapped, done with courtesy, “What will serve to convince you of it?”
Sire John eyed him narrowly, then shook his head. “There’s nothing. If you’ve report and proof that Edward is dead, that’s one thing, but to just demand the packet, no. There’s something more about all this.”
“It’s because of that something more that your cousin went to this trouble,” Joliffe said. “It’s because of that something more that he’s in trouble that we’re trying to get him out of. I’ll swear on a Bible that I’m here for his good and to finish what he started. I’ll twice swear it, if that will help.”
Sire John made a sound of rumbling displeasure in his throat and his eyes narrowed. “The other fellow offered me money for it.”
“I’ve offered to swear,” Joliffe said stiffly. “That should be enough.” Would have to be since Vaughn’s offer of money hadn’t been enough.
“That’s not what Edward wanted. He said I was to keep it until he came, or I had proof he was dead, and even then it goes to … someone, and it isn’t you.”
“The duchess of Suffolk,” Joliffe said. “His late master’s widow. You’re to see it gets to her.”
“Very good,” Sire John said mockingly. “The other fellow knew that, too.” He sniffed. “Didn’t do him any good, either.”
And a plague on Edward Burgate for not having some word that would pry the letter loose from his cousin, Joliffe thought; and had another thought and said, “Then do you go yourself to my lady. Take the packet and whatever guard you want from among your people here and go to her at Wingfield. She’ll pay your costs and a reward besides.”
Sire John at least paused before answering, still staring at him narrow-eyed but considering before finally saying, That I have to think on. Come back tomorrow when I’ve thought on it.”
“The packet …”
“Has been safe in my keeping and will go on being safe there. I told you, I’ll think on it.” He jerked a hand toward the door. “Now go.”
Neither sense nor greed nor anything short of violence looked likely to shift the man. That was the “benefit” of narrow-minded certainty that one was beyond chance of ever being wrong, Joliffe thought. Sire John would “think on it” and think well of himself for having thought. What Joliffe bitterly doubted was how well the man would think: the difference between “think” and “think well” escaped a great many people.
But seeing no way to shift the man, he jerked a short bow and was only barely careful not to slam the door behind him as he went out, certain that when he came back tomorrow, he’d find Sire John had not shifted an inch from what he “thought” now. Vaughn had come for the packet and Vaughn was dead. Sire John’s first thought should be that the thing was likely dangerous and be grateful for the chance to b
e rid of it, even if it meant going—with his own chosen guard, mind—to Lady Alice. If the man had been thinking, that’s what he should have thought.
But even while Joliffe jerked Rowan’s reins free and swung into his saddle, he knew his deeper anger was not at the fool of a priest but at Vaughn for being dead. He’d had no business getting himself killed.
And mixed with that anger was a spine-tightening certainty that more than plain robbery was behind Vaughn’s death. For Vaughn to come here, ask for the packet, be refused, and be immediately murdered afterward … to accept his death was chance was a stretch Joliffe was unwilling to make, especially since making it and thereby lowering his guard could get him equally dead very soon.
As he turned Rowan away from the priest’s house, there was a growling shout from the alehouse, confirming for him how little he wanted to stay the night in this place. There had been past-counting outbreaks of anger and rebellion all this year and they were likely to go on, because after all there was so far no reason for them to stop. All the ground for men’s angers were still there, unchanged—the greed of the lords around the king, the breakdown of justice anywhere the duke of Suffolk’s men had held power, the lost French war. If there was yet another uprising in the making here, it was only another reason to be away from here as soon as might be.
But Vaughn was dead, and Joliffe wanted to know more about how he had died than “killed and robbed.” Besides, he owed Vaughn at least one prayer over his body, if only because Vaughn had not killed him when he had the chance.
The church’s charnel house was easily found, a stone-built shed with reed-thatched roof and wooden door standing in a rear corner of the churchyard. Joliffe tied Rowan’s reins to the low withy fence that marked the churchyard bounds without making a barrier, so that he did not bother with going to the narrow twist of stile into the yard but merely took a small leap over the fence. Crossing the humped and grassy ground toward the charnel house, he found that his bitterness at Sire John was growing, the more time he had for it. A more generous priest might have allowed a murdered man’s body to lie in the church for better blessing, instead of shoved into the charnel house before its time. The charnel house was where the bones of the faithful departed were kept after being unearthed from their graves when new graves were being made for the more newly dead, since consecrated ground was limited but deaths were not. What Joliffe sometimes wondered on was how that would be at Judgment Day when all the dead were to rise, their bodies restored. The pictures painted and carved on church walls showed a rising up of whole men and women from graves and coffins, never the Jumbled sorting out there would have to be of bones piled at random in charnel houses. Presently, though, he was merely glad the bones were clean ones, the rot of flesh long-gone mm them, the smell as he opened the door into the shed’s shadows only of small decay and the damp earthen floor.
Except for the door, the only light came from two small high up windows, one in each side wall, above the bones in their sorted piles—large long bones here, lesser long bones there, jaw bones jumbled in a heap, skulls stacked like rounded rocks one on another against a wall, their blank black eyeholes staring. Vaughn’s body lay wrapped in a length of canvas on the bare floor in the middle of the shed, not given even the slight kindness of a candle left burning beside it, to guess from the lack of any puddled wax. Had Sire John bothered himself with a single prayer for Vaughn’s soul? Joliffe wondered as he went down on one knee beside the featureless bundle and folded back the outermost flap of canvas to uncover Vaughn’s face.
Except—he saw as he turned the canvas back—it was not Vaughn’s.
Chapter 19
Joliffe stared, blank-witted. Not Vaughn.
Someone who had come asking for the packet but not been Vaughn.
He threw the fold of canvas over the dead man’s face again and stood up, staring down at it, his mind flung back to everything Sire John had said but finding no help in it. The priest had named the duchess of Suffolk but that meant little. Burgate might have finally broken. Or been broken, “ad someone decided torture was needed to have what they wanted from him, after the queen’s error in betraying he was there?
If that had been error and not something fore-thought.
Or was it, more simply, that Vaughn had after all returned to Lady Alice first, had been for some reason unable to come onward, and this man had been sent in his stead?
Joliffe lifted the canvas from the dead man’s face again this time meaning to see more than simply that he was not Vaughn.
Several days dead, his skin was gray and sunken over the skull, and because no one had bothered with binding his jaw decently shut, his mouth hung gaping open. A several-days-dead man was not good to look on but Joliffe did and after a few moments knew that he did know the man. Not by name, no, but knew him. He had been one of the men with Vaughn in Alderton.
That he was here had to mean Vaughn had gone to Wingfield instead of straightly here. Why? Had he been hurt? Fallen ill? Whatever the reason, he must have gone to Lady Alice because he could not come here, and so she had sent this man in his place. And now this man was dead.
Joliffe suddenly felt the open door of the charnel house at his unguarded back and took a long step aside and turned enough to let him see it as well as the corpse.
He had too many questions now and too many possible answers to them, and much though he wanted to be out of here, he also wanted to see how the man had died, and leaned over and folded back the canvas from the rest of the body. Because the crowner had yet to view it, the body was still fully clothed. In the shadows of the charnel house Joliffe at first saw only the dark, spread stain of dried blood on the man’s doublet-front but when he leaned nearer, holding his breath against the smell of beginning decay, he could make out the black slit where a blade had gone through the doublet into flesh under the left ribs. A well-placed blow that would have reached the heart for a quick kill, leaving a man no time to argue about his fate.
That might have been the murderer’s good luck, but Joliffe doubted it. He suspected there had been both skill and purpose to that stroke, that it had been made by someone who knew how to kill.
He sat down on his heels and felt in the leather purse still hanging from the dead man’s belt. It was empty not only of any coins but of even the lesser things everyone gathered in a jackdaw-way—slight things that mattered to no one but the gatherer and of no worth to anyone else. Whoever had emptied this man’s purse had been thorough. Not that that told much. It might have been done either by whoever killed him, the better to make it seem a robbery, or else by those who dealt with his body afterward, taking anything they could get and afterward throwing away whatever they decided was worthless.
Thankful he could see no reason to go through the man’s clothing in search of anything else because whoever had so completely emptied his purse would have been thorough there, too, Joliffe stood up and away from the body. Plain robbery with murder might be the way of it, but he could not bring himself to accept that, because even though the duke of Suffolk was four months dead, the circles of trouble he had caused were still spreading outward, with this accumulation of deaths around his household only part of it and no reason to think they were the end. Men who had known too much about Suffolk’s part in losing the French war were being killed, and Sire John was a great fool not to be rid of that packet at the first chance given to him. Even knowing nothing else about it, his cousin’s desperation in sending it to him should have been warning enough the thing was dangerous. Nor did Joliffe see he was to be honored for reusing to give it up. His grip on it looked less to be keeping kith with his cousin than pleasure at his power to thwart and anger anyone who wanted it.
So what to do next?
Face down Sire John and have the packet from him one way or another, or else set him on his way to Lady Alice. Either would do, and Joliffe found himself favoring the latter, not wanting to have the thing himself unless he could acquire a full suit of armor to wear while he
had it and someone to guard his back for good measure.
He re-covered the body, wished the man’s soul well with a brief prayer, and went out of the charnel house, closing the door behind him. The setting sun was large and orange above the spread of trees that edged the western sky here, but the storm clouds that had been climbing black out of the east were now sweeping overhead and would likely overtake it before it set. One more trouble and one more bar to him being away from here as soon as he would have liked. To add to his unease, no one had come to ask what he was doing in the churchyard or charnel house. A village usually knew everything that went on within it, with someone always ready to ask questions of any stranger. That no one had come to question him was warning of how awry things were here.
As he untied his reins, Rowan raised her head from grazing what grass there was along the fence and looked at him with what seemed a suggestion that a dry stable and oats would be well bethought.
“Maybe,” he told her, swinging into the saddle. “Maybe not. This isn’t going as easily as we could hope.”
With a great-heaved horse-sigh, she gave way to his tug on her reins and headed down the road toward the priest’s house. As they crossed the lane by which he had come from the alehouse he saw at its far end what looked to be the men from the alehouse clotted in a tight bunch, crowding into the lane and shouting at each other with the rabble-growl of men gone past thinking into blind, ugly doing. Yet they didn’t look to be quarreling and readying to fight each other. Whatever they were angry at, they were at one about it and it was for someone else.
A few women were standing in their own doorway along the lane, some with tightly crossed arms, others with a huddled look, many with a hand out to keep a peering child or children behind them, but all of them staring toward their angry men. Joliffe stopped Rowan near one of them with a baby on one arm, a toddler by the hand beside her, and a frightened look on her face. With a nod toward the men, he asked, “What is it?”
16 The Traitor's Tale Page 23
