A Play of Knaves

by Margaret Frazer

  “Brave Bevis!” Gil said promptly, he having a well-sized part in that one.

  “St. Nicholas and the Boys!” Piers returned on his own behalf.

  “I do like the part in that one where the evil innkeeper grinds the two boys into sausages,” Joliffe said, then added thoughtfully, “though I’ve thought it would be even better if we left out the part where St. Nicholas turns them back into boys.”

  “Hai!” Piers protested.

  Ellis and Rose had disappeared down the path toward the stream by then. Basset tossed possibilities for tonight’s play back and forth with Gil and Piers for a while but ended by saying, “I’ll make up my mind in a while. For now, Piers, why don’t you finally show Gil how you cheat at merels.”

  Gil crowed, “Ah-ha! I thought you must, you win so often at it!” while Piers protested, all vast and injured innocence, “I don’t! I’m just better at it than anyone else, that’s all.” Free of Basset’s hold, he stood up and started for the cart where the merels gameboard was kept with his own few things. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  Gil shared a grin with Basset and Joliffe, and they returned it, all of them knowing the diversion would keep Piers happily occupied a goodly while. But neither Basset nor Joliffe made immediate use of being left to themselves; instead they sat in silence a while, Joliffe finishing his share of the bread and cheese while Basset gazed away at the sky in apparent idleness. Gil and Piers were well into their game on the far side of the cart before Basset said, still gazing at the sky, “So. What do you think about Medcote’s death?”

  “Rose and Piers and probably Gil are safe from suspicion of doing it. They haven’t the weight or strength.”

  Basset cocked his head and a look at him. “Which leaves you and me and Ellis if the crowner wants to turn on us. Except we can each claim none of us left here last night.”

  “Not that anyone need believe we’re telling the truth about that,” Joliffe pointed out, although it was a thing Basset knew as well as he did. The little silence between them came back until Joliffe added, “I do like our company being Lord Lovell’s.”

  Basset nodded on a sigh of unspoken agreement with that. In their years without a patron they had had more than one narrow slide out of trouble, and sometimes they had not made that slide unscathed. But being shielded by Lord Lovell’s name did not mean they should rest easy, and Joliffe said, “At least by everything we’ve heard it’s sure there are plenty of others willing to have Medcote dead.”

  “What you’re wondering is which of them it was did for him,” Basset said.

  “So are you,” Joliffe returned.

  Rather than deny that, Basset began to count on his fingers, “Jack Hammond, Walter Gosyn, Master Ashewell, maybe Nicholas Ashewell—”

  “If I was threatened with marrying Eleanor Medcote, I’d be tempted to murder, surely,” Joliffe said thoughtfully. “Though it would make more sense to kill her than her father, I would think.”

  “Shut up, Joliffe,” Basset said without heat and went on with his count. “Medcote’s wife, tired of his ways.”

  “Eleanor, tired of her father making use of her to his own ends?” Joliffe suggested. “She looks to be a strong young woman. More likely than her mother to match Medcote’s strength, I’d think.”

  “The same can be said, and more so, for her brother.”

  “He and his father didn’t seem at odds, though. Seemed even to work hand-in-glove together. Why would Hal kill him? And why now?”

  “To inherit? With us at hand and readily blamed? After all, Hal is the one who’ll gain the immediate most by his father’s death.”

  “True enough. I’d like to know where he was last night.”

  “And where Gosyn, Ashewell, and Jack Hammond were, and all the others who don’t mind Medcote is dead,” Basset said. “Kyping has his work cut out for him.”

  “It would help to know if the murder was planned and Medcote was stalked to where he was killed, or if someone merely happened on him and took the chance.”

  “Which isn’t something anyone is likely to know until the murderer is caught.”

  “Too true for comfort. Still, it would help to know who knew for certain where Medcote would be last night. I wonder, too—” Joliffe broke off. What he had suddenly wondered was whether the murderer had meant to kill Rose, too, if she had been there, to make both deaths look more surely Ellis’ doing. That being altogether a thought best left unsaid to Basset, he said instead, “—who gains besides Hal Medcote.”

  “The rest of the family, glad to be rid of him,” Basset said. “Not every murder has to be for a large reason. Quite a small reason will do as well for some people.”

  “Being rid of Medcote would seem a large reason to me.” Joliffe thought for a moment, then added, “It seems less of a gain for both the Ashewells and Gosyn. Hal is all too likely to keep on with his father’s demand for the Ashewell marriage for Eleanor, and now he’s clear to move openly for Claire for himself.”

  “As you said, for the Ashewells at least, killing the daughter would have been better sense,” Basset said, with no jest to the thought.

  “What about her?” Joliffe said.

  “What about her?” Basset echoed.

  “For the murderer. We’ve agreed she might have the strength to hold Medcote down, if she got that blow to his jaw in first.”

  “That’s hardly a woman’s blow. A fist to a man’s jaw?”

  Joliffe touched his own jaw lightly in memory and said, “There’s some women who do. If they mean business enough.”

  Basset’s face lightened with interest just short of open laughter. “Who? When?”

  “A long time ago,” Joliffe said with dignity, “and that’s all that I’m telling.”

  Basset did laugh then.

  Ignoring him, Joliffe went on, “Or else Mistress Eleanor has a lover. Someone she wants who also wants her. And she got word to him of where Medcote would be last night, and this lover killed him in the hope that with Medcote dead he’ll have Eleanor.”

  “Unless Hal still wants the Ashewell marriage,” Basset pointed out.

  “That’s something I’ve wondered on,” said Joliffe. “She’s a widow. Why wasn’t she free to marry as she chose? As a widow, she should have her own say over her life.”

  “Maybe she does want to marry Nicholas Ashewell.”

  “Or she may think Hal will be better to sway than their father was. Medcote kept a heavy hand on everybody. Maybe the only way past him was—”

  “—over his dead body,” Basset finished. “Unfortunately, we’ve no thought of who this putative lover might be, do we?”

  “Um. No,” Joliffe granted, then waved an easy hand. “We’ll have to find out. Well, find out if he exists and then who he is. Along with where the Ashewells and Walter Gosyn were last night.”

  “That’s something Kyping will surely see to. As well as already knowing how many others besides Jack Hammond will be dancing most merrily now Medcote’s dead.”

  “Of those there’s no lack, and because Medcote made no secret of what he was intending last night, there’s no way to know how many of his servants knew it and who they may have told over ale in the alehouse.” Joliffe shook his head with deep dissatisfaction. “It’s a hard thing when a murdered man was hated by nearly everyone who knew him. Even Father Hewgo didn’t look very liking of him by the time we finished in the sacristy yesterday.”

  “True,” Basset agreed. “They’re said to be two of a kind and to work as one, but yesterday was the second time we saw Medcote cross him.”

  “And with Medcote that means there were likely other times, and Father Hewgo had maybe had enough. Or maybe he thought it was his Christian duty to put a stop to Medcote’s fornications. No,” Joliffe corrected himself. “Given what I’ve seen of Father Hewgo, he’d rather have the sport of imposing heavy penance on Medcote for his sins and setting the bishop on him if Medcote didn’t comply. Or maybe Medcote knew something Father Hewgo didn’t
want him to know. Or maybe Medcote knew something someone else didn’t want him to know. Or—”

  “Enough,” Basset said, running his hands through his hair and clasping them together at the back of his head. “My brain is overheating. Let’s drop Medcote and decide what you’ll all play tonight for the Gosyns.”

  Joliffe caught that “you” and asked, “What about you?”

  “I’m thinking someone should stay with the cart and it shouldn’t be Rose,” Basset said grimly. “Or not Rose alone. Besides,” he added with his Evil Sheriff smile, “what’s the use of being master of this company if I can’t order someone else to do all the work once in a while?”

  Chapter 14

  The Gosyns’ manor lay farther out in the Vale. Drained by reedy ditches between the road and the broad fields and pastures, the land here was rich both for crops and grazing, Joliffe thought as he, Ellis, Gil, and Piers walked along. There was the hopeful green of young growth across the ploughed fields, but that was a promise of harvest-to-come that had proved false these past two years of wet summers and harsh winters, and there were not so many cows or even sheep at graze as there might have been. That had been true everywhere the players had traveled so far this year. When the haying failed in a rain-drenched summer, fewer cows could be over-wintered and that meant fewer calves come the spring and that meant fewer cows in years to come. And if too little was left from a ruined harvest to feed a family through the winter, then what should have been saved to plant the next year’s fields too often went to ease present hunger, lessening even further the next year’s hope. And because when all this happened, the hunger was everywhere, there was nowhere to go to escape it, nothing to do but stay and see it through until the fat years came again. Or die where you were if you didn’t last that long.

  Joliffe had seen how that trap went when he was very young and had taken his first chance to slip free and away from it, first by one way, then by another, and then into being a player. But he was older now and knew there was no true going free. For one thing, all in life was too much bound piece to piece to piece, was too much a whole, for anyone to be wholly free while they still drew breath. For another thing, whatever sort of life someone might choose, there were burdens to it, and any manner of “escape” left an emptiness where the might-have-been would have been, with sometimes—after some “escapes”—that emptiness a burden in itself.

  Not that Joliffe had any wish to go back on the choices he had made, but neither was he so cowardly as to try to deny their costs. Nor was he so young anymore that he thought life could be lived without burdens. In truth, he had found that in bearing a burden honestly and with a whole heart there was often a surprising freedom.

  What was needed, he had long since decided, was to find the balance between burdens rightly accepted and burdens stupidly borne, between escapes rightly made and the fool’s escape that led to nothing but worse burdens than those left behind.

  He had also decided there were few people able to tell one choice from the other until too late—and he wasn’t at all certain he was any better at it than anyone else.

  But he also knew that on the whole he would rather starve as a player than as something else, so here he was and, thanks to the vagaries of fortune and Lord Lovell’s favor, less close to starving than the company had been for years.

  The road curved and sloped down to cross a stream, probably the one that ran past their camp. It was wide and shallow here, with an easy ford for cart or wagon, and stepping stones by which Joliffe, Ellis, Gil, and Piers crossed dry-footed. Beyond it, the road curved again, bringing them into a scatter of perhaps ten houses. There were signs there had been more of a village here upon a time. Between the present houses there were here and there wide gaps that told where other houses had likely stood, with some of the gaps now made into someone else’s kitchen gardens but others simply left bare, one with the stub of housewall still standing, while in another what looked to have once been a house was turned now into a byre or barn.

  A dying village, its life draining away to other places, Joliffe thought. The players came to such now and again. Time was past when men and women were tied to one place for life. More and more lords found it easier to take money in place of services, and then money in place of a man or woman altogether, letting villeins buy themselves free to try their luck elsewhere, leaving the lord able to hire others to whom he owed nothing but their wages and none of the tangle of rights and privileges that his erstwhile villeins had acquired through the generations. In some ways it was a freeing of the lords as much as it was a freeing of ordinary folk—which of course was why the lords were willing to do it.

  Of those peasants who stayed where they were, many did simply because they could not imagine doing otherwise, could see no further than where they already were. Others stayed because they saw how to make use of what new chances there were, and from what Joliffe had heard, Walter Gosyn was one of those—an up-coming man and resented for it by the likes of Wat Offington who wanted what Gosyn had but, lacking the wits to get it for themselves, settled for being angry about it.

  Of course, Joliffe added to himself, Gosyn’s ways might be as likely to kill off the village’s life as other men’s ignorance, but that was the way things went—chance and foolishness happened to all men.

  From Sy, the players knew Gosyn’s place was on the village’s far side, the last house, and Ellis had said as they walked along, “Shall we give the villagers something, too, as we pass through? Just for the sport of it?” The others had agreed, knowing more than sport was part of it. Villagers made friendly now could be villagers friendly in the future for other players who might come this way—though any players come this far from any main way were probably in more need than could be helped in a place like this.

  Aside from that, it was easier to pass through a village doing something other than simply walking with everyone staring, maybe none too friendly, wondering why they were there. So as they came up from the ford, Piers began to tootle on his pipes and rat-tat on his tabor, leading the way for Ellis and Gil, who set to making a show of juggling the bright-painted leather balls, while Joliffe thumped the curved bottom of his lute and sang an idiot song to let folk know the players were come to town, tra-la, to sport and play today, hey-hey.

  In the clear early evening, folk were at work in their gardens or sitting in ease by their doors, so the players had audience enough for their going, as well as a merriness of children who gave up some circle game they had been playing in the street to dance and laugh around the players for the hundred yards or so to Gosyn’s gateway. At the gateway, though, they spread aside and fell back from the players. Ellis gave the word, and Piers, just gone into the yard beyond the gateway, left off his pipes and tabor while Ellis and Gil deftly caught all the juggling balls. Together with Joliffe they all turned back to their following of children and a few men and women who had joined them, and bowed deeply, with Joliffe and Piers sweeping off their hats with flourishes and Joliffe saying, “Our thanks and more, good folk, for your good welcome . . .”

  “Judas!” a child yelped, pointing at him.

  Joliffe bowed again, smiling, and said, “Nay, that was yesterday and only for the while. Today I am myself. Though mayhap in a while I may turn into a devil. One never knows.” He twisted his face into a mocking, leering grin at the child, who yelped with delighted fear while others laughed or pretended to be frightened with him.

  With more bows and flourishes, the players turned away, toward the house and its open doorway where at least a servant should have been waiting for them by now to see them in. They had made noise enough that no one could be ignorant of their coming, but no one was there, and that surprised Joliffe.

  The house itself was set back from the street on the other side of a small, dusty yard flanked by the usual byre and barn and separated from the street by only a waist-high wattle fence. While beyond argument the house was the best in the village, it was a far lesser place than either Medcot
e’s or Ashewell’s. Reed-thatched and half-timbered, with white-plastered daub walls, it had plainly been only a small yeoman’s house of probably two rooms and a loft until, at one end, a two-floored short range of rooms had been added, end on to the yard, not so long ago—both timbering and thatch were still golden-new, not weathered to gray with time and weather—with what had been the house probably made into the hall.

  “There’s someone else here,” Ellis said with a nod toward one side of the yard where three saddled horses were tied to posts.

  “So we’re to play for more than only the Gosyns,” Joliffe said lightly. “The two bay rouncys look like Ashewell’s.”

  “But the gray is Medcote’s,” Gil said tautly. “I remember it from when he was at our camp.”

  “Damnation,” Ellis growled. “It has to be Hal Medcote is here.”

  “No trouble,” Joliffe warned.

  “My quarrel wasn’t with him,” Ellis said sharply. “But I doubt him being here will add to the merriment, do you?”

  Joliffe did doubt it, but before he could answer, Sy came out of the house door and scurried—that was the only word for it—toward them with much the frightened hurry of a hare pursued by hounds.

  “Damnation,” Ellis said, this time in a mutter.

  Joliffe silently agreed, but drawing together, the four of them kept on across the yard, Ellis pulling Piers by the shoulder back and a little behind them as if out of harm’s way as Sy reached them, urging as he came, “Come in, come in. Mistress Geretruda says come in, you’ll maybe help. They’ll maybe stop if you’re here.”

  “Who’ll stop what?” Ellis demanded.

  “Master Gosyn, Master Ashewell, and that Hal Medcote. They’re quarreling horribly. Mistress Geretruda doesn’t know what to do. Nor does Mistress Ashewell.”

  “Neither do we,” said Ellis. “We’re here just to play, not put ourselves in the way of anything.”

  “What are they quarreling about?” Joliffe asked, earning a furious look from Ellis.