A Play of Knaves

by Margaret Frazer

  Flatly, angrily, Kyping answered, “Walter Gosyn was murdered last night.”

  Chapter 19

  Basset ended the long silence that followed that by saying to Gil, “You’d best build up the fire after all.” And to Kyping and his man, “Will you join us at something warm to eat? You look as if you need it.”

  They did look it. Both were shadowy gray in the face and neither was making any effort to sit straight in their saddles. Their hoods and the shoulders of their cloaks were dark with soaked-in rain, and their horses were mucked to the knees with mud. Men and horses all looked to have been out and about for hours and miles, and after a moment, Kyping said, “Yes. Something warm would be welcome. Thank you.”

  That much was to the good anyway, Joliffe thought. If they were suspect in Gosyn’s death, Kyping would likely have kept greater distance.

  Or mayhap he was just being cunning, hoping to learn something by seeming friendly when he was not.

  Either way, he and his man dismounted, tied their horses to a wheel of the cart, and while Gil awoke the banked fire and fed it carefully to life with the last of their gathered wood, and Rose unbundled the bread and cheese she had already readied to store in the cart, Basset asked the inevitable question, “What happened that Gosyn’s dead?”

  Kyping wiped rain from his chin and said, “He went out while the household was settling for the night and never came back in. It was his way to walk for a while every evening in that orchard behind his house.”

  “It was raining steadily at nightfall yesterday,” Basset said. “He went out anyway?”

  “He went out whether there was rain, snow, cold, heat,” Kyping said. “It settled him for sleep, his wife says. My own thought is he wanted the peace of being alone for the while, especially now. It can’t be easy watching your wife die. You know she’s dying?”

  “We thought it, seeing her,” said Ellis.

  “She’ll likely die the quicker now,” Kyping said darkly. “Grief will tear her heart out, the way she presently is.”

  He must be even more tired than he looked, to talk that freely, Joliffe thought, and took the advantage to ask, “What of the daughter?”

  “Claire? From what I saw, she’s all torn between her own grief and her mother’s need.”

  “She’s very young to see to all of that,” Rose said gently.

  “Mistress Ashewell is with her,” Kyping said. Rose handed him a thick cut of cheese and a thick slice of bread. He thanked her. “And Master Ashewell is there, too, to help.”

  “And Nicholas?” Joliffe asked quietly.

  “Nicholas, too,” Kyping agreed around a mouthful of bread and cheese. “Claire Gosyn sent to the Ashewells at the same time she sent someone to find the crowner and me. They were there long before I was.”

  That Claire or her mother would send for their near neighbors and friends was understandable, Joliffe thought, but for her and Nicholas to be together at such a high-wrought time was maybe not a good thing. Not with the Medcote threat still hanging over them both. And why was Gosyn the one murdered when Hal Medcote was so much the more likely one?

  “What happened?” Basset asked again.

  “Part of it’s plain enough. He went out to walk in the orchard in his usual way, at what would have been sundown if there’d been any sun. With the rain it was just a deep gloaming, of course, but that’s never been enough to stop him. He went out and he didn’t come back, and when he didn’t come to bid Geretruda good night—they no longer share a bed because of her pain; there’s a servant sees to her in the night—Geretruda became fretful, so Claire sent one of the men to find him, to remind him to come in. Instead the man found him dead at the far end of the orchard.”

  “How was he killed?” Joliffe asked.

  “Stabbed,” said Kyping’s man. With the fire now beginning to lick more strongly among the wood, he and Kyping were come close to it. Taking the bread and cheese Rose now held out to him, he added, “Right through the throat.”

  “It was more than that,” Kyping said with angry weariness. “He was first knocked to the ground. There’s a bruise along the side of his face, jaw to temple, where he was hit with something hard. A length of wood probably. Something sufficient to fell him. Then while he lay there on his back, stunned, whoever it was ran a dagger through his throat at the base. Through it and slantwise to miss the spine and pin him to the ground with it, then straddled his chest and arms and held him there while he kicked and scrabbled and died. The grass was torn up where he kicked, and when I saw the body, his fingers were still dug down into the dirt with his final death spasm.”

  Kyping said it flatly, his voice as uncolored as the gray and dripping day, but the ugliness of it coiled like a venomous snake in Joliffe’s mind, and with his own voice as flat as Kyping’s, he said, “That’s much like Medcote’s death.”

  “It is,” Kyping agreed, the thought plainly one he had already had.

  “Please,” said Rose. “Say that neither his wife nor daughter saw him that way.”

  “The servant who found him kept his wits about him. He saw to it they were kept away.”

  “It’s a pity Gosyn didn’t grab something off his murderer,” Joliffe said, watching Kyping to see if that were true.

  “It’s likewise a pity we haven’t found anyone as soaked in blood as his murderer had to be,” Kyping said and did not sound as if he were making even half a jest of it. “We found the dagger, though. It was dropped in a neighboring field. It’s maybe Wat Offington’s.”

  “Maybe?” Basset asked.

  “He’s the first one I went to see, wasn’t he?” Kyping said. “He had no dagger on him and couldn’t say where it was. He tried to swear the one in the field isn’t his, but at least two other men say differently.”

  “And now Offington claims his was lost or stolen,” Joliffe said.

  Kyping gave him a sharp look while answering, “Aye. That’s what he claims. That it went missing yesterday at the church or churchyard. That he didn’t miss it until he was almost home.”

  “Do you maybe believe him?” Basset asked.

  “It’s too useful, isn’t it?” Kyping answered, not as if it made him happy. “He’s in known quarrel with Gosyn. Gosyn is murdered. Offington’s dagger is there, carelessly dropped after doing the murder. It’s too useful by half.”

  “But you’ve arrested him anyway,” Ellis said.

  “I haven’t, no.”

  But the crowner likely would. For simplicity’s sake if nothing else, Joliffe thought. Because a thing was too useful by half did not mean it was false.

  “There were others besides Offington angry at Gosyn of late,” Kyping was saying. “I want to know about them before doing anything to anybody. Even if Wat Offington was seemingly the only one maybe angry enough to kill him.”

  “We’ve not been angry at Gosyn,” Basset pointed out.

  “No,” Kyping granted.

  “But we’re not going to be able to leave today, are we?”

  “No. You’re strangers and a strange thing has happened, so you’ll have to stay somewhat longer, for the look of the thing. Just as, for the look of the thing, I’ve come to question you. My thanks,” Kyping added as Ellis held out a cup of ale to him.

  His man’s thanks were likewise grateful when Ellis handed him a cup. Piers nudged his mother’s elbow and said hopefully, “The fire’s fit for toasting us some bread and cheese,” looking up at her with a small boy’s hungry pleading.

  He was grown too large for that to work quite so well as it had, and it had been a long while since it had worked on Rose, anyway. Like all of them, she knew him too well. She also knew how much bread and cheese was left and she refused him with a shake of her head, while Joliffe said to Kyping, “Who else has been angry at Gosyn lately?”

  “Aside from other of his own tenants, he’s quarreled lately with Lionel Ashewell over these marriages. Then there’s Hal Medcote, who maybe thought his way to Gosyn’s daughter would be clear with
Gosyn dead.” Kyping rubbed a hand tiredly at his eyes. “Then there’s talk that Gosyn was lately saying he was going to take his ongoing quarrel with Father Hewgo over tithes to the bishop’s court, along with some other things against him.”

  “I’d not heard that last one,” Joliffe said.

  “You’d heard of the rest?” Kyping asked, then answered himself, “Right. You saw some of it at Gosyn’s when you played there.”

  And only Mistress Ashewell had kept it from turning truly ugly then, Joliffe thought, while Ellis said, “None of it looked murdering-angry, though.”

  “Things fester,” Kyping answered. “Who knows who might have a long anger against him that everyone else has forgotten? They might take this chance to kill him when there are so many others angry at him as would cover why it was done.”

  That was too altogether possible to be put fully aside, but Basset asked, “Is that likely?”

  “Is it likely the murderer just happened to be there in the orchard at just the time Gosyn happened to go for an evening walk there?” Joliffe returned. “In the rain.”

  “There was no ‘happen’ about Gosyn being there, remember,” Kyping said. “It’s when he was usually there.”

  Already regretfully sure of what Kyping would say, Joliffe asked, “How widely was it known he did that?”

  Kyping gave a small laugh that had no pleasure in it. “Widely enough that even if we did set ourselves to learning how far it was known and to whom, we’d hardly be further ahead.”

  “Why?” Rose asked. “Why did it matter so much to him to walk in his orchard every evening?”

  That was not a question Joliffe had thought of. It was maybe a question he would not have thought of, he realized with surprise, it seeming aside from the matter of Gosyn’s murder. But Kyping answered, “The orchard was the first land he bought for his own. Maybe walking there helped him feel how far he had come from where he started.”

  And now he had died with his hands dug into that same land, as if he would hold to it in death as he had in life.

  There would surely, in years to come, be stories told of his ghost seen walking there.

  Kyping had finished eating and drinking. He and his man had even dried a little beside the fire and maybe somewhat warmed. Giving their cups back to Ellis, they both thanked him and Rose and Basset, and started to leave, walking their horses back toward the gateway. Joliffe traded a look with Basset. Basset nodded agreement and Joliffe went with them, falling into step beside Kyping to ask when they were away from the other players, “If it comes to no one else, will the crowner be content with simply finding Wat Offington guilty?”

  “I doubt it. He’s a great one for both the law and his own dignity. He’s furious there’s been a second murder, and done while he was here, as if to spite him.” Kyping’s face went heavy with greater gloom. “He’s going to ride this into the ground. He’s going to tear at things until he has everything out into the open. Things that have nothing to do with either murder. What with that and everybody’s fears already raised, the whole parish is going to be torn apart before he’s done. Then, when he’s done and satisfied, I’ll be left to put the pieces back together.”

  “Besides all that,” Joliffe said, “Medcote’s murder was one thing; Gosyn’s is another.”

  “It is that,” Kyping agreed heavily. “There was nothing false or foul about Gosyn. Even most of those who didn’t like him will grant you that. People can understand Medcote being murdered. Not Gosyn. Supposing his murderer isn’t found, everyone’s suspicions are as likely as the crowner’s questions to tear the parish apart.”

  It was shrewd of Kyping to know that, Joliffe thought. Not comfortable, but shrewd, which was to the good because there were times when being comfortable was dangerous. This looked to be one of them, and aloud he asked, “So, would I be welcome, do you think, if I went to play quiet music for the widow and all?”

  Kyping, about to swing into his saddle, stopped to look at him. “You mean today?”

  “Today. Yes.” While everything was still raw enough that someone guarding what they said and did might show against others too lost in grief to protect themselves. Untoward wariness could betray as much as open guilt.

  Kyping held quiet a long moment—whether thinking that or not, Joliffe did not know—before saying, “It’s not your business.”

  Joliffe made a small gesture back at the players, Tisbe, and the cart. “So long as we’re trapped here by it, it’s our business.”

  Kyping considered that before finally saying, “You might be welcome at Gosyn’s. You can try anyway. If you learn anything . . .”

  He left that hanging, but it was enough. They understood one another.

  Chapter 20

  By the time Joliffe walked into Gosyn’s yard, the rain had dwindled to a stop and the clouds thinned enough for hope there would be sun before the day was over. There could be little work in the fields yet, but the village was oddly empty of people, even children, as Joliffe walked through it. He expected at least a clot of folk at the manor gateway, standing about in the useless way that people had, as if they hoped something worth seeing would happen now that the worst had, but the gateway was empty.

  In the manor yard the several tethered horses by the barn showed neighbors were come, but such servants as he saw were glumly quiet, neither speaking to him nor making an effort to stop him. He even stood for several minutes on the hall’s threshold before anyone there took note of him, and he took the chance for a long look at who was there and how they were among each other. He learned little. Except for a servant standing at a table where food and drink had been set out, only a few men were gathered, Master Ashewell and Nicholas among them and the others of like kind, to judge by their clothing and bearing. None of them were plain villagers anyway, but looked to be folk like the Gosyns and Ashewells—yeomen on their way into gentry and all the more sure of themselves because there were no near-neighbored high gentry or lords to overbear them and make them feel their place.

  Joliffe supposed that, if he tried, he might know some of their faces from the church ale’s crowd or yesterday’s funeral and inquest, but he did not particularly try. He wondered if their low-kept voices and strained faces were entirely for grief at Gosyn’s murder or if they were thinking, too, of how they could come to like sudden end, all hopes and ambitions gone to nothing between one minute and the next.

  He wondered, too, as he had to, if any of them had had quarrel with Gosyn.

  But Kyping was the one who could ask questions. The most he could do here himself was see and hear what there was to see and hear, and presently that did not seem likely to be much; there was little talk going on among the men. But there had been pads behind some of the saddles on the horses in the yard for women to ride pillion. Mistress Ashewell was surely here, and other women must be, too, and probably in the solar, giving Geretruda what comfort could be given. Or else in the bedchamber if Geretruda had been laid completely low by this blow.

  He could walk into neither solar nor bedchamber without bidding, but since no one was troubling to give him greeting or even heed here, he went aside from the hall’s doorway and toward the solar, to a bench against the wall there that gave him somewhere to set one foot so he could rest his lute on his knee while putting it in tune. Keeping watch on the gathered mourners, and especially the Ashewells, he began to play, at first drawing quiet notes at almost random, letting them fall beneath the low-kept voices, only slowly after a while weaving them into a softly sorrowing song.

  He did not sing. For one thing, the lament was one familiar enough that the words would be in people’s minds without he sang any of them. For another, singing would draw too much heed to him and he was here to note things, not to be noted himself. Or, rather, to be noted just enough to be taken to soothe Geretruda.

  His hope of that looked like it was happening when Claire shortly came from the solar and toward him. The black mourning gown she wore must have been made for her for
someone’s death a few years ago; it was short in the hem and too tight, showing how far she had passed from girlhood toward womanhood between when it was made and now. But with her tear-reddened eyes and face blotched from crying, she looked very young after all, as well as deep in pain, and Joliffe stilled the lute strings, straightened, and bowed low to her in respect for grief that deep, despite that in her pain everything but pain was probably only a blur to her just now.

  She was starting to say to him, “My mother would like . . . ,” when her gaze shifted past him to the outer doorway and her voice died as if all air had been suddenly pressed from her lungs. Everyone else in the hall had turned toward her when she came from the solar. Now everyone else and Joliffe followed her look toward the doorway.

  To see Hal Medcote standing much where Joliffe had paused, taking in, as Joliffe had taken in, everyone there.

  But where Joliffe had had no more than a glance from anyone, Hal was greeted by an array of stares, and one corner of his mouth twitched toward what looked close to in-held laughter before his gaze, sweeping over everyone there, fell on Claire. He instantly sobered and started toward her. She took a small step backward, as if toward flight, then steadied and held where she was, only putting her hands behind her.

  From the corner of his eye, Joliffe saw Nicholas Ashewell take a step forward and Master Ashewell take hold on his arm, keeping him where he was as Hal bowed to Claire, saying as he straightened, “I’ve come to say how sorry we are, my mother and sister and myself, to hear of your father’s death.”

  Stiffly, Claire said, “Thank you.”

  Joliffe shifted his lute and said, seeming blind to any business but his own, “You were saying you wished me to play to your mother, yes?”

  That was putting himself forward more than he should. Musicians, like players, were there to be ignored except when wanted, and Hal gave him an angry glance, but Claire said, short-breathed with relief at reason to escape, “Yes. She’s in here,” and fled more than led his way into the solar.