A Play of Dux Moraud (22 page)

Mariena sank back with disgust. Her father patted her shoulder again, smiling with fellow-feeling. “Tomorrow you can ride in with me to hear the banns read,” he promised. “I’ll see you at supper, my ladies.” He gave his wife another kiss that was no more welcomed than the other had been, exchanged bows of the head with Idonea, and left, having not once so much as looked at Joliffe, still standing because he had not been given leave to sit.

“Joliffe,” Lady Benedicta said when her husband was gone, “sing us something bright.”

Joliffe sat and set immediately and light-voiced into the shining, “I have a new garden that new is begun. Such another garden know I not under sun,” because he felt, with her, the need for something bright against whatever had come into the chamber with Sir Edmund.

Yet Sir Edmund had done nothing beyond the ordinary and common. He had given greetings, made polite talk, said courteous farewell. Even Mariena seemed the better for her father’s visit. Whatever the ill-feelings and lack of trust between her and her mother, things looked to be well enough between her and her father. That might be simply because he did not have to spend hours in her company, Joliffe thought dryly. Still, it left him certain Mariena did not resent the marriage being made for her. If she did, she would likely have shown her anger against her father as readily as she showed it against her mother. What surprised him was his pity for Lady Benedicta, because even as he wondered at her coldness toward her husband’s open willingness to affection toward her, he was wondering, too, if Sir Edmund was not only aware she did not want his attentions but gave them deliberately in a place and way where she had to accept them with some outward grace.

If that were the way of it, Joliffe thought, he did not want to know how matters went between them when they were alone, with no need of good manners between them.

He then wondered which servants shared their bedchamber at night, and if there was any way he could make chance to talk with them.

He finished the song. Before he could ask what Lady Benedicta would like now, Mariena flung her sewing aside and stood up, stretching her arms and back in show of how stiff she was become, saying, “Please, may I have rest for a while?” To which her mother, more quietly setting down her own sewing, answered, “We should all rest a while. Idonea, may I trouble you to find out a servant and ask that wine and something slight to eat be brought us? For our player, too, say.”

With a willingness that might have been flight, Idonea said, “ Most certainly, my lady,” put aside her sewing, rose to her feet, curtsied, and went out. Lady Benedicta shifted on the windowseat to look out. Mariena crossed to Joliffe, sat down beside him, and said, smiling, “You play so well. I have a lute, but I don’t play nearly so well. I’d ask you to show me how to play, but it’s in my chamber.”

She was not touching him but was so near she might as well have been, her face turned up to his, eyes welcomingly bright, lips invitingly red.

Not doubting that Lady Benedicta could hear them and need only slightly turn her head their way to see them, too, Joliffe said in a carefully bland voice, “Good playing is a matter of much practicing, my lady.”

“I do practice, but surely lessons would help, too,” she said in her warm-honey voice, which was enticement as definite as her body pressed against him on the stairs had been.

Steadfastedly refusing the bait, Joliffe said, “Surely. Beyond doubt there will be someone in Cirencester skilled enough to teach you when the time comes you’re there.”

“But what of lessons from you here?” she asked and slid her hand, where her mother could not see it, along his thigh and down between his legs.

Joliffe came to his feet and away from her before he had thought of what he would do once he was on his feet. Once up, he had to do something that seemed casual and so strolled toward Lady Benedicta at the window. She looked around. He had the instant certainty that she was not in the least doubt about what had happened; but her hard look went to her daughter, rather than at him, as he said, desperate for something to say, “Would you have me lesson your daughter, my lady?”

That came out with more possibilities of meaning than he had intended, too late for him to take it back. Lady Benedicta’s sudden, bitter smile told she saw the possibilities as well as he did, but she surprised him by saying evenly, “I think my daughter has lessons enough, nor do I doubt you have enough to do without taking on more.”

“Indeed, I do, my lady.”

Dropping her voice too low for Mariena to hear, she surprised him more by asking, “With Sia, was it not?”

His wits now caught up to his tongue, and with a mental gulp as he swallowed that, Joliffe said, matching her quietness, “That came to nothing, my lady.”

“Did it? You surprise me.”

“As you do me, my lady.”

He had wondered if any of her smiles ever reached her eyes. Now as her eyes warmed suddenly with in-held laughter, Joliffe was as suddenly, however unreasonably, on her side, whatever that side was, because—given she was beset with a husband she gave no sign of loving and a daughter who gave every sign of hating her—that silent laughter was a gallant thing. It was even still there as she asked him, looking past him to Mariena, now on her feet and moving restlessly around the chamber, “Will you feel hard done by if I give you leave to go ere the wine comes?”

“Not in the least, my lady.”

“Then you have my leave.” To get away from her daughter, she did not say aloud.

Joliffe bowed very low, more truly respectful of her than he had been, and made for the door. Mariena did not cross his way but caught his eye with a taunting smile that dared him to change his mind and come to her. Only barely he kept his slight bow to her plain rather than mocking in return before he escaped out the door and down the stairs.

This time it was Idonea he met on the stairs, returning from her errand. He turned sideways and pressed his back against the wall for her to pass but she paused a step below him and asked with a nod up the stairs, “How is it in there now?”

It was such a simple, worried question, and her plain face so pleasant after Mariena’s heated interest in him, that Joliffe answered straight-forwardly, “No worse than it was.”

She sighed, “That’s bad enough,” and went on, past him and up the stairs.

Joliffe, going down the stairs two at a time and glad to be away, silently agreed with her.

Chapter 15

Will was gone and Piers and Gil not yet back with Tisbe when Joliffe returned to the cart-shed. Basset and Ellis were sitting in low-voiced talk beside the cart. Rose was lying down on her bed, blanket-covered and apparently sleeping, and as Joliffe joined the men, Ellis tipped his head toward her, saying in a half-whisper, “She’s resting,” adding in answer to Joliffe’s immediately worried look, “She’s well. Just resting.” Not something they had chance at most days. Joliffe thought he might try it himself sometime.

“How went it?” Basset asked.

“Well enough.” Joliffe heard the uncertainty under his words and amended, “Well enough with me. It was watching mother and daughter dislike each other that was strange. Sir Edmund found Will?”

“That Deykus came for him. Said he was to go riding with the men,” Basset said. “He should be safe enough there.”

“He wasn’t yesterday,” said Joliffe. He looked at Ellis, waiting, then asked, “You’re not going to protest that yesterday’s fall was only an accident?”

“How much good would it do if I did? Besides,” Ellis went on grudgingly, “he’s frightened. Not happy either. Something has him worried and scared.”

Basset nodded agreement to that, and Joliffe asked, “Could you tell of what? Or, better, of whom?”

“He said nothing sure,” Basset said. “He wouldn’t, would he? Not to us. It’s more in how he was than anything he said. You could all but see the knots in him loosen while he sat here listening to me tell him stories.”

“That would be because he was being dulled to sleep,” Ellis muttered.

It was a half-hearted scoff and Basset and Joliffe both ignored it, Basset going on, “You could see him forgetting to be worried or afraid or whatever he is. Then you could see every knot all tighten up again when Deykus came for him.”

“Frightened of his father?” Joliffe asked.

“He seemed to ease a little when he heard it was his father wanted him.”

“Frightened of his mother then?” Joliffe wondered.

“Or just worried Father Morice was after him,” Ellis said, “Only, no, it was more than that. For all his boldness and talk, he’s not a happy boy.”

“Whatever the reason,” Basset agreed.

“Did you learn anything of use from Father Morice?” Joliffe asked. “About Will or anything else?”

“I don’t know how much of use it is, and it’s more what was behind what he said than in his words.”

“Does he think everyone is as pleased about this marriage as they seem to be?”

“I gather so. In truth, if I were asked, I’d say there was a general eagerness to have Mariena married and out of here.”

“No sign that Mariena doesn’t want this marriage?” Joliffe asked.

“By what Father Morice says, she’s very willing to be married and away.”

“And Lady Benedicta has no objection to it?” Though Joliffe would be very surprised if she did, given the irk between her and her daughter.

“I asked that directly of Father Morice, under seeming concern that we not rub folk the wrong way with over-playing the joys of marriage to someone who might not be so happy about it. ‘Is her mother, for one, quite resigned to losing her daughter?’ I asked.”

“And he said?”

“He said with somewhat staggering bluntness that Lady Benedicta just wants to have her married and gone. More than that, I had the feeling that so does Father Morice.”

And yet Lady Benedicta had been unwilling for Harry Wyot to marry her, which would have got her out of here far sooner. Thinking on that, Joliffe said slowly, “From what I’ve seen, Lady Benedicta and Mariena don’t get on, true, but I can’t tell if that’s merely for the present or something more.”

“That’s something long-set between them,” Basset answered with firm certainty. “Given the chance, Father Morice does like to talk. I said something slight about mothers and daughters going through a difficult time, and he said from all he’s heard, it’s a time they’ve been going through since Mariena was small. She likes to have her own say about everything—final say, mind you—and goes angry if she doesn’t get it. That sets her at cross-purposes with Lady Benedicta, who’s not minded to give over being mistress of the household to her.”

“So it stands that the sooner Mariena is married and gone to a household of her own, the happier they’ll both be,” Joliffe said.

“Them and everyone else, I’d say,” said Basset.

“You know,” said Ellis, “it could be no more than all the dislike going on around him that’s troubling Will. It would keep me ready to duck, that’s sure.”

“It could account, too,” Basset said thoughtfully, “for Sir Edmund going after the Breche marriage instead of waiting for better, if the difference was made up by having a happy home in its stead.”

“Were there other offers for her?” Joliffe asked quickly.

“What Father Morice said was that when the Breche offer for her came, Sir Edmund took it on the leap. Mind you, it’s a rich marriage and no disparagement to the girl.”

“Is Sir Edmund badly enough in debt to need a quick, rich marriage?”

“Or is maybe his daughter in need of a quick marriage, rich or otherwise, for another reason,” Ellis said meaningfully. “She had a betrothed she expected to marry.”

“She’d be showing by now if she’d done anything beyond bounds with Harcourt,” Basset said. “Nor is she likely to have had chance with anyone since then.”

Joliffe kept to himself what he knew about her that way, partly because he thought that Mariena probably valued her place in the marriage market too highly to give herself freely to anyone, however much she took delight in stirring a man to lust. In truth, part of her delight in that might come from never satisfying a man once she had roused him.

Only with that thought did he face how much he had come to dislike her.

“Altogether,” Basset said, “I’d say we’ve learned nothing except this is an unhappy family and may be the happier once Mariena is married and gone.”

“Not if the trouble runs deeper,” Joliffe said. “Not if matters have never been mended between Sir Edmund and his wife since she strayed. And don’t tell me they’ve had two children since then and still share a bed,” he added at Ellis, “because none of that means anything is mended at all.”

Ellis, who had started to open his mouth, shut it again, looking darkly at Joliffe, who gave him no heed him and asked Basset, “Did you learn anything about Sir Edmund that we didn’t know?”

Basset brooded on his answer before finally saying, “I’m trying to think whether Father Morice deliberately avoided talk of him, or if it only seems that way. I know I made openings he could have talked into, if he’d wanted.”

“You did that,” Ellis said. “You did everything but ask him openly to tell you what he knew about Sir Edmund.”

Basset made a frowning, agreeing nod to that. “I did,” he granted. “And he never took the chance. He talked enough about Lady Benedicta and Mariena, but not about Sir Edmund at all. I wonder why.”

“Discretion,” Ellis said. “He’s the man’s priest after all.”

“He’s priest to everyone here,” Basset pointed out.

“Fear?” asked Joliffe, keeping to the question.

“Of what?” Basset asked.

“Of the same thing Will is afraid of?” suggested Joliffe.

“Which is?” Basset returned.

They all fell silent, no answer among them, until Basset folded his hands across his belly, leaned back against the cart wheel, and said, “I’m going to nap on it a while,” and shut his eyes. Ellis stood up and went out. Joliffe sat a few moments more, then went to get his writing from the cart and sat down in his corner to work a while more at the problem of Dux Moraud’s repentence of his terrible sins. As the play went now, when confronted with the dire consequence of his greatest sin, the duke was supposed to cry out, “Jesu have mercy on my corrupted soul,” fall prone before the altar, and lie there while an avenging angel spoke at length unto him, until finally the duke was allowed to say how badly he felt about the whole business and promise to do better hereafter.