A Play of Dux Moraud (30 page)

“Then I shall let Basset get on with it,” Joliffe said, “and sit myself down to enjoy your lady mother’s gift. Add my thanks to everyone else’s, if you please.”

With Will there, Joliffe was safe from whatever unwanted questions he might have had from Ellis about what he had been doing and any talk with Basset; and as Will was leaving, Piers and Gil and Tisbe returned. Joliffe took Tisbe to tie her up again and wipe her dry, while the boys were sent to fetch the players’ supper, and when they had eaten, it was time to ready for that evening’s play. Or, rather, two plays—
The Baker’s Cake
and
St. Nicholas and the Thief
—in place of
Robin and Marian
. Both were ones they had done so often that they could all have done them in their sleep, but in the hall that evening they whole-heartedly put themselves into their playing, to do honor to Lord Lovell in front of the increased guests and because they owed Sir Edmund fair return for their good meals and good shelter. Their playing won laughter where they wanted it and silence where there should have been and at the end a hearty hand-pounding as they made their bows. Tired, satisfied talk saw them all to bed, and Joliffe would have been grateful for how quickly sleep took him except that he was so quickly asleep.

If he dreamed, he did not know it and was kept from his thoughts the next morning by practice both for that night’s play,
Griselda the Patient,
and the two farces they would do tomorrow at the wedding banquet. Supposing the wedding happened, Joliffe thought once, then pushed the thought down and covered it over with the work of teaching Gil how to take a blow from a padded bat as if he were being hit “with a hunk of oak wielded by a giant,” Basset said. “In a farce, if it isn’t over-played, it won’t set them laughing.”

Twice through the morning a hurrying in the yard told when more guests arrived, but the hour for dinner came without a meal to go with it because Lord Lovell had sent word that he and Lady Lovell and their people would be there soon after mid-day and all was being held back for them.

“Which should put the cook into a foul humour,” Rose said. “Trying to keep the dinner from spoiling and holding up work on everything for tonight and tomorrow’s feasting, too.”

“At least Lord Lovell looks to have dry riding today,” said Ellis, unpleased himself at the delayed meal. “That should help
his
humour anyway.”

Yet more rain had pattered to an end sometime toward today’s dawn, and although the clouds still held, the day was dry above if not underfoot, with puddles among the cobbles of the yard and the cart-yard’s packed mud slick with wet. The hint of a mid-day sun showing through the clouds made no difference to that, and when a trumpet sang out distantly, telling that someone of importance was nigh, Rose warned, “Don’t any of you dare slip and fall,” as she straightened the Lovell tabard over Gil’s shoulders.

They meant to be in the yard with the rest of the household to greet Lord Lovell when he rode in. For that they were putting on their tabards, but Basset had decreed that Gil should have Piers’ because, “It will please my lord to see Gil has become fully one of us.”

Piers, not happy, tried, “It’ll be too small for him. It won’t fit him.”

“It’s a tabard,” Rose said calmly. “It doesn’t fit, it hangs.”

“It’ll be too short,” Piers warned.

“Lady Lovell considered you would be growing rather than shrinking,” his mother returned. “There’s a hem in it I can let down in a trice if need be.”

“And it won’t look a tent on Gil, the way it does on you,” jibed Ellis.

Because Ellis, tall and broad-shouldered, wore a tabard with easy grace, Piers was still looking for a quick come-again at him when Basset said, “What you’ll have is your cap with its feather and you shall stand at the end of our line and flourish it to my lord and lady.”

Ever-pleased for a chance to show off himself and his feather, Piers ceased troubling, fetched his hat from where he safe-kept it in the cart in this wet weather, and followed the rest of them out to the yard happily enough. Because they were wearing Lord Lovell’s livery, no one contested their right to line up not far aside from where Sir Edmund, Lady Benedicta, their family, and guests were hurriedly gathering outside the main door to the hall, just in time as the Lovells rode in with their attendants behind them and probably several baggage-laden horses bringing up the rear somewhere. Lord and Lady Lovell themselves were in brown traveling cloaks whose lower edges, as well as their horses’ legs, showed how muddy their travel had been, but they were both smiling as they drew rein in front of Sir Edmund. He and everyone else bowed or curtseyed, and Lord Lovell answered with a raised hand and smile to everyone and, “Well met, Sir Edmund,” to his host.

“My lord,” Sir Edmund returned, coming forward to hold his bridle while he dismounted.

One of the men guests went to help Lady Lovell likewise, with Lady Benedicta coming forward to greet her. As lord and lady, host and hostess all moved toward the hall’s doorway, there were more bows and curtsies among all the lookers-on, but Piers gave a particularly great flourish of his cap that brought Lord Lovell to look straight at the players. He took in Gil standing with them in a tabard and as he passed by nodded to Basset in acknowledgment, so that afterward, going back to the cartshed to put the tabards away before going at last to dinner, Ellis said in the triumph they all were feeling, “That nod! Everyone saw it. He noted us and everyone saw it!” Rose, smiling, tucked her arm through his, and Piers risked his cap by a high toss into the air, and Basset clapped a grinning Gil on the back.

Joliffe, trailing behind them all, had on a matching smile and said enough right things to be a part of their pleasure, but inwardly he was darkly waiting for when Lord Lovell would want to know what he had learned. He didn’t doubt that would come before the day was out, but he had to wait some several hours and the day was drawing into late afternoon, with rain threatening again, when a Lovell servant brought word that Lord Lovell wished to see Master Basset and the player Joliffe.

“We’re at his service,” Basset said as easily as if being summoned to a lord were an every-day and always-pleasant happening for him.

Rose hurriedly straightened their collars and smoothed their hair, smiling, but Joliffe saw the worry in her eyes as she brushed something imaginary from his doublet front and he was sorry for it. She had worries enough in her life without he gave her more. He could argue, he supposed, that this one was not his fault; but despite he could argue anything almost any time, including whether good was bad upon occasion, he just now did not feel like arguing anything and smiled at her with what he meant to be assurance.

He only wished he felt as assured as he tried to seem. What he had to tell Lord Lovell was truly not his fault, but messengers had taken blows for ill-received messages before this. And what if Lord Lovell simply refused to believe him?

Lord Lovell’s man led Basset and Joliffe not to the great hall or the tower or even the galleryed wing of rooms but past there to a gate in a wooden wall across the space between the wing’s far end and the sheds and workshops along the manor wall beyond it. Until then, Joliffe had vaguely thought the gate led probably to a woodyard or some such serviceable place and was surprised when he followed Basset into a small garden of four squared flower beds divided and surrounded by narrow, graveled paths. It must have been meant for a lady’s pleasure garden, but the place had a drowned, brown air of being little cared for that Joliffe thought came only a little from the weather and not much from autumn. It was a place unloved, here but not truly wanted or cared for by anyone.

Very like Lady Benedicta, he thought.

Another time he might have followed that thought, but there was no time now. Besides the soaking ground, the only place to sit in the garden was an unsheltered wooden bench, where Lord Lovell had chosen not to sit. Instead, he was standing, looking down at a crumpled plant long since beaten by weather into nothing recognizable, and he gave up his contemplation of it without probable regret as he turned, waved that his man could leave them, then waited where he was while Basset and Joliffe came to him, saying as they bowed low, “I ask your pardon for meeting you nowhere better than this. It seems to be the only private place on the manor at present, but it’s a condemnedly damp and cold one, so let’s make this go quickly. I gather from Sir Edmund that you’ve well pleased everyone here.”

“We’ve hoped so, my lord,” Basset said.

“Has Gil given satisfaction? Or is he as hopeless as you feared he would be?”

So he had not been fooled by the good front Basset had put on taking the boy, but giving that part of it no outward heed, Basset said full-heartedly, “He’s all and perhaps more than could be hoped for. He learns quickly and does well. In truth, he bids to be so good, I’ve considered again your offer to apprentice him to us and think to accept it now, if your lordship allows, lest he be wooed away to another company before his time.”

“He’s that good, is he? His mother hoped he’d have failed by now and I would bring him back to her. She’ll be displeased.” But Lord Lovell was not. Far from it. “Yes, I think we can draw up apprentice-papers for him. What of the other matter?”

“That’s best told by Master Ripon,” Basset said and stepped aside with another bow.

Left facing Lord Lovell, Joliffe thought: Right; take the good, leave me the bad.

But he had to admit the bad was fairly his, and as Lord Lovell’s heed shifted to him, he bowed again, playing for time despite he knew that time would make no difference. Whether said soon or late, what he had to say was not going to be welcomed.

“You’ve found out something?” Lord Lovell prompted. “Or nothing?”

“Something,” Joliffe said, and there being no way into it but straight, went on, “But about much more than John Harcourt’s death.” From there, keeping his voice flat and bare of outward feeling, he told it all as nakedly as he might, both what he had learned outright and what he had made of it, including warning that he might have it all the wrong way on.

After a time Lord Lovell ceased to watch his face, instead stood looking at the path between them, and went on looking at it a while longer after Joliffe had finished. Joliffe and Basset exchanged glances but waited in silence, until finally Lord Lovell looked up from his thinking and said, “God’s blood and bones. Should it be Lady Benedicta we first talk to, do you think?”

Joliffe was unused to being asked by a lord what he thought, but since he agreed that was where they should begin, he said, “If your lordship wishes it.”

Already started for the garden’s gate, Lord Lovell said, “Come then. You’ll have to be there for it.”

In some small corner of himself, Joliffe thought he would rather not be there for it, but mostly he would not have missed learning how true his guesses were for half the world. For the whole world he might have forgone it, but not for less—and since no one was offering him the world or anything else, he followed Lord Lovell from the garden, with Basset now coming last. Lord Lovell’s man was waiting outside the gate, and Lord Lovell sent him off to find where Lady Benedicta presently was, saying, “Tell her I’d have private word with her.”

The man went at a run toward the hall. Following at a steady stride, Lord Lovell was just past the steps to the tower when his man came running back to say Lady Benedicta was taking the air atop the tower with Lady Lovell. Should he go up and bid her come down?

Lord Lovell gave the doubtful sky a doubtful look—the mid-day hint of sun had faded away behind lowering grey clouds—but said, “No. I’ll go up to her,” and turned aside for the stairs up to the tower doorway.

Joliffe, mindful it might be better if Lord Lovell did not know of Basset’s aching stiffness, said quickly, “By your leave, my lord, would it be best if less rather than more were there when you talk with her? Would Master Basset do better not to come?”

Lord Lovell paused, then granted, “Yes. She might talk the easier. Master Basset, if you would be so good as to leave us.”

“My lord,” Basset said with a bow; and gave Joliffe a single small nod of thanks when Lord Lovell was turned away again. Joliffe returned the nod before following Lord Lovell up the stairs and into the tower. Inside the doorway, Lord Lovell said at Joliffe, “You lead.” Joliffe bowed and started up the long curve of stairs while behind him Lord Lovell turned back long enough to say something to his man still following them. In answer the man bowed and disappeared out the door, and with Lord Lovell at his heels, Joliffe kept on up the stairs.

Passing the open doorway to Lady Benedicta’s chamber, Joliffe glimpsed why she might have chosen to go to the tower’s top for a time, crowded as the room was with the bright talk and quick laughter of a great many—or maybe only six or so—women come as guests for the wedding. If Lady Benedicta was as little given to laughter and talk as Joliffe had thus far seen her, that merry group could well have been wearing on her.

As he stepped out on the tower’s roof, though, he saw that it was more than weariness had taken her there. The roof, round like the tower, was low-pitched, coming to a point in its middle, with around its outer edge a narrow walkway made of wooden slats fixed to wooden rails over the guttering that carried rainwater away to drain through the holes through the base of the outer wall. Since no Deneby lord had ever paid the royal fee for right to embattle his tower, that outer wall was not the high and crenellated battlement it might have been but merely low, with its flat top making a goodly place to sit, which was what Lady Lovell and Lady Benedicta were doing there. Almost as far from the door as they could be, they were seated side by side on cushions they must have brought with them, Lady Benedicta with her head bowed, one hand covering her eyes, with Lady Lovell holding her other hand and looking worriedly at her.