A Play of Dux Moraud (33 page)

That was complete dismissal, and with another bow, they took it; but crossing the yard, Basset weighed the pouch in his hand and said, “I’m liking this lord more every day.”

At the cartshed the rest of the company took the news in good part, no one minding to be away from here; but it wasn’t until the morning, when Deneby Manor was behind them and there was a hope of sun behind the clouds, that Ellis said across Tisbe’s back to Joliffe as they walked along, “Anyway, this will surely stop you trying to make something out of that grievous
Dux Moraud
. That’s the one good thing from all of this.”

Joliffe, having had the long, unsleeping hours of the night to come to some terms with yesterday, feigned large surprise at him. “What? By no means whatever! In truth I’ve finally seen my way clear to the end that had me stopped until now.”

“Please,” Ellis pleaded. “No.”

“Yes,” Joliffe said blithely, his spirit rising with the familiar pleasure of irking him. “I’ve been trying to deal with Moraud as a villain of great daring and great sins—sins so great his repentance was a thing beyond believing. Or at least beyond my being able to write it well.”

“Humility,” Ellis said. “I like that in you.”

“But,”
Joliffe said grandly, “now Sir Edmund has shown me the way. There was nothing great or daring about anything he did. All his sins were small-hearted and petty. Petty lust. Petty hatred. Petty greed . . .”

“If those are petty sins,” Ellis said impatiently, “what exactly do you consider a
great
sin?”

“Pride,” Joliffe said promptly.

Ellis gave a bark of laughter. “That makes you a great sinner, then. You’ve enough pride for—”

“My pride is honest and proportionate pride,” Joliffe said with dignity. “There’s no sin in pride at filling my humble place in the world as best I’m able. In using well what talents God has given me. In—”

“Sir Edmund?” Ellis said quellingly.

“Sir Edmund,” Joliffe said, unable to keep a hard edge from his words, “is a hollow-hearted coward who has never seen beyond what
he
wants, what
he
feels. Other people’s grief or pain or hope or happiness don’t matter to him. Only
his
grief,
his
pain,
his
hope and happiness count for anything. If he comes to repentance now, it’s not because his heart has truly changed but because he’s frightened to his hollow core that he’ll otherwise be made to suffer for what he helped to happen.” Joliffe heard the anger building in his own voice and shifted back to deliberate lightness. “If I do him wrong, may I be forgiven. But there I have my Moraud. A petty man sniveling his way into repentance. I think—”

“You think too much,” said Ellis.

Author’s Note

Lord and Lady Lovell are historical. His effigy can be seen on his tomb in Minster Lovell church in Oxfordshire, close by the ruins of Minster Lovell manor house. The site is a lovely one to visit, with its remains of golden Cotswold stone buildings beside the Windrush River under Wychwood Forest.

The Denebys and all about them are imaginary, but the story of incestuous father and daughter is an old one, to be found in many sources and forms through the centuries, including the contemporary
Confessio Amantis
by John Gower
and
the actual play of
Dux Moraud
.

Unfortunately, the play presently exists only in fragmentary form, written in the 1400s on a damaged and reused parchment of the early 1300s. We have the Duke’s speeches, no one else’s. This brief remains of the play can be found in
Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments,
edited by Norman Davis for the Early English Text Society, Oxford University Press, 1970, or in perhaps more generally accessible form (if somewhat less accurately and under the title
Duke Moraud
) in Joseph Quincy Adams’s
Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas.