A Play of Isaac (33 page)

Stiffly, Master Penteney said, “I had nothing to do with Leonard’s death.”

“Besides,” Mistress Penteney said, “your brother, God help him, has been dead for years. Everyone knows that who knows anything about it at all.”

The silence in which Master Penteney did not answer that lasted too long, before Joliffe said, “I gather Master Barentyne thinks Master Glover was talking too much about the poisoning being Lollard vengence. He . . .”

“I wish I’d never said that!” Mistress Penteney exclaimed. “It’s all foolishness!”

“Not that Master Barentyne sees any way Glover can be linked to the sweetmeats,” Joliffe went on; but now he looked at her rather than her husband, laying his words out very deliberately. “The sweetmeats came straight from the baker’s to here. Master Barentyne has begun to wonder, though, why you wanted them so much ahead of time.” That was a lie, but if Master Barentyne had not wondered it, Joliffe had. “Master Wymond has never been known for being late with what’s ordered from him. It would be more reasonable, in this warm weather, for you to want the sweetmeats to be made later rather than sooner wouldn’t it?”

Mistress Penteney looked confusedly from him to her husband and back again. “It was . . . I don’t know. It just seemed . . . I thought it would be better, that’s all.”

Knowing how much a fool and worse than fool he was going to look if he failed to bring this off, Joliffe pressed on, giving Mistress Penteney no time to regain her balance. “Of course, the whole thing is that everyone is thinking about the sweetmeats. Everyone has been wondering whether it was by chance or purpose they were tainted. If by chance, there’s no problem. If by purpose, then whose purpose? Who would want to strike like that against Master Penteney?”

“No one,” snapped Master Penteney. “What happened was simply mischance. I’m satisfied of that. If Master Barentyne isn’t . . .”

“But suppose,” Joliffe interrupted, still watching Mistress Penteney, “you weren’t the reason for it at all, sir? What if the sweetmeats
were
tainted on purpose but it had nothing to do with Lollards or against you? What if, instead of all that, it’s Lewis’s death we should be looking at?”

“Lewis died of his weak heart,” Master Penteney said at the same time Mistress Penteney demanded, her voice breaking with distress, “Make him stop talking about all this!”

Master Penteney put an arm around her shoulders and said at Joliffe, “She’s right. This is pointless talk. Have done.”

Knowing he had gone too far to have done, Joliffe said sharply, “Suppose the whole purpose was to make Lewis sick so that he could be given something not to
help
his heart but to stop it once and for all.”

Master Penteney opened his mouth, closed it again, apparently unable to find words sufficient for the outrage suffusing his face, before he finally burst out, “Does Basset know you’re a crazed young fool?”

But Mistress Penteney was staring, rigidly silent, at Joliffe and he turned on her, saying with seeming merciless-ness, “I’m not the only one who saw you put the packet of whatever you gave Lewis up one sleeve and take the packet you showed the doctor out of your other.”

It was a lie but she couldn’t know that. Even so, a hardened woman would have faced him better on it, but Mistress Penteney shrank back, shaking her head with wordless horror.

Master Penteney took a furious, threatening step toward Joliffe, ordering, “Stop it!”

Joliffe took a step backward but said past him, still at Mistress Penteney, “Besides that, Master Barentyne has a man right now asking all over Oxford if anyone has lately bought quantities of any of those things the doctor said could have been used to taint the sweetmeats and bring on vomiting. Groundsel. A concoction from elder bark. Anything.”

Mistress Penteney, dropping the lavender, pressed her hands to her mouth and went on—more desperately now—shaking her head. All color had drained from her face and her eyes were huge with fear.

Knowing he had to break her now or lose the game altogether, Joliffe said, demanding and begging together, “My lady, if he’s going find out that it was you who bought anything like this, please, do you want to be here when he comes looking for you?”

The tear-wrought cry of protest and denial that broke from behind her hands turned Master Penteney from Joliffe to her. Too surprised to be alarmed yet, he said, “Anne? What is it? What . . .” He caught up to what Joliffe had been saying, matched it with the terror in her eyes, and said in a suddenly stricken whisper, “Blessed Saints. Anne, what have you done?”

Her hands slid down to clutch her throat as she turned her frighted stare on him. “What he said,” she whispered hoarsely. “About buying the elder and groundsel. I couldn’t let Kathryn marry Lewis. How did I ever think I could? I . . . I . . .” She lost breath and seemed unable to find more.

“But you never said anything,” Master Penteney said, sounding still half-disbelieving what he was hearing. “You never said anything against it at all.”

“I did!” Mistress Penteney cried out, anguished. “All this past half-year, when time started to run out, I tried. I’d start to say something about the marriage, but every time I did, you’d start in on what you could see coming from it! All your plans for Richard running the Fairfield properties and making a separate home for him and Geva. Everything. I couldn’t make you hear me!”

“But all these years we’ve purposed it, Anne. There’s been time and enough to say you didn’t like the thought!”

“It didn’t matter until now! We thought Lewis would die before now and we’d marry Kathryn to Simon. But Lewis didn’t die and I couldn’t bear it! I couldn’t bear Lewis to be what Kathryn first knew of being married. Not with all the rest of her life to be lived through!”

Finally, fully, Master Penteney grasped what she was telling him, and like a man who had taken a blow under the ribs he took an unsteady backward step and gasped, short-breathed. “My God.” Staring at her. “My God and all the saints.”

Hands still clutched at her throat, Mistress Penteney stared back at him and saw in his horror that she had lost him. But in the instant that her face began to twist toward that knowledge and grief, he recovered with a gasp, took a long stride back to her and grabbed her into his arms, pulling her to him as if his life and hers depended on him holding her to him as tightly as he could.

“Sanctuary,” he said fiercely. “Before Master Barentyne comes for you we’ll get you into sanctuary. I won’t let them have you. I swear it. We’ll have you into sanctuary first.”

Meaning into a church, any church. Once someone claimed sanctuary in a church, the law could not touch them for forty days, whatever crime they were accused of. And if, in that forty days, they confessed to the crime, they could not be tried or imprisoned, only sent into exile—given so many days to reach an appointed port and sail from England, forbidden ever to return.

In his arms, Mistress Penteney began to cry, but he looked past her to Joliffe and asked, “You say Barentyne is asking right now about anyone buying this . . . these things?”

“Yes.”

Not loosing his hold on her, Master Penteney asked his wife, “Will he find out you did this?”

“Yes.” She gulped on her freely flowing tears. “Yes. I bought groundsel at some places and elder at others all over Oxford this past week. They have good uses. That’s why apothecaries have them. That’s what I said I wanted them for. It’s only if you mix the groundsel with . . .”

“Best we don’t try for any of the near churches,” Master Penteney said, planning aloud. “We might meet Master Barentyne on our way to them. St. Peter-le-Bailey would maybe be best, well away from any way he might take to come here. We can go by the back lane from here and around to come in by the West Gate. No. Not St. Peter. St. Ebbe’s. That’s straight in from West Gate, easier to come to.”

He was already moving while he said it, pulling Mistress Penteney around and starting toward the back gate. She began what might have been a protest. “Hal . . .” But he said, “When you’re safe, there’ll be time for more. For now, sanctuary is what matters.” He looked back at Joliffe, standing where they had left him. “If Barentyne shows here any time soon . . .”

“I’ll delay him as best I can,” Joliffe said. Was this how he had meant things to go? Too late to wonder, but, “One thing,” he said. Master Penteney slowed, looked back, but did not stop. Joliffe raised his voice to reach him. “If ever Master Barentyne asks why you took her to sanctuary, could you just tell him she confessed to you and leave me out of it?”

Master Penteney gave a curt nod of silent agreement. Then he and Mistress Penteney were gone out of the garden and away.

Chapter 19

Joliffe followed them slowly enough that they were gone from the yard by the time he came from between the sheds. Since Master Barentyne had no reason to suppose Mistress Penteney would be warned and try to escape him, she would probably reach St. Ebbe’s church safely enough. If they weren’t followed too soon. And knowing he was being several ways a fool, he sauntered the length of the yard to the front gateway.

The gates were closed, only the small door through one of them standing open. He went out, giving a nod to the Penteney servant still on guard. The man nodded back with nothing to say, and Joliffe leaned back against the near side of the gateway, arms crossed, at seeming-ease as he took to watching the passing folk in the street. He had not watched long before Master Barentyne came striding along from the North Gate through the crowd with a grim look to him and four of his men following. That told Joliffe all he needed to know, and as the five men neared him, he straightened up with an easy movement that put him directly into their way to the gate-door and said with a bow and cheerful curiosity, “This is soon to see you again, Master Barentyne. You haven’t found out anything from Glover already, have you?”

It was either stop or walk into Joliffe. Master Barentyne stopped and answered, “My men haven’t brought him in yet. It will be a while longer.”

Seeming not to see Master Barentyne’s half-made gesture for him to stand aside, Joliffe said lightly, “What brings you here, then?”

“The other matter,” Master Barentyne muttered, not wanting to be overheard, it seemed. Master Penteney’s man was listening hard. The crowner’s grim look did not ease. “Let us pass, man.”

“Oh. Yes. Sorry.” Joliffe confusedly started to go through the doorway ahead of him, thought better of it, started to step aside, thought better of that, made to go first through the doorway after all, and only finally settled on standing clear to let Master Barentyne go ahead of him.

Thrown off by the fluster of movements, Master Barentyne hesitated, waiting to be sure Joliffe was done before he went on. Joliffe bowed encouragingly, Master Barentyne finally went, and Joliffe followed him closely enough to cut ahead of his four men following him, fell into step beside him as he made toward the house, and asked, “The other matter? You mean the tainted food? You’ve found something out?”

They were to the porch. He stopped as he asked the last question, and Master Barentyne stopped, too, facing him to answer with taut impatience. “I’ve found out Mistress Penteney bought groundsel from at least three apothecaries and elder from an herbwife, all in this past week or so. I’m here to question her about it. Now if you’ll pardon me.” He did not wait for pardon but went on, his men behind him.

It had not been much of a delay. Joliffe could only hope there would be a longer one once Master Barentyne was inside. Someone would be sent to bring Mistress Penteney to him, would find she was not to be found. Then it would be found that Master Penteney was missing, too. Only then would the search for them spread out from the house, and even when it was determined neither of them was there, no one would know why or which way to send a search for them, and by that time all that was straightened around, Mistress Penteney would hopefully be into sanctuary.

And if she was not, there was nothing more Joliffe could do for her anyway.

Tired all through and not certain what he was feeling, he went to the barn, into its shadows and quiet, was glad to find Basset still alone there, sitting on a cushion with the box that kept their plays open beside him and papers in his hands. He looked up as Joliffe came toward him and started to ask, “Do you think maybe we should work over . . .”

Joliffe went past him, dropped wearily down beside the cart, and leaned back against the wheel, his arms draped over his updrawn knees, his head bowed, his eyes shut.

Basset changed his question to, “What’s wrong?”

Without lifting his head, Joliffe said, “Master Barentyne has found out it was Mistress Penteney poisoned the sweetmeats. He’s here to question and probably arrest her.”

Basset shot to his feet. “Blessed St. Genesius! Does Penteney know?”

His eyes still shut, Joliffe answered, “Master Penteney took her away to sanctuary in some church just before Master Barentyne came for her. He knows she killed Lewis, too. But Master Barentyne doesn’t.”

Basset sat heavily back down. “Joliffe.” His voice was flat. “What have you done?”

Briefly, Joliffe told him, first about setting Master Barentyne on to Walter Glover—“Though I don’t know how that will come out”—and then what Master Barentyne had told him about the questioning being made of apothecaries and herbwives. “Knowing that, I came back here, asked to speak with Master and Mistress Penteney both, told her I knew about the packets in her opposite sleeves and what Master Barentyne was doing. She broke down.” Just as he had meant her to because all he had were suspicions, no proof without she admitted to it.

“And Penteney?” Basset asked in a low voice.

Joliffe told him the rest of it, ending, “He took her out the back way not much before Master Barentyne and his men came in the front. They’re at the house now.”

But they were not. With a hard rap at the door and not waiting to be asked, Master Barentyne stalked in, two of his men with him. Basset stood up. Joliffe dragged himself to his feet and stayed leaning against the wheel, his arms crossed while Master Barentyne waved his men to search the barn, then said at him, “I’m told you were with Master and Mistress Penteney in the garden not long ago. Do you know where they’ve gone?”