A Play of Piety (33 page)

“How did you come from that to being a player?”

Since a servant’s place gave him no space to say that was none of Master Soule’s business, Joliffe said in his same servant-voice that mingled respect and nothing forthcoming that could be helped, “I found that hours of ink and pen and sitting in one place didn’t suit me, sir.” Something that was as true now as it had been at age nine. But if Master Soule wanted to talk, he was willing and deliberately brightened his voice to add, “I did like the reading, though. Have kept that up. As Jack told you. We have good talks together, Jack and I.”

“He should have been a clerk himself, except his back is so bad,” Master Soule said. “It’s kept him penned here when he might have gone elsewhere.” Was there a shade of longing in Master Soule’s voice for some lost chance of his own?

Trying for just the right note of a servant making cheery but still respectful talk, Joliffe offered, “He sees a lot of the world, though, right there at the gate. He likes that part of it all. I warrant he was as glad as the rest of us to see the last of Mistress Thorncoffyn this morning.”

As he hoped, Master Soule rose to that bait, saying with unchecked disgust, “So are we all. An odious woman who sees no reason for God and all the earth to exist except to feed her appetites. Our good fortune would be she’s been so offended she never returns.”

“We were all surprised, though, the crowner let her go,” Joliffe tried. “What with everything and all.”

Master Soule came to the table, took a spoon, and began pushing at the meat pottage in the bowl without sitting down or showing much desire to eat. “If it comes to charging her with manslaughter in Aylton’s death, she can be found as readily at one of her manors as here.”

“It’s pity she took Master Hewstere with her,” Joliffe ventured. “It’s that put out the sisters are about it.”

That was a more outright lie than his claim to have wanted to be a clerk, but it proved a very serviceable one as Master Soule threw down the spoon and said, “It would seem we’re well-rid of him, too. He always seemed a man of reason, but I have to doubt that now he’s chosen to become her dog. In place of the dead one, as it were. He could at least have lingered to be at Master Aylton’s funeral.”

That was to be this afternoon, Joliffe knew. There had been talk among the sisters which of them should go, but there had been no mention of Master Soule attending at all and, curious why Master Hewstere’s failure to be there seemed so particular an offense to him, Joliffe asked, “Will you be going then, sir?”

“No.” Master Soule took up the spoon again, sat down. “I have my duties here and did not know the man. It was Master Hewstere knew him. They were even friends upon a time, I gather, if not so much of late.”

Joliffe echoed sharply, “Master Hewstere knew him?”

“As I understand it, it was Master Hewstere helped him into Mistress Thorncoffyn’s service.” Spoon filled and on its way to his mouth, Master Soule added, “Recommended him to Geoffrey, I believe.”

While Joliffe was gathering his wits around that, Master Soule gave a sideways nod of dismissal at him. Joliffe willingly accepted it, bowed, and escaped from the room and down the stairs, to come to a stop in the sacristy, staring out the window opposite him with a whirl of shifting possibilities in his head.

That Aylton and Hewstere had known each other before here, before Aylton’s service to Mistress Thorncoffyn, changed the balance of several things. For one, it made more possible that Aylton would have sought Hewstere’s help in escaping that night. More than that, Hewstere, when first tending Aylton after the beating, had had excellent chance to offer his help in Aylton escaping and warn him against the sleeping draught. Or turn it another way: when Hewstere was first tending Aylton after the beating,
Aylton
had had the chance to ask for Hewstere’s help.

Either way, Mistress Thorncoffyn’s unexpected “illness” had not interfered. Hewstere had simply made a reason to leave the hospital for a time in the night.

Or was Mistress Thorncoffyn’s “illness” after all unexpected? Not by Aylton, surely, if it was granted he had poisoned the ginger. In fact, knowing she was going to be ill and, hopefully die, it had surely added to his urgent need to escape, lest suspicion after all rouse and turn his way.

Again there was the question of why poison her here, where the best of help to cure her could be counted on. Unless help
not
to cure her was precisely on what Aylton had been depending. More than that, a physician could know about poisons as readily as an apothecary. Could have arsenic on hand or know how to get it.

But Hewstere had helped to keep Mistress Thorncoffyn alive.

After Aylton was dead.

Or after Hewstere had been certain Aylton would
be
dead.

After all, Mistress Thorncoffyn had all along been worth more to Hewstere alive. Worth far more than Aylton was, that was a certainty.

But then why would he have helped Aylton poison the ginger at all before Aylton gave it to Geoffrey for his grandmother?

Unless—Joliffe’s mind jerked and shifted among possibilities—unless there was something Aylton knew about Hewstere that Hewstere did not want known by anyone else. Something Aylton could use as a threat to force Hewstere to help with the poison. So Hewstere had helped him—until chance came to be rid of Aylton and whatever extortion Aylton was using on him, and win himself even deeper into Mistress Thorncoffyn’s favor.

Whosever’s thought it had been for Aylton to escape the hospital—Aylton’s or Hewstere’s—the rest would have been easy. Aylton would have gone to Hewstere’s house, would have waited there until Hewstere came, and never questioned when Hewstere did come and gave him food and drink and very probably something to ease the pain of the beating—something that had instead sent him senseless. That done, Hewstere, a well-sized man, could have carried Aylton the short way from his house into the orchard and to the stream beside the garden, and laid him there, his head in the water to drown, looking like he had been coming from the hospital when he fell.

Joliffe jerked from his frozen stare out the sacristy window, swung his head side to side as he tried to decide which way to go next, then made up his mind and went out the sacristy’s rear door, taking the way Aylton had probably gone that night, through the small garden and around to the road in front of the hospital that would have been in deep darkness then. Under Jack’s window he called up to him, and when Jack put his head out, asked, “Is the crowner still in town, do you know? There was mention made he might stay for Aylton’s funeral.”

“You’re on the wrong side of the gate, you know, and where’s my dinner?” Jack said back good-humouredly. “So far as I’ve heard, he’s still in town, probably at the inn, or they’ll know where he’s gone.” And added as Joliffe started away, “Hai! My dinner?”

Joliffe waved and kept going.

Master Osburne proved easy to find. As Joliffe neared the inn, the crowner came out its front door and stood regarding the sky as if wondering why it was so clear. He shifted his heed to Joliffe readily enough as Joliffe came to him and asked, as Joliffe bowed to him, “What is it?”

Just as abruptly, Joliffe said, “Master Soule said just now that Master Hewstere and Aylton knew one another before Aylton came into Mistress Thorncoffyn’s service. That Master Hewstere knew him well enough to recommend him to the Thorncoffyns. Did you know that?”

Master Osburne, his brows drawing down in thought as he took that in, shook his head slowly. “No, I did not know that. Assuredly Master Hewstere never said anything about it. He has gone with Mistress Thorncoffyn, yes?”

“Yes. My thought is that if he and Aylton knew one another longer than either said, better than anyone has thought, then parts of all this that haven’t made sense go together better.”

He went from there with what else he had thought, and Master Osburne began to nod while he talked and said when Joliffe finished, “As you say, things go together better, knowing they knew each other well.” He stopped nodding and fixed a sharp look on Joliffe. “What needs knowing is what Aylton might have known against Hewstere that was worth killing to keep secret. Since you seem to have a great many thoughts beyond the ordinary in this matter, have you any thoughts that way?”

Joliffe had not gone that far with his thinking yet and said, “No. No thought at all. I had little chance to see them with each other, but in the little that I did, I would never have thought they more than barely knew each other.”

“Yet Master Soule seemed to think they were friends. I wonder why?”

“He and Master Hewstere spent much time in talk together. They had to have talked of
something
besides the stars and courses of the planets and mankind’s unsettled humours. Or it may be something Master Soule only gathered in passing.”

“I shall surely shortly be asking Master Soule about it.”

Joliffe could not hold back from asking, “And then?”

“Then I shall likely go looking for what there might have been that might have made Master Hewstere willing to help Aylton poison Mistress Thorncoffyn. Of course the poisoning may have been meant merely to make her ill enough to value and depend on Master Hewstere’s care forever after . . .”

“There have to be safer ways of making her ill than arsenic.”

The crowner nodded agreement to that. “No, it was death they were after,” he said.

“But that had to be Aylton’s desire more than Hewstere’s,” Joliffe said, wanting to be certain that was clear. “Because when the chance came to be rid of Aylton, it seems Hewstere took it with no pause at all.”

“No pause at all,” Master Osburne agreed. “I think I will not linger to see who does what at Aylton’s funeral after all.” Staring away along the road, he seemed now to be thinking aloud to himself. “Master Thorncoffyn has told me where Aylton came from. I’ve sent a man to find out if he has family who should know he is dead. Now there are questions I want asked there, too. Master Soule will likely be able to tell me from where Master Hewstere came to here. I can have questions asked that way, too.” His gaze came suddenly back to Joliffe. “You have my thanks,” he said. But there was speculation in that thanks and in his look, and Joliffe, aware that in his eagerness he had let go all of a servant’s manners, gave an over-deep bow, said humbly and quickly, “I pray I’ve been of service, sir,” bowed deeply again, and retreated even while Master Osburne was saying, “You have been. Most assuredly, you have been.”

Chapter 24

T
hrough the following few days, the hospital’s life settled back into quiet and commonplaces. Surprisingly quickly and with a welcome ease, the troubles raised by Mistress Thorncoffyn and by Aylton’s death smoothed out of the hospital’s life like water settling to calm on a briefly troubled pond. That the crowner simply left meant that those who knew no better went on thinking Aylton’s death had been because of Mistress Thorncoffyn’s beating, and while talk of murder would have been more diverting among the men in the hospital’s hall, the other made pleasant talk enough until newer, nearer matter came with tired-looking Agnes Kemp bringing in her aged and tottering grandfather. Both he and she seemed relieved to have him there, she parting from him with a kiss on his forehead and promise to return on Sunday to see how he did, he settling down onto his mattress declaring it was softer lying than he had had in many a moon and neither was there anything so bad about being soaked clean from head to foot all at one time either. Within two days he was as familiar with the hospital’s ways as if he had been there a month, cheerfully at ease, and all the more welcomed by the other men for wanting to hear everything they had to tell of the Thorncoffyns and that of Master Aylton.

Oddly, Master Hewstere seemed no more missed than Mistress Thorncoffyn and all of hers. The town’s other physician sent word he would come when needed, and the sisters supposed among themselves that Master Soule would sometime stir himself to find someone else, but in the meanwhile no one was displeased with Sister Margaret’s care.

All of that might have been sufficient reason for Sister Letice’s raised spirits, her more often smiling and sometimes laughter, but when Joliffe said something of it to Rose, she said with one of those smiles that women use to puzzle men, “She’s had that distillation from Master Goldin, as he promised. He’s also written to her that he hopes to be here again about Saint Edward’s day.” When Joliffe showed his uncertainty of what that had to do with anything, Rose added pointedly, “He’s a widower. And the sisters here are nursing sisters. They’ve no nuns’ vows to hold them here.”

Finally seeing, Joliffe said, “Oh.”

“Oh,” Rose agreed, smiling

So in some ways nothing here was changed and yet everything was changing. The old men went on as they had been, with maybe nobody but the sisters seeing how Deke Credy was fading day by day. Adam Morys of the broken leg was able to leave his bed and walk a little, held up between Sister Petronilla and Joliffe while he rediscovered his balance but with promise of crutches to come and Sister Margaret’s assurance that his leg had mended so straight he would likely have no limp at all. Iankyn Tanner’s bouts of struggling to breathe became fewer; he had hope of going home at cider-making time. John Oxyn’s fever finally fully freed him, leaving him weak but no longer wildly restless for hours on end. And Basset was able to bear being on his feet and, with the help of a staff, was walking, at first for only little whiles and unsteadily but better every day, to the point where Sister Ursula told him, “We’ll not have you here much longer.” And cast a look at Joliffe as she added, “Which means we lose you, too, I suppose.”

Joliffe spread his hands to show it was not his fault.

“Still,” she said, “harvest is coming to an end, and that will likely bring Ivo back to us. Hopefully before you leave.”

She included Basset and Joliffe together in that, and now it was Basset who spread his hands, saying, “You’ll have to blame Sister Margaret and Sister Letice for our loss. It’s their good care has made me better.”