A Play of Isaac (14 page)

Simon and Kathryn both looked at him, surprised and showing it. “You read,” said Simon.

“It helps if I’m to learn my part in plays,” Joliffe said dryly.

“But Latin,” Simon said. “Did you learn it in a grammar school?”

Not about to explain his Latin-learning, Joliffe was spared finding a side-ways answer by Kathryn saying, “Simon wants to have a grammar school. He wants to teach Latin.”

“Kathryn,” Simon said, warning her of something.

Kathryn leaned to the side, bumping her shoulder against his companionably while going on to Joliffe, “He’s good at teaching. He’s taught me Latin.”

“
Kathryn
.”

“Oh, he’s not going to tell Mother or Father. Are you?” she said at Joliffe.

“I’ve no reason to if they don’t ask me, and I doubt they’re going to ask me,” Joliffe answered. “But you should know your father is in the room behind us.”

Kathryn and Simon looked over and up at the window with alarm, but Kathryn immediately eased and said, albeit in a lower voice, “He’s talking with someone.”

And I wanted to hear them, Joliffe thought, while saying, also quietly, “Your father and mother don’t like you learning Latin?”

“They don’t know about the Latin. What they don’t like is Simon wanting to have a grammar school and teach.”

“I’m supposed to become a victualler and travel and merchant for Master Penteney on Lewis’s behalf,” Simon said.

“You don’t want to travel?”

“I want to travel. I just don’t want to merchant or be a victualler.” He said it lightly, but Joliffe thought there was unhappiness flickering behind the words. As well there might be if there were something else he truly wanted for his life.

Kathryn bumped against his shoulder again. “Once I’m married to Lewis, I’ll get you the money for your school.”

Simon smiled and bumped his shoulder to hers. “As if they’ll let you.”

Uncomfortable with the sudden feeling that the unhappiness behind Simon’s smile and lightness was for something deeper than not wanting to be a merchant or a victualler, Joliffe asked, knowing he should let it lie, “When’s this marriage to be?” Asking Kathryn but watching Simon.

Simon went on smiling but his eyes were suddenly sick, though Kathryn answered blithely enough, “Father thinks we should make our betrothal vows this Friday, with Lord and Lady Lovell here to hear them. Then the first banns can be read in church on Sunday.”

“And they can be married before Lammas,” said Simon. He stood up. “I’d best away.” He pointed at the book. “Don’t let your mother see it.”

Kathryn made a face at him while tucking the book into the housewifely purse hung from her belt. “I won’t. I never.”

“You did once and she nearly threw it in the fire. My Latin grammer,” he added to Joliffe.

“But she didn’t throw it in the end,” Kathryn said.

“No, but it took you a month to woo her into giving it back to me. She doesn’t hold with the time I spend with books,” he explained to Joliffe. “Kathryn had to swear she hadn’t learned any Latin from me.”

“Well, I hadn’t yet,” Kathryn said. “Nor did she make me promise I wouldn’t. I told her I’d taken the book from him in sport, and that was true, too. Sport is done for pleasure, and learning is a pleasure.”

If she was that well-witted at wriggling around things, it was a waste she couldn’t be a lawyer, Joliffe thought. Or at least married to Simon. That she would be married off to Lewis seemed an even greater waste than it had at first.

Across the garden Piers yelled, laughing, at Lewis, “You didn’t say it was the thimble on her finger! It’s supposed to be something you hide!”

“Time we fetched our boys,” said Kathryn.

 
 
The rest of the day and evening went all as planned and perfectly. Basset had settled with Master Penteney for the players and Lewis to have their supper before the household did, Matthew on duty again to help contain Lewis’s excitment. Then, while the household dined, they readied for the play and at the meal’s end came into the hall to do it while the household was still at table.

Joliffe, Ellis, and Basset somewhat raced through their part of it, to bring Lewis and Piers on the sooner, and that was just as well since once Lewis and Piers were on it seemed they would never get off, chasing Ellis around and around while the household roared with laughter. When Ellis had had enough and made his escape, the two of them turned to pretending to attack people along the benches until Matthew collared Lewis and Joliffe collared Piers and made them take their bows to everyone’s applause.

Ellis and Basset joined them, and when even Lewis had had enough, he was led off to bed and they returned thankfully to the barn.

“And the only time Lewis poked you was your own doing. You dodged the wrong way,” Basset said to Ellis as they sorted themselves toward bed. “The boy is a wonder. And here.” He tossed a coin toward Rose who was sitting on Pier’s bed with her son’s sleeping head in her lap. The coin in its momentary flight flickered gold in the lantern light. “Sign of Master Penteney’s pleasure.”

Rose caught it, held it into the light to see it better, and said, wonderingly, “A gold noble? He gave you a gold noble?”

“As you can see.”

“Oh, Da,” she said, smiling and sounding near to tears together. She closed her hand around the coin and pressed it to her heart. With that coin they were farther off from poverty than they had been for years.

Basset went to her, laid his hands gently on her shoulders, and kissed her forehead. “I know,” he said, answering all the things she had not said but they all felt.

In that golden glow they went to bed. Joliffe slept deeply, and when he did awaken with the first graying of morning around the door, he made no move to rise, in no hurry to start a day he knew would be all work, readying the play for tonight.

So it was Ellis who arose first, yawning and scratching, and went with early morning bleariness out the door to see to his necessities . . . and a moment later stepped backward into the barn again, staring down at something on the ground outside.

And only after another long moment turned around to say slowly, stiff with disbelief, “There’s a dead man out here.”

Chapter 9

Except for Piers, still soundly sleeping, they all struggled up from their blankets to join Ellis at the door, Basset pulling it open wider so they could stare together at what was, beyond denying, a dead man lying on his back a very few yards away. A definitely dead man, because no one alive lay with such emptily staring eyes.

There was dawnlight enough by now to let them see that, and that meant there was light enough other people were surely up and around; and because it would be better if they weren’t found standing there staring at a dead man, Basset said tersely, “Don’t anyone touch him. Joliffe, go find someone. At the stables. That will be quickest. There’ll be men sleeping there. Have someone from there go to tell Master Penteney.”

As Joliffe went, Ellis was putting his arm around Rose, telling her, “Come back inside. You’re shivering, love,” while Basset muttered to himself, “There goes the day.”

He made no mistake there. Joliffe gave word to a yawning stablehand just coming down the ladder from the loft, left him yelling to his fellows, and returned to join Basset and Ellis in guard over the body, that no one do anything with it until Master Penteney could take charge and give whatever orders would be necessary until the crowner came. As first-finders, reporting and keeping watch over the body was their duty, but more than duty, it was necessity and they knew it without need to say so to each other. Wandering, lordless players were always the first and easiest to accuse of anything that happened awry and a dead man was something very awry indeed, making it to their best interest to guard the body, that no evidence be spoiled before the crowner came, it being the crowner’s duty to investigate, in the king’s name, any unexpected deaths, to find out their cause and determine whether they were a matter for the sheriff.

Not that there would be much question of cause here, Joliffe thought, looking down at the dead man. In the rapidly growing morning light what had been a darkness all over the front of the man’s doublet had taken on color, the dark red of dried—or drying—blood. Joliffe stooped and touched a finger to it. Dried. The man had been dead a while.

He wasn’t anyone Joliffe remembered seeing here at the Penteneys’. His clothing was too good for him to be simply a servant anyway and, besides, he wore a rider’s tall boots. Not of the best make, Joliffe noted, and well-worn with much use.

One of the man’s arms was bent across his body. The other lay flung out to the side. Joliffe lifted the nearer hand a little from the ground. There was some stiffening in the arm, not much, but the night had been warm enough that stiffening would have been delayed. Or the man had been dead long enough the stiffening was wearing off rather than coming on.

“Joliffe,” Basset said warningly.

Joliffe straightened.

“Here they come,” said Ellis.

The man Joliffe had spoken to at the stable had already gone at a run to the house. Now his fellows from the stable, looking tumbled out of sleep, were coming from the stable.

“At least the fact he’s stiffened and the blood is dried means Ellis didn’t step out the door just now and stab him,” Joliffe said before they were near.

“What?” Ellis said. Distracted between the coming men and Joliffe, he took a moment to catch up, then said angrily, “Of course I didn’t stab him, you dolt. Tell him to shut up, Basset.”

“Shut up, Joliffe,” Basset said obligingly and Joliffe did, leaving it to Basset and Ellis to warn the men to stand back and, no, they didn’t know how the man had come there but it looked like he’d been dead a while, stabbed, yes, by the look of it, no, best leave him for the crowner to see . . .

Master Penteney came striding across the yard, bedgown wrapped around him and shoes loose on his feet. The men already around the body stood aside for him. Others were following from the house, led by Master Richard somewhat more dressed than his father in hosen, shoes, and shirt, but before they overtook him Master Penteney had time to stand over the dead man, looking down at him in silence for a long moment. Then, just before the others caught up to him, he shifted his eyes without raising his head to look at Basset standing on the other side of the body from him.

Joliffe, drawn a little to one side, was able to see but not read the brief, deep look between them, something unsaid but understood passing between them before Master Penteney turned and began giving orders to the other men and the exclaiming maidservants flocking behind them from the house. Crisply, he named off two men who were more into their clothes than most were, ordering, “Jankin, go to Master Barentyne. He’s crowner at present. You know where he’s staying. Foulke, fetch the nearest of the constables. On your way, tell Father Francis what’s here and that he’s needed.”

The men bowed and left at a run. Master Penteney sent others to take up guard at the two gateways into the yard. “To keep people out when word of this spreads,” he said. “It’s too late to hope to keep the murderer in. Whoever did this is long gone.”

Or still here and set to dare it out, Joliffe thought but did not say.

Some of the maidservants cried out at mention of a murderer, ready to be fearful, but Master Penteney curtly shushed them and sent them and most of the men about their morning business, ordering, “We’re all going to want our breakfasts and you all have your work that needs doing. Get on with it,” so that at the end, only Master Penteney, Master Richard, Basset, Ellis, and Joliffe were left beside the body, with Piers craning his head around the barn door and Rose holding him there from behind with her hands on his shoulders.

“Not,” Master Penteney said in a suddenly weary voice to Basset, “any of your doing, I presume.”

It was not even a question and before Basset could say anything back, Master Richard interrupted, “It’s the man who was here yesterday, isn’t it? You talked with him yesterday afternoon.”

“He was here and I talked to him, yes,” Master Penteney said. “Hubert Leonard. Late of Abingdon.”

And now, courtesy of a knife to his heart, of nowhere at all, Joliffe thought. So this had been the man with the sneer to his voice. He had no sneer now, only a slack-jawed blankness.

Mistress Penteney, dressed and her hair covered with a close-fitting cap, came from the house carrying something over her arm. Since Master Penteney’s back was to her, Basset warned, “Mistress Penteney coming . . .”

“Stay here,” Master Penteney said to his son and went to meet her, taking her by the arm and turning her away before she was near enough to see the dead man clearly. What passed between them was said so low it went unheard but to Joliffe it looked—to guess by her gestures—that Mistress Penteney’s greater concern was not about the dead man but to have her husband into the house, out of the morning damp, and dressed. Master Penteney seemed to agree with her and called, “Come here for your doublet, Richard. Geva sent it. I’m going in to dress.”

Master Richard went to his mother while Master Penteney started for the house, and as soon as they both were out of whisper-range, Ellis asked, “None of us know this dead man, do we?”

Joliffe readily shook his head that he did not but Basset said slowly, “When I went to see Master Penteney yesterday, this fellow was just leaving.”

“Had they been quarreling?” Ellis asked.

“Not a word that I heard.”

Joliffe kept silent but Ellis said, “That’s all right then. We don’t want anything should happen to Penteney. Not while he’s doing us so much good.”

“Ellis,” Rose said, in the voice she used to remind Piers of his manners.

“Or any other time either,” Ellis belatedly added.

Master Richard came back, fastening his doublet. “A bad business,” he said.