A Play of Isaac (15 page)

“It is,” agreed Basset.

A brief silence closed on them after that, before Rose said, “Come in and dress, you three,” and withdrew into the barn, pulling Piers with her. With a murmured asking pardon of Master Richard by Basset, they followed her, dressed without saying much to each other, and suffered Rose to tidy them afterwards. As she pointed out while she did, “The more like honest folk we look the less trouble there’ll be for us. Maybe.”

Maybe. Besides that lordless players were always an easy mark when blame needed to be laid somewhere, it was not going to help that they were first-finders of the body. That much was such a given that Joliffe did not even dwell on it but was thinking over Basset’s answer to Ellis. Basset had said he’d not heard Master Penteney quarreling with this Hubert Leonard and that was true enough. What Basset hadn’t said was that he must know something about the man because why else would Master Penteney have asked him what he thought “of that.” Which raised the question of what was “that” and why should Basset have any thought on it at all? And what was the “ill luck and bad mischance” in him being there at the same time as this Leonard? If that was what he had meant when he said it.

Rose brought out some of the hard-baked biscuits she kept for tight times, saying, “Eat. Food will help us keep our wits about us and there’s no saying whether we’ll have breakfast today or not. Piers, come away from the door,” she added for something like the fifth time.

“I want to see . . .”

“You’ve seen dead men before now and you’ve seen this one enough. Just stay away from there. You and I will wait while the men handle this.”

“Lewis . . .”

“Will be waiting, too, while the men handle it. You couldn’t be with him today anyway. We have two plays to rehearse.”

And good luck to our getting to, Joliffe did not say, knowing the thought was in all their heads as he followed Basset and Ellis outside again. The sun was risen now, its light spread bright as daffodils across the yard, welcome for the promise it gave of another warm, clear day. Master Richard was still waiting beside the body, his back to it, but his waiting almost done if Joliffe rightly guessed that the two men coming through the streetward gateway were the priest and either the town crowner or else the constable.

Master Penteney’s messengers had been quick but so had Master Penteney. He came out of his door to meet the men as they crossed the yard. He now wore a three-quarters-long dark blue houppelande belted low around his waist, the full sleeves hanging open from his shoulders to show the close-fitted sleeves of a dark blue doublet underneath. His hosen were black, but his low-cut leather shoes had been dyed to match his gown, and all in all Joliffe guessed that, like the players, he had dressed to show his respectability to the face of authority. A murdered man in your yard was a trouble no matter who you were. It was therefore best to make your importance plain from the very beginning if you could, and Master Penteney had far more with which to impress authority than the players had any hope of.

“The priest, I take it,” Basset said to Master Richard. “The other man?”

“Master Crauford, the constable. But there’s Master Barentyne come now, too,” Master Richard added as a third man, accompanied by a clerk, came through the gate and joined the others now in talk with Master Penteney in the middle of the yard. “He’s not properly crowner, is Barentyne. He’s only helping out his cousin who badly broke a leg at Easter,” Master Richard added, and Joliffe thought: not good, because it raised the chance of an inexperienced non-crowner who either knew he didn’t know what he was doing, had been hoping nobody would die on him, and would make as short work of the business as he could rather than trying to do it right and well; or else he might be so overeager to prove he deserved his place that he would make more trouble about things than there had to be.

Master Penteney and the newcomers started down the yard toward the barn. He sent a look toward the men clustered by the stable door, silently reminding them they had work to do before breakfast; they disappeared into the stable. Someone else was probably doing much the same in the house; the faces that at been at all the upper windows were disappearing. Only Master Richard and the players stayed where they were, with Joliffe trying to guess something about the bailiff and Master Barentyne as they approached.

Master Crauford was the older, with the settled, irked look of someone who had dealt with students and their foolishnesses and the quarrels they made with Oxford townsfolk for more years than was good for him. The one necessary thing with him, Joliffe knew from experience with others of his kind, was never to let him think his authority was doubted or challenged. If once he took against someone on that account, neither rhyme nor reason would ever serve to put him on their side again.

Master Barentyne was younger and looked somewhat more eager to his work than the constable. If he were busy-brained to sniff out trouble, any trouble, whether it was there or not, he could well be more a problem than the constable, but if, on the other hand, he were set on finding out the truth rather than merely someone to blame, he could be the players’ best hope of not being scapegoated. There was nothing for it but to wait and see, and—waiting to see—Joliffe put on his best “I’m here but I don’t really matter” manner. Ellis had once described it as, “As close to respectful as you ever bother to go,” which Joliffe had thought was somewhat unfair, albeit not entirely untrue.

The priest set to his prayers while Master Crauford, Master Barentyne, and his clerk all took a long look at the body and Master Penteney gave names all around. The players bowed. Master Crauford returned them a beady-eyed stare and a grunt but Master Barentyne looked at them as if to be sure of knowing them one from the other later on. That could be either a good thing or a bad, depending on how this went, but it seemed a good start, anyway.

Even as a kind of under-crowner, Master Barentyne had precedence over Master Crauford and asked him, although with all courtesy, “Master Crauford, would you be so good as to question the stablemen where each of them were last night and when they came home to bed?”

Master Crauford accepted the charge with a grumping nod and, “Aye.” He bent and moved the dead man’s head, feeling for the stiffness, and added, “Dead since middle of the night, maybe earlier. I’ll ask if any of them heard anything in the night, too, and if they know the man or have seen him besides dead here.”

“He said his name was Hubert Leonard,” offered Master Penteney.

Master Crauford gave him a sharp look but left it to Master Barentyne to say, “You know him then?”

“He was here yesterday.” A thing Master Penteney had as well admit because enough people had seen the fellow here that someone would say it sooner or later.

“‘Said’ his name was Hubert Leonard?” Master Barentyne asked.

“That’s who he said he was,” Master Penteney said carefully. “But he may have had other name or names. I think he may have been a Lollard.”

Everyone, including Joliffe, startled and stared at him. Lollard might be a foolish-sounding name and Lollards were considered fools because of their heresies, but they had been very effectively plaguing both the Church and the law with their heretical arguments and disbelief and occasionally even armed revolts for sixty years and more. The more open of them were perforce pursued to the death for their heresies, but a great many more kept their beliefs secret, with even greater need to be secret of late, since one of their uprisings here around Oxford three years ago had been threat enough to need the king’s uncle, the duke of Gloucester, with an army to put it down. There had been trials and hangings for treason afterward, but no one doubted there were still Lollards about. To admit to knowing one without having given him over to authorities was perilous. That gave Master Penteney reason to hedge what he said, but to accuse a man of maybe being a Lollard was an ill thing, too, and Master Barentyne demanded, “Why did you think that of him?”

“Because he wanted I should give him money for my brother.”

“Your brother?” Master Crauford echoed with surprise and distaste. “St. Frideswide be with us. You mean your brother is still alive? I haven’t thought or heard of him since I don’t know when.”

“Nor have I either,” Master Penteney said, somewhere between anger and sorrow. “And wouldn’t now if I could help it.”

“Your brother?” Master Barentyne asked. “I’ve never heard you had a brother.”

“To all intents I don’t,” Master Penteney said bitterly.

“He ran off years ago,” Master Crauford said. “How long has it been? It was when that heretic Payne had to run for it.”

“Payne?” Master Barentyne asked. “Peter Payne?”

“That’s him,” Master Crauford said. “You’ve heard of
him
, belike. He made trouble enough here in Oxford that he’s still talked of sometimes. There’s those of us here then that remember the man himself, damn his soul.”

The priest stood up from kneeling beside Leonard’s body, saying as he did, “No need for you to damn his soul, George Crauford.” He nodded at Master Barentyne’s clerk who promptly bent to start going over the body. “Payne has already done that for himself a hundred times over. I still pray for your brother, though,” he added to Master Penteney.

“My thanks,” Master Penteney answered.

“Payne was a scholar and master at the university here, yes?” Master Barentyne said as if digging remembrance out of far corners of his mind. “There was scandal about his teachings, wasn’t there, and he left?”

“There was scandal and more,” the priest answered. “His heresy became so open he was going to be arrested and tried for it, but he disappeared, fled abroad, and finally ended up on the other side of Europe, in that whole country of heretics, Bohemia. He’s been writing his filth and making trouble from there ever since. Twenty years has it been?” he asked of Master Crauford and Master Penteney.

“At least,” Master Crauford answered.

“What did your brother have to do with him?” Master Barentyne asked Master Penteney.

“He took up with Payne. Was taken in by him.”

“He had to leave even before Payne did, didn’t he?” Master Crauford said. “That business about the University’s seal.”

To Master Barentyne’s questioning look, Master Penteney explained, “There was a flare of Lollardy about that time. The heretics here were in touch with others of their kind not only in England but across Europe. Somehow a letter went out to those in Bohemia, where they’re the worst, that the University of Oxford supported them and their heresies. The University supported no such thing, but the University’s seal was attached to the damnable letter. It was never proven who was responsible for it but . . .” he stopped, not happy with what he had to say but forcing himself to go on, “. . . my brother had something to do with it, that’s sure. When he came under close suspicion, he fled. Our father disinherited him and that’s the last we knew about him.”

“I’ve never heard this,” Master Richard said, sounding as if he only half-believed it now that he had.

“It was before I’d met and married your mother. Twenty-five years ago at least. Long enough that talk about it has long since died out. Until now.” Master Penteney was openly bitter over that. “We’ve known where Payne has been all these years, but I didn’t know whether my brother was alive or dead and I didn’t care. Then this fellow shows up.” He gave a hard glance at the dead man. “He says my brother has been with Payne all this time, has fallen into trouble and is in prison and needs my money. He asked for a note in hand to a French merchant I vaguely know, saying he could collect the money from him on his way back to my brother. I told him I kept my money for better things than traitors and heretics and sent him away.”

“But you didn’t report him?” Master Barentyne said.

“For what? He claimed that he’d never met my brother, was only a go-between for merchants, picking up this job on the side.”

“But you thought he might be a Lollard himself?” Master Crauford asked.

“Afterwards, when he was gone, it crossed my mind. He never said anything to betray certainly he was but . . . there was something felt wrong about him.”

Priest and bailiff nodded, understanding what he meant. Joliffe noted Master Barentyne gave no nod but instead asked, “Was he telling the truth, do you think? About your brother?”

“I don’t know,” Master Penteney said. “I didn’t quite believe him but there was nothing I could point a sure finger at. He had a letter in what looked to be my brother’s hand, but it’s been twenty-five years since I saw his writing and I’d not swear to it. Whether this Leonard was telling the truth or not made no difference anyway. I wasn’t going to give him anything except good-bye, and that’s what I did.”

“Did you keep the letter?” Master Crauford asked.

“He took it away with him.”

Master Barentyne’s clerk looked up from going through the dead man’s clothing. “There’s no letter on him now. Nor any money either. Or any weapon.”

“He had a dagger and purse hung from his belt yesterday,” Master Penteney said.

“Robbed,” Master Crauford said. “Murdered and robbed and it probably had nothing to do with whether he was a Lollard or not. I’m off to question the stablemen.”

He strode away.

“He’s been stabbed once,” the under-crowner’s clerk said. He had opened the front of the man’s doublet and shirt to see the wound. “Straight to the heart from the front.”

“Was it a dagger?” Master Barentyne asked. “Not a sword?”

“Too narrow for a sword blade. A dagger, certes.”

“Was he down or up when it was done?”

“We’ll be better able to tell when we fully see the body but . . .” The clerk was fumbling under Leonard’s back, feeling for the wound there. “But the wound is small back here. I’d say the dagger’s point came out but barely. So either it was a short dagger or he was down and whatever he was lying on stopped the thrust.”