A Play Of Heresy Part 13

Richard Eme sat on his mother's other side and was withdrawing an arm from around her shoulders and standing up as Master Fylongley and all came into the room. The man who must be Master Eme, burly in a prosperous townsman's long gown, was already on his feet behind the backed bench where the rest of his family sat, a hand resting on his wife's shoulder. He stayed there, saying only, "Master Fylongley. Gentlemen." Sounding somewhat uncertain why there were so many of them but adding, his voice heavy and weary with grieving, "Have you come to tell us we may have our son's body now?"

Master Fylongley made somewhat of a bow to the women and answered, "I've come to tell you that, yes. But also that we have determined beyond doubt that he did not die by his own will or hand. It was not self-murder. The Church will have no reason to deny him funeral rites and sanctified burial."

Mistress Eme gasped, let go one hand from her daughter's to reach up and grasp her husband's. He grasped it willingly while taking a deep, unsteady breath as he gathered himself toward the beginning of hope, gasping, "He didn't-" only to break off as he caught up to the full meaning of the bailiff's words. If his son was dead not by self-murder, then it had to be by . . .

Mistress Eme, with fresh tears running down her face past a broken, quivering smile and not yet gone as far as her husband, cried out, "I knew he had not. I knew it. G.o.ditha, I said so, didn't I? Richard"-letting go of her husband's hand to reach out to her son-"I told you, didn't I? He was in a play. He would never have killed himself while he was in a play!"

"You did, Mother. You did. But-" Richard Eme was looking not at his mother but at Master Fylongley. "But if he didn't kill himself and yet he's dead-"

G.o.ditha gasped, pulled one hand free from her mother's hold, and pressed it over her mouth, her eyes wide. Mistress Eme looked at her, then to Richard, and then up at her husband, her first joy going to confusion, then to horrified understanding. She brought her stare around to Master Fylongley. "You mean he was murdered?" she demanded. "My son was murdered?"

"I fear so, mistress," Master Fylongley said. "There is no doubt of it."

Joliffe willed him not to tell more of how her son had died. She surely knew he had hanged. She did not need to know the rest. But the bailiff seemed to be already ahead of him in wanting to avoid precisely that, because he went on quickly, "So there are questions we need to ask, the jurors and I. If you all would be so good as to answer them now, it would be a help."

"Murdered," Mistress Eme wept, now onto her daughter's shoulder while her daughter, weeping, too, held her and stared at the bailiff as if he had come from some terrible, strange world where such things as murder might happen, not from her familiar, comfortable, safe world. Yet G.o.ditha was old enough to have clear memory of seven years ago when things had been anything but safe and sure in Coventry, especially for Lollards. Meaning for her own family as well as others. Even if, as Powet said, the Emes were "quiet Lollards," seven years ago there must have been no knowing how far the government's vengeance for the revolt would spread, how strongly the Church would demand even the least guilty be sought out and destroyed. It had not come to that, but there had to have been a frightening time until everything had settled. Had the lovely G.o.ditha blotted all that from her mind and feelings?

More likely, Joliffe thought, was that she simply believed terrible things happened only to other people, not to herself or her near and dear. He had found that many people stubbornly held that common and comforting belief, but he had never been able to shelter in it. For various reasons, he had always believed terrible things could happen to him and to his near and dear. It meant he went through life with an almost constant twitch of wariness at the back of his mind-except for the times, more frequent of late, when the twitch was to his mind's fore, making him wary of almost everything.

Not that his deep-set wariness had been able to keep him from doing such mad things as becoming a player, let alone a spy.

"Questions?" Master Eme was saying. He sounded stunned. He moved from behind the settle, one hand groping out blindly. Richard, with somewhat more of his wits about him than the rest of his family, quickly shifted the nearby chair, turning it toward the bailiff and jurors, and guided his father to sit in it while Master Eme went on, "Yes. Of course. Anything you want to ask. We'll tell you whatever we can."

What Master Fylongley asked then were the expected questions. When had each person in the family last seen Ned? Two evenings ago, at supper. What had his humour seemed to be then? Merry. They all agreed he had been merry. No, they'd thought not much about him not coming home that night to bed or seeing him the next day.

"He has-had friends," his father said. "He wasn't wild, but there were times he'd be out and not come back right as he should have." Master Eme roused to a little fierceness. "If you found who he was with, that might tell you something about how he died, wouldn't it?"

"That's the sort of thing that can help, aye," Master Fylongley granted. Likely for whatever mercy it was, he held back from saying just how long Ned had been hanging there. Some things a family was better off not having to know, if it could be helped. He asked for the names of those with whom Ned might have been. His clerk wrote them down. Master Fylongley asked if Ned had shown unusual concern over anything of late?

"Only over Johanna Byfeld's girl," Mistress Eme said with grieving bitterness. "He wouldn't let it go. It was too soon after that other young man's death. Ned had waited for her so long, and then instead of him, she wanted that other man. I hope she's satisfied now."

"Mama!" her daughter exclaimed as Master Eme reproved, "Wife!"

Mistress Eme mopped at her eyes, tearfully admitting their reproofs with, "Yes, well, I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have. But there, it's said, and why couldn't she have wanted him?"

"You didn't let me want Herry Byfeld," G.o.ditha pointed out.

"Of course not," her brother said sharply. "There would have been words said, too, if Anna had shown herself inclined to Ned, but she didn't, so it didn't matter."

"If he were alive, I wouldn't mind who he wanted to marry!" Mistress Eme sobbed.

If Ned had been still alive, she would have felt entirely otherwise, Joliffe was sure, but no one gainsaid her. In grief people said what they needed to say, and it was wise of Master Fylongley to let them get on with it. After all, what they might say aside from his questions could be as useful as any answers made to what he asked. Now, though, he did ask, "They'd known each other a long while then, your son and Mistress Deyster?"

"The children, when they were small, used to run together, as children will," Master Eme answered. "It's only since-" He shifted what he was going to say. "Only since they grew older that they've been-less friends."

And more desirous to be lovers, Joliffe thought. But he also thought that had not been what Master Eme had first been going to say. What the draper had likely shifted from saying was "only since the rebellion," when all Lollards had become suspect because of a hot-hearted, idiot few. A quick reckoning back suggested Richard Eme and Herry Byfeld might have been just old enough to be caught up in the foolishness, but the Byfelds were not Lollards, and Joliffe suspected Master Eme kept a firmer hand on his family than to let a then-very-youthful son be drawn into treason.

Of course he had not been able to keep his second son from murdering two men.

If it was Ned who had murdered them. His own murder called that into question, didn't it?

Master Fylongley was now asking if Ned had quarreled with anyone of late or had long running trouble with anyone. As Master and Mistress Eme were saying no, Richard said, "He and Robyn Kydwa had words a while back. Just before Robyn left for-oh."

Master Fylongley caught that up quickly. "Just before Master Kydwa left for Bristol and was killed on the way, seemingly by his servant, now fled. Is that what you were going to say?"

"Yes."

Mistress Eme looked up at her husband in dismay but left it to him to say with darkening brow, "They were to go together. Ned and Robyn. But Robyn was delayed, and Ned went on. We've all thought what ill-fortune that was, that if they had gone as they planned, Robyn Kydwa would not have been killed. But what if, instead, they had both been killed? What if-" He broke off, seemingly too stunned by his thought to finish.

Master Fylongley did it for him. "What if their deaths are connected? Do you have any reason to think so?"

His look invited all the Emes to answer. Master Eme slowly shook his head, and the others matched him, all looking equally bewildered. "There's nothing," Master Eme said. Then sharply questioning and demanding together, "Richard? Is there?"

Seeming startled by his father's demand, Richard declared, "No!"

There was a pause, everyone seeming to be waiting to see if he would say more, but he only looked blankly from face to face as if wondering what else was wanted from him.

It crossed Joliffe's mind that Richard Eme would do well enough in the solid life he had as his father's son and heir, but for the first time Joliffe wondered if Richard Eme chose to be in plays as a way to fill out how much of him there was not. Some people, like Powet, took to playing because there was so much in them that ordinary life was insufficient for them and they sought to set themselves free into other possibilities of being, to stretch themselves wider and deeper than called for by daily life. Other people had so little in themselves that they tried-not seeing what they were doing-to find more by playing parts in plays, as if hoping that engrafting bits of other "lives" onto their own would cure their lack. Not that anyone was ever wholly one or the other, was instead a mix of both-in unequal proportions surely, but nonetheless a mix. Joliffe had a good guess at which portion was larger in himself.

In the moment just before the silence drew out too long, Master Fylongley said, "So. That's all I need to ask presently." He looked around at his jurors. "Gentlemen, have you any questions of your own?"

Burbage and Master Waldeve seemed not to, but Joliffe asked, "Was Ned ever in the smiths' play?"

Burbage looked uncertain and Master Waldeve started to shake his head that he had not, but Mistress Eme said, "Years ago he was. He was one of the demons. He helped to-oh!"

One of the demons who helped to hang Judas. That had to be what she had been going to say, and under remembrance of then and now, she broke down in heavy weeping again. G.o.ditha put both arms around her, and her husband, moving to join in comforting her, said distractedly, "If that's all, gentlemen, Richard will see you out."

Master Fylongley and the others all bowed and retreated to the stairs. Richard led them down and toward the front door, the sound of his mother's weeping loudly following them. Hand to the door, ready to open it, Richard paused to ask the bailiff, "What will you do next? Who else is there to question?"

"Others who knew your brother. Too, we'll try to learn if anyone saw him going to the smith's pageant house two evenings ago. Him and anyone else."

"If he went by the back way, children may have seen him," Richard said. "That's probably how he went. We all played back there as children. They probably still do." A louder wail of weeping from overhead made all of them flinch upward looks. Richard hurriedly opened the door, asking while he did, "But we can get Ned's body now? The crowner will release it?"

"Whenever you wish," Master Fylongley a.s.sured him. "Your parish priest will likely see to it if asked."

"Yes. Thank you. That's probably the best way, yes."

Richard Eme retreated, closing the door between him and them as if escaping. Master Fylongley regarded the shut door for a moment, then shrugged and turned away to ask at Joliffe, "Why did you ask if our dead man had ever been in the smiths' play?"

Joliffe, who had been wondering how long it would be until the bailiff released them for at least a while, blinked, steered his wits this other way, and said, "Why did someone choose there to hang him? Was it the one private place he and his murderer both knew? Or was it the only place they both knew?" Which would mean his murderer was someone not familiar with Coventry. But if not familiar with Coventry, how would he know of the smiths' pageant house at all?" Joliffe set that question aside for now, going on, "Then there's why he was hung at all, rather than killed some other, more ready way."

"Stabbed," Master Waldeve offered. "Or his throat cut."

"Or bludgeoned," Burbage suggested.

"I've wondered as much," the bailiff said. "It's something you'll all have to think on, isn't it?" He heaved a sigh, shifted his belt on his hips, and said, "For now, though, you'd all like to be away to your proper work, I'm sure. I have where to find you all when needed. Learn what else you can about this Ned Eme and who might have wanted him dead, and we'll talk later. I'm away to find what's kept Master Purefoy all this while."

He left them at a brisk walk, his clerk falling into step beside him. Joliffe and the others went along the street more slowly, in unspoken agreement to let the bailiff leave them well behind, although Joliffe asked as they went, "Master Purefoy?"

"His fellow bailiff," Burbage said.

"I wish I'd never gone to the yard last night," Master Waldeve brooded.

"I wish you hadn't seen fit to come for me instead of haring off for one of your fellow smiths," Burbage returned, but slapped him on the shoulder in good fellowship and added, "But done is done. Just think how your wife will be pleased with all the news you can bring her when you get home."

"Think, too, how she's going to work to drag every bit of it out of me," Master Waldeve said back at him, "and then want to spread it far and wide."

Chapter 19.

They parted at the corner of Much Park Street and Earl Street, Burbage saying he would be glad to get back to his proper work, Master Waldeve muttering glumly that he might as well find out a new rope before he did anything else. Joliffe said nothing but plain farewell to them both. Since Master Waldeve went rightward and Burbage cut slantwise across the street toward his own Bayley Lane, Joliffe went left. What he needed to do now was find Sebastian. Or let Sebastian find him. By now word of Ned Eme's death had to have spread wide enough through Coventry-albeit in general report still calling it self-murder-that Sebastian had almost surely heard of it.

So where was he likely to be? Not the tavern, since they had already been there together twice. St. Michael's, then, for a start, and after that a random wandering of streets, Joliffe decided.

His long-strided walk had already carried him past any direct turning to the church. He paused to buy a honey-sticky pastry at a bakeshop and retraced his way to Pepper Lane that served to swing him back toward St. Michael's. He took his time, eating as he went, half-expecting Sebastian to appear at his elbow, but Sebastian did not. A horse-watering trough in the shade of a yew tree overhanging the churchyard wall served to wash Joliffe's hands of the last of the sticky pastry before he went into the church to wander, more aware of the masons' shouts above him and the creak of the great wheel raising stones for the spire than he was of any holiness about the place.

Despite that, he lingered at St. Thomas' altar long enough to light a candle and make a silent prayer. Saint Thomas the Doubter appealed to him today: he felt full of doubts. But with the prayer said, he had equal urge to be out of the church and away and left the way he had come. For reward-if it could be called that-he found Sebastian sitting in apparent ease on the broad stone edge of the horse trough.

Joliffe stopped beside him with the idle air of a man who had nowhere in particular to go happening on another idle man doing nothing in particular. Sebastian, hands loose in his lap, one foot swinging easily, said with no ease at all or any greeting, "What's this about Eme killing himself? When? How did you get into the middle of it?"

Joliffe told him how he had got into the middle of it and all the rest. Only at the end, having deliberately saved it, did he say, "But he didn't kill himself. Someone else did for him."

Sebastian, who had been letting his gaze drift everywhere except at Joliffe, constantly making sure no one was within hearing of them, snapped his head around to stare at him. "What?"

Joliffe repeated himself and went on to tell what he, his fellow jurors, the crowner, and bailiff were all agreed on.

As if unable to contain himself, Sebastian stood up from the trough's rim, took several deep, apparently angry breaths, and sat down again. "d.a.m.nation."

"Indeed," Joliffe agreed.

They contemplated a pair of women going into the church with their market baskets on their arms and then a pa.s.sing rider and horse before Sebastian said, "So how does this change how we see Kydwa's death?"

The question, although aloud, was more to himself than Joliffe, but Joliffe answered anyway. "That someone else killed them? Ned Eme suspected who, let them know it, and was killed in his turn?"

"Who?" Sebastian demanded.

Joliffe shrugged to show that not only did he not know, he had no one else to suggest for any of the murders.

"No," Sebastian said. "No, I think we should hold to it being Eme who killed Kydwa and his man. What we learned holds too well together for it to be someone else. If he didn't kill them with his own hand, he helped someone else with hiding the bodies. We can well suppose he did it because Kydwa must have found out something against Lollards here. Eme and his family being Lollards, that would give Eme reason to kill him, to protect his people. Or help someone else kill him."

"They were rivals for a woman, too," Joliffe pointed out.

"Another reason, yes. Added to the first, it would have made killing Kydwa all the easier, I suppose." His tone laid open his low opinion of mankind as a whole, able to use such a fool's reason for murder. "So if we hold to Ned Eme having killed Kydwa or helped in killing him and hiding the body-bodies-we're left with the question of who killed him."

"And why."

"Why is easy enough. Lollards covering their tracks."

"One Lollard," Joliffe said. "Two or more would have made a better business of hanging him. It was clumsily done."

"One Lollard then."

"But why would any Lollard need to kill him, if any Lollard did? He either killed or else helped in the killing of Kydwa and his man. I think we're right about that. But no suspicion was turned toward him or toward anyone in Coventry at all. Why need him dead?"

Sebastian swung his foot, kicking his heel against the side of the trough in several dull thuds, before answering, "I don't know. There must be something else." He stood up. "So find out. I'll see you just past mid-day tomorrow at the Angel outside Spon Gate." And he strolled off like a man taking his idleness elsewhere, having used up all he could of it here.

Joliffe carefully did not watch him go, simply turned and strolled off another way in apparently matching idleness, as if he had nowhere in particular to go or anything in particular to do. Unfortunately, both were true. He did not know where to go and he had no clear thought of what he should do. He settled the first part of that by going back to the smiths' pageant wagon yard. He was somewhat surprised to find the gate still unlocked and more surprised to find no gawkers in the yard itself. The folk who always came to see where something bad had happened must have already gawked their fill. After all there was not anything to see except an empty yard. Both body and rope had been taken away yesterday. There was only the empty pageant wagon to be seen in its shed and even he had no interest in that. What he wanted was to try out the way he had seen Piers and the other boys come and go from the yard, by that narrow alleyway between sheds to a rear gate.

He found the rear gate as unlocked as the fore gate. Given it was no more than a few thin boards nailed together by crosspieces and hung on rope hinges, the cost of a lock would have been wasted anyway. The gate was not even fully shut, sagging down to the dirt path outside it, leaving a boy-wide gap. Plainly the locked doors of the sheds were what mattered in keeping the wagons safe, and Joliffe had gathered that even those were left open as often as not this time of year.

He made to push the gate open sufficient for him to go out, but thought better of it and instead put only his head and one shoulder through and looked down at the path. The curved sc.r.a.pe marked in the dirt there showed that sometime lately the gate had been shoved wider open-or else been dragged, depending on which way someone had been going-to let someone larger than a boy go through. It had then been closed again as far as its sag would let it go. None of that meant anything. Joliffe pushed the gate wider open again, finding the sc.r.a.pe marked how far it would altogether go before it caught and stuck again about a third of the way to fully open.

He went through the gateway, onto the path. He was willing to guess it had been a field path before Coventry grew this far to the east. On one side of it, the houses along Mill Lane backed their narrow gardens along it, except where places like the pageant wagons' yard instead had only the blank back wall of their buildings to it. On the path's other side, the trees of an orchard showed above a tall wicker fence. Going left, a little walking brought him to the river. There the path split to run both ways along the riverbank. From his wandering through and around Coventry, he could guess that a short way to his left again the path would come to the mill that gave Mill Lane its name, while to the right it would curve with the river around the orchard, the river to pa.s.s under Gosford Bridge at the end of Gosford Street, the path presumably to come out there unless it first dead-ended against someone's garden wall. He turned back to follow the path its other way, past the sagging gate and toward Gosford Street.

The houses along Gosford Street were the larger ones of merchants who had prospered enough to move somewhat out of the crowded center of Coventry. They had taken advantage of building anew to make large rear gardens, all ab.u.t.ting on the orchard, Joliffe presumed. A stone wall replaced the wicker fence when it came, at the pathway's end, to run along the garden-side of the house that faced onto Gosford Street. The house itself had spread its upper storeys sideways, roofing the path into a pa.s.sageway. Under the overhang of those upper floors, the path opened onto Gosford Street. Joliffe stood there at the path's end for a moment, looking out and to either side along the street, busy with pa.s.sersby at this early hour of the afternoon, just as it was most hours of the day. No one seemed to give him any particular heed, and he turned and went back to the gate.

For a few moments longer, he studied it and the path there but learned nothing more from it. The path was well-used. He knew boys certainly came and went along its way and without doubt other people did likewise, as a short cut away from the streets. The few inches of black thread he now bent to pluck from a rough bit of wood near the bottom of one gatepost could have come from anyone. Of itself it told him nothing, probably because it meant nothing. Most things in life seemed to mean nothing when all was said and done. Usually "meaning" came simply out of whatever pa.s.sing urge people happened to put on a thing.

Except scholars. They were another matter altogether. Scholars, by what Joliffe had experienced of them, worked hard to give meaning to things no matter how great the effort needed, no matter how unlikely the meaning they devised. Then, having devised it, they began to disagree among themselves over whether that meaning was sufficient or even, after all, correct.

Joliffe looked for a long moment at the thread on the palm of his hand, but it still told him nothing, and he bent and put it back where he had found it, hooking it carefully to the wood again for no better reason than the completeness of the thing. Besides, he had no way to keep it safe, would only lose it if he took it with him, so why bother?

He went into the yard and stood a while, thinking. Ned and whoever else had come here two evenings ago had surely come by the path, not openly along the street. The bailiffs would undoubtedly ask folk hereabouts about both possibilities, but no one was likely to remember from two days ago seeing someone turn onto the path from Gosford Street or the Mill. The path was too used for anyone to take such note. Someone might remember seeing Ned Eme go that way, now he was made memorable by being dead.

Except of course he probably had not gone that way. Two days ago he had had supper with his family, then come to rehea.r.s.e the play and left early. All he need have done then was go across and a little along the lane and into the yard here. Only his murderer need have troubled to come the back way.

Unfortunately that still left it unlikely he would be remembered by anyone, especially if he had kept Ned waiting and come by dark.

Well enough. To another question then, one that might do some good to ask. Why here? Why the smiths' pageant wagon at all?

The immediate answer that came to Joliffe was: For the sake of hanging Ned on the Judas tree. But that brought another question: Why had someone chosen hanging for Ned when there were other, easier ways in plenty to kill a man?

The ready answer to that was that someone saw Ned as some manner of Judas and had wanted him to die as Judas had, hung on the Judas tree, that dark opposite to the Tree of the Cross where Christ had died in self-sacrifice. But then . . . who had seen Ned as a Judas? Who was Ned supposed to have betrayed?

Robyn Kydwa was the obvious answer. But that supposed someone else knew Ned had killed him and his servant. Always supposing that Ned really had and not someone else.

Joliffe had to face that there was chance he and Sebastian had got it wrong-that Ned Eme was not the murderer they had been seeking. But if not Ned, then who? And if someone else, then what was the why of Ned's death?

There had to be a link. There must be a link. Otherwise it all became too strange, too beyond hope of reckoning any sense from it.

Not that life-or death-had to make sense. All too often they seemed not to. But in this . . . Somewhere there was a link between the deaths.

Unfortunately Joliffe had only the barest of guesses at what the link was. And if Sebastian was right and all of this had to do with Lollards, then his guessed-at link was no link at all.