A Play Of Heresy Part 16

By way of his earlier wandering, he knew that not far from the Emes' house there was a lane that ran south off Gosford Street. Not far from it, on the street's other side, was the pa.s.sageway leading to the path that ran behind the smiths' pageant house and to the river, but while that path was simply a path, the lane that Joliffe now turned into was a proper and paved street, albeit narrow and shadowed under the overhang of its houses. At its other end it came to the White Friars' monastery, where a turn to the right along the street there headed Joliffe toward Much Park Street with the monastery's wall on his left and on his right another town orchard like the one the other side of Gosford Street. He was come around two sides of a rectangle: if he turned right again when he reached Much Park Street, he would be on the rectangle's third side and shortly pa.s.s the Byfelds' house.

Before he came to that corner, though, he found what he expected. On his right, running behind the rear yards of the houses facing onto Much Park Street, was a cart-wide track between those rear yards and the orchard. Surely most used in autumn at orchard harvest time, it would be useful any time to go somewhere more privately than by the street, from neighbor's to neighbor's rear doors or farther. Such as around the way Joliffe had just come. At twilight-time or after dark there would be small likelihood of being known while going out this way and around by way of the White Friars' lane to Gosford Street. There the chance of being seen and known was somewhat more but still slight in the few moments it would take to cross it and disappear into shadows and the path past the smiths' pageant house.

Joliffe followed the track. He had no way to tell which of the rear yards he pa.s.sed belonged to the Byfeld house. He had to be satisfied with finding the track ended at the far corner of the orchard, did not go through to Gosford Street but went far enough that one of the yards it pa.s.sed had to be the Byfelds'.

So now he knew how . . . someone . . . might have gone a long way round to the smiths' pageant house without the near neighbors remarking on the lateness of the hour for a walk. It made what he had guessed a little possible and opened the next step he would have to take. The problem was how to take that step. He saw no way to it this afternoon.

Or was it that he did not want to see a way to it?

He shook he head against that as he went back the way he had come. No. This was something that had to be seen through to the end, no matter how much more grief that end was going to bring if he were right. For now, though, the only thing to do was wait, and he went off to join in whatever Ba.s.set, Rose, and the others were doing with their day.

Chapter 23.

As it happened, Ba.s.set and the others were taking the afternoon at their ease. Against all likelihood, Rose had yesterday declared the garb for Ba.s.set's play was done, so even she was having a restful day. She had seen to them all going together to morning Ma.s.s at Holy Trinity, that being the Silc.o.ks' church, but was not pushing their devotion further than that. When Joliffe came up the stairs into their chamber, he found all signs of sewing had been tidied away. The garb, carefully folded, was set out in piles along the work table, and the players' sleeping pallets and floor cushions were scattered over the floor, with Ellis lain out on one of them, snoring slightly in pleasant sleep. Rose and Piers were sitting on cushions in the patch of sunlight through the far window, playing at something on the game board set between them. Ba.s.set, Gil, and-somewhat to Joliffe's surprise-Will Sendell were sprawled at ease at the room's other end, talking in apparent good cheer, with cups in hand and a pitcher set in their midst.

They all waved for Joliffe to join them. He did willingly and for the rest of the afternoon lost himself in the rich and satisfying talk of their shared world of plays and fellow players present and past, roads traveled and places seen, good times and bad. Their laughter over how, years ago, their playing of Noah and the Flood was washed out by a thunder-burst and downpour at the very moment Noah welcomed his wife into the boat wakened Ellis sufficiently for him to growl without opening his eyes, "It wasn't that laughable at the time."

"It wasn't," Ba.s.set agreed, his smile nonetheless unabated.

"But then there was the time," Ellis went on, sitting up, "when-" and he was away on one of his own favorite stories that had them wiping the laughter-tears from their eyes by the time he finished.

All in all, it was a better afternoon than Joliffe had had in a long while, and at the end they all-Rose and Piers, too, of course-went out to supper together, with Rose reminding them as they went of how they had tried to use the infant Piers as the Infant Jesus and how that had turned out.

"I remember," Will Sendell laughed. "He kept wiggling out of the swaddling bands. I didn't know babies could wiggle out of swaddling bands."

"They shouldn't be able to," Rose said with a dryness only Joliffe could have matched. "But he did."

"Looking back, I can see it was done for kindness on his part," Joliffe offered. "He didn't want us ever mistakenly having hope he was sweet and biddable."

"Hai!" Piers protested. "I'm biddable. You can bid me all you want." His most mischievous grin spread over his face. "I just won't do it if I don't want to."

A chorus of general agreement answered him, and Ellis tousled his hair in the way Piers claimed to most dislike. That was become a more perilous deed now that Piers was so well grown, but this time Piers only ducked out from under Ellis' hand and punched his shoulder in friendly fashion, and afterward went along the street with Ellis holding Rose by the hand on one side and his arm over Piers' shoulders on the other, plainly well-content in each other's company.

They dined in a good inn on the marketplace. Ba.s.set insisted Sendell was their guest. Sendell insisted back that he would at least buy a pitcher of wine for them to share. That turned into several pitchers of wine, with Joliffe buying the second and Ellis the third, while Ba.s.set said he would pay for the meal. It was altogether as good an afternoon-into-evening as Joliffe had spent in a long, long while. Their players' talk went on, continuing to call up the mischances and bon-chances that had come along their way. "Or that we've tripped on and fallen sprawling over," Ellis mock-grumbled.

They all laughed, Ellis, too. All in all there was a great deal of laughter. Will's lost company was not forgotten, nor some mischances over which there could be no laughter even now. But likewise there was the continuing thought under it all, in Joliffe's mind at least, that all things pa.s.s and that, come what may, the present moment is when he and everyone lived. All the rest was past or to come, and if now was very good, it should be enjoyed to the full.

When time came he had to leave them, Joliffe's regret was real and deep. He was jibed at for going, with laughing demands to know where he would have better time than with them. He jibed back that change gave life its savour. Piers declared he had found himself a girl somewhere in Coventry. Joliffe laid a finger along his nose and said as if imparting a deep secret, "The less said, the less pestered, youngling," and sauntered out.

The long almost mid-summer afterglow of sunset still filled the western sky. Reportedly, curfew would not be very closely kept these last few days before Corpus Christi as the town filled with outside folk come for the festival and plays, when it was wanted they have as many hours as possible to spend their money. The long twilight at this time of the year aided that. Would aid him, too, with what he purposed. Supposing he was right in his guesses, of course. Supposing . . . supposing . . . supposing.

He had been supposing much through yesterday and today. Now he would find how much of his supposing was true.

She was already there, walking in the orchard, just as he had . . . supposed she might be. There were not many ways or chances to be alone from a house over-full of people. The orchard was there, just beyond the back gate, and no reason why she should not, as other people did, walk there in the last daylight, for ease after the day's work. Given all her present grief, no one would refuse her that small solace nor force their company on her when she said she wanted to walk alone. It would be only kindness to let her do so, as well as perhaps a relief to everyone else in the house to have her away for a while, taking the weight of her grief with her.

Because there were others-not all of them couples-strolling along the paths wound through the orchard, she took no immediate heed of Joliffe until he came directly in her way and stayed there. Forced to halt, she lifted her gaze from the ground and for a moment openly did not know him.

"Mistress Deyster," he said.

Anna Deyster rearranged her face from whatever stark place her thoughts had been. "My uncle is at home, I think," she said, dropped her gaze again, and made to go around him.

Joliffe let her, but turned and fell into step beside her, saying, "It's you I meant to see here."

Her step faltered, then went steady again. Her gaze stayed down, and with taut dismissal in her tone, she said, "I don't want to be seen."

Everything about her, not just her voice, was taut. Joliffe thought she was like a tightly twisted rope that if released would go whipping wildly out of control, lashing around and around until finally limp. Watching her from the side of his eyes but carefully keeping only quietness in his own voice, Joliffe said, "My guess is that you've taken to walking alone in the orchard most evenings."

"Yes," she all but snapped. But since it seemed he was not going to go away, she made an attempt at easing her voice and said with strained lightness, "I think my mother worries that I hope to meet Robyn's ghost here in the twilight."

"Do you?"

"Do I what? Meet him? Or hope to meet him?"

"Either. Both."

"No." She bit down on the word as if she meant it to be her last, then said as if bitterly unable to hold it in, "Hope is gone out of everything."

Joliffe waited three paces. He could feel her, in the darkness of her thoughts, begin to forget he was there. Into her darkness he said quietly, "I should think you'd be afraid it was another ghost you might meet here."

Her look at him questioned what he meant, as if she truly did not seem to understand. Joliffe felt a qualm that he was very much gone the wrong way, but he finished his thought. "Ned Eme's ghost."

Anna Deyster jerked to a stop and turned on him. Even in the blue shadowing of the evening he could see the tightening of fury take her face. "Ned?" she spat out. "His ghost? His soul went surely straight to h.e.l.l the instant he was dead. There'll be no coming back by him, nor ever prayers enough to shift his d.a.m.ned soul to Heaven. He died d.a.m.ned and he'll stay that way."

Joliffe waited the length of a slow-drawn breath before saying quietly into the evening darkness, "You made certain sure of that."

Her rage against Ned had burned up her awareness of what she should and should not say. Remembering now, too late, she seemed to shrink. Even as Joliffe looked at her, she dwindled from a woman furyed enough to have killed a man to simply a woman very tired and ready to be done with it.

"Yes," she said, matching his quietness. "I made certain sure." Still quietly, almost inevitably, she asked, "How do you know?"

"When Master Fylongley was questioning you and your family, nothing was said about when Ned had supposedly hung himself. Everyone seemed to be taking it he had done it the day he was found. We hadn't said otherwise. But when Master Fylongley asked when each of you had last seen Ned, you shivered and crossed yourself and said not yesterday of course. The *of course' was because you knew he had been hanging there all that day and the night before it, too, not merely for a few hours before he was found."

She said, "Ah," and moved on.

Joliffe moved with her, matching her slow walk, saying, "It was a little strange, too, that you didn't remember when you last saw him. It's usually the first thing someone remembers when they hear of a death: the last time I saw him was . . . But your brother had to remind you."

"Ah," she said again.

"Was it then, in the street that morning, that you asked him to meet you in the smiths' pageant house that evening?"

Her eyes still on the path in front of them, she said, "Yes. We'd played there-all around there-as children. We both knew how to go there by the back way without drawing heed. I let him think I wanted to talk with him where we'd likely be unbothered by anyone. He didn't think about the Judas tree being there."

The anger and force of will that had let her do what she had done was again in her voice and the clutch of her hands together. Joliffe, keeping his own voice even and low, said, "But you thought of it."

When she did not answer that, he asked his own inevitable question. "Why?"

She twisted her head from one side to the other, refusing an answer.

"He said something to you the day before that made you angry at him," Joliffe pushed, his voice still quiet. "Made you angry enough to kill him. What was it? Did he tell you he'd killed Robyn Kydwa?"

Anna Deyster drew the harsh breath of someone struck a painful blow. She stopped, swaying a little where she stood. Joliffe held back from reaching out to steady her. This was not a woman ready to be touched.

"Yes," she hissed. "He was at me again to marry him. He said he had waited so long to have me. He said Robyn wasn't worth mourning over. He said Robyn was . . . was . . ."

She could not get the word out, was choking on it. Joliffe said it for her. "A spy."

"Yes." This time she spat the word. "He said Robyn was a spy against Lollards here in Coventry and that he killed him to protect his family and others."

"Do they need protecting?"

"No! There's no one needs protecting here! That was just Ned's excuse. Ned's lie!"

Not entirely Ned's lie. Robyn Kydwa had been spying. But Joliffe could also believe Ned had used that for excuse to do what he wanted to do-rid himself of a rival for a woman he meant to have. Either way, at the last it did not much matter what was true in the layers of why Ned Eme had murdered two men, or what Anna Deyster believed or refused to believe. The end and sum of it all was that between them, she and Ned had killed three men in brutal, ugly ways. But Joliffe still had a question and now was the time for it, while she was still talking, before she maybe wound herself tightly closed again, not understanding that it was too late for silence to do her any good now.

"How did you do it? How were you able to hang Ned? He can't have simply let you."

She stopped walking and laughed, a bitter, ugly, terrible sound. Joliffe was almost glad the twilight had deepened enough he could no longer clearly see her face as she said with scorn and bitterness, "It was so easy. I was there first, to ready things. When he came, I was standing on the wagon, waiting for him just where I needed to be. I told him I was weakening toward him, that I hadn't wanted to meet somewhere we'd be seen because it was too soon to be seen I was giving up Robyn, but still I was weakening. He believed that. He tried to put his arms around me. I backed away, said I was still torn over it all, asked him to turn away from me while I gathered myself to part from memory of Robyn forever." Everything except contempt left her voice. "He truly believed I was that weak and a fool. He turned his back on me. The rope and the noose had been already up when I came there. I'd only had to make sure the noose was in reach when he turned away from me. I threw it over his head, jerked it tight while he was still too startled to do anything, and pushed him off the wagon to swing and choke. To swing and choke," she repeated viciously, then choked herself on what sounded like her own anger and triumph and sickened memory all together.

His voice kept carefully empty, Joliffe said, "Except it wasn't that easy. You had to keep him from grabbing hold of something to save himself even then."

Anna Deyster lurched forward into a rapid walk. Keeping pace with her, Joliffe insisted, "Didn't you?"

"I had to. I had to." Her hands, that had been folded tightly together at her waist, were now fists pressed between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She began to beat them against herself, lightly at first, then with increasing force. "He made Robyn suffer. I made him suffer in his turn. It took him longer to die than I thought it would, but he finally did. He couldn't even pray for pardon with the rope choking him. He died unshriven and d.a.m.ned. d.a.m.ned forever!"

That she had given Ned no chance of salvation plainly mattered greatly to her. Did it matter at all to her that her own salvation was in doubt if she could not come to remorse, confession, and penance for what she had done?

Her walking had brought them to the orchard's edge, to where a gate stood open into the rear yard of what Joliffe guessed was her own home by the way she came to a sudden stop and stood staring the length of the yard toward the house at its far end. Then she abruptly turned aside and sat down on a bench there beside the gate. "I can't go in there again," she said.

Joliffe stayed on his feet in front of her. "Are you ready to go to the bailiffs, then?" As if it were something she had choice in. She might, of course, go back on all she had said, deny she had ever said it, but he did not think so. It had all been weighing on her so heavily that the slight added weight of his questions had been too much. Words and truth had broken out of her. He did not think she would mend enough to take up lying again.

But she went on sitting there, not ready yet for what must come next, and what Joliffe had supposed would happen happened: someone came looking for her down the length of the yard from the house, carrying a horn-sided lantern. To the good, it was Powet. When he was near enough for the lantern light to show him Joliffe standing just outside the gate, he said with open surprise, "Master Joliffe? Have you seen-" He reached the gate then, saw his niece on the bench, and changed that to, "Ah, there you are. Your mother is fretting. You said you'd not stay out like this again after the other night. You could have brought Master Joliffe into the house."

There was half a question behind that last and in his look at Joliffe. Well might he question finding her out so late and alone with a man, but Joliffe had his own question and asked, "When was she out so late before?"

One hand out to urge his unresponding niece to her feet, Powet said, "Um? When? When was it, Anna? Four nights ago, wasn't it? Herry and d.i.c.k have a wager laid you'd do it again, no matter what you said. I think Herry has won. Now . . ."

"Uncle Eustace." Anna Deyster lifted her aged and ravaged face to the lantern light. "I killed Ned."

Powet's hand fell back to his side. He stared at her, then looked sharply aside at Joliffe who nodded agreement to her words. Powet looked desperately back to her and said, begging her to unsay it, "Anna, no."

She stood up from the bench. Her back was straight. Her voice was firm. "Yes. Now I have to go to the bailiffs and tell them so." In an echo of her uncle's gesture, she put out a hand to him and asked in a voice gone momentarily small, "Please, will you come with me?"

Chapter 24.

Word of Anna Deyster's confession and arrest burned through Coventry the next day with something like the speed of fire through dry stubble. More than once it overtook the slower-spreading word that Ned Eme's death had not been by his own hand, making momentary confusion for those unable to re-sort the pieces quickly enough. Joliffe heard more than he wanted to of the gabble-talk as he paced the streets, waiting for Sebastian to find him. He supposed Sebastian would, rather than wait for when they had settled to next meet, and surely enough as Joliffe walked through the marketplace in early afternoon, Sebastian's hand came down on his shoulder.

They made play of having chance-met, so that if anyone heeded them it should look like two acquaintances briefly meeting, making an exchange of greetings, and soon parting. What actually pa.s.sed between them was Sebastian saying, falsely smiling, "Out Bishop Gate. First street to the left. Second alehouse along it," and Joliffe answering with as false a wide smile, "I'll go long way round, shall I?" so that he and Sebastian would not go along Cross Cheaping and out the Bishop Gate at too much the same time. Sebastian gave an agreeing, smiling nod to that and they slapped hands and parted company.

A half hour later they were facing each other along a bench in a dark, slovenly den of an alehouse that looked to sell secondhand clothing as well, and Sebastian was not smiling at all as he said in a low-voiced growl and with a glower, "That's it, then? That's all she told you about it? She killed the fellow because he stupidly told her he'd killed Kydwa to have her? That she doesn't believe what he said about Kydwa being a spy because she says there's nothing to find out about Lollards here?"

"That's the sum of it."

"There has to be more. What a fool of a grieving woman thinks is true or not is worth nothing," Sebastian grumbled.

"If there is, it will have to be for someone else to find." Joliffe stood up, spreading his hands to show that was all he had. "I'm done for this while."

Staying seated, looking up at him, Sebastian said, "Not if I give the word otherwise."

"It won't matter what word you give. I'm a player. Much of my value to our lord lies in my being a player. A good one. From now until after Corpus Christi all I am is a player. What you and any Lollards get up to in that while is your business and theirs, not mine. Not"-he added as he started to leave-"that we've found sign of any Lollards getting up to anything here. So I'm not going to worry overmuch about it."

To Joliffe's surprise, Sebastian lifted his cup in gesture of farewell and said with his rat-toothed grin, "The Lollards for me. Playing for you. Fair enough for now."

Joliffe grinned back and went out.

The next few days were not that simple, of course. The talk and scandal of it all likely added to the pleasures of the hundreds of out-folk flowing into Coventry for the week, and Joliffe could not help hearing far more than he wanted to hear, more especially since it followed him straight to the last practices for his own play.

His worry the first day was over what they would do if Powet decided he was too distracted to go on with Joseph. Will Sendell could probably take up the part, but what if, instead of Powet being unable to go on, Richard Eme declared he could not work with the uncle of his brother's murderer? At this late in the practices there was only so much patching could be done before the play suffered in the playing.

So he was relieved that first afternoon's end when everyone came, gathering to the yard at the expected hour. By the look of them, they all were as unsure as he was how things would go from there. Powet was gray-faced and haggard with strain and grief. d.i.c.k was little better, half-hiding, huddle-shouldered, behind his uncle as if unsure he wanted to see or be seen. Richard Eme for once had nothing to say, simply stood looking as if he had been blindsided out of all reckoning of how the world should be. No one else seemed to know what to say to them or to each other and sat or stood around in awkward silence. But they were all there, and Sendell stood in front of them, the roll of the script in his hands like a marshal's staff of office, and said, "We know what's happened and it's terrible all around. There's nothing good to be said"-here he looked at Powet, who had drawn d.i.c.k to his side with a steadying hand on his shoulder, and then at Richard Eme-"beyond how sorry we all are."

Murmurs from everyone else and a general nodding of heads agreed with that. Powet and Richard Eme nodded back in thanks and acceptance. d.i.c.k looked as if he wanted to bolt, but with his uncle's hand on his shoulder, he managed his own awkward nod.

"That said," Sendell went on, "we still have a play to do. It's a fine play. We've made it that. Better than any of us thought we could when we started." As he surely meant it to, that won a shaky laugh among them all, and he said more strongly, "I doubt any of us want to fail it now. So, into your garb and up on the wagon and everyone to their beginning places. We'll run it as if we mean it. Prophets, let's set it going, and mind you keep the pace fast to the forward."

Joliffe, knowing from experience how possible it was to lose oneself in the necessity of a play no matter what was happening-or waiting to happen-in life beyond it, threw himself full strength at his Prophet, willing Richard Eme to match him because the drive they brought to the beginning might lift and carry everyone else forward in their turn. It worked. Or something did. From the Prophets onward, the play flowed like a thing with a life of its own, carrying them all with it. Their new Gabriel fitted in like he had been there all along. Joseph was sincere and comical in deft proportions. Mary remembered to move like a girl and held the bundle that was supposed to be the infant Christ as if it were a real child, not a wad of cloth. Even d.i.c.k, by the time he had to come from the stage house as Christ, had moved beyond his immediate misery into feigning the mix of wisdom and merriment that Sendell had been working him toward.

The only moment that nearly undid them all was Simeon's Nunc Dimittis that he sang so much from the heart that it seemed to be for all the pa.s.sing away there was in the world. Joliffe saw the tears rising in more eyes than his own among those on the stage and took up his next lines as the prophetess Ane more quickly than he might have, to move everyone onward from where their thoughts should not go just now. His own included.

At the end everyone came back onto the stage. Joliffe, looking around at them, saw they were all as lifted up and worn out as he was, and he started to clap, both for himself and them. Sendell, beaming at them from the yard below the wagon's edge, joined in, and then everyone in a burst of relief and triumph was clapping for each other.

"We can only hope," said Sendell when they had done, "that the next two practices go badly."

Those among them who knew the old adage that a bad last practice meant a good performance when it counted explained it to those who looked either puzzled or alarmed at Sendell's words. That made for more laughter before Sendell held up a hand and finished, "Word is we're to play at five sites this year. If you haven't heard, those will be in Gosford Street, then along to the meeting of Greyfriars and Earl Street, onward to the corner of Smithford and West Orchard, around to where West Orchard meets Cross Cheaping, and lastly at St. Michael's churchyard. The weavers have promised us plenty of apprentices and journeymen to pull the wagon, so all we have to do is be there. And play our hearts out, of course."

They cheered him for that, and he dismissed them for the night. Only to Joliffe, lingering behind everyone else, did he show how tired he was, sagging down on a bench to sit staring at the pageant wagon across the yard. In the evening shadows the bold colors of its red and blue painted sides and the green and yellow curtains of the stage house were muted, the emptiness of the stage profound after all that had been there so short a time before. Joliffe sat down beside him, guessing he needed to talk. Not taking his eyes from the stage, Sendell said, "It's going to work. I truly think it's going to work."

"If they could do this well tonight," Joliffe said, "they'll be fine come the day."