A Play Of Heresy Part 6

"It can't be George killed and robbed him!" Ned declared. "I'll not believe that!" His face shifted from startled to dismayed. "Holy Saint Michael, Anna must be beside herself in grief. Master Sendell, can you be done with me for now?"

Sendell managed, "For now, yes, but . . ." before Ned was away, jerking open the gate and bolting from the yard.

"Has always had a mind to Anna," Powet said glumly, by way of something like explanation.

"Who's this George?" Joliffe asked.

"George Wyston. Been servant to the Kydwas for years. Is all but another son to old John. Sure, he's not murdered Robyn. Ned's a fool."

"Could we come back to the play now?" Sendell asked with the patience of a director who did not want to be patient much longer.

The next morning, deliberately out and about in hope that Sebastian was somewhere near and looking for him, Joliffe had no surprise at all when someone in the jostle of the market crowd along Cross Cheaping near Coventry's market cross b.u.mped into him from behind and slipped a sc.r.a.p of paper into his hand. He did not look around. As he had been told when being taught the trick, "If you're not both subtle, then it's all a waste, isn't it?"

Besides, he had found no one more subtle than Sebastian and doubted that-even if he had looked around-he would have found him out of the crowd. Instead he turned into the first narrow side street and only around its first sideways jog paused and read what few words were on the bit of paper. St. Michael. St. Thomas' chapel. Now.

Well, that was clear enough. Joliffe swung around and headed for St. Michael's church with its tall, unfinished tower.

For a parish church, the place was huge. The nave was six bays long, with arcaded aisles along both sides, an aisled chancel beyond that, and any number of chapels with their altars and arrays of candles set about here and there. Joliffe wandered until he found St. Thomas' chapel. Sebastian was there, sitting on the stone ledge along the wall, seemingly with all his gaze and heed on the carved wooden screen and statues of Saint Thomas, Christ, other saints, and a few angels for good measure behind the altar. Being Sebastian, he was surely also aware of every movement within his range of sight outside the chapel. Never a trusting man was Sebastian. Ever. When Joliffe came in, he stood up, bowed to the altar while crossing himself, and left, all without ever seeming to look at Joliffe. Joliffe, never looking directly at him, either, went through the business of kneeling before the altar and making what could have been a semblance of brief prayer except, so long as he was there, he made more than a semblance, praying, "Bless this work we are about, if it is work that should be done."

After all, it hardly seemed right to ask G.o.d's blessing on work that should not be done. The trouble lay in having only notoriously fallible human judgment to use in deciding. But finding out a murderer was surely a thing that should be done, and Joliffe rose, bowed, crossed himself, left the chapel, and not unexpectedly found Sebastian propped on the splayed plinth of one of the pillars not far off, head craned back in seeming study of the paintings of saints and angels along the length of the nave's wooden ceiling. Because naves, like church porches, were places where folk commonly came and went, meeting friends and standing about in talk, there was nothing to remark in Joliffe pausing beside Sebastian and saying, pointing randomly at something on the ceiling, "Word came yesterday your missing man has been found. Was it you that did it?"

Nodding and pointing as if agreeing about the ceiling, Sebastian said, "It was."

Having hopefully set into the mind of anyone who might have noted them that they had met by chance and were simply in talk about the church, Joliffe looked fully at Sebastian for the first time. Whatever the man had been doing, it had not lately included a good meal and a long rest. His narrow face was more than ever toward rat-like, without the usual glitter to his eyes and a flat weariness in his voice as he went on, "I said I was going to look for him, didn't I? I found what's left of him under a thick pile of brush, cut last winter likely from a hedge there along a cart-track on the rear side of a hay meadow. The brush had kept carrion birds off the body. Otherwise they might have brought someone to see what they were at. He would have been found, though, when someone used the brush pile, and that would have been soon, I'm thinking, when the haying started in that meadow."

Joliffe nodded, seeing it. The women would have started carrying the wood away then, because no wood went to waste if it could be helped; well-dried wood from hedge tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs could serve under any number of small cooking fires. "Likely it was too distant from the village for them to trouble with it sooner?"

"Likely. They'd know it was there and to be had when the time came, when they'd be at the field anyway. Whoever put the body there knew it would be found. Meant for it to be found. Unlike the servant's body," he added glumly. "That one wasn't meant to be found now or ever, I'm thinking."

"George Wyston," Joliffe said.

Sebastian's gaze, that had been drifting around the church with an apparent idleness that Joliffe knew was not idle at all, whipped back to him. "How do you know that? His name?"

Joliffe told how yesterday had gone and how he came to be on the edge of it all.

"So you know the family," Sebastian said. "Families, since the Byfelds are so linked to it. That's good. Very good. Lollards are they?"

"Not on the Byfeld side of it, from any talk I've heard. The most I've been able to hear yet about Lollards is a neighboring family with a *whiff of Lollardy' about them. Not enough to trouble their priest, and since they've two sons in one of the plays here, I doubt there's anything there."

"There's always something there if they're Lollards," Sebastian said. "What were they doing seven years ago?"

"Nothing, it seems. Not that their neighbor knows."

"Or knows but isn't saying."

"He talked about them freely enough, it seemed to me. He talked freely about the Kydwas, too. But you already know about them."

"I know about the woman. Mistress Kydwa. The rest of the family was never much part of her foolishness and are well over it. That's why Kydwa was helping us."

"And must have found out something."

"Or been found out. We need to talk, you and I. More than we should here. There's an alehouse off Palmer Lane. Go by way of Ironmonger Row, turn into Palmer Lane, and just across the river turn into the first alley on your right. Soon as you can after me." He ended with a laugh, slapped Joliffe friendliwise on the shoulder, and strolled away toward the near door with every look of chuckling to himself about something as he went.

Joliffe, widely smiling as if they had just shared a fine jest, strolled off the other way, admiring the church as he went, circling the nave until he was come around to go out the same way Sebastian had but well after Sebastian was gone.

He had no trouble finding the alley and alehouse with its bush above the door, was interested to see the alehouse's rear must be on the river, giving another and less likely way in and out of the place. He had learned from Sebastian to value places that gave various ways to come and go, and despite he had never had any desperate need of such as yet, he was strongly aware that "yet" might happen any time.

The day's overcast had gathered into spattering rain while he was coming from St. Michael's. As he approached the alehouse, the several men who had been seated outside were shifting themselves inside. He did not see Sebastian among them, but when he followed them inside, Sebastian was already there, sitting at ease and alone on a bench against one wall, with a fat chunk of bread thickly laid with sliced meat in one hand and a pottery cup in the other that he raised at sight of Joliffe, calling, "Hai! There's someone I'd not thought to see here! Come and sit and tell me how it goes with you." Adding as Joliffe came toward him, "You here for the plays?"

"I am that," Joliffe said, no more troubling to keep his voice down than Sebastian was, nor particularly raising it. Just two acquaintances meeting by chance. He took up a filled cup from the table beside the alewife, laid down a coin, and sauntered over to sit beside Sebastian. The bench was near none of the others in the room nor to either of the doors or the front window; was in fact in the most shadowed part of the room without being blocked from either of the ways out and altogether too well-placed to be by chance, which told Joliffe this alehouse had not been a random choice. But then Joliffe had never for a moment thought it was and said as he sat down, taking up their talk about where it had broken off, "So Kydwa's servant is dead, too. Someone said yesterday, when word came that Kydwa was found, that his man couldn't have done it, that he was someone who'd been with the family forever."

"No one thinks it likely then that he conspired toward Kydwa's death with someone, then was betrayed?"

"Not from what was said about him, no. Practically another son and all that."

"I've known sons that couldn't be trusted within arms' length of anyone in their family," Sebastian said darkly. His eyes narrowed with thought, he took a long drink, then said, "Still. I doubt that's the matter here. What it looks to me is that someone wants it thought he's guilty. Kydwa's body was sure to be found, being where it was. The other fellow was shoved under an under-cut stream bank and then the bank pulled down to bury him."

"Which could mean their murderer . . ."

"Or murderers."

"Or murderers," Joliffe granted, "wanted people to think his servant had killed Kydwa and was fled, and the only reason to take that kind of trouble would be to steer suspicion away from Coventry . . ."

"Not the only possible reason but the most likely one."

". . . which suggests the murderer or murderers are from here."

"Or just thorough in muddling their trail."

"Thorough would have been to shove both bodies under that stream bank and hope neither was ever found," Joliffe said dryly.

Sebastian acknowledged agreement to that with a show of his teeth in a tight smile and a silent jerk of his body that was nearest to a laugh Joliffe ever saw him come. "You have it. So their murderer is someone who wanted to keep suspicion turned away from Coventry, yet wanted it known Kydwa was dead. But not until it would seem this George Wyston was too far escaped for search for him to be of use."

"Cunning," Joliffe said. "And cold."

"That, yes, but clumsy into the bargain. Whoever did it had small skill at killing."

"There's a comfort if we end by going up against him," Joliffe said dryly.

Dryly never worked with Sebastian. He simply looked at Joliffe with his flat, rat eyes for a moment as if deciding how seriously Joliffe meant that, then said, back to where he had been, "The bodies were far decayed. Some things about them were hard to tell, but by what I could see of wounds, neither of them look to have defended themselves."

"Taken by surprise. Or sleeping."

"I judge they were upright when stabbed. So taken by surprise. From behind. The servant was stabbed in the back, either first or while he was trying to escape. I'd guess first. Kydwa was stabbed in the side, maybe as he was turning around, given the way the blade went in."

Joliffe was grateful he was not the one who had had to handle well-decayed bodies enough to find that out. "Sword or dagger?" he asked.

"Dagger."

"Unuseful." If a sword had been used, there would have been at least somewhat a lessening of who to look at, but nearly every man not a monk wore a dagger.

Sebastian nodded agreement to that and went on, "Both blows were poor. Whoever did them did not know his business. Not even with the second one to Kydwa, given after he was down to be sure of him." Sebastian sounded annoyed at such poor skill. Joliffe had not had occasion to see Sebastian's blade-work but supposed it was as well-honed as every other skill he had so far shown.

"Meaning his business, generally, isn't murder," Joliffe suggested.

"I'd say not. The servant may even have been still alive when pushed under the bank and it was pulled down on him. Probably not aware, though."

For what comfort there was in that, Joliffe thought bitterly. He was starting to very much dislike this murderer. He drank the rest of his ale in a single long draught while Sebastian continued, "I'm seeing it as either their murderer came on them unawares or else was someone they knew and didn't mind having at their backs as they went along together. The servant was probably behind Kydwa and was stabbed first. As he suddenly went down-maybe cried out-Kydwa started to turn around in surprise and was stabbed in his turn. He went down and was stabbed again, finishing him. Then it was a matter of hiding the bodies."

"First of moving them," Joliffe pointed out. "It wasn't done where you found them, was it? It sounds too far off the road for Kydwa likely to have been there on his own."

"No way to tell. Maybe he was there to meet this man-or men-secretly. Maybe he was there to learn something. Or betray something. Me, maybe. Maybe he had turned his coat to the Lollards, only they weren't as grateful as he hoped and killed him."

"But you weren't betrayed."

"No." Sebastian granted that almost grudgingly. "So maybe it's that the Lollards had found him out as a spy and simply killed him to put a stop to it."

To move Sebastian away from Lollards, Joliffe asked, "How long since they were killed, do you think? And where? How far from Coventry?"

"A day and a half's ride out of Coventry. Almost three weeks ago, I'd judge."

"They were on the straight way to Bristol, I take it."

"Aye."

"So their murderer could have followed them from Coventry on purpose to overtake them, or gone before and been waiting for them. Supposing he was from Coventry at all."

"We have to start with thinking he's from Coventry. Or else from Bristol."

And if that doesn't play out, we'll have to think about combing through the whole middle of England for him, Joliffe thought, knowing there was little hope of success in that. Sebastian did not help by going on, "There's always the chance, too, that he went on-or else back-to Bristol and took ship and is long away." Which was altogether possible: Bristol was a large city and a port from where ships were away to Ireland and down to Portugal and Spain and Gascony, let alone a steady traffic of all manner of boats and ships to Wales and back. For leaving the country, Bristol was as good a place as London or Hull.

There being nothing to be done about that-if their murderer was that gone, he was gone past finding out or overtaking-Joliffe said, "The time that's pa.s.sed is against us. It will be hard to trace who was gone from Coventry then."

"That will be for you to do. I'm for Bristol. The murderer might have been someone from there, heading out and meeting Kydwa on the way. Or maybe he was someone from Coventry but on his way home from Bristol. You'll need to find out who came back to Coventry about the right time, as well as who was gone."

"I'm to find out who wasn't here and who came back? Among how many thousands of people that live here in Coventry?"

"Bristol is bigger," Sebastian retorted glumly.

Chapter 10.

With both of them mutually silenced for the moment by those thoughts, Joliffe took his empty cup and Sebastian's to have them refilled. Sitting down again and handing Sebastian his, Joliffe said, "It would be good to know if the murderer encountered Kydwa by chance or on purpose, planned ahead to kill him or simply used the moment as it came. And what happened to the horses Kydwa and his man were riding?"

"Sold somewhere well away from the Bristol-Coventry road," Sebastian said. "For the other, it would help to know, yes, but we're unlikely to until we've caught him. What I'd want to more immediately know is whether or not the fellow was out from Bristol. If it was someone who knew Kydwa was supposed to meet me and came out of Bristol purposefully to stop him, that'd not be good." Because it would mean Sebastian was known for what he was by someone dangerously ready to kill, however unskilled they were at it. "There's those that would needs be warned if that's the way of it."

That put Joliffe in mind of something about which he had wondered. "I don't suppose this Robert Kydwa, or Robyn as his people call him, was the only man spying in Coventry, was he?"

"Ha!" Sebastian scorned. "In a money-pot like this, with its trade in wool and cloth and iron making a wide web to west and south and north? There's more than our own lord master"-his usual way not to say Bishop Beaufort's name aloud-"want eye and ear to what goes on here. The more so with this present stirring of gentry and lords into new contentions now the Earl of Warwick's hand hereabouts is lessened for the while. But you know more about that part of it all than I do." Sebastian c.o.c.ked an eye at him, inviting him to talk. Joliffe looked blank. Sebastian barked one of his short laughs, approving, and went on, "But me-I'm our lord master's huntsman after Lollards, G.o.d rot them, so Kydwa was the only man I needed to know here."

Joliffe never altogether accepted any claim of ignorance from Sebastian but outwardly always seemed to and only asked, "What, then, if I need help here or . . ."

"Best you don't need any."

". . . or want to pa.s.s on word about anything?"

"Wait until I'm back. Or if I don't come back, take it you know to where." He stirred as if about to rise. "Now I'd best set way back Bristol-ward. No use to my lingering hereabouts."

Belatedly thinking of it, Joliffe asked, "What about you as first finder of Kydwa's body? Won't you be wanted here?"

Sebastian shrugged. "Some fellow with a dun yellow beard and a ragged-edged hood paid a boy here in Coventry to take a sealed message to the crowner. The boy was to say the fellow didn't have time to find out the crowner himself and that's why he'd paid the boy to do it."

"Then you followed the boy to be sure he did it."

"Surely."

"And the fellow in a dun yellow beard and a ragged-edged hood won't be seen again."

"Not here in Coventry," Sebastian said with great satisfaction.

The one thing that Joliffe had been able to show him was the usefulness of skillful disguise. Sebastian had taken to it warily at first but quickly found out its usefulness and was become good at it. Joliffe suspected it was the added layer of deception that pleased Sebastian most: he was not someone who wanted to be known by anyone in any way.

They both rose, done here and making ready to leave, except Joliffe asked with another belated thought, "It was only Kydwa's body you reported. Nothing about the servant. That's to let the murderer think he's got away with his hope the servant will be blamed, yes?"

"That's it," Sebastian agreed. "Let the stinking Lollards think they're safe and maybe they'll be enough careless we can find them out. I mean to learn what I can of their stirrings in Bristol while I'm finding out who was there from Coventry one side or the other of the murders. A link there could lead back to any Lollards thinking about making trouble here."

Joliffe nodded despite he was not as altogether ready as Sebastian to a.s.sume Lollardy was the reason behind it all. He knew too much of what else was going on among lords and gentry now the Earl of Warwick's hand no longer held so tightly hereabouts to be altogether ready to let them go by the way in this. That meant a double watching out for anyone who might not want him to know more, either about Lollards or what some lord or other might be into.

They paused in the tavern doorway, Sebastian eyeing the heavily clouded sky that promised the present pause in the rain was only momentary, and a sudden other question came to Joliffe.

"About that brush pile where you found the first body and then the stream bank-were those just luckily there for the murderer when he happened to need them?"

"I suppose so, ye-" Sebastian broke off that yes, his eyes abruptly narrowing to a glare at Joliffe. "Or maybe not. And if not, then-"

He stopped, looking as if he were mentally chewing over his thoughts. Joliffe said them for him. "Or did the murderer know of the brush pile and the stream bank aforetime and plan to make use of them?"

"They were nowhere near any road or lane," Sebastian said. His eyes were shifting swiftly side to side as if he were trying to catch hold of all his thoughts as they sped past. "So if he knew of them, he must be someone of the place. Or else someone with reason to be familiar there."

"Or else a stranger who took the time and chance to search around," Joliffe offered.

Sebastian shook his head against that but granted aloud, "Maybe. That will be the sheriff's look-for. He'll almost surely ask around about any strangers seen thereabouts a few weeks ago. Me-I want to know whose land it is, who's the lord of it. If one of his officers was there nigh the right time, that would be someone to have a long look at. Especially if the fellow or his lord is any way linked to Coventry or Lollards."

"Ask, too, who owns neighboring land."