A Play Of Heresy Part 7

"That, too. Aye. That, too." Sebastian was turning away as he said it, was walking away by the time he finished, not troubling with any farewell. But he never troubled with farewells. Joliffe had once wondered if that was because in the work they shared a "farewell" could all too easily be a last one. Had wondered it once, then refused to think on it again. Not that, going the other way from Sebastian now, the thoughts he took with him were any more comfortable. The murderer they now sought seemed not to be skilled at killing, seemed not to be someone trained to it. Still, he had been able to kill two men together, had seemingly had Fortune on his side all the way in the matter, able not only to kill them but then to hide their bodies without being caught at it.

What of the blood, Joliffe suddenly thought. With all of that, wouldn't the murderer have bloodied his clothing, and if he had, would not someone have noted that and now maybe remember it? It would be useful if someone did. Or remembered that someone no longer wore his familiar clothing or else suddenly had new clothing for no good reason.

No, that latter was too thin a tether to follow. When Kydwa and his man had been killed was not far off Eastertide, when those who could commonly got new clothing, after a winter's wear had worn out last year's garments. Or, if the murderer had truly thought well ahead, he could have simply got from a fripperer whatever he wore when he killed the men, then buried the bloodied clothing somewhere and never been seen in it at all. That would have been the way to do it. So had he?

Joliffe saw no likely way of finding out, one way or the other. Between them, he and Sebastian had questions in plenty and not much in the way of answers. Or, on his own side, next to nothing in the way of answers and no certainty how to start after them. On that account alone, he was glad he had something else to do this afternoon instead of brood about it all, having learned that often and often he got better answers out of himself not by prodding, poking, and worrying at a problem straight on but by letting a tangled matter sink down to behind his thoughts while he got on with other things.

Today at least that was just as well, because last evening he had agreed to spend some of this afternoon helping Master Burbage with readying his little devils for the Harrowing of h.e.l.l. He suspected that by the time he had finished with them-or they had finished with him-thinking about murder might be a pleasant pastime.

He curved back toward the now-familiar Earl Street by less familiar streets that took him past high-spired Holy Trinity church and toward St. Michael's with its unfinished spire that would surely challenge, if not out-top, Coventry's other two. The low-trailing clouds seemed close to skimming the point of Holy Trinity's spire, but the rain was only spattering down, untroublesome, as Joliffe curved around the east end of St. Michael's with its bow of tall, stone-traceried windows and headed down a lane he knew would bring him into Earl Street. He was hurrying a little, uncertain if he were somewhat late but meaning to take time to buy at least a meat pasty on his way. He was not minded to deal with Piers and the others on an empty belly.

A man coming out of a doorway a few yards ahead of him said with pleased surprise, "Hai! Master Joliffe!"

"Master Burbage," Joliffe said in return, adding as a boy younger and smaller than Piers followed Burbage into the street, "Your son? One of the devils?"

Burbage gave the boy a slight, affectionate shake by one shoulder. "That's him. Son and devil, often as not." The boy grinned and let his father's hand stay where it was, not shrugging it away as Piers would likely have done, as they went on along the lane with Joliffe, to turn into Earl Street. Or was it already become Jordan Well here? Joliffe did not trouble to ask; it was enough to know they were bound for Mill Lane again. He did buy a pasty from a woman selling them from a tray along the street and ate it while they went on, Burbage explaining along the way how the smiths and girdlers and several other guilds had their pageant houses off a shared yard.

"That means there's some working around who can use the yard when," Burbage said. "Mostly it's the smiths who have it, what with them having the Pa.s.sion and Crucifixion and Pontius Pilate and Judas hanging himself and Herod and all."

"Their Herod is really good," young Burbage said excitedly. "I mean good at being bad. He's been Herod for the smiths how many times, Da?"

"This will be his third and, yes, he's very good at it. Knows how far to go without he goes too far." He smiled at Joliffe over his son's head. "I've warned Ba.s.set he'll have to watch out for his Herod. He's one of them that want to go altogether mad."

"So Ba.s.set has said."

What Ba.s.set had said in full was "If I left him to it, he'd be on his back rolling around on the wagon, kicking his heels and squalling. I told him he can stomp and flail but if he tried more than that I'd put a bit, bridle, and reins on him until he learned better."

Joliffe had asked, "Is he the kind who will do what you say until he's got lookers-on and then do what he wants?"

"I've told him that if he does, I'll have his guild fine him to within an inch of his life."

"Did he believe you?"

"Oh yes," Ba.s.set had said grimly enough that Joliffe, for one, believed him, and very probably his Herod did, too. Or did if he had any good sense at all.

No one ever seemed put off that Herod was played by someone different in every play, with three or more different Herods rolling past as the pageants shifted from site to site. Not to mention all the different Christs, Marys, Josephs, and Apostles there were from play to play. The odd thing Joliffe had noted the time he had been taken as a youngling to see the Corpus Christi plays done at York, long before he became a player himself, was that having so many different Christs and all meant that instead of the lookers-on becoming attached to the player of Christ, they attached to the story instead, and to the meanings beyond the story.

Burbage was saying, "The rest of us with our plays can do our practicing well enough with someone's hall or house yard most of the time, until things get harried near the end, but there's no trouble with using the yard this afternoon."

"The Smiths Guild, they got in a player from London to do their play for them," young Burbage offered excitedly. He looked up mischievously at his father. "Last year they had to make do with my da."

"Oh, aye, and a sorry mess I made of it, surely," Burbage said good-humouredly.

"You didn't!" his son declared with fierce loyalty. "You're as good as that London fellow is. Every bit. Better!"

"I'll settle for as good," Burbage said, smiling.

They had reached the double gates to the yard. They were wide and high-arched, making rolling the pageant wagons out and in easier, Joliffe thought. They were closed for now, of course, but the small door set into the right hand one was standing open, and Burbage's son skipped ahead and in. Joliffe and Burbage followed him. Counting Burbage's son, five demons were already there, scattering from what had probably been a friendly scuffling at each other in the middle of the yard. Piers and another boy were just coming out of an alleyway at the yard's other side. Joliffe supposed, without much thinking about it, that it must go to whatever was behind the long shed that ran most of that side of the yard. It also crossed his mind to wonder what Piers had been up to. Not trouble, hopefully. No hunt seemed to be on his trail anyway.

Another open-sided shed made up a second side to the yard, while sheds with doors hung with heavy locks closed the other two sides. Four large wagons were backed into the open-sided sheds, bare yet of anything built on them for their plays. Burbage, maybe seeing Joliffe's look all around or maybe just still explaining everything, said, "They'll be hauled out into the yard next week and everything built on them then. What's needed for that is stored in the other sheds, along with such things as don't need better keeping and haven't been taken elsewhere. I've the key for ours if you want to start with the spears and all. Can haul out the h.e.l.lmouth, too, if you want that today.

"Not today, no," Joliffe said. The h.e.l.lmouth would be a large monster-head, painted in colors suitable to h.e.l.l, its mouth gaping large enough for the Devil and his devils to go in and out, and eventually for the Souls called to salvation by Christ to come forth. Before dealing with that, there were other things to be done with the young devils, who had heard the offer of spears and, led by Piers, were setting up a chant of "Spears! Spears!" doubtless in eager hope of having weapons put into their hands.

Master Burbage settled them down, made Joliffe known to them, named each boy to him, and stepped aside, leaving Joliffe to it. Joliffe, bracing himself, said, "First, you have to learn to fall down. Stand a full five feet and more apart from each other." Which would serve to stop their present elbowing and shoulder-b.u.t.ting at each other. "Now, Piers, you've been taught I know . . ."

"Why do we have to know how to fall down?" demanded the boy who had come in with Piers. Burbage's older son, Joliffe had gathered. "We're devils!"

He started to prance and grimace, and likely the others would have joined him at it, except Piers for once proved useful instead of troublesome by saying as he came to stand beside Joliffe, "We have to learn to fall because Christ is going to strike us all down and we'll have to writhe and everything, only we have to fall down without hurting ourselves. Like this-only don't do it until Master Joliffe shows you how!" he ordered.

With that, he took a few steps back, raced forward, and threw himself headlong into a somersault. His hands never touched the ground, he landed on his feet, paused long enough to say, "Then you fall down like this," and sprawled backward as if he had been hit by a huge fist. It was not easily seen, unless someone knew how to look, how he caught himself so no part of him hit the paving too hard.

The other boys gaped. Burbage's older son exclaimed, "Are you hurt?"

"Of course not," Piers said, springing back to his feet without using his hands. "Because I learned the ways to do it rightly."

Joliffe, choking down mirth at how much Piers sounded like his grandfather, said mildly, "But we'll start with something simpler than that, I think."

Chapter 11.

With Piers full of delight at showing off his skills and surprisingly patient at helping the other boys begin to learn simple tumbling, Joliffe had an easier time with the pack of them than he had feared he would. Whatever Piers had been doing these days of running wild in the town, he had plainly found an acknowledged place among these boys that made them willing to listen to him and follow his lead. Of course the thought of anyone following Piers' lead in anything was usually cause for alarum, but Joliffe was not about to scorn the present usefulness of it.

When one of the panting boys thought to question why they were doing this, Burbage said, "When Christ comes to open h.e.l.l's gate, and the Devil orders his demons to stop him, and Christ gestures at you, I want something better than the lot of you just falling down and scuttling off the stage."

"This is the force of Heaven striking the forces of h.e.l.l," Joliffe put in. "It should look like more than just a bunch of clumsy boys falling over."

"We should be blasted right off the wagon!" Piers exclaimed.

"I was thinking that, yes," Burbage said. "Have you all fall about, then flee the wagon in all directions and out of sight under it, to leave the Devil suddenly facing Christ alone."

"But all that will only work credibly," said Joliffe, "if you learn to fall and tumble well."

He kept them at it for a while longer and at the end justly praised them for how well they were doing, finishing with, "Piers will let you know when we do it again."

"Again?" one of the boys protested.

"More of this," Joliffe confirmed, "but also how to use your spears so you don't truly stab anyone."

An answering chorus of "Spears!" gave general approval of the spears at least. At Burbage's word that they were freed then, they started a general surge away toward the alleyway out of the yard, on their way to whatever mischief they could find next, Joliffe supposed as he moved quickly enough to catch Piers by one arm in his escape. Piers, twisting against his hold and looking up at him, complained, "Ahhhh, Joliffe. I . . ."

"My thanks for your help," Joliffe said without jest. "You made a large difference how it went with them."

Piers stared at him, so startled that even when Joliffe released him, he only stood for another moment, still staring, before recovering enough to say brightly, "That's because you need all the help you can get, surely," before taking to his heels after the other boys.

Standing with Joliffe to watch them go, Burbage said, sounding well satisfied, "After all that, I have to talk to Master Crowe. He has the rest of the play in hand and will be glad at the chance for some new thoughts on what can be done."

While he said that, he and Joliffe turned toward the gates and found Eustace Powet standing there, hands thrust into his belt, a distant look in his eyes as he gazed past them across the yard. At Burbage's good-humoured, "Ho, Powet, come to take deviling lessons with the boys?" he swung his gaze to them, a smile lightening his drawn-down face.

"Nay then. Only I was remembering when I twice played the Devil in the Harrowing. Five and six years ago might have been?"

"More like eight or nine, I'd say," Burbage offered. "You've been Pilate since then a few times."

"Aye. But the parts are dwindling away, just like me," Powet said as they all ducked through the door and into the street.

"There's nothing dwindling about Joseph," Burbage said, shutting the door behind them.

Deliberately decrepit, Powet croaked from the familiar carol, "Joseph was an old man and an old man was he when he wed Mary in the land of Galilee."

Burbage gave him a friendly slap on the back of one shoulder as they started along the street. "At least you aren't stuck with being one of the Doctors in the Temple. There's a part to dull a man to tears."

"Not when Master Sendell is done with you," Joliffe declared stoutly.

"Well, we'll see," Burbage said, but cheerfully enough.

"It's d.i.c.k he's going to have to see to," Powet said, not cheerfully at all. "He was one of the Harrowing's devils last year and had a fine wild time of it. You remember, Burbage?"

"Oh, I do indeed." Burbage did not sound as if the memory were an altogether happy one.

"Once he hears what they're at this year, learning to tumble and all, he's going to be even more set by than he already is. He says there's nothing but tedious in being Christ."

Joliffe felt what was coming next even before Powet looked at him.

"What say you, Master Joliffe? Would you have chance to work some with him? Help him to see the part better than he does now?"

For the form of it, Joliffe demurred, "By rights, that's Master Sendell's task. I don't know he'd care to have me over-step what's his." But the back of his mind was clamoring for what might be a chance to be nearer those who must have best known the dead Robert Kydwa and his servant.

"He's to his neck with seeing about everything else," Powet said. "I said something about it to him when he came to ask if Cecily will be able to sew for us after . . ." He fumbled briefly. "After things being as they are," he finished.

"Will she?" Joliffe asked, the matter of d.i.c.k momentarily put aside. The new and newly-refurbished garb was going to matter in the play almost as much as having a well-played Christ.

"Oh, aye. She said when Master Sendell asked her that without Robyn they would need the money now more than ever, her father and her. Of course the tears came again then, poor wight, but she'll do it. Look you, there's nothing else can be done that way, and that's why I've put mind to d.i.c.k and the trouble he's likely to be."

"I'd be willing enough to do what I could with him, Master Sendell not minding," Joliffe granted slowly while thinking rapidly. "The trouble is I'd want to do it at your house, to keep just anyone from blundering in and . . . embarra.s.sing him at the work." Yes: that sounded almost likely. Putting apology and regret into his voice, he added, "But this doesn't seem a time for doing that, coming in on everyone's grief and all."

"d.i.c.k and I will welcome something besides grieving going on," Powet said in no uncertain terms. "Herry, too, I'll warrant. It's the women are at it most. Cecily and Anna. My niece some, too, her having known Robyn's mother all her life and all."

They were all stopped at the corner of Powet's street, trying to stay out of the way of people busily going one way or another. It was here they would part ways if Joliffe was going with Powet, but Burbage paused to ask, sounding as if he already knew the answer, "How is old John Kydwa taking it?"

"I don't know that he's taken it at all," Powet said. "You know how he's been these few years past. He moves when someone reminds him to. He eats. He makes his way to the privy and usually back again if he's helped, though sometimes he forgets. All in all, there's no telling how much reaches him. Certes, little comes from him to let us know."

Burbage nodded sad acknowledgement of that. "Well, give my sympathy to whoever may want it. I'll see you this evening likely?"

That was to both Powet and Joliffe, and they both agreed he would. Taking a quick look against running into anyone or being run over, he cut away across the street toward his own, leaving Joliffe and Powet to turn down Much Park.

"Will we find d.i.c.k at home?" Joliffe asked as they went.

"His mother told him off this morning for being an idle whiner and set him to spend the day helping Herry in the shop. For which Herry is duly ungrateful," he added with a grin.

"Not shaping to be mercer, is d.i.c.k?" Joliffe asked.

"Shaping to be a great lie-about, according to Herry. But it's early days yet, and every once in a while I remind Herry of how he was at that same age." Powet chuckled. "He then says that was all different. But that's what the young always say when they're that bit older."

"What does d.i.c.k say?"

They were nearly to the Byfelds' shop. Ahead, Joliffe could see d.i.c.k holding up a bolt of cloth while Herry explained something about it to a man on the outside of the shop board.

"d.i.c.k says he wants to be like his old great-uncle Eustace and wander Coventry all day to hear what he can hear what's afoot with other merchants and bring it home for my niece and Herry to know."

Joliffe stopped short. A few steps more, he and Powet would be too near the shop to go on with their talk. With effort he leveled his voice to ask with a seeming of no more than good-humoured interest, "Is that what you do? Spy out what other merchants are doing?"

"Oh, aye," Powet said easily. "It never hurts to know who's going to where and why, and who's come back and how they did. Twice or thrice I've been able to send Herry off to one place and another on a short word, to nip in ahead of someone where it mattered." Powet tapped the side of his head midway between eye and ear. "The wits still work fine enough. I'm not just an idle old man wandering through my days, waiting for the churchyard, like most folk think I am."

Joliffe laughed, both pleased at Powet's pleasured pride in himself and ready to make use of it. "So. Has Herry been away to anywhere of late to better the family fortune?"

"Nay. I've heard nothing worth his going for almost a year now. But I've been able to put him on to other things right here in Coventry that have turned to our good. I earn my keep."

"Unlike poor old John Kydwa," Joliffe led.

"Ah, there's as sad a case. Neither decently dead nor decently alive."

"And now his son is gone, too. What was taking him to Bristol? Do you know?"

"There was word a ship had come in there from Spain. He'd be late getting there, but whatever was left of the lading he might get cheap enough to turn a profit on it here. If nothing else, there's always something to be had in Bristol to bring back here, if the Spanish ship came to nothing."

"Herry didn't see him as a rival?"

"Robyn? Nay, Robyn was a long way from being a rival to us. Truth was that Herry used him as a factor sometimes and would buy what he brought back if it suited. If he-Robyn-had ever got enough to dower Anna with, then there could have been a partnership as well as a marriage there." Powet shook his head. "It's all too sad past bearing."

He walked on. Perforce Joliffe went with him, all the while trying to see a way how he could ask more about who of Coventry had come and gone near to the time Robert-Robyn-Kydwa had been killed. And his servant, although no one here yet knew he was dead, too.

No one but the murderer.

He had too little time to find another question before he and Powet reached the shop. d.i.c.k was bundling the length of cloth the man had bought, and Herry was taking his coins. Powet and Joliffe stood aside the few moments until they finished. The man went off, giving a nod and "Master Powet" as he pa.s.sed, Powet nodding back and saying, "Master Hors-ley," before going on to say across the shop board to Herry, "Master Joliffe here has said he'll spend some time with d.i.c.k if you'll give the whelp leave for a while."

Herry looked around at his brother. "You willing to be freed from one taskmaster to another?"

Apparently not one to consider whether he was leaving the frying pan for the fire, d.i.c.k said, "Surely!"

"He's done well today," Herry said to Powet and Joliffe. He took d.i.c.k by one shoulder and gave him a slight, affectionate shake. "Mind you do as well for them. Go on, then."

He gave the boy a push toward the door at the side of the shop. As d.i.c.k went through it into the pa.s.sageway, Herry said, again to Powet but not so lightly, "Ned is here again."

Powet made an impatient sound. "He doesn't hear what's said to him, does he?"