A Play Of Heresy Part 9

Aggrieved, Ned protested at Powet, "Now is perfectly the time. When she's in most need. Before she finds someone else instead of me to turn to."

"I'm only telling you that to wait may gain you all." He pointed at Ned's hand. "That won't."

Ned made a face at him and turned away, sullenly fumbling whatever he held into his belt pouch.

The rehearsal went well. Tom as Mary would need more help but was beginning to find his way into-as it were-motherhood. Powet as Joseph was making stronger the man beneath the comic husband, a man as aware as Mary of the duty they had been given and trying to lighten the burden of her worry with his lighter humour but no less concern. Hew was still perhaps a shade too stiff but no longer rigid as a stone statue and there was no faulting his voice, while Ned had all the grace of voice and looks that could be desired of an angel. Richard Eme was . . . well, he went on being Richard Eme, but that sufficed to give Masters Burbage and Smale clearer ways to their own Doctors, playing off Eme and to each other at Sendell's skilled direction.

Once, though, Sendell brought the practice to a stop, to ask of everyone not a Doctor in the Temple the why of their smothered laughter. Fingers pointed, forcing Burbage to confess he was copying the all-too-familiar voice and gestures of the senior priest at St. Michael's. Sendell frowned in thought, looked at the merry faces, and finally said, "Pull it in somewhat and lose it altogether when you begin to take Christ seriously. Yes?"

"Yes," Burbage agreed, and thereafter obligingly did. Having directed plays himself in other years, he likely understood there were few things someone directing a play loved better than a player who took direction.

The evening's high surprise was d.i.c.k's Christ. d.i.c.k was not easy in the part yet nor anywhere near to knowing his lines off by heart, but he was far better than he had been and was working at being better, which was more than he had done before. Sendell managed to keep both surprise and relief out of his voice at evening's end as he told d.i.c.k how well he had done, before dismissing everyone until tomorrow.

Powet caught Joliffe's eye and made a gesture of raising a cup to his mouth, silently asking if Joliffe wanted to go drinking, but added by a twitch of his head toward d.i.c.k that he would have to see the boy home first.

Joliffe's answer was forestalled by Sendell saying, "Master Joliffe, could you stay a time longer, please you?"

"a.s.suredly." He traded a regretful shrug with Powet but in truth sat back down on the bench willingly enough. Since he had probably drained Eustace Powet of all the information he safely could for the while, it was just as well to let him go now rather than risk more talk.

For his part, Powet probably did more than shrug when he realized Ned Eme was waiting at the gate for him, undoubtedly wanting more chance to bend Powet's patience with plaint about Anna Deyster. Joliffe was duly grateful for his own double escape as Sendell straddled the bench beside him, sat down, and asked, "What did you do to young d.i.c.k Byfeld today? He was almost good just now."

"Hai!" Joliffe protested. "He was well toward what you need him to be."

"Closer than he was last time I had to suffer through him mauling his lines," Sendell granted. "What did you do to him? I may have to do it to someone else sometime."

"I made him see that the Doctors in the Temple don't know the boy who shows up to talk at them is anything but a bold brat, that he has to charm them into listening to him because if some half-grown whelp came on all pompous at them, they'd simply clout him alongside his head and send him on his way."

"That did it?"

"Not quite. He still didn't quite have it. Not until I asked him if he meant to sound like Richard Eme being Richard Eme at his worst."

Sendell gasped on a surprised laugh.

"It made d.i.c.k laugh, too," Joliffe said with satisfaction. "That was when he finally started trying to say the words as if they were his words, not something painted a foot high on a church wall."

"Richard Eme as a dread example. I will remember that," Sendell said. "My thanks, Joliffe."

He said it so simply that for a moment Joliffe hardly understood, then said, trying to match Sendell's quietness, "You're shaping a good play here. I'm pleased to be in it and help as I can."

Sendell regarded him in such grave silence for a long moment that Joliffe added, "I mean it. It's shaping well."

Another moment pa.s.sed before Sendell said quietly, "It is, isn't it?" And then, even more quietly, "I almost begin to hope," sounding as if hope were something he hardly recognized.

Chapter 13.

A few days followed that were as near to ordinary as Joliffe was used to anymore. He worked twice with the young devils for h.e.l.l's harrowing. He firmed his lines as the Prophet and Ane into his mind. He strolled out once to see how Tisbe and Ramus were doing where they were pastured outside of Coventry. He spent time with Ba.s.set and the others, helping with their cart and gear, Ba.s.set having decreed that this while off the road was the perfect time to give a good tending to everything, from greasing the wheels and checking all the underpinnings and harness to laying out every one of their playing properties, to mend those that needed it and dispose of such as were past decent use. Ba.s.set set Joliffe and Gil on quest to find and buy what could be used in place of the latter, a quest which diverted Joliffe and Gil for most of a day and gave Joliffe chance to be in places around Coventry for which he might otherwise have lacked excuse. Not that he learned aught of notable use. Kydwa's murder was widely talked of, but he heard nothing new. Never any mention that Lollards were part of it or-come to that-anything about Lollards at all, beyond once an overheard mutter between other men at a tavern that old Master Kydwa had had no luck at all these past years, what with his wife and all. Then the talk had sheered away to the weather in a way that made Joliffe think it was not to the weather the men were going but away from old Master Kydwa's Lollard wife.

It was as they left that tavern Gil asked, "Hear anything of interest this time?" in a widely innocent voice.

Joliffe was both abashed and diverted at being caught out. "Um. Not really."

"Is it something particular you're hoping to hear?" Which was as close as Gil had ever come to asking about what the players somewhat knew he did when he was not with them.

Because Gil and the others had been so behindhand in ever questioning him, Joliffe answered more directly than he might have otherwise. "I don't know what I'm hoping to hear. I just listen to everything and see if anything fits with something else."

"Is it about this Kydwa's murder? The servant that did it?"

"Kydwa's family and close friends swear the servant never did it, would never have done it."

"You've somehow overheard them, too?" Gil mocked.

Joliffe poked him in the arm. "One of them is in Will Sendell's play with me." Two of them if d.i.c.k was counted, but he seemed to have naught to say about Kydwa's death, now Joliffe came to think of it. "I don't have to *overhear' anything. I get told."

Gil nodded, either satisfied with that or sensible enough to let it go, and Joliffe tried to be more circ.u.mspect with his listening thereafter. He found himself wishing he could hear what other than tavern-folk were saying, women most particularly, and realized belatedly that he had the perfect place to do just that, given the women who presently spent hours sewing in the upper room with Rose. Not that Rose would let him in any way help with the sewing. His st.i.tchery fairly well matched his juggling and neither was a pretty sight. That drove him to hit on the claim he wanted to sit in a corner and write at a thought he had for a new play, using a rainy day for excuse why he did not want to crouch in the cart for the work.

Since he had often enough written while the players' life went on around him, n.o.body thought a room full of women was an odd choice of place. Not that his afternoon spent listening to them did him any good. There was inevitably some talk of the murder, but since it had not happened in Coventry itself, the strongest edge was off it, the women having less to say about it than the men had and making not even sliding mention of Mistress Kydwa. They spoke with pity for Cecily, done out of any hope of marriage now, and with respect for Mistress Byfeld for taking in the Kydwas as she had, and with some sympathy for Anna Deyster, but as one woman said, st.i.tching an embroidered band to the sleeve-edge of a king's robe, "After all, she could all along have had a better marriage than to Robyn Kydwa, and there'll surely be some other come her way soon enough."

Another woman's sly, "Oh, there's someone already," was met with the laughter of general understanding who she meant.

That was the sum of what Joliffe learned there. Unless their failure to speak of Mistress Kydwa at all told something in itself. There had not even been the almost obligatory "Thank the saints she did not live to see this day." Was it a continued wariness to talk of those brought down by Lollardy, even among women?

Joliffe caught himself. The matter was hardly a simple "even among women." Both Mistress Kydwa and her friend Alice Garton must have been known to these women to one degree or another. Remembering those women's fate could well be sufficient to curb their talk in that direction.

For Joliffe's purpose, however, absence of something said was not of much help-unless that utter silence was a worry in itself. Was it hiding something so deeply dangerous that no one was fool enough to talk of it?

Oh, please, he thought-please don't let it be Sebastian was right, and this is all, at the root, to do with Lollardy.

But since Kydwa's and his servant's deaths were not about plain robbery, what were they about, if not because of Lollardy, he wondered while sitting over a wooden bowl of good pottage at one of the inns along Earl Street on his way to practice that evening. That so much trouble had been taken to put blame on the servant had to mean that whoever had done it did not want anyone looking back toward Coventry, which meant whoever had done it was tied to Coventry in some way, and that might mean that Kydwa in his spying here in Coventry had learned something-very possibly about Lollards, Joliffe grudgingly granted-but been himself found out by someone determined to keep him from pa.s.sing on what he had learned. And if that was the way of it, then there was no reason the murderer would not be willing to kill again to protect . . . whatever he was protecting.

Joliffe did not like that possibility. He had developed a strong dislike to anyone wanting to kill him, not to mention a truly deep dislike of anyone actually trying.

But what if Kydwa's death was not because of his spying? What if it was for something else? Thus far, Joliffe had heard no word against him from anyone. He seemed to have been seen by everyone as a pleasant, hard-working young man and nothing more. So why would someone take the trouble to have him dead?

Of course the first answer that came was-Ned Eme.

Who had been gone from Coventry at the right time.

Who could not hold off his eagerness to have Anna Deyster for even this while she was in worst mourning.

Who by marrying her would gain not only her but more freedom from his family than a younger son might readily hope to have.

Who, apparently unexpectedly, had money to buy a pretty piece of jewelry.

d.a.m.n.

Joliffe finished the pottage without the heed it deserved and went onward to Mill Lane, overtaking John Burbage along the way. With two plays to talk of, they had a pleasant time of it until at the corner of Mill Lane they encountered Richard and Ned Eme coming from the other way, their home being near Gosford Gate. For the short way farther to the yard, Joliffe had to keep up a lightness of talk he did not feel and hold off eyeing Ned too closely. Nor did it help that Burbage asked the youth how his wooing went.

"As ever," Ned said glumly. "Badly."

"He won't listen. I tell him he needs to hold off, but he won't heed," his brother said with a virtue ripened by unfaltering certainty of his own good judgment in all things. These past few practices he had taken to making suggestions to Sendell on how better to do things. He had finally grasped that how Joliffe was playing the First Prophet was a success, might even be drawing people's favor away from himself in that part of the play. His attempt then to lighten his Prophet to match Joliffe's had been as leaden as wayfare bread and immediately curtailed by Sendell. Eme had sulked through much the rest of that practice but unfortunately was undaunted for long. Yesterday he had begun to suggest how the Doctors at the Temple might be played better-meaning how his own Doctor could stand to the fore of the pageant wagon and Master Burbage's and Master Smale's not only be kept to the back but give up some of their lines to him. Their better lines of course.

So far Sendell had taken it with outward patience, although he muttered to Joliffe at the end, "His thoughts on it all are as dull as his playing."

"But his good opinion of himself remains sharp," Joliffe had returned and left Sendell snorting on smothered laughter.

This rehearsal Sendell's patience raveled to an end. When Richard Eme during one of his longer speeches-and against what Sendell had earlier carefully directed him to do-cut around his fellow Doctors and behind Christ, forcing d.i.c.k, Burbage, and Smale all to turn their backs to where most of the onlookers would be, Sendell roared, "Stop! What in the name of Saint Genesius are you doing, Eme?" Although he and everyone else knew very well what Eme was doing-making certain all the onlookers would be seeing him more clearly than anyone else at that moment in the play.

Eme, brought to an abrupt halt in the middle of a line, gaped at Sendell, momentarily startled by Sendell's shout, then drew himself up to dignity, and said, "I thought we should try how that worked. It played better than what you had, don't you think?"

Joliffe slapped a hand over his own mouth just in time to stifle a burst of laughter. Sendell, strangling not on laughter but barely in-held anger, said, "No. I don't think that at all. That's why I did not have you doing it."

"But . . ." Eme foolishly started.

"And don't do it again," Sendell snapped. "Now get back where you were and stay there. I'll tell you when and where I want you to move."

Red was a color that went well with Richard Eme's fair hair, but not when it was suffusing his anger-tightened face. At least Joliffe supposed it was anger, since he doubted Richard Eme had the sense to be rightly shamed. Still, he was holding in his apparent rage, had even begun to stalk back to where he was supposed to be, when Ned called out from the corner of the yard where he and Hew were working their Angels' singing with one of the town waits and his small organ, "Told off again, eh, brother-mine?"

Richard Eme whirled toward him. "You shut your mouth, loblolly-wit." Ned made a gesture toward him that could only be called rude. Richard returned it. Ned opened his mouth to answer, his eyes' merry glitter betraying he was about to say more mischief. But Sendell roared, "Enough!"

Startled, everyone-the Emes and all-looked at him.

He glowered at both Ned and Richard. "You can be brotherly at home or in the street, but not here," he snarled. He shared his glare around to everyone else. "So back to d.i.c.k's last speech before Eme decided he knew better than I do what the play needs." He jerked a single nod at d.i.c.k. "Start."

d.i.c.k scrambled his first words, then steadied. By the time he reached the speech's end, Richard Eme was back in place and recovered enough to take up his own part, albeit with a certain stiffness of the jaw. Since he mostly spoke and moved in the play as if his joints were made of unoiled iron hinges, the little more stiffness made barely a difference. The practice went on. d.i.c.k would never play Christ to Joliffe's satisfaction. The boy lacked any deep place in himself from which to draw thoughts and feelings beyond his familiar ones, but Sendell was having some success crafting those familiar ones as best he could into what he wanted for Christ. Tom Maydeford as Mary and Powet as Joseph were settling into their parts-Powet warming into the loving husband trying to soothe with light humour his wife's pa.s.sion for her son, Tom moving more freely as Mary with every practice. From the corner of the yard Ned's and Hew's voices rose and twined together in the Nunc Dimittis they would sing with Simeon. If actual angels did not sing so, they should, Joliffe thought, glad that the not-well-joined pieces of the play looked to be coming together into a whole that would be pleasing when all was said and done.

A few more days pa.s.sed much the same. Joliffe worked another afternoon with Piers and his fellow devils, after which Burbage declared himself satisfied and ready to use them. Talk among Ba.s.set, Ellis, and Gil told their play was shaping the way Ba.s.set intended, and on the whole Sendell was pleased with his. All of that was something to set to the good against the fact that Joliffe's daily wanderings around Coventry got him nothing new of any use. Given that, he was uncertain whether he was pleased or not the morning in the market crowd along Broadgate he found Sebastian looking back at him over one shoulder, meeting his gaze only long enough to give a single sharp nod before melding out of sight into the crowd, leaving Joliffe to guess where to meet him.

The chapel in St. Michael's church was somewhat nearer than the tavern in Palmer Lane, but with all the talk they would likely need between them, the tavern was the more likely place, and Joliffe twisted around by way of Butcher and Ironmonger Rows, always with an eye out for anyone who might be following him but seeing no one until he paused to buy a handful of strawberries from a woman's basket, giving him chance for a careful glance around. He glimpsed Sebastian a few hayforks' lengths behind him, using a chattering pair of broad housewives as a moving screen. Joliffe moved on, eating strawberries, dropping the stems into the stone-lined runnel down the middle of the street to be washed away in the next rain, and giving no sign he had seen Sebastian. But when three apprentices, probably escaped from their duties and making the most of their freedom before retribution overtook them, came barreling down the narrow street, crowding and jostling among the shoppers, Joliffe took the chance of being briefly out of Sebastian's sight to s.n.a.t.c.h off his cap, thrust it into the front of his doublet, pull out another of a different color, and jam it on his head at a different slant than he had worn the first, at the same time spinning sideways to seem intent on an array of shoes laid out for sale on the nearest shop's board.

The man behind his goods looked at him, rightly startled by the cap-switching. Joliffe gave him a deliberately merry grin and conspiratorial shrug and twitch of the head toward the street behind him, to show he was playing some manner of jest. The man grinned back, accepting that, which freed Joliffe to watch from the corner of his eyes as Sebastian went past, craning to find him somewhere ahead but probably not worried, likely certain by now that Joliffe had to be heading for the tavern.

Sharing another grin with the shopkeeper, Joliffe changed back to his first cap and set off after Sebastian in his turn. The cap-switching was an old but simple ruse. Sebastian would guess he had done it as soon as Joliffe overtook him, but Joliffe saw no point in having Sebastian know what other cap-or anything else, come to that-he might have to his use. Not if there was no need of Sebastian knowing.

He nonetheless found himself a little startled at how deeply he had taken to the habit of secrecy, even with someone supposedly his ally. Supposing that a fellow spy was indeed to be thought of as an ally and not simply as a fellow spy.

There was something twisted around on itself about that thought. He supposed he would have to think on it later. For now, it was enough that he carefully overtook Sebastian just as Sebastian reached the tavern. As expected, Sebastian entered with a step aside from the doorway, that he not be outlined against the light and to have a wall at his back while he paused to make quick surveyance of who was there and to be on the flank of anyone who might follow him in. He must have momentarily wondered why he did not see Joliffe, but Joliffe in the same moment went past the doorway, turned, and thumb-shot a small strawberry off the side of his finger, past Sebastian's nose with the accuracy of a misspent youth. Sebastian spun to face him, starting into a crouch, a dagger suddenly in his hand that had not come from the sheath at his hip.

Seeing Joliffe, he swore, straightened, and disappeared the dagger. "Fool. I could have gutted you before I knew it was you."

"That's why I kept well out of reach," Joliffe returned lightly. Sebastian was the longer-experienced of the two of them, but that was no reason to let him think he could have it all his own way.

Or else every bit the reason not to let him think it.

Either way, they both threw a quick, shared look around the room to see who was there and had noted them. To their good fortune, only one man besides the tapster was there, on a bench in a far corner, peering at them in a bleary way that suggested he was somewhat too far into his drinking to be sure what he had seen. Trouble, or just two friends playing the fools? Something of the same doubt-but clearer-was warily on the tapster's face, and Sebastian laughed and slapped a hand down on Joliffe's shoulder, giving him a friendly shake and saying lightly, "Well enough. You win." As if there had been some merry wager between them. "I'll pay the penny this time around."

They got their ale and sat on a bench well away from the only other drinker, in a corner that would leave them private from anyone else who might come in, as inevitably others did while they drank and talked, looking outwardly at ease despite what they were saying to each other.

Sebastian began it, asking as soon as they had sat, "So. What have you learned? Anything to the purpose? Anything that shows Lollards are part of this?"

"Any Lollards here are lying quiet and very low."

"Like adders," Sebastian muttered.

"Even adders only strike when troubled or affrighted."

"n.o.body was frighting them seven years ago."

"Ah," Joliffe returned, "but the fools that were making trouble then paid for their foolishness-many of them with their necks. The ones that are left want nothing more than to be left in peace."

"Until the fools still among them again start to think they have a chance."

Knowing this was not a debate he was likely to win-nor needed to-Joliffe let it go, settled for saying, "As that may be, I've found out nothing that warns they're stirring now. I'm supposing you knew Kydwa's mother was a Lollard."

Sebastian accepted that with a grudging nod and, "Ruined her family with it, yes. So. What else?"

Joliffe told him. When he had done, Sebastian at first said nothing, just stood up and took their cups to be refilled. Only when he had returned and sat again did he say, "That, then, is as far as you've got? This Ned Eme is your only choice for maybe guilty?"

Joliffe bit back the urge to snap a curt and angry answer to that, keeping himself to no more than saying somewhat dryly, "I've been somewhat over-busy with why I came to Coventry at all. The plays, remember. I've gone about, listening as much as I've been able wherever I reasonably can. There's been nothing to hear. It's only by chance I have anything at all. Have you got better?"

Sebastian gave the narrow twist of lips that served him for a smile. "What I've got is a better that's all the better because it matches with yours. I've someone in Bristol who watches for who comes and goes there, and when, and why, if he can learn that, too. Merchants and others worth the noting. There were several who came from Coventry in the while that matters. The next thing that mattered was when they left here, and you tell me about this Ned Eme that left Coventry several days before Kydwa did. Yet, according to my Bristol man, he didn't arrive in Bristol until the day I was looking for Kydwa to come."

"Kydwa was delayed in leaving here. I've learned that. Shouldn't you have thought to see him several days before then?"

"Kydwa could come to Bristol any time he wanted, so long as he was there the particular day set for us to meet. It wouldn't have mattered to me if he were there earlier, so long as he was there that day. He wasn't, of course. But likewise this Ned Eme, leaving here before Kydwa, should have arrived in Bristol sooner than he did. That lends to wondering why."

Joliffe granted that with a nod but had to say, "It's thin, though, and goes nowhere to proving anything. He could have had reason to linger along the way."

Sebastian's rattish eyes glittered. "But there's the other thing I learned. That manor where the bodies were hidden-it's held by a Coventry man named Master Eme."

Chapter 14.

Joliffe took in that bit of information with a jolt deep in his guts and was still finding his way to some response when Sebastian said with less satisfaction, "Not that that suffices to prove anything. Even if we find out this Ned Eme was there, his claim would be he was simply seeing to something for his father."

"Which he might have been," Joliffe pointed out in fairness. "And there's the reason, all honest enough, why he was late in coming to Bristol."

Sebastian gave a grudging nod of agreement but nonetheless added, "That's not to say he didn't do the murders."