"Too true," Joliffe agreed. "But I've a good to ask of you, sir, if I may."

"Ask."

Joliffe told him of Ba.s.set's arthritics and the comfort it would be if Father Morice went to talk with him. The priest a.s.sured him it would be his own pleasure to do so, and they parted companya"Father Morice on toward the manor, Joliffe back to the alehouse, where he found Piers giving Gil and the alewife's little boy a juggling lesson and the alewife setting bowls of vegetable pottage on the table for the three village men. Aware he and Piers and Gil were going to miss their dinner at the hall, Joliffe asked for some for them, too.

"If there's enough?"

"There is," she said. "The turnips in the upper field did not so badly as everything else this year, and with all the rain the gra.s.s has the cows giving plenty of milk for the while."

"Not but what we're getting tired of your milk-and-turnip pottage," one of the old men muttered between spoonfuls.

"You'd get more tired of being hungry," the woman said as she went back toward her kitchen. "Be thankful we have what we have."

Piers, Gil, and the little boy were crawling about among the floor-rushes, collecting fallen b.a.l.l.s. Joliffe sat down on a bench near the table, making a show of being somewhat stiff, although he was not, to give him an opening with the men, and said, "This weather gets into the bones, doesn't it?"

"Not into theirs," the injured man said, nodding at the three boys. He sounded both disgruntled and envious.

Joliffe nodded at his bandaged foot. "Gout?"

That surprised one of the old men into a hoot of laughter. The other snorted into his ale bowl, and the hurt man said, "A dropped pitchfork. Right through it."

Joliffe made a pained noise of fellow-feeling.

"Good it was a cleaned fork," one of the old men jibed, "or you'd not be sitting here to complain of it."

"Better if I'd not done it at all," the other man said sharply back. "You fellows," he said at Joliffe, "you've the life. No pitchforks for you. All words and the women looking at you. If you don't like it here"a"he made a wide swing of his arm, endangering the ale in the bowl he helda""you go on there. Free as birds, you fellows are."

He had downed too much ale. Even a brew as weak as this one would finally be too much if someone drank enough and he had probably been at it all morning, adding it to the mix of pity and the pain he was probably in. So Joliffe, forbearing to point out that birds were "free" to be cold in hedges and hunted by anyone who felt like it, only said easily, "The trouble is that, even if we happen to like wherever we are, we still have to move on to somewhere else, like it or not."

"I wouldn't mind moving on to somewhere else," the man grumbled into his ale.

"It's as good here as anywhere," one of the old men said. "They're all the same, most places."

Less philosophically, his companion in age and drink said, "Everywhere had as ill an harvest as we did, from what's said. There's no point going somewhere else." He gave Joliffe a nod. "'Less you have to,'course."

"I'd still like to go," the hurt man grumbled. "I'd still like to do something else than this."

"What?" one of the old men said. "Something else than sit dry and drink the livelong day? Don't be addle-witted. I'll tell you I worked a lifetime to be able to do this."

"'Til your daughter decides you've had enough and hails you home to ch.o.r.es," the other old man chuckled.

"Aye, and the more reason to enjoy what I have while I have it." He poked the younger man's arm. "You heed me, boy. Be glad you've got what you've got." Raising his bowl, he mumbled just before burying his nose in it, "It's not like you've choice in it, anyway."

The other old man raised his own bowl to that and drank, too. The younger man simply drank, staring broodingly at the wall while he did. Joliffe, watching him over the rim of his own bowl, felt for his discontent. In his own life there were other things he could have been besides a playera"several other things he had been besides a playera"but at least he had had choices and made them. He doubted this fellow had ever seen anything else to be but what he was. Or else he had refused other choices if they ever came. But staying with what you were born to was a choice, too, and the one that most people madea"a choice that Joliffe could have made, too, upon a time, but had not and of that he was still glad. However cold the hedge sometimes was.

But this was not getting him what he wanted. The three boys were sitting on the floor at the far end of the room, each with a bowl of pottage the woman had just handed down from a tray. As she came along the room with another bowl for Joliffe, he harked back to the bad harvest, saying, "Going to be a lean year all around, no matter where you are. Will Sir Edmund scant the wedding feast, do you think?"

"Nah, not him," one of the old men said. "There'll be plenty. And even if it's no more than plenty of turnip pottage, it'll taste the better with what his cook does with it."

Joliffe smiled his thanks to the woman as she handed him the bowl, a wooden spoon ready in it.

"Spices and like," the other old man offered. "Brings 'em in from London-town." A far-off, foreign place they would never see. "Those nutmeg-savored cakes, remember them?" he asked his fellow, who smacked his lips in answer and said, "Could do with more of those."

Joliffe had tasted the present pottage by then and said, unfeignedly approving, to the woman still standing there, "London spices or not, you've given this savor. It's very good."

She smiled at him. "There's herbs to be had here that do well enough for those as know what to do with them."

"Basil?" Joliffe guessed at hazard.

Her smile warmed. "Yes. And a touch of sage."

He had another spoonful, letting her see how much he enjoyed it, while one of the old men granted somewhat grudgingly, "Aye, girl, you do well. But you'll eat as hearty of the wedding feast as any of us, come the time."

"I never said I wouldn't, and I'll remember it afterwards with as many sighs as you do. Sir Edmund does what's right by folk, I'll give him that."

Something in the way she said that, though, made Joliffe ask, "But?"

She moved her shoulders uneasily and shifted her tray from one hip to the other. "It's how he does things."

"Ah, you've gone on about that before," one of the old men said. "You've got a flea on your brain about it."

But hers was the first thing near to a complaint of Sir Edmund that Joliffe had heard and he asked, "How do you mean?" The question was too open. He saw her start to close off from saying more and added quickly, "If we don't please him well enougha"the boys"a"he gestured to Piers and Gil now making her son laugh as they started his juggling lessons againa""and me and the rest of the companya"he might ill-speak us to Lord Lovell. Is there a way we're likely to put a foot wrong?"

Appealed to that way, the woman opened up again, rea.s.suring him, "No, you'll likely please him without much trouble. He'll do right by you, too, but . . ."

She paused, trying to find what she wanted to say. The hurt man grunted, brooding into his ale bowl. "All *buts' and *ifs.' Everything is all *buts' and *ifs.'" Without lifting his head, he thrust the ale bowl toward her. "More."

She took it. "It's that there's no heart to him," she said. "In Sir Edmund, I mean. No heart in what he does, no matter who he does it for."

"You've a flea on your brain," the old man said again. "What's heart got to do with it, so long as he gives us our rights, takes no more than his own, and leaves us alone the rest of the time?"

"And feasts us at harvest and Christmas, remember," his fellow added.

The woman shook her head, impatient with them but lacking words for more answer.

Joliffe offered, "Without his heart is in it, it's hollow, what he does."

"That's it," the woman said, pleased. "He's hollow."

"Doesn't matter he's hollow so long asa"" the old man started.

"It does matter," the woman interrupted. With Joliffe to back her, she was suddenly fierce. "It's like saying it doesn't matter if . . . if . . ."

She cast around for way to say what she wanted to say, and Joliffe put in, "It's like saying it doesn't matter if the two sides of a roof stay up if you lean them together without any rafters. It does matter, because without the rafters, you can't be sure how long it will stay before it falls on you."

"Like that, yes!" she said, pleased to have it said for her. "Or those puffball mushrooms you find, all big and looking solid, but you step on them and they turn to nothing, being all hollow inside."

"More ale," the hurt man said sullenly.

"Only because your wife will thank me for keeping you quiet," the alewife snapped and went away.

Left to see what else he could have from the old men, Joliffe harked back to, "At least there'll be fine feasting at the wedding."

"Aye," one of the old men said and the other agreed, "That there'll be. Fool woman."

"You must have thought you'd lost your chance at it for this year when . . . What was his name? The other one the girl was going to marry. The fellow who died?"

"Harcourt. John Harcourt," one of the men obliged.

"That was it. How near was it to the wedding when it happened? He died here, didn't he?"

"He did," one of the old men said, and the other went on, "The cart carrying his body home to bury pa.s.sed right through the village, it did. All draped in black and him coffined and all."

"No funeral feast, though, because they took him away to bury."

The alewife was back with a filled bowl for the hurt man. He took it without thanks or shifting his stare from the wall in front of him; nor did she give him more heed than to be sure his grip on the bowl was firm before she rejoined the talk with, "He'd ridden through here on his way to the manor four days before, and a fine sight he was. Dressed in green and yellow and sitting his horse like the fine knight he was going to be. It was said Sir Edmund would knight him at the wedding, belike."

"He was come then for the wedding itself?" Joliffe asked.

"Not then," she said. "It was a month maybe to the wedding yet, but he couldn't stay away from Mariena, like. He lived only a day's ride away, so it was no great matter."

"Less than a day, if you hurry it, I hear," one of the old men said.

The other one chuckled deep in his throat. "Which Lady Benedicta did upon a time. And more than once."

"Half a day if they met in the middle, and half a day's ride back," his fellow said.

"Don't start in with that old story," the alewife said. "It was all long ago, if it ever happened at all."

"It happened," one of the men said.

"Long summer days when it doesn't get dark until late," his fellow went on, "there'd be time to meet in the middle and do what they'd do and her be home again before dark."

"As if she could be gone that long without Sir Edmund wondering," the alewife scoffed.

"He wasn't home that summer, was he?" one of the men said, sharp at being contradicted. "Gone off to London about some trouble needing lawyers."

"Westminster," his fellow said. "He was gone to Westminster and the courts there."

"All the same. He was far off and not to know what his wife was doing."

"Do you think," the alewife said, sharp, too, and impatient, though this was likely something they had all gone around more than once before now, "that Sir Edmund would set to marry his daughter to the man . . ."

"Always supposing she is his daughter." The old man nudged his fellow in the ribs. His fellow nudged him back. They were both taking ribald pleasure in sinsa"or supposed sinsa"long past. But then their own sins that way were probably long past, too, and in memory other people's would do as well as their own.

"She's his daughter," the alewife said, more impatient and at them both. "She was born a good more than nine months after he came back, wasn't she? And if he doubted she was," the woman added triumphantly, "do you think he'd set to marrying her to the son of the man who'd cuckolded him?"

She had them there and they knew it, but one of them made a fighting retreat, saying, "Aye, right. But something went on that summer someways. Things was never warm between Lady Benedicta and Sir Edmund since then."

"Things weren't probably warm between them before then," the alewife shot back. "I've saida""

"Aye, aye, we all know what you've said."

"And whatever happened or didn't," she went on, "the man is long since dead anyway." Remembering Joliffe was a stranger and probably unknowing about all this, she added to him, "It's all old talk and nothing to do with anything now."

Joliffe nodded as if she had enlightened him on some great matter and tried, to keep the talk going the interesting way it had been, "If that's the only talk there's ever been against Lady Benedicta, seems there can't be much in it."

The alewife willingly took him up on that. "She's as good a lady as could be asked for," she said firmly, then pointed an accusing finger at one of the old men. "And you know it, Rafe. She sent that syrup for your grandson that stopped his cough last winter when it was like to have driven him into his grave. So mind your tongues, all of you, in this house anyway."

Probably minding more that she was the alewife who let them sit about her place not drinking much, one of the old men said, "You're in the right, goodwife. You're in the right about her. There's been no other talk about her in all these years since."

"Learned her lesson that time," his fellow said into his ale, low enough the alewife ignored him.

"And Sir Edmund has never strayed?" Joliffe tried, to keep the talk going.

"Not so it matters," the other old man said. "Not that we know of."

The alewife came back at him, "Meaning it doesn't matter what one of you men do, so long as we don't know about it? That it isn't wrong unless it's found out and we jaw about it forever? Is that what you're saying?"

"Nah, nah," he hurriedly denied. "That's not what I'm saying. Wrong is wrong. Buta""

"Something's wrong somewhere here, though," the young man said broodingly at the wall. The links between his mind and his mouth and the world around him were slurring away with drink and he said the words with the deliberate care of someone having to work at them. "Something's wrong somewhere, that's sure. Bad harvests two years in a row. Another hunger-winter coming. G.o.d's against us. Something has set G.o.d against us. Wea""

"He's against more than us, if that's the way of it, and I doubt Father Morice will thank you for saying so," the alewife snapped. She turned to Joliffe. "You folk get around. It's no better anywhere else, is it? Weather and harvest and all, they've been bad everywhere, haven't they?"

"It's no better anywhere else, that I've heard or seen," Joliffe said. "Not for anyone."

Thought of the bad harvest and the famine-winter to come settled into a dark quiet on them all. Across the room, Piers and Gil were encouraging the alewife's son at his jugglinga"he had two b.a.l.l.s behaving well for hima"and their merriment was sharp against their elders' sudden silence. The alewife said suddenly, "Well, there's some has work to do." She held out her hand to Joliffe. He had the coins ready, gave her two pennies, and asked, "Enough?"

She gave him a wide smile. "Town prices for village fare."

"Well worth it, it being fare better than I've had in many a town."

"You'll be welcome here again," she said warmly, gave the other men a look to tell them their welcome was less likely, and went away through the rear doorway, calling her son to her as she went.

Figuring he had likely learned all he was going to here, Joliffe stood up, too, called Piers and Gil to him, made farewell to the men, and left, satisfied in belly if not in mind. He'd heard much and learned little, but at least the story against Lady Benedicta had been repeated, so he knew it wasn't just one man making up tales. He'd like to know if the syrup she'd sent to the ill grandson had been of her own making. Was she skilled at healing with herbs? Because the skill could be set the other waya"to kill. Or to make ill. The way Mariena had been suddenly ill last night.

But why her own daughter?

Answer to that would be hard to have. Nor did it go with Will's fall yesterday. If that had been more than accident and Mariena's illness more than chance, someone was against both of them, and Joliffe had trouble forcing his mind around the possibility it was their own mother.

But if she was . . . then why? Or rather, why now?

He'd probably do better to consider who else it might be. Who had reason? And what reason?

But those would be answers equally hard to come by. Maybe better to consider how the attempts against Will and Mariena had been done.

Always supposing there had truly been attempts against them and not simply mischances.