Whose revenge?

Joliffe felt like a housewife trying to beat fleas out of a blanketa"persistence was getting him nowhere.

What if he took it step by step from where he knew things had first, at least lately, gone awry here? Supposing he could tell when that was. Had it been when Harry Wyot refused to marry Mariena? And had he done that because Lady Benedicta indeed warned him away from her? But if she had, then why had she? The only certain thing about Wyot's refusal was that he had stood out against Sir Edmund despite what it cost him, settling for a marriage far more to Sir Edmund's advantage than to his own. Or so it was said.

Then there was John Harcourt. There had been delays in making the final agreement, and then when it was done, before the marriage could happen, he had died. Suddenly. In itself, that told nothing. Death happeneda"rarely conveniently and more often by chance than by someone's ill-will. But if his death had not been chancea"if it had been convenient for someonea"then who? And why?

Not for Lady Benedicta, who had surely been looking forward to having her daughter wed and gone. Not for Mariena, said to want the same. Sir Edmund? Had he found, too late, some reason against the marriage? Or some suddenly developed need for a richer marriage? Was the Breche marriage a richer one? Joliffe was not sure. No one had said as much. And how could Sir Edmund have been sure of a richer marriage anyway? Amyas Breche had not come into the reckoning until after Harcourt's death.

So far as Joliffe knew.

Was there some link between Amyas Breche and John Harcourt he had not heard of? It didn't seem likely. It was said to be from Harry Wyot that the Breches first heard of Mariena, and so far as Joliffe had heard, Wyot had not known Harcourt at all.

Harry Wyot.

Sir Edmund's first choice for Mariena's husband and now here again, companioning the man who would finally have her.

Joliffe's flare of excitement at that thought of Harry Wyot as the link between the things that had happened faded as quickly as it had come. He had been this path before. Harry Wyot had been married and gone from here before the Harcourt marriage was ever even talked of. Joliffe hadn't heard that he even knew John Harcourt, but even if he had, hadn't someone said he'd not been back here between his marriage and now?

Still, what if he had come to repent his refusal of Mariena? Could he have found someone herea"maybe bribed a servanta"to kill John Harcourt to keep the way clear for himself, in hope of another chance at her? That he was left with a wife himself might seem no great problem to him. She could always be sent the same way Harcourt had gone.

Except why would he have let the Breche dealings go this far when he could have stopped them by warning Amyas away from Mariena with some story against her? Unless he meant for Amyas to marry her, to get her into his reach at Cirencester, then kill both his wife and Amyas and then win Mariena to him . . .

That was so far a stretch Joliffe set it aside, only noting to himself to see if he could sometime make a play out of it.

But if not Harry Wyot, then who? Who else was there who might have an interest-unto-death in whom Mariena married?

Go back, he told himself. Try it all again around a different angle.

He rubbed his head, trying to find that different angle.

Harcourt's death. Set it aside for now. Look at everything else that had happened. Did they make a pattern of their own? What could be made of Will's mishaps? They had started before Harcourt's death. They had continued since his death. Had they all come during marriage talks or randomly around them as well as during them? That was something to find out, because maybe Will was in danger, rather than Amyas. Or they both might be. Or neither of them.

At least who would gain from Will's death was plain enough. If he died, Mariena inherited everything instead of having only her marriage portion. That could be reason enough for several people to want Will out of the way. Amyas Breche for one. But he hadn't even known the Denebys when the first accidents happened. Mariena then. But her possible willingness to be rid of her brother wouldn't account for Harcourt's death. His dying made no difference to Mariena's inheritance, only served to keep her trapped here at Deneby longer.

Joliffe realized he was back to considering Harcourt's death as part of everything that had happened here. But what of Mariena's sudden, strange illness two nights ago? What had that to do with anything? No one had made mention of any mishaps to her before then. Had it been only chance, too, like Harcourt's death had maybe been? Or did it mean that someone had broadened their attacks to include her? Or that they had changed from Will to attacking her? But why now and not before? Had something changed, to bring on that change? What? The fact that her marriage agreement was finally made? But the last time she had been betrothed, it had been the bridegroom who had fallen ill, not her. And he had died. She had not. Though that could have been her good luck rather than someone's intent. Even so, why would someone now prefer her dead instead of the bridegroom? Or her instead of Will?

Always supposing that all of these happenings were not merely mischance. Mischance did happen, could happen even in quant.i.ty like this. What he needed was something that linked these happenings one to anothera"something that told why someone would do them at all.

But if someone was doing them, how had this someone been able to strike down John Harcourt so skillfully and yet done so poorly in the attempts against Will and Mariena?

Or what if two different people were at work here, pursuing different ends, working at cross-purposes and apart from each other? Or could it be two people who were working together? Or one person but with two different ends in mind. Or, Joliffe thought savagely, half a dozen people all working at malign counter-purposes all at once. Wouldn't that make such a cat's cradle of everything as he would never untangle.

No. Instead of adding tangles to tangles, what he should do is convince himself that nothing was wrong here, that no one was doing anything to anyone, that it was all mischance and would work its way out in the fullness of time. That would make his life simpler all the way around and he could start this very moment.

He shifted himself and his writing box, resting his head on it as he lay out on his back in the long gra.s.s. If he wasn't going to write, he could watch the broken clouds drifting white across the sky and maybe even sleep. That would be more useful than his thoughts, for certain.

Tisbe lifted her head, listening a moment before Joliffe heard, too, hoof-fall and the c.h.i.n.k of harness along the trackway, coming from the village. Several horses, Joliffe guessed, listening. Probably ridden rather than led. Not pulling anything anyway. He stayed flat. With any good fortune, horses and riders would simply pa.s.s by, taking no particular note of Tisbe or seeing him at all.

Fortune favored him. But when they had pa.s.sed, Joliffe gave way to curiosity, rolled to his side, and raised himself enough on one elbow to see the backs of Sir Edmund, Mariena, and their accompanying servant riding away from him toward the manor. Taking the long way home to give Mariena a longer ride, Joliffe supposed, and lay down again, idly watching Tisbe's head instead of clouds as she turned it, watching the riders away. She spent very little time with others of her kind nor ever seemed to want their company, but she took an interest in them nonetheless and her head went on turning, watching.

Or . . . listening now, to judge by her forward-p.r.i.c.ked ears as her head went on turning, so that she had to be looking toward the woods now . . .

Joliffe sat up, frowning toward the trees. The trackway ran along the wood's edge. He and Tisbe had come along it, coming here, and he didn't remember seeing even a footpath into the woods there, let alone a track wide enough to ride a horse easily. Why were they going into the woods where there wasn't a path?

With one part of his mind very clearly telling him to stay where he was, he got to his feet. Tisbe swung her head to look at him. Suspecting that her look was much the one Ellis would have given him had he been there, Joliffe patted her on the flank and went away from her toward the curve of woods where she had last been looking. The riders would be past there by now. He would be able to follow them. Which would be better than meeting them.

Once through the brush along the woods' edge and among the trees, he found he had been wrong about there being no path through the woods there. It was narrow and a rider would have much ducking under tree limbs, but it was there. What was not there, he saw when he looked back to where it must start, was any break in the brush along the woodsh.o.r.e. The path began in the wood itself.

That would need closer looking at, but more immediately he wanted to know where Sir Edmund was going, and he followed the path the other way, farther into the woods. With all the rain there had been, the fallen leaves were too softened underfoot to make a betraying rustle. He had only to avoid cracking any sticks as he walked, and that he did. The horses could not. He could hear them ahead of him; and when sound of their going stopped, so did he, except he stepped sideways off the path to lessen his chance of being seen should someone back-track the trail to be sure they were unfollowed.

When no one did, he went carefully on, not wanting to come on them suddenly and be seen. What he came on instead was the path's end as it met a trackway undoubtedly far more traveled than ever the path was. The track's hard-packed earth and the smooth-worn grooves running equally apart from one another along it made him guess it was used for sledges rather than wagons. For hauling firewood probably. Or maybe there was a charcoal burner's camp somewhere near.

Whichever it was, even with the rain there had been, the way was too firm to show certainly which way the horses had gone. Joliffe listened, heard nothing, decided they were more likely to have kept going away from the village than back toward it, and turned and went that way along the track.

That was nearly his undoing. He had gone less than twenty yards, the track making a long, easy curve to the right, when a sudden jink of horse-harness, as if a horse had shaken its head, warned him he was far closer to the riders than he had thought he was. He froze. There was no hoof-fall. They were stopped. Waiting for him? Waiting for someone else?

He slipped sideways into the underbrush, more careful than ever of his feet. Hidden behind a hazel bush that had not fully lost its leaves yet and was covered over with the grey-white haze of traveler's joy for good measure, he stood still, listening, but heard nothing more than the same sound of a restless horse. No voices. Nothing. He eased forward, not back to the trackway but through the trees toward the horse. A little later in the season and he would have had no cover, but while many of the trees had begun their leaf-fall, the lower bushes and lesser trees had not; he could move from tree to tree with little chance of being seen unless he was careless. Or watched for.

He kept from being careless nor, he found, was anyone keeping watch. In truth, when he crouched low to look through a last screen of hazel bushes and more vining traveler's joy between him and a long clearing widened out to either side of the trackway, the man sitting nearby on one horse and holding the reins of two others looked to be doing nothing so much as wishing he were somewhere else. In the first few moments Joliffe watched him, he shifted his seat to one side in his saddle, then to the other, drummed impatient fingers almost silently on his saddle's pommel, then shifted his seat again. Of Sir Edmund and Mariena there was no sign, but he was Sir Edmund's man and those were Sir Edmund's horses, so unless Sir Edmund and Mariena had decided to walk for a whilea"which struck Joliffe as unlikely in the dripping woodsa"they could only be in the small woodsman's hut across the clearing.

Why? It looked to be a common enough woodsman's huta"was small, with low-eaved, roughly plastered, wattle-and-daub walls, the roof rough-thatched with bracken, and no bother about a chimney. A hole at the top of the gable wall under the point of the roof would serve to let out smoke from any fire made inside, though there was presently no smoke and so likely no fire. It was a place to warm yourself and briefly shelter from wet weather, nothing more, and Sir Edmund and Mariena had to be in there. There was nowhere else for them to be. But why? To get out of the rain would have been reasonable, except it was not raining. Nor was the day so cold they should need to shelter for warmth a while with the manor so short a ride away.

He considered creeping to better vantage but decided he had pressed Fortune's favor as far as he should. Instead, he shifted silently to a slightly easier crouch and settled down on his heels to wait. Except for the sometime drip of water from leaves and the occasional heavy-hoofed shifting of one or the other of the horses, the forest was muted around him. Even the servant provided no interest, slumped in his saddle with every appearance of trying, not too successfully, to doze. He wasn't keeping watch, that was sure. Even when he did rouse to restlessness in his saddle again, his long stares at the hut and sometimes a roving look at the woods around him were more to pa.s.s the waiting time than any watching out, and Joliffe did not worry about being seen. In his plain clothing of grey and muted brownsa"best for not showing the stains of travela"and motionless behind the bushes, he doubted he would be seen even if the man looked directly his way.

The man never did, and Joliffe had no doubt that, if he wanted to, he could withdraw as unseen and unheard as he'd comea"very probably a better thing to do than crouch here, cramped and beginning to be chilled. But he stayed. He knew too well that curiosity was one of his failings. Even without Lord Lovell's behest to find out what he could, his curiosity would have kept him here. Although maybe this time he could forgo blaming himself for his weakness, could lay the blame on Lord Lovell. A satisfying thought. He could so rarely, fairly, blame someone else for his failings.

The woods went on dripping. He went on waiting, and at the end it was the servant who came alert first to the hut's door finally opening, had straightened in his saddle and was giving a long look all around the clearing as if in careful watch when Sir Edmund came out, head bowed to go under the low lintel. Clear of the doorway, Sir Edmund straightened, too, looked all around and then at his servant, who nodded in silent answer to whatever silent question Sir Edmund had asked. Sir Edmund turned back, held out his hand, and led Mariena from the hut and toward the horses.

The servant was dismounted by the time they reached him. Sir Edmund took his own horse's reins from the man and drew it aside for room to swing himself into his saddle, leaving the man to hold Mariena's horse for her to mount, his back to them both, so that so far as Mariena knew, there was no one to see her brush her hand along the servant's thigh as she went past him. Her hand lingered just long enough to leave no doubt she did it on purpose. From where he crouched, Joliffe saw the man's back stiffen and his head twitch toward Sir Edmund to be sure he did not see it, while Mariena, as coolly as if she had done nothing, swung up into her saddle and was settling her skirts when her father turned his horse toward her.

The servant remounted his own horse, and with no word among them, they rode away, not back the way they had come but on along the track that Joliffe supposed would finally bring them out somewhere near the manor.

He was supposing other things, too, and didn't like his suppositions. They kept him where he was until he was well a.s.sured Sir Edmund and the others were truly gone and not coming back. Only then did he stand up and even then waited a little longer, listening, before he left hiding and crossed the track and clearing to the hut. He did not expect it to be locked and it was not. A simple pull of the latch string loosed the latch and let him in, bent over as Sir Edmund had been as he stepped across the threshold, then standing up straight under the low, bare-raftered roof to look around, not able to see much in the gloom. There was a shuttered window in the rear wall, though. Making his way around the small, expected hearth in the middle of the floor, he opened it and with that and the light from the open door he could see enough.

Not that there was much to see. The walls were almost as bare inside as out and the floor was hard-trodden dirt. Enough dry kindling and logs to see a man through a wet night were stacked against the wall just inside the door, and two crudely made joint stools squatted beside the hearth. The small pile of ashes there was cold, though, when he put a hand over them. Sir Edmund had not bothered with a fire nora"to judge by the unmarred dust on the box of candlestubs Joliffe found beside an empty, equally dusty candlestick on a shelf fastened to one side walla"had he bothered with more light than he might have had through the window, supposing he had opened it.

The only other things in the hut were a bed and its bedding and a pole fastened between two of the posts of the wall beside it. The bed itself was no more than could be expected in such a place, a pegged-together wooden frame on short legs and strung with rope to hold up the coa.r.s.e-clothed mattress thickly stuffed with probably straw. There was a blanket thrown over it, another blanket carelessly tossed at its foot, a thin pillow, probably straw-stuffed, too, at its other end. That was all, but Joliffe stood looking at the bed a somewhat long while before he went to it and with reluctance ran his hand down the middle of the blanket covering the mattress.

He was willing to believe it was only his imagination that said it was still faintly warm, but his movements were slow with thought as he first ran a hand along the wall pole, then took up the blanket from the bedfoot, shook it out, folded it, and hung it over the pole; did the same with the other blanket; then hung the mattress, too, and propped the pillow beside it. That was how a woodsman who sometimes used the hut or any sensible pa.s.ser-by who sheltered there a while would have left them. Hanging them up lessened the next-user's chance of finding mice nesting in the mattress straw or pillow and holes eaten in the blankets. That the wall pole had been free of dust except near its ends made him think they had been hanging there. He likewise thought it likely that neither Sir Edmund nor Mariena would take the trouble to put them back after making use of them.

The question he did not want to ask was why they had made use of them at all. Or for what.

Chapter 17.

When Joliffe retreated from the hut, making sure of the latch as he went, nothing was changed outside. The woods still dripped but the sky was not gone back to and rain yet. He had to acknowledge darkly that the increased gloom was all inside himself. He had not much thought ahead about what he might find out by following Sir Edmund. He had only thought he might find out something. And even if he had thought ahead, he would not have thought to find out thisa"not if he was right in his suspicion of what use Sir Edmund and Mariena had made of the hut and its bed.

The irony that he just now should be working on Dux Morauda"a play about a father's ill "love" for his daughtera"did not escape him.

Momentarily, he was diverted by watching his mind try to turn away from his suspicion, near though it was to certainty. Because what else would they have been doing there? Anything but that, he wanted to tell himself. It was a thought almost unthinkable and yet he was thinking it, even while trying hard to think of some other reason they had been there.

But he could not.

He gathered sticks savagely as he went back along the path and through the woods to Tisbe. He found her still grazing peacefully where he had left her, and she kept on grazing while he bundled the sticks onto her back, then gathered up his writing box. Only when he had loosed her hobbles and taken up her lead rope did she raise her head and huff a heavy sigh.

"I know," he said as he turned them around toward the trackway. "I feel the same way. Over-burdened and under-fed. Though in a different sense, mind you. Over-burdened with thought and under-fed with answers. And with better reason than you have, my girl. Those sticks weigh next to nothing and you've been grabbing gra.s.s for quite a while, so don't go huffing at me."

To show there were no hard feelings, Tisbe b.u.t.ted her head solidly against his shoulder.

"Yes," Joliffe agreed.

They were somewhat halfway back to the manor gateway when he looked up from watching his feet walka"he could shut off quite a bit of other thought by watching his feet walka"to find Rose and Ellis coming toward him. Because they were making no great haste, were in talk, their heads near together, he had no stir of alarm.

Neither was he surprised when Ellis lifted his head, saw him, and called, "There you are," as if Joliffe had been deliberately invisible from them until then.

"And there you are," Joliffe returned. "What I'm wondering is why."

"To find you," Ellis said, "and if ever there was a less rewarding errand . . ."

Rose poked him in the side and said, "We're here to hurry you back. The play's changed for tonight."

Joliffe had reached them by then and at Ellis' words instinctively increased his pace manorward, asking, "Changed to what? Why?"

"There's some of the wedding guests started to arrive," Ellis said disgustedly. "A day early. They're somebody who matters enough that Lady Benedicta sent to ask Ba.s.set if we would do one of our better, longer plays tonight."

Joliffe groaned.

"So Ba.s.set has decided we'll do the Robin and Marian tonight instead of tomorrow," Ellis said. "With Gil as the Sheriff's Evil Knight."

Joliffe turned a hard stare on him. "What Evil Knight?"

"The one you're supposed to write a few lines for between now and then."

"Is Gil ready for this?"

"Ba.s.set thinks so."

"Should we invoke St. Jude or St. Genesius, do you think?" The patron saint of desperate causes and the patron saint of players.

"Both," Ellis said darkly.

Rose laughed at him and stretched to kiss his cheek. Joliffe, perfectly aware she had not come for the pleasure of his company but for the chance to be alone with Ellis a little, tugged Tisbe's halter and walked faster, letting them fall behind him, willing to give them a while more with each other, not least because he hoped Rose would sweeten Ellis out of his dark humour, but also to begin his thinking about what to write that Gil could quickly learn and hopefully not forget. Did Ba.s.set know what he was doing, pitching the boy into it like this?

Joliffe supposed they would find out before the evening was done. To the good was that in the meanwhile he would be kept too busy to think about what he did not want to think about.

Rose overtook him as they reached the cart-yard and took Tisbe's lead rope from him as Ba.s.set said from beside the cart, "Good. You're here. Get to work."

Not bothering to retreat to his corner, Joliffe sat down with a token grumble and his back against a cartwheel, settling his writing box on his lap. Ba.s.set was working to better Gil's knightly stance and swagger, one of their false swords hung from his hip so he could learn to move with it. "Without hurting yourself or someone else before you've even drawn it from its sheath," Ba.s.set had said to Joliffe when teaching him the same thing. For a mercy, Gil looked to be a quick study at ita"better than he was with skirts, anyway, Joliffe thought, then set to the business of adding a part for him to the straight-forward tale of Robin (Ellis) and Marian (Joliffe), happy in their Sherwood life until she goes to the village and is seized by the l.u.s.tful Sheriff (Ba.s.set). A Village Boy (Piers) warns Robin, who comes to her rescue, fights the Sheriff after brave speeches by both of them, kills him, and saves fair Marian.

So where could an Evil Knight come into it? Joliffe decided the simplest way was to have the Evil Knight follow the evil Sheriff into the village and turn one of the Sheriff 's lines into a questiona""Is she not fair to see?"a"to which the Evil Knight could reply, "Aye, she is, my lord." Then, with the Sheriff saying, as he already did, "And yet more fair to hold, I warrant you," the play was back to itself. Unfortunately, that left the Evil Knight standing there, doing nothing, so Joliffe added in that while Robin and the Sheriff fought, the Evil Knight circled around and seized Marian as if for himself. Then she would cry out, Robin would turn and run the Knight through with his sword, the Village Boy would cry warning as the Sheriff tried to kill Robin from behind, Robin would turn again and kill the Sheriff.

There. Simple.

All they need do now was learn it, practice it, teach Gil how to "die," and hope for the best. All before suppertime.

Ellis was right. Best to pray to both St. Jude and St. Genesius.

He showed Ba.s.set what he had done. Ba.s.set said, "Good," and they set to Gil learning it.

"Just follow me into the playing place," Ba.s.set told him. "Stand there. Say your line. Don't do anything else until Ellis and I have exchanged, say, five blows." He and Ellis mimed their fight without swords in hand. "Keep count," Ba.s.set said. "Five blows. Then circle left. Like that, yes, and come behind Joliffe and seize him around the waist with your left arm, keeping your body just enough aside to the right that Ellis can stab his sword between you and Joliffe without danger of Robin killing Marian instead of you. Ellis, don't even think it. Yes, Gil, just like that. Good. Ellis."

Ellis feigned a long sword thrust toward Gil.

"Now clutch your side and drop dead, Gil," Ba.s.set said. "No, just drop and lie still. Don't twitch and writhe. Drop and be dead. Do it again. Yes."

There was nothing like the dread of failure to urge quick learning. They ran Gil's part in the play four times with him, until Ba.s.set granted, "It goes none so bad. None so bad at all. You'll do, Gil. Just keep your head and you'll do. Now you and Piers go and fetch our supper. It must be nigh time for it."

Only when they were well gone did he ask Ellis, Joliffe, and Rose together, "What do you think? Have I courted, wooed, and won disaster with this?"

"Probably," Ellis growled.

Rose yet again poked him in the ribs and chided, "The boy was good. You know he was. Say it."

Ellis caught her hand and granted, smiling, "He was good. Better than he has any right to be." He shook his head at Ba.s.set. "d.a.m.n my toe, but I think you may pull this off."

"Unless he goes cold when there are lookers-on," Joliffe said.

"He hasn't yet," Ba.s.set said.

"Let's hope he doesn't start tonight," Ellis grumbled.

Everyone ignored him, Ba.s.set saying, "Joliffe, did you get any further on with Dux Moraud this afternoon? I'm starting to look forward to starting work on it if Gil goes on shaping as he is."

That play with its incestuous duke and his daughter was close to the last thing Joliffe wanted to think about, but he said evenly, "I'm still not around the problem of his repentance at the end. It won't come believable for me."

"I remember he repents but not for certain how he comes to it," Ba.s.set said. "To conceal his sin with his daughter, he's had her kill their baby and her mother. He goes to church and is confronted and accused by a miraculous statue. He repents and tells his daughter he forswears his sin. That's the way of it, isn't it?"

"It is, as it stands now," Joliffe said. "I'm thinking to change it so he and his daughter go to church together and the saint's statue comes to life and strikes the girl horribly dead and d.a.m.ned. Devils drag off her shrieking soul and the duke is horrified into instant repentance, says some things, and the saint declares him saved."

"You mean," Rose said with coldly, "the girl dies and is d.a.m.ned but the duke is given chance to repent and saves his soul, even though he's the one who corrupted her? Why should she be d.a.m.ned and he be saved? Who's fault was their sinning anyway?"