Joliffe gave her a wry look. "That's something to think on, yes."

"She's d.a.m.ned," said Ellis, "because she's the greater sinner. Besides the incest, she killed her mother and her baby."

"As I remember it," Rose snapped back, "it's her father who orders her to both murders. He doesn't even have the guts to do it himself. Besides the incest and corrupting his daughter's innocence, he's a coward as well."

Sounding suddenly wary of what he might have stirred up, Ellis carefully granted, "It could be seen that way." On the rare times that Rose broke into open argument over something, no one liked to be in her way.

Not only at Ellis but at all of them she said sharply, "Even setting aside his cowardice and despite what she did and he didn't, he's a man. Since you men argue that men are higher in G.o.d's creation than women . . ."

All three men threw up protesting hands at that, Ba.s.set saying quickly, "Not us. No. We've never claimed that, no. Someone else, but not us!"

Scorning his protest, Rose went on, "You men claim you're nearer to G.o.d than women, that it's all the fault of Woman that Mankind fell. So why, if women are so imperfect, is Eve more at fault that she succ.u.mbed to the Devil's wiles, when Adam simply gave way to her? If men are so much the better, his fall was the greater because he gave way under far less temptation than she did and so his sin is the greater and . . ."

"Yes," her father agreed hurriedly. "You're right. We can see that. I . . ."

Rose went right on, demanding at him in particular, "Then in this Dux Moraud play, why should the girl be seen the greater sinner when it was the duke who led her innocence into sin, corrupted her goodness into evil? Tell me that."

"Ah!" Ba.s.set said with the air of a man grasping at a straw. "You see there's G.o.d's mercy at work. The duke is in greater need of salvation and is given the chance to repent and . . ."

Able to see what was coming, Joliffe was already stepping backward in open retreat as Rose snapped with growing anger, "And the girl is d.a.m.ned for eternity, despite his was the greater sin. It must be because I'm a weak-headed woman that I don't quite see the fairness of that."

Ba.s.set and Ellis made haste to agree they did not see it either.

"So you," she said, pointing her finger at Joliffe, "are going to fix that, aren't you?"

Still backing away, his hands already up in surrender, Joliffe said, "I'm trying. I swear I am."

Ba.s.set and Ellis nodded in hurried agreement. Rose swept them all with a look of disgust, as if even their surrender was insufficient apology for being men, and turned away to tend the fire.

Leaving Ba.s.set and Ellis to what they would, Joliffe retreated all the way to his corner beyond the cart, taking his writing box with him. There must be some delay at the kitchen, that the boys were not back yet, and he made a show of having out paper and pen and ink as if at work already to meet Rose's demand. He would have worked gladly, too, but his thoughts slid away to the worse thing in his mind.

If, as he feared, it was incest between Sir Edmund and Mariena, what different look did that give to what he so far knew? For one thing, it could explain the prolonged dealing before agreement was made for John Harcourt to marry Mariena. If Sir Edmund intended to keep Mariena for himself, it could also explain why Harcourt was murdered. But then why move on so quickly to dealing for another marriage? And why was it Will, rather than Amyas Breche, who had come close to grief these several times, while nothing had befallen Amyas?

Yet. There was still time for it to happen. Not much time, though. Not with only three more days until the wedding.

But there was still the possibility that Harcourt's death was only by chance, or evena"if purposeda"it was for some other reason than Sir Edmund's secret. What that purpose might have been, Joliffe had no thought on at all, but either way, it would mean Amyas was in no danger. That did not mean he wasn't, though; and none of those possibilities answered why Will was having "accidents." Could they be for someone's revenge against Sir Edmund for John Harcourt's death or some other reason? To increase Mariena's inheritance? For some reason to which Joliffe had no clue?

Did Lady Benedicta know what was between her husband and daughter?

That was a thought Joliffe had been keeping shy of but now faced. Because if Lady Benedicta did know, then complications only increased. It would explain the lack of love between mother and daughtera"or, no, it didn't, because it was said they had never done well together. But it could explain Mariena's sudden sickness the other night. Lady Benedicta could have poisoned her. It was a possibility. There was enough else apparently awry here, it was not that far from reasonable to think she might.

But why only slightly poison her? Or why at all? Lady Benedicta reputedly had no attachment to either her husband or daughter. If she knew, or suspected, what there was between thema"if there really was somethinga"would she care enough to bother making Mariena suffer for it? Or, to take it another way, would she have been satisfied with making her suffer so little? Or could there have been another reason to do it?

Such as Will's bad fall that day.

Looked at from that way, there was some sense to what had been happening, both to Will and about Mariena's sickness. She was the one who would most benefit from her brother's death. Let him be dead and she was heir to Deneby. That she would be willing to his death was an ill thought, but Joliffe found he could think it of her fairly easily. And if Lady Benedicta suspected the same about her, then, yes, he could readily see her warning Mariena off her purpose with threat of death against herself.

But why John Harcourt's death? To judge by how readily he had set to talks so soon after Harcourt's death, Sir Edmund apparently had no objection to Mariena marrying, so he was unlikely to have killed the man. And Mariena was said to have been eager to the marriage, with no apparent gain by his death. And Lady Benedicta reputedly would be glad to have the girl gone. So if Harcourt's death had not been murder at all, then Amyas was safe enough, and what business did Joliffe have in wondering about the rest?

Maybe no business at all, but he knew, regretfully, that was not going to stop him now. They had all, except for Will, become suddenly fools to him. Sir Edmund. Lady Benedicta. Mariena. They were all carrying on like poor actors in a bad play. Cold, angry mother. Hot-loined, possibly murderous daughter. Incestous father. Joliffe supposed that if he were a priest he'd have to take them seriously. And if someone wrote a play of them, it would have to be a tragedy. But to hima"looking at their miserable blundering about without a clear thought about the rights or wrongs of anything they felt or dida"the whole business looked a farce.

Unless John Harcourt truly had been murdered and someone truly was trying to kill Will and there was actually incest between Sir Edmund and Mariena.

Not farce then, no. Plain tragedy.

When Lord Lovell came, he would have to be told it all, Joliffe supposed, to make of it what he would. Joliffe only hoped to be well away from here as soon as might be after that.

Piers and Gil came back with deep bowls of stew, thick brown bread, lumps of cheese, and a tale of an irate cook and the kitchen in chaos, all plans upset because of the two knights and their ladies who had arrived before their time.

"If it was my household," Rose said as they finished their meal, "I'd not be doing somersaults to make them think the better of me. They'd have what we were going to have and be happy with it or not, as pleased them."

"Ah, but that's because you are perfection itself," her father said. "Whatever you do is beyond the bounds of others' hopes and no more could be desired than what you give."

Rose rolled her eyes, and Ellis lightly slapped the back of Piers' head before Piers had more than opened his mouth to make some bright comment back at his grandfather.

"You do but speak the truth, good sir," Joliffe said, standing up and brushing bread crumbs from the skirt of his doublet. "Shall we make ready?"

Rose helped Joliffe into Marian's gown and with the long wig, then held the small mirror while he colored his face. Ba.s.set and Ellis saw to Gil, and Piers took care of himself. By the time they were ready to head for the hall, Gil was looking as if he was working not to be ill, and Ba.s.set said bracingly as if to them all, "We know what we're doing. We've done the play here. We can do it there. Simple as that. Onward!"

At the hall, at the play's beginning, Joliffe and Ellis entered the hall first, leaving the others waiting in the screens pa.s.sage. Gil still looked ill and was standing stiffly, as if waiting for the worst to happen, but when he came in behind Ba.s.set, he came with firm stride and hand on sword hilt, just as Ba.s.set had been teaching him; and he took up his stance with enough swagger but not too much, said his line out loud and clear when he was supposed to, made his move on Marian on the sixth blow of the swords, and died without excess from Robin's perfectly placed sword thrust. He could not have done better if they had rehea.r.s.ed him for a week, Joliffe thought, nor their audience been more approving, with even a few cries of "down-with-the-sheriff " among the clapping and thumping on tables afterward, so that the whole company returned across the yard in high and merry humour, Rose with them because she had slipped into the pa.s.sage to watch with the servants, wanting to see how it went.

Too over-pleased to contain himself, Gil strode ahead with Piers, talking and talking about how it had gone. The rest of them followed more slowly, as pleased but too tired for much more than wide smiling, except Ba.s.set said thoughtfully as they went, "I maybe better take up Lord Lovell's offer of an apprentice's contract for him. Otherwise, the first greater company that sees him will hire him away from us before I can say, *Wait!'"

At the cartshed, they found Rose had been to the kitchen before coming to the hall and had brought back a pitcher of ale and plate of small seedcakes. "Because you'd either be in need of comforting if all went wrong," she said, "or else we would want to feast your triumph."

"Feast it is!" said Ba.s.set, and for good measure they built up the fire, too.

Tiredness wasn't far behind them, though, and they were beginning to ready for bed when Joliffe said, "Someone is coming."

They all turned and looked into the darkness, waiting, half-wary, until the maidservant Avice came out of the shadows into the little lantern-light. Not cloaked for the chill night, she had her arms wrapped around herself and was not looking happy to be there as she pulled one hand free, pointed at Joliffe, and said, "You. My lady has a headache. She wants you to play your lute for her until she sleeps."

"Lady Benedicta?" Joliffe said, with a sinking feeling in his belly already telling him otherwise.

"Mariena." Avice shifted from foot to foot. "She's gone to her bedchamber. She'll have wanted you there five minutes ago. Make haste, won't you?"

Chapter 18.

With his lute slung behind his shoulder by its strap, Joliffe followed Avice not back to the hall or even to the tower but farther along the yard to the wooden stairs leading up to the open gallery that ran outside the wing of rooms there. It being evening's end, most of the lanterns around the yard were out, only the ones at the hall door, the top of the stairs to the tower, and the outer gateway still burning. Glints and hints of light showed at window shutters' c.h.i.n.ks and cracks here and there along the wing, but he and Avice were in shadow where she stopped at the stairfoot, and he only faintly saw her pause at rubbing her arms to point upward as she said, "You want that door there at the near end, where the light's showing around the shutter's edge, and if she has a headache, I'm a lark on the wing. Good luck to you."

She started to leave but when, startled, Joliffe said, "What?" she turned back, came close to him, and hissed, "She has an itch like a she-cat on the prowl, does our Mariena. The sooner she's married and somebody satisfies her, the better for everyone." She moved closer, her breath warm on his cheek as she said even lower, "Look you, no matter how willing she gives out to be, don't you think you'll get more than some kisses and an ache in your loins from her, that's all. Meanwhile"a"her own hands found him in the darka""give us a kiss, there's a sweetheart."

Thinking, Why not? Joliffe pulled her to him; and when he had done and let her go, she went on leaning against him a long moment before finally giving a deep sigh of contentment and stepping back.

"That," she murmured, "will warm me to my bed." She laid a hand on his chest. "Just you be careful up there. Don't give her any kisses like that or you'll find yourself in trouble you won't get out of easy."

With that, she was gone away into the shadows before Joliffe could promise he meant very much to stay out of that kind of trouble.

More worried than he wanted to be, he went up the stairs and along the open-sided gallery, instinctively quiet-footed in the settled-for-the-night quiet of the manor. Because of his quiet, he surely was not heard as he neared Mariena's doora"instead heard a man's voice from inside that stopped him where he was. If Mariena had a man with her, then . . .

Angrily, loudly, in answer to something Mariena said, "I'm to marry him in three days! You saida""

The man's voice interrupted hers, and Joliffe moved quickly to the window, getting his ear near to the shutter in time to hear, ". . . not give you up. What does married have to do with it? Because you're married doesn't mean you'll stay married."

Silence answered that for a long moment before Mariena said slowly, "Oh." And after another pause, sounding as if she were smiling, "You mean that I'm to have him for a pretty while and thena""

"And then we pray," Sir Edmund said, his voice cold and quelling, "that your wedded bliss goes on for a long, long while. Yes?"

Again there was a pause from Mariena before she said again, as if just catching up to his thought, "Oh." And then with sudden false brightness, "Yes." And on a note of laughter, "Oh, yes!"

A silence followed that Joliffe tried not to fill with any thought of what the two of them might be doing together. To count on it lasting long, though, was hardly safe. Sir Edmund must have come to her unexpectedly. He was not likely to linger long, and this not being a place to be caught overhearing, Joliffe had one foot raised toward retreat when Sir Edmund said in a suddenly harsher voice, "One thing, though. Leave off on Will."

Mariena began what sounded like a protest but broke off on a yelp of pain as Sir Edmund went on, "Let one more thing happen to him and you'll have bruises to explain to Amyas on your wedding night, along with your missing maidenhead."

"You swore he wouldn't know," Mariena said, sounding half-way to angry and at the same time afraid.

"He won't know," Sir Edmund said coldly. "I'll have him so fumble-brained with drink, he won't know more than that he's had you, if he even knows that much. But bruises he won't miss. If not that night, then the next. So you leave Will alone."

Mariena started, "I haven't done . . ." but broke off with a squeak of surprise or pain.

"Leave him alone now and ever after," Sir Edmund said, his voice flat with threat. "He's my son. He's my heir. You leave him alone. If ever he's hurt and I think it's your doing . . ."

He left the threat for her to imagine for herself. Or maybe he showed her again the pain he had in mind if she disobeyed him, but Joliffe was in full retreat by then, having heard enough. His thought was to go back to the stairs and down, to wait in shadows until Sir Edmund was gone, but the door's latch rattled, telling someone was coming out, and he vaulted the gallery's railing, hung by his hands for the hairsbreadth of an instant before he let loose and dropped soft-footed to the ground just as the opening door spilled light in a narrow band across the gallery walk. Out of sight in the darkness below it, he moved swiftly into the deeper darkness under the gallery and pressed himself to the wall there, holding his breath. His thought was that Sir Edmund would go along the gallery to the tower and his own chamber. If he did not . . . if he came down the stairs to the yard and was carrying any kind of a light . . .

Joliffe began to breathe again as Sir Edmund's footfall went away toward the tower; but he stayed where he was until he heard the tower's thick door shut and even then he moved only to the edge of the deeper darkness under the gallery, keeping from sight while he looked to be sure there was no one to be seen anywhere. Unseen watchers he could do nothing about. If they were there, they had already seen him and worry about them was useless, and taking a deep, steadying breath, he left hiding anda"this time not quiet at all about his goinga"bounded up the stairs. For good measure, he whistled an uneven, seemingly absent-minded tune as he neared the door, meaning to sound like a simple man with nothing to hide. In the same quick, easy way he started to rap at the door, but before his second knock fell, it was s.n.a.t.c.hed open and a frightened-faced woman looked out at him.

For a moment he stared at her, startled. As a knight's daughter, Mariena was of course companioned almost everywhere, certainly in her bedchamber. The woman would be her waiting-maid. But with what he had just heard, he had thought to find Mariena alone. That she was not unsettled him in a new way. If this woman was not a complete fool, she had to know what was between Mariena and her father, just as the man who had held their horses in the woods this afternoon had to know. How wide did the corruption spread in this place?

On the instant, though, he turned his own startlement into a wide smile and a small, flourished bow; and the woman said over her shoulder, "It's the player, my lady. You sent for him, remember."

"Of course I remember," Mariena snapped. "Let him in and close that door. It's cold out there."

The woman was already stepping aside, opening the door wider for him to come in. He did, more outwardly bold than he inwardly felt.

Mariena's room was far smaller than her parents' in the tower but as comfortable in its way. The shutters and door and roof-beams were painted a forest-green. The bedhangings were a strong blue. A woven mat of golden rushes covered some of the floor, and on one wall a painted tapestry of flowers and trees showed dimly in the shadows beyond the light of the small oil lamp burning on a square table between the bed and a small fireplace in the farther wall.

Mariena was standing there, her back to the low fire, already in her bedrobe of some dark, green fabric that fell in heavy, loose folds from her shoulders to the floor. Her hair was loose, too, a dark, soft frame to her white face; but she was cradling one arm against her as if it hurt and Joliffe hoped it did. What had Amyas Breche ever done that she should so look forward to being his widow?

The pity was Sir Edmund was probably in no pain at all, despite he surely deserved to be, probably even more than Mariena did.

But presently Joliffe was more worried about his own plight than Amyas'. Even without Avice's warning, he would not have been happy to be there, as good as alone with Mariena. Nor did the way Mariena was presently staring at him make him any happier.

For one thing, he could not tell whether she was looking at him with l.u.s.t or anger. For another, he did not know what he would do, whichever it was. Anger, he decided as he made a low and sweeping bow to her, would be the better. With anger she might be satisfied simply to send him away. If it was l.u.s.t, he would have to forestall her, whatever the after-cost of her displeasure might be.

Without taking her eyes from him or smiling, Mariena ordered, "Wine, Lesya. For both of us." And at him, "Come here."

Joliffe went, stopped before he was very near, and bowed again. "My lady."

She let go of her arm, put one hand to her throat at the closed front of her bedgown, and with the other shifted the bedgown's long folds away from her feet as she moved toward him. Even under the bedgown's loose flow, the graceful, deliberate sway of her hips showed. She was, beyond denying, beautiful. She was also not for him even to touch except at his peril, and he was judging at what point he could step back from her without giving offense, when she stopped far enough from him for propriety's sake but too near for his comfort. Her smile at him was bright and young with innocence, but he no longer believed in her innocence in any sense of the word, and keeping his own face as bland as might be, he slipped his lute from behind his shoulders to in front of him and said, drawing his fingers across the strings in a gentle, low strum, "I grieve to hear you're troubled with a headache, my lady, but pleased you thought my lute and I might do you service."

Mariena took another step toward him, too near now. She put out a hand and stroked it down the neck and along the body of the lute, stopping just short of his fingers. Softly she said, "I hope you may. Do me service." She looked up at him from under her lashes. "You played the damsel in your play tonight very well, but I think from what else I've seen of you, there's nothing of the damsel truly about you."

To weave words with a woman toward a mutually desired end could be a pleasant pastime, but just now words were his only protection against Mariena, and with no pleasure at all, he said carefully, "I'm pleased the play pleased you, my lady."

"The play pleased everyone," she said. "But you pleased me."

Her eyes, raised to his face, were inviting him to kiss her, and though he had pleasured women before now because his playing had pleased thema"had pleasured himself, too, or he'd not have done ita"everything about Mariena was too dangerous for even so slight a matter as a kiss. Besides the plain peril of making sport with a knight's unmarried daughter at all, he was become frightened of Mariena herself. Women driven by l.u.s.t could, in their need, be either dangerous or tedious, depending on who they were and how many or few wits they brought to the business. At worst they could be both dangerous and tedious, and he had begun to think Mariena was one of that kind. But he had no wish to find out further and for certain, nor did he want to give her any claim on him in any way.

But neither did he think he could afford to offend her, since her smallest accusation against him would suffice to ruin him and probably take the rest of the players down with him. A great accusation would likely have him dead, and he did not want to find out which she would make if he refused whatever she was about to ask of him, but refuse her he surely had to do, despite her eyes were large and dark in the lamplight, her lovely mouth curved in a small smile, as she leaned closer to him and said softly, "Won't you please me some more? Here? Now?" She raised her hand, made to touch his cheek.

Joliffe had decided he was going to have a violent coughing fit right now, but by some small movement or look he maybe betrayed his unwillingness toward her more openly than he meant to, because Mariena's face changed on the instant from l.u.s.t to anger and her hand flew aside from his face and came back in a hard slap that jerked his head to the side.

Then she flung away from him, exclaiming like a small child denied an expected treat, "Oh, I'm not in the humour for it. I don't want you. Go away." She threw herself onto her bed, her back against her pillows, her dark hair fanned out across them, her arms crossed tightly like a barrier between him and her. But with equal sharpness she ordered, "No. Stay. Play me something. That's what you're here for." And at her waiting-maid, "Wine, you slow-footed wh.o.r.e," despite the woman was already crossing the room to her with a silver-gilt goblet.

Joliffe, his face stinging from the slap, took the first song that came into his mind, a half-bawdy tavern song. Mariena had seized the goblet and begun to drink before she caught the words of what he was singing. He saw her eyes go startled over the rim of the goblet. Then she choked and had to sit up, laughing and choking together, s.n.a.t.c.hing the napkin Lesya brought, wiping at her chin while ordering Joliffe, "Go on. That's what I want. Something that isn't this place."

He sang and she drank. He followed the first song with another like it, and while Lesya filled her goblet again, Mariena waved him on to a third. He obeyed with a song that at the start seemed like the others but shifted into a quieter way before it finished, and from that one he went into a yet quieter one. His hope was that the music and wine would work together to lull her into sleep while he sang, and indeed as he softened his voice into "When the nightingale sings, the woods grow green," Mariena settled a little deeper against her pillows, her eyes closed, the goblet resting on her stomach, held in both her hands.

Lesya hovered not far off, probably to rescue the goblet should Mariena's hold on it slacken, but Mariena's hold held firm; and when Joliffe finished, "Sweet love, I pray you to love me an hour. I sing sadly of the one for whom I long," on a soft and fading note, hoping she had faded to sleep with it, she patted the bed beside her without opening her eyes and said, "Come sit here."

He looked at Lesya, asking for help. She shrugged, then beckoned her head toward the bed. That was not the help he wanted, but keeping hold on his lute and his lute firmly between him and Mariena, he went to the bed and sat not quite so near as she had bade him. She opened her eyes and stared at him with an owlish effort that made him think she must have had more to drink than he had thought.

"You play very well, player," she said.

He knew he played well enough, not very well; but if Mariana knew no better, well and good, and he made her a small bow and said, "Thank you, my lady."

Keeping her eyes on him, she held her goblet out to the side. Lesya stepped forward and took it, then stepped back. As if the goblet had removed itself and no one else was there at all, Mariena slid her hand onto Joliffe's leg and asked softly, "Do you play women as well as the lute?"

Evenly, he said, "I have been known to, yes, my lady."

Her hand slid over the curve of his thigh. He was just the little way too far away for her to reach where she plainly wanted to go but rather than order him nearer, she whispered, "Will you play me, player?"

There were only two ways to go from that question, and since he most a.s.suredly did not mean to go the one, he went the other, meeting her boldness with his own. "No, my lady, I will not."

Her hand, which had begun to stroke up and down his thigh, stopped. She went on staring at him, but rather than the harshness he had feared would come with his refusal, after a moment a small smile eased the tightness of l.u.s.t from her mouth and she took back her hand, laid it with the other on her belly, and said, "Fairly answered," closed her eyes again, was silent a moment, then said quietly, "Tell me, player, do you ever grow tired of being alive?"

The question and its quiet threat took him by surprise, keeping him from any answer.

Still quietly and without opening her eyes, Mariena said softly, "Don't you grow tired of it? Tired of all life's mess and disappointments?"

He realized she was not making a threat. Instead, blur-brained with wine and sleepiness, she was maybe giving away her own most inward thoughts. Thoughts someone so young should not have. And he said, matching her quiet, "I've wearied many times over of life's disappointments, yes. But of life itself? No, of that I've never wearied."