Mariena made a small sound that might have been a disbelieving laugh if there had been more strength to it. "The more fool you," she murmured. She half-opened her eyes, smiled at him so slightly he hardly saw it, and said, "I wish you loved me, player," before her eyes closed again and she rolled over and curled in on herself, gone suddenly, completely, into sleep, it seemed. But he did not move, nor did her waiting-maid until Mariena's breathing had evened into what could only be sound sleep; and even then he only turned his head, careful not to shift the bed at all just yet, as he looked at Lesya and asked softly, "Well? What did you give her?"

The woman shrugged. "A sleeping draught. Sir Edmund orders it." She turned away to the table and started to pour some wine into a cup there.

"Should you be drinking that?" Joliffe asked.

"The potion is in her goblet before ever I pour the wine. It's only to make her sleep, anyway. It does no harm."

"And it forestalls her craving after men," Joliffe ventured, to see what the woman would say.

Lesya had lifted the filled cup to her mouth but stopped, set the cup down, and turned on him in one swift movement, hissing, "Don't ever say that. About her craving men. Don't ever say it."

Joliffe held up his hands as if to show he surrendered and was unarmed.

Lesya still stared at him, suspicion una.s.suaged, and snapped, "What makes you say it, anyway?"

Joliffe stood up from the bed and strolled toward the table with an easy smile. "I've none so great opinion of myself that I expect women to fall into a pa.s.sion for me as easily as she seems to have. That wasn't love for me in her eyes just now. That was l.u.s.t, and likely any man would have served." And did Sir Edmund know how willing she was to lay handsa"and maybe morea"on other men and was that why he had her sent senseless to sleep at night to contain her wantonness? And be sure no one had her but himself?

Eyeing him over the cup's edge, Lesya drank deeply, lowered the cup, and said with another shrug, "Well enough then, yes. She has a l.u.s.t for men maybe beyond the ordinary." She shook a finger at Joliffe. "But if one word about her gets out, I'll see to it it's your guts that Sir Edmund gets."

Given that almost any man who came into Mariena's reach probably knew about her, Joliffe thought that was hardly fair but did not say so, only caught Lesya's hand and kissed it before she could pull away. "Her secret is safe with me." Until he had chance to talk to Lord Lovell, he silently added. "And so is yours."

"Mine?" Lesya had been enjoying his kiss but now s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away. "What do you meana"mine?"

"She doesn't know you give her this sleeping draught to drink every night, does she?"

"Of course she doesn't! She'd tear my hair out if she knew I did it! And who says I do it every night?"

Joliffe grinned as if they were sharing a particularly good jest and said lightly, "I'd have you do every night if she were my daughter." Since it seemed unlikely Lesya was going to offer him any of the wine, he sat down on the long-legged stool beside the table and started to stroke a quiet song from the lute, asking as if interested more in what his fingers were doing on the lute strings than in his question, "Does Lady Benedicta know what Sir Edmund has ordered?"

"Lady Benedicta?" Lesya had finished her cup of wine, was starting to fill it again. What she had already downed was maybe serving to loosen her tongue. Or maybe she was just past caring what she said. "Lady Benedicta gives me the potion to give her." She sat down on the chair and took another long drink. "There's no harm in it. Lady Benedicta uses it herself."

Joliffe wondered if the woman was simple enough never to wonder what Lady Benedicta could do with that draught if she chose to change it. Did Lady Benedicta know what her daughter wasa"although she surely didn't know what was between her and her fathera"or did she simply do her husband's bidding without asking why?

All outward innocence, he asked, "Lady Benedicta sleeps badly?"

"Lady Benedicta? The nights she doesn't have her draught she spends more hours walking the floor than in her bed, so Felicie, that's her woman, says. It's been worse lately, too. That John Harcourt was the image of his father, Felicie says."

"What's his father to do with it?"

Lesya gave a wary glance toward the bed, but the wine well and truly had hold on her tongue now and she leaned toward him to say in a lower voice, "He was her lover. Lady Benedicta's. Years ago. John Harcourt's father. It didn't last long and the man's dead, but it must have stirred her, to see his son that looked so much like him when he was something to her. And this John going to marry her daughter and then dying all sudden that way." Lesya sat back and wetted her second-hand sorrow with a long drink.

"Small wonder she doesn't sleep well," Joliffe said. "But John Harcourt's death wasn't an unlikely death, was it? I heard he was sickly youth and took a chill." Lying through his teeth as he said it.

Lesya hiccuped on unswallowed wine, swallowed quickly, and said, "Sickly? Not him. Fit as a stud stallion." She gave a nod at Mariena. "Couldn't keep her hands off him, she couldn't, and you could see he wanted her, oh, yes."

Putting on a scandalized voice, Joliffe started, "But they never . . ." He made a suggestive gesture.

Lesya scorned that thought. "Never. Sir Edmund knows my lady Mariena too well to give her chance for that." The wine's momentary ease went out of her. Her face fell into downward lines and she reached for the wine pitcher again, muttering, "Knows her far too well, he does."

Pretending he did not hear that, Joliffe asked lightly, "So how did he die then, this stallion-ready John Harcourt?"

Lesya had enough wits left to turn willingly from Sir Edmund to that. "Nasty, it was. He started with a pain, then a flux that nothing stopped. Lady Benedicta did all she could but nothing helped. She's good with herbs. If she couldn't find a way to save him, there wasn't any."

And if there was a way to kill him, she'd know it, too, Joliffe thought, but said, to keep the maid talking, "Did Mariena help nurse him?"

"Her? Not so's you'd note it," Lesya scoffed. "She's never bothered to learn aught like that." Another deep drink of wine. "Never one for learning anything. Except of one sort. And that comes natural, like, no learning needed."

That raised another question to which Joliffe could guess the answer. In the usual way of things, servants weren't given unstinted wine, supposing they got any wine at all, costly and troublesome as it was to get. Yet Lesya had no pause at downing this pitcher of it all by herself. Probably it was part of her payment for keeping secret what was between Sir Edmund and Mariena. Had Sir Edmund thought ahead to when the balance would shift from wine enough to keep her quiet to too much wine and a tongue she no longer controlled? Joliffe would wager he hada"and about what would have to be done with her when that time came.

That time might not be so far off, either. Lesya was sighing over her cup now, shaking her head as if under a weight of sorrow. "They would have been lovely together, my lady and John Harcourt. I'd have gone away with her when she left with him, too, and that would have been good. Good to be away from here. You don't know. My brother is Sir Edmund's man and he says we're onto a good thing here, but I'm not . . . not . . . not"a"shaking her head back and forth on each "not"a"". . . liking it anymore."

She was drinking herself drunk past being useful to him, Joliffe judged. She was not likely to tell him any more of much use before she was soused out of her wits into weeping uselessness, and readying to make his escape as gracefully as possible, Joliffe ran his fingers in a quick, closing way across the lute strings, gave a huge sigh of seeming-regret, and stood up, slinging the lute around to his back. "Well, I'd best be going. Tomorrow will be here soon enough."

Lesya caught hold of his doublet's edge and smiled up at him. "My bed's not as soft as hers," she said, "but I can make it as warm for you."

Saint Mary Magdalene, save me, Joliffe thought, rather desperately smiling at her as he stepped back far enough that she had to let go his doublet or be pulled forward off the chair, saying while he did, "Alas, sweet maid, I am expected in my own bed. Otherwise . . ."

Still retreating, he kissed his hand toward her and left "otherwise" hanging between them as he got altogether away, out the door and safe into the mist-cold night.

Chapter 19.

With the mist and the hour's lateness and carry-ing too much knowledge unsafe to have, Joliffe crossed the yard's thick darkness between the few lanterns' light with a constant watching all around him and a crawling unease up his back. Going into the thick, narrow blackness between carpenter's shed and stable to reach the cart-yard was an effort of will because anythinga"anyonea"could be waiting unseen in the dark there, dagger in hand. All of which was fool-worry because no one here knew that he knew anything beyond what he should, and so no one here had interest in having him dead; but that did not stop him letting out his pent breath when he came into the cart-yard and in sight of the low red glow of the players' fire.

He was surprised, though, that it had not been banked for the night before now. Was surprised, too, to find Ba.s.set sitting hunched almost over it, wrapped and hooded in his cloak. Everyone else seemed to be asleep, and when Joliffe had laid the lute into its case and into the cart, he went to sit on his heels beside Ba.s.set and ask, quiet-voiced, "All's well?"

"Well and very well with us," Ba.s.set said back. "With you?"

"Well enough." But he said it too slowly, weighted with his thoughts.

"You've learned something," Ba.s.set said.

"I've learned something," Joliffe agreed. Several things, including how discouraging other people's l.u.s.t could be and to what depths of foolishness l.u.s.t like Mariena's could take someone. He had known something of foolishness' faults before this, but none so deep as these. "Most importantly, Amyas is in danger."

"From whom?" Ba.s.set asked.

"From Sir Edmund and Mariena both. But not until after he's married her."

"Not before?" Ba.s.set asked. "You think then that Harcourt's death was only chance?"

"To my mind he was likely murdered, but I don't have any proof he was, nor know why, and couldn't swear to who did it."

"Ah," said Ba.s.set dryly. "That's helpful, isn't it? What of Will?"

"He's probably safe for now." But only if Sir Edmund was right in thinking Mariena was to blame for everything that had befallen the boy and she believed his threats. But if he was wrong? What if it was someone else than Mariena? Who? Lady Benedicta? Joliffe was certain against thata"and equally certain she had used the bedtime draught to make Mariena ill as a warning after Will's last "accident."

But if not Lady Benedicta, then who?

"So you think Harcourt was indeed murdered," Ba.s.set said. "But Will is safe for now, and Amyas in no danger until after he's married. Is that the way of it?"

"Probably." But only probably. The trouble was that he was more than half-way sure Lady Benedicta had poisoned John Harcourt to his death but did not know why and so there was no telling but what she might choose to kill Amyas, too, before his marriage, whatever her husband's intention. But still the question was why would she want to prevent Mariena's marriage. The more especially if she knew about the incest. But did she know? And even if she did, that did not answer much. The dislike between her and Mariena went back for years longer than the incest could have, and why, with finally the chance to be quit of Mariena, would she kill Harcourt? But if she hada"or someone else had for a reason Joliffe equally did not seea"then Amyas could be in danger the same way. Just as Will might still be if Sir Edmund was wrong about Mariena harming him and it was someone else entirely set on hurting, if not killing, him.

Ba.s.set sighed and held his hands out over the fire's glow. "It's something to tell Lord Lovell anyway. He'll do something about the marriage, I suppose. What to do about the rest will be his choice, too, and better him than us."

"Better never us at all," Joliffe said. He was suddenly in a savage anger at everything. "I've had a vile, ugly evening." Faced with l.u.s.t he couldn't return and wine he wasn't offered. "I'm for sleep and to h.e.l.l with it all."

He left Ba.s.set banking the fire, undressed barely enough, and slid into his blankets still seething with frustration and anger. The pieces of whatever was happening here were taking shape but they didn't yet fit together. It maybe should have been enough that Amyas and Will were probably safe for now and the rest could be left to Lord Lovell, just as Ba.s.set had said, but that did not stop his thoughts from circling. There was Mariena's frightened waiting-maid. She plainly served Sir Edmund rather than Mariena. She had to know their secret and probably saw to it that Sir Edmund knew whatever she knew of Mariena. That meant Sir Edmund would hear what had pa.s.sed between her and Joliffe, so thanks be given to every celibate saint that he had done no more than what he had. Unless Lesya told Sir Edmund about the questions he had asked. Would it matter if Sir Edmund knew he knew about the sleeping draught? Maybe not, if Sir Edmund didn't know Joliffe understood it was meant for a way to keep Mariena's l.u.s.t in check, and surely Lesya would keep that part of their talk to herself. He hoped. Did Lady Benedicta know the draught was for that, or did she truly think it was simply to make Mariena sleep well? Did she know her daughter l.u.s.ted beyond the ordinary for men? Did she know of Mariena's and Sir Edmund's sin? Did she agree with her husband on what he intended for Amyas Breche, or did she know nothing of it? Had Sir Edmund wanted John Harcourt's death, or had that been Lady Benedicta's doing alone? Supposing she had done it. Supposing anyone had done it. But if she had done it, did Mariena know it? Was Mariena's sin with her father partly in revenge for that treachery? Or had their l.u.s.ting started even before that? How wide and deep did treacheries go among these people?

All that was a circle Joliffe went around more than once but all the answers stayed uncertain and the questions did not change and he fell asleep still circling.

He awoke to heavily falling rain and pity for Mariena and was not happy about either one. He was tired of rain, he was tired of mud, and he didn't want to think about Mariena or anyone else at Deneby now or ever again. Lying tightly rolled into his blankets, refusing to open his eyes, trying to deny morning was come, he burrowed deeper into his bedding. Even at the least guess, there looked to be so many wrongsa"either done or intendeda"here that he doubted anyone could any longer sort out one as separate from another. And if some of the wrongs went back to whatever had gone amiss between Sir Edmund and Lady Benedicta years ago, there was likelihood no one even remembered for certain the how or why they had begun.

One thing was discomfortably clear, though. Whatever wrongs Mariena had done, was doing, meant to do, she was as much betrayed as she was a betrayer. From every side she was wronged beyond measurea"by her father, by her mother, by even the waiting-maid who should have been her own. If ever there had been goodness in her, no one had ever done anything to help it grow. He disliked her too much to want to pity her, but he did, without pity in the least lessening his wariness and dislike. Pity did not change the fact of her l.u.s.t or her greed or that her own father thought she had tried for her brother's life. She had certainly shown no scruple in thinking of Amyas dead. No, Joliffe did not choose to be such a fool as to think she was not dangerous to anyone she turned on.

An unkind toe prodded at his back and Ellis said, "We're not bringing your breakfast to you. Rise and gloom with the rest of us or go hungry."

Joliffe rose, looked out at the rain, and said, "I think I'd rather be hungry than wet."

In a heroic voice Ba.s.set declaimed, "Be brave, my heart, and face the worst the world can give!"

"Just now the worst is having to look at Ellis," Joliffe growled.

Intent on being away to breakfast, even Ellis ignored that, and Joliffe did go with them, silently hunched into his cloak. Gil and the rest of them were still riding high and happy from last night's play. Joliffe, unable to give up his thoughts and unwilling to spoil their pleasure, let himself be drawn into talk of what changes he could make to the plays they had been doing and what plays they could do again, now they were one more man to the good. Gil had more training ahead of him but no one doubted now he would be one of them, and the talk gave Joliffe reason, when they returned to the cartshed, to go away to his corner with his writing and the script box as if he meant to see what could be done. And that gave Ba.s.set reason in a while, when he had set Ellis to teaching Gil more about using his voicea""The deep growls strengthen your throat cords, the high cries keep them loose, and everything in between gets you from one to the other," Ba.s.set told him cheerfullya"to join Joliffe, bringing a cushion and sitting down on it with a stiffness that made Joliffe ask, "How go the joints?"

"Better." Ba.s.set gave a soft grunt of discomfort as he settled. "By fits and starts," he amended. Forgoing the grumble to which he was probably ent.i.tled, he started to talk plays. He had some thoughts that were the same as Joliffe's and some that Joliffe had not had, and warming to the talk, Joliffe let go his worries for the while. Only when Ba.s.set asked, "So how does Dux Moraud come on?" did everything drain flat again, so quickly Joliffe was unable to hide it.

Ba.s.set, reading his sudden silence and his face, said, "As bad as that?"

Joliffe tried, "Not . . . the play so much," but had nowhere to go from there except where he did not want to go. When he had begun to work over that play, with its incestuous and murderous father and daughter, it had been a story, just a story, to be pulled about into whatever shape met the players' needs, his only great problem with it his quest to give it some grace and sense beyond the readily seen ugly pleasure of the tale. Face to face with such ugliness in truth, there was no pleasure in it at all. All the answers he had considered giving to the play for his own satisfaction were no answers at all when faced with the harshness of lives lived in just such ugliness.

Slowly, watching his fingers twirl his pen and keeping his voice too low to be heard beyond the cart, he gave way and told Ba.s.set what he had seen in the woods yesterday, had learned last night, and now suspected. Ba.s.set listened, with occasional looks to be sure no one else was near enough to hear, and at the end gave a low, long, almost silent whistle before saying, "You're for it, my boy, if anyone knows you know all that."

"Thank you," Joliffe said with heavy mockery. "I needed to hear that. It adds to my mind's peace."

"Pleased to be of comfort to you." But for all his words' lightness, Ba.s.set was frowning with thoughts probably no more pleasant than Joliffe's. "At least we can tell Lord Lovell something of what he wanted to know concerning this purposed marriage. How much he'll thank us for the rest, I don't know. Once it's done, though, it's no more our matter. He's the one who'll have to sort it out, thank all the saints."

Joliffe nodded silent agreement with that, but Ba.s.set was too skilled at reading what the body betrayed of unsaid thoughts to accept that for all his answer and asked, "Is there something more?"

Joliffe started to answer, stopped, tried again, and finally said, irked at himself, "I have this clutter of questions all churned together in my mind and they won't stop churning. I've found out too much and not enough. There are too many pieces that could go together too many ways and I can't stop shifting them around. There has to be some way it all makes sense and it doesn't yet."

"You're asking a lot of life, if you want it to make sense."

Most of the time, Joliffe was of the same opinion, but he shook his head against it now like against a fly's buzz and said nothing, frowning at the pen he was still twirling.

Ba.s.set watched him a moment, then said, "Well, if you can't let it go, go at it as if you were trying to make a story of all these pieces you have. Shift them around and fill the gaps until they make the sense you want."

Joliffe nodded without looking up, still twirling the pen. Ba.s.set waited a few moments, heaved a sigh of business done, patted Joliffe on the knee, and labored up from the cushion. When he reached the other side of the cart, he said to someone, "Leave him be for now. He's thinking."

To which Ellis said, "Ah. Let's hope he doesn't hurt himself too badly, then."

Chapter 20.

Joliffe kept to himself most of that day. Save for mid-day dinner and afterwards a quick through-run of that evening's play, he stayed beyond the cart, chill but needing his thoughts more than he needed the fire and the others' talk. Piers and even Gil moaned at having to take Tisbe out to her grazing when the rain eased off to hardly more than a misting, and Joliffe gathered from their half-heard talk when they returned that the last reading of the banns must have gone without trouble. Not that that much mattered. Given what he had to tell Lord Lovell, the marriage was unlikely to happen. What held him was what he was untangling by way of little scribbled thoughts on paper and lines drawn from one to anothera"lines often scratched out and replaced by others going other ways.

Finally he sat for a long while without adding anything or scratching anything away. If the few guesses he had added in were right, it was all there. Nor were the guesses wild. They were come out of what he knew for certainty, and because they made everything else come together, he was afraid he now had the right of it all. Nonetheless, he straightened, finding his back hurt with being bent too long, drew in a breath to the very bottom of his lungs, and let it out with a deep relief. It helped to know. Or to think he knew.

Putting his work away, he made to rejoin the others, shuffling from behind the cart, his legs as stiff as his back, and was surprised to find Will was there, sitting beside the fire with Ba.s.set, Rose, and Ellis. Everyone had been keeping so quieta"and must have signaled Will to the same before he was across the cart-yarda"that he had not known the boy was come. Ba.s.set had apparently been telling him a story, their heads close together. Rose was mending a shirt. Ellis was carving something from a thick stick. But they all alike looked up at Joliffe questioningly, and he smiled in what he meant to be an easy way and said, "All's settled. No more trouble."

Ellis muttered, "That will be the day," and went back to his carving.

Rose watched Joliffe join them, her worry showing. He smiled better, just for her, and said, "Truly. All's well."

He didn't know if she believed him, but she smiled in return and went back to her sewing. Standing between Ellis and Ba.s.set, Joliffe held out his hands to the fire that was blazing more merrily than was its wont. "This is a goodly fire. Did someone bring us wood?"

He c.o.c.ked an eye down at Will, who beamed with pleasure. "My lady mother said I should. I'm best out of the way just now, she said. She said I could stay, too, if no one minded. There's more guests come and everybody's busy with readying for tomorrow when the rest of the guests will come. The day after that is the wedding and then next day there's to be more feasting before everyone starts home and Mariena goes away. Now Ba.s.set is telling me a story about Sir Lancelot."

"Then I shall let Ba.s.set get on with it," Joliffe said, "and sit myself down to enjoy your lady mother's gift. Add my thanks to everyone else's, if you please."

With Will there, Joliffe was safe from whatever unwanted questions he might have had from Ellis about what he had been doing and any talk with Ba.s.set; and as Will was leaving, Piers and Gil and Tisbe returned. Joliffe took Tisbe to tie her up again and wipe her dry, while the boys were sent to fetch the players' supper, and when they had eaten, it was time to ready for that evening's play. Or, rather, two playsa"The Baker's Cake and St. Nicholas and the Thiefa"in place of Robin and Marian. Both were ones they had done so often that they could all have done them in their sleep, but in the hall that evening they whole-heartedly put themselves into their playing, to do honor to Lord Lovell in front of the increased guests and because they owed Sir Edmund fair return for their good meals and good shelter. Their playing won laughter where they wanted it and silence where there should have been and at the end a hearty hand-pounding as they made their bows. Tired, satisfied talk saw them all to bed, and Joliffe would have been grateful for how quickly sleep took him except that he was so quickly asleep.

If he dreamed, he did not know it and was kept from his thoughts the next morning by practice both for that night's play, Griselda the Patient, and the two farces they would do tomorrow at the wedding banquet. Supposing the wedding happened, Joliffe thought once, then pushed the thought down and covered it over with the work of teaching Gil how to take a blow from a padded bat as if he were being hit "with a hunk of oak wielded by a giant," Ba.s.set said. "In a farce, if it isn't over-played, it won't set them laughing."

Twice through the morning a hurrying in the yard told when more guests arrived, but the hour for dinner came without a meal to go with it because Lord Lovell had sent word that he and Lady Lovell and their people would be there soon after mid-day and all was being held back for them.

"Which should put the cook into a foul humour," Rose said. "Trying to keep the dinner from spoiling and holding up work on everything for tonight and tomorrow's feasting, too."

"At least Lord Lovell looks to have dry riding today," said Ellis, unpleased himself at the delayed meal. "That should help his humour anyway."

Yet more rain had pattered to an end sometime toward today's dawn, and although the clouds still held, the day was dry above if not underfoot, with puddles among the cobbles of the yard and the cart-yard's packed mud slick with wet. The hint of a mid-day sun showing through the clouds made no difference to that, and when a trumpet sang out distantly, telling that someone of importance was nigh, Rose warned, "Don't any of you dare slip and fall," as she straightened the Lovell tabard over Gil's shoulders.

They meant to be in the yard with the rest of the household to greet Lord Lovell when he rode in. For that they were putting on their tabards, but Ba.s.set had decreed that Gil should have Piers' because, "It will please my lord to see Gil has become fully one of us."

Piers, not happy, tried, "It'll be too small for him. It won't fit him."