Chapter 21.

It was Lady Lovell who took everything in hand in the first terrible moments after that, first coming at haste to take Will from Joliffe, clasping the boy to her while saying over his head at her husband, "I'll see to him. Go down to the yard. Take over there. All that need's saying is that Sir Edmund and Lady Benedicta and Mariena were arguing. Mariena was going to push her brother off the tower. Lady Benedicta saved him but fell to her death. Then Mariena jumped. That's all we need say. Just that. Sir Edmund, you might do best to stay here, out of the way."

"She's in the right," Lord Lovell said at Sir Edmund. "Best you stay here." And added at Joliffe over the outcries that were started in the yard below the tower now, "You come with me."

He turned and disappeared down the stairs and Joliffe followed him, shoving past Sir Edmund, who had not moved and did not move, stayed standing frozen, staring at where his wife and Mariena had last been.

Joliffe overtook Lord Lovell as he paused at the door to Lady Benedicta's chamber, stopping the women just starting to come out its door with order they should stay there. Past their rising questions, Lady Lovell, coming with Will, said crisply behind him, "I'll see to them. Go on."

"Stay and help her," Lord Lovell said at Joliffe and went on.

Joliffe stayed, not certain what he was expected to do but more than willing not to see what lay in the yard. For choice, he simply stayed beside the door to keep anyone from leaving, while the women gathered to Lady Lovell as she went to sit on the chest at the bedfoot, some of them from the window where they had still been leaning out to see. With Will gathered in her arms on her lap, his face hidden against her neck as if he were a much smaller child, Lady Lovell repeated what she had said on the roof. The women's horror and exclaims were broken with cries of pity for Will, and though some of them kept going to the window to look out again, most busied themselves with bringing him wine and stroking his hair and making much of him while asking Lady Lovell questions to which she gave the same answers and they exclaimed and cried out again.

Only when Father Morice came did she get respite. With priestly authority he shooed the women away from her, sat down beside her, and said to her over Will's head, "They've been moved into the lower chamber here. I have one of her women finding sheets to shroud them. Lord Lovell has already sent someone for the crowner. He wants to know if you can go on seeing to things here."

"Of course. Yes," Lady Lovell said with her great calm. "Has anyone seen to Sir Edmund?"

"No," Father Morice said, sounding surprised, as if Sir Edmund had been forgotten until then.

Lady Lovell looked to Joliffe. "If you would, please."

"My lady," Joliffe said with a bow and went out; but not immediately up. Instead, he waited on the stairs above the door for Father Morice, and when the priest came out, closing the door behind him, said at his back, "How much of all this did you know, Father?"

Father Morice spun around. "Know? I wasn't there. You were there. Youa""

"About Mariena and Sir Edmund and whose daughter she truly was and that he meant to marry her to her half-brother. How much of all that did you know?"

"Those are matters of the confessional," the priest said stiffly. "Not mine to divulge."

"Dealing over the marriage agreement was not *of the confessional,' so tell me something: you dragged out the dealings with John Harcourt for as long as you could. That's what I've been told. Because you knew, yes? You understood what Sir Edmund meant to do but you didn't dare face him with it. What would you have done when the time came they were at the altar ready to say their vows? Did you plan to let them commit mortal sin? Would you have blessed the bridal bed that night and left them to it?"

Father Morice sagged backward against the wall. "I don't know what I meant to do. No. I wouldn't have let it happen. I couldn't have. I hope. I . . ." Despair edged his voice. "I don't know. And now she'll have to be buried in unconsecrated ground. Mariena will. Because she killed herself." He looked suddenly frightened. "It did happen that way, didn't it? She jumped? He didn't . . ."

Words failed him, the way his courage had when most he needed it, and for truth's sake, not comfort because he had no urge to comfort the man, that Joliffe said, "He didn't push her over. Not by present deed. Only by everything he did to her before." And he swung away from the priest and went up the stairs, back to the tower's roof.

The rain had come back, was a thick-falling mist greying and blurring the world. Sir Edmund had not taken shelter from it, though; was sitting on the battlement, hunched and slumped like an old and weary man, staring down between his feet at the runnel of rainwater in the gutter under the wooden walkway. He did not look up or show any sign he knew Joliffe was there; and Joliffe, when he had stood for a while with the rain brushing across his face and beginning to run down his neck, said ungently, "The rain will help to wash the cobbles clean of their blood anyway."

Sir Edmund gave a small grunt of pain and pulled his head lower between his shoulders. So he could hear what was said to him and he was in pain. Good, Joliffe thought, and said at him, "Your wife's last act was one of love. Your daughter's last acts were all of hatred." Sir Edmund started to shake his head, probably against Mariena being called his daughter, but Joliffe lashed at him, "She was your daughter. In everything but blood. In cruelty and coldness of heart, she was all yours, and now she's d.a.m.ned her soul to h.e.l.l. You, though, will likely repent of everything and save your soul. If not Heaven, you'll at least have Purgatory. But I hope you're put through h.e.l.l here on earth before you die. I hope Lord Lovell sees to that much for you."

Sir Edmund a little raised his head, enough to say, "I never meant . . ." He waved one hand vaguely sideways. "Never meant her . . . them . . . to die. To . . ."

"No," Joliffe snapped. "It was Amyas you meant to kill."

That brought Sir Edmund's head up. A little wild-eyed he stared at Joliffe, who said, unrelenting, "Or did you mean to betray Mariena that way, too, and leave her married to him? Though any man who married her was as foul betrayed by you as man could be. And, yes, Lord Lovell knows what you planned for Amyas, too."

Sir Edmund had started to rise but at that sank down again and put his head between his hands. "I never meant their deaths," he mumbled. "I swear that. I never meant that."

"No," Joliffe agreed coldly. "You preferred them alive and tortured. You left the killing to your wife and Mariena. I think there's not much absolution in that."

He went back inside and down the stairs at dangerous speed, leaving Sir Edmund to the rain. With any luck the cur would take the lung sickness and die. Or, better yet, despair and fling himself to d.a.m.nation from the tower.

But he wouldn't, Joliffe thought bitterly. He was a man with no courage for anything except crueltya"the coward's pastime.

The rain had driven people to shelter under and along the farther building's gallery and under the pentice over the tower doorway. Joliffe shoved through the latter and down the stairs, already too wet to care about the rain, crossing the yard long-strided toward the cart-yard, slowing only for Ba.s.set, coming out from among the household folk sheltering in the hall doorway, to join him. Ba.s.set asked him nothing, but when they joined Ellis, Piers, and Gil huddled under the eaves of the carpenter's shed, Ellis started to ask, "What . . ." only to break off, either at the shake of Ba.s.set's head or the look on Joliffe's face as he went past them.

In the cartshed, Rose was tending the fire but must have known something of what was happening but likewise broke off the start of a question, instead saying at Joliffe as she laid more sticks onto the fire, "You're cold and you're wet. Sit down. Take off your doublet. Father, bring his cloak. Take off your shoes, Joliffe."

He had meant to escape into the corner beyond the cart but suddenly wanted not to be alone; wanted the fire and warmth and Rose's care; and he shrugged out of his doublet and flung it aside, sat down on a cushion, and leaned toward the fire, his hands held out to it.

"Shoes," Rose reminded.

As he pulled them off, Ba.s.set laid his cloak over his shoulders. Joliffe huddled it around him, leaning to the fire again. Rose set his shoes where they would dry without the heat shriveling their leather and hung his doublet over the ever-ready drying rack. "He should have something hot to drink," she said.

"I'm well. There's no need," Joliffe said without looking up from the flames at play among the sticks. They were warmth and light and like something alive, and just now he very much needed warmth and light and things alive.

Quietly Ba.s.set asked, "Were you right in what you told Lord Lovell?"

"I was right."

He began to shiver. Rose brought a blanket and wrapped it around him over his cloak. Piers had come to crouch on the other side of the fire, his hands out to the warmth, but Ellis and Gil had stayed standing just inside the shed's shelter, and Ellis now demanded of Ba.s.set, "What did he tell Lord Lovell?"

Still quietly, Ba.s.set told them. While he did, Rose sat down on a cushion beside Piers, put her arm around him, and held him close while watching Joliffe still staring into the flames. When Ba.s.set finished, Ellis swore softly, briefly, then demanded at Joliffe, "That's what you made out of what you found out here? All of that?"

Not looking up, Joliffe said, "It was the only way of things that made sense of it all."

"You told Lord Lovell that and he believed you?"

"Yes. Believed it enough anyway," Joliffe said tersely. "Enough to follow it through."

"So then?" Ellis demanded of Ba.s.set again.

"Then Lord Lovell went to challenge them with it, to see what they would answer," Ba.s.set said. "About that only Joliffe can tell you. I wasn't there."

"Joliffe?" Ellis said, only it was an order more than question.

Still watching the fire, where the sticks were now breaking down into glowing coals, Joliffe told them the rest and how only part of it all was being told to everyone else; and when he had finished, there was quiet among them all, with only the drizzling of rain off the thatch until finally Rose said, "You saw it from the yard, Father?"

"I saw them fall, yes. Then I looked away and didn't look back."

Rose signed herself with a cross. "G.o.d have mercy on them both." And after a moment, "On all of them."

Hushed, Piers said, "Poor Will."

Ellis, equally hushed, muttered, "Poor everyone."

Though there would be no play tonight, Ellis and Gil fetched the players' supper from the kitchen along with what was being said there. It seemed Lady Lovell's telling of what had happened on the tower was the one that would hold, though no one seemed clear on what had set so desperate a quarrel going or for certain what the quarrel had been.

"Sir Edmund has shut himself away into some room in the tower, with only Father Morice going in or out," Ellis said. "Amyas is in grief and only keeps saying, *But why? Why?' Most of those who knew much seem to think this all was something that was a long time coming and almost bound to come, one way or another. Lord and Lady Lovell are giving all the orders that have to be given."

"What's being said of Will?" Rose asked.

"*Poor boy' sums it up," Ellis said. "Lady Lovell has kept him with her, so no one's had chance at him."

"Hasn't Sir Edmund asked for him?" Ba.s.set asked.

"Someone said he had and she'd refused. Whether that's true or not . . ." Ellis shrugged.

Then a servant with Lord Lovell's badge of a dog on his doublet came to say Lord Lovell wanted to see Ba.s.set and Joliffe. Rose did her usual quick straightening and smoothing of them before they left, and when Joliffe forced a smile of thanks at her, she patted his arm like he was Piers and said, "It will be all right."

Since he had finished telling his side of what had happened, he had not spoken at all nor did he now, only kept the smile on his face for her sake until he was turned away to go with Ba.s.set after the servant.

Lord Lovell was in a small chamber off the great hall that looked to be where Sir Edmund carried out manor business, with tables at which he and a clerk could work and a chest against the wall for keeping doc.u.ments; but there was also a backed, comfortably cushioned bench in front of a fireplace, and a fire burning there against the damp of the evening now drawing in, and Lord Lovell was seated there; and when Ba.s.set and Joliffe had bowed to him, he gestured them to come stand near the fire, taking a long, searching look at them both before asking, "You can keep quiet about all of this?"

"We can, my lord," Ba.s.set said.

"Master Ripon?" Lord Lovell said.

"Yes."

"It's a miserable business," Lord Lovell said. "But you did as I asked and I'm well pleased." He held out a small pouch to Ba.s.set. "This is for your trouble."

Ba.s.set took it with a bow that accepted the dismissal that came with it, but Joliffe asked, "What's to be done about Sir Edmund?"

Lord Lovell frowned, not at Joliffe, only at his own answer. "Whatever his priest decrees for him. There's no proof he had intent against Amyas' life. For the rest, to make public the whole ugliness would serve mostly to hurt Will hereafter, which seems to me wrong, he being the one innocent in all of this."

"You won't leave him here with his father, my lord?" Joliffe asked.

That was impudence, which Lord Lovell acknowledged with a level look before he answered anyway, "I mean to take Will into my household until he comes of age. He'll leave here with my lady and me. As for leaving . . ." He paused, then seemed to make up his mind about something. "It will be best, I think, if you and your company leave in the morning, Master Ba.s.set."

"My lord?" Ba.s.set asked, surprised and showing it.

"In a day or so, hardly more, the crowner will be here with his questions about the deaths. If you're not here to answer questions, you won't have to lie to him. You're my company of players. I'll answer for it that you knew nothing beyond what I myself can tell him and that I sent you on your way because your skills are unsuitable to a place now in mourning and your places at table would be better used for other people."

Ba.s.set bowed. "We'll be gone at first light, my lord."

"Good. Tell young Gil I'm sorry to have no chance to speak with him, but he's to go on serving you well. I shall expect to see your company at Minster Lovell at Christmastide."

That was complete dismissal, and with another bow, they took it; but crossing the yard, Ba.s.set weighed the pouch in his hand and said, "I'm liking this lord more every day."

At the cartshed the rest of the company took the news in good part, no one minding to be away from here; but it wasn't until the morning, when Deneby Manor was behind them and there was a hope of sun behind the clouds, that Ellis said across Tisbe's back to Joliffe as they walked along, "Anyway, this will surely stop you trying to make something out of that grievous Dux Moraud. That's the one good thing from all of this."

Joliffe, having had the long, unsleeping hours of the night to come to some terms with yesterday, feigned large surprise at him. "What? By no means whatever! In truth I've finally seen my way clear to the end that had me stopped until now."

"Please," Ellis pleaded. "No."

"Yes," Joliffe said blithely, his spirit rising with the familiar pleasure of irking him. "I've been trying to deal with Moraud as a villain of great daring and great sinsa"sins so great his repentance was a thing beyond believing. Or at least beyond my being able to write it well."

"Humility," Ellis said. "I like that in you."

"But," Joliffe said grandly, "now Sir Edmund has shown me the way. There was nothing great or daring about anything he did. All his sins were small-hearted and petty. Petty l.u.s.t. Petty hatred. Petty greed . . ."

"If those are petty sins," Ellis said impatiently, "what exactly do you consider a great sin?"

"Pride," Joliffe said promptly.

Ellis gave a bark of laughter. "That makes you a great sinner, then. You've enough pride fora""

"My pride is honest and proportionate pride," Joliffe said with dignity. "There's no sin in pride at filling my humble place in the world as best I'm able. In using well what talents G.o.d has given me. Ina""

"Sir Edmund?" Ellis said quellingly.

"Sir Edmund," Joliffe said, unable to keep a hard edge from his words, "is a hollow-hearted coward who has never seen beyond what he wants, what he feels. Other people's grief or pain or hope or happiness don't matter to him. Only his grief, his pain, his hope and happiness count for anything. If he comes to repentance now, it's not because his heart has truly changed but because he's frightened to his hollow core that he'll otherwise be made to suffer for what he helped to happen." Joliffe heard the anger building in his own voice and shifted back to deliberate lightness. "If I do him wrong, may I be forgiven. But there I have my Moraud. A petty man sniveling his way into repentance. I thinka""

"You think too much," said Ellis.

Author's Note.

Lord and Lady Lovell are historical. His effigy can be seen on his tomb in Minster Lovell church in Oxfordshire, close by the ruins of Minster Lovell manor house. The site is a lovely one to visit, with its remains of golden Cotswold stone buildings beside the Windrush River under Wychwood Forest.

The Denebys and all about them are imaginary, but the story of incestuous father and daughter is an old one, to be found in many sources and forms through the centuries, including the contemporary Confessio Amantis by John Gower and the actual play of Dux Moraud.

Unfortunately, the play presently exists only in fragmentary form, written in the 1400s on a damaged and reused parchment of the early 1300s. We have the Duke's speeches, no one else's. This brief remains of the play can be found in Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, edited by Norman Davis for the Early English Text Society, Oxford University Press, 1970, or in perhaps more generally accessible form (if somewhat less accurately and under the t.i.tle Duke Moraud) in Joseph Quincy Adams's Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas.

end.