"Avice!" Sia hissed loudly over her shoulder.

"Coming!" Avice shouted, then dropped her voice again to finish her message. ". . . but I like a warm bed, tell him."

"A warm bed and a merry one?" Joliffe asked.

Avice's smile widened. "A very merry one. You tell him."

"I will. Mind if I remember it myself?"

Avice laughed and said merrily as she went away, "I wouldn't mind, like, but Sia would."

Chapter 7.

As Joliffe left the kitchen yard, saddled horses were Joliffe left the kitchen yard, saddled horses were being led past the tower toward the long building beyond it, where Sir Edmund was coming down the stairs from the open upper gallery, graciously leading his wife by one hand, her other hand gathering her skirts away from her feet, with Master Breche behind them, then Amyas leading Mariena, followed by the Wyots, with Will coming last.

Off to their hawking, Joliffe supposed, and lingered in the kitchen-yard gateway to watch them. Knowing more about them than he had made that watching the more interesting. Sir Edmund lifted his wife up to her side-saddle and they spoke briefly, unsmiling but courteous enough. If Sia had it right and Lady Benedicta had opposed him over marrying their daughter to Harry Wyot, it meant Lady Benedicta had a mind of her own and used it, not necessarily to her husband's good. That was something to hold in mind. That, and the fact they kept at least outward courtesy to each other.

Then there were Mariena and Amyas. Given they were all but betrothed, Joliffe had half-thought she would ride pillion behind him, an allowable familiarity; but Amyas was lifting her to her own saddle, while a stablehand waited with another horse for him. Whose choice was it that they ride apart, Joliffe wondered. Not Amyas', certainly. His hands lingered on Mariena's slender waist under her cloak once she was in the saddle. Her head was bare, her dark hair loosely braided, with soft tendrils already straying loose around her face. Even across the yard, her loveliness was a pleasure to gaze upon. Joliffe did not wonder that Amyas' hands lingered as she leaned forward, her face briefly above and temptingly near his.

Then she straightened and he stepped back and turned hastily to his own horse, to mount and bring it close beside hers. Whoever's choice it was that they ride apart, Joliffe doubted it was theirs. He guessed, too, not having heard otherwise, that she had accepted quietly her father's several choices of husband for her: so despite her insistence on another wedding dress, Mariena must be biddable in most matters. About that new bridal gown, there was no way to know whether Amyas or Will was righta"whether she was tender-hearted maiden or greedy girla"since neither a love-blinded youth nor a jealous little brother were likely to be a good judge. Watching her gather up her reins and turn her horse to follow her parents toward the gateway, Joliffe was willing to accept she was merely a soon-to-be-married young woman with presently very little choice about her life and therefore insisting on one of the few things she might most reasonably insist ona"a new gown for her wedding. That Sia disliked her meant little. Given the difference between their lives, how could Sia not dislike her?

But why had Harry Wyot refused to marry her? That had cost him trouble and money; refusing an offered marriage always cost a ward a hearty fine to whoever held his marriage right. Nor could Wyot have known that instead of whatever comfortable marriage portion would come with a wealthy knight's daughter, he would end up with a wealthy merchant's daughter instead and no worse off, save that his wife was nowhere near the beauty Mariena was. Even so, there seemed to be affection there, Joliffe thought. Mistress Wyot was the one woman riding pillion, seated sideways behind her husband on a solid grey gelding, her arm around his waist and laughing at something Wyot, smiling, was saying over his shoulder to her.

The riders rode away, out the gateway and across the drawbridge, and Joliffe went onward toward the cartshed, taking his thoughts with him. Whatever quarrel there had been between Sir Edmund and Harry Wyot must be over now, forgiven and forgotten, since Harry was here and had not warned his friend against a marriage he had refused for himself. Or had he warned his friend, only to find Amyas was brave enough to dare what he had not? Bravea"or else too foolish to take the warning?

Either way, that was by the way. It was about John Harcourt's death they needed to know more, to see if there looked to be any threat to Amyas Breche that same way. For that, there was need to fall into talk with other folk here at leisurely length, to learn what else he could about everyone and everything. And surely talk more with Sia, who was so willing to it. Nor did he mind that talk with her would likely lead to something more than talk. No, indeed, he did not mind that at all.

In the meanwhile, he should keep in mind one other thing he had learned from her: Sir Edmund had been enough in debt to need Harry Wyot's marriage to pay off what he owed. What bearing that might have on anything, Joliffe didn't know. It was simply something to keep along with the accompanying question of whether Sir Edmund might be in debt again and in need of another prosperous marriage. Had the proposed Harcourt marriage been as rich a one as this Breche one? Could Sir Edmund have found out the Harcourt one was not as rich as he needed it to be but too late for any way out from it but the bridegroom's death?

Joliffe would have answers to none of those questions from Sia, that was sure, but what of Father Morice? It was maybe time for Ba.s.set to find reason to talk with him again. Not that direct answers could be had, since direct questions could not be asked, but Ba.s.set might learn something around the edges, as it were.

Joliffe's thoughts and legs had him back to the cartshed by then, and for next while of the day he worked at writing, and Ba.s.set worked with Gil's speaking, and Ellis and Piers oiled Tisbe's harness, and Rose mended one of Piers' hosen, refusing to admit it was out-grown and would only rip again next time he wore it. The carpenter was not at work today, and with all the other manor-sounds muted beyond the buildings and Tisbe slumbering with one twitching ear in the cart-yard's sunlight, it was as peaceful as their lives ever were. Nearly, Joliffe could have dozed along with Tisbe.

The peace was jarred to an end by the thudding clatter of horses crossing the drawbridge over the moat. Ellis, pausing over a bridle strap, said, "If that's the hunters, they're back soon."

"Maybe it's some guests come for the betrothal?" Joliffe suggested.

"I'll see," said Piers, dropping the rein he was oiling and leaping to his feet.

"Just you stay here," Ellis ordered. "Don't . . ." But Piers was already away and Ellis muttered darkly about what he'd do when the whelp came back; but when Piers did, after not very long, Ellis only asked impatiently, "Well? Guests or what?"

"It was Will," Piers said. "And everybody else. Will took a fall. They had to bring him back."

"He's badly hurt?" Ba.s.set demanded.

"I'd guess not," Piers said lightly. "He was on his own feet, anyway, when the women rushed him up the stairs. He was dripping, though, like he'd fallen in water or on boggy ground. But not hurt, no."

"You will be if you don't get on with that rein," Ellis threatened.

"Rein, rein, gives me a sprain," Piers mocked; but he sat to the work again and something of quiet came back. For a while there were voices and horse-sounds from the nearby stable as the hunters' mounts were groomed and stalled, but that settled and time pa.s.sed. The fit of sunshine that had graced the early afternoon was replaced with grey clouds, Ellis and Piers finished with the harness, and Joliffe was come out of the corner to watch Ba.s.set lessoning Gil when a house-servant came into the cart-yard, so evidently on an errand that Ba.s.set made to stand up from the cushion pile, to receive whatever message the man brought.

Rose's medicine had eased all but the worst of his arthritic pains but the effort cost him, and when the servant said, "My Lady Benedicta would have you come to her in her chamber to talk about what you've planned to play these next days," Joliffe inwardly winced for Ba.s.set's sake. Lady Benedicta's chamber was surely up one set of steep stairs or another, and when Ba.s.set's arthritics were flaring like today, stairs were a torment and difficulty. But Ba.s.set was equal to the trouble. He gave a single bow of his head in gracious acceptance of the message and said, "It would be my pleasure if I were fit for it. Being somewhat unwell, though, I'll spare her my presence and send Master Ripon in my stead. He knows my mind in all of it as well as I do."

Joliffe stepped forward.

The servant shrugged. "It's all one to me. Just so someone comes."

While Joliffe straightened his tunic and pulled up his hose to smoothness, Rose made a quick brush down his back, reminded him with "Rump" to brush off where he'd been sitting, gave him a hard look from feet to hair, and nodded he was presentable. He made her a low bow of thanks and gestured to the servant to lead onward. He had no objection at all to seeing closer the heart of the Deneby household and was the more pleased when the man led him across the yard to the stairs up to the round tower.

Stone-built and squat, ungraceful but thick-walled for defense, the tower had probably been there since the earliest days of the manor, its arrow-slit windows showing it was meant to face dangers not likely now in these far more settled days. What had to be the original doora"thick oak planks studded with broad-headed nailsa"stood open at the stair-head. Inside, a single chamber took up the tower at that level. From the brief sight of it he had, Joliffe judged it to be a solar and council chamber, sparely but comfortably furnished, with what had been an arrow-slit in the far wall widened into a fair-sized window, giving the chamber daylight it would otherwise have lacked. Below, in the tower's windowless lowest level, would be storage. Above would be Sir Edmund's and Lady Benedicta's more private chamber, Joliffe guessed as he turned to follow his guide through a narrow, stone-framed doorway and up a long curve of stairs built into the thickness of the tower's wall. Narrow and dark save where a little daylight fell through an arrow-slit, they were somewhat worn with the several hundred years of use they had probably had and Joliffe went careful-footed, ready for the usual one step made higher than the others to betray an attacker into a stumble, making him easier victim for whoever might be fighting up the stairs in retreat.

The step came and he did not stumble, and at another stone-framed doorway his guide turned into a chamber like the one below, save here was clearly more a woman's world. Close-woven reed matting covered most of the floor for warmth and comfort, and a window twice larger than in the lower chamber had been cut through the south curve of the tower's wall. The wide stone windowseat under it was softened with bright cushions, while the ceiling beams were painted a gay yellow and the walls were a deep autumnal red with a hunting scene of galloping riders and leaping stags drawn in white outline all around. Set against one wall was a broad, tall bed hung with blue curtains embroidered in a red chevron pattern, with coverlet that matched. A wooden chest nearly as wide as the bed itself sat at the bedfoot, the Deneby arms deeply carved and brightly painted on its front, a woman's needlework basket and a folded heap of richly blue cloth sitting on its flat top. Other women's things were here and there around the room, too, not untidily but giving the sense of a room well-lived-in as well as presently over-crowded, with not only Lady Benedicta there, seated on the bed's edge, and Mariena standing at the window, but Mistress Wyot, too, perched uneasily on a curve-backed chair with sewing in her hands, and several maidservants bustling, and Will sitting gloomily near the fireplace on a low stool, wrapped to his ears in a fur-collared cloak far too large to be his own.

The fireplace was the least expected thing about the chamber. At some time, the stone around one ancient narrow window had been chipped away to make a hearth and the gap then stone-hooded to chimney the smoke out the window-slit. Though still early in the autumn for a hearth-fire, one was blazing high there just now, surely for Will's sake, because close by was a high-sided metal tub with soap-sc.u.mmed bath-water still in it but two maidservantsa"one of them Siaa"beginning to empty it.

Best, of course, would have been st.u.r.dy men to carry the tub down the stairs and out to dump it all at once but there was no question of carrying anything the tub's size and full of water down the tower's stairs. The water had come up bucketful by bucketful, probably hot from the washhouse and re-warmed beside the fire, and now it would go bucketful by bucketful out the window, with Sia scooping water out with a bucket to pour into another bucket for the other maidservant to carry across the chamber to empty out the window while Sia filled a third bucket to have ready when she returned. Since the tub was large and the buckets, for the sake of not spilling, could not be filled, this was going to take some while.

Will's fall must have been disastrously wet and muddy to warrant this much trouble, but as Piers had reported, he seemed unhurt, except perhaps in his dignity. He a.s.suredly did not look to be enjoying himself here.

"One of the players, my lady," Joliffe's guide said with a bow to Lady Benedicta.

Joliffe bowed, too, but found Lady Benedicta somewhat frowning at him when he straightened.

"It wasn't you who spoke in the hall yesterday," she said while making a small beckon at the servant that he should leave. "You're not the head of your company, are you?"

"No, my lady," Joliffe said with another, slighter bow. "But Master Ba.s.set is somewhat unwell todaya"a pa.s.sing rheuma"and sent me in his stead. I'm bid to ask your pardon and tell you that I know his mind in the mattera"what he intends for your household's and guests' pleasure this week."

Lady Benedicta accepted that with a small bow of her head and, "Tell him I send my regret for his discomfort. Does he have anything to ease it?"

"He does, my lady. My thanks, though, for your asking."

"Of course. Now draw over that stool. We'll talk."

With another small movement of one hand, she showed him a joint stool not far from where Will was sitting. Joliffe fetched it, thinking that Lady Benedicta, with her small movements and short words, was not a giving sort of woman. Her courtesy in letting him sit while they talked was something, though, and Joliffe smiled at Will as he picked up the joint stool. Will gave back an unhappy grimace, then slid around to face his mother and ask, "Can I get dressed and go now?"

"You may not. If you know no better than to fall into mud and water, we must all suffer the consequences."

"My saddle slipped!" Will sounded as if he had already protested that more than once. "It slid right around and dumped me. It wasn't my fault!"

"You will learn," his mother said coldly, "to check your own saddle girth, not trust it to servants."

"Can't Sia take him to the kitchen?" said Mariena from the window. Her voicea"this first time Joliffe had heard ita"was pleasant and a little laughing at her brother. "He'd keep even warmer there and be out of the way."

"He'll staya"" Lady Benedicta began.

"I am warm!" Will said.

"a"until I'm satisfied he's taken no harm," Lady Benedicta finished.

"He's not hurt. Hear how he keeps whining," Mariena said. "Send him to whine somewhere else."

Will threw an angry look at her and opened his mouth to answer, but Lady Benedicta said, "You're whining more than he is, Mariena. Set to your sewing and be quiet."

"I'm tired of sewing."

Mariena did sound truly tired, as if worn with hours of it, but Lady Benedicta answered with asperity, "It was you who wanted this second wedding dress. There's no reason the rest of us have to suffer for it without you do, too." She slightly turned her head toward Mistress Wyot and said, "Idonea, cease sewing, please."

Seen nearer, Mistress Wyot was somewhat more pleasing than she had appeared at a distance. Although perhaps a little older than her husband and certainly older than Mariena, she was still very young, with youth's bright color in her plump cheeks. Or maybe the color was embarra.s.sment as her hands went idle on the sewing in them and her glance flicked unhappily, uneasily, back and forth between Lady Benedicta and Mariena.

Joliffe watched them all with his face correctly blank of thought or feeling. He was here as hardly better than a servant and a servant's place was to serve, not to hear or see what his betters did among themselves. Servants did see, though, and everything he was seeing told him something of how things were in the heart of the Deneby household, Mistress Wyot looking ill at ease, Will crouched and sullen in the enveloping cloak, Mariena stiff with offense and glaring at her mother, Lady Benedicta sitting straight-backed on the edge of the bed as on a throne, regarding her daughter coldly, waiting for Mariena to choose what she would do.

They were all waiting, even Sia and the other maid, standing unmoving now beside the bath, until finally Mariena, after a long moment of an angry look locked with her mother's, suddenly shrugged, sat down on the end of the window bench, and took up the sewing waiting there. With that, Mistress Wyot began hers again, Will scooted around on his seat to face the fire, putting his back to everyone, and Joliffe returned his look from Mariena to Lady Benedicta, to find her watching him.

He thought he hid how much that disconcerted him, while she said, "My daughter is lovely, yes."

Joliffe held back from saying, "Lovely is as lovely does." Settled for silently bowing.

And that should have been the end of it, but Lady Benedicta went on coldly, "Unfortunately, she is not entirely happy at marrying someone who gives her no t.i.tle. She had counted on being a lady, like her mother. But it's somewhat too late for that."

Before Joliffe quite sorted out whether Lady Benedicta meant both of the possible meanings to the last part of that, she went on, "So. What does Master Ba.s.set purpose for our pleasure?"

He gave himself over to business. Lady Benedicta heard him out, then questioned him more closely about what the players intended for this evening. "It will not go to ribaldry?" she asked.

"Nothing beyond the most mild, my lady," Joliffe a.s.sured her, silently setting himself to warn Ba.s.set and Ellis. "Master Ba.s.set was wondering about the wedding feast, though."

"I want to laugh," Mariena said from the windowseat.

"I'm certain you will," her mother returned without looking at her.

It not being his place to hear such things, Joliffe seemed not to and went on, "Master Ba.s.set had thought Griselda the Patient might serve."

"I know the story, but tell me how you play it," Lady Benedicta directed.

"Might I say it quietly?" Joliffe asked. "Rather than give all away to everyone?"

Barely lifting her hand from her lap, Lady Benedicta made a beckon for him to come nearer. Leaving the joint stool, Joliffe did and knelt on one knee beside her, not minded to stand bent over while he talked low-voiced to her. Thus far he judged her a stiff, ungenerous woman, curt of words and doing her duty toward her son without show of particular affection. He half-expected her to give him trouble for trouble's sake over what he told her, but she did not and her few questions were well-made and to the point. Only at the end did she raise her voice to say, just loudly enough to carry across the chamber, "Griselda the Patient sounds satisfactory indeed. Though there are some who won't agree."

She did not look toward Mariena as she said it, but Joliffe and probably no one else in the chamber had doubt where the words were aimed. Mariena jerked her head up from her sewing as if about to answer sharply, but Lady Benedicta forestalled her, saying in the same raised voice to Sia and the other maid, just finishing with emptying the tub, "Thank you. You may go. Tell Fulk and Gefri to come when they can to take it away."

Mariena threw aside her sewing, stood up, and without asking her mother's leave, went out of the chamber while the maids were curtsying to Lady Benedicta, who ignored her daughter, only saying to Joliffe while the maids gathered up the buckets and towels and left, "Please tell Master Ba.s.set I'm well-content with what you've told me. If there's aught that your company needs, either toward the plays or your comfort, let me hear of it."

Joliffe rose to his feet and bowed his thanks, was about to a.s.sure they were well-content when he saw Will looking sad-eyed at him over the furred edge of the vast cloak, and said before he thought better of it, "One thing, my lady. Your son has taken interest in what we do. May he have leave to keep us company sometimes while we're here?" And added in inspired after-thought, "With his tutor, if that would make it better."

Lady Benedicta looked from him to Will sitting suddenly straighter and brighter-eyed, and for the first time the possibility of a smile lightened her own face. It did not quite happen but she was near to it and said, "Father Morice might enjoy the respite after the work we've put him to of late. Yes. Will may spend time with you if he wishes."

Will shot to his feet, exclaiming gladly, "Mother!"

"Sit down. You'll let a draught under the cloak and take a chill," she ordered at him. He sat, still beaming, and she said to Joliffe, "It will be for Master Ba.s.set to say whether Will is in the way or not, and for him to send Will away when he wishes." She looked at Will. "Understood?" He nodded eagerly. She returned her look to Joliffe, who noted for the first time her fine eyes, deep-set and dark, before she dismissed him with a nod of her own. He bowed again and withdrew, hearing her say behind him as he started down the stairs, "Idonea, how goes the sleeve?"

He was on the curve of the stairs beyond sight of anyone at their head or foot when he met Mariena coming up. In the stone-walled narrownness he stepped as much aside as he could, flattening his back to the wall to let her pa.s.s. Though she had to turn sideways, too, there was room for her to pa.s.s without touching him but she dida"and more than touched. She brushed her body, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and hips across his, for a moment paused with her fine-boned, beautiful face upturned to his, her lips slightly parted, inviting a kiss he might have given except he was so startled he only stared at her in the instant before her gaze fell and she went on, with the slightest of smiles at the corner of her mouth and a sidelong look back at him from under her lowered lids before the curve of the stairs took her from sight.

Swallowing thickly, shaken by how easily she had raised him, he went uncomfortably downward, only to meet Sia on the last curve of the stairs. He would rather not have dealt with her just then and would have gone past when she stepped aside, out of his way, but she put out her arm, barring him from going down, and said, "She was waiting for you, you know."

"And so were you," Joliffe said lightly; and because Sia was almost as near to him as Mariena had been and her face was turned up to him the same way, he kissed her. The kiss turned into more than he had meant it to be, with Sia's arms coming around his waist and her body leaning into his, pressing him back against the wall.

He was the first to break it off, but Sia, still leaning against him, smiled up into his face with a sigh of satisfaction. "There now," she said. "That's better."

Joliffe took her by the shoulders and set her back from him as much as the stairs allowed. "I have to go."

Sia continued to lean into his hands so that he could not let her go lest she fall against him again. Mellow with pleasure, she said, "It's no matter, you know. We're used to getting her leavings, the other girls and me."

"Leavings?" Joliffe asked.

Sia twitched her head the way Mariena had gone, up the stairs. "Hers. She does like she did with you. For the sport of it. Heats men to where they don't know whether they're coming or going. Never satisfies them, just heats them. They're easy to have then." Sia wiggled a little, wanting to be close again. Because he couldn't be sure he'd hear anyone coming, Joliffe kept her where she was and she went on, "These past few years, while she's had suitors here now and again, some of us have gathered a pretty lot of coins helping them ease their longings. If you know what I mean."

He'd have to be both gelded and stupid not to know what she meant and he said, smiling, "I'm no wealthy suitor come to woo. I've no coins to give you."

"You're fair-bodied enough with a face I don't mind kissing"a"Sia slipped free of his hands, came close, and kissed him again to prove ita""that I'll have you for my own pleasure and no need for coins."

Enough was enougha"and he'd not nearly had enough. "Where?" he asked. "And when?" Since here and now surely did not suit.

"Tonight after supper. There's a loft above the cow byre. Behind the stables. Can you find it?"

"I'll find it."

"Here." She pulled a square of red cloth from inside the front of her gown. "If you go now and leave this on the ladder, it means the loft is bespoke for tonight. Then we'll be sure of it."

She gave him the cloth, warm from her body, and another kiss to go with it, then was gone down the stairs, leaving him with the thought that l.u.s.t seemed very well served here.

Chapter 8.

Joliffe took his time going the rest of the way down the stairs, tucking the red cloth out of sight up his sleeve as he went. Outside the tower's doorway, he paused at the stair-head and saw Sia well away along the open gallery running outside the wing of rooms beyond the tower before he went the other way, down the stairs to the yard and in search of the cow byre, although his thoughts were mostly busy elsewhere than with Sia.