She leaned to look under the cart at him in his corner, and he answered, "Not enough to matter. He was lucky it was sog-wet ground."

Rose straightened back to her work, saying, "It was that, right enough."

"He's had other accidents of late, I heard," Joliffe offered.

"The women were saying that, too. Well, one accident. A skinned knee and bruised hand from a fall on the tower stairs. Worse has been he's twice been badly sick to his stomach this past summer. There's worry he's turning sickly."

"He looked well enough to me," Ba.s.set said. "Father Morice didn't seem worried that way about him."

"Oh, him," Rose said dismissively. She shook out a shirt and draped it over the drying frame. "You should have heard the women about him."

Joliffe began putting away his work. This was talk too valuable to let pa.s.s and he asked, "Troubles the women, does he?"

"Not the way you mean," Rose said back tartly. "What it was, they were laughing over how fast this marriage-talk went, compared to last time. Last time he questioned every point as it came up, dragging things out and out."

"That's as it should be, isn't it?" Ba.s.set said. "Sir Edmund would want him to find the points that could make trouble later and straighten them out now."

"Seems even Sir Edmund was impatient at him before it was done. And Mariena swore she'd throttle him if he kept it up."

"She threatened a priest?" Ellis said, laughing.

"Not for him to hear," Rose said. "But some of the servants did."

Putting his work back into the cart, Joliffe said, "She wanted the marriage, then?"

"Seems so." Rose held up the long leg of half a pair of hosen she was about to hang over the drying frame, checking to see if it needed mending. Their best garb was kept only for playing. Otherwise, they each had a single change of clothinga"one to wear while one was being washeda"and their traveling took heavy toll. "Everyone did. The intended bridegroom was well-liked all around. Good to look on and well-mannered. A knight's son, too, and come into his lands not so many years ago."

Taking a shirt from the basket and making to hang it over the rope now Ellis had it firmly up, Joliffe asked, "His father is dead?"

"Three years past or so, I gather."

"What about the present bridegroom? What do they say about him?"

"The women think it's shame Mariena is being married no higher than a merchant's son, but they've naught to say against Amyas himself."

"Merchants tend to be richer than knights these days," Ellis said. He was dipping a finger in the water on the fire, testing its warmth. "Richer than some lords, even. Probably Sir Edmund needs what the marriage will bring in the way of money."

"I wonder if he's gone into debt again since selling Harry Wyot's marriage," Joliffe said. He wondered, too, how long ago that had been. Long enough for Sir Edmund to be badly in debt again? Or was Sir Edmund the sort who didn't take long to be in debt?

"Where'd you pick that up?" Ellis asked.

Making much of hanging another shirt straight over the line, Joliffe shrugged off the question. "You know. Just around. People talk. Rose, what do they say about Mariena and this marriage? Does she want it?"

Rose went on hanging other hosen over the drying frame while answering, "No one said she doesn't. What I gathered was that they're ready for her to be married and away from here, she's such a trouble."

"A trouble?" Joliffe asked.

"You know. Quarrels with her mother. Fights with her brother. Demands too much from the servants." Finished with the hosen, Rose took Piers' shirt from the basket. "All the usual things from a girl who's almost done with being only a daughter but isn't yet a wife. That being caught betwixt and between, it wears on a person."

Joliffe gave a quick look from her to Ellis and back again, wondering if they saw themselves mirrored in what she had just said, caught as they were between Rose's vanished husband and their own desire for each other. But Rose was simply shaking out Piers' shirt and Ellis was pushing more sticks into the fire, and Joliffe said, to lead the talk onward, "She's maybe still mourning her other betrothed."

"Now that's odd," Rose said. Odd enough that she paused, still holding Piers' shirt. "From what the women were saying, she took her first betrothed's death . . . What was his name?"

"John Harcourt," Joliffe supplied.

"Well, she took his death hard, it seems. Wept and did all the expected moaning and so on, and I gather she's been in this ill-humour ever since, despite she's sweet enough to this Amyas and willing to this marriage, too."

"Likely, she just wants to be married," Ba.s.set said.

"Still, given she's had so little time to be over her last betrothed," Rose said, "they're fortunate she's so willing to this Amyas."

"Out of sight, out of mind," Ellis said. "And a man can't be more out of sight than in his grave."

"Ellis," Rose said quellingly.

Followed by Gil, Piers ambled over, rolling the script-scroll closed as they came, asking, "Is it time to eat yet?"

"It is," said Ba.s.set. "Which means time for you and Gil to go to the kitchen to fetch it."

"Wash your hands and faces first," Rose said, nodding at the kettle.

They did, Piers' necessary grumbling increasing when Ellis held him by the collar long enough to wash the often-missed back of his ears. Then he and Gil went, and it was time to begin readying for tonight's playing. Together, Ellis and Joliffe lifted out of the cart the hamper that held their older, more worn properties, used for such knock-about playing as The Fox and the Grapes, when the battered propertiesa"bent sword, tattered garments, straggling wigsa"added to the laughter.

While Ellis fetched from the cart the box of masks used in some of their plays, Joliffe asked Rose, "So, in your laundry talk, was there aught said about Lady Benedicta?"

"Just that things are never good between her and her daughter and are worse of late."

"Nothing else?"

"You saw her this afternoon," Ba.s.set said. "What did you think of her?"

Joliffe considered before he answered. What did he think of her? Finding himself uncertain, he answered slowly, "She wasn't happy with her daughter, that's sure. Nor was Mariena happy with her, come to that and just as Rose said. But she was likewise angry at Will . . ."

"For what?" Rose asked.

"For falling? For spoiling the hawking? For making more work for everybody?" Joliffe ventured, findinga"now that he thought about ita"that he really did not know. "Or maybe . . ." He paused, considering a new thought before going on, slowly, "I'm not certain but what she's always angry, one way or another."

"At Will?" Rose persisted.

"At everybody, for all I know," Joliffe said with a shrug. "Why not?" Even a lost love of long ago could shadow a life, he supposed. If the love had been strong enough. And then to lose that love and afterwards bear children to an unloved husband and lose most of those children at their birthsa"for a woman who would not accept it, that could all be enough to break her or else to harden her into unceasing anger at her life and everyone in it. But he kept those thoughts to himself and only said, "She dealt fairly enough with me, though, so I'll not complain against her."

Piers and Gil came back with supper. They all ate, then Ba.s.set, Ellis, Joliffe, and Piers made ready to go, Ba.s.set, moving better than he had been this morning, putting on his sober best robea""The one I'll wear when I'm summoned to dine with the king"a"that would mark him as the story-teller, not part of the story, while Ellis and Joliffe dressed more boldly in their parti-colored hosen and short doublets and Piers put on the blue tabard Gil had used the other day.

"He's grown again," Rose said in despair, pulling at its hem. "Look. And his tunic is nothing to hope for, either."

"Never mind," her father said cheerfully. "Next market town we come to, we'll buy cloth for another tunic. Ribbons for Tisbe and a tunic for Piers."

"Or the other way around," said Joliffe.

Everyone ignored him.

Gil was coming with them but would only watch from the screens pa.s.sage. Rose was staying at the shed, to keep the fire going and turn the laundry so it would dry the sooner. As he and Ellis picked up the hamper to carry between them, the mask-box a-top it, Joliffe said jestingly to her, "You shall sit in quiet and peace, contemplating the joy of doing nothing."

"I shall contemplate," Rose said back at him, "the joy of having no men around."

They were somewhat early to the hall. They were to perform at supper's end, but the meal was not yet over and they waited in the screens pa.s.sage, Piers sitting on the hamper, the rest of them standing. Ba.s.set was telling Gil in a low voice what he should be learning by watching them tonight; Joliffe and Ellis were leaning against the wall, arms crossed, able to hear the cluttered sounds of tableware and talk in the hall while the servants waiting on the tables tonight gathered in the pa.s.sage, waiting to clear. Sia wasn't among them, but Avice was and she sidled close to Ellis and cast her eyes up at him, her hips making a small, suggestive sway his way. Ellis looked instantly willing to answer her suggestion with one of his own, but before he could, Joliffe said cheerfully, "Avice. We met at the well this morning, remember?"

She gave him a quick look that entirely dismissed him, but Ellis, reminded he was only prey to her, lost interest. Joliffe pretended to be interested elsewhere while she tried to get it back until she had to go with the rest of the servants into the hall.

"If you're done playing coy with the servants," Ba.s.set said, "shall we ready to play in earnest?"

Pretending that wasn't a jibe, Ellis poked Piers to get him off the hamper. The noise from the great hall changed to the clatter of tableware being cleared, then servants bearing filled trays and used serving dishes came out, headed back to the kitchen, while several others went in with tall pitchers of wine or ale to refill goblets and cups. With the sudden sharpening of heed to the moment at hand that almost always came in the moments before a performance, Joliffe reached for the hamper at the same moment Ellis did, picking it up between them again as Ba.s.set took up the mask-box and Master Henney asked if they were ready. At Ba.s.set's a.s.surance that they were, the man went into the hall and declared them.

As he finished, Piers leaped from the shadows of the screens pa.s.sage into the bright hall, posed for an instanta"both to be seen and to be sure the way was cleara"then spun around and backflipped his way down the hall between the tables to just short of the hearth, where he stood up, arms out, to be acclaimed. But Joliffe and Ellis were directly behind him, running with the hamper between them, giving him a bare instant of glory before he pitched forward as if flattened by the hamper and afterwards scrambled to his feet and scurried after Joliffe and Ellis now setting the hamper down in front of the high table. Amid laughter, they all bowed to Sir Edmund and the others there, Will among them, looking well-scrubbed, then to the tables along the sides of the hall. By then, Ba.s.set, proceeding with more dignity, had joined them. After setting the mask-box on the hamper again and making his own bows, he declared in a full voice rolling with dignity, "Tonight for your pleasure, we purpose to perform The Fox and the Grapes, my fellows to enact it while I tell the tale."

With that, Ellis threw open the box of masks and he and Joliffe both made play of grabbing among the masks as if in quarrel over who had which one, until Ellis "won," seizing up the pointed-nosed mask of a fox. Piers instantly grabbed the mask-box and set it aside, leaving Joliffe, feigning sullen disgust, to throw open the hamper and make show of rummaging through it until finally he held up a picture of grapes painted on a thin board and proceeded to pretend he was a grapevine with an outward ill-grace that kept the already-started laughter going.

The Fox and the Grapes in itself was hardly a long enough fable to entertain a household for an evening, but with Ba.s.set's telling, it turned to include a Knight, a Giant, and a Damsel in Distress, keeping Ellis and Joliffe in lively change, first from Fox and Gravevine to Knight and Giant, sorting with frantic haste through the hamper for sword and helmet and Giant's club and to find an ugly mask in the mask-box to turn Joliffe into the Giant. Given that he was somewhat less tall than Ellis, he made an unlikely Giant, which added to the sport. Then when the Damsel was required, he dragged a gown and wig out of the hamper but was left standing helplessly still wearing the Giant's mask, the Damsel's gown and a bedraggled yellow wig in one hand and the Giant's club in the other, until in apparent desperation, he dropped gown, wig, and club, grabbed Piersa"who had spent the while flirting at the ladies along the tables with all the charm his ten years and golden curls gave him but "happened" to be in reach at the necessary momenta"swung him onto the top of the closed hamper, plopped the Giant's mask over his head, and thrust the club into his hand, making him into the Giant and leaving Joliffe free to pull on the gown, drape the wig randomly over his head, and become the Damsel.

All the while of that Ba.s.set went on with the story, steady-paced and solemn, as if unaware of the chaos around him. The Knight became a Hermit with whom the Damsel took sanctuary, the Giant came in search of her, the Knight appeared to fight the Giant and rescued her, and finally, with Piers sprawled in pretended death across the top of the hamper and the Damsel safe in the Knight's arms, Ba.s.set said, "So the Fox, who had watched all this from the vineyard . . ." setting off a seemingly desperate scramble by Ellis and Joliffe to rid themselves of their Knightly and Damsel gear, find the discarded Fox mask and painted grapes, and return to their first roles as Ba.s.set finished, ". . . at last took heart from the Knight's bravery and leaped higher than ever before, to seize the bunch of grapes"a"Ellis s.n.a.t.c.hed the pictured grapes from Joliffe before Joliffe could even lift it upa""and lived happily forever more." Pause. "Until the Knight, on quest again . . ."

Ellis started to grab for the helmet but Joliffe grabbed for Ba.s.set instead, silencing him with a hold on his head and hand over his mouth. Ba.s.set, taking in the glares at him from Joliffe, Ellis, and Piers, gave a nod. Joliffe released him and he announced loudly, "The End."

They all took swift bows to satisfying clapping and laughter. Ellis and Joliffe did not wait for it to stop but threw their properties back into the hamper while Piers had the masks back into their box, the three of them then running with their gear from the hall, leaving Ba.s.set to make dignified departure behind them.

Outside, as they crossed the yard's darkness by the light of a lantern one of the servants had had waiting for them, Ba.s.set said, "That was well done. Gil, what did you learn from what you saw?"

Listening to Gil and Ba.s.set trade answers and questions the rest of the way back to the cartshed, Joliffe was the more sure the boy had a true instinct for their craft. There were some men whoa"no matter the time and training spent on thema"never seemed to grasp there was more to playing than the pleasure of showing off themselves. Others could be taught, if only eventually, otherwise; and then there were some like Gil, who seemed to understand in their bones the need to take on the seeming of whom they were playing, rather than turning every person they played into himself. Gil still needed to build the necessary skills of voice and body, but he increasingly looked to be worth the training.

The cart-yard and -shed were deep in shadow save for the low red glow of their own fire to welcome them back. Rose had their beds laid out and ready and welcomed them back with a hug for Piers and questions how the playing had gone. While Ba.s.set told her, Joliffe and Ellis set the hamper near the cart, to be put away tomorrow, and Piers put the mask-box a-top it. Asking her father how he felt, Rose started to ready Piers for bed, stripping his player's garb from him. The rest of them were likewise undressing, stripping to undergarments to go to bed, except for Joliffe who, after seeing his garb safely folded and laid on the hamper, pulled on his own hosen and doublet. Ellis at least knew why but none of the others asked him what he was doing. Only when he picked up the still-lighted lantern and started out of the shed did Ellis ask mockingly, "Where are you away to?"

Mockingly back at him, Joliffe said, "Just a walk."

Ellis snorted and Piers laughed. Rose shushed them both, but Ba.s.set called cheerily, "Walk carefully!"

Joliffe waved one hand over his shoulder without looking back and kept going. The rain had softly started up again, but under the eave of the narrow way behind the stable he was dry enough and crossing the dung-yard hardly dampened him. The cow-shed was lined with cows now, their munching of hay and cud-chewing loud in the night-stillness. The lantern-light disturbed them. Hind-quarters shifted and heads lifted, throwing shadows far more giant than anything the players had managed in the hall. Joliffe made soft, cow-hushing noises at them, rea.s.suring them he wasn't come to attack them, and then climbed the ladder awkwardly one-handed with the lantern. Not that a lighted lantern was the best of things to have in a hayloft full of dry hay buta"as he had rather expecteda"that problem was forethought: the hay was cleared away from the ladder's end of the loft and there was a peg in one of the beams to hang the lantern.

No one was there. Joliffe hung the lantern, checked its candle, judged it would last to see him back to the cartshed, and took a long look around. Not that too long a look was needed. It was a hayloft, with bare roof-beams and bare wooden floorboards, where they weren't covered by the piled hay, and that was all. What surprised him was that there was nothing else.

"The way Sia and Avice are said to go on, you'd think they'd have themselves a bed here," Joliffe told the shadows. Besides that, he had always found hay made for p.r.i.c.kly lying. But he'd also found that if the p.r.i.c.k of the body's desire was strong enough, the hay's p.r.i.c.k hardly mattered, and hay was better for lying on than bare boards or ground, that was certain. The hay was new enough, too, that it still smelled sweetly of summer and sun. There were worse places for l.u.s.ting, and Joliffe sat himself down on the floor, his back against the wall, content to wait.

Unfortunately, his mind was not content. For preference, he would have kept himself happily occupied with thoughts of pleasures to come, but what came instead was thought of why he was here at Deneby at all. Sorting through what he had found out so far, there seemed little to go with Lord Lovell's vague doubts and worry. John Harcourt had fallen ill and then been dead. That was common enough, with little to be made of it. It didn't mean the same couldn't happen to Amyas, but neither did it mean that it would. But what of Will? He'd had a fall on stairs lately, a thing that could happen to anyone, but today's fall would have been far worse than it had been if it had come a few yards sooner. And lately he'd twice been ill. That was much misfortune for one boy in a short time.

Still, such things happened, just like John Harcourt's sudden death.

But if they weren't happenstance, who might have reason to want Will dead?

Amyas Breche for one. With Will dead, Mariena would be her father's sole heir.

Or Amyas' uncle could want it on his nephew's behalf. A wealthy, landed nephew could be of use to a merchant.

But could either of them have had anything to do with John Harcourt's death? From what he'd heard, Joliffe didn't think they'd even known of Mariena then. They might have, though, by way of Harry Wyot, and found some way to bribe someone here to poison Harcourt . . . The likelihood of that seemed thin. They couldn't have been certain Sir Edmund would turn to Amyas for Mariena's next betrothed, and there were surely other valuable marriages to be had for far less trouble. Nor did Amyas seem so besotted with Mariena that he'd kill for the chance to have her. And while it would be to Amyas' profit to have Will dead and Mariena sole heir of Deneby, why start trying to have him dead before being certain of Mariena?

There was still Harry Wyot to consider. He'd gain nothing by Will's death, any more than he was going to gain by Mariena's marriage, and Joliffe couldn't make it likely that he'd do it for Amyas' gain, however good friends they were. Revenge against Sir Edmund was possible, of course. There must have been quarrel between them when Harry Wyot refused Mariena. Had it been bad enougha"or was his present marriage bad enougha"that he wanted revenge on Sir Edmund, even if it meant bettering Mariena, whom he must not like or he would have married her?

But Will's fall today had been by way of a loosened girth. If it wasn't the stableman's fault, then someone had pulled the buckle loose while riding and hoped for Will's fall on the rocks. But today Harry Wyot and his wife had been riding together. If he had loosened that girth, she had to know of it and their marriage would have to be a sound one if he trusted her with a secret about him like that, and that took away revenge for a bad marriage as reason to harm Will. d.a.m.n.

Who else was there to consider? Mariena for one, Joliffe supposed. Head tilted back against the post, he frowned up at the underside of the thatch-covered roof. She would gain by her brother's death, most a.s.suredly, and have better chances at hurting him than Amyas or Harry Wyot did. But murder? l.u.s.t was one thing, murder was another. He might as well consider Lady Benedicta while he was at it. And why not? Her affection for Will seemed thin. Even though she was presently out of humour with her daughter, she might prefer Mariena's betterment to that of a son favored by a husband for whom she didn't care, if the servant-talk was righta"and servant-talk was usually right about things like that. Forced into one childing after another by a husband wanting more sons, she might be seeking now to hurt that husband in one of the few ways left to hera"by taking his one son away from him.

But surely she could find better ways than falls on stairs and loosened saddle-girths, and other times than now, with so many people around. Mariena would benefit whenever Will died. Later would do as well as now.

It was Harry Wyot who couldn't count on having other chances at the boy.

Except Joliffe didn't see that he had a reason to want Will dead.

Come to that, Joliffe couldn't see any sufficient reason for anyone to take the risk to have Will dead. Being caught at murder and risking danger of d.a.m.ning one's soul to h.e.l.l were large chances to take for any reason, whether for revenge or gain, and he couldn't see there was that much to gain here. Not set against the risk involved.

So there was no reason anyone would want John Harcourt dead and no one was trying to kill Will and he was wasting his time trying to find answers to pointless questions, he thought disgustedly. If he was going to go making twists and turns, why not take up the possibility that a whole array of people, unbeknownst to each other, wanted Will dead for a whole array of different reasons, and one after another were trying for him. That worked as well as anything else he had come up with. No. The simplest way to see things was that John Harcourt had died of a sickness and that Will was having a run of bad fortune. There. No more problems. Everything settled and taken care of. No more need to think about the matter anymore at all. Or of anything else except of Sia now softly calling up the ladder, asking if he were there. About her, he was very ready and more than willing to think.

Chapter 10.

Knowing what was expected of him as well as what he expected, Joliffe stood up and went to meet her as she came up the ladder. With her skirts to hold, the climbing was not easy, and he took her arm to help her the last way, steadying her as she stepped from the ladder. Her smile rewarded him for that as she slid a folded blanket off her shoulder, where she had been carrying it, saying as she handed it to him, "I brought this to make us the more comfortable."

"Wise as well as lovely," Joliffe said, bending to take a quick kiss from her ready lips. She stretched toward him, plainly willing for others, but those would come. He was never in favor of hurrying these things if it could be helped, and he turned his back on her, leaving her wanting more as much as he did while he made show of shaking out the blanket and throwing it across the low-mounded hay nearest to them. As he bent to pull it more even, Sia came close behind him, stroked her hands down his sides to his hips, and then pulled him against her. As he straightened up, she pushed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against his back and slid her hands around him and upward, under his doublet's lower edge.

Her boldness was enough to raise any man's . . . l.u.s.t, and Joliffe's very certainly rose. He turned, took her in his arms, and gave the long kiss they both wanted. When they had to pause for breath, Sia began to unfasten his doublet. While she did, he explored her body with his hands, until she had finished and he drew back a little from her, gazing into her flushed face, ready for her lips again but holding back while he shrugged out of his doublet. Then, with it off and tossed aside, he took his turn, beginning to unlace the long opening down the front of her gown to come at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Sia's hands in return slid under his shirt and up, warm over his bare flesh.

With her gown undone enough for him to come at the drawstring of her undergown, he loosened that and pulled her gown open and her undergown down, baring one of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Cupping it with his hand, he bent to kiss it. Sia moaned with pleasure, her head bending back, opening her throat to more kisses. Her legs giving way, she began to sink down. He caught her and lowered her onto the blanket and himself on top of her. But one part of his mind was still detached from what they were doing and he slid aside, onto his side beside her. She made a wordless sound of protest and rolled onto her side, too, holding on to him. He did not resist. His own hands were too busy pulling up her skirts. But he asked, forcing the question past his l.u.s.t, hard though the words came, "Have you done aught against childing?" Because whatever his other desires, he had no desire to leave b.a.s.t.a.r.d children behind him.

Sia gasped, somewhere between her pa.s.sion and unexpected laughter, and pulled back from him, not away but only enough to look into his face. "There's none ever asked me that before."

"And doesn't the unexpected add to pleasure," Joliffe said. He had no fear of losing what they were doing, enjoyed prolonging their sport. Finding her bare thigh under her skirts, he stroked his hand along it. Sia sighed, her eyes closing, her hips moving with the pleasure of his touch. "You haven't answered," he whispered.

She whispered back, "There's no fear. We all know what to do. Ummm. That's good. Don't stop."

He stopped. "You do what?"

Sia twisted in protest and opened her eyes. "What?"

"What do you do?"