And in the meanwhile there was the matter of the man she had seen beside the well.
When she came out into the yard, the men who had been gathered around him were drifting off toward the guest halls but he was still seated on the top step of the well curb, head bent over the lute he held as he made some adjustment to its strings. Frevisse stopped a ways away from him and asked, “Joliffe?”
He looked up. Merriment and recognition danced into his eyes, and snatching off his cap, he stood up to sweep her an excessively deep bow. “Dame Frevisse!”
He had been part of a company of players the only time they had ever met-five years ago? six?-so slender and fair-faced then that he had played the woman in whatever plays they did, though there had been nothing womanly about him when he dropped the roles and was himself. Or as much of himself as he had ever shown to her. He could slip from one seeming to another more easily than most folk changed clothing, with the only constant thing about him the easy air of mockery behind almost everything he said and did.
“The others. Where are they?” Frevisse asked as he straightened from his bow. “Are they here?”
They had been a small band of players, come on hard times but closely bound to each other, so that in all the years since they had been so briefly at St. Frideswide’s, sheltering through a bitter Christmastide, she had never thought of Joliffe as anywhere but with them.
Joliffe struck a momentary pose of heart-stricken grief. “No, alas. Never no more.”
Hearing the familiar warm edge of Joliffe’s mockery there, Frevisse did rise to alarm, only asked shortly, “Then where?”
Joliffe raised his head and said simply, all flourish gone, “Rose decided a few years past that Piers should have something more than what a player’s life would give him, so she and Evan have settled down to run an inn in Oxford for a man they know while Piers is supposed to be learning to be a pewterer.”
Remembering the little rogue of a boy who had fretted at being kept to one place for too many days together, Frevisse said, “He must hate that.”
“With a passion, but he comforts himself with the hope that he can turn the skill to forgery someday.”
So Piers was still himself. “And Thomas?” He had been the oldest of them and their leader. How had he taken Rose’s decision to quit and take Ellis and Piers with her, effectively finishing what little there had been of their band?
But Joliffe said cheerfully enough, “I think he was relieved to have the choice of going on or quitting taken away from him. He’s set up as a grammar teacher in some grocer’s charity day school for poor boys, and as he says, he now has an audience who can’t escape him.”
“And no matter what they think of the performance, he’s paid anyway,” Frevisse said.
Joliffe laughed. “You have it to the core. Besides the fact he has the added pleasure of being free to grumble to his heart’s content that he was torn from the life he was meant to live by a mean-spirited woman’s weakness.”
“And when he does, Rose tells me what she thinks of that.”
“In clear and unmistakable terms.”
“And you?”
Joliffe stepped back and spread his arms as if to invite applause. “As you see.”
He was dressed in doublet and hosen that must have been gaudy once but were muted now by weather and much wear. His high leather boots were rubbed and darkened with long use; he was slightly in need of a shave. The years had edged in on him; he would not pass in a play as a fair-faced maiden anymore, and though he was as slender as he had been, it was with a man’s lean strength now instead of a boy’s.
Frevisse eyed him, decided he still showed no more than what he wanted to be seen, and said, “It doesn’t tell me much except that whatever you’re doing, it keeps you clothed and fed.”
“Clothed and fed and sometimes with a penny in my purse. What more can a wandering minstrel ask?”
“I shouldn’t care to guess or even ask.” She matched his mockery and laughter with her own. “But for the sake of knowing something of the guests within our walls, I have to ask what it is that brings you here. Besides your feet.”
Joliffe, his mouth already opening to reply, stopped, then protested, “I wasn’t going to say that.”
“Then you were going to say it was for the pleasure of seeing me again.”
“What better reason could I give than that?”
“The true one.”
“What if I say I’ve taken to minstrelsy and my wanderings have happened to bring me this way?”
“That is a thing I’m willing to believe.”
He swept her another bow. “Your ladyship is most gracious.”
“My ladyship is also bound to find how it is with others of our guests. If you’ll pardon me?”
“Of everything and anything, my lady,” he declared, hand over his heart. “And hope you’ll do as much for me should chance arise.”
“That,” she said dryly, “is probably another matter,” and went on her way.
Chapter 8
There was an unexpected quiet to the rest of the morning and the early afternoon. Domina Alys, come back from quarreling with Master Porter, went to her chamber, gave order for the steward’s accounts to be brought to her and, when they had, closed herself in with them, sending word by Katerin that Dame Perpetua should see to the offices when they came. She did not come down to dinner either but had Katerin fetch it to her, and Katerin afterward would answer no questions of how she was except with a shake of the head that told no one anything.
The day had moved into the drowsy warmth of afternoon when Frevisse went out to the guest halls again, to see how things went and if all was well in hand for supper. As she crossed the yard she had the regretful thought that it was a pity these bright, dry days had waited for October instead of blessing them at harvest. They would have made no difference then. Now they were hardly better than illusion, their brief warmth gone as soon as the day began to fade, the cold returning with the sunset shadows that in these shortening days came ever earlier.
In the guest halls there was nothing beyond the expected.
In answer to Frevisse’s asking, Ela answered, “It’s as well as may be. Bad when they’re here, good when they go, worse when they come back.” With small hope, she asked in her turn, “Be there any sign of it ending?”
Frevisse gave no false comfort. “For all that’s been said about their leaving, they could be here for the winter.”
“Then they’ll be starving with the rest of us by Martinmas.”
It was too slight an exaggeration for Frevisse to contradict.
She was taking her discouragement back across the yard and the lengthening shadows when she was loudly hailed, “Hai! Nun!” and she jerked around, offended, to see Joliffe coming toward her from the gateway to the outer yard. She had wondered where he was when she had not seen him in the guest halls or yard. Now she wondered how angry he meant to make her, hailing her thus; but even as she wondered it she knew that whatever else Joliffe was, he was never casually ill-mannered. If he was rude, there was a purpose to it, so she kept her immediate frown but not her anger at him as she answered with rudeness equal his own, “What is it?”
Fists on his hips, irritation in his voice pitched to carry well beyond her to the hand count of men and servants scattered around the yard, he stopped in front of her and said, “The way you keep your guests here. Where am I supposed to sleep and is supper going to be as scant as dinner was?”