A Play of Piety (26 page)

But Rose was already saying, “It was because Piers was so sick in the night, just like Mistress Thorncoffyn was. That gave Sister Letice the thought.”

“Piers was sick?” Joliffe echoed, alarmed. That, then, would be why Rose had been late coming to the hospital this morning and had looked—still looked—so drawn with tiredness. “How sick? How is he now?”

“Terribly sick. He was better enough by dawn that I could leave him to Ellis for the day, but for a time in the middle of the night he was very sick. Sister Letice remembered the piece of ginger Mistress Thorncoffyn gave him. It was the only thing alike between them.”

“Why try it herself if she thought it was poisoned?” Joliffe demanded as they came to the kitchen door.

“She didn’t know how else to find out for certain otherwise!”

He followed Rose into the kitchen. Sister Letice was on one of the benches, resting forward on the table on her crossed arms. Her headkerchief was gone. From the edges of her close-fitted coif at the nape of her neck and on her cheeks, black tendrils of her hair were curling free, all the darker against her unhealthy, sweating pallor. Master Osburne was leaning close over her, and she had raised her head to him. Both his clerk and Sister Ursula were standing discreet distances aside, but Sister Margaret was on the bench beside her, gaze watchful on her, one hand resting near a wide basin on the table as if she expected it would be needed soon.

“Yes,” Sister Letice was saying, faint-voiced. “The signs are all the same. It has to be the candied ginger. There’s nothing else we’ve had to eat in common.”

“You’re certain it’s poison then?” Master Osburne asked.

“As certain as can be.”

“Couldn’t you have found another way to prove it?”

She gasped, “No,” and wrenched around, away from him and toward Sister Margaret who was already snatching the basin toward her. Sister Ursula came, too, to brace her with a hand on her forehead and a hand on her back as an almost-dry vomiting took her. Master Osburne stepped well out of the women’s way, probably knowing himself as helpless with this as Joliffe was, but Rose went quickly aside and was back and ready with a cup of the hospital’s thin ale when Sister Letice finished with a weary gasp and sagged backward against Sister Ursula. Putting the basin aside, Sister Margaret took up a damp cloth and began to wipe her face.

Joliffe, at last seeing something he could do, went for the basin and was carrying it away to the scullery as Master Osburne asked, very gently, “Sister, do you know what manner of poison it is?”

A little trembling with weariness, Sister Letice answered, “No.”

Firmly, Sister Ursula said, “That has to be all for now. She’s told what she can.” And to Sister Letice, “You’ve done what you needed to do. Now you will lie down and rest. If there’s more you have to say, it will have to be for later.”

Master Osburne must have accepted that. Joliffe returned from the scullery to find he was gone aside to say something to his clerk, while Sister Ursula and Sister Margaret were helping Sister Letice from the kitchen, toward the pantry where she would be able to lie down. Sister Margaret held out her hand for the basin. Joliffe gave it.

At the last moment before they were gone, Master Osburne said after them, “Do any of you know how Mistress Thorncoffyn came by the ginger?”

Without looking around, Sister Ursula answered, “It was a gift from Master Thorncoffyn. The carrier from St. Neots brought it, yesterday, I think. She said something about it last night, that it was good he’d thought of it; it would help her stomach. But Master Hewstere said no and took it from her.”

Master Osburne said thanks after her, but the three women were gone and he returned to saying something to his clerk as they both went out to ask more questions of Geoffrey, Joliffe guessed, as well as tell Mistress Thorncoffyn she had been poisoned. Joliffe was glad not to be there for that and that none of the sisters would have to do it.

Left alone in the kitchen, Rose and Joliffe looked at one another for a silent moment before she said, “The ginger would be a good choice for poisoning, I suppose. The sharpness of the ginger would serve to conceal any taste the poison had.”

“Even supposing Mistress Thorncoffyn didn’t gobble every piece down too fast to note any off taste,” Joliffe said. “Then, when the poison made her gut ache, she would eat more of the ginger to settle it.”

“Ginger being good to settle the stomach,” Rose agreed. “Although an honest infusion of ginger in boiling water and drunk straight down would surely settle it better.”

“Something Mistress Thorncoffyn should have considered, given how much stomach she has to be unsettled,” said Joliffe. “Come and sit. You look done to the bone with weariness.”

To show her how, he sat on the bench beside the table and patted it encouragingly.

“I should do something toward the men’s suppers,” she said, but came and sat anyway, leaned a companionable shoulder against his before she said, “Piers didn’t gobble his piece. He savored every sharp and sugary bit of it and must have noted nothing.”

“That would be Piers, and fortunately he had only the one piece. It was enough to make him sick, being boy-sized, while one like piece was enough to kill the dog, it being so much smaller.”

“The dog? One of Mistress Thorncoffyn’s dogs? Oh, the one that was sick. I’d forgotten that among all the rest. He died?”

“Not of the poison, but that’s what he was sick with and would have died, Master Hewstere said. The little beast was in pain enough that Master Hewstere broke its neck.”

Rose flinched.

“Not so she saw him do it,” Joliffe added. “Not so she knew he’d done it. Likely
he’d
not have survived that if she’d known.”

That won a small sound that might have been a corner of a laugh from Rose, but Joliffe’s thoughts were going forward—or circling back—and he said, “If the candied ginger was a gift from Geoffrey and it only came yesterday by the carrier, how did it get poisoned?”

Rose sighed, knowing the question was to himself, not her.

“Who could come to it to poison it?” he persisted. “Geoffrey in the while after he had it from the carrier. Aylton in that same while, I suppose. Idany after it was here . . .”

“
Idany
?”

“Why not? Who suffers more from the Thorncoffyn tyranny than she does?” He warmed to the thought. “She could poison Mistress Thorncoffyn’s food and drink more easily than anyone else. Could have got the ginger and poison and done it all with no one’s help. Safer that way. But I could see her and Geoffrey in it together.”

Rose sat up, away from him. “Joliffe, little though I like either one of them, I do
not
think either is murderous.”

Joliffe agreed with a regretful nod. “Somehow I don’t either.” Something about Geoffrey’s and Idany’s devotion to Mistress Thorncoffyn was as addled as the woman herself. The unwholesome twining together of pride, greed, gluttony, and ire among the three of them was like twisting vines dependant on each other for support even while they strangled one another. Whatever it was among them, it might well go too corruptedly deep for one of them to murder another.

“What I can’t see,” he said, “is why Mistress Thorncoffyn keeps coming here where she has to know at least three people have deep reasons to hate her.”

“Three people?” Rose echoed with surprise. “Who?”

“Sister Letice and Father Richard, from what you’ve told me, and Sister Margaret, surely.”

Rose actually laughed. “Oh, Sister Margaret can’t be troubled to hate either Mistress Thorncoffyn or Geoffrey.”

“You told me they cheated her out of everything that should have been hers. How can she not at least deeply loathe the both of them?”

Rose was smiling with open delight. “That’s where the jest lies! Without either her son or Mistress Thorncoffyn knowing it. She hated being married to John Thorncoffyn. He was as much his mother’s creature as Geoffrey is. Instead of setting up his own household after he married, he stayed in his mother’s, and Mistress Thorncoffyn expected her daughter-in-law to be the same as he was. But Sister Margaret—Mistress Thorncoffyn herself, as she was then; just think of it—refused to be—to be—” Rose paused, searching for what she wanted to say.

“Refused to be devoured?” Joliffe offered.

“Devoured,” Rose agreed. “When she was widowed, she hoped she might escape, could go to live on her dower land and be free. But Mistress Thorncoffyn would have none of that, and Geoffrey took his grandmother’s side. What neither of them knew was that Sister Margaret—only she wasn’t then, of course—saw from the very start how they meant to cheat her
and she let them
. It was her escape, you see. You’ve seen how skilled a
medica
she is. If she wasn’t here, all that skill would be wasted. So she let herself be robbed of everything they supposed she wanted and came away to here.”

“Where she’s glad to be,” said Joliffe, “while her son and erstwhile mother-in-law enjoy the thought that she’s humiliated and miserable. Because they do think that, don’t they? And enjoy it.”

“Yes.”

“And yet Mistress Thorncoffyn is mad enough to put herself in Sister Margaret’s reach at the same time that Sister Letice and Father Richard have to endure serving her, too, despite what she did to their lives. I can see why Idany is wary over who sees to Mistress Thorncoffyn’s medicine, but given the misery Mistress Thorncoffyn spreads around here, I have to wonder why Idany thinks
anyone
here is safe to make food, drink,
or
medicine for her.”

Rose laughed. “I suppose because neither of them truly believes anyone would dare do anything against her.” She sobered. “Or didn’t believe it until now, when they’ll have to. Sister Ursula says the problem is that Mistress Thorncoffyn always knows that everything she does or wants is right and sees anyone who doesn’t agree with her as a fool.”

To be that sure that one is forever right and righteous, and that everyone else is wrong, must be a constant comfort, Joliffe thought acidly.

“Oh, merciful Saint Anne,” Rose said.

Joliffe, likewise hearing Idany’s determined tread along the passageway, stood up as hurriedly as Rose did. While she moved toward the hearth as toward a task there, he tried to look, for his part, as if he were just turning from some task to another at the table. Idany, coming in, maybe noted their effort, maybe did not, giving no heed at all to Rose and saying at Joliffe as if he had been hiding from her, “There you are. You’re needed to help Mistress Thorncoffyn to Kydd’s burial. It’s to be in the orchard. Now.”

Not troubling for his reply, she turned sharply around and left. Joliffe looked to Rose, who shrugged and shook her head to show she would not tell him what to do. He shrugged back and went. It would probably make less trouble for everyone all around if he did. Besides, he was curious. Had Master Soule given way about the prayers?

It seemed he had not; it was Father Richard at the outer door of the foreporch, with Mistress Thorncoffyn leaning on one of his arms heavily enough that he had his opposite shoulder braced against the doorframe to hold himself up against her weight. She must be too weak to depend even on her staff today, Joliffe thought, and wondered where Geoffrey was, not to be here helping his grandmother. Come to it, she looked as if she should be in her bed anyway, not bound for the orchard. Besides that she was pasty-faced, her cheeks’ and chins’ fat flesh was sagging heavily into the folds of her wimple around her face as if the inward force that had kept her round-faced and ruddy was gone out of her. Which it probably was, after her night of sickness, Joliffe thought as he went quickly to take her other arm and some of her weight off the priest.

Father Richard thanked him with deep relief. Mistress Thorncoffyn, her breath wheezing in and out as if driven by a leaky bellows as her lungs labored under the mass of her bosom to draw in sufficient air, wasted none of her strength on thanks, just heaved forward into a determined trudge across the yard, depending on the two men to keep her upright. Behind them, Idany skittered from side to side, wringing her hands and making small, worried sounds. At the yard’s end, they levered and steadied Mistress Thorncoffyn through the doorway there and then across the narrow plank bridging the stream there, into the orchard where, thankfully, Geoffrey stood not far away, beside a freshly dug hole and small mound of earth in which a shovel straightly stood. He neither looked pleased nor came to help with his grandmother as Joliffe and Father Richard lurched with her over the uneven ground.

Only after they had shuffled her to a stop beside the hole did Joliffe see the small bundle that must be Kydd lying on the grass nearby in the shadow of one of the trees, wrapped around with a length of white linen that was likely one of Mistress Thorncoffyn’s fine linen towels that Emme was expected to wash but never trusted to iron.

Standing spread-legged to keep herself up, Mistress Thorncoffyn shook Joliffe off her one arm and beckoned sharply at Geoffrey to come to her. Joliffe willingly drew back the three long steps to the rear a servant should be and took up a waiting stance, supposing he would be needed when time came to return to the hospital. Idany hovered nearer to her lady, ready to be what aid she could, while Geoffrey took Joliffe’s place at his grandmother’s side, and she withdrew her arm from Father Richard, saying, “There, Father. Put him in his grave and begin.”

Father Richard, rather than obeying, said, “That is not my place.”

Mistress Thorncoffyn jerked her head around to glare at him, but before she could do more, Idany said, “I’ll do it, my lady,” and went quickly forward, took up the bundle from the grass, and kneeled to set it gently in the bottom of the grave. As she stood up and stepped back, Mistress Thorncoffyn swayed, dragging Geoffrey nearly off balance, and said on a heaving sob, “My poor, brave Kydd!”

Geoffrey, bracing his feet more widely apart, pleaded, “Grandmother, worse grieving will only make you more ill.”