A Play of Piety by Margaret Frazer Read Free Book Online

who had come. Her eyes were deeply dark in a smooth face that was round rather than long and momentarily austere and without welcome as she stared at them. Then, as if her thoughts had been so far away that it took that long moment to come back from wherever they had been, Joliffe saw her know Rose, and the warmth of the smile that came changed everything about her as she said happily, “Rose. And this must be your Joliffe.”
    Joliffe bowed to her as Rose answered, “He is. Joliffe, this is Sister Letice. She oversees our cooking and is our herbalist. You’ll likely find yourself helping her here when you’re not needed elsewhere.”
    “We’re come to that time of year when more hands are welcome,” Sister Letice agreed. “Can you tell one plant from another? Do you know any herbs?”
    He pointed at the plants beside them. “Basil,” he declared confidently.
    “Marjoram,” she corrected with dry resignation. She nodded at the bundle under Rose’s arm. “You remembered the peas?”
    “Yes. Thank you.”
    Sister Letice looked sideways at the sun. “Best you be on then, if you’re to have their supper cooked for them.”
    She nodded farewell to Joliffe, friendly enough but already bending back to her herbs before he had finished his answering slight bow, a woman intent on her own business and little interested in anyone else’s, he guessed as he went on with Rose across the garden.
    Its farther side was bounded by a wide, free-flowing stream with an orchard on its other side. They crossed dry-footed by a plank whose each end rested on a single large stone, into the orchard where Rose turned to the left to follow a well-walked path between the trees heavy-hung with apples. Joliffe, ducking past one low, laden branch, said, “It looks to be a good year for fruit as well as all else.”
    “There’ll be cider-making in plenty,” Rose said. “We’re looking forward to the change from ale.”
    The “we” in that disconcerted Joliffe. The company had sometimes helped at harvests, for the extra coin the work brought in, but there had always been a strong line between “we”—the players who would move on when the time came—and the “them” who belonged to the fields and would stay. This easy “we” from Rose said something else. He might have counted it as merely a word, but he had made his daily living by words for enough years to know there was nothing “mere” about words. Whether their user thought closely about them or not, they carried a power that was sometimes the more powerful for not being forethought by whoever spoke them, and Rose had used “we” as if “we” belonged with the fields and the harvest, instead of merely pausing here.
    Was she betraying an unspoken understanding that Basset would not be sufficiently better any time soon? That the players would all be held here for weeks upon weeks more, no certain end in sight?
    Joliffe stopped his mind going that way. There was use in a wary watching forward, but too much dwelling in trouble-maybe-to-come could waste a great deal of effort better used otherwise; and to take himself elsewhere, he asked, “So. The large woman with dogs. Who is that?”
    “You weren’t sleeping then?” Rose asked.
    “Something large going past my door woke me, and then a dog looked in. Then I heard her in the kitchen, and she and the dogs came past again. Not another of the sisters, is she?”
    Rose made a sound that caught somewhere between a laugh and scorn and said with feeling, “She assuredly is not. That is Mistress Cisily Thorncoffyn. Her father founded St. Giles as a thanks-offering for having survived a sickness he had thought would kill him. He gave this manor for it and paid for changing the buildings to a hospital’s needs.”
    “Very laudable,” Joliffe said.
    “To a point. He included in his provisions for it that anyone of the family could stay in certain chambers provided for them when and as they wished, for their better health