A PLAY OF PIETY

Chapter Three

Where he would sleep proved to be a small room off the short passageway between the kitchen and the roofed walk -- and small was the only word for it, with just distance enough to fully open the door between the doorway and the narrow bed along the far wall and no space for anything else except a little wooden chest against the wall beside the bedfoot, with a wall-pole above it for hanging clothing.  Joliffe slid his bag from his shoulder yet again, this time to the wooden floor beside the little chest, and said, “I hope Ivo wasn’t a large man.”  He nodded toward the wall beyond the bed and asked, “What’s there?”

“The stairway to the storeroom that’s above here,” Rose said from outside the doorway, there being hardly space for them both at once in the room.  “Beyond the stairs is the scullery.  You’ll be seeing enough of that soon.”

“Will I?” he asked, suddenly wary.  “Washing dishes was part of this Ivo’s duties?”

“Everything was part of his duties,” Rose said with a serenity suspiciously underlain with laughter.  She looked at the bare mattress on the roped bedstead.  “I’ll bring you sheets, a blanket and pillow.”  She stepped backward from the doorway, inviting him to come out, adding, “We stripped and scrubbed the room and aired the mattress after he went.  That only leaves doing the same to you.”

“Pardon?” he said, following her back toward the kitchen.

“Cleanliness of body and soul.  Those are the lights that lead us here.”  She sounded as if she were quoting – and maybe a little mocking – someone.

“I note that cleanliness of body coming first,” Joliffe said dryly.  “I suppose because it’s easier to be sure a body is clean than a soul.”

“Only too true,” Rose agreed, crossing the kitchen toward a far doorway.  “So, as with anyone newly come here, we’ll begin with your body.”

Still following her but his voice rising more strongly, Joliffe repeated, “Pardon?”

“And hope for the best with your soul,” Rose said as she went out the door.

Joliffe followed her into a small, stone-paved yard enclosed on either side by low, long buildings and at the far side by a waist-high wall of willow-woven hurdles and a broad gateway to what looked a larger yard with varied buildings that Joliffe supposed were the place’s byre, haystore, and granary as well as a poultry yard somewhere, to guess by the many multi-colored chickens scattered and scratching about the dusty yard.

Here in the smaller yard Rose pointed at the buildings on the left and said, “The bakehouse and woodstore.”  Then to the right and, “The brewhouse and laundry.  That’s where you’re bound for.”

“The brewhouse?” Joliffe said with pretended hope.

“The laundry,” Rose said with the same ruthlessness she used toward Piers when he going to be given no choice about something.  “It’s also the bathhouse, it being the rule that no one is admitted here without they be thoroughly bathed – soaped and scrubbed from hair to toenails.  Patients and all,” she added as they reached the doorway, then saying as she went in, “Emme, I’ve someone needs a bath.”

The place had plainly been built with the thought of how it would be used.  The roof was held up on stout wooden posts, but on two sides the walls stopped a foot short of the eaves, the better to let out the smoke and some of the heat from the two fires burning in the long, low-walled hearth in the middle of the room.  Two cauldrons sat on short-legged griddles above the coals, the steam of hot water was rising from their depths, and just inside the door was a well with a long-roped bucket sitting beside it to keep those cauldrons filled.  The round, high-sided wooden tub standing in a far corner was the bath, Joliffe guessed, and the tall woman coming toward him and Rose from beyond the cauldrons had to be Emme, the laundress.  Lean as a coursing hound, she was gowned in the same gray gown and white apron as Sister Margaret and Sister Ursula, but her sleeves were pushed above her elbows, the gown was unlaced at her neck, and her hair was bound in a head-cloth wrapped to leave her neck clear, to be as cool as might be in the place’s heavy, wet heat.  She was red of face and red of arms, and Joliffe noted that those arms were as sinewed as any fieldworker’s.  But the face was friendly, her eyes merry as she looked the length of him while saying to Rose, “He looks somewhat too healthy to be one of ours.”

“He’s taking Ivo’s place for the while,” Rose said.

“Nor a moment too soon,” Emme said, then turned her head to add.  “Amice, hear that?  We’ve someone for the firewood again.”

On the farther side of one of the cauldrons a woman stood up from where she had been kneeling, probably feeding firewood into the fire there.  She was younger than Emme and not yet worn to such leanness, with a pretty plumpness to her and a curl of dark hair escaping the forehead edge of her headcloth that was wrapped, like Emme’s, to leave her neck clear.  And a very pretty neck it was, too, Joliffe thought, smiling back to the smile she was giving him before it crossed his mind that her pleasure might be not so much at him for himself as for his ability to carry firewood.

That did not change her prettiness, however.  Since they were all servants together, no bow was needed among them, and he simply nodded to her, still smiling, before Emme caught his heed back to her by saying, “Let’s have him clean, then.  Amice, start filling the tub.  You --”

She paused, waiting for his name, and he gave the one he had already given Sister Ursula.

“Joliffe, then,” she went on.  “Strip off and get into the tub.  Do you have fleas or suchlike, that we need to deal with your clothing, too?”

“No fleas or anything,” he said.

“Clean shirt and hosen and braies?”

“In my bag.  In my room.”

“I’ll fetch them,” Rose said and left him to Emme’s firm ordering, beginning with telling him in no uncertain terms, when he was rid of doublet, hosen and shirt and down to only his short braies, that he need not stop there.  “We’ve seen too many men’s bodies to take much interest in them beyond whether they’re clean or not.  Those off, too, and into the tub with you.”

Which would have been well enough, if Amice had not added, a little laughing, “Still, his is a better body than most we see.”

“It is that,” Emme had agreed, openly approving.

In his life Joliffe had not had much chance or use for shyness over nakedness, his own or other people’s, and the women’s laughter made it easy to finish stripping while Emme went on, “Most men we bathe are on their way to a sick bed, see you.  Dirt in a hurt makes the hurt harder to heal, and even if it’s not a outright hurt they have but sickness, there’s the thought there’s evil little creatures that carry sickness, too small to see, and the less of them a sick man takes to his bed with him, the better his chances of living to leave that bed.  That’s what we’re told, anyway, and whoever cast the rules for St. Giles put into them that everyone, whether they’re here to be tended or to work, has to start out clean.  So into the tub with you.”

There was nothing new to Joliffe in any of that.  He knew the scholarly thoughts on the possible existence of some sort of life so small as to be invisible and yet a cause of diseases.  Knew, too, that – scholarly thoughts or no -- any good hospital lent heavily toward cleanliness and that after his warm days on dusty roads he was more than willing to a bath now it was offered to him.  Only the suddenness of it all was disconcerting him.  Hardly an hour ago he had been trudging along a road, hot and dusty and alone.  Now he had not only found Basset and Rose but had work, a promise of meals, a room to himself, and was about to sink into pleasantly warm water and be clean.

“Besides,” Amice added, quite cheerfully as he put himself into the tub, “there’s the stink that goes with sickness.  That’s always good to wash away, too.  Not that you smell bad, just of honest sweat.”

As good humoured at it as they were, Joliffe settled himself into the bathing tub, hip-deep into warm water, his knees drawn up so he would fit, and while Amice went to scoop another bucketful from one of the cauldrons, Emme set a bowl of soap in his reach and said, “Wash everything.  Your hair, too.”

He washed.  His shirt and hosen and braies went into a pile of laundry after Emme had a look at them sufficient to be sure he had been right about no fleas or lice.  Rose came back with his clean shirt and braies, told him he would find her in the kitchen when he had done here, and went away again.  He finished his scrubbing, helped Amice tip the tub so the dirtied, soap-scummed water flowed into an open stone gutter and away under the wall, then stood in the tub while Emme and Amice poured clean, warm water from the rinse-tub over him.  Having dumped the tub again, he dressed, thanked both women, found Rose in the kitchen, and was told he should keep himself out of the way if he did not want to be put to work before his time.

“I won’t be free to take you to the others until supper is done with here,” Rose said.

“You do it alone?” Joliffe asked.

“The rest of the women will be here any moment, and unless you want to face us all at once, best you go to your room.  Lie down for a while.  You look tired.”

“But clean,” he pointed out brightly. 

But she was right about him being tired, too.  Not just the few days’ walking but the several months before them had him worn out more than he could deny to himself, and he went to his room, found Rose had made the bed with clean sheets and blanket and a pillowslip that smelled of lavender when he settled his head against it.  He sighed contentedly, folded his hands on his chest, and slept.

It was a light sleep, though.  For better air in the warm afternoon, he had left the door slightly ajar, and while he drowsed in and out of sleep, he was aware of women’s busy voices from the kitchen on the other side of the lathe-and-plaster wall at his bedfoot.  Heard, too, for a while, a man’s voice raised in probably prayer to judge by the patterning of it.  That would be someone saying Vespers in the chapel, he thought.  The full Offices of prayer and psalms would not be kept here -- this was no monastery – but some would be, and this was Vespers’ time of day.  The voice was not a strong one, but it prayed firmly and without haste, and Joliffe rolled onto his side and slid into another drowse that broke when something large went suddenly lumbering past the door, accompanied by the clack of a wooden staff hitting the stone floor and the quick pattering of very many feet that was so ill-suited to the bulk of the other that he jerked full awake, confused at what he was hearing.  He was struggling up on one elbow when the door moved, was pushed slightly more open to let in, at somewhat less than knee-height, a white, long-muzzled face, bright of eye and pricked-eared with interest at him.  For a startled moment – startled on Joliffe’s side, at least -- he and the dog stared at one another until a woman’s voice demanded, “Kydd!  Here!” and the bright-eyed little face disappeared, followed by a quick pattering away of feet, not as many feet as there had first been but, “Dogs,” Joliffe thought as he sank onto the pillow again.  It had been a pack of small dogs going past his door.  He frowned at the ceiling.  Small dogs and someone large.  Assuredly not anyone he had yet met here. 

Dull in the way that sleep in a warm afternoon was apt to make anyone, he was admitting to himself that he was not sufficiently curious to bother getting up about it when the same voice that had called to Kydd demanded from the kitchen, loud with indignation, booming through the lathes and plaster as if they were parchment, “If you know how it’s supposed to be, why wasn’t it?”

Whatever answer was made to that demand was too quiet for Joliffe to make out.  At least he supposed an answer was made, but it must have been an unsatisfactory one because the strong-voiced woman declared, “You may say so.  But I expect better.  I will have better or else Master Soule will hear of it.  Be sure of that!”

Not one of the patients, that was certain.  First, because it was a woman, and Rose had confirmed only men were tended here.  Second, because whatever was the matter, that was not the voice of anyone sickly.

Someone must have made another answer to the woman because now she ordered, “See to it then!  Children, come!”

Joliffe rolled back to his side in time to see, through the slightly wider door-gap the dog Kydd had made, the surging past of a very large red gown, followed by a low seethe of white dogs, too many for him even to guess at their number in the instant before they were past, too, the wild pattering of their feet going with them. 

A silence followed, ended by something flat and metal – Joliffe guessed a pot or pan -- being slammed down on a hard surface in the kitchen. 

Joliffe willingly stayed where he was, glad to be no part of whatever all that had been about.  Westering sunlight came through the small, high-set window above the bed’s head, slanting down the wall at the bedfoot, and he guessed that whatever work was being done in the kitchen was end-of-day work, to be done while there was sun enough to need no lamps, for the saving of candles or lamp oil, and Rose would likely soon be free to take him to the other players.   All he need do was lie here until she fetched him, he thought.  So he did and, to his later surprise, slept again, not knowing he was that tired.  Slept deeply enough that he dreamed that he was on the practice field where he had lately spent so many days, standing bare-handed while a bear on horseback charged at him with an upraised sword he knew he had to avoid while closing with the bear to pull it from the saddle.  The part with the bear was wrong.  So were the moor-topped hills beyond the field.  It had usually been Hede on the horse, sometimes Therry, never a bear, and those moor-topped hills were from another place and time in his life altogether. 

But the rest was real enough, and in the dream he did as he had finally learned to do when awake without taking a whack from the wooden practice sword, which was good because in the dream it was a great blade of shining steel the bear had in its paw.  But as he pulled the bear from the saddle he did not know what he would do next because somehow he seemed to have no weapon on him and the bear’s sword had disappeared and . . .

He was awake.  That instantly awake he had also been learning in these past weeks, with one hand shifting the draw the dagger hidden along his forearm even as his mind caught up to where he was and that his dagger was not there, was not needed here, that it was only a tap at the door that had awakened him.

The tap came again.  He opened his eyes and sat up, shaking his head to clear it while swinging his legs off the bed and saying, “Come.” 

Players lived a wary life, never belonging wherever they were and therefore never quite trusted -- or ever quite trusting.  For their own company, very warily had been the only way to live in the years they had been lordless, before Lord Lovell had taken them for his players.  That had lessened – not ended -- the need for wariness, but all that had been a familiar wariness.  This reaching for a dagger was another matter, and it troubled him.  He was not surprised by how deep the past weeks’ of learning had gone in him, but he was not at ease yet with the wary someone who was come to live inside himself.  It was as if -- weaponed with skills he had never thought to have -- he was now standing knife-edged to the world.  He had always had a sideways way of looking at the world that had sometimes made him uncomfortable with who and where he was – had sometimes made uncomfortable the people around him, too.  Among the players it had not mattered so much, since players always lived somewhat sideways to the world, belonging nowhere as they did and spending so much time and skill on pretending to be other than they were.  It was his skill at that that had helped make him valuable enough to Bishop Beaufort he was come to where he was.  He did not like that it was now a skill he must needs use to hide himself from his fellow players. 

And nonetheless as Rose looked around the door’s edge, he smiled at her easily while stretching his arms out mightily to show he was just awakening, and asked, “Time we went?”