A Play of Isaac (11 page)

Joliffe, watching unwatched, smiled at their pleasure, at first surprised by, then ignoring the unexpected pang in him that was not jealousy but sharp awareness of how there had been a time when something like that much happiness with family had been a possibility for him. Just as John Thamys yesterday had been a reminder of yet another way he could have taken his life instead of the way he had. But everyone’s life always came down to choices. He was living out his choices and still preferred them to the ones he might have made and nonetheless was still smiling at the Penteneys’ pleasure as he drew back from the gate and returned to the barn.

He was stretched out on his pallet, a pillow comfortably under his head but no need for a blanket yet, the evening still warm though the sun was finally down, when Basset came into the barn, carrying a sleeping Piers. Joliffe, who had drifted to somewhere between thinking and dozing off, roused and rolled onto his side, propping up on one elbow to ask, “Just you and Piers?”

“Just us,” Basset said softly, laying the boy down on his bed. Piers did not waken, merely sighed happily, rolled onto his side, and curled up into deeper sleep.

“Talked somebody into playing nine-penny merels with him, did he?” Joliffe said, not trusting Piers’s happiness even in sleep.

“He did.” Basset straightened with a sigh of his own and pressed his hands to the small of his back. “He’s getting too big and I’m getting too old to be hauling him about like this much longer. He’s going to have to use his own feet after this to get home.”

“Did he take them for much?”

“Enough but not too much. Ever moderate when it counts, is the boy.”

Moderate in the hope of taking them again a few more times if he had the chance, before they caught on that nobody ever won against Piers at nine-penny merals except when he let them. Come to that, nobody won against him at quite a few other games either. Joliffe was sure that if all else failed him, Piers could make his living as gambler, at least while he was still young and golden-haired and looked like a guileless cherub. After he outgrew that, he might find the going a little harder. Or then again, being Piers, he might not.

Joliffe thought of asking Basset how things had gone with the other players but that was something that could keep until morning. He’d rather sleep now and Basset had probably been the one to bring Piers home because he was ready to be a-bed himself.

First, though, instead of undressing to lie down, Basset rolled his shoulders as if to ease them and said, “I think I’ll take a turn around the yard to work the twitches out, un-fume my head a little. I’ll be back.”

Already settled to his pillow again, Joliffe made a sound to say he had heard and in very few moments he would have been asleep, but as Basset went out, partly closing the barn door behind him with a soft creak, his eyes flew open and he lay staring into the dark. And not because of the door.

If Basset had said nothing, had simply gone out, Joliffe would have had no second thought about it at all. But to un-fume his head a little? All Basset ever wanted to do when he was fumed with drink was go to bed. Joliffe rolled off his own bed, stood up, and silent on bare feet, went to the door. It still stood half-open, with no need for him to creak it on its hinges. Easing his head around its edge, he saw Basset—or rather the black shape of him in the blue starlight—just as it merged with the shadows of the alley between the two sheds, the same way Joliffe had gone earlier. Joliffe slid out the barn door and sideways and, aware he could be seen in the naked starlight should Basset happen to look back, kept in the thicker darkness of the barn’s eave-shadow until he was past where anyone in the alley itself could see him unless looking out from just inside it. Basset had been moving with enough purpose to suggest he should be more than a few paces along it by now, able to see only a little of the empty yard if he looked back, not Joliffe crossing to the shadow of the nearer shed.

Joliffe had not much thought about what he was doing or why and did not stop to think about it now. More than once, his curiosity had set him to do things he could just as easily not have done if he had only taken the trouble not to be curious. Unfortunately, that was usually too much trouble to take, and because just now he was curious why Basset had felt the need to lie about where he was going, he moved along the shed’s shadow to the alleyway’s mouth, stopped, held his breath to listen, and was just able to hear Basset still going away from him, then the soft opening of the gate, and the light crunch of steps taken on gravel.

Two steps on the graveled path . . . then nothing. Not the closing of the gate or more footsteps. Basset had either stopped just inside the gate or else crossed onto the grass. Was either still at the gate, or was going away across the garden, or had taken unexpectedly to flying.

Now, Joliffe knew, was when he should go back to his bed and the pretense he had never left it. He also knew he would not. Instead, he slipped around the shed’s corner and into the alley’s darkness, glad he knew there was only clear earth along it and nothing nasty to step barefoot in. What he need worry about instead was keeping silent, and he did. And when he neared the alley’s other end, he pressed himself flat-backed against the right-hand wall and edged nearer to the gateway, keeping himself as much part of the darkness as possible. From there, with his head turned sideways and against the wall, he could see Basset standing on the path, looking away toward the house.

If the set of Basset’s body and head were anything to judge by, he was waiting for something. Or more likely someone. Joliffe had barely time to wonder for what or whom when a faint crunch of footsteps told him it was someone, and Basset took a step forward to meet them, almost beyond where Joliffe could see him. Joliffe silently cursed at him to stay where he was and Basset did, though probably not for Joliffe’s cursing but because the other person had reached him, just barely into Joliffe’s sight. Master Penteney.

Even in the pallid starlight Joliffe had no trouble knowing him and seeing he was readied for bed, a bedgown of some dark stuff loosely belted around him and his hair rumpled as if maybe he had already been to his pillow before coming outside. He held out a hand that Basset took in a welcoming grip that Master Penteney readily returned, saying low-voiced as he did, “Your pardon for asking you to meet like this. It’s not for shame.”

“It’s for good, solid sense,” Basset returned, equally low. “Even after all this while, there’s still folk might be reminded of too much if they saw us being friends together.”

“There’s too much truth for comfort in that. But by St. Christopher, it’s good to see you again, Thomas.” They had dropped hands but he reached out to slap Basset on the upper arm. “Damnably good.”

“And you. I’d not have sought you out—haven’t done all these years—but I’d agreed to come with your young Lewis before your name came into it and it was too late then to back off without it looked odd.”

“There’ve been times when I knew you were in Oxford and I didn’t seek you out either.” Some of the pleasure went out of Penteney’s voice. “We’ve paid our price, haven’t we?”

“We have that,” Basset agreed. But a smile came back into his voice as he added with a movement of his head toward the house, “It’s not turned out so ill for you, though, has it?”

“It hasn’t, true enough. But you?”

Penteney’s doubt was plain but Basset’s answer was un-hesitant. “As far as any man is likely to get what he wants in this world, I’ve the life I want, no fear. And even if I didn’t,” he added jestingly, “it’s a better life than the one I might have had if we hadn’t paid our price.”

“Longer, at any rate,” Penteney returned, matching the jest but with something more than jest behind it.

Something less than jest was in Basset’s voice, too, as he asked, “And Roger? Do you ever hear aught of him? Or from him?”

There was silence then, making Joliffe wish for more than starlight by which to see Penteney’s face before he answered, “I’ve never seen him since, but I hear from him once a year. Sometimes twice. He’s well. He’s . . . doing well.”

“And best not spoken of,” Basset said.

“Best not,” Penteney agreed. “Basset, come inside. I’ve wine in my study. Let’s risk the time to talk . . .”

“It’s not worth the risk, Hal. Even this is more than we should.”

“But you’re well?” Penteney insisted. “You can assure me of that?”

“As well in my way as you are in yours. I swear it.”

Not knowing how long they would talk and afraid it would not be much longer, given their unease at it, Joliffe slid silently away along the wall. Given one thing and another, he thought he would rather be in his bed and seemingly asleep when Basset next saw him than be caught here listening.

Chapter 7

In the morning Joliffe was, as usual, first to awake among the others. He lay in the darkness, listening to the early rustle and murmur of birds in the barn’s rafters and thatch and the even breathings of his fellow players. For a mercy none of them—including him, he supposed, or he would have heard about it by now—was given to snoring. “Would take too much effort,” Basset had grumbled when Joliffe once mentioned it. “Or maybe nobody wants to die, because I’ll kill any fool who wakes me from a good sleep.”

To judge by the deep rumble of his breathing, Basset was sleeping soundly enough now. And well he should be, after his lurking last night, Joliffe thought.

Joliffe had been well settled on his bed and feigning sleep by the time Basset returned to the barn; had fallen actually to sleep while Basset was readying to lie down and had awakened only enough when Rose and Ellis came back to know they were there before falling straight back to sleep, his tiredness greater than his curiosity about how their evening had gone.

He was fully awake now, though, and it wasn’t their evening he was wondering about but what he had heard between Basset and Penteney. He had been already sure they had known each other before now and had half thought their secrecy was because Penteney did not want to admit acquaintance with a player and Basset had been willing to accept that. But last night Joliffe had unmistakably heard a friendship still warm between them after apparently years of never speaking to or seeing one another. Friendship . . . and some trouble heavy enough to keep friends apart. A trouble that despite they were years away from it, they felt they still had to pay the price of it because there were still people who could be “reminded” of it. Reminded of what? What had Basset and Penteney known or done—or, St. Genesius forbid, known
and
done—that it was dangerous even now for people to remember they had known each other?

And who was this Roger who was “best not spoken of”?

Joliffe rolled onto his back and damned his curiosity for dragging him into this. He couldn’t even pretend to himself he would let it go and forget about it. His questions would twitch at him worse than an itch would. Likewise worse than an itch, he couldn’t even go straight at them. There was no simply asking Basset. Even aside from the fact he shouldn’t have been listening at all, there was the never-spoken pact among the players never to ask about each others’ lives before they had met. Any of them could tell whatever he chose to tell, but no one ever asked questions. “It’s the best way to keep throats from being slit, boy,” Basset had said in their early days together. “What a man doesn’t know, he can’t use against you if there’s a falling out or we end up going separate ways. All we need know about one another is that we all do our work, share and share alike, in plays and otherwise, no slacking, and the rest doesn’t matter.”

That had suited Joliffe well enough at the time and still did, but it meant there was no way he could be asking Basset outright what was toward between him and Master Penteney.

Come to that, how had Basset and Penteney come to know each other at all? Or at least to know each other well enough to get into such trouble. On the face of it, there wasn’t much likelihood of it. Players were set too far aside—below, some would say, but Joliffe made his own choices on how to see things—from a settled, wealthy merchant like Penteney for there to be any deep dealings between them, let alone ground on which friendship could grow.

Joliffe stretched his arms out to the sides and muttered toward the roof, “This is what comes of being lazy.” If he had fought his curiosity instead of letting it haul him out of his bed last night, he’d have no problems this morning beyond making sure of his lines for
Pride
and hoping Ellis wasn’t quarrelsomely sore-headed from too much ale. It served him right and on a platter to be stuck with questions he had small hope of ever having answered and maybe he’d finally learn his lesson by it.

That settled, he closed his eyes, determined to slip to sleep again. And promptly opened them to stare into the thinning darkness. He hadn’t even a prayer of fooling himself into believing he would let his questions go or convince himself to make light of whatever was between Basset and Penteney. Whatever it was, they were still so wary about knowing each other that last night Basset had left the gate open behind him so he could make a swift retreat if need be, and if the thing was that dangerous to Basset, it was dangerous to all of them, if only because without Basset there would be no company and not even the thin livelihood they presently had. If nothing else, without Basset they would be down to two men and a boy and there were too few plays they could do with only that many. As it was, they were almost too few. Only Basset’s determination and Joliffe’s skill at making over plays to fit them had kept them going this long. But more than that, it was Basset who had brought them together, Basset who kept them together. Without Basset it would all be over.

Not that they couldn’t find work of one kind or another elsewhere. They could even join other companies of players if they were that daft; but staring into the rafters now taking shape out of the darkness, Joliffe had to admit—to the darkness and to himself but never to anyone else—he liked the company he was in. He was used to them and they to him and he was not minded to be forced to change. If Basset was in trouble, so were they all and Joliffe wanted to know what the trouble was, either to help Basset if he could, or else be forewarned of disaster coming.