A Play of Isaac (12 page)

Besides, all else set aside, he was curious. Damn it.

He was still lying there when Rose awoke and eased from under her blanket. The dawn was cool enough that she paused to be sure Piers was still covered, no bare back or leg thrust out from beneath his blanket, before she pulled her gown on over her shift and went silently, a shadow-shape in the barely lightened darkness, to the cart, took something from the small chest that held her few belongings, sat down on one of the hampers, and set to un-braiding her long hair that during the day she wore wound up and fastened out of sight under her headkerchief, never seen. Going on pretending sleep, Joliffe watched her as she shook her hair out loose to her waist and began to comb it in long, slow strokes unlike her usual briskness toward everything she did.

Watching her, it came to him that their stay at the Penteneys was holiday time for her even more than for the rest of them. For the while they were here, she was spared most of the things she usually had to do. No worry over the buying or bartering for their food; no cooking of it and cleaning up afterwards; no constant troubling over where and how their things were packed and unpacked from the cart—nothing put where it couldn’t be readily found when they next stopped and needed it, nor anything left behind when they moved on—no bother with starting a fire and keeping it going when they spent the night by the road rather than at an inn or somewhere. Her other usual worries were still with her—of seeing to their clothing and such of their properties that might need finer mending than what the men could do—but the great worries of food and travel were put by for now and instead of her usual early morning bustle she was simply sitting, combing and combing her hair.

It was a soothing thing to watch a woman comb her hair that way, and Joliffe was somewhat back toward sleep again when Ellis and Basset began to stir. That meant time for him to stir, too, and he did, stretching as if just awakening before getting up and going outside about his business. When he came back, Basset was sitting up on his bed, rubbing his face and grumbling to himself—mornings were not his best time—and Ellis was prodding Piers awake, saying, “Time to fetch water, you slug.”

Piers made to grab Ellis’s bare ankle but Ellis was too quick for that and Piers—a grumbling small copy of his grandfather—shambled up and toward the water bucket. His mother caught him on the way and combed down his hair, saying, “Let’s at least pretend we’re seemly folk, shall we?” before letting him go.

Piers was gone, still grumbling, and the rest of them were straightening their blankets over their beds when Ellis said, “Know what we heard last night after you left, Basset?”

“Of course. I always sneak back into a tavern to listen to you after I’ve gone to bed.”

Ellis ignored that. “Rose and I fell into talk with some Penteney servants that were there. Lewis is to marry the Penteney girl.”

Basset turned around from his tidied bed. “Marry her?” “Marry her,” Ellis repeated.

“They’re going to marry her—what’s her name?—to Lewis?”

“Kathyrn,” said Joliffe. He looked to Rose. “Truly?”

“Truly,” she said.

“The Penteneys have been putting it off on the likelihood he’d die before he came of age,” Ellis said, “but he hasn’t, and he comes of age at midsummer. So while Penteney still has control of Lewis’s marriage they’re going to marry him to this Kathryn and be done with it. The talk is they mean to do the betrothal this week, while Lord Lovell is here to witness it.”

“I’d have thought they’d rather have young Simon for her,” Basset said. “Penteney holds right to his marriage, too, as I understand it.”

“Simon isn’t the heir.” Ellis was dry about that.

Basset frowned. “Not that I have anything against Lewis, but I wonder why they haven’t seen to having him set aside from inheriting. Given how he is, that would be possible.”

“Costly, too, what with lawyers and fees to the king and Church and all,” Ellis pointed out. “Besides, if it’s set up for Simon to inherit when he comes of age, he’ll surely take everything into his own hands, the way Lewis never can.”

“Ah,” said Basset, immediately seeing the point.

Joliffe saw it, too. Had seen it earlier, in his talk with the serving man at supper their first night here. With Lewis married to Kathryn, Master Penteney would go on running the Fairfield properties and go on having the profit of them just as he had for all these years, rather than giving everything up to Simon, to
Simon’s
profit.

Thinking aloud from there, Joliffe said, “And even if Lewis dies after he’s wed, Master Penteney will likely go on running the properties for his daughter’s sake.”

“So the girl is to be sacrificed to the idiot on the great altar of her father’s profits,” said Rose coldly.

“Or the girl is to be set up for life as prosperous wife and prosperous widow,” Basset returned. “There’s few would quarrel with that. And they have waited as long as they could, in hope it wouldn’t come to this. You have to give Penteney that. Lewis has already lived past the time most of his kind die. He’s not likely to last all that much longer, come what may, but even if he doesn’t get a child on her, to keep all the Fairfield properties in the family, the girl’s dower-third of it in Penteney hands will be better than none. And she’ll be free to marry again.”

All that was not so much heartless as merely reasonable. As Basset said often enough about other matters, there was rarely point in shying clear of what was true and couldn’t be helped; but Rose nonetheless gave him her disgusted look that said, “
Men,
” though aloud, she only warned, “Best not say anything of this around Master Ears.” Meaning Piers.

To that they all nodded agreement and got on with the day.

After breakfast Basset talked with Mistress Penteney, and at his asking the hall was given over to them at mid-morning, that they might run the play there with Lewis so he would be used to doing it there. Until then, they worked at
Pride
, Basset beginning to be satisfied with it by the time they had to go to the hall.

The practice there went well, too. Lewis was happy with his devil’s tunic and twitching tail, and though he made a larger, more lumbering demon than Piers, it somehow made the business the funnier. And he remembered to be careful with his spear, never once jabbing Ellis.

They were not without lookers-on. Matthew was there, of course, sitting out of the way on a stool, and sometimes a servant’s head would ease around the corner of the doorway to the screens passage for a brief look. Mistress Geva came once, carrying on her hip the little boy Joliffe had seen in the garden. She stood near Matthew until there was a pause and then went to Basset while Rose mended some stitches in Lewis’s tail—she had come with her sewing basket in expectation of the need—and said, “Mistress Penteney sent me to remind you Lewy isn’t to do too much and tire himself.”

The little boy on her hip waved at Lewis, calling, “Lewy!”

Lewis waved and called back. “Giles! I can’t come. She has my tail.”

The boy laughed as Basset gave his mother a bow and assured her that care was being taken.

Mistress Geva, who seemed no more certain how players should be dealt with than she had on Sunday, was apparently unsettled by Basset’s courtesy to her, and said stiffly, “Well. Just see it is.” She looked around as if for something else to say, did not find it, and with her chin a little jutted in the air, left the hall.

“Bitch,” muttered Ellis.

“Or maybe just very unhappy.” said Joliffe.

“About what? Living easy and not having much to do?”

“Living in someone else’s household with nothing to do but what she’s told?”

Ellis grimaced, seeing what he meant.

They let Lewis caper two more times before Basset traded looks with Matthew and said, “Well, that’s enough for now, I think, Master Fairfield. You have it to perfection and we, alas, are growing tired.”

“Once more?” Lewis begged.

Matthew, coming forward, said, “They must needs rest. If you tire them out too much, they’ll be no good tonight or tomorrow at the feast.”

“Rest, rest, rest,” Lewis muttered, but he let Rose help him out of his tunic, and when Kathyrn came into the hall he called happily to her, “I’ve been a good devil!”

“I don’t doubt it,” she answered, smiling.

Joliffe’s assessing look at her was different than it had been, now he knew she was meant for Lewis. She was somewhat young for marrying but not by much. Others, both girls and boys, were married off younger than she was for the sake of profit. But had anyone considered what might happen if she came to full womanhood still bound to a husband who was, to most intents and possibly purposes, forever a child? However it went between them in bed, their companionship would always depend on her care of him, with never an equal meeting of minds or hearts. Or if no one else had considered it, had she?

Presently anyway, she was saying to Basset with her pretty smile and far more ease than Mistress Geva, “Please you, my mother said I was to ask if the servants could ready the hall for dinner now.”

Bowing with an excessive flourish that made Kathryn laugh the way he had meant it to, Basset said, “It is our pleasure to oblige. I pray you tell your lady mother from me that Master Fairfield is so excellent at his work that we need do no more with him this afternoon.”

Lewis started to protest but Kathyrn said to him firmly, “You know she wouldn’t let you anyway,” and held out her hand. “Come. She’ll want to hear what you’ve been doing.”

“Come, come, come,” said Lewis disgustedly, but he went with her, Matthew following them out of the hall.

After an ample dinner and their return to the barn, Basset, with an unwonted inclination toward repose, said that he thought he would nap a while. “With maybe we rehearse
Pride
afterwards,” he added.

Joliffe waited until he had laid down and shut his eyes before taking Ellis aside and saying, too low-voiced to disturb Basset, “I think I’ll away to see how Tisbe is doing.”

“Mind you’re back before he wakes,” Ellis warned.

“But if I’m not, we won’t have to run
Pride
again, will we?”

Ellis brightened. “Have as long a walk as you like. No need to hurry back. None at all.”

“I want to come,” said Piers, nudging at Joliffe’s elbow.

“If Joliffe says you may,” Ellis said.

“And your mother,” Joliffe added.

Rose gave her leave. Joliffe complained it wasn’t fair that because they needed Piers for the plays this week he’d have to bring him back alive no matter how much a pain he was. Piers, used to being complained of, already had his hat on and was heading out the door as Joliffe added, “Of course we could always hire Lewis, I suppose.”

Piers turned back long enough to say, “Or I could come back without
you
, and we could hire Lewis to take
your
place. It wouldn’t make much difference,” then ducked outside as Joliffe set off after him.

They made a dodge and tag game of it out the rear gate and for a way along the lane before Joliffe bothered to catch him with an arm around his waist and a hand free to pull Pier’s hat over his eyes.

“Hai!” Piers protested. “My feather!”

His hat’s bright green feather from a popinjay’s tail had been given to him by a lady at a manor where they had played last autumn. She had been charmed by his sweet face and fair curls, been more charmed by the grateful kiss he gave her on the cheek and had given him a coin to go with it. He had refused to share the coin and had Rose fasten the feather to his hat, been careful of it all winter, and now wriggled free of Joliffe and snatched off his hat to see if there was damage. Joliffe had been careful of it, and assured his feather was unharmed, Piers put the hat back on and started to ask questions as they walked.

Joliffe had never decided whether Piers’s questions were a way to be sure someone was paying him heed or because he really wanted to know about whatever he was asking, but at least they were rarely dull. Today his questions were about Master Penteney and how he had come to be so rich. Joliffe explained as best he could what it was to be a victualler, and at the end, after silently thinking on it a while, Piers said, “Then he does no work with his hands himself. He gathers in what other men do and has the money from selling it to other people who’ll have to do the work with it.”

“The men he buys from have his money for their work, and a good many of the men he sells to probably make money from what they buy from him. The money doesn’t all go one way.”

“The thing is,
he
doesn’t have to do any heavy work, doesn’t have to put his back into anything,” Piers said.

“He has to put his brain into it,” Joliffe pointed out.

“I can do that,” Piers said, plainly quite taken with the possibility of using just his brain and not his back to make a living. “Where we’re going is where he keeps cattle and such until he can sell them to butchers and all, right?”

“You have it.”

“But he doesn’t own much land himself?”

“Maybe little more than what we’ll see today.” But the Fairfield properties might include lands, making them even more worth his while to keep.

“But he has the big house and all. I bet the people he buys from don’t have as big a house.”

“Some might. As well as from lesser folk, he likely buys from lords’ stewards making money for their lords by selling surplus stock.”

Piers was silent a while, swishing a stick through the branches of the hedge as they walked along, before he said, “I wonder if I could marry that Kathyrn instead of Lewis?”

“Where did you hear of that?” Joliffe asked.

“Lewis told me. He likes that he’s going to marry her. He says wives have to do what husbands tell them, so she won’t be able to give him orders any more.”

Joliffe did not point out the fallacy of that, only suggested dryly, “Wait to marry her yourself until she’s his widow. She’ll be richer then.”