A Play of Knaves (11 page)

Or maybe he was so hungry he was making fantasies out of his dislike of Medcote and of things that were not there at all. What should matter was that Anela Medcote had paid them none so ill, and if the trouble suspected by the abbey’s bailiff lay in Medcote wanting a marriage that Ashewell did not want between his son and Medcote’s widowed daughter, then the players could do their play tomorrow at the church ale, tell the bailiff what they’d learned, since surely he would be there, and the morning after that be away, free and clear. Even Ellis should hardly be able to find complaint in that.

But why would talk of a marriage be kept secret? It was easy enough to see why Medcote would want his daughter married so well. It was easy, too, to see why Ashewell would want better for his son. But why such secrecy about it that even servants had hardly heard the talk?

That, Joliffe told himself firmly, was the bailiff’s business to find out.

Meanwhile, there was today coming light around him. Yesterday’s possibility of rain had faded. He hoped if there was rain to come, it came today and not tomorrow; but he had learned long since that hope was what you had while you got on with what actually was, and presently what was was dawn sweetly around him, with birdsong in the hedgerows and, by the time he turned through the gateway into their field, daylight had fully come and the world around him was rich with the greens of spring.

Rose was tending a pot hung over the firepit. Piers was laboring up from the stream with a bucket, Ellis was leaning into the cart for something, and Basset and Gil were sitting beside the fire, with Gil’s hurt foot propped up on a low basket.

Everyone greeted Joliffe easily, Rose looking up from stirring whatever was in the pot to nod to him, her look lingering as if she were trying to judge how he was. Pretending she was not, he nodded at Gil’s foot and asked, “It’s giving trouble?”

“Only some,” Gil answered.

“It was the way he yelped when he first stood up this morning gave him away,” said Basset.

“It’s better,” Gil insisted. “The ointment Rose gave me to rub on it has helped. It was just the walk to Medcote’s and back it didn’t like.”

Joliffe sat down on his heels beside the fire, out of Rose’s way. The gray, bubbling mass of oatmeal pottage in the pot was no more appealing than ever, but Joliffe’s stomach growled with appreciation at the thought of food.

Ellis sauntered to join them, jibing at Joliffe as he came, “She must have been worth it, to keep you out all night. Or was it just the ale was so good you had to sleep it off under a tavern bench?”

“The ale was good and she was better,” Joliffe jibed back. “So was her friend, come to that. But sleep? I didn’t get much of that.”

Ellis glared at him. Gil stared. Basset cleared his throat and became very busy with rubbing his hands together toward the fire. Piers, hanging the bucket from the cart, had not heard. Joliffe, pretending not to see any of them, caught instead Rose’s look at him. He had jibed at Ellis without thinking of her, and was disconcerted there was no anger in her look but instead a bitter-edged almost-laugh that told him she didn’t believe him any more than Basset did.

More disconcertingly, when she had spooned the pottage into their wooden bowls, she not only added currants from their carefully kept supply and drizzled honey over each bowl, but he saw she had given him somewhat more currants and honey than she had to anyone else. She not only did not believe his tale, she was offering him the kind of comfort she gave to Piers when he was hurt or more-than-usually disappointed of something, and Joliffe decided he did not want to think about why just now and gave himself over to his hunger, taking full pleasure in breaking his fast.

Afterward, when everyone but Gil had finished and gone away from the fire, he offered to take the bowls and spoons and pots to the stream to wash. “After oatmeal, it’s hot water they’ll need,” Rose said, smiling at him. “If you’ll take the pot to the stream, fill it, and bring it back to set over the fire again, that will be enough. Especially since I think Basset means to work all of you most of the day today, to ready for tomorrow.”

Joliffe showed mock horror at the thought. She laughed at him and handed over the pot.

At the stream, with the pot filled, he knelt to wash his face, feeling his beard along his jawline, glad he would not have to shave until tomorrow, and telling himself he had had plenty of sleep and was ready for the day, whatever Basset had in mind. As he came out of the woods, a lark was rising from the field’s far end, taking its wondrous song with it into the sky. He paused to listen and watch as it soared high and hovered small with distance against the sky, its song still flowing, until suddenly it broke into its steep fall to earth again, to disappear into silence and the tall grass again.

In the stillness after it, Joliffe became aware of the pot’s weight at the end of his arm and went on, carrying not only the pot but the thought of how the lark’s flight was like so much of life. No matter to what heights of joy and beauty a man might go, in the end there was, always and inevitably, the return to earth. Still, he added to balance that somewhat heavy thought, it was surely better to live, however briefly, in joy and beauty than never to have them at all.

And, he added cheeringly, to live in a constant exaltation like the lark’s would surely be wearying.

He wondered if he was sickening for something, the way his mind was throwing thoughts around. Ellis would probably say he was just sickening, and that run of his thought had him smiling as he set the filled pot over the fire and said to Rose, “Thanks for the goodly breakfast. You’ve a fine hand with currants and honey.”

“And you’ve a fine tongue in your head,” she said back. “Best you go put it to work instead of flattery.” But she met his smile with her own, understanding his thanks without his having said them.

She had warned truly, though, that Basset meant to work them today. With breakfast and all else seen to and done, he gathered them all to him and said, calm as if it were nothing, “Now, about tomorrow’s play. I’ve thought we could made good use of some of what we did at Minster Lovell.”

That brought united groans from all the players, not just Joliffe, even before Ellis asked, “What do you mean by ‘some of what we did’?”

With all the blandness of knowing how unwelcomed his words were going to be, Basset said, “I’ve thought we could start with
Christ Against the Money-changers
and go right through to the
Resurrection
, but leaving out the
Crucifixion
, it being so hard to do, and . . .”

“Leaving it out?” Joliffe said with sudden suspicion. “And do what in place of it?”

“Why, have you write a speech to bridge the gap,” Basset said brightly.

“By tomorrow?” Joliffe protested.

“Before tomorrow. To give whoever has it . . .”

“Not me,” Ellis muttered.

“. . . time to learn it.”

“I’ll do it!” Piers offered readily.

Too readily. His grandfather fixed him with a look and said, “I think whatever Joliffe writes will need more weight than you can give it.”

“Fledgling,” Ellis said, leaning sideways to give Piers a shoulder-to-shoulder shove. Piers shoved back, then remembered he was still angry at Ellis for his mother’s sake, and moved to the other side of Gil.

Ignoring all of that, Basset went on, “So, Joliffe will write us a speech to begin it all. Then we’ll do
Christ Against the Money-changers
,
Judas’ Betrayal
,
Last Supper
, not the
Crucifixion
, not the
Harrowing of Hell
, then the
Resurrection
, and we’re done. That’s none so bad, is it?”

A general chorus of “Yes!” answered him. Basset beamed on them as if they had shouted approval and said, “There now. This will be to the good for us all. You don’t want all that to slip out of mind through not being used. If nothing else, think of what a hit in the eye it will be for Father Hewgo. Holiness from us instead of profanation. So, to work! We’ll do a light run through it, then give Joliffe time to write what speeches we’ll need, and do it again.”

“Mad,” Ellis muttered. “Utterly mad.” But he was getting to his feet with the rest of them. They had survived so long as a company because Basset’s instinct was sure for what to play in whatever place they found themselves—and because, however much they grumbled, his company trusted him. Besides that, in this particular matter he was right: It would be to the good to keep these new plays fixed in their minds.

But what a pity it was, Joliffe thought with an inward grin, that no matter what noble-minded plays he did and wrote, he never seemed to grow more noble-minded in himself and above such petty desires as giving Father Hewgo a hit in the eye.

Chapter 7

Rough-running their lines while moving some-what at speed through the plays to find out how much they remembered and how much they had forgotten in the week and less since they had performed them, they were as far as the
Last Supper
when Joliffe said, low-voiced, “Don’t anyone look, but we’re being watched from the woods.”

Without looking, Basset said, “Three of them. Ashewell’s younglings, I think. One of them is Tom that we met. They came while you were Judasing with the high priests.”

“Shall I run them off?” Gil offered.

“It’s their field more than ours,” Basset said easily. “Their woods and stream, too, come to that. No, let them stay. There’s no harm in it.”

Aware of them now, Joliffe found himself lifting both his voice and the pace of his playing for the sake of the children. Not that it mattered that he did. The other players were doing the same, as unable as he was to resist any audience, however small. Despite the slips and pauses and startings again that came with rehearsing plays gone slightly out of mind, they had soon finished resurrecting Christ and, taking a rest before beginning again, were gathered to the water bucket for a drink, when Ellis said, “Heads up. We’ve more visitors.”

Nicholas Ashewell and Gosyn’s girl, seen briefly at the Ashewells’ the other night, were walking through the gateway. Joliffe caught a sudden small flurry of branches from the edge of the trees, making him guess their watchers there were retreating, and he wondered where they were supposed to be instead of here as Basset went to meet Nicholas and the girl, bowing to them and welcoming them, bringing them onward to the fire where the other players likewise bowed and Rose smoothed her apron and curtsied.

The girl looked about the camp with interest. Nicholas, trying to be less openly curious, gave Basset a stoppered leather bottle, saying, “It’s cider. My mother thought you’d like it.”

“Your mother is a kind and thoughtful lady. Please give her our thanks,” Basset answered.

“She also asks if you’ve seen Nicholas’ younger brother and sisters,” the girl said.

“Until a few moments ago, they were secretly watching us from the woods,” Basset said. Nicholas immediately looked that way, and Basset added, “But I somewhat think they’ve gone now.”

“They sport along the stream like otters,” the girl laughed. “Never fear, Nicholas. They’ll come home wet and dirty and in time for dinner.”

With a frown weighted heavily with duty rather than any anger, Nicholas said, “It makes for trouble when they come home wet and dirty.”

“But not trouble for you,” the girl reminded him kindly. “Let be.”

He smiled at her a little shamefacedly, as if she often had to remind him of that, and Rose said, “If it please you and you care to join us, there’s spice cake just done.”

Nicholas seemed about to refuse, but the girl said happily, “That would be welcome. Thank you.” And after a bare moment’s pause Nicholas echoed her thanks but added, “We shouldn’t stay long, Claire.”

“There’s not all that much hurry.” Claire sat down on her spread skirts beside the fire, looked around at them all, and said, “I saw you at the Ashewells’ hall the other night. We all greatly enjoyed your play.”

Basset gave her a small bow and said, smiling, “It’s our pleasure that you were pleased.”

They were all still standing because Nicholas still was. Claire reached up, took hold of his hand, and pulled. He hesitated, then sat down. Freed, the players all sat, too, circling the fire, except for Rose, who stood cutting squares of spice cake in the cast iron pan she had just pulled from the ashes. Putting the pieces onto a wooden cutting board, she held them out to Claire with a smile. The girl smiled back and, thanking her, took one. Nicholas took his with matching thanks and an uncertain smile, as if not sure that smiling was safe. He wasn’t unfriendly, Joliffe thought, watching him. He was merely unsure. But how unsure did you have to be to doubt that smiling was safe?

Of course the possibility of being married into the Medcote family could well be enough to make any man—let alone young Nicholas—feel unsure, Joliffe thought. But did Nicholas know what was being talked of between his parents and Medcote, or had they kept it secret from him, if not from their servants?

The spice cake was warm, tasting as rich as it smelled, and Claire said to Rose, “This is wonderfully good.” Then said to Basset, “My father says you played for the Medcotes yesterday.”

Nicholas had begun to ease a little but now stiffened again, his gaze jerking from face to face while Basset answered easily, “That we did. Medcote and his son stopped by our camp yesterday to ask us to it.”

Looking around the field as if for damage they might have done, Nicholas demanded angrily, “They were here?”

Seeming not to hear the anger, Basset said, still easily, “Briefly.”

“You went to their place and played for them,” Nicholas said, not quite accusingly.

Basset shrugged. “We had no reason not to. I doubt, though, we pleased them much. They seem to be a prickly family.”

Claire laughed. “My father says they make a hedgehog look smooth.”