A Play of Isaac (35 page)

“They quarreled over something,” Joliffe guessed. “They fought—there were Leonard’s skinned knuckles and the bruise on his chin—and when Leonard was down, Glover did for him, likely in anger and not thinking ahead. Otherwise he would have thought about the blood needing to be cleaned up.”

“That’s how I see it,” Master Barentyne said. “Unless Glover talks, we’ll never know for certain but it’s close enough.”

And if Joliffe had his guess, the quarrel had been because Leonard had gone to Master Penteney for money where and when he should not have. If Glover indeed kept a way station for secret Lollard comings and goings, peril to Master Penteney came too close to being peril for himself and everyone who dealt through him. That was surely reason enough for him to be murderously angry at Leonard.

Those thoughts he kept to himself, only saying aloud, “Once he’d killed Leonard, he hid the body in the marsh because if it was found there, at least he could deny any knowledge of it.”

“Then, after dark, with his men gone away to Oxford, he dragged the body to the stile and over,” Master Barentyne said. “Leonard being much about Glover’s size, dragging him would have been easier than carrying him. Likely if the ground wasn’t so hard, we’d have found drag marks from the house to the marsh. Once over the stile, Glover had the cart waiting. That torn bit of Leonard’s shirt? One of my men found it in one of the carts, just like we guessed, torn off on a rough splinter of wood. The first time anyone used the cart again, it would have been seen, but Glover did it all at night, by nothing but starlight, and it’s been holiday since then, with the cart just sitting in the shed. Its wheels, by the way, had been lately and thoroughly greased.”

“Could someone else have used the cart without Glover knowing? Can he claim one of his men there might have?” Joliffe suggested.

“Glover isn’t a trusting man. There’s a door on the cartshed with a padlock on it and he has the only key. No one else could have used it. No, he loaded Leonard’s body onto the cart, brought him here, dumped him, and went home again.”

“Why here?” Ellis asked, still aggrieved about that.

“There’s a question,” Master Barentyne said. “Since he won’t say he did any of this, he hasn’t answered it, but I’ve made guesses. From what you told me . . .” he nodded to Joliffe, “. . . about what Glover was saying against Master Penteney, my guess is that Glover hasn’t forgiven Penteney for gaining everything his brother lost, nor maybe for being rich when Glover isn’t. Glover and Penteney’s brother have stayed true Lollards, but it’s Master Penteney who’s thrived in the world.”

“I thought true Lollards are supposed to scorn worldly things,” Basset said dryly.

“Apparently some don’t scorn them enough,” Master Barentyne said dryly back. “There Glover was with a dead body and a dislike of Master Penteney. Burying a body is a chancy business. People tend to note new-dug earth where there’s no reason for it. In the general way of things, dead bodies don’t stay hidden well, and just left lying about, they draw attention to themselves sooner or later, one way or another, and people ask questions. So he put the body where people wouldn’t look at him about it and made trouble for Master Penteney at the same time. Whether he knew you players were in the barn . . .”

“I don’t think I ever said so to him,” Joliffe said. “But one of his men is courting a maid here and could have heard and talked about it.”

“Lollards don’t care much for plays and players,” Basset said. “Seems Glover is a bitter sort of man. If he did know about us, I doubt he’d have minded making trouble for us as well as Master Penteney. More for the price of one, as it were. Will what you have against him be enough to satisfy a jury, do you think?”

“That’s never easy to say ahead of the time, but even if we fail to get him for the murder, there’s still the Lollardy. That will hold. More importantly for you, I’m satisfied he did it and you’re all free to leave Oxford whenever you choose.”

Relief bright as sunlight after a cloud moves past the sun showed on all their faces; but Rose asked, “What about Mistress Penteney? We’ve heard she’s taken sanctuary and why—that she poisoned the sweetmeats—but why did she do that? Has she said?”

“That she has not. She only claims it was a kind of madness came over her. When she confessed her guilt to her husband, he saw her into sanctuary.” Master Barentyne fixed Joliffe with a hard look. “Just before I came to accuse and arrest her. Almost as if she had had warning I’d come for her.”

Joliffe tried for a look that said he did not understand what Master Barentyne was saying. Master Barentyne answered that with a doubting sound in his throat and went on, “Master Penteney says he doesn’t understand either why she did it, and it doesn’t matter in the end, I suppose, since she’s confessed to it and there’s nothing more the law can do about it except see her into exile and be thankful that God was merciful and none but the idiot died.”

Joliffe curbed the same spasm of anger he had had toward Glover’s easy dismissing of Lewis’s death. Whatever Lewis had lacked in the way of wits, he had been completely, honestly himself—a thing most people rarely were, even those
said
to be whole in their wits. More than that, Lewis had been full of eagerness toward his life and it had been roughly stolen from him. Whatever good came to Kathryn and Simon because of that did not in the least change the wrong that had been done to him.

Joliffe kept all that to himself, though, while Basset thanked Master Barentyne for their release and walked him to the barn doors, saw him away, and stayed there until he was well gone before turning around to say, “Let’s load up. Joliffe, how long will it take to fetch Tisbe back?”

“If I go for her now, we can be on our way by dinnertime.”

“After dinnertime,” Ellis said. “Why travel with empty stomachs?”

“Why not?” said Joliffe, heading out the door. “You travel with an empty head.”

“
Yours!
” Ellis shouted after him.

At the pasturage the fellow presently and somewhat bemusedly in Glover’s place made no protest to Joliffe claiming Tisbe. “Given she’s the scrawniest one in the pasture, you wouldn’t be claiming her if she wasn’t yours,” the man said.

“What about that bay with the white forefeet?” Joliffe asked, pointing across the pasture.

“Odd. The crowner’s man asked about that one, too.”

“And?” Joliffe prompted when the fellow did not continue.

“I don’t know nothing about it, is all. That’s what I told the crowner’s man and what I’m telling you. It was just here one day when I come back from Oxford. When I asked Master Glover about it, he said it belonged to a friend of Master Penteney’s, that’s all. Like your little mare here.”

“What did the crowner’s man say?”

“He didn’t say nothing. Just nodded and walked away. That was just before he arrested Master Glover for that murder, like.”

For some reason none of that seemed to stir the fellow’s curiosity in the slightest.

Some people, Joliffe thought, have more luck with their curiosity than others did.

Tisbe butted her head at his shoulder half the way back to town, as if telling him she had had enough of those other horses and was glad to see him. At the barn the cart was waiting fully loaded, with nothing to do but put her in her harness, but neither Piers nor Basset was there, only Rose and Ellis, looking not so easy as they had when Joliffe had left, and he asked sharply, “What is it? Where are Basset and Piers?”

“Piers is gone to buy meat pies for us,” Rose said. “After you’d gone, we decided not to wait but leave as soon as you came back and eat as we go.”

“Basset . . .” Ellis started, but Piers appeared from behind Tisbe, his arms wrapped around the obviously very full canvas bag the players carried food in when they traveled.

“How much did you buy, in St. Lawrence’s name?” exclaimed Ellis. “Where’s my money? You were supposed to have some left over!”

“The pies looked so good, I bought some for supper, too, and there was someone selling spice cakes next to the pieman, so I bought those, too,” Piers said cheerily. “I spent all the money.”

“I’ll bet if I check your purse I’ll find a few coins,” Ellis muttered threateningly.

“I’ll bet their mine, if you do!” Piers answered, giving the bag over to his mother. He looked around. “Where’s Grandfather?”

“Here,” Basset said, coming into the barn.

With his back to the sunlight his face was too shadowed to read, nor was the feeling in his voice any clearer. Wherever he had been, something had happened and Joliffe braced himself as Basset came toward them, saying, “Joliffe. Piers. You’re both back. Good.” And to all of them, “It was Lord Lovell who wanted to see me. He and his lady are leaving today, too. He says the Penteneys have trouble enough now without guests on hand.”

“Why did he want to see you?” Rose said, her worry plain.

“For this.” Basset was to them now. He held out a several-times folded paper to her. Still watching her father’s face, trying to read it, she took the paper. As she began to unfold it, Joliffe realized it was not paper but parchment. A document of some kind then, with the writing on it done in a fine hand, he could see when she had it open, and a seal attached to the bottom by a ribbon.

But Basset could not wait while she read it out to them or Ellis and Joliffe read it for themselves over her shoulders. Giving way to suddenly open pleasure, he exclaimed in triumph. “Lord Lovell wants us to be his players. He’s offered to be our patron. He said Master Penteney had suggested it. This patent . . .” He slapped a triumphant hand on the parchment. “. . . makes it real. We’re Lord Lovell’s players! With forty shillings a year certain money from him, so long as we show up to perform at Christmastide and some other time of his choosing, wherever he happens to be. To start with, he’d like us with him at Michaelmas at Minster Lovell this year. We’re made!” Basset cried, and grabbed Rose to him in a massive hug while Ellis caught Piers into wild, swinging dance and Joliffe laughed aloud.

Lord Lovell’s players! No longer lordless. No longer unprotected against anyone who might take against them for whatever slight reason or no reason at all. Still on the road from year’s end to year’s end, surely, but . . . Lord Lovell’s players!

They left soon thereafter, Joliffe leading Tisbe, Basset walking with Ellis in excited talk on the cart’s far side, Rose following behind, hand-in-hand with Piers, out of the Penteney gateway, headed for the eastward road, for Aylesbury and places beyond, the world looking a far brighter place than it had looked for a while and a long while past.

Author’s Note

Through Joliffe, this book links with the Dame Frevisse series of mysteries, taking place in the summer after
The Servant’s Tale
.

Lollards were an ongoing trouble in England through the 1400s, though never so dangerous again as in their armed revolt of 1431, talked of in this story. The government and people of the time, lacking the comfort of hindsight, had very reasonable fears against what more trouble the rebellious heretics might cause. The heretics Peter Payne and John Penning existed and were in Bohemia at the time of this story, but the Penteney family is fictional.

As for the use of pamphlets for propaganda purposes before the beginning of printing, contemporary mention is specifically made of Lollard pamphlets circulating at the time of the revolt in 1431. In other words, pamphlets are period.

So are Dr. Thomas Gascoigne’s arguments against players, though in this case they’re drawn, ironically enough, from a Lollard treatise. Dr. Gascoigne is likewise real and quite possibly as unpleasant as he’s shown here, judging by his extent work. John Thamys, too, existed, and St. Edmund Hall still does, now fully an Oxford college in its own right.

My particular thanks go to scholars Dr. Alexandra Johnston and Dr. Chester Scoville of the University of Toronto for their very necessary help with my questions about medieval theater in Oxford. One of the great helps to me in “seeing” medieval theater has been the volumes of the ongoing
Records of Early English Drama—REED
—project at the University of Toronto.

My general thanks and very great appreciation go to all the people with whom I’ve worked, both onstage and off, over many years in many plays, indoors and out. I couldn’t have put on a single play in this book without them.