A Play of Isaac (4 page)

“If that would seem a fair exchange to you. Board and lodging these five days in return for obliging Lewis and performing for our guests?” Master Penteney asked back as politely.

The offer was more than fair. It was all that Basset had hoped for and probably more than he’d thought to get and it had come more as a gift than by bargaining. But Master Richard said with the quiet certainty of someone pointing out a reasonable thing, “Father, there’s going to be no room to spare. Once Lord and Lady Lovell and their people come . . .”

“I hardly think Master Basset and his company expect to stay in our guest rooms,” Master Penteney said.

Basset immediately, smoothly, agreed. “Assuredly not, sir. A corner of any clean place suits us very well.”

And when pushed to it, so did unclean places if there was no other way to have a roof and walls between them and the weather, but neither he nor Joliffe was about to say so.

“There then,” Master Penteney said to his son. “The winter stores are mostly emptied and the hay hardly yet begun to come in. Why not the great barn? They can stay there at no one’s inconvenience, surely.”

“Who’s going to see to Lewis going back and forth to them?” Master Richard asked.

“Matthew, as always. Nor is there any reason they can’t come to the hall. They’ll want to work in it before they perform in it anyway.”

Master Penteney was knowledgeable as well as generous, Joliffe thought. All too often people had to be persuaded players did not step out of thin air into a place to do a play.

He was knowledgeable of more than that, too: he had said Basset’s name without—to the best of Joliffe’s remembering—anyone having said it either here or at the inn.

“It’s going to mean five more people to feed,” Master Richard said. “Shouldn’t you ask Mother . . .”

“Five more mouths won’t break us. Say we do it in honor and for the sake of our Lord’s Body.”

Everyone, Lewis a little behind the others, crossed themselves at the mention of Corpus Christi. Then Master Penteney paused as if waiting for something. When nothing came, he cocked a questioning look at his son. “No other objections?”

Master Richard solemnly shook his head.

“I can’t say you made much of a case against them being here,” his father complained.

“I didn’t see there was much of one to be made,” Master Richard returned. “If there’s somewhere for them to stay and you’re willing to feed them and they’ll earn their keep, what else was there to protest?”

“That they’re vagabonds and therefore probably rascals and so shouldn’t be allowed inside our gates, let be spend whole nights here, able to work who knows what ill doings?” Master Penteney suggested.

Master Richard smiled. “It seemed a rude thing to say to their faces, especially considering we know nothing actually ill against them. Haven’t you said it’s better to let others do wrong to us than to do wrong first?”

“Hm. A point well taken.” Master Penteney returned his heed to Basset. “You see, when raising a son to follow you, it’s ever a peril that he may learn to follow so well he never learns to lead. Therefore, I’ve encouraged him to argue with me.”

“Sometimes and by your leave,” Master Richard said.

“And sometimes without my leave,” his father returned.

“But we’re more private about those,” Master Richard said, smiling.

Master Penteney returned his smile. “Granted.” He turned back to Basset. “By the time you’ve brought the rest of your folk, we’ll have a place ready for you and I dare say Master Fairfield will be waiting.”

Lewis clapped happily. “I have my players!”

“You have your players,” Simon agreed and held out a hand. “Now we have to find out Mistress Penteney and tell her about them.”

“I want to go with them!” Lewis protested.

“No,” Master Penteney said firmly. “Go with Simon now.”

“They have to fetch the other players,” Simon said, going to take Lewis by an unwilling hand. “They have to go for Piers.”

“Piers!” Lewis said, delighted.

“And we’re going to tell Mistress Penteney about them,” Simon repeated. “So come on now.”

Lewis went peaceably enough then. When the door had shut behind them, Master Penteney said to Basset, “Thank you for your kindness to Master Fairfield. It’s appreciated.”

Basset bowed. “As is your kindness to us.”

“We’re both well satisfied then. Richard will see you out, please you.”

It was a gracious dismissal and Basset took it graciously, he and Joliffe both making deep bows before following Master Richard from the room and through the great hall. He left them in the porch and they went on by themselves, across the yard and through the gateway, Joliffe waiting until they were to the street, to say, “It looks like we’ve landed on our feet this time and no mistake.”

“It does indeed,” Basset agreed. “I’ll light a candle to St. Genesius for it.” The patron saint of players, beheaded in ancient Rome after suddenly converting to Christianity in the middle of a play—part of the miracle being that his fellow players had not martyred him for spoiling the performance, before ever the Roman lords laid hands on him.

As they went back toward the inn, Joliffe kept curbed his curiosity at what he had seen pass between Basset and Master Penteney. Curbing curiosity was a necessary courtesy most players kept among themselves. A company of players lived too much together to go asking questions about things someone else might not want to tell. Whatever their lives had been before they joined a company, they mostly knew no more about each other than what each one chose to say by chance or purpose, and mostly it was better that way. Assuredly there were things in Joliffe’s life he was content that neither Basset nor anyone else should ever ask about or know. Leaving Basset to his own secrets was the least he could give in return.

Besides, if he asked something that he shouldn’t, Basset would likely flay him front and back and down both sides with a few very well chosen words. Best not to give him the chance.

At the inn they found that Rose and Ellis, because it was always best to keep the company’s belongings safely basketed except when needed, had the company’s wicker hampers packed. With that already done and the good news given, it was the work of merely moments for Joliffe to hitch Tisbe to their cart while Rose, Ellis, and Piers loaded the baskets in and Basset went to make their farewells to Master Norton, who tried to gouge another sixpence out of him but did not get it.

At the Penteneys they found Lewis waiting in the gateway for them, behind him a man almost as short as he was but older and more strongly built and with nothing lacking in his wits, to judge by the sharp look-over he gave the players while Lewis greeted Piers with, “I’ll show you where! Come on!” and started away at a shambling run.

Piers looked to Basset, who nodded he could go. He did, and the older man, left behind, gave a hard look at him light-footing after Lewis but, seeming satisfied of something, said to Basset, “This way, then.”

At Joliffe’s urging, Tisbe started the cart forward again, following Ellis and Rose who were following Basset who was saying as they went, “Thank you, Master . . . ?”

“Matthew,” the man said. He sounded as if he were still of several minds how much he approved of them being here. “No ‘master’ to it.”

“You see to Master Fairfield,” Basset ventured.

“I’m his keeper is the way most folk put it, like he was an animal. Which he isn’t. He’s just simple.”

“And good-hearted and clear-spirited,” Basset said, “which is more than can be said for a great many men who
ought
to have keepers and don’t.”

The man give Basset a shrewd sideways look. “You’re in the right of it there. Master Fairfield doesn’t need ‘keeping. ’ He just needs watching out for, like you would with a child. I’m the one who does it most of the time and that means, from what Master Penteney has said, that we’ll be seeing something of each other these few days.”

“Indeed,” Basset agreed. “So by your leave, I’ll depend on you to keep us straight with him. Tell us if we start to lead him some way he shouldn’t go.”

“Aye,” Matthew said. “There’s none know him better than me. You listen to what I say and it’ll go well enough.”

“Would he be able to be in one of our plays, do you think. A small part but . . . ?”

Joliffe grinned to himself. Basset would have the man as much on their side as Lewis was before they finished crossing the yard.

As the cart rattled off the cobbles of the fore-end of the yard onto hard-packed bare ground that went the rest of the way to the rear gate, Piers and Lewis disappeared through the double-wide doorway of the barn at the yard’s far end. Joliffe, with the practiced glance of someone who often needed to know quickly as much as he could about where he was, took in the barn’s size, over-large for some place in town, even if on the town’s edge. The well-built stables and long cattle byre facing the house were more than might be expected, too, as well as, on the house side of the yard, the several low, strongly built sheds with hasped and locked heavy doors in a line from the house’s end to the barn where Piers and Lewis had disappeared. To make it all more strange, the whole yard was oddly empty, with no men in sight nor any animals besides a few chickens scratching in the dust. There was not even a muck heap beside the stable.

Ahead of him, Ellis must have noted that, too, because he asked something and Matthew said over his shoulder to him, “Aye, nothing much going on just now. It’s because Master Penteney is a victualler, see. Supplies their beef and mutton and pork and all to a goodly number of the colleges and halls and St. Frideswide’s monastery right here in Oxford, as well as I don’t know what all he sells to London merchants. Whatever the butchers need for the holiday they already have, so he’s cleared the place out for there to be room for Lord and Lady Lovell’s people and horses as they’ll be bringing with them. Then, God willing, we’ll be coming on to more haying. That’ll take up a big part of the great barn where you’re to stay, but there’s room in plenty for you folks for now. Along harvest-time he’ll be buying grain, and right through into winter we’re full up and busy with cattle and sheep and all, as well as whatever he buys in from overseas in the way of spices and the better wines and suchlike. That’s what’s in there.” Matthew nodded at the locked sheds. “He deals back and forth for Lord Lovell and some others, too, that doesn’t want to merchant for themselves. He does all right, does Master Penteney. It’s quiet here only for the while.”

All that explained how Master Penteney could afford to please Lewis to—frankly—excess. What it didn’t explain to Joliffe was why Master Penteney bothered with pleasing him. He held Lewis and Simon’s wardships, yes, and that meant he was responsible for their care and up-raising until they came of age, meanwhile running their inheritance and taking the profits of it. How well or ill a ward was kept depended on their guardian and on how much of a profit he meant to have out of the wardship. A ward could be nearly starved and go in rags the while they were in an unkind person’s keeping, though it was rare for that to happen and there were laws to prevent it; but there was nothing that forced Master Penteney to indulge Lewis with as much care and freedom as he plainly did—not when, as an Eden-child, Lewis could simply have been locked in a room and fed, even removed as heir and Simon put in his place. Joliffe came back to wondering why hadn’t he been.

They were nearly to the great barn. Reared up to the sky and spread wide to either side of its broad double doorway, it was larger than some village churches Joliffe knew, maybe larger than the hall in the house behind him. Piers bounded out from the shadowy inside and called “Come on! Wait ’til you see!”

The others went ahead. Although horse and cart would go easily through the doorway, Joliffe stopped and spoke to Tisbe, then left her standing outside before he followed the others into the high-raftered space, thick with shadows after the bright day outside, in time to hear Matthew say, “All the rain this spring brought the grass along. With the good weather these past few weeks, Master Penteney had some meadows mowed, making early hay on the chance the weather turns again, the way it has these past two summers and we get to make no more hay. There’s not much, though, and still plenty of room for you.” He raised his voice. “Master Fairfield, you stay off that mow! You got your good clothes on!”

Well away toward the far end of the barn and the golden mound of hay there, Lewis and Piers pulled up short and looked at each other, before Lewis hunched his shoulders toward his ears in a massive shrug and together they turned back.

“Have my work cut out for me with two of ’em to watch,” Matthew muttered, but it sounded like token grumbling and he added, “Won’t hurt him to have some new company for a change, someone to play with, like, and your boy’s not making fun of him. That’s good.”

But then, anyone who would let Piers talk and show off all he wanted was going to find him good company, Joliffe thought. The rest of them might even be spared Piers’s chattering at them for the while, if Lewis was willing to listen enough.

“You’re welcome to bring your cart right on inside. Settle down wherever you like,” Matthew went on. “Help yourself to hay for bedding if you like. Master Penteney says you’re not to be grudged it if you want it. He says, too, your horse can be put to pasture with his if you like. Save mucking out here, don’t you see, and feeding it since you’re not going to need it these few days.”

“That’s kind indeed,” Basset said.

“Where?” Joliffe asked, knowing he’d be the one to take her.

“You go out the rear gate here into the lane and head north,” Matthew answered. He went on to tell Joliffe how to know the place when he saw it while Rose called to Piers and Lewis, headed now for the cart, “You two leave those baskets alone for now. When we’re settled in, you and Master Fairfield can go through them, Piers, but not yet.”