A Play of Knaves (12 page)

“At least a hedgehog curls up and leaves people alone,” Nicholas said bitterly. “
They
never do. They’re more like hawks. They clutch what they want and never let go.”

That was somehow thrown at Claire, who said back at him as if challenged about something, “Not me. I’m not going to marry Hal Medcote, no matter what he wants.”

“You’re safe enough,” Nicholas returned sharply. “Medcote doesn’t want you married to Hal.”

Joliffe, knowing he should not, asked at Nicholas, “What about you to his daughter?”

Both Nicholas and Claire turned startled looks at him before Nicholas burst out, “How have you heard that?” And answered his own question fiercely. “They were talking of it there last night, I suppose. Gloating.”

Paying no heed to the dark looks Ellis, Basset, and even Rose were giving him, Joliffe said, “It was servants’ talk. You know how they are.”

That deepened Ellis’ frown at him, but Nicholas accepted he meant Medcote’s servants and shrugged angrily as Joliffe pushed further, saying, “But surely it won’t come to you marrying her if you don’t want to.”

Instead of Nicholas, Claire answered, “That’s the trouble! Medcote claims that because Francis Brook died that . . .”

“Claire!” Nicholas exclaimed.

Claire clapped her free hand over her mouth and said through it, “Oh, Nicholas, I’m sorry.”

Nicholas stood up, threw what was left of his cake into the fire, and said even more bitterly, “It’s all right. They’ve surely heard of it.”

Scrambling to her feet, too, Claire said, “But it doesn’t matter. You didn’t do it.”

“I did. I killed him, and nothing is going to change that and now I’m going to have to marry Eleanor Medcote to make up for it.”

He turned harshly away and started for the gateway. Behind him Claire said hurriedly to everyone, and low so that maybe Nicholas did not hear her, “I’m sorry. He was only nine when it happened. It was only ill-chance but he . . .” She faltered, made a helpless gesture.

By then the players were all on their feet, too, Basset saying, “We understand.”

Claire started to turn to follow Nicholas, but Joliffe said after her, “Surely Father Hewgo could help him. Could find him a way to ease his conscience?”

Claire turned around, walking backward and still away while answering, angry and scornful together, “Father Hewgo? He only makes everything worse whenever he’s asked for help. He’s a horrible man.” Then with belated courtesy she said with a smile to Rose, “The cake was very good. Thank you,” before she turned again, gathered her skirts, and ran to catch up to Nicholas, already disappeared into the lane.

In the players’ momentary silence after she was gone, a green woodpecker’s yelping laugh broke out in the woods along the stream. Then Piers faced his mother and said accusingly, “You gave away our cake!”

“Not much of it,” Rose said evenly. She smiled at her father. “I thought you’d want the chance to ask or hear things from them.”

“As ever,” Joliffe said to her, “you’re as wise as you are fair.”

“And you’re as ever rattling off your mouth like that rat-a-tat woodpecker,” Ellis snapped at him.

“Which is better than what some people rattle off,” Rose shot back at him.

Ellis’ mouth shut with a snap as Gil and Piers found somewhere else to look and Basset said hurriedly, “Can we all have another piece of your wondrous cake?”

Making her point that it was only Ellis who had her anger, Rose smiled—albeit a somewhat tightened smile—on the rest of them and cut pieces for each of them, even Ellis, who took his with his eyes down and muttered thanks.

While they ate, Basset passed around the leather bottle of cider that young Nicholas had brought. The cider being good, too, they went on passing it when they had finished their second shares of cake. It was a contented moment, all of them sitting at ease together, not bothering with talk. In the quiet Joliffe could hear the burble of the stream away in the woods and the tear of grass as Tisbe grazed, and far too soon Basset stretched and readied to rise, saying, “Back to work with us.”

Less ready to be up and about again, Joliffe said with a nod toward the gateway, “It doesn’t make sense what the boy said. However guilty Nicholas may still feel, why would Ashewell be thinking to marry his son to Eleanor Medcote to ‘make up’ for a death the boy was too young to be blamed for? Just because Medcote may say it doesn’t mean Ashewell has to go along with it. There must be more to it than we’ve learned.”

“But not more that we
have
to learn,” Basset said. “This is enough to give the bailiff.”

“But why wasn’t the abbey’s bailiff able to learn as much as we have?” Joliffe wondered.

“For all we know, he may know all this and there’s something more, something worse, that we’ve not found out any more than he has,” Basset said. “Or else, not being as lowly as we are, he doesn’t have free talk with servants and children careless with their betters’ secrets. Nor are you putting me off working the plays again. Up with you.”

“Joliffe hasn’t written what we need yet,” Gil pointed out.

Basset shook his head. “I’m getting too old for all this,” he muttered. “I’d forgotten.” He brightened. “Still, he can write while the rest of us work our words together. We’re not so steady on them as I’d like. An hour, say?” he said at Joliffe.

“An hour?” Joliffe protested. “For all you want done? An hour?”

Choosing to take that as agreement rather than protest, Basset said, “Good. We’ll leave you to it then.” And to the rest of them, “Come on. We’ll set up the frame and curtain before we start.”

“We’ll only have to take them down again to take to the church,” Ellis protested.

“So it goes,” Basset agreed cheerily.

To the single wooden bar held up by two pairs of slanted legs and hung with a curtain that had sufficed them for years in their travels, Basset had lately added a second frame that could be put up behind the first and then two wood rods fastened between their ends to make a square space enclosed by more curtains that gave the players somewhere to retire out of sight to change their garb and their person when need be in a play. Held together with wooden pegs, the whole thing was easily put up and easily taken down by either several or all of them working together. Joliffe left them to it, collected his writing box with its paper, pens, and ink from the cart, and went off to the far end of the pasture where a stump at the woods’ edge made a good place to sit well away from the others.

For all his protests, the needed speeches came readily—one to cover Christ’s coming to Jerusalem and set up what was to come, another to cover the gap left by leaving out Good Friday’s play of Christ’s trial and torments, his crucifixion, and the bringing of his body down from the cross. Basset was right to forgo that one, difficult with too many changes of characters and garb except for Ellis as Christ.

Finished, knowing it was not his best work but sure it would suffice, Joliffe heard the others arguing over some piece of business in the garden at Gethsemane and decided against rejoining them just yet. With paper, pens, and ink closed into their box again, he gave way to the gentle blandishment of the midday sun’s warmth and stretched himself out on the grass on the far side of the stump, his head cushioned on a grassy lump, his hands folded on his chest. He had slept little and poorly last night, was shortly drowsing, and awoke to find Rose smiling down at him.

“That,” he said accusingly, “is how you smile at Piers when he’s asleep.”

“And for the same reason,” Rose returned. “You both look so sweetly innocent when you’re asleep.”

“And we’re quiet, too,” Joliffe said, sitting up.

“That more than anything,” Rose agreed. “Father wants to know if you’re sleeping for inspiration or resting from your labors.”

“Resting from my labors.” Joliffe got up and picked up his writing box. “They’re ready for another go-through?”

“Father is, anyway.”

“That’s what matters.”

The other players had snatched a rest while Rose fetched Joliffe. They were eating spice cake again and drinking cider, and Joliffe quickly took his share before all was gone, handing the fresh-made speeches to Basset while saying around a mouthful of cake, “You’ve not said who’ll have these, so I kept them short on the chance it was going to be me.”

“You could have made them longer. I’m giving them to Gil,” Basset said.

“Ha!” Ellis said, giving Gil a friendly shove on the shoulder. “You’re the victim of choice this time!”

Gil, grinning, reached for the paper. He was like the rest of them: however much they griped and groaned, they were all usually happier with more lines than less. And while Joliffe had indeed kept the speeches short, he had expected Gil to be Basset’s choice and written them richly because Gil, for all he was not yet a year in the company, was skilled beyond the usual at the work, taking to Basset’s training much like the proverbial duck to water. Besides that, he learned with an ease to be envied and would have the lines to heart by tomorrow with no trouble.

For now, though, he took his place in front of the forward curtain and read the opening speech aloud from the page, finishing with a low bow and a wide sweep of an imagined hat to the imagined audience before disappearing around one end of the curtain as the other players came out from around its other end to begin
Christ Against the Money-changers
.

The play was difficult because it needed not only Christ but money-changers for him to attack, and at least the Jews’ High Priest to be offended by it all and, if not all the Apostles, at least Judas to be horrified. With Ellis playing Christ, Basset as the High Priest, and Joliffe as Judas, it was left to Gil—crossing quickly behind the curtain to come out on the heels of the others—and Piers, and perforce Rose to be everyone else. They were not troubling with garb today, but tomorrow Rose would have to submit, reluctantly and only because of necessity, to being a money-changer, wearing a false beard and a man’s long robe.

They made their way through all the plays more smoothly than they had earlier, finding that the new speeches eased and evened the pace, and at the end Basset said, “That went well enough. We’ve remembered what we’re doing. Gil, are you going to be all right with learning what you need to by tomorrow?”

“No trouble at all,” Gil said. “It’s good, clear verse.” He grinned. “For once.”

Still grinning, he ducked aside from the clout that Joliffe aimed vaguely at his head.

“As ever, I’m damned with faint praises,” Joliffe whined, and Ellis countered, “Don’t complain. Usually we just damn you and forget the praises.”

“Well, I’m satisfied with it all,” Basset said. “Does anyone want to run through it again, or shall we let it rest until tomorrow and leave Gil to get on with learning his words?”

The vote was entirely in favor of rest for everyone but Gil, who went away contentedly to find a quiet place in the woods to work. Piers, stripped to shirt and braies, headed for the stream to play. Basset settled on cushions piled beside the cart where the sun was falling most warmly, “To consider the inside of my eyelids,” he said, folding his hands across his middle and closing his eyes. Rose was stirring the pot of good-smelling stew that hung over the fire, and Ellis was making himself useful by bringing wood from the small stack under the cart to pile beside the firepit. Joliffe gathered what he needed to curry Tisbe, a soothing pastime for both of them, and started away to where she was grazing. Behind him, he heard Ellis say something, low-voiced, to Rose. If Rose answered aloud, Joliffe did not hear her; but when he reached Tisbe and looked back, Ellis was nowhere in sight and Rose was alone by the fire, still stirring the pot with a spoon in one hand while wiping her eyes with her apron with the other, despite the smoke was drifting away from her.

With a sigh for both of them, Joliffe set to brushing Tisbe, saying softly in her ear while he did, “In a lot of ways, it’s none so bad being a horse, you know.”

She nickered down her long nose at him, telling him—he supposed—that he said true but that an occasional feed-bag of oats would not come amiss.

Chapter 8

The players ended the day by loading almost every-thing into their cart again, excepting what they needed for sleep and eating, and that—except for the tent—they would load in the morning. They expected to spend tomorrow night in the field, but through the day none of them would be here and as Basset was wont to say, “Take care now and maybe lose less later.”

That done and the sun trailing sunset colors down the clear western sky as blue shadows spread and deepened outward across the pasture from trees and hedgerows, they gathered around the fire and to their supper of Rose’s good stew and yesterday’s bread. For all that they had not been on the road today, they had worked and worded enough that they were satisfactorily tired and there was little talk among them. Even Rose’s anger at Ellis seemed to be wearing out, Joliffe thought. Forgiveness might be a while in coming, but the worst edge to her anger was gone.

Joliffe’s worry was that with each forgiveness given, a little more of Rose’s love wore off. That what she gave was becoming not so much forgiveness as a slow wearing out of caring about what Ellis did or didn’t do.

What Ellis should maybe begin to fear was not her anger but the day her love was too worn away for her to care about him enough to bother with anger anymore.

Where he sat a little way from the fire, Joliffe watched the White Horse on its hill slowly disappear into the gathering dusk as the sun slid away and was gone; he wondered if it was more painful for love to once have been and slowly die or worse for love never to have been at all. He didn’t know. He had never loved in a way where losing mattered. Nor did he know whether that said good or ill about him, that he had never loved that way.

What he more deeply wondered was whether he ever would. And then, to the side, as it were, he wondered if there had ever been love between Medcote and his wife—or any love in that family at all. There had been nothing of it to be seen yesterday, surely.