A Play of Dux Moraud

by Margaret Frazer

  Now, with Gil to be maybe of their company, he could think more directly about possibilities, ignoring Tisbe while he did, knowing full well she did not need him. The mare had been with the company long enough that she knew her business. Set out along a road, she simply kept on going. If she came to a crossroads and no one told her otherwise, she stopped until told which way to turn. If she came to a bad stretch of mud, holes, ruts, or rocks, she waited for someone to guide her and the cart carefully past it. When a village or town came into sight, she slowed until told whether or not the players meant to stop and make ready to perform there or else go straight on. This last year, things being as bad as they were with the ruined harvest, they had played everywhere they came to, needing whatever farthings or foodstuffs were given them in return.

  Supposing any were given at all.

  With Lord Lovell’s coins in their purse these past few months, they had done a little more choosing; and today, with more of Lord Lovell’s coins in hand and some place particular they were supposed to be, they simply traveled on. Not that there were many places to pause the way they were going, north and east through the wide forest of Wychwood, but by late afternoon they were beyond it, and with early dark drawing in because of the rain, they stopped for the night in a village where the reeve agreed they could shelter in his barn in return for performing for his family after supper.

  That was a good enough exchange. “Though we don’t have to give as much as we might, since we’re feeding ourselves,” Basset said over the players’ own supper of Gil’s meat pie and a leather bottle of ale brought from Minster Lovell. “This is excellent pie, young Gil. Our thanks to your mother and welcome to you.”

  Basset lifted his handleless cup as he said it and the others followed suit. Gil grinned and lifted his in return. “My thanks to you,” he said. “For taking me on.”

  “We’ll see how thankful you are in a week or so, once Basset has put you to work,” Ellis said. But he was smiling. He tended toward black-browed frowns more than any of them, but even he was presently in good humour, being well-fed, well-sheltered, and with money in hand.

  As the players had expected, after supper they found most of the village crowded into the reeve’s house. There was not much space left for them to play but they were used to that and began with some juggling by Basset, Ellis, and Piers. Then Joliffe played his lute (his juggling skills were execrable) while Piers sang in his bright, clear child’s voice. Basset’s sleight-of-hand tricks followed, accompanied by a running exchange of practiced insults between Joliffe and Ellis that rocked their lookers-on with laughter and approving shouts.

  Rose kept aside, near the door with Gil, and slipped him away as Basset began his flowered closing speech of thanks to all, interrupted by Joliffe and Ellis snipping insults at each other behind his back until with a roar he chased them both out the door, leaving Piers to make the final bow all by himself with a flourish of his feathered cap and a wide, triumphant smile before running after the others, leaving shouts, laughter, and clapping behind him.

  All the brightness of performance was gone from them, though, while they laid out their pads and blankets on the barn’s packed-earth floor by the small light of a single tallow candle in a lantern. With no one to see them, they moved with the tiredness earned by a day’s walking and an evening’s work, and Gil asked somewhat shyly, “Do you have to do that all the time? Play at the day’s end?”

  “Often,” Basset said. “Nor it doesn’t do to give less for these things. Next time we come this way, they’ll remember us, and better they remember well than ill. Value for value.”

  “And at the end of a rainy day there isn’t better value than a dry place to sleep,” Rose said. “Piers, don’t you dare lie down in those wet hosen.” She had set up a drying rack around the small clay pot that carried their fire and was hanging all their hosen over it. Fed with a little of their hoarded charcoal and the dry sticks they kept in the cart against wet days, the fire heated the pot; the pot, then covered to slow the fire to a smother, gave off warmth most of a night—too little warmth to be much use against cold nights but grand for drying wet hosen, and dry hosen were far more pleasant to put on in the morning than were damp.

  Piers stripped his legs bare at his mother’s order, yawning while he did. Ellis, already sitting on his blankets, was rubbing his bare feet as if they ached, while Basset lowered himself with a groan onto his bed; and Gil asked, “You seemed not tired at all while you were playing. How do you do that after a day of walking?”

  “Being half-mad or else an idiot helps,” Joliffe said, spreading his still-damp cloak over his blankets.

  “Then you should be better at it than any of us,” Ellis muttered.

  “Pretend I’ve just thrown my pillow at you,” Joliffe said. His pillow being a small oblong of straw-stuffed canvas and somewhat hard.

  “Pretend I’ve just thrown it back at you,” Ellis said around a yawn. He slid between his own cloak-covered blanket and straw-stuffed sleeping pad.

  “We’re players,” Basset said, answering Gil. “That means that when we’re pretending to be someone, we feign feelings that they have, not our own. Tonight we were ‘the jolly players,’ full of mirth and fun. At Minster Lovell you saw Joliffe as the fair Marian and Ellis as bold Robin, most wonderfully in love with one another. Do they look to be in love with one another to you, now that you know them?”

  Joliffe made mime of gagging, and from the depths of his blanket, Ellis snorted. Rose, kneeling, just finished with tucking Piers into his own bed, turned and reached, smiling, across her own bed toward Ellis, who put out a hand and briefly clasped hers. With her was where his love lay, and hers with him, however rarely it came to more than wishing between them.

  Gil looked as if he were sorting through a great many thoughts as he crawled into his own blankets.

  In the morning Basset’s value for value was rewarded. The rain had stopped in the night and a yellowish dawn was trying to happen through thinning clouds as they started out, cloaks and leather shoes still damp and stomachs only somewhat satisfied with the barley gruel and the bit of yesterday’s bread that Rose had portioned them for breakfast. But as Tisbe turned the cart into the village street, headed the way she had been going yesterday, a woman came out from one of the houses, hurried toward Basset, thrust a small loaf of bread into his hands, and said, “For last night. Our own thanks.’Tisn’t much, but it’s something.”

  Loaf in one hand, Basset swept off his hat with the other and made her a low bow. “Good lady, that it comes from your fair self makes it precious beyond gold.”

  She laughed at him but was blushing, pleased, as she retreated to her cottage. Only when the village was behind them did Basset say to Gil at his side, “Folk know when you’ve given fully and fairly to them. Some will take it all and give little or nothing. Some pay what’s asked and no more. Some, like that good woman who owed us nothing, give something more precious than a silver coin from a lord.” Because in a dearth-time like this year, silver coins might sometimes be more readily had than bread. “It’s still warm from her oven,” Basset said. “Shall we have it now or save it?”

  The vote was entirely to have it now. Warm, fresh bread was too good a thing to let go cold for later; and though divided among the six of them, the little loaf did not go far, the pleasure of it raised spirits.

  The drying weather raised spirits more, nor did it seem there’d been so much rain here: the going was none so bad, with rarely need to heave the cart along through a mud-hole. Basset had taken one of their scripts from the box and tucked it inside his doublet before they had started today. Now he brought it out and set Gil to reading it aloud, first to find out what possibilities his voice had, then to begin training him both to understand what he read and how to make the most of it.

  “These aren’t just words you’re reading, lad. These are people talking. You have to understand not just what they’re saying but why they’re saying it. Because if you don’t underst
and why they’re saying it, chances are your listeners won’t understand it either, and nothing loses you a crowd like them not understanding what you’re doing. And if you lose your crowd—”

  “You lose your money,” chorused Joliffe, Ellis, and Piers from ahead, aside, and behind. It was a lesson they’d heard more often than almost any other.

  Ignoring them, Basset went on, “You lose your money. Which can mean no food for your belly or roof for your head that night.”

  “Which we don’t always have anyway,” Ellis put in. “You’ve been lucky so far.”

  “Remember when—” Piers started.

  “We’ll remember later,” Basset said, probably not trusting what Piers would choose to remember. “Right now I want to work him.” And through the rest of the morning’s miles Basset did.

  The rest of them closely heeded how it went, not for the sake of the lesson itself but to judge what they could about Gil, because besides that they needed him to be good, they needed to know something about him. They all lived too much together, day in and out and nights, too, to add to the company someone with whom they could not live—a complainer or a whiner or someone given to quarrels or naturally glum, unable to find an often desperately needed laugh when things were bad; or someone too weak in body to keep up their traveling pace; or too weak in voice to be of use; or too stupid to learn.

  They already knew Gil could keep to the walking well enough, and before the morning was out, they found he was both clear-voiced and fairly quick to catch what Basset wanted from him. He was also cheerful at it. How cheerful he would be after a few weeks on the road was another matter—one that would have to wait those few weeks for answer, Joliffe supposed.

  They paused along the road to eat their noontide bread and cheese and ale. The sun was weakly out but the grass was still too wet for sitting on. Rose and Piers sat on the lowered tail-gate of the cart. The rest of them made do with standing, and when the first edge of hunger was off and everyone’s chewing had slowed, Basset said, “So, young Gil, how far would you say we are from Deneby?”

  With all of them looking at him, Gil seemed to find his bread and cheese suddenly far too dry in his mouth; but he chewed and swallowed and said, “My guess is about two hours’ walk, Master Basset. But that’s just a guess.”

  “That’s good enough,” Basset assured him. “Suppose you tell us, though, before we get there, what you know about this Sir Edmund Deneby and his people. There’s a wife and a son and the daughter whose marriage they’re working toward, yes?”

  “Mariena,” Gil said. “I’ve seen her. She’s lovely.” From the way he said the word, her loveliness was still warm in his memory, and Joliffe felt a twitch of wariness. They didn’t need a lovesick boy mooning after their host’s daughter. Gil shrugged. “Her brother is just a boy. But then there’s Lady Benedicta.” His voice went altogether the other way from how he had spoken of her daughter.

  “Hard to please, is she?” Basset asked.

  Gil paused over his answer before saying slowly, “I don’t know what she is. I never had anything to do with her, nor my father either. I only saw her at meals in the great hall. A hard-favored woman. The sort you don’t want ever mad at you?”

  He made the last a question, as if uncertain that it told Basset enough. Basset acknowledged with a nod that it did and asked, “What of Sir Edmund?”

  “He’s a good sort, my father says. Straight-forward. No twisting about. His people like him.”

  Basset nodded some more, satisfied with that. “Well done. Thank you.”

  Well done, indeed. It never hurt to know ahead of time what sort of people they were going to play for. From what Gil said, Joliffe judged that Sir Edmund would probably be easy to please but his wife might be a trouble; but among Basset’s sayings about trouble was the palpable truth, “If there isn’t one, there’s another,” and they had had to deal with troublesome wives before now. Sometimes it took no more than doing a play that ended with a wife having the upper hand. Sometimes it took other than that. They would have to wait until they were at Deneby to judge, but at least they were forewarned.

  While they passed around the leather bottle of ale for the last time before moving on, Basset said, “I’m thinking that we should stop in Deneby village before pushing on to the manor. There’s a village, isn’t there, young Gil?”

  “About a quarter mile from the manor house itself,” Gil readily supplied.

  “Better yet,” said Basset. “I say we stop there for the night, to learn what else we can about what’s what at Deneby. Play something, then spend a few hours of the evening at the alehouse, and move on in the morning to present ourselves to Sir Edmund and all.”

  There were general nods to that before Ellis asked, “Play what?”

  That was always a closely considered question, because an ill-judged choice, no matter how well played, could put them into trouble in some places or, here, set them off on the wrong foot before they were even at the manor.

  “Not a farce about marriage,” Rose said. “Not before we know how feelings are running about this one.”

  “Nor about stewards,” Basset said, and explained to Gil, “Making sport of stewards and reeves and any other manor officers is always an easy way to laughs in villages, but we’re going to be here too many days together and there’s no use in finding out too late the steward overmuch minds being laughed at.”

  Gil nodded with ready understanding. “That play you did about the priest, then? That had us all laughing.”

  Basset briefly considered but said, “Best not. We might want the priest’s friendship while we’re there.”

  “A saint’s play,” Joliffe said. “That won’t offend anyone.”

  “So long as it’s not one about the virtues of virginity,” Basset said. “Virginity not being what’s on people’s minds at Deneby these days. But, yes, one of the slap-and-fall-about saints plays should do. Are we ready to move on? Gil, why don’t you walk ahead with our good Tisbe, and Joliffe and I can talk about which play will serve.”

  That was reasonable enough; but when Basset sorted it so that Rose and Piers were walking beside the cart, and he and Joliffe well behind it as they set off again, Joliffe knew they were going to talk about more than which play to do. Nor did Basset waste time but said when the others were enough ahead not to hear him, “We’ll do St. Nicholas and the Thief. There. That’s settled. Now, about this spying we’re to do.”

  “It’s not my fault,” Joliffe tried.

  “Of course it’s your fault,” Basset said without heat. “You made clever this summer and got yourself noticed. There’s nobody to blame for that except you.”

  “Maybe we could blame Lord Lovell? He’s the one who’s done the noticing.”

  “No one ever got far in the world by blaming a lord for anything. No, it’s all of it your fault and that’s settled. It’s what we’re to do about it is the question.”

  “Be such poor spies Lord Lovell doesn’t ask us to do it again?”

  “And maybe lose his interest in us? No, honest work is honest work. You and I will do what we can, keep the others out of it if possible, and hope for the best.”

  “Spying is honest work?”

  “Starving may be more honest,” Basset said with sudden grimness. “But if I’m choosing, I’ll forgo the starving, thank you.”

  “Basset, I am sorry for this,” Joliffe said, serious.

  But Basset waved both that and his own grimness away with one hand, saying, easy again, “Sorry butters no parsnips, boy. Not that it would much matter if it did. I’ve never been partial to parsnips. We’ll do what we can and it will have to be enough. Just like with everything else in life. Come. Let’s tell the others who we’re going to be this afternoon.”

  Chapter 3

  Deneby village was a long curve of road with houses pushed up against it along both sides, their gardens and byre-yards behind them. There was no green, only a widening of the street between the churchyard and an al
ehouse, and the players chose there for their play. Gil had his first lesson from Ellis, Joliffe, and Rose in how quickly the simple wooden frame could be set up beside the cart and the cloth hung from it to make the back of what was instantly then their playing area, while Basset made a grand, booming speech that brought people to see what they were doing and Piers went skipping up and down the street, playing merrily on a recorder to draw more folk from their houses.

  Despite it was mid-afternoon, there were enough Deneby women and children and men not out to the fields—too soaked as the fields presently were for autumn plowing or planting—to make a good gathering, and to them Basset announced that he and his company were come from Lord Lovell especially and particularly to perform for their lord and lady toward the lady Mariena’s wedding day but that first and here and now they would play, for the delight and bettering of all good folk here, a tale of St. Nicholas.

  While Piers played and jigged in front of the curtain, Basset went behind it, for Rose to help him quickly into St. Nicholas’ long robe while Ellis put the bishop’s mitre on his head. Joliffe handed him the episcopal crozier and, all dignity, Basset strode out and around to the curtain’s front to take up a pose as a statue of St. Nicholas on a cloth-covered box. Piers scampered out of sight the other way, past Joliffe—gowned and wimpled as a woman—coming on with a small, closed chest that “she” set in front of the “statue.” While “she” was making prayer then to St. Nicholas to guard her wealth while she was gone, two riders came along the street and drew rein to one side of the crowd to watch and listen. Joliffe finished his speech and went from sight around one end of their curtain; was hardly out of sight when Ellis as a Thief went out around the other end, intent on the chest of treasure.