A Play of Dux Moraud

by Margaret Frazer

  “Children,” Basset said in his schoolmaster-in-classroom voice. “Behave. May we begin?”

  Despite his unwillingness at the start, Gil did well at his lessoning. By the end of it, he might not have had a girlish swing to his hips yet but he could drop a creditable curtsy. He did tread on his skirt’s hem much, but he fell over only once, and when they had finished, Basset allowed it was a promising beginning.

  “Better than Joliffe,” Ellis said, sitting aside to watch. “Didn’t he turn an ankle, almost break it, while he was learning?”

  “No,” Joliffe protested strongly.

  “I remember mending his hems a great many times,” Rose offered. “He kept tearing them out with his big feet.”

  “Everyone picks on me,” Joliffe complained.

  “It’s because it’s such fun,” Ellis returned.

  Lessons finished, Piers and Gil were sent off to fetch water and some hay for Tisbe. Rose took the afternoon’s pause to lie down for a rest, and Ellis set to scraping out a firepit in the packed earth floor. Joliffe, before taking a rest himself, went to check Tisbe, tied to the cartshed’s end wall and taking life easy. While he was feeling down her legs and seeing that her hooves were clean, Basset joined him, which was reasonable—Tisbe’s well-being was their well-being—but Joliffe supposed that Basset had more than Tisbe on his mind, and straightening from her last hoof, said to him, too quietly for anyone else to hear, “You hauled a good bucketful of information out of Will. We know more than we did.”

  “Not that any of it seems any particular use,” Basset answered, stroking the mare’s neck. “But then we couldn’t expect that anything even the boy knows would be all that secret. And maybe we’ll be fortunate and there won’t be any secrets to find out here after all.”

  “We can only hope,” said Joliffe.

  Chapter 6

  That evening, the play, done in the great hall by torchlight after supper when the household was at ease and ready to be diverted, went well. Gil joined in the deviling with Piers without stumble or fault. “Almost as if you knew what you were doing,” Ellis said, slapping him on the back as they made their way back to the cartshed by lantern-light through a soft rain.

  “Now if we can just teach him to talk, he may make a player,” Joliffe said.

  Gil, too happy to mistake their jibing for anything but the friendliness it was, kept saying, “I did it, didn’t I? I did it.”

  “You did indeed do it,” Basset assured him.

  “Wait until you’ve done it fifty times and see how you feel about it,” Ellis muttered.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Basset said. “Every set of lookers-on and every place we play is different and that makes it a different play every time.”

  “Not different enough,” said Ellis. Rose poked him none too gently in his arm to shut him up.

  At the cartshed they changed out of their playing garb, and while Rose put it all away, Basset started a small fire in the firepit and the others laid out the bedding around it. Joliffe saw Ellis whisper in Rose’s ear, but she shook her head to whatever he said or asked and turned her back on him, her eyes downcast. Suddenly deeply glum, Ellis kicked his bedding before lying down.

  Gil was already into his own bedding and looked to be gone into instant, exhausted sleep as soon as he was under his blanket. The rest of them took hardly longer at it, with Joliffe maybe the last to go into sleep. He was aware of everyone else’s evened breathing around him, anyway, as he lay watching the small firelight’s orange flickering among the shadows of the cartshed’s rafters and roof, thinking, but not much, until he slept, too.

  Morning came as damp and drizzling as last night had been, with no comfort from the burned-out fire and only Piers and Gil seeming ready to take on the day cheerfully despite of all. Joliffe had a wary eye for Ellis, who was gone from yesterday’s good humour to sullenness, while Basset groaned when he shoved aside his blanket and moved only slowly and with what looked like pain as he made to climb to his feet. Rose, turning over the fire’s ashes to find if any embers remained, looked quickly to him. “Your arthritics?” she asked.

  “Not my arthritics,” Basset said firmly. “I never invited or paid them to come and wouldn’t keep company with them if I had a choice.” Groaning, he used the near cartwheel to pull himself upright, his back and knees straightening unwillingly, before he went on, still firmly, “Not my arthritics. Given chance to choose, I’d reject them utterly.”

  “I’ll get your medicine,” said Rose. “Ellis, see to these embers, if you will.”

  Ellis muttered something about the embers being the only warm thing around here, but Rose gave no sign she heard him as she went in at the rear of the cart to fetch her box of simples. Doctors, like so much else in their lives, cost too much to be indulged in lightly; Rose kept various herbs and other remedies to hand, treating the company’s slight hurts and ailments herself when there was need. When Basset’s joints flared into pain they were a little helped by an ointment of mallow and sheep’s tallow. It did not cure but usually at least eased the pain. This morning, though, it hardly did even that if Basset’s hobble when they set out toward the hall to break their fast was anything by which to judge. But his stiffness seemed to ease as he walked so that he was barely limping by the time they crossed the yard. Only someone who knew him, watching carefully, would see he moved in pain.

  As was usual in great houses, breakfast was laid out on a long table in the hall—warm, new bread; cheese; cold meat from last night’s supper; ale—for folk to help themselves, eat standing, and get on with the day, with the steward’s clerk Duffeld standing by to see that no one ate more than their share or lingered when they should be to work. He kept as sharp an eye on the players as on everyone else and said to Basset when he passed close to him, “You had hay for your horse yesterday. You’ll be taking it out to graze today?”

  “We will, sir,” Basset assured him heartily, as if appreciating a fine thought generously offered instead of a near-complaint curtly given, and moved on before the man could say more.

  Back at the cartshed, Rose piled everyone’s cushions on top of each other against a cartwheel, so Basset could sit higher than the ground. That left the rest of them to stand, squat on their heels, or sit on the dirt, but none objected, pretending not to see how Basset eased himself onto the stacked cushions, his mouth tight-held to keep in a groan. If he said nothing, then neither would they, but it was always a worse sign when Basset ceased to grumble about his infirmity. His silence when so obviously in pain meant the pain was gone past complaint into plain enduring.

  Once he was set, though, he looked them over and said cheerfully, “Here’s how I think today should go. Piers, you and Gil will take Tisbe to graze this morning and collect us firewood while you do. The rest of you, we need more talk over what plays we’ll be doing these next few days. Then, Joliffe, I want you to get on with your writing, while Ellis and Rose and I go through the garb and properties to be sure of everything. This afternoon we’ll continue young Gil’s training.”

  “It’s raining,” Piers complained.

  “You’ll not melt,” his grandfather assured him.

  “Joliffe always takes Tisbe.”

  That was true but Joliffe suggested, “It will give you chance to tell Gil stories about us all without us overhearing you.”

  “And smacking you hard for it,” Ellis added.

  Piers brightened. “Come on, Gil.”

  “Before you go, though,” Basset added, “do duty with the shovel and find the stable’s dung heap.”

  Piers groaned. When on the road they left certain horse-based problems by the wayside when they moved on. Here, lacking that advantage, Tisbe’s dung had to be seen to.

  “And Gil,” Basset went on, “you might as well fill the water bucket again while he does that.”

  The boys went, and Ellis looked up from wooing the fire to flames again to ask Basset, “Are you planning to play Gil again tonight?”

  “
Last night gave him confidence. Now we give him training,” Basset said. “He’s had a taste of applause. He’ll take even better to the work.”

  “So tonight we do what?” Ellis asked.

  “I think . . .” Basset paused, looking from Ellis to Joliffe and back again with a glint of mischief. “. . . tonight we’ll do The Fox and the Grapes.”

  Joliffe and Ellis both groaned far more loudly than Piers had. Since the play was done in dumbshow and therefore they had no words to remember, it could have been thought an easier play for them to do, but while Basset told the story—beginning where Aesop had but soon turning it into something else altogether—Ellis, Joliffe, and Piers had to play it out, pretending to be more dismayed and frantic and desperate as the story went further and further astray. By the end the lookers-on were helpless with laughter, and Ellis, Joliffe, and Piers were worn out.

  Quite aware of their dislike, Basset went on, “I’m gambling they will finish with the marriage talk today and be ready for a release to laughter. Tomorrow and the days after, while the banns are being read, we can do The Husband Becomes the Wife, The Baker’s Cake, and Tisbe and Pyramus. If more is needed, we can decide when the time comes, but I’ve thought Griselda the Patient for the wedding feast, with Gil taking the Daughter . . .”

  “And a well-grown little girl he’ll be,” said Joliffe.

  “. . . who has but the one speech, but it should please Lord Lovell to see him already at work,” Basset went on. “We’ll throw in another speech that lets Piers be the son.” Someone in the story they had done without until now, Piers having to be the daughter.

  Ellis with a wordless grumble and Joliffe with a nod accepted that, both of them trusting Basset’s skill at choosing plays that matched an audience’s humour of the moment. A very necessary skill among players and one at which Basset was very good.

  “Then,” said Basset, “to work. Joliffe, some speech for Griselda’s lord if you will. You might even add a few lines to Gil’s part. This will be, after all”—Basset put on a grand voice—“his first chance to speak as a player.”

  “And if he makes a dog’s mess of it,” said Ellis, “most people will be too drunk to note it.”

  “Especially the happy wedding couple, drunk with delight,” Joliffe said.

  “Um,” Ellis agreed. “I thought she looked well-beddable, too.”

  Ignoring that jibe, Rose said to her father, “You stay sitting. We’ll see to things and you’ll tell us if we’re doing it right. There’s a dress I think will do for Gil but it’s in the hamper under the cart seat. Ellis, come. You’ll have to take out all the others for me to come at it.” Which meant she had not ignored the jibe and Ellis was now going to pay for it.

  Joliffe took his writing box and the box in which the company’s copies of plays were kept back to the corner and out of the way. Piers and Gil returned with cleaned shovel and full water bucket, collected the basket for bringing back firewood, and leading Tisbe between them, left again. Basset, enthroned on his cushions, oversaw Ellis’ and Rose’s busyness as the hampers came out of the cart. Behind the cart, Joliffe, without a cushion under him today, was aware of the dirt floor’s creeping damp until he lost himself in his work. Soon done with adding lines to the Daughter’s single speech for Gil and another speech for Ellis as Griselda’s lord, he was resisting the urge to work on Dux Moraud again—he was still unsure how to make better believable the duke’s turn from depraved depths to utter repentance—in favor something more useable, when Basset raised his voice to say, “Welcome, Master William. You’ve escaped the bonds of scholarship again?”

  Joliffe leaned over to see Will standing under the cartshed’s eave, out of the small rain but hesitating to come in as he eyed Ellis and Rose at work while answering Basset, “For the last time maybe. They’re nearly done, they’re saying.”

  “Then doubly welcome,” Basset assured him. “Come in, if you will. Two of us are gone, as you see, to graze our horse along the woodshore, but you’re welcome to watch what we’re doing here. Though you must promise to keep secret whatever secrets of our craft you find out while doing so.”

  Will promised eagerly that he would and Joliffe returned, smiling, to his work, shutting his ears to Will’s questions and Basset’s answers about one thing and another. It seemed this was their morning for visitors, though, and the next to come interested Joliffe more. Hearing voices approaching, he looked under the cart again and saw the bridegroom-to-be, Amyas Breche, and Harry Wyot, who had been Sir Edmund’s ward, come talking together around the corner of the blacksmith’s shed into the cart-yard, followed by the stolid Deykus. Basset stood up to greet them with a bow, as did Ellis while Rose curtsied. Joliffe considered staying where he was and only listening, then decided he would rather see the two men more nearly than the length of the great hall and put aside his work to join the others in time for Basset to introduce him at the end.

  He bowed, but neither Amyas Breche nor Harry Wyot gave him much heed, busy with looking over the three open hampers and the array of garb and properties laid out on the closed top of a fourth.

  “You get all this into that cart of yours and go around the countryside with it?” Amyas asked.

  “We do, sir,” Basset said.

  “That’s a good-looking crown,” Harry Wyot said, reaching for it.

  “You’re not supposed to touch,” Will said quickly.

  Wyot stopped, surprised. Basset said, fully polite and apologizing, “It’s a rule we have, to keep folk from handling things too much. If you’d like to lift it, though, please do.”

  Wyot did and said, more surprised, “It weighs so little.”

  “It’s of tin, sir,” Basset explained. “A little brass laid thinly over tin is all it is, to make it look of gold. The jewel is glass, of course.”

  The crown was, in fact, one of their most used properties, kings being always popular on stage, but it would not stand up to hard handling. Wyot set it down carefully. Rose, smiling at him, took it up and put it away in its wooden box while Will asked with a wary look sideways at Deykus, “You haven’t come to tell me I’m wanted, have you?”

  “No, Will,” Amyas assured him. “We’ve come to escape the women. While my uncle and Sir Edmund do their agreeing together,” he said to Basset, “Harry and I have been left to keep much company with the women these past days.”

  “Until now we’re heartily sick of it,” Wyot said, “and have escaped.”

  “That’s not it,” Amyas protested, laughing. “It’s that everything has come around to Mariena’s wedding gown and we’re far too much in the way.”

  “Is she going to get a new one after all?” Will said with all a younger brother’s indignation.

  “Did you think she wouldn’t?” Wyot answered mockingly.

  “It’s tender of her not to want to wear the gown made for her other wedding,” Amyas protested.

  “It’s her way of getting another new gown,” Will said, all scornful at Amyas’ innocence about such things.

  Joliffe, rapidly watching all their faces, thought he saw silent agreement with that statement on Wyot’s, but Amyas laughed and shook Will by one shoulder, telling him, “You sound just like a little brother.”

  Will glowered at him, and Basset quickly took up one of the players’ false swords, saying to Amyas and Harry together, “Here’s something will make you laugh.”

  They took turns handling the sword and did laugh at its poor balance, dull edges, and round point, until Amyas, handing it back to Basset, said to Wyot, “Well, it looks as if the rain is stopping. Maybe we’ll be able to go hawking this afternoon after all.” He cast an arm around Will’s shoulders. “Let’s see how things are in the mews with the hawks and all, shall we?”

  Arm still around Will, he left the boy no real choice about going, but Wyot agreed to it readily enough and they all went, the man Deykus stolidly behind them. With them gone, Basset eased down onto the cushions again and said, “So that’s Sir Edmund’s second cho
ice of a bridegroom for his girl. Or third. I wonder . . .”

  “What are you talking about?” Ellis asked. “Second. Third.”

  “Hm?” Basset had been thinking aloud without thinking what the others did not know. “Oh. Seems the daughter was nigh married to someone else a few months ago, except he died.”

  Basset made it sound of little matter, because in the usual way of things that’s all it would have been to them; and all Ellis did in answer was shrug and say, “Maybe best we don’t do Tisbe and Pyramus here then. No tragic deaths of young lovers.” Which Ellis would regret, because he was particularly fine as a tragic young lover and his playing of Pyramus could usually bring at least a few women to tears. Joliffe’s suggestion that sometime when they played at a village with a stream or pond, they do a Hero and Leander so Ellis could try a tragic speech while drowning had yet to be met with anything but Ellis’ irk.

  “Robin and Marian then?” Basset suggested. “That’s merry enough.”

  Piers and Gil came back with their own Tisbe and firewood in time for the mid-day dinner. “Some of this is even dry,” Piers said, setting down the wood with an air of triumph, since dry wood for burning was always troublesome to have in wet weather. The trick was to have enough dry wood to burn to dry the wet enough to burn in its turn.

  “You are both noble youths of exceeding skill and shall be rewarded as best beseemth,” Basset declared. From the direction of the great hall someone began to ring a handbell. “By being fed,” Basset finished. He stood up stiffly, with Ellis’ hand under his elbow to help him, but again he seemed to better as they walked toward the hall.

  At dinner the talk was that all was finally settled about the marriage, agreement fully made, and that Sir Edmund, his family, and guests were to go hawking along the river this afternoon while Father Morice saw to everything being copied out several times over in a fair hand, to be signed this evening before witnesses.

  The serving woman was still giving Joliffe enough heed to show she found him more interesting than all the talk of her master’s success, and at the meal’s end, while the players were leaving the hall, Ellis and Piers ahead in debate over something, and Rose talking with Gil, Basset said quietly to Joliffe, “Now’s the time, maybe, for you to hang about the kitchen yard and hear what you can there.”