A Play of Dux Moraud

by Margaret Frazer

  “Hear any useful talk?” Basset asked.

  “I saw the doublet and hosen and cloak young Will was wearing when he fell,” she said. “They were so dirty, he must have rolled as well as fallen. Must have been galloping hard, too, to fall that hard. The women were saying they hadn’t heard he was hurt, though. Joliffe?”

  She leaned to look under the cart at him in his corner, and he answered, “Not enough to matter. He was lucky it was sog-wet ground.”

  Rose straightened back to her work, saying, “It was that, right enough.”

  “He’s had other accidents of late, I heard,” Joliffe offered.

  “The women were saying that, too. Well, one accident. A skinned knee and bruised hand from a fall on the tower stairs. Worse has been he’s twice been badly sick to his stomach this past summer. There’s worry he’s turning sickly.”

  “He looked well enough to me,” Basset said. “Father Morice didn’t seem worried that way about him.”

  “Oh, him,” Rose said dismissively. She shook out a shirt and draped it over the drying frame. “You should have heard the women about him.”

  Joliffe began putting away his work. This was talk too valuable to let pass and he asked, “Troubles the women, does he?”

  “Not the way you mean,” Rose said back tartly. “What it was, they were laughing over how fast this marriage-talk went, compared to last time. Last time he questioned every point as it came up, dragging things out and out.”

  “That’s as it should be, isn’t it?” Basset said. “Sir Edmund would want him to find the points that could make trouble later and straighten them out now.”

  “Seems even Sir Edmund was impatient at him before it was done. And Mariena swore she’d throttle him if he kept it up.”

  “She threatened a priest?” Ellis said, laughing.

  “Not for him to hear,” Rose said. “But some of the servants did.”

  Putting his work back into the cart, Joliffe said, “She wanted the marriage, then?”

  “Seems so.” Rose held up the long leg of half a pair of hosen she was about to hang over the drying frame, checking to see if it needed mending. Their best garb was kept only for playing. Otherwise, they each had a single change of clothing—one to wear while one was being washed—and their traveling took heavy toll. “Everyone did. The intended bridegroom was well-liked all around. Good to look on and well-mannered. A knight’s son, too, and come into his lands not so many years ago.”

  Taking a shirt from the basket and making to hang it over the rope now Ellis had it firmly up, Joliffe asked, “His father is dead?”

  “Three years past or so, I gather.”

  “What about the present bridegroom? What do they say about him?”

  “The women think it’s shame Mariena is being married no higher than a merchant’s son, but they’ve naught to say against Amyas himself.”

  “Merchants tend to be richer than knights these days,” Ellis said. He was dipping a finger in the water on the fire, testing its warmth. “Richer than some lords, even. Probably Sir Edmund needs what the marriage will bring in the way of money.”

  “I wonder if he’s gone into debt again since selling Harry Wyot’s marriage,” Joliffe said. He wondered, too, how long ago that had been. Long enough for Sir Edmund to be badly in debt again? Or was Sir Edmund the sort who didn’t take long to be in debt?

  “Where’d you pick that up?” Ellis asked.

  Making much of hanging another shirt straight over the line, Joliffe shrugged off the question. “You know. Just around. People talk. Rose, what do they say about Mariena and this marriage? Does she want it?”

  Rose went on hanging other hosen over the drying frame while answering, “No one said she doesn’t. What I gathered was that they’re ready for her to be married and away from here, she’s such a trouble.”

  “A trouble?” Joliffe asked.

  “You know. Quarrels with her mother. Fights with her brother. Demands too much from the servants.” Finished with the hosen, Rose took Piers’ shirt from the basket. “All the usual things from a girl who’s almost done with being only a daughter but isn’t yet a wife. That being caught betwixt and between, it wears on a person.”

  Joliffe gave a quick look from her to Ellis and back again, wondering if they saw themselves mirrored in what she had just said, caught as they were between Rose’s vanished husband and their own desire for each other. But Rose was simply shaking out Piers’ shirt and Ellis was pushing more sticks into the fire, and Joliffe said, to lead the talk onward, “She’s maybe still mourning her other betrothed.”

  “Now that’s odd,” Rose said. Odd enough that she paused, still holding Piers’ shirt. “From what the women were saying, she took her first betrothed’s death . . . What was his name?”

  “John Harcourt,” Joliffe supplied.

  “Well, she took his death hard, it seems. Wept and did all the expected moaning and so on, and I gather she’s been in this ill-humour ever since, despite she’s sweet enough to this Amyas and willing to this marriage, too.”

  “Likely, she just wants to be married,” Basset said.

  “Still, given she’s had so little time to be over her last betrothed,” Rose said, “they’re fortunate she’s so willing to this Amyas.”

  “Out of sight, out of mind,” Ellis said. “And a man can’t be more out of sight than in his grave.”

  “Ellis,” Rose said quellingly.

  Followed by Gil, Piers ambled over, rolling the script-scroll closed as they came, asking, “Is it time to eat yet?”

  “It is,” said Basset. “Which means time for you and Gil to go to the kitchen to fetch it.”

  “Wash your hands and faces first,” Rose said, nodding at the kettle.

  They did, Piers’ necessary grumbling increasing when Ellis held him by the collar long enough to wash the often-missed back of his ears. Then he and Gil went, and it was time to begin readying for tonight’s playing. Together, Ellis and Joliffe lifted out of the cart the hamper that held their older, more worn properties, used for such knock-about playing as The Fox and the Grapes, when the battered properties—bent sword, tattered garments, straggling wigs—added to the laughter.

  While Ellis fetched from the cart the box of masks used in some of their plays, Joliffe asked Rose, “So, in your laundry talk, was there aught said about Lady Benedicta?”

  “Just that things are never good between her and her daughter and are worse of late.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “You saw her this afternoon,” Basset said. “What did you think of her?”

  Joliffe considered before he answered. What did he think of her? Finding himself uncertain, he answered slowly, “She wasn’t happy with her daughter, that’s sure. Nor was Mariena happy with her, come to that and just as Rose said. But she was likewise angry at Will . . .”

  “For what?” Rose asked.

  “For falling? For spoiling the hawking? For making more work for everybody?” Joliffe ventured, finding—now that he thought about it—that he really did not know. “Or maybe . . .” He paused, considering a new thought before going on, slowly, “I’m not certain but what she’s always angry, one way or another.”

  “At Will?” Rose persisted.

  “At everybody, for all I know,” Joliffe said with a shrug. “Why not?” Even a lost love of long ago could shadow a life, he supposed. If the love had been strong enough. And then to lose that love and afterwards bear children to an unloved husband and lose most of those children at their births—for a woman who would not accept it, that could all be enough to break her or else to harden her into unceasing anger at her life and everyone in it. But he kept those thoughts to himself and only said, “She dealt fairly enough with me, though, so I’ll not complain against her.”

  Piers and Gil came back with supper. They all ate, then Basset, Ellis, Joliffe, and Piers made ready to go, Basset, moving better than he had been this morning, putting on his sober best robe—“The one I’ll
wear when I’m summoned to dine with the king”—that would mark him as the story-teller, not part of the story, while Ellis and Joliffe dressed more boldly in their parti-colored hosen and short doublets and Piers put on the blue tabard Gil had used the other day.

  “He’s grown again,” Rose said in despair, pulling at its hem. “Look. And his tunic is nothing to hope for, either.”

  “Never mind,” her father said cheerfully. “Next market town we come to, we’ll buy cloth for another tunic. Ribbons for Tisbe and a tunic for Piers.”

  “Or the other way around,” said Joliffe.

  Everyone ignored him.

  Gil was coming with them but would only watch from the screens passage. Rose was staying at the shed, to keep the fire going and turn the laundry so it would dry the sooner. As he and Ellis picked up the hamper to carry between them, the mask-box a-top it, Joliffe said jestingly to her, “You shall sit in quiet and peace, contemplating the joy of doing nothing.”

  “I shall contemplate,” Rose said back at him, “the joy of having no men around.”

  They were somewhat early to the hall. They were to perform at supper’s end, but the meal was not yet over and they waited in the screens passage, Piers sitting on the hamper, the rest of them standing. Basset was telling Gil in a low voice what he should be learning by watching them tonight; Joliffe and Ellis were leaning against the wall, arms crossed, able to hear the cluttered sounds of tableware and talk in the hall while the servants waiting on the tables tonight gathered in the passage, waiting to clear. Sia wasn’t among them, but Avice was and she sidled close to Ellis and cast her eyes up at him, her hips making a small, suggestive sway his way. Ellis looked instantly willing to answer her suggestion with one of his own, but before he could, Joliffe said cheerfully, “Avice. We met at the well this morning, remember?”

  She gave him a quick look that entirely dismissed him, but Ellis, reminded he was only prey to her, lost interest. Joliffe pretended to be interested elsewhere while she tried to get it back until she had to go with the rest of the servants into the hall.

  “If you’re done playing coy with the servants,” Basset said, “shall we ready to play in earnest?”

  Pretending that wasn’t a jibe, Ellis poked Piers to get him off the hamper. The noise from the great hall changed to the clatter of tableware being cleared, then servants bearing filled trays and used serving dishes came out, headed back to the kitchen, while several others went in with tall pitchers of wine or ale to refill goblets and cups. With the sudden sharpening of heed to the moment at hand that almost always came in the moments before a performance, Joliffe reached for the hamper at the same moment Ellis did, picking it up between them again as Basset took up the mask-box and Master Henney asked if they were ready. At Basset’s assurance that they were, the man went into the hall and declared them.

  As he finished, Piers leaped from the shadows of the screens passage into the bright hall, posed for an instant—both to be seen and to be sure the way was clear—then spun around and backflipped his way down the hall between the tables to just short of the hearth, where he stood up, arms out, to be acclaimed. But Joliffe and Ellis were directly behind him, running with the hamper between them, giving him a bare instant of glory before he pitched forward as if flattened by the hamper and afterwards scrambled to his feet and scurried after Joliffe and Ellis now setting the hamper down in front of the high table. Amid laughter, they all bowed to Sir Edmund and the others there, Will among them, looking well-scrubbed, then to the tables along the sides of the hall. By then, Basset, proceeding with more dignity, had joined them. After setting the mask-box on the hamper again and making his own bows, he declared in a full voice rolling with dignity, “Tonight for your pleasure, we purpose to perform The Fox and the Grapes, my fellows to enact it while I tell the tale.”

  With that, Ellis threw open the box of masks and he and Joliffe both made play of grabbing among the masks as if in quarrel over who had which one, until Ellis “won,” seizing up the pointed-nosed mask of a fox. Piers instantly grabbed the mask-box and set it aside, leaving Joliffe, feigning sullen disgust, to throw open the hamper and make show of rummaging through it until finally he held up a picture of grapes painted on a thin board and proceeded to pretend he was a grapevine with an outward ill-grace that kept the already-started laughter going.

  The Fox and the Grapes in itself was hardly a long enough fable to entertain a household for an evening, but with Basset’s telling, it turned to include a Knight, a Giant, and a Damsel in Distress, keeping Ellis and Joliffe in lively change, first from Fox and Gravevine to Knight and Giant, sorting with frantic haste through the hamper for sword and helmet and Giant’s club and to find an ugly mask in the mask-box to turn Joliffe into the Giant. Given that he was somewhat less tall than Ellis, he made an unlikely Giant, which added to the sport. Then when the Damsel was required, he dragged a gown and wig out of the hamper but was left standing helplessly still wearing the Giant’s mask, the Damsel’s gown and a bedraggled yellow wig in one hand and the Giant’s club in the other, until in apparent desperation, he dropped gown, wig, and club, grabbed Piers—who had spent the while flirting at the ladies along the tables with all the charm his ten years and golden curls gave him but “happened” to be in reach at the necessary moment—swung him onto the top of the closed hamper, plopped the Giant’s mask over his head, and thrust the club into his hand, making him into the Giant and leaving Joliffe free to pull on the gown, drape the wig randomly over his head, and become the Damsel.

  All the while of that Basset went on with the story, steady-paced and solemn, as if unaware of the chaos around him. The Knight became a Hermit with whom the Damsel took sanctuary, the Giant came in search of her, the Knight appeared to fight the Giant and rescued her, and finally, with Piers sprawled in pretended death across the top of the hamper and the Damsel safe in the Knight’s arms, Basset said, “So the Fox, who had watched all this from the vineyard . . .” setting off a seemingly desperate scramble by Ellis and Joliffe to rid themselves of their Knightly and Damsel gear, find the discarded Fox mask and painted grapes, and return to their first roles as Basset finished, “. . . at last took heart from the Knight’s bravery and leaped higher than ever before, to seize the bunch of grapes”—Ellis snatched the pictured grapes from Joliffe before Joliffe could even lift it up—“and lived happily forever more.” Pause. “Until the Knight, on quest again . . .”

  Ellis started to grab for the helmet but Joliffe grabbed for Basset instead, silencing him with a hold on his head and hand over his mouth. Basset, taking in the glares at him from Joliffe, Ellis, and Piers, gave a nod. Joliffe released him and he announced loudly, “The End.”

  They all took swift bows to satisfying clapping and laughter. Ellis and Joliffe did not wait for it to stop but threw their properties back into the hamper while Piers had the masks back into their box, the three of them then running with their gear from the hall, leaving Basset to make dignified departure behind them.

  Outside, as they crossed the yard’s darkness by the light of a lantern one of the servants had had waiting for them, Basset said, “That was well done. Gil, what did you learn from what you saw?”

  Listening to Gil and Basset trade answers and questions the rest of the way back to the cartshed, Joliffe was the more sure the boy had a true instinct for their craft. There were some men who—no matter the time and training spent on them—never seemed to grasp there was more to playing than the pleasure of showing off themselves. Others could be taught, if only eventually, otherwise; and then there were some like Gil, who seemed to understand in their bones the need to take on the seeming of whom they were playing, rather than turning every person they played into himself. Gil still needed to build the necessary skills of voice and body, but he increasingly looked to be worth the training.

  The cart-yard and -shed were deep in shadow save for the low red glow of their own fire to welcome them back. Rose had their beds laid out and ready and welcomed them bac
k with a hug for Piers and questions how the playing had gone. While Basset told her, Joliffe and Ellis set the hamper near the cart, to be put away tomorrow, and Piers put the mask-box a-top it. Asking her father how he felt, Rose started to ready Piers for bed, stripping his player’s garb from him. The rest of them were likewise undressing, stripping to undergarments to go to bed, except for Joliffe who, after seeing his garb safely folded and laid on the hamper, pulled on his own hosen and doublet. Ellis at least knew why but none of the others asked him what he was doing. Only when he picked up the still-lighted lantern and started out of the shed did Ellis ask mockingly, “Where are you away to?”

  Mockingly back at him, Joliffe said, “Just a walk.”

  Ellis snorted and Piers laughed. Rose shushed them both, but Basset called cheerily, “Walk carefully!”

  Joliffe waved one hand over his shoulder without looking back and kept going. The rain had softly started up again, but under the eave of the narrow way behind the stable he was dry enough and crossing the dung-yard hardly dampened him. The cow-shed was lined with cows now, their munching of hay and cud-chewing loud in the night-stillness. The lantern-light disturbed them. Hind-quarters shifted and heads lifted, throwing shadows far more giant than anything the players had managed in the hall. Joliffe made soft, cow-hushing noises at them, reassuring them he wasn’t come to attack them, and then climbed the ladder awkwardly one-handed with the lantern. Not that a lighted lantern was the best of things to have in a hayloft full of dry hay but—as he had rather expected—that problem was forethought: the hay was cleared away from the ladder’s end of the loft and there was a peg in one of the beams to hang the lantern.

  No one was there. Joliffe hung the lantern, checked its candle, judged it would last to see him back to the cartshed, and took a long look around. Not that too long a look was needed. It was a hayloft, with bare roof-beams and bare wooden floorboards, where they weren’t covered by the piled hay, and that was all. What surprised him was that there was nothing else.