“Skirts,” said Gil. “I need to learn more with skirts.”
“Well noted,” Basset said with approval. “Skirts and swords and how to walk across a stage . . .”
“Everybody knows how to walk,” Will protested scornfully.
“Ah,” said Basset. “That’s what you think. Everyone but Will, come stand here by me. You, too, Rose. Now you, Will, go out to where we were playing and walk back and forth for us.”
Will obeyed. Or tried to. It took him only a few steps to know he was being awkward, too conscious of all their eyes on him and nowhere else. He couldn’t make his walk go easily; it wanted to be either strut or stiff shuffle, and he couldn’t stop looking sideways at all of them watching him, until he suddenly bent over in laughter and shouted, “I can’t!”
They laughed, too, and Basset said, “Now you do it, Gil.”
Will came to sit cross-legged beside Piers while Gil went in front of them and tried to walk. He was somewhat better but still too openly aware of being watched, his stride too stiff.
“Now Joliffe,” Basset bade.
Taking Gil’s place, Joliffe asked, “What sort of walk?”
“Just a man’s stride,” Basset said.
“What sort of man?”
“A knight.”
Joliffe put hand to imaginary sword hilt and strode out as if expecting a fight.
“A clerk,” Basset said.
Joliffe was immediately carrying a bundle of books in his arms and walking the small way of someone who spent much of his time at a desk.
“A young girl.”
Joliffe’s steps turned light and his hips had a sway not there before.
“An old woman.”
Joliffe’s shoulders curved forward and he shuffled, helping himself along with a stick that was not there.
“Me,” Basset said.
Joliffe straightened and asked, “With or without the arthritic hobble?”
Piers and Will laughed. Basset told Joliffe he was a rude boy and could have done. Ellis muttered, “He’s not done; he’s half-baked,” and got up to do something else. So did Rose, but Gil sat looking deeply thoughtful and that was to the good, Joliffe thought. Like Will, too many people saw play-acting as only a matter of learning the words and walking around with people to look at you. To Joliffe and Basset and anyone else in earnest about the work, playing was a craft whose skills had to be learned like the skills of any craft; and as with every craft, some folk were better at it than others were. Ellis was good within his limits. Joliffe was better, able to play far more sorts of parts, though no one in the company—including himself—ever said as much aloud. Basset, as befitted a company-master, was good at many parts and best at seeing a play as a whole and setting them all to what they had to do. What Gil would be able to do remained to be seen but that he sat there now, thinking, promised well.
A manservant whom Joliffe recognized from the hall came around the corner of the carpentry shed, and Will stood immediately up, saying, “I’m wanted.”
“Your lady mother was asking for you, yes, Master William,” the man said with a bow. “You’re to ride with the company to hear the first banns read at the church.”
“Now?” Will’s disgust at the thought showed openly.
“Now,” the man said.
With all the shine gone from him, William thanked Basset and then the others and went away, sullen-faced, with the servant. When they were beyond hearing, Basset said, “Not looking forward to losing his sister, do you think?”
“Not looking forward to riding after his fall yesterday,” said Ellis. He was settling to oil some more leather. “Is Tisbe going out to graze today or not?”
“It’s going to rain again,” Piers protested, then added, “It is raining,” as a few drops pattered down in the yard.
“We’ll wait until there’s no rain before we feed you,” Ellis said. “See how you like that.”
“I think,” said Basset in a considering voice, “it looks like clearing by this afternoon. Tisbe can wait until then. Only do your duty now.” He nodded toward the shovel. “Nor I doubt we’ll be grudged half an armful of hay if we ask. Piers, shovel. Gil, hay. And then the both of you can go with Joliffe to the village to add some festive cheer to this bann-reading.”
“Go to the village?” Piers moaned. “Walk, you mean?”
“It’s how we get most places,” Basset pointed out.
Piers shoveled up Tisbe’s dung and went away with it while Gil went for the hay and Basset said to Joliffe, “This will be chance to see Sir Edmund and them all together other than in the hall and afterwards to hear among the village folk what they think of this marriage and all.”
Aware of Rose watching them both with worry and of Ellis deliberately very busy with a piece of harness, Joliffe said easily, making little of it, “Well thought. And if I send Father Morice to give you comfort in your affliction, maybe you can have more from him, too. See if he’ll tell you about this present marriage agreement, for one thing. I’d not mind knowing why it’s been easier done than the Harcourt one, since it seems he was the one who made the difficulties there.”
Rose turned away in a way that said she was unhappy with them both, and Ellis’ head went lower over his work, but Basset nodded agreement and said, “Have him come, yes, if he will. I’ll even be somewhat more afflicted than I am and”—he slumped and his voice went feeble—“and in need of talk to distract and cheer me.”
Chapter 12
As it happened, it was Sir Edmund, Will, the Breches, and Harry Wyot who rode into the village to hear the first banns read. Whether for the rain—still pattering down in fits and starts—or other reason, neither Lady Benedicta, Mariena, nor Idonea Wyot went with them, but a good gathering of villagers drew to the church, it being near to mid-day and folk in from the fields to their dinners. Joliffe watched with Piers and Gil from under the eaves of a house across the lane from the churchyard while Father Morice, in full priestly vestments, stood in the church doorway to read out to the riders and gathered villagers the first banns, declaring that a marriage was intended and telling between whom, his voice not trained for the strain of being heard any distance in the open air. Not that it much mattered; he was heard enough for the betrothal between Amyas and Mariena to be now publicly known, with no way to break it off or stop their marriage without expensive legalities and troubles from the church.
Or death, thought Joliffe.
Finished, Father Morice came away from the church door to Sir Edmund, who leaned from his saddle to say something to him, smiling. The other men were already turning their horses away, but Will stayed at his father’s side and the villagers still lingered. With good reason, Joliffe saw, as Sir Edmund finished with Father Morice, gathered up his reins, and while turning his horse away, said something to Will. It must have been an order for something already arranged between them, because Will nodded, fumbled in the leather pouch at his belt, and brought out and threw a handful of pennies across the hard earth of the lane outside the churchyard gateway as Sir Edmund and the other men rode away. Children and a few women darted forward to snatch up the coins almost before they were on the ground. One man bent to take one that fell at his feet but otherwise the men left the scurrying to their children and wives, doing their own part by raising a brief cheer of thanks to the backs of the departing men and Will before crowding into little family groups to count their gains. Father Morice, Joliffe saw, had gone back into the church to take off his vestments.
Joliffe nudged Piers. “Now’s the time.” And to Gil, “Watch.”
Piers, ever ready to be noticed, cried a glad, “Hah-ha!” to draw people’s eyes to him and, stepping forward into the street, set five bright balls immediately fountaining from his hands to a little above his head and down and up again, around and around. People turned, first to look at him, then to gather around to watch, making a horseshoe that left Joliffe and Gil standing alone with their backs still to the house where they had sheltered.
Piers made a fair show, varying how many balls he had in the air at once and keeping them going, but it was simple juggling, such as could be seen from any common juggler anytime, and Joliffe began to shake his head, looking dissatisfied with what he was seeing. Then he stepped forward to Piers’ side. Piers glanced aside as best he could without losing track of the balls and went on juggling, turning to put his back to Joliffe. Joliffe moved to his other side, to force Piers to notice him. Piers turned away again. This time Joliffe pushed his shoulder from behind. Piers gave him a glare but kept on juggling. Joliffe gave him another shove, hard enough to stagger him forward a step. Seemingly off-balance, Piers grabbed wildly and caught all the falling balls save a red one that hit the hard-trodden mud and rolled away to the nearest feet among the lookers-on. Piers scurried after it, people laughing at him as people did at others’ troubles. Behind him, left alone, Joliffe reached into the breast of his doublet, brought out three juggling balls of his own and strutted in a circle, holding them up for everyone to see. Then, ignoring Piers’ glare at him, he set to his own juggling, throwing the balls awkwardly one after another high above his head.
They came plummeting down as out of rhythm as he had thrown them. He grabbed at them frantically, caught one, missed the other two. They landed with flat plops in front of him. The lead weights inside of them and slight lack of stuffing ensured they would. To more laughter, this time at him, he snatched them up and tried again, to no better avail. He was making his third desperate attempt when Piers—having started his own juggling again—came forward and grabbed first one and then another of Joliffe’s ill-fated balls from the air, adding them to his own. Left with only one ball, Joliffe tried to make show of tossing it straight up in the air and catching it as it came down. On his second time of that, Piers scornfully grabbed it, too, and sent all eight balls in a merry fountain of color high over his head and back, around and around, while everyone laughed and Joliffe took awkward, inadequate bows that brought more laughter, until Piers collapsed his fountain, caught all the balls one after the other into his arms, and made his own deep, graceful bow to thorough clapping all around. But when one woman started forward with a coin, Joliffe held up a hand and said, smiling, “For the lady Mariena’s betrothal. Sir Edmund gives pennies. We give laughter. For each, the best that he can do.”
That brought more clapping, to which Piers gladly bowed some more, until Joliffe collared him and hauled him away along the lane, leaving more laughter behind them. The alehouse was hardly a dozen yards along; they went in. Today there was no warmth of crowded bodies and candlelight, only wet, grey daylight through the open doorway and the glassless gap of the window, and sitting at a battered table a lone young man with a bandaged foot resting on a stool and two old men, one of whom raised an ale-filled bowl to the players and said, “Saw most of that from the doorway. Sir Edmund put on a good show, but yours was the better.”
Piers started to bow again. Joliffe feigned booting his backside, steered him to a bench near the table and sat him down, gave a coin to Gil, and said, “Get small ale for all of us. I have to see Father Morice, but it won’t take long. I’ll be directly back.”
He turned from the bench to find the alewife had come in behind him, a woman in middle years, her kerchief over her hair somewhat askew and her apron as clean as much scrubbing could make it. Both she and the small child she had by the hand were smiling as she told Joliffe in passing, “The first drink is free to you fellows. For the laughter, thank you.”
“Thank you,” Joliffe said and gave her a bow more flourished than he would have bestowed on the queen, leaving her in a smiling blush as he went out the door, to find that his luck was in—Father Morice was just setting off along the now-deserted street toward the manor. Stretching out his stride, Joliffe overtook him, saying as he caught him up, “Sir, a favor, please.”
Joliffe had made no effort to hide his footfall, but soft-soled shoes made little sound and the priest must have been deep in thoughts of his own and heard nothing. He turned, unready, toward Joliffe, his face showing a naked, stark unhappiness in the instant before he shifted it into surprised welcome and said, “Well met! What do you here?”
Pretending he had seen nothing amiss, Joliffe said, “Some of us came to juggle a little for the villagers after the banns were said. Our own celebration for the betrothal.”
He said that last deliberately to see if the priest’s trouble lay that way; and if the flinching at the corners of Father Morice’s eyes was sign, it did; but the priest only said, “That was good of you. The villagers need all the celebrating there can be after this year’s poor harvest again.”
“Too true,” Joliffe agreed. “But I’ve a good to ask of you, sir, if I may.”
“Ask.”
Joliffe told him of Basset’s arthritics and the comfort it would be if Father Morice went to talk with him. The priest assured him it would be his own pleasure to do so, and they parted company—Father Morice on toward the manor, Joliffe back to the alehouse, where he found Piers giving Gil and the alewife’s little boy a juggling lesson and the alewife setting bowls of vegetable pottage on the table for the three village men. Aware he and Piers and Gil were going to miss their dinner at the hall, Joliffe asked for some for them, too.
“If there’s enough?”
“There is,” she said. “The turnips in the upper field did not so badly as everything else this year, and with all the rain the grass has the cows giving plenty of milk for the while.”
“Not but what we’re getting tired of your milk-and-turnip pottage,” one of the old men muttered between spoonfuls.
“You’d get more tired of being hungry,” the woman said as she went back toward her kitchen. “Be thankful we have what we have.”
Piers, Gil, and the little boy were crawling about among the floor-rushes, collecting fallen balls. Joliffe sat down on a bench near the table, making a show of being somewhat stiff, although he was not, to give him an opening with the men, and said, “This weather gets into the bones, doesn’t it?”
“Not into theirs,” the injured man said, nodding at the three boys. He sounded both disgruntled and envious.
Joliffe nodded at his bandaged foot. “Gout?”
That surprised one of the old men into a hoot of laughter. The other snorted into his ale bowl, and the hurt man said, “A dropped pitchfork. Right through it.”
Joliffe made a pained noise of fellow-feeling.
“Good it was a cleaned fork,” one of the old men jibed, “or you’d not be sitting here to complain of it.”
“Better if I’d not done it at all,” the other man said sharply back. “You fellows,” he said at Joliffe, “you’ve the life. No pitchforks for you. All words and the women looking at you. If you don’t like it here”—he made a wide swing of his arm, endangering the ale in the bowl he held—“you go on there. Free as birds, you fellows are.”
He had downed too much ale. Even a brew as weak as this one would finally be too much if someone drank enough and he had probably been at it all morning, adding it to the mix of pity and the pain he was probably in. So Joliffe, forbearing to point out that birds were “free” to be cold in hedges and hunted by anyone who felt like it, only said easily, “The trouble is that, even if we happen to like wherever we are, we still have to move on to somewhere else, like it or not.”
“I wouldn’t mind moving on to somewhere else,” the man grumbled into his ale.
“It’s as good here as anywhere,” one of the old men said. “They’re all the same, most places.”
Less philosophically, his companion in age and drink said, “Everywhere had as ill an harvest as we did, from what’s said. There’s no point going somewhere else.” He gave Joliffe a nod. “’Less you have to,’course.”
“I’d still like to go,” the hurt man grumbled. “I’d still like to do something else than this.”
“What?” one of the old men said. “Something else than sit dry and drink the livelong day
? Don’t be addle-witted. I’ll tell you I worked a lifetime to be able to do this.”
“’Til your daughter decides you’ve had enough and hails you home to chores,” the other old man chuckled.
“Aye, and the more reason to enjoy what I have while I have it.” He poked the younger man’s arm. “You heed me, boy. Be glad you’ve got what you’ve got.” Raising his bowl, he mumbled just before burying his nose in it, “It’s not like you’ve choice in it, anyway.”
The other old man raised his own bowl to that and drank, too. The younger man simply drank, staring broodingly at the wall while he did. Joliffe, watching him over the rim of his own bowl, felt for his discontent. In his own life there were other things he could have been besides a player—several other things he had been besides a player—but at least he had had choices and made them. He doubted this fellow had ever seen anything else to be but what he was. Or else he had refused other choices if they ever came. But staying with what you were born to was a choice, too, and the one that most people made—a choice that Joliffe could have made, too, upon a time, but had not and of that he was still glad. However cold the hedge sometimes was.
But this was not getting him what he wanted. The three boys were sitting on the floor at the far end of the room, each with a bowl of pottage the woman had just handed down from a tray. As she came along the room with another bowl for Joliffe, he harked back to the bad harvest, saying, “Going to be a lean year all around, no matter where you are. Will Sir Edmund scant the wedding feast, do you think?”
“Nah, not him,” one of the old men said. “There’ll be plenty. And even if it’s no more than plenty of turnip pottage, it’ll taste the better with what his cook does with it.”
Joliffe smiled his thanks to the woman as she handed him the bowl, a wooden spoon ready in it.
“Spices and like,” the other old man offered. “Brings ’em in from London-town.” A far-off, foreign place they would never see. “Those nutmeg-savored cakes, remember them?” he asked his fellow, who smacked his lips in answer and said, “Could do with more of those.”
A Play of Dux Moraud Page 14