A Play of Lords

by Margaret Frazer

  “It seems,” said Basset, “that we are indeed to be the shining jewel set in the midst of the golden splendor of this wondrous feast.”

  “Oh, Lucifer’s toenails,” Ellis muttered, though whether at the weighty thought that so much of the evening’s success might depend on them or at Basset’s vision, Joliffe was not certain.

  Then Basset, solidly back to practicality, said, “Shall we do our lines one more time before we garb and all?”

  “I’ll leave you to it,” said Mak. “Be back in a while.”

  He left, and they did their lines, finding that the play was settling into their heads. While they were at them, the first uneven tuning of the musicians began in the loft above the screens passage, and when Ellis had made the Devil’s final declaration of victory, Basset said, “That’s it. We have it, I think. Now I want to ask the musicians something. Stay here. Don’t wander. I’ll be back.”

  He went out, giving no chance for questions. The players traded questioning looks instead, but since none of them knew more than the others, Ellis’ silent shrug summed up that there was nothing to say, and they set to emptying the hamper, were done with that and beginning to paint their faces by the time Basset came back, looking pleased with something.

  “They’re the same men who played at the earl of Mortain’s last night,” he said. “They’ve seen the play, and their master is willing to oblige with a trumpet flourish for when the Duke of Burgundy and Lady Honor enter. All we need is for Piers to nip up the stairs to the gallery and tell him when.”

  “I can do that,” said Piers.

  “That was all I was going to ask of him,” Basset went on, “but then he offered to have another flourish played for the Dauphin’s coming in, only that one flat and ragged. So you’ll have to tell him that one, too, Piers, before you ready to come on yourself.”

  Piers nodded that he understood, looking pleased to have the special duty.

  “At the end,” Basset went on, “when Burgundy and Dishonor leave, there’ll be a rude blatting of horns, and a mocking fanfare when the Devil and Dauphin go out.”

  “It’s started,” Ellis muttered as if only to Joliffe but loud enough for Basset to hear. “It’s music he’s adding now. Next he’ll want sulpherous smoke when I come on, and who knows what after that.”

  “Spangles on your hosen,” Joliffe suggested, knowing how unwelcome the thought would be, and quite satisfactorily Ellis growled, “Don’t even think it.”

  “Smoke,” Basset said thoughtfully. “Spangles.”

  “No!” said Ellis.

  By good chance, servants brought their supper then, giving something else to think about, and after that the evening went much the way of yesterday’s, with at the end no doubt of their success. Laughter and hand-clapping and even some table-pounding from the lower end of the tables met the play’s end, and afterward the payment brought to them in a velvet purse was quite sufficient. Basset gave them all a quick look into it that made wide smiles all around before he tucked it into the front of his shirt and finished dressing.

  Mak reappeared soon thereafter. He had watched the play again from behind the musicians but spent much of his time, he said, outside the kitchen door with servants come with the guests and waiting to see them home again. “Heard things, I did,” he said. “You won’t want to hear them tonight, but tomorrow maybe?”

  “Tomorrow certainly,” Basset said. “Tonight I think we only want to go to our beds.”

  Their only pause in leaving was while Basset went up the narrow stairs to the gallery to give the master of the musicians a coin in thanks for what they had added to the play that night. Coming down again, he said, “It went so well, the music, that we may have to hire a musician when we do this again.”

  Joliffe, carrying the rear end of the hamper, rolled his eyes at Ellis nearby and said under his breath, “Sulphrous smoke next. I’m telling you.”

  But they were still too heady with their success to care much over what came next beyond going back to their room, having some ale or wine and some talk, then going to bed warm with their triumph, and they trooped light-heartedly out Malpas’ gate and into the street. There was still time enough until curfew and no raw wind to add to the night-time chill that such other honest folk as were out and going home from their evening’s pastimes were making no haste about, and the few they encountered who were over-merry and looking to be even merrier if they could find drink enough were not looking for trouble.

  Trouble did not come until the players were nearly back to Lord Lovell’s inn and going along broad Cheapside. Basset, Ellis, Gil, and Piers were ahead, knowing the way here. Mak and Joliffe and the hamper were coming behind, were passing the black mouth of one of the lesser streets, when there was a rush of men out of the darkness. One moment there was no one there. The next they were come so fast that Joliffe had no time to see how many. Someone knocked Mak down, and the falling hamper pulled Joliffe off balance before he could let go the handle. Basset yelled something and then someone grabbed Joliffe, swung him around, and shoved him stumbling backward and up against a housewall hard enough his head hit it and his breath was driven out of him. He wanted his dagger but was gripping with both hands the doublet-front of the man who was gripping him and leaning all his weight to pin Joliffe to the wall while saying into his face, “You’d all better think again about what yer doing.”

  Stunned and breathless, Joliffe was less aware of the words than that the man had eaten onions lately and maybe had a rotting tooth. He heard himself gasp out, “What—” but the man was taking a long step back from him, keeping hold on him with one hand while letting go with the other, pulling it back into a fist that he drove forward into Joliffe’s belly well below the ribs so that Joliffe doubled over, forgetting everything except the pain and going to his knees as the man let him fully go, saying above him, “Think about it and don’t do it anymore,” and kicked him.

  It was not much of a kick and no more than caught Joliffe on the thigh. The man could have done worse, helpless as Joliffe momentarily was, but just as suddenly as they had all come, the man was gone. Joliffe, struggling to straighten, saw his fellows had gone with him and that only he and Basset, Ellis, Mak, and the hamper were left. And only Ellis was still on his feet, standing with legs braced apart and his dagger in one hand like someone who had maybe won his fight.

  The rest of them surely had not. Mak was sprawled on the ground, trying to rise while clutching his head. Basset was propped against the hamper, holding his belly much the way Joliffe was holding his own, crowing for breath. Past his own pained shortness of air, Joliffe gasped, “Piers. Gil.”

  “Run,” Basset gasped back. “Told Gil. Take him. Run.”

  “The purse?” asked Ellis hoarsely.

  Basset let go of himself with one hand to feel at the front of his doublet. “Still here.”

  “That’s . . . something,” Ellis said. He took three tottering steps, the last one ending in a collapse onto the hamper, his left leg stretched out and his free hand clamped to its upper thigh.

  “Ellis?” Joliffe asked. Air was beginning to reach the bottom of his lungs again, and he struggled to his own feet. What?”

  Fumbling his dagger back into its sheath, Ellis said angrily, “I’m hurt. That’s what.” He took his hand away from his thigh, looked at it, said, “Damn,” and clamped it back to his hip. “I’m bleeding.”

  Chapter 11

  Basset lurched to his feet, he and Joliffe both clos-ing on Ellis, both demanding, “How badly?”

  “I don’t know,” Ellis snapped. He swore again. “Now it’s starting to hurt. Damn!”

  “Come on.” Basset still sounded short of breath and was moving badly, but the order came crisply enough. “We need you where we can see it. Joliffe, can you and Mak see to the hamper?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ellis, come on.” Almost able to stand straight now, Basset pulled Ellis onto his feet. “Can you walk if you lean on me?”

  “Yes,�
�� Ellis said through gritted teeth.

  Basset pulled Ellis’ arm around his own shoulders and said, “Then do it.”

  It had all happened so quickly, in so little a time, that only now were others in the street starting to understand that something had happened and beginning to gather to see what it was. A motherly woman was helping Mak up. A man asked Basset if he needed help, and Basset instantly made use of him, asking him to link hands so they could carry Ellis sitting between them. The man did, and Mak and Joliffe were left sitting side by side on the hamper, assuring the half-dozen or so people around them that, no, they were battered but not much hurt, and Joliffe took the chance to ask if anyone had seen who the men were and how many of them there had been.

  No one knew who they had been or, for certain, how many, the general refrain being it had all happened so fast and so much in the shadows.

  “Five maybe?” one man said. But he was no surer than anyone else.

  There were offers of help to carry the hamper, but Joliffe thought the fewer people that went with them the better, and when Mak said he could walk now, Joliffe forced himself to it, too, and with thanks to those who had offered help—and ignoring those who had only gathered to gape—they picked up the hamper and went onward, even if at more a shuffle than a walk.

  At the gatehouse they found less stir than Joliffe expected. The man who had helped carry Ellis was just leaving, seen away by John Hyche, who was thanking him for his help. Joliffe added his own thanks but wanted most to see how Ellis did and kept on with Mak and the hamper to the players’ room, where they found the others gathered around the table where Ellis was partly sitting, partly rolled onto one side to put his hurt hip into the most lamplight. He was white-faced, gripping the table’s edge with both hands, and not watching Rose who, dry-eyed and firm as she always was when things were worst, had finished loosening his hose on that side and was rolling it carefully down to bare his thigh. Joliffe, hurriedly setting down his end of the hamper, went to stand by Basset, and with Basset and the others let out a heavy sigh of relief at first sight of the wound.

  “What?” Ellis demanded, his eyes flying open. He started to turn his head to see for himself, changed his mind, and turned away again. “How bad is it?”

  “You’ll likely live,” said Basset.

  “And maybe even walk again,” said Joliffe.

  “Joliffe!” Rose said sharply. “It’s nothing like that!”

  It was not. By the blessing of Saint Genesius, it looked to be nothing more than a shallow slice. Bleeding, yes, but not deep into flesh or muscle.

  Ellis gave way, looked, groaned, and looked away again, closing his eyes.

  “It will look better when it’s washed,” soothed Rose.

  As if summoned, Maud Hyche came in carrying a basin of steaming water, some clean rags over her arm, and saying, “Here you are, and there’s more set heating if need be.” And seeing the wound, “Oh, that’s none so bad, is it? Aren’t you the lucky one?”

  Ellis groaned and did not open his eyes. Maud, setting the basin on the table beside the lamp, traded a look with Rose that said things between women that Joliffe thought it best no man ever hear.

  John Hyche, coming in, said to Maud, “They’re all soundly asleep.” Meaning their children, Joliffe supposed; and then to Basset, “It’s late enough you’ve caused no stir. Likely, if anyone saw, they think you’re drunk is all. You’re sure you want it that way?”

  “Do we?” Basset asked, looking to the rest of them.

  Shrugs and agreeing nods answered him, with Joliffe saying, “Did any of us see any of them well enough to say who they were?”

  None of them had. Close as the man had been, Joliffe had only a confused uncertainty what he looked like.

  “Nor did they take anything,” Basset said, “or do much hurt. Except to Ellis,” he added as Ellis started to say something to that.

  “It was likely because Ellis drew his dagger on him,” Mak said from where he sat on the edge of the hamper, keeping out of the way but missing nothing.

  “My dagger!” Ellis cried and clapped a hand to its sheath, forgetting he had sheathed it himself. The movement was too sudden. As Rose made an aggravated cry at him to stay still, he grunted with pain and went back to gripping the table edge with his eyes shut. He knew better than to complain at Rose, no matter if what she was doing hurt, and he kept tight-lipped silence until she said, “There. It’s clean.” But as he groaned with relief and started to ease, she said, “Joliffe, get the box. It’s in the far hamper. Father, the wine,” and Ellis gave a whine, re-tightening his grip on the table, knowing what was coming next and that it was going to hurt maybe more than the wound did now.

  The wooden box Joliffe fetched held the herbs and ointments and bandages Rose used on them when need be. To the wine Basset brought, Ellis said, “Good. I need a drink.” But Rose said, “It’s for your wound, not you.” A good washing with wine often served to keep infection away.

  “For the wound and me,” Ellis bargained.

  “We’ll see,” Rose answered.

  The table being overly full of lamp and basin and Ellis, Joliffe stayed to hand, holding the opened box, cringing a little in fellow-feeling with Ellis when she wined the cut. Shallow though it was, the wound was nothing Joliffe would have wanted in his own flank. Or in any other part of him, come to that.

  “There’s need of a few stitches,” Rose said. That was something else she could do. On the whole, the company had had few hurts, but no one went through life unscathed, and with even a barber-surgeon all too often beyond the players’ purse in past days, Rose could sew more than a seam. Without her skill, a faint pink scar on Joliffe’s left forearm would have been far uglier. But stitches were never good sport, and Ellis made a small sound of useless protest that Rose ignored.

  But Piers, who had been standing with unusual quiet next to Gil and out of the way, slipped forward and laid a hand over one of Ellis’ gripping the table’s edge. Ellis opened his eyes, narrowed though they were with pain, gave him a tight-lipped smile, and asked, “You’re all right?”

  Eyes large and fixed on Ellis’ face, Piers gave a little nod, then, overwhelmed, said in an indignant rush, “But Gil picked me up and carried me. When Basset said to go, Gil carried me.”

  “And I think I’ve sprung every bone in my back doing it,” said Gil. “Have you been eating rocks when we weren’t looking?”

  “It’s his head,” Joliffe said. “It’s getting thicker and harder by the day.”

  Leaving the table to go to her sewing for needle and thread, Rose said, “Why don’t you all go outside while I do this?”

  Piers, staring hard at Ellis and keeping hold on his hand as if Ellis might disappear if he did not watch and hold to him, said, “I’ll stay.”

  “I’ll stay, too,” Maud Hyche said calmly, taking the box from Joliffe, setting him free to willingly join Basset, Gil, Mak, and John Hyche in their retreat out the door, but Rose said on a sudden thought, “Mak, could you get me some long horsehairs at this hour?”

  He paused, then said, “Aye, mayhap I can.”

  “Please, then. Quickly?”

  “You pour some of that wine down him as well as in the wound, and I’ll be back almost before he’s done swallowing.”

  John Hyche had closed and barred the gates for the night behind Joliffe and Mak when they came in but readily opened the wicket for Mak to leave, closed and barred it afterward, and came back to Basset, Joliffe, and Gil, who were still standing not far outside their own door, somehow not wanting to desert Ellis entirely. Making a small nod past them toward the lamplit room, Hyche offered, “That’s women’s work, that is. Tending to blood and hurts.”