Joliffe had time to take in that much but no more, the players keeping close behind Mak and his fellow as they wove their way among the street’s people, carts, and horses toward a pair of lesser towers flanking an arched gateway opposite the street down which they had come. There were two pairs of gates—an outer and an inner, at either end of the long gateway passage—and both were standing open, with the pairs of guards in crimson and azure livery on duty, long pikes in hand, giving no sign of expecting trouble. Mak and Harry paused somewhat aside the gateway with the hamper, leaving it to Basset to go forward and say with every outward sign of confidence that these were Lord Lovell’s players, come at his grace the duke of Gloucester’s bidding, and one of the guards gave an easy wave of a hand toward the open gates, saying, “It’ll be Master Russell you’ll want to ask for. Ask in the inner yard. Someone will know where he is.”
It was times like these that a player’s skills were more than usually useful. Despite Joliffe was fairly certain everyone’s inward parts were as roiled with uneasy excitement as his own, Basset gave the guard a gracious nod, every inch the master of a successful, even renowned company of players, and strode forward with the rest of them following him in kind, heads up and confidently striding, Ellis with his swagger, and Mak and Harry now coming at the rear. It was the manner of entrance their company had made many times to one place and another over the years when they had been far less successful than they were now. Even the renown, of sorts, was come their way. After all, they were bade to play before the royal duke of Gloucester, weren’t they? But then that was what had Joliffe’s stomach not sure which was up. To play before Bishop Beaufort of Winchester had been staggering enough, but Humphrey, duke of Gloucester was son, brother, and now uncle to kings, might one day be king himself—and they were to play before him.
It was not past imagining, but it was past anything Joliffe had ever believed would happen.
The long gateway passage opened into a large stone-paved square yard surrounded on all sides by more of the building, its several storeys all stone-made and raised on an undercroft so that the many windows looked not so much out on the world, Joliffe thought, as down on it.
Ahead of him, Basset breathed, “Blessed saints. It’s all new-made.”
“The old place burned a few years ago,” Mak said from behind. “Went like the best bonfire you ever saw. Grand to watch. So Gloucester’s had it made all new. Mostly all new. Still got some scruffy parts back of the stables, I hear, where it didn’t burn and didn’t need building again. Had an Italian in to do it. Very keen on Italian things is his grace of Gloucester.”
Maybe that was why, despite it was called Baynard’s Castle, it looked less a castle and more a palace to Joliffe’s eyes.
He also changed his guess about what wealth a royal duke must have, because the amount must lie somewhere well beyond the bounds of even his imagination.
Ahead, across the yard, a wide stone stairway as big as a poor man’s house swept up to a stone-railed porch and a broad-arched doorway, clearly the grand entrance into the place. At the stairway’s foot several men and women who must have ridden in just ahead of the players’ coming were dismounting from their horses, with servants in the duke’s livery holding the horses’ heads while the men swung from their saddles and turned to help the women. Above them, the tall stone-traceried windows and steep-pitched blue slate roof stretching away to one side of the stairway had to belong to the great hall, and wherever the players were supposed to go, Joliffe was sure it was not that way.
As he thought that, Gil asked, “Where should we go?”
Basset glanced over his shoulder at Mak for answer, and Mak said with a sideways nod, “There’s your John Trebell, innit?”
Besides the various lesser doors and stairways opening from the yard, there was another wide gateway arch, and just at Mak’s nod toward it, a man in its shadow was straightening from where he had been leaning against the wall, raising a hand in greeting toward them. Basset swerved toward him, and the players followed. The man stepped forward to meet them. He had a small drum and a long case that must hold a trumpet hanging at his back by straps over one shoulder, and as he and Basset briefly clasped hands, Basset said, “Our great thanks for joining us for this.”
“Any chance to play at the duke of Gloucester’s isn’t to be missed,” Trebell said, smiling. “So, my thanks to you in equal measure.”
Beyond the gateway was another large square of paved yard, the buildings around it plainly meant more for work than show, with one whole side given to stables. Another side must be the kitchen, Joliffe supposed, and probably bakehouse and brewhouse, while the others were probably storerooms and offices and whatever else so grand a place might need to ensure its lord’s comforts.
There were people all about, most of them in a bustle from one place to another. Trebell saved the players the trouble of getting anyone to heed them and showed this was not his first time here by leading them through a narrow door close by the gate and then through several rooms with a confidence that brought Basset to say, “You know your way around.”
“I do,” Trebell agreed. “When my lord of Gloucester is in London, there’s never shortage of work for the likes of us. He’s even-handed about it, too. Favors the best but not one over another.”
“He has his own minstrels, surely,” Basset said.
“Oh, aye, and his own company of players, too, and all of them not second to anyone’s, save maybe the king’s. They’ll all be here today, likely. But a man can’t be listening to the same music forever, or watching the same plays. You know how it is with lords. Off they send their companies—hither, thither, and yon about the country and to each other’s households for a bit of change. That’s what gives place for the rest of us to show our skill.”
And maybe find a place in a lord’s service themselves. It was lately enough their own company had come to such haven that Joliffe could sharply remember what it was like to be outside it, and he would not be surprised if Trebell carried hope with him today along with his trumpet and drum. Still, he looked to be prosperous enough. Not that they were likely to meet shabby folk playing for such as the earl of Mortain. Those who played for them would more likely be the successful ones among those who chanced their lives at diverting folk.
“Here we are then,” Trebell said as they came into one more chamber where there was already a scattering of people. Among them, Joliffe saw the red-haired woman whom Ned had called Pet but no one else he knew before Trebell said, raising his voice, “Master Russell, I’ve brought Lord Lovell’s players.”
On the room’s far side, near another doorway and a close-standing group of six other men and a boy, an impressively tall man with a long staff in one hand and a prospering belly under his long crimson robe turned around. “Ah,” he said. “Very good.”
He raised a hand in sign they were to come to him and they went, Joliffe at least very aware that both the man and the men near him were summing them up with long looks as Trebell said, with a bow to the tall man, “Master Russell.” And in explanation to Basset, “Marshall of the hall to his grace the duke of Gloucester.” Which meant that, among other things, he oversaw the work and ordering of things in the great hall and was well justified in giving them so long and assessing a look as he did while they bowed to him, and because the six men standing close by him had the same sort of look fixed on them, Joliffe guessed who they were even before Master Russell said with a gesture, “His grace the duke of Gloucester’s players. Master Cawode, Master . . .”
He raised questioning eyebrows at Basset who said, somewhat bowing his head to the other player, “Master Thomas Basset, sir.”
“Master Basset,” Master Cawode returned with a matching slight bow of his head.
All their players likewise slightly bowed to each other, outwardly gracious but with something of the bristling of two dog packs judging their rivals, Joliffe thought. Surely there had been other companies of players here before this, but
just as surely that made it no easier for either of them, because as little as Joliffe liked the thought of being judged against a duke’s own company in the duke’s own house, Master Cawode probably liked being judged against unknown newcomers just as little.
“They’ll be playing between the first and second remove,” Master Russell was saying. “You’ll be between the second and third. You’d care to see where you’re to play?”
Basset assured him that they would.
It was just as well they did.
They had played in many halls of many kinds and sizes over the years, and what Joliffe had already seen in London should have somewhat prepared him for here. But . . .
The duke of Gloucester’s hall was broad and long beyond the ordinary, even more than the bishop of Winchester’s. Overhead thick oaken beams arched and crossed under the high-pitched roof in beautiful ways that Joliffe had never seen before, while the floor was of large-squared green and white marble. The walls were covered with what seemed to him furlongs of richly colored hangings worked with silver ostrich feathers, golden roses, and white swans below windows set high enough only sky could be seen through them save at the hall’s far end, where a window of fretted stone and glass both clear and colored reached from floor to ceiling and curved boldly outward, letting daylight flood across the dais and high table’s covering of snow white cloths.
Behind that table a canopy of estate of what could only be cloth-of-gold thrust out over the two high-backed chairs centered there, and behind it almost the whole wall was covered by a woven tapestry showing the duke’s royal arms bordered with silver and flanked by a rearing lion and an antelope. Below the high table, two lines of tables stretched down the hall’s length, one on either side, with room enough to seat perhaps a hundred people, Joliffe guessed, and the cloths that covered them were as shiningly white as that of the high table, while an ordered hurry of servants was setting out what looked to be silver dishes and goblets along them. Joliffe could readily suppose that for the high table the settings were gold.
More to the players’ purpose, though, was the space between the tables, running open the long length of the hall. The players would have to allow for that very long length when coming in and going out, but at least there was no hearth in its middle with which to contend.
Basset and John Trebell and Master Russell were talking together, Basset as calmly as if playing such places was part of his everyday life. The rest of them kept seemly quiet, even Piers, although Joliffe saw Ellis subtly shift his balance as if trying to find some way to stand that did not hurt. He caught Joliffe looking at him and glared a little, silently daring him to make anything of it, but Joliffe intended to say nothing. Ellis would either be able to carry off his part or he would not. Asking him how he was doing would serve no purpose.
With such things settled as need be, Master Russell went away to his other duties, John Trebell said he would go to claim a corner of the minstrels’ loft above the screens passage, and the players returned to the room where Mak and Harry were sitting on the hamper, waiting for them. The duke’s players had spread out to claim a full third of the chamber for their own, but Mak and Harry had used themselves and the hamper to claim almost half of what space was left, for which Basset gave them thanks and some coins and told them to be back when they thought it would be time to leave here—“Since this looks likely to be a long feast today.”
Unfortunately, where they were had them somewhat too close to where the red-haired woman—surely Pet was short for another name—was stretching and bending and twisting, loosening her body for her work to come. Joliffe turned his back to keep his eyes away from her, gave Gil an elbow in the ribs to bring his eyes away, too, and set to readying for his own work.
Chapter 14
If it could have gone better than it did, Joliffe hardly knew how, and their return to Rose was triumphant. As they passed St. Paul’s, Piers ran ahead to tell her they were coming, was dancing around her and trying to tell her everything at once when she met them in Lord Lovell’s gateway.
Her smile quenched briefly at sight of Ellis. Halfway back from Baynard’s Castle, he had finally given way to pain he had been keeping at bay and now had Basset and Joliffe on either side of him, helping him limp along; but his smile was as wide as everyone else’s, and Rose’s smile returned as he lurched forward, away from Basset and Joliffe to throw his arms around her, exclaiming, “It was everything it had to be! We did a second play for them, they liked us so well!”
Short-breathed and laughing in his embrace, Rose exclaimed, “You didn’t have the garb for it!”
Her father gave her a hearty kiss on the cheek. “We made do, dear heart! We made do!”
“But what did you play?” Rose demanded as she squirmed loose from Ellis, keeping one of his arms across her shoulders to help him onward while Joliffe quietly propped him on the other side, taking most of his weight, and Basset answered, “In consideration of Ellis’ tender self, we did Tisbe and Pyramus.”
Ellis growled, whether at being described as a “tender self” or at the thought that playing Pyramus had been easy on him or simply because his leg hurt, Joliffe could not tell. He only knew that if someone asked him how Ellis had done today, he would have had to answer, in all truth, “Wonderfully,” and so he was glad no one was likely to ask him, because he did not want to say that aloud.
At least not where Ellis would hear him.
But it was true, and he was not about to begrudge Ellis his collapse into pity-craving now. He only hoped he never had to play while hurting as much as Ellis surely had been.
As he and Rose saw him into their room, the Hyches—man and wife and swarm of children—hurried out from their side of the gateway to hear how things had gone. Anyone else who was about the inn’s yard came, too, and Basset, Gil, and Piers stayed on the doorstep to tell it all at length while Mak and Harry brought the hamper in and left, and Rose and Joliffe eased Ellis down onto the mattress she had ready for him. Ellis settled with a groan, eyes closed and pain-sweat on his face, and Rose said at Joliffe, “Get his hosen off him. I’ve had water waiting heated this past hour and more, and Lady Lovell has sent clean bandages, the saints bless her.” And soothingly to Ellis, “There’s wine here, and a potion against the pain. The apothecary said it will maybe make you sleep.”
“Give it to me,” Ellis said through clenched teeth.
A little later, with some of the drugged wine in him and his leg bared for Rose to see to his hurt, she looked across him to Joliffe kneeling on his other side, ready to help if need be, and asked, low-voiced and serious, “Did it indeed all go well?”
Glad beyond measure he could honestly say it, Joliffe answered, “It could not have gone better. Truly.”
And that was the truth. Most days, playing was playing: skilled work done surely, competently, the way any skilled craftsman did his work. Every player knew there were likewise times—fortunately rare—when, for no good reason, everything went like a spavined horse and the work had all the pleasure of hitting oneself on the head with a club. But then again there were the times—with no knowing why they came—when the work was suddenly suffused with the joy of doing it, as if Saint Genesius had touched it all to gold for players and lookers-on together, and everything was right beyond what it had been yesterday or would be tomorrow.
Today, from the moment John Trebell’s trumpet had sung out and Basset and Gil had swept into the hall as the Duke of Burgundy and Lady Honor, had been one of those joyous times.
And then to be asked if they would play again at the dinner’s end . . .
As he and Rose finished with Ellis, the others came in. Still vastly a-glow with their triumph, Basset flung his arms wide—a perilous undertaking in so small a room—and declared, “God and Saint Genesius bless us all, but I do love this life! Ellis, how do you?”
Now propped a little up, his back against one of the hampers and a cup of drugged wine in his hand, Ellis growled wordlessly without opening his eyes
. Rose gentled the cup from his loosening grip, saying quietly, “He’ll be asleep soon.”
A Play of Lords Page 19