A Play of Knaves

by Margaret Frazer

  Basset bowed to him. “It will be our pleasure. Thank you, sir.”

  “But there’ll be no more of your profanity here in the village!” Father Hewgo said. “I forbid it!”

  Master Ashewell looked about to make sharp answer to that, but Medcote cut in first and smoothly, “On that I’ve had a thought, Father Hewgo. Since Lord Lovell vouches for them and they’re here, why not use them to the church’s good?”

  “To the church’s good?” Father Hewgo made it sound as if he’d been asked to eat hot worms.

  “A church ale, Father Hewgo,” Medcote said smoothly.

  The priest began what looked to be yet another protest, despite that a church ale was usually to a church’s profit. Parishioners were expected to donate food and drink to be sold for the parish church’s good, and although that donating was sometimes grudged by those who had to do it, folk were generally willing to make a holiday of the time, and Joliffe suspected that in the latter was where Father Hewgo’s objection most deeply lay. He did not seem a man who favored jollity. Probably because people busy with jollity, pleasure, and joy were less biddable than people kept bowed under a heavy sense of their sins and the world’s wickedness.

  But Medcote cut over whatever protest the priest might have made, going on, “To raise money toward that east window you’ve been wanting.”

  Father Hewgo’s look went from outrage to disconcerted willingness to listen. Medcote surely knew him well and how to deal with him, smiling while saying, “This Sunday coming would suit. That will give time for word to spread that, come Sunday after Mass, there’ll be a play here in the churchyard and . . .”

  Father Hewgo bristled into new protest. “In the churchyard? No. That’s beyond all and into desecration.”

  With mellow respect, Basset said, “By your leave, sir, all last week and on Easter Sunday afternoon itself, we performed in Minster Lovell’s churchyard by leave of my lord’s priest, for Lady Lovell and the household and half the countryside around. By the time we left, people had been moved by piety to such gifts that there was talk of building a new aisle for the church.”

  That was more than Joliffe had heard, but he and Ellis both nodded their heads in agreement. Gil had rejoined them and nodded, too. After all, as Basset sometimes said, truth sometimes lay as much in what was possible as in what was. It was possible someone had talked of a new aisle to Minster Lovell church.

  For now it was enough that Father Hewgo was paused; and into that pause Joliffe said, more as if thinking aloud than to anyone, “It’s in my mind that Lady Lovell may have said that in her Lenten time at St. Mary’s in Winchester, my lady abbess told how she’d a company perform there at Shrovetide. In the guest-yard, was it?”

  Ellis took that up with, “Didn’t she say there was enough made to buy a new gold-embroidered altar frontal?”

  “Might have been,” Joliffe agreed. Just as Lady Lovell might have said something about a Shrovetide play—but had not.

  “There,” said Medcote. “If such as Lady Lovell and my lady abbess find no fault . . .”

  “Yes, yes,” Father Hewgo snapped. “I see the point. Well then, yes, if it’s to be to the good of the church, it may be an allowable thing.”

  Basset, knowing it was better settled now than later, said smoothly, “Our fee is a tenth of whatever good our work brings to the church.”

  The priest opened his mouth toward either protesting that or else attempting to bargain it down, but before he could do either, the young man behind Medcote, silent until now, said, “I’ll take word to Faringdon myself tomorrow. There’s always some will come that far for a good ale, and the more the merrier.” Somewhat mocking, he added, “Since it’s for the church.”

  Several men among the lookers-on cheered and maybe jeered that, and Father Hewgo swung around and said at all the crowd, his voice raised to pulpit-strength, “But never think I’ll not be giving heed to who comes only to the ale and not to Sunday Mass before it! Come to one and not the other and there’ll be a price to pay!”

  There were priests who could have made that into a jesting jibe with their authority’s weight behind it nonetheless. Father Hewgo made it simply a threat, surveyed the crowd as if to be sure they understood it, then gave a curt nod of farewell more or less at Master Ashewell and Medcote and stalked away toward the church.

  To no one in particular, Medcote said, “We’ve somewhat rumpled his tonsure, I think. I suppose I’d better go smooth it. By your leave, Master Ashewell.”

  There was something lightly mocking in the words and the way he bent his head to the other man in a courtesy that Master Ashewell answered with a curt nod.

  “Master Nicholas,” Medcote added to the boy behind Master Ashewell and seemed not to see the glare the boy gave him along with a barely jerked nod.

  Medcote and the Ashewells might be united against the priest, but they were not friends with one another, that was clear. And as Medcote went away in the priest’s wake, the youth with him—looking as if he had found the whole business vastly laughable—gave Master Ashewell a nod and, behind his back after going past him, a look down his nose at the boy Nicholas, who flushed red and looked furious but was too young and not nearly tall enough to look down his nose in return.

  Joliffe did not know whether any of the other players saw that exchange, but he heard Basset let out his breath on a whoosh of relief that matched Joliffe’s own, because when a village’s priest kicked up hard against players, the players rarely came out the winner. Whatever was the sport among Father Hewgo, Master Ashewell, and Medcote, it had come out in the players’ favor, and at a guess, they had now seen the men who were worrying the abbey’s bailiff.

  But Master Ashewell was coming toward them, and Basset, Ellis, Joliffe, and Gil all bowed to him, Basset saying, “Master Ashewell. Our thanks for being our champion in this.”

  “It was my pleasure. Father Hewgo is overbearing beyond his office and a hypocrite. I have too few chances to thwart him and welcome every one.”

  That was surely blunt enough, Joliffe thought, as Basset asked, “The church isn’t in your gift, then? To shift the priest as you choose?”

  “Unhappily, no, or he’d be long gone. I’m only reeve here for the nuns of St. Mary’s Abbey in Winchester. The village and the gift of the church are both theirs.”

  “Oh,” Basset said. “I had thought from your name . . .”

  He trailed off the sentence, leaving an opening that Master Ashewell filled, saying easily, “No. I take my name from the village but I own what used to be the desmesne manor lands that were once part of it. Now, if you would care to come with us, I’ll show you where you’re welcome to stay.” He stopped as if on a sudden thought, then said, “Do you know, I think no one asked if you wanted to stay long enough here to perform at a church ale come Sunday. Do you? Or are you bound for somewhere else and expected there?”

  “We’re always bound for somewhere else, sir,” Basset said, “but rarely expected anywhere. We’re more than pleased to linger here through Sunday.”

  Master Ashewell smiled. “Very good. My son and I will fetch our horses while you ready your cart and then we’ll show you the way. There’s a field I think will serve you well.”

  Basset and the others again thanked him with deep bows. Far more than once, Basset had said, “There’s no such thing as showing too much respect to those who ease our way through life.”

  Especially considering how little ease there often was, Joliffe always silently added.

  As the Ashewells left, Piers came from where he had been hovering well to the side, jiggling the bag that clinked and jinked very satisfactorily as he said, pleased with himself, “I think people were paying for both the shows they got. Ours and that priest’s.”

  “And well they should,” his grandfather said, taking the bag and weighing it in his hand. “Well done, Piers.”

  Rose was waiting behind the cart to give them their tabards, not needing to be told that, since they would be here f
or a time, her father would want to make as good a show leaving the village as coming in. Basset gave the bag of coins to her—she saw to their money as well as to so much else—before taking up his tabard while Joliffe, Ellis, Piers, and Gil were slipping their own over their heads, Ellis saying as he settled the weight of the cloth across his shoulders, “Do you have the feeling we just became a rope in a tug-of-war the priest and these men are having?”

  Joliffe shrugged, partly in answer, partly to shift his own tabard into place, and said, “Thus far anyway the tugging has been to our good.”

  “That’s probably what the rope says just before it breaks,” Ellis growled.

  “Ellis,” Basset said, “you’d find something to complain of if God himself dropped gold coins in your lap.”

  Ellis paused, seeming actually to consider that, then said seriously, “You’re right. I probably would.”

  Rose laughed at him and kissed him on his cheek.

  Chapter 2

  The Ashewells returned riding bay rouncys, horses meant more for service than show, but these two were of good quality. Not wasting words but with a smile and a nod, Master Ashewell led the players not back the way they had come but onward, to turn right at the cross-lanes and along the churchyard’s end and out of the village, the downs now at their backs. Beyond the village’s crowd of houses the lane did not deepen between steep banks like the other one had, but made a long, straight slope to the level land, the broad village fields spread away to either side beyond the ditches that kept them drained, with hedges and stands of trees here and there and, it soon proved, Master Ashewell’s own manor not far from the village.

  The place was not walled. The hall and its house, barns, stable, and sheds sat close and clean around an open yard beyond the far end of a wooden bridge across a ditch widened to make a reed-filled moat around it all. With freshly white-plastered walls and roofs golden with new reed-thatch, the clustered buildings shone with settled prosperity and welcome among the young-greened fields and pastures around them. But at the bridge’s outer end Master Ashewell drew rein, said something to his son, lifted a hand to the players, and rode on across the bridge into the manor yard.

  Left to wait for the players to come up, Nicholas dismounted, and when they reached him said to Basset, a little shy but smiling, “It’s not much farther to where you’re welcome to tent. My father hopes you’ll pardon being left to me to show the way.”

  “We are as grateful to the son as to the father for all their courtesy and kindness,” said Basset with a bow.

  Nicholas acknowledged that with a slight bend of his head in return. “If you’ll come this way, then,” he said, turned, and leading his horse, fell into step beside Basset.

  While they went on along the road, he made solemn talk about the weather and how long the players had been on the way from Minster Lovell. Basset answered him just as gravely, and when they had turned from the wider way into a side lane between hedges high enough to hide the fields beyond them, took his turn to ask whether Father Hewgo was so cross-grained about everything or only about players.

  Forgetting to be grave, Nicholas exclaimed, “Him? He’s cross-grained about everything.” And added with scorn, “Besides, he’s like glove to hand with the Medcotes.”

  That had not seemed true just now, Joliffe thought, while Basset prodded mildly, “You’d think he’d take better care to keep well with your father, him being the abbey’s reeve here.”

  “You’d think so, yes,” Nicholas said with a boy’s readiness to talk to someone as ready to listen as Basset. “But when John Medcote got Brook’s manor, the right to a quarter of the village came with it, and the right to half the village court, too. That gives him more sway in matters than he’d otherwise have.” In obvious echo of his elders, he added, “He uses it ill, too. He’s been buying up grazing rights for his sheep and then overcrowding the pasture-lands. So far Master Kyping hasn’t been able to curb him.”

  “Master Kyping?” Basset asked.

  “He’s the abbey’s bailiff for its lands in this half of the Vale. He answers to Master Carswell, the abbey’s steward, but Master Carswell only comes at quarter-years, so mostly it’s my father and Master Kyping who have to deal with the Medcotes.”

  “Ah,” said Basset with flattering interest. They had stopped at a gateway into a field, probably where they were to be left, but before Nicholas could say anything in parting, Basset asked, “Medcote is new here, then?”

  “He’s from Wantage and doesn’t belong here at all. The manor came to him by way of his wife after . . .” Nicholas suddenly fumbled, turned red, steadied himself, and said in a rapid mumble, “. . . after her cousin died and she inherited.”

  “While your family has been here far longer, having the village name and all,” Basset said, pretending not to see that stumble.

  “Yes,” Nicholas agreed. But all his eager urge to talk was gone. He gestured through the open gateway, saying rapidly while gathering his reins and readying to mount, “This is Grescumb Field. There’s a stream among the trees there, and you can take what wood you need for your fire.” He swung into his saddle, finishing, “If you come to the house a little before sundown, you’ll be in good time to perform at supper, my father says,” and was turning his horse away even as Basset thanked him and gave assurance they would be there.

  Basset stood and watched him ride back the way they had come. Joliffe, starting Tisbe into the tight turn through the gateway into the field, asked dryly, “You don’t suppose we’ve learned what we came for, do you? That something about Medcote upsets Nicholas Ashewell?”

  “I doubt that’s a secret to anybody,” Basset answered as dryly. “I’d say, though, that we’ve moved nicely into the center of the trouble this Master Kyping the bailiff is worried over.”

  “Ashewell has done well enough by us, anyway,” Ellis said. “Look at this place.”

  Untilled and ungrazed, Grescumb Field was surely going to be hayed come high summer, but presently the grass’ young green was scattered with cowslips’ yellow flowers and the fire-red sparks of campion. The young-leaved hedges on three sides gave good privacy, while the fourth side was mostly thickly grown alders and willows except where a wide gap marked a ford across the stream there to the ploughed field beyond, hazed with the green of newly sprouting wheat, the hope of a harvest better than last year’s.

  With no need to talk out a choice, the players, Tisbe, and their cart headed for that gap, Piers flinging himself into half a dozen cartwheels and then running ahead to disappear down the shallow slope to the stream. By the time the rest of them reached the top of the slope, he was sitting on a stump beside the water, pulling off hosen, his shoes already cast aside. Intent on wading into the clear, shallow-running water, he did not look up as the cart creaked to a stop at the edge of the trees and the other players stood smiling down at him with the same smile Joliffe knew was on his own face. As traveling players, they had stayed in places ranging from ghastly to good enough to pleasing. Here was a very pleasing place, with grazing for Tisbe and water and wood close at hand, and they would have it not just for the one night but for probably four.

  Joliffe clucked to Tisbe and turned her to draw the cart aside from the ford a few yards but still sheltered near the trees. That brought him around and looking back toward the downs, unseen since the players had taken to the narrow lane into Ashewell village. From here, with the field open around him, the high, steep rise of hills was in clear view, their smooth-grassed flanks curving upward like a huge sea-swell to the sky. And high across one curved shoulder was the White Horse of the Vale, stretched in its eternal gallop just as Joliffe remembered it from six years ago, and he came to a stop in mid-stride, staring at it as he had stared then. At some time beyond the reach of men’s memories, for a reason long forgotten, the hillslope’s grassy turf had been cut away to lay bare the white chalk underneath in sweeping lines that were not so much a horse as the sense of a horse, more potent in its seeming than any p
lain-made horse shape could have been. There was the proud arch of a horse’s neck, the long sweep of its back, the curves of its running legs, and the flare of its tail, all stretched across a hillside, immense and strange and beautiful.

  Coming past Joliffe, Ellis made a quick, one-handed warding sign against evil toward the Horse, muttering, “I’d forgotten how fey that thing is. The way it takes your eye, whether you want to look at it or not, makes my skin crawl.”

  Turning to begin unharnessing Tisbe, Joliffe said, hiding irk under jest, “That’s not the Horse making your skin crawl. It’s lice. You’ve got them again. You’re lousy.”

  Behind him, Rose said with pretended displeasure, “I’ll thank you to take that back,” knowing as well as he did that none of them had lice, not after the trouble she took with fleabane, tansy, rue, lousewort, and other herbs, both as ointments on them and, dried, among their hampers of garb and other clothing.

  Joliffe gave her a quick half-bow. “I take it back on the same breath that I gave it, and beg your forgiveness, sweet lady. I did but speak in jest.”

  Too long among players for fair words to divert her, Rose said back at him, “You spoke to irk Ellis.” But she smiled at him as she said it.

  They each had their familiar duties when it came to settling anywhere, though Gil, to spare his ankle—better though it was—took Piers’ usual task of gathering dry wood while Piers, already wet from his wading, went down to the stream with the water bucket. Basset and Ellis set up the tent they used on nights they had no other shelter, while Joliffe saw to unharnessing Tisbe and wiping her down, then hobbled her to let her graze as she would.

  For her part, Rose dug a small firepit, setting the grassy turves aside, both for banking the fire when need be at night and to replace in the hole when time came that they moved on. Gil brought dry wood from among the trees and set to making the fire for her, while Piers, having returned with the water, brought the long-legged metal trivet for setting the cookpot over the fire, and then the cookpot itself. With the tent up, Basset and Ellis unloaded their bedding into it, while Joliffe fetched what Rose called the kitchen box, setting it near the firepit for her. Readying to begin their supper, she said, “We should have bought food while we were in the village. It will be oat pottage and yesterday’s bread for tonight, I’m afraid. But maybe you’ll be fed at the manor after you’ve played.”