A Play of Knaves

by Margaret Frazer

  “We’ll buy something tomorrow anyway,” Basset said easily. “My thought is that, rather than sitting about for the two days until Sunday, we should do a wander through the nearest villages to let folk know we’re here and to hear what we can hear. We’ll buy what you want while we’re about it.”

  Joliffe had brought from the cart and was dropping beside the fire the canvassed cushions they used for sitting, but Basset, somewhat troubled with arthritic joints, sat himself on the open back of the cart while saying, “We might even go back to Faringdon while we’re about it.”

  “That fellow with Medcote said he’d go to Faringdon,” Ellis pointed out, lifting the cooking pot onto the trivet for Rose now that the fire was burning well.

  “He’ll tell his friends,” Basset said. “We’ll tell everybody.”

  Joliffe sat down on one of the cushions, glad to get off his feet. Piers and Gil, their share of tasks done, were gone back to the trees where Gil, perched on a half-fallen willow limb, was giving Piers advice on what was a suitable sapling for a fishing pole.

  Ellis poured some water into the pot to boil for the pottage, set down the bucket, and turned to Rose, who was just straightening from the kitchen box, the bag of oatmeal in her hands, her back to him. He put his hands on either side of her hips and pulled her back against him, bending his head to kiss her neck and say something in her ear too quietly for anyone else to hear.

  Not that Joliffe could not make an easy guess at it by the look on Ellis’ face and how he was pressing his body to hers, and he dropped his gaze to give them what passed for privacy among them all. There was love between Rose and Ellis, and desire for each other. The trouble lay with Rose’s missing husband. However much she did not want him back, for all she knew he still lived, and if he did, then whatever pleasures of the body she and Ellis shared went beyond the sin of fornication to the far worse sin of adultery, and whenever she gave way to her need and Ellis’, her shame afterward was deep and her penance never enough to ease her conscience. This year she had insisted that she and Ellis keep the Church’s law against giving way to bodily lust of the loins through all the forty days of Lent.

  Joliffe did not know how hard that abstinence had been for her, but Ellis, despite having accepted it, had not taken to it well; but Lent had ended at Easter and since then Ellis had been letting Rose know in small, hopeful ways that he was ready to be done with abstinence. Now he looked to be asking outright for what he wanted.

  But Rose twisted free of his hands, shrugged away and aside from him, and said, “No.”

  “I meant tonight,” Ellis said. “Not now.”

  Rose stopped still, paused, then said with her head bowed so she was speaking more to the top of the meal bag in her arms than to him, “We’ve held chaste this many weeks, Ellis. Please. This is our chance to be done with our lust once and for all. Please let’s take it.”

  Joliffe could not keep from glancing at Ellis then, and if he had been cruel he would have laughed at Ellis’ look of confused hurt, disbelief, and beginning anger. Instead, he became very busy with taking off one shoe as if there was a pebble in it that he had to find this instant and no other. Basset, too, had sudden need to be half-turned around, rustling at something in the cart behind him, saying somewhat loudly, “So, what should we play at Ashewell’s tonight?”

  Ellis drew back from Rose, snarled, “King Cophetua and the Unwilling Maid,” and stalked away toward the stream.

  Rose closed the kitchen box, set down the meal bag, and went on to readying their supper, keeping her back somewhat too carefully to Basset and Joliffe. And Basset, for only Joliffe to hear, said, “No, not that play tonight, I think.”

  “The Robin and Marian,” Joliffe offered, because as Robin, Ellis would be able to fight, save his fair lady Marian, and kill the Evil Sheriff—pretend triumphs, to be sure, but maybe some comfort against his present complete defeat by Rose.

  “Um,” Basset agreed. “Is it your turn or Gil’s to be Marian?”

  “Gil’s.”

  In their small company’s lean years, before they became Lord Lovell’s players and Gil joined them, the women’s parts in their plays had been mostly Joliffe’s. That had been a worry as he came into his twenties and was no longer quite the stripling that he had been. He could still play them but it was good to have Gil take the younger ones most of the time. Besides, their company could now do plays with two women and that greatly increased how many plays they could do. But Robin and Marian only needed the one woman, and Joliffe had written in a Henchman for the Evil Sheriff, with him and Gil trading between Marian and Henchman, while Ellis was always Robin and Basset was always the Evil Sheriff. Except now Basset said, “So, do you think you could do the Sheriff tonight?”

  Joliffe looked around and up at him with worry. “Why? Are your arthritics worse than you’ve let on?”

  “I keep telling you they’re not ‘my’ arthritics,” Basset complained. “I would, given choice, keep no company with them at all.”

  “They’re bad, then,” Joliffe said.

  “They’re neither good nor bad at present. They just are, and my thought is why should I work harder than I have to? So, back to my question. Could you do the Sheriff tonight?”

  “I can,” Joliffe assured him. Besides that they had done almost all their plays so often they all knew each other’s lines and movements almost faultlessly, he had already done the Evil Sheriff a few times before this. “You’ll be the Henchman then?” With one line and little to do but be stabbed and die.

  “I will.” Basset heaved a satisfied sigh, rested both hands on his knees, and sat up straight. “I do like being master of a company and giving orders.”

  “You didn’t order me. You asked,” Joliffe pointed out.

  “From a lord, an ask is as good as an order,” Basset returned.

  “I’m going to sleep,” said Joliffe, and stretched himself out on the grass with his head on the cushion, and set himself to it.

  He awoke to Gil grumbling at having to shave, Ellis scrubbing Piers behind the ears with water warmed beside the fire, and Rose getting out the bowls for serving the pottage.

  “Good,” she said at Joliffe as he sat up. “You can cut the bread for me.”

  When they had finished eating, the afternoon was far enough gone that it was time to go. Leaving Rose to watch the cart and Tisbe, the men and Piers set out on foot, with Ellis and Joliffe carrying the needed garb and gear in a hamper between them, usually a task Joliffe shared with Gil, but they were still sparing his ankle and it was no great trouble anyway; the manor was only a short and easy walk away.

  As they neared it, Joliffe thought the half-timbered, white-plastered buildings curved around their yard, peaceful and warm in the westering sunlight, were like a cat curled and comfortable in a favorite sunny corner. It was an ordinary place belonging to an ordinary, prospering man, hardly differing from any number of other ordinary places the players had played in their time, but Joliffe had the sudden sense that this was a home, a place people had settled into and belonged and would belong to for a long time to come. If “home” had been a thing he had wanted for himself, he would not have gone the ways he had gone with his life, but for that one moment, as he and the others crossed the bridge over the reed-filled moat into the dusty yard, he felt the draw of pleasure there could be in such a thing as “home.”

  A small boy with a plume-tailed brown dog came running across the yard toward them from the doorway of the tall-roofed hall, saying excitedly as he reached them, “You’re the players! Father said I could watch for you! The last of supper has just gone in.”

  Basset bowed to him. “Then we’ve come at just the time we meant to, good sir.”

  The boy eyed their plain clothing with unhidden disappointment and asked, “Do you need to change your clothes?”

  “We do, if it please your worship,” Basset said. “A room or even the smallest corner will suffice, if in your great kindness you might let us use so much.”
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  As he was supposed to, the boy giggled at all that, but behind him a man had come from the hall and was saying friendliwise as he crossed the yard, “The players. Welcome. Tom, go tell Master Ashewell they’ve come. I’ll see to what they need.”

  “Dyer will see to you,” Tom said happily and ran back toward the hall while Basset slightly bowed to the man and said, “We do need somewhere to change, sir.”

  “This way, if you will,” Dyer returned as courteously and led them not into the hall or house but aside to the kitchen yard. Like many older places, the kitchen was built away from the house for better safety from fire. Here, with everything kept close together in the surround of the moat, the kitchen was not very far from the hall, nor was its yard very large; but the man took them to a door standing open into the house itself, into a small passageway between several heavy wooden doors standing open to several small rooms on either side and at its end a glimpse into the tall openness of the hall. Joliffe supposed the small rooms would be the butlery, pantry, and stores, where wine, bread, and other needs for meals were kept. Though probably usually locked for safekeeping, the doors were open now, this being mealtime, and the man showed them into the pantry with its wide board table along one wall still scattered with crumbs and crusts from bread cut for tonight’s supper.

  “Will this serve?” he asked.

  “Very well. Thank you,” Basset said.

  “Supper is nearly done. Will you be ready soon?”

  “Very soon,” Basset assured him. “When we open the door, you’ll know it’s time to announce us.”

  The man nodded to that and began to withdraw, but Basset said, “One thing. What humour are folk in tonight?”

  “Quite good,” Dyer answered. “Gosyn is here—him and his wife and daughter. He’s somewhat given to shouting, but all’s well between him and Master Ashewell. If there’s shouting, it will be about something else.”

  He went out, shutting the door, leaving Joliffe to wonder who this Gosyn was and what he might shout about. But Gil had begun to unlace his doublet as soon as they were in the room, and while he shrugged out of it, Joliffe pulled Marian’s gown out of the hamper, ready to help him into it and lace it up the back since Rose was not here. There was not that much any of them had to do to be ready for Robin and Marian. Gil had painted his face for Marian before they left their camp, and for playing in so small a place as the hall, the rest of them had not bothered with their own faces, simply left them as they were. Piers, playing the Peasant Boy in his own everyday tunic, had put on a pair of his outgrown, well-patched hose at the camp and busied himself here with getting out the men’s sword belts and swords while Basset put on the Henchman’s loose surcoat over his own doublet and hosen and Ellis took off his walking-days brown doublet and put on Robin Hood’s gallant one of green and gold. Even bought as it had been at third or fourth hand from a dealer in used clothing, it was far better than any outlaw would wear in the greenwood, but when Joliffe had long ago pointed that out, Basset had answered, “That’s commonsense, yes, but folk live every day with commonsense and what-is. They won’t pay us to show them more of the same. Robin gay in gold and green will get us more coin than Robin dull in brown and mud, so Robin gay in gold and green is what they’ll get.”

  So Robin and Marian were both gay in gold and green and the Evil Sheriff—“On the chance someone may not otherwise be able to tell he’s evil?” Joliffe had jibed—wore a black, padded surcoat studded with gray rivets as if maybe it was armored underneath, which it was not but nonetheless was heavy enough and too warm in today’s warm weather to be comfortable. Having laced Gil into Marian’s gown, Joliffe left Basset to help him with the long wig to go with it and turned to Ellis, who was garbed and sword-belted and holding up the Sheriff ’s black surcoat for Joliffe to slide into. That on, Joliffe buckled on the Sheriff ’s sword belt, settled the sword on his hip, and took the helmet Piers had ready for him. It was an unvisored man-at-arms helmet bought cheaply, not much dented, and open-faced so he could both see and his face be seen. Despite that, he settled it down on his head with a sigh. He hated the thing, but it was agreed among the other players that he was too fair-haired to be a villain, his protests that he had known fair-haired villains enough in his time being always ignored.

  Basset finished with Gil, stepped back to look them all over, nodded that he was satisfied, and opened the small room’s door to tell Dyer that they were ready. Dyer nodded and went the few yards more along the passageway and out into the hall where he announced in a firm and carrying voice, “My Lord Lovell’s players!” and stepped aside, clearing the way for them to enter and begin.

  Chapter 3

  Neither the hall nor the household were large. Besides the cloth-covered table at the far end where Master Ashewell, another man who must be Gosyn, and two women sat, there were only two short trestle tables, one on either side of the hall, with several children along the outer side of one and several household folk at the other. More folk were hurriedly crowding in through the hall’s door from the yard, elbowing each other into place along the near wall—kitchen-women and stablemen who didn’t dine with the family but were welcomed to the hall for something like this, Joliffe guessed as he quickly assessed the place where they would play.

  Although the hall’s windows were few, narrow, and un-glassed, their shutters were set open to the fair day, letting in the late afternoon sun to shine off the white-plastered walls and fill the hall with light. This time of year there was no fire on the open hearth in the hall’s middle to frond smoke up to the high rafters under the thatched roof, and the rushes scattered across the floor looked to be fresh and clean, not treacherous underfoot, so that Joliffe swaggered out boldly, hand on sword hilt, laying claim by his outward arrogance to all the space between the tables for the players’ own by declaring loudly, “Robin Hood, that false outlaw, dare not come forth, lest my sword I draw, for cowards all these outlaws be that hide away in the greenwood free!”

  The play went well, too familiar to them to be a trouble now that Gil was past sometimes stumbling on his long skirts. Willing though Gil had been to learn everything he could of the players’ craft, skirts and “playing the lady” had come hardest to him, but he no longer went crimson about it and could even do a credible curtsy when need be. Ellis of course enjoyed playing the hero, and Robin’s sword-clashing with the Evil Sheriff brought encouraging shouts from the lookers-on. The Henchman died with suitable agony and then so did Joliffe’s Sheriff; and to table-pounding and clapping, Robin and Marian and the Boy took their bows. Then the Evil Sheriff and his Henchman came back to life, with Joliffe pulling Basset to his feet with a flourish that covered Basset’s stiff knees, and the both of them took their own bows to very satisfactory hissing. The hand-clapping went on as Basset, Ellis, Joliffe, and Gil made a bowing retreat from the hall, leaving Piers behind, beginning to juggle five leather-wrapped and brightly dyed balls he had pulled from the front of his tunic. He would follow that with the tumbling and somersaulting he had learned from his mother, filling the time it took Joliffe to strip off helmet, sword, and surcoat and rejoin him, bringing juggling balls of his own.

  Joliffe’s juggling being notably worse than only poor, he always played the fool to Piers’ skill, which pleased Piers as well as the lookers-on; and then Basset came out, followed by Ellis, followed by Gil, all in their usual clothing, with Basset making great show of being head of the company, shooing Piers and Joliffe briskly aside and stepping forward to address “my good, assembled gentlemen and ladies all.” While he made a word-flourishing speech, Ellis and Joliffe made to strike dignified poses behind him but ended up shoving and sniping rude comments at each other while Piers climbed onto a table, and from there onto Gil’s shoulders, and started to juggle again, so that finally Basset broke off his speech, turned on them all with a roar, and chased them from the hall with threats and much arm-waving, leaving laughter, table-beating, and clapping behind them.

  They came back in for q
uick bows and disappeared again, this time for good. Dyer, who had seen them in, followed them out, still laughing, telling them as they collected their hamper, “Mistress Ashewell says I’m to see you to the kitchen for food and drink.”

  Basset thanked him and they followed him out into the kitchen yard where he left them to sit on the wooden benches either side of the kitchen doorway while he went in. The players looked back and forth at each other, grinning at how well the playing had gone, then stood up as two women and a half-grown girl came hurrying around from the hall’s front door and across the kitchen yard. Suddenly flustered to see the players there, the girl and the older of the women ducked their heads and went into the kitchen, but the younger woman stopped, eyeing them all but mostly Ellis. She was well-curved, with enough of her there for a man to get his hands on, and curls of butter-yellow hair creeping out from under the edge of her head-cloth. Smiling mostly at Ellis, she said, “You gave fine sport. I’ve not enjoyed myself so much since Shrovetide.”

  Ellis, suddenly holding himself less like Ellis and more like Robin Hood, smiled in return and thanked her, and Joliffe knew trouble was coming.

  Dyer came out of the kitchen and said, “Titha,” with the worn patience of someone who had had to give the same order too many times.

  Titha gave him no look, just wrinkled her nose at Ellis and went away into the kitchen with a come-hither sway of her hips.

  Giving her no more heed than she gave him, Dyer said to Basset, “Nan will bring your food in just a moment,” and left them, going back toward the hall.

  They all sat down again and Joliffe, looking at Ellis, said, “Don’t.”