A Play of Knaves

by Margaret Frazer

  This was the kind of talk that could help in finding out the things for which Lady Lovell had sent them here, and Basset prompted, “He’s not liked?”

  “Not him or his wife or their son or their daughter,” Ellis said, pleased with himself. “Medcote takes a high hand with everything, and like we’ve heard, he and that priest tend to work as one in most things, with Father Hewgo no better liked than he is, from what Titha says. She says all that makes it odd that . . .” Realizing he should have named no names, he stopped short, too late, as Rose snapped the long-handled toasting fork toward him, flipping the trencher at him so that he had to catch it or be hit in the chest. He did catch it but had to juggle it, hot and greasy, from hand to hand, protesting while he did, “Hai! What’s that for?”

  That was another stupid thing to say, Joliffe thought, but fortunately for Ellis, Rose did not trouble to answer as Basset hurriedly asked, “Makes it odd what?”

  With the bread now in one hand, Ellis left off sucking the sore, greasy fingers of his other one to say sullenly, “That maybe Medcote wants to marry his daughter to Nicholas Ashewell, and Master Ashewell is maybe thinking to do it.”

  From what he had seen yesterday, Joliffe would not have thought there was that kind of liking between the men, but it was Basset who said doubtfully, “That’s several ‘maybes’ there.”

  Ellis shrugged. “Ashewell’s been heard saying something about it to his wife, and she’s been downcast of late, and Nicholas, too, as if maybe he’s been told and doesn’t like it either.”

  “It’s servant-talk then, this maybe-marriage?” Basset asked, not disparaging it for that. Servant-talk was often the surest way for the players to learn what was likely to sit well in a household they were to play for and, as importantly, what might not sit well.

  “Servant-talk,” Ellis agreed, “and not meant for them or anyone to know, seems like. That’s the feel I had from . . .” Far too late he saw the peril in what he had been about to say and shifted to, “. . . it,” with a wary sideways look at Rose.

  Rose, still giving him no look at all, left the fire, picked up the water bucket, and walked away toward the stream, eloquently leaving them all behind her in a shared silence of guilt.

  Which wasn’t fair, Joliffe wanted to protest—he hadn’t done anything. But likely at this moment just being men was enough to damn them all in Rose’s eyes.

  “Go help your mother,” Basset said to Piers.

  Throwing a baleful look at Ellis, Piers scrambled to his feet and went, making clear on whose side he was, and it wasn’t Ellis’.

  For his part, Ellis looked ready to take refuge in sullenness, probably beginning to feel as wronged as Rose did. In hope of heading that off, Joliffe said to Basset, “You think this could be the trouble the bailiff hasn’t been able to put his finger on?”

  “I’d guess it’s likely,” Basset granted. “It’s something to keep our ears out for, anyway.”

  “If the Ashewells don’t like the thought,” Gil said, “why can’t Master Ashewell just say no to the offer and there’s an end?”

  “A good question,” Joliffe said.

  “If I was asked,” said Basset, “I’d have thought a marriage between young Nicholas and that Gosyn’s girl more likely, what with the families looking so friendly together yesterday.”

  “That’s what Titha said, too,” Ellis said. “Seems that’s what most people have thought. More than that, a marriage to Medcote’s girl would do Ashewell’s friendship with Gosyn no good. Gosyn is on the outs with Medcote over sheep-grazing rights hereabouts. Medcote got the lease Gosyn has had for years. Out-bid for it to the abbey’s steward and took it right out from under Gosyn. So there’s bad blood there.”

  “You must not have been much use to Titha if she did all this talking,” Joliffe said.

  Ellis bristled. “I was use enough. It was between whiles of it that we talked.”

  “Oh, ‘whiles of it,’” Joliffe baited. “What time was it you crawled to your bed, anyway?”

  “Leave off, Joliffe,” Basset said, too used to them both to rise even to irk about it. “Ellis, what else did she have to tell?”

  “What more do you want?” Ellis protested. “There’s an old murder between the Ashewells and Medcotes. Medcote maybe wants a marriage that maybe Ashewell doesn’t. Gosyn and Ashewell are friendly. Gosyn and Medcote aren’t. That’s something more than anyone else of you has gathered.”

  “What about the priest?” Basset asked. “How does he figure into it all?”

  “Not as a peacemaker, I’ll warrant,” said Joliffe.

  “You don’t much talk of priests at a time like Titha and I were having,” Ellis said. Boasted. “There was only what she said about him and Medcote, and that we knew already. So. Is all that enough to satisfy this bailiff that we’ve done as Lady Lovell asked? Will it clear us of the business, do you think?”

  Basset sat staring at the fire, rubbing the knuckles of one hand while answering slowly, “That Gosyn is angry over losing the grazing rights can’t be a secret to anyone. The marriage business, though, that’s something, since it seems Ashewell and Medcote are trying to keep it to themselves. That could well be what the bailiff was hearing rumbles of. Yes, Ellis, you may have done our duty for us. If we chance to hear more while we’re here, well and good. If we don’t, what you’ve brought us should serve well enough to go on with. Well done.”

  “Which is what I trust Titha said to him, too,” Joliffe said.

  “Leave off with her,” Ellis snapped.

  Basset clapped his hands down on his knees and went on briskly, “But we’re still here for three more days and have yet to decide what we’ll do for the church ale.”

  “Something short, sweet, and easy,” Ellis said.

  “I don’t know,” Basset said thoughtfully. “I’m still thinking on it.”

  Uneasy at what Basset might be thinking, Joliffe said, “Whatever we do, we’ll probably have little thanks from Father Hewwwwgo for it.”

  Ellis snapped, “Leave off with the ‘Hewwwgo,’ too, will you?”

  “That was probably the other thing Titha said,” Joliffe grinned, and added in a shrill girl’s voice, “‘Leave off, Ellis.’”

  Ellis looked around for something to throw.

  Not waiting for him to find it, Joliffe went to see how Tisbe did.

  If Basset had not already planned for them to do more than be about camp all day, he would probably have come up with the thought now, as much to have Ellis away from Rose for the day as any other reason. As it was, he shortly announced that he and Ellis, Joliffe, and Piers should be on their way to Faringdon, to play at places along the way and there to draw folk to Sunday’s church ale. “The more there, the merrier,” he said.

  “The more there, the larger our share of the take at the day’s end,” said Ellis.

  Gil started to protest, “Why can’t I . . .”

  Basset stopped him with, “No, Gil. You’re not coming. Your ankle can do with that much more mending since there’s chance for it, and the cart and all shouldn’t be left to only Rose the day long. We’ll only be doing our lighter street work anyway. The juggling and suchlike, to draw people’s heed and laughter and leave them wanting more, so they’ll come on Sunday.”

  Given no choice, Gil watched, disgruntled, while Ellis, Joliffe, and Piers changed into their bright, parti-colored playing garb and Basset put on his Lovell tabard, and set out, with Rose waving good-bye to at least Basset, Joliffe, and Piers. As soon as Ellis raised his hand with the others to wave back, she dropped her own hand and turned away.

  Aside from that, it was a fine spring day. The mist was already gone, the morning sky lightly fretted with white clouds, the sun just clearing the tops of the hedgerows that seemed more green and open-leaved than they had yesterday. The thumb-sized daisies were thicker than ever in the wayside grasses, white stitchwort and red campion were blooming, and plovers were sweeping and calling over the ploughed fields. There was a warm h
eaviness to the fitful wind that made Joliffe suspect there would be rain before the day was done, but weather was something about which—like so much in life—he could do nothing except enjoy it, endure it, or ignore it. The rain would come or it would not, and meanwhile he had the pleasure of the kind of day when he remembered why he had left behind the other possibilities his life had held—of settled work and certain livelihood, of daily roof and walls and meals—for the one he had instead and presently would have changed for no other.

  Mind you, if the weather turned back to cold and wet and the tent leaked tonight and his feet began to hurt, he would surely feel differently, but he was not such a fool as to let that knowing spoil the moment as it was.

  At one place and another along the way to Faringdon, Ellis and Piers did brief juggling, Joliffe sang short and usually bawdy songs while playing on his lute, and Basset announced the church ale and promised a play. A few times Joliffe caught a grumble about “that priest and his money-getting ways,” but the promise of a play seemed to outweigh any dislike of Father Hewgo. The miles went easily and they reached Faringdon on its hill a little past noontide, when people were just starting back to work from their dinners or else to the afternoon’s shopping and either way were ready to stop a while and be entertained.

  This far from Ashewell and no longer in its parish, Joliffe heard only welcoming cheers and nothing about Father Hewgo when Basset declared their business, nor were people behindhand in dropping coins in the bag Piers offered them. As usual he made use of his wide blue eyes and fair curls to charm women into pity for his plight as a poor little boy a-wander in the world in need of care and mothering. That seemed always good for extra coins, but Joliffe was already seeing a few years ahead to when the trouble Ellis now gave them would be nothing to the havoc Piers was likely to cause when he could do more than look winsomely at women.

  From many other times, the players knew that, gaudily dressed as they were, sitting down in a tavern or anywhere else to eat and drink rarely went well, and they waited while Basset shed his tabard and went to buy the bread and other things Rose had asked him to fetch back, then went all together, following their noses, into a side street off the marketplace to a bakeshop where they bought meat pasties both to eat as they headed back to camp and for supper.

  Leaving the bakeshop, they went on along the street, knowing it would take them back to the road out of town. In the lead, Basset shifted aside to make way for a woman going the other way, leading a small boy-child by the hand, a market basket on her other arm. She was dressed in the good brown gown and white wimple and veil of a tradesman’s respectable wife, and the players, following Basset’s lead, stepped aside, all of them bending their heads to her in respectful, wordless greeting. Slowed by the child dragging at her hand while staring at the strange-garbed men, she bent her own head in return while briefly but not boldly looking at them, too. Only as her gaze passed across Joliffe, coming behind the others, did her eyes widen and her steps falter.

  Joliffe’s steps more than faltered.

  With memory sweeping through him of a warm September night and the scent of wild thyme on a hillside, he stopped where he was and said, before he could think to do otherwise, “Mary?”

  She stopped, too, smiling so warmly that her memory of that night must be as sweet as his own. “Joliffe. You remember.”

  Both gallant and truthful, he said, “A memory as sweet as that one will keep me company to my dying day.”

  But the next moment his mind caught up to the fact there was a boy-child staring up at him from her side, and sweet memory was overlaid by a desperate attempt to judge how old the boy was.

  His thoughts’ rush must have shown on his face because Mary laughed her lovely laugh—he had remembered her laugh was lovely—and said, “This is James.” She paused, her look teasing Joliffe, before she added, “He’ll be four years old come St. Bartholomew’s. I’ve been happily wed to a good man these five years.”

  And it had been six years since the players had last been this way, Joliffe remembered and tried not to let his relief show, but she laughed at him again and this time he laughed with her. Moonlight and her lovely laughter and her generous loving. That’s what he remembered of Mary.

  Basset, Ellis, and Piers had kept walking and there was no one else near. Quickly, while there was chance, Joliffe asked, “All’s well with you?”

  “Very well. And with you?”

  He made a small, flourished gesture. “As you see,” he said lightly. “Much the same.”

  But it was into his eyes she went on looking and said gently, still smiling, “I see.”

  And then there was nothing else to say between them that mattered or would make different what was.

  He said, “We’re Lord Lovell’s players now.”

  And she said, “You’ll pass our shop farther along the street here. A cordwainer’s on the left.” Her child tugged at her hand, impatient to be going, and she gave way to him with one last smile at Joliffe, and went her way.

  And Joliffe went his and did not look back and doubted she did either.

  No promises had ever been asked, made, or expected between them the little while they had had together. There had been need on both sides, then pleasure, then parting. What they had given between them had been given unburdened by afterward-demands for more on either side, so that what had been between them had stayed whole, a moment complete and enough in itself.

  At least that was how it had been for him, and now he thought it had been that way for her, too.

  He lengthened his stride, overtaking Basset, Ellis, and Piers just as they passed a prosperous-looking cordwainer’s shop where various well-made shoes and gloves and purses were laid out on the shopboard for display. Joliffe looked but caught no glimpse of its owner, and that was probably just as well, he thought as he kept on going.

  Tired from the morning’s work, the players did little but walk on their way back to camp. Piers sometimes plucked a daisy from the wayside to chew the sharp-tasting stems, but for the rest of them walking was enough, until almost back to Grescumb Field, when Piers ran ahead to tell his mother and Gil the others were coming; and, with him away, Ellis said suddenly and aggrieved, “Rose still loves me or she’d not care so much what I do,” sounding as if it were something he had been thinking on and had to say out.

  “She still loves you so much,” Joliffe said back, “that she’ll likely grieve when you’re dead because she’s stuck a knife into you the way she did that bread this morning.”

  “Let’s just hope she does it here,” Basset said, “with nobody to see it happen and good places to bury your body among the trees afterward.”

  Ellis had probably hoped for better than that from them and started to say something in answer, but they were at the gateway and neither Basset nor Joliffe paused to give him chance. He had to close his mouth and follow them wordless into the field, where Rose and Gil were seated on cushions on the ground near the cart, Rose with sewing on her lap, Gil with one of the script-rolls of a play. Piers was sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of them both, telling how the day had gone. Joliffe, likewise ready to sit, made for one of the other cushions, while Rose put aside her sewing and stood up, lightly touching the top of Piers’ head on her way to see what Basset had brought back. Piers went on talking at Gil. Joliffe dropped down and closed his eyes with a satisfied sigh at being off his feet. Basset, handing the food over to Rose, was started telling her what they’d brought back but broke off mid-word, paused, then asked in an altogether different way, “Rose, what is it? What’s happened?”

  Joliffe opened his eyes. Saw Ellis spin around from where he had been leaning into the back of the cart for something and Gil start getting slowly to his feet. Saw, too, the look that Gil and Rose traded with each other before Rose answered her father with, “Medcote and his son were here while you were gone. They want you to play for their household tonight. I said you would. He’s told me the way to there from here.”
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  There was nothing in that to be angry about but there was anger in her words. And fear. Joliffe heard it, and that was maybe what Basset had seen in her face, because he said, sounding angry himself now, “That isn’t all. What else happened?”

  Another look passed between Rose and Gil. Had they meant to tell whatever it was? Joliffe wondered. But it was too late to keep their secret, and with anger as plain as Rose’s, Gil started, “It was Medcote. He was . . .”

  “No!” Rose ordered at him. “It’s mine to tell.” She faced her father squarely and said, “After I told him you’d gladly play for his household tonight, he turned over-bold. Gil was gone to the stream for water, so Medcote thought I was alone. He asked if I ever ‘played.’ He said that, traveling with so many men, I must surely know all manner of ‘play.’ He told me he’d like to see my ‘play,’ and that if I were generous to him, he’d be generous to me. In more ways than one, he said. And his son sat there on his horse looking ready to laugh and take his turn if it came.”

  Ellis started toward her with a furious oath, adding, “If either of them laid a hand on you . . .”

  Rose turned on him with a fury to match his own. “What business is it of yours if anyone did?” Ellis stopped as short as if she had hit him, and she turned back to her father, saying, still fierce, “It went no further. It might have. I don’t know. But Gil came back and they rode away.”

  Gil, standing with clenched fists, said, “I should have . . .”

  “You should have done just what you did,” Rose said. “Nothing. There was nothing for you to do. They left.” She added to Basset, “I’m sorry. I meant to keep it to myself, not make trouble about it. But . . .” She faltered and the fierceness went out of her. “I was frightened,” she said softly; and Basset held out his arms and she went into them.

  For a long moment they held to each other, both of them needing assurance that she was safe. Ellis looked at them for a helpless moment, then turned and stalked away toward the stream, out of sight among the trees. Joliffe realized his own hands were as tightly clenched as Gil’s and carefully unfolded them before just as carefully asking, “So, do we play for the Medcotes anyway?”