A Play of Isaac

by Margaret Frazer

  But not to be loading and unloading the cart every day, and walking miles between one hope of work and the next with never certainty the work would be there when the time came—instead sleeping in the same place five nights in a row and certain of every meal—that looked like holiday to him.

  The feeling stayed with him even after he rose with everyone else to go through the morning business of putting on the hosen and doublet he’d taken off for sleep last night, seeing to his body’s needs, washing his face and hands in the waiting water bucket, and combing his hair because Rose was firm on them looking no more unseemly than could be helped.

  So as not to spoil the pleasure she took in ordering them around, he carefully kept from her that he at least—he would not answer for Ellis and Piers—would have done it anyway.

  Only when Basset sat them down and said, “Now. The Pride of Life. From the beginning,” did the sense of holiday not so much fade as die a brutal death, as all too quickly it became plain that neither Ellis nor Joliffe had a firm hold on their lines anymore. Worse, Basset did have firm hold, and Rose, prompting from the script, shook her head over how often she had to give Ellis and Joliffe, turn and turnabout, a word or words to keep them going, until Basset stood up with a frustrated roar, swore at Ellis and Joliffe both for wash-brained idiots, said he was going to breakfast and that they’d better, too, though, “I’ll be mazed if either one of you has wits enough to keep straight the difference between chewing your food and breathing,” he snarled.

  If Ellis had any better answer to that than Joliffe did, he wisely kept as silent as Joliffe, neither of them moving as Basset stalked out the barn door, Piers beside him, their backs matchingly eloquent with indignation. Even Rose held silent while she put the script away in the box where all their scripts were kept, only giving Ellis a sideways look that Ellis answered with an uncomfortable, sheepish shrug; but she relented before she left, saying as she moved toward the door, “Come on then. You won’t do any better for being starved.”

  “I think I’ll stay,” said Joliffe. “I’ll go in after you’ve come back. Someone should stay to keep an eye on things here.”

  Ellis said, “Come on. Basset won’t bite your head off in front of others. We all went in to supper last night.”

  “That was last night. By now all the Penteney servants and everyone up and down the street if not half of Oxford know we’re here. I don’t think we should leave our things simply to strangers’ good will.”

  Ellis frowned at that, but Rose said, “You’re probably right. Well thought of, Joliffe.”

  Basset would have thought of it if he had not been so irked this morning, Joliffe thought as he watched Rose and Ellis out the door. He waited until sure they were well gone, then leaped for the script box.

  With reading, his lines began to crawl back out of whatever hole in his memory they had sunk into; he was feeling at least a little less a fool by the time Rose and Ellis returned. By then he was also more than ready to go to his own breakfast but asked as he pointedly held the script out to Ellis, “Where’s Basset?”

  Taking the script ungraciously but willingly, Ellis said, “Gone to speak to Mistress Penteney. He asked the chamberlain or someone if he could see Master Penteney. The fellow said we’re a household matter now and it was Mistress Penteney who’d deal with him.

  “Where’s Piers?”

  “Lewis claimed him as soon as he’d done eating,” Rose said. “That man Matthew has them.”

  “Good luck to him,” Joliffe said from the heart.

  He made it to the hall in time to help himself to the last of breakfast, spreading a fist-thick slab of new-baked bread with soft butter, layering a few cold slices of beef onto it, and catching up a wooden cup of ale just ahead of the servants clearing the benchless single table set up in the middle of the hall. Breakfast in even the largest households was usually a simple matter, with bread and ale and yesterday’s left food set out for folk to help themselves without sitting down, the quicker to get them onward with the day. Accordingly, there were no servants lingering for him to draw into talk, and a long look around while he ate told him that wherever Basset was, he was not here, nor Piers either.

  But Kathryn Penteney still was, standing not far away, near the doorway to the screens passage, in earnest talk to a man Joliffe guessed might be the household’s chamberlain: he plainly belonged to the household but his tunic was of better cut and cloth than a mere servant’s and his manner toward her was both respectful and assured, suiting someone who both served here and had authority. Joliffe was too far away to hear what was being said between them, but he took his time over eating his bread and meat, watching them.

  Well, watching the girl more than the man he admitted, and liking what he saw. She would probably someday fill out with womanhood to her mother’s fullness of figure, but presently she was merely slender in her girlhood, with her fair hair in a long plait down her back, her hands moving quickly while she talked, her laughter brief and bright at something the man said.

  He did not know Basset was behind him until Basset slapped him between the shoulder blades deliberately hard enough to stagger him a step and said, all his ill-humour seemingly gone, “Come on then, boy. Finish up. We’ve a new player to set to work.”

  Joliffe gulped the last swallow of his ale, set the cup down, shoved the last bite of the bread and beef into his mouth, and followed Basset from the hall, pausing only at the basin and towel set by the door to wash his hands and wipe them clean, giving a last, quick look backward at the girl, still in talk with the man. She was no harder to look at close up than farther off, though maybe younger than he had guessed, but that was all he had time to note before Basset caught him by an arm around the shoulders and moved him out of the hall, saying as they went, “I don’t want to think what kick in the shins the goddess Fortuna will give us next time she turns around, but for the present I have to tell you we’ve landed hip-deep in a pot of cream.”

  “Your talk with Mistress Penteney went well, I take it?”

  “Well and better than well. No trouble over anything. She saw no reason Lewis couldn’t be in a play, simply that we weren’t to tire him. Seems he’s not so stoutly strong as he looks. She said to ask if there was anything we needed for that or anything else, and to speak with the chamberlain if there was something particular to how the hall should be set up for either Lewis’s play or Wednesday’s. We should be so lucky in our hire all the time!”

  Joliffe couldn’t quarrel with that. All too often the best they could hope for was not to have too much trouble put in their way.

  “All she asked was that Wednesday’s play be somewhat to the point of Corpus Christi, it being the feast’s eve,” Basset went on. “I told her what we had in mind—I didn’t tell her I had idiots as bad as her own in my company who have to learn their lines all over . . .”

  “‘For no doubt death has mastery, to make to weep and sorrow. From holy writ and prophecy this knowledge I do borrow,’” Joliffe declared, raising a dramatic hand.

  Basset clapped him happily on the back again. “There! I knew the part was still in your addled head somewhere. It was just a matter of grubbing around till you found it. Anyway, she said it would do well.”

  “There’s the part where the Devil makes somewhat rude sport with the Bishop,” Joliffe warned.

  “I told her of that and said we could cut it out, but she said laughter could be as much to God’s glory as prayer and she’d trust we keep all within bounds. There’s a woman I’d marry if I could.”

  “Pity she’s wed and can’t accept the honor,” Joliffe said, with cheek enough he knew to duck as Basset made to cuff his head.

  “You keep a courteous tongue in your head, boy. And don’t think I didn’t notice you noticing the daughter either. Just mind that noticing her is all you do.”

  “Tell it to Ellis. He’s the one has an eye for the women.”

  Basset snorted. “And you don’t? Heed me. There’s to be no loosenin
g of the loins while we’re here. You hear?”

  They had reached the barn, were just outside its door. Joliffe paused to sweep Basset a deep and flourishing bow, declaiming as from his very soul, “Your command is ever the wish of my heart.”

  “Oh, lord. What’s he thinking of getting up to now?” Ellis called from inside.

  “Nothing, if he knows what’s good for him,” Basset growled, and then, on the instant all brighter humoured, added, “Ah, here come our fine young devils,” as Piers and Lewis came out of a narrow gap between two of the buildings ranged between the barn and the house, Lewis’s Matthew following behind them.

  “We’ve seen Mistress Penteney! Piers called.“She told us!”

  “But does Master Fairfield want to do it?” Basset called back, as if he did not know the answer.

  “Of course he does,” Piers said, scornful that his grandfather had to ask.

  “Of course I do!” Lewis echoed.

  Basset looked skyward for the divine help that never seemed to come when called for, sighed with mock despair, “What have I done?”, clapped his hands and declared, “To work then!”

  Chapter 5

  But Basset did not intend to shape all their work to Lewis. Instead, he said they would begin with a run-through of the Abraham and Isaac to see how much (with a glare at Joliffe and Ellis) they’d all forgotten.

  “That can wait,” Piers protested. “We know the thing backwards!”

  “I want to see if we know it forward, too,” Basset said quellingly. “Besides, Rose needs to measure Lewis for his devil-wear. Go on.”

  He pointed them aside to where Rose was laying out a length of somewhat battered red cloth, bought last autumn cheap off a stall in Warwick marketplace from a batch spoiled in the dyeing. At the time Basset had said, “At that price, we’ll sooner or later find it fit for something or other,” and today he was proved—as usual—right: some of it could easily be made into a devil’s tabard for Lewis. Diverted, Piers and Lewis went to Rose, leaving Basset, Ellis, and Joliffe to outline a square-cornered shape the size of their scaffold in the barn’s dirt floor and set out the two stools that would serve, for now, as God’s throne and the sacrificial altar.

  Joliffe, with his fair, smooth face, was inevitably the Angel but on their way to Oxford there had been, yet again, debate between Basset and Ellis over which of them should be Abraham and which should be God this time. Both parts were better suited to Basset, with Abraham supposedly being somewhat over one hundred years old and God being . . . well, God. Either way they played it, they were both going to be bearded heavily enough to obscure their actual years and Ellis had tried, “If I’m God, all I have to do is sit. I won’t have to remember to move old.”

  “Meaning I don’t have to remember because I am old, you young whelp?” Basset had growled in mock anger.

  “Meaning Abraham is the better part and you should have it,” Ellis had growled back.

  “What you mean,” Joliffe had put in, “is that you want the fewest lines and the chance to sit watching us do all the work. Let me play God. Then I can do the sitting.”

  They had both snapped at him for that and he had gone off laughing to help Piers fetch water from a stream to the camp and come back to find that, as usual, Basset would play God, with Ellis to be—as usual—the patriarch Abraham.

  Now Basset took his place upstage on the stool that was presently God’s throne and Ellis knelt as if in prayer down-stage, nearer the audience, while Joliffe as the Angel stood at God’s right hand. They had begun running their lines with each other last week on their way to Oxford, and despite Basset’s jibing at them, all of them had their words firmly in their heads. It was the business that went with the words they needed to make smooth again, not having done the play since sometime in Lent, and Basset was set on making this as perfect a performance as lay in human power. “We’re few enough,” he said, “but, by God, we’re better than most and as good as the best.” And if they weren’t, he plainly meant they would be before he was through with them.

  He set right off to it with, “Now, Joliffe, face me more than Ellis, remember, as if you’ve been listening to me, until he starts his prayer. When he starts to pray, turn your head over your shoulder to look at him so it seems we’re both pausing to hear him. Ellis, raise your head more. Remember the damn beard is going to be over most of your face. Talk to heaven but be sure they can see your eyes. Now, when I start to speak, Ellis, you go on mouthing silently as if still praying and, Joliffe, you look back at me, and if you can put less grin and more adoration into it, it will help. Ellis, begin.”

  Ellis obeyed, his voice rich on the words, giving them weight and worth. “Father of Heaven, omnipotent, who neither beginning nor ending has, with all my heart to you I pray . . .”

  He prayed at length, giving thanks in particular for his dear and long-desired son Isaac. Then God spoke to his Angel, and the Angel spoke to Abraham, and only then was Piers needed as Isaac. With the time Basset took over every bit of business among them, Rose was long since done with measuring Lewis, but she knew as well as anyone what trouble idle boys might make—or, more accurately, what idle Piers might lead Lewis into—and Joliffe, waiting while Basset showed Abraham exactly how he was to rise and pretend to be dusting off his knees and turn with great surprise when the Angel spoke to him, watched her setting Lewis and Piers down together with a few handfuls of hay between them, telling Piers, “You show him how to braid this to make his tail so it will be ready when I need it.”

  “Devils don’t have hay tails,” Lewis protested.

  “You’ll see,” Rose said with a smile and made to ruffle his hair as she would have done Piers’s but remembered in time he wasn’t a child. For all that he was childish, he was man-grown and properly to be called “Master Fairfield” and was certainly no one whose hair she had any business ruffling. Joliffe saw her look a little uneasily toward the door where the man Matthew was leaning comfortably against a post, keeping out of the way while he watched. To her look he merely smiled and nodded to let her know all was well. Then Joliffe needed to pay heed to his own business with Ellis until Basset said, “Right. Now, Piers, you’re on. You have your hoop?”

  Piers, already on his feet and coming, no hoop in hand, as his grandfather could well see, froze, one foot in the air and a rather frantic look on his face. “I thought. . . .” He stopped, straightened, put his foot down, and glared at Basset. “You said no properties today. I don’t need the hoop.”

  “Good. You do remember what you’re told sometimes. Get over here.”

  Some days it was a close-run thing whether Basset would keep the upper hand with his grandson but more times than not he did. Thus far.

  Lewis made to follow Piers, saying, “And me,” but Rose said, “Not for this play, Master Fairfield. This one has no devils. He has to be a boy and all alone in this one.” Lewis’s round face began to draw toward a pout at that but Rose added, deliberately cheerful, “Besides, you’re not ready to be a devil yet. We still have your tail to finish. Bring me what you’ve made and we’ll do that, please.”

  She held out her hand and Lewis went to her, taking the two feet or so of braided hay he and Piers had done, while Basset said, “Come on from over there, Piers, the way you’ve done before, if you remember it,” pointing, and they went on from where they were, sorrowful Abraham taking Isaac away to the mountain to sacrifice him at God’s command. Joliffe, withdrawn to the side of the throne of God, had only to watch while Abraham told Isaac his fate and Isaac made his plea for life and then submitted to God’s will, at which point Joliffe’s Angel stepped forward to save the boy and praise Abraham for his faith in God, bringing the play to a glad end.

  The whole business with the ram miraculously appearing in a bush was put off for later, Basset being presently more interested in how well they had their lines and movements than any of the special business that went with them—the crowd-pleasers, as he called such business rather rudely when he was out o
f good humour with the world in general and audiences in particular. Besides, the ram was Rose’s business and she was presently busy sewing a long strip of the red cloth tightly around the braided hay, with a point to one end to make it into a credible devil’s tail. It would not hold up to much rough use but for the few times they would rehearse and the once Lewis would perform it would do well enough, and for now Basset settled for granting rather grudgingly that they all seemed to know their lines sufficiently well. “Better than I hoped, that’s certain.”

  Low enough Basset could pretend not to hear him, Ellis muttered, “If we don’t have them now, we never will. You’ve had us saying them every other mile the last two weeks.”

  “But how does it stay on me?” Lewis protested as Rose held up the finished tail.

  Before Rose could answer, Piers skipped out of the stage-space to him, saying, “There’ll be a band wrapped around your waist and between your legs . . .”

  Lewis giggled and made to touch his crotch but Matthew by the door made a loud clearing of his throat and Lewis’s hand moved vaguely off into space as Piers went on, “. . . and the tail is stitched to that and it sticks out from under the tabard. Here. I’ll show you mine, how it does.”

  “And then,” said Basset, “we’ll run your part of The Steward and the Devil, if you will, Master Fairfield.”