“Yes!” Lewis said eagerly. “Yes!”
“Sit down while you can,” Basset added aside to Ellis and Joliffe who promptly did, with Ellis asking a drink of water from Rose who brought cups for him and Joliffe both, then went to explain to Lewis why he and Piers would not either of them be wearing their devil tails just now, not for a first practice. When Lewis would have protested that, Piers made it all right by saying, “I never wear mine for first practices. There’s too much else to think about.” He looked to his grandfather. “But what about the horns? Couldn’t we wear those?” Adding aside to Lewis, “They’re more trouble than the tails. The tails won’t fall off, once they’re on, but the horns do if you’re not careful.”
“A point well taken,” Basset said as if it were a great matter worth heavy consideration. “Yes. I’d say you should wear the horns.”
Being smaller and rag-stuffed, the horns were not so liable to damage as a hay-stuffed tail, and Piers, with Lewis following him, dove for the basket where the horns were kept, not only Piers’s small ones but several man-sized ones from when they had been a larger company, able to send more “devils” onto the stage. Lewis’s somewhat stubby fingers made clumsy work of tying on the black cap that held them to his head. Piers helped him, then did his own while Lewis went over to Matthew to show himself off.
Basset took the chance to say at Joliffe and Ellis, “Since we did this only yesterday, I’m going to suppose, St. Genesius reward my faith, that you remember your lines . . .”
“Rest it, Basset,” Ellis said impatiently, never good at being jested at, which was what made it such a pleasure to do.
“So we’ll do just the last few speeches before the end.” Basset held up a warning finger. “But we’ll probably do it maybe five times, to satisfy Master Fairfield and take some of the edge off him. You see?”
Joliffe and Ellis both saw. You had to care more than a little for the craft of playing to be willing to go on and on at a part, working it over and over into the best you could make it be in whatever time you had. If someone looked on it all as little more than a light game, as a chance to show himself off, the work of it soon palled, and it surely would for Lewis. The trick was going to be to rehearse him well enough that he could do his part, without quenching his interest in it along the way. Or maybe quenching his interest just enough he would be satisfied with what he was being given to do and want no more. To Joliffe’s mind—and to Basset’s as well, he suspected—that would be the very best of all.
The Steward and the Devil was mostly taken from one of Geoffrey Chaucer’s tales, with changes made to suit their company but the story much the same. The Steward, a lord’s officer given to extorting money from hapless folk in his power, meets a friendly man who claims to be a Devil come from Hell. They make agreement to travel together a while, each taking their share from whatever people offer them. They overtake a man—Basset—carrying and damning to the devil a sack too big and heavy for him. When the Steward urges the Devil to take what he’s been offered, the Devil declines, saying the man did not truly mean it. Likewise, when they come on a drunken man (again played by Basset with a change of hat and doublet) damning himself to the devil because his wine bottle is empty, the Devil says again he doesn’t mean it, the offer doesn’t count. But when the Steward seeks to grind a false fine out of an old widow (likewise played by Basset in loose gown and wimple and veil) and she wishes him to the devil, the Devil cries, “Now there is a wish made from the heart and fully meant!” Revealing his horns and tail, he summons the demon Piers to help him drive the Steward off to Hell, ending the play.
It was quick-paced and with laughs in plenty. The Penteneys would probably be well pleased simply because Lewis was in it, a second demon with Piers, no matter how ill Lewis might do his part.
The surprise, as they began to play it, was that it seemed Lewis would not do ill at all. He understood easily when Basset showed him where and how he was to follow Piers, and he readily copied, albeit clumsily, Piers’s leap and caper around the playing space. Basset brought them to a stop then with a sharp clap of his hands and said, “That’s the way of it. No trouble there. Now here’s the part you have to careful with.” He held out his hand for the two spears Ellis had brought from the cart. Ellis gave them over and Basset showed them to Piers and Lewis together. “They’re only painted wood, even the heads, but they’re sharp” he said sternly. “You wouldn’t want to be poked with a sharp stick, would you, Master Fairfield? No. Nor does Elis. You can poke them at Ellis but you must never, never touch him with them. You understand?”
Lewis frowned, puzzled, and said slowly, “Piers did. I saw him.”
“You thought you saw him, but he never really did,” Basset said, slowly and clearly back, because it was very necessary Lewis understand this. “Come. Stand with me, and Piers and Ellis will show you.”
Still frowning, Lewis obeyed. Ellis took his place as the Steward, Piers took one of the spears, made his long leap onto the “stage” and capered and jumped and bounded around Ellis, thrusting at him with the spear without ever touching him while Ellis yelped and flinched and tried to dodge and flinched and yelped some more until driven off, Piers thrusting and poking the spear behind him all the way.
His frown gone to a grin, Lewis clapped wildly. “I see! I saw how they did it! Let me! Let me!”
“Slowly,” Basset said, handing over the spear but holding up a warning finger. “Slowly at first. Faster later. You understand?”
Lewis nodded eagerly and went to join Piers, and shortly showed that he did understand. He even understood, without being told, that his own movements were less sure than Piers’s and was the more careful because of it. They were doing it a third time, at a little better speed, when Ellis did catch a hard jab in the ribs and Lewis stepped hurriedly back with a shocked gasp but Ellis said quickly, with a grin, “My fault. I bumped into the spear, not the spear into me. But you,” he added at Piers. “You slow down, you little demon. Lewis is doing better than you are.”
Piers stuck out his tongue, Ellis took a slap at his head without any chance or intent of reaching him, Lewis laughed, and they started again.
Joliffe’s part, when he had said his last line, was simply to get out of the way and stand with hands on hips, laughing devilishly, then follow his demons off the stage. For now he simply waited aside with Basset, so interested in watching Lewis and Piers that he hardly noticed when Simon sidled in past Matthew and around to Basset’s other side, to stand silently watching with them until Basset said quietly, with a nod at Lewis, “Your brother is simple, Master Simon, but he’s not a fool.”
Simon looked at him with surprise, then past him to Joliffe who nodded agreement. Simon smiled. “There’s not many can see that about him. Thank you.”
Matthew eased over to join them, keeping a servant’s place a little behind Simon but saying, “Begging pardon, but maybe best call this enough for Master Fairfield for now.” He made a small nod toward Lewis. “He wears down sudden, you know, Master Simon. We don’t want him going blue.”
“True,” Simon agreed unwillingly. “But it’s good to see him at such fun.”
With happy yells and much flailing of spears, the devils had just chased yelping Ellis off the stage yet again and Lewis was begging to do it one more time but Basset clapped his hands at them and Piers immediately swung around and came toward him. Lewis turned, too, his wide grin dimming as he looked from Simon to Matthew and back again. He would have stayed where he was except Ellis laid a friendly hand on his shoulder, saying, “You have to come when Master Basset calls. We all do.”
Smiling, Simon held out a hand to his brother. “It’s time to go, Lewis. Come on.”
“Go away,” Lewis said firmly, putting his hands behind his back. “I don’t want to.”
“It’s time to go,” Simon repeated, still easily, his hand still out. “It’s time for dinner.”
How odd did Simon find the necessity of seeing to Lewis as a child when
Lewis was the older of them, Joliffe wondered? Or was he so used to it that he never thought about it as strange at all?
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” Simon said.
“No,” Lewis answered.
“Our guests are. They’re going to eat. It would be discourtesy not to come with them.”
“I’ll put our spears away,” Piers said cheerfully, offering to take Lewis’s.
Lewis looked about to refuse but Joliffe, taking on his “Devil” manner and voice, said, “Here now, young master demon, there’s time for sport and time for feast and as your lord I say ‘tis time to feast, that afterwards we may have strength enough for seizing souls. Hand over here . . .” He put out demanding hands toward both Piers and Lewis. “. . . and away with you both till time for sport again.”
Among Piers’s few virtues was the ability to know a prompt when he heard it. With a flourish of his spear, he knelt and held it out to Joliffe. Lewis, grinning again, clumsily copied him, going heavily down on one knee and holding out his spear, too. With a solemn, approving nod, Joliffe took them both and ordered, “Away with you then, my devils, until we meet again to win this stinking soul to hell.” He pointed arrogantly at Ellis who rolled his eyes and turned away as Piers and Lewis, laughing now, scrambled back to their feet, Piers saying, “Race you?”
But Matthew quickly put in, “No, best not. Master Simon wants to hear what you’ve been doing this while.”
“How the play is going and all,” Simon said. He held out his hand again and this time Lewis took it and they went out together, Lewis talking happily, Matthew following a few paces behind.
At Basset’s word, the players lingered, to let Lewis, Simon, and Matthew reach the hall well ahead of them before going themselves, leaving Ellis to his turn of keeping watch in the barn. By the time they took their places at the farthest end of one of the hall tables, below all the household folk, Lewis and the others were at the high table with Matthew standing against the wall behind Lewis, who—to judge by his gestures and bouncing on the bench through the meal—was telling Kathryn all about the morning, paying more heed to that than to his eating and sputtering much of his food in consequence. The girl seemed used to that. She took it in good part anyway, nodding to what he was saying and wiping his chin when need be, helped by Simon sometimes drawing Lewis’s attention his way, giving her chance at her own food. Joliffe, watching while trying to seem he was not, judged it was something well practiced between her and Simon.
Seated between Piers and Basset, he had no chance to speak with anyone else but decided that, first chance that came his way, he would make talk with someone of the household—a pretty maidservant for choice; no reason not to mix one pleasure with another—to find out more about this care and coddling of Lewis. Even if Master Penteney hoped to go on running the Fairfield properties—and they must be considerable—after Lewis came of age, that was hardly reason for all this care of someone who anywhere else would at best have been kept unseen and never talked of. There had to be more than money in it somewhere and Joliffe wondered what it was.
At the meal’s end, when Master Penteney said the grace and the household was beginning to draw back from the tables, making no great haste toward their afternoon’s work, Lewis ducked away from both Kathryn and Simon and around the high table’s end, avoiding even Matthew reaching out for him as he made eagerly toward the players at the hall’s far end. Basset, seeing all that, said, “Rose, Piers, you go on. Get Ellis’s food and go. Joliffe, keep with me.”
“Why me?” Joliffe muttered at Basset’s back, not expecting answer and getting none as he followed Basset up the hall, their progress slow against the flow of folk the other way. They met Lewis halfway, just as Matthew overtook him, with Simon and Kathryn not far behind. When Matthew laid hold on one of Lewis’s arm and Simon took the other, Lewis started to thrash against them both, yelling toward Basset, “There! See! He’s come for me!”
“Uh-oh,” Basset said, for only Joliffe to hear.
That was an echo of Joliffe’s own feeling and he silently doubled it as Mistress Penteney swept down on them. She was a wide-bosomed woman of middle-years, suitably dressed for a housewife running her weekday household in a plain gold-brown gown held in at the waist by a buckled belt hung with a housewife’s keys and a small cloth purse, her hair covered by a white headkerchief neatly pinned to the white wimple around her face and throat. What told she was a rich man’s wife was the finely woven linen of gown and veil and wimple, and the thick gold and garnet ring on the hand she reached to lay on Lewis’s shoulder. The hand was gentle, though, and so was her voice as she asked, “Oh my, what’s toward? Does Master Basset need you this afternoon, too, Lewis?” at the same time giving a firm shake of her head at Basset.
Lewis, turning around too late to see the head-shake, complained at her. “I have to go! We’re practicing!”
With a low swept bow to both Mistress Penteney and Lewis, Basset said, “Praying your pardon, Master Fairfield, but I was coming to tell you that this afternoon we mean to rehearse the play we’re to do for the household on Wednesday . . .”
“I want to watch!”
“. . . and I must needs ask your kindness in not watching us, lest it be spoiled for you on the day.”
Lewis’s face crumpled like a small child’s told he was not going to have a longed-for treat after all. “No?” he asked faintly.
Basset said regretfully, “I fear so.”
“Master Basset will want you later,” Mistress Penteney said kindly. “Best you be rested when he does. Go on with Matthew now, like usual.”
“Usual, usual, usual,” Lewis said unhappily and trailed away with Matthew toward a doorway at the near end of the dais.
“Thank you for trying to help,” Mistress Penteney said to Simon and her daughter. They made bow and curtsy to her, and Kathryn cast a smile toward Basset and Joliffe before she and Simon went off together a different way from Lewis. Mistress Penteney smiled at Basset and Joliffe, too, and said, “Master Fairfield must needs lie down every day after dinner, lest he tire himself too much. I should have told you that, but he knows it as well as anyone. Thank you for your ready help.”
“It’s ever my pleasure to serve you, my lady,” Basset assured her.
“And this is . . . ?” she asked toward Joliffe.
“Master Joliffe Southwell,” Basset said. “One of our company. You’ll see him as the Devil tonight and tomorrow.”
Joliffe swept her a slightly flourished bow. “And as the Angel of the Lord on Corpus Christi, may I assure you, my lady, lest you think ill of me.”
Straight-faced but with a merry enough twinkle to her eyes, she said, “But you’re only a man most of the time, I trust? Neither angel nor devil would be comfortable to have around the house for long.”
“Only a man most of the time,” Joliffe agreed, “and at your service.”
“You’ve both served well thus far, surely,” she said, “keeping Master Fairfield so happy. But one of you was missing from dinner just now. There’s nothing amiss, I hope?”
Basset explained about the need to keep watch on their belongings.
Mistress Penteney made an impatient sound at herself. “Now there’s a thing of which I should have thought. You were surely going to take him his dinner, though, weren’t you?”
“One of our company is seeing to that, my lady,” Basset said.
“I’ll tell our chamberlain that you’re to have a padlock and key so there’s no need to trouble yourselves any more with keeping watch and missing meals.”
Basset and Joliffe both bowed their thanks. She bent her head to them in return and said, “Now I’ll leave you to your business and go on with mine. But, again, my thanks for your help with Lewis.”
She went her way and Basset and Joliffe went theirs, Basset musing as they went, “A worthy woman. Still, what’s amiss with our Lewis, I wonder, that he’s not to tire himself too much and must needs lie down to rest at midday, as if he were m
ore an infant than a man-grown youth. I do have to wonder.”
“And about the care being taken of him?” Joliffe prompted.
“About that, too,” Basset agreed, but neither of them took it any further, not then, keeping to themselves whatever were their own thoughts about it.
Chapter 6
Despite what he had told Lewis, it was the Abraham play that Basset kept them at through much of the afternoon.
“Three days,” he said to Ellis’s grumble at that. “That’s what we have. Three days to make this good enough not to shame ourselves, and some of that time must go to keeping Lewis in good spirits and putting together The Pride of Life. Now, I’ve another thought on what you can do, Piers, when you understand he means to kill you. You’re standing here, see . . .”
He finally gave over working them but only because a servant from the priest at St. Michael Northgate sought them out with word that Sire John wanted to see Basset about what was planned for Thursday.
“Right, then,” said Basset. “I’ll go along with you. Piers, help your mother. If Lewis shows up, he’s yours to divert.” He caught his hat that Rose tossed to him and added as he put it on, “Ellis, Joliffe, you can run your lines for Pride while I’m away.”
Ellis and Joliffe both gave him respectful half-bows. Only when Basset and the servant were well gone did Ellis exclaim, “Christ and the cripple!” and fling himself down in disgust on one of the cushions.
“Ellis, not that oath,” Rose admonished. “Not this week of all weeks, especially.”
Ellis sprang to his feet and went to kiss her by way of apology. Joliffe settled on another of the cushions, waited until he judged they had had a long enough apology between them, and said “Shall we get on with it?”
Ellis groaned and came to join him. For the next hour they belabored their way through the play, far enough better than their first attempt this morning that Piers, listening while he helped his mother hem Lewis’s devil tabard, said when they’d finished, “That wasn’t bad. Maybe Basset won’t kill you after all.”
A Play of Isaac Page 7