A Play of Isaac

by Margaret Frazer

  Joliffe had not much thought about what he was doing or why and did not stop to think about it now. More than once, his curiosity had set him to do things he could just as easily not have done if he had only taken the trouble not to be curious. Unfortunately, that was usually too much trouble to take, and because just now he was curious why Basset had felt the need to lie about where he was going, he moved along the shed’s shadow to the alleyway’s mouth, stopped, held his breath to listen, and was just able to hear Basset still going away from him, then the soft opening of the gate, and the light crunch of steps taken on gravel.

  Two steps on the graveled path . . . then nothing. Not the closing of the gate or more footsteps. Basset had either stopped just inside the gate or else crossed onto the grass. Was either still at the gate, or was going away across the garden, or had taken unexpectedly to flying.

  Now, Joliffe knew, was when he should go back to his bed and the pretense he had never left it. He also knew he would not. Instead, he slipped around the shed’s corner and into the alley’s darkness, glad he knew there was only clear earth along it and nothing nasty to step barefoot in. What he need worry about instead was keeping silent, and he did. And when he neared the alley’s other end, he pressed himself flat-backed against the right-hand wall and edged nearer to the gateway, keeping himself as much part of the darkness as possible. From there, with his head turned sideways and against the wall, he could see Basset standing on the path, looking away toward the house.

  If the set of Basset’s body and head were anything to judge by, he was waiting for something. Or more likely someone. Joliffe had barely time to wonder for what or whom when a faint crunch of footsteps told him it was someone, and Basset took a step forward to meet them, almost beyond where Joliffe could see him. Joliffe silently cursed at him to stay where he was and Basset did, though probably not for Joliffe’s cursing but because the other person had reached him, just barely into Joliffe’s sight. Master Penteney.

  Even in the pallid starlight Joliffe had no trouble knowing him and seeing he was readied for bed, a bedgown of some dark stuff loosely belted around him and his hair rumpled as if maybe he had already been to his pillow before coming outside. He held out a hand that Basset took in a welcoming grip that Master Penteney readily returned, saying low-voiced as he did, “Your pardon for asking you to meet like this. It’s not for shame.”

  “It’s for good, solid sense,” Basset returned, equally low. “Even after all this while, there’s still folk might be reminded of too much if they saw us being friends together.”

  “There’s too much truth for comfort in that. But by St. Christopher, it’s good to see you again, Thomas.” They had dropped hands but he reached out to slap Basset on the upper arm. “Damnably good.”

  “And you. I’d not have sought you out—haven’t done all these years—but I’d agreed to come with your young Lewis before your name came into it and it was too late then to back off without it looked odd.”

  “There’ve been times when I knew you were in Oxford and I didn’t seek you out either.” Some of the pleasure went out of Penteney’s voice. “We’ve paid our price, haven’t we?”

  “We have that,” Basset agreed. But a smile came back into his voice as he added with a movement of his head toward the house, “It’s not turned out so ill for you, though, has it?”

  “It hasn’t, true enough. But you?”

  Penteney’s doubt was plain but Basset’s answer was un-hesitant. “As far as any man is likely to get what he wants in this world, I’ve the life I want, no fear. And even if I didn’t,” he added jestingly, “it’s a better life than the one I might have had if we hadn’t paid our price.”

  “Longer, at any rate,” Penteney returned, matching the jest but with something more than jest behind it.

  Something less than jest was in Basset’s voice, too, as he asked, “And Roger? Do you ever hear aught of him? Or from him?”

  There was silence then, making Joliffe wish for more than starlight by which to see Penteney’s face before he answered, “I’ve never seen him since, but I hear from him once a year. Sometimes twice. He’s well. He’s . . . doing well.”

  “And best not spoken of,” Basset said.

  “Best not,” Penteney agreed. “Basset, come inside. I’ve wine in my study. Let’s risk the time to talk . . .”

  “It’s not worth the risk, Hal. Even this is more than we should.”

  “But you’re well?” Penteney insisted. “You can assure me of that?”

  “As well in my way as you are in yours. I swear it.”

  Not knowing how long they would talk and afraid it would not be much longer, given their unease at it, Joliffe slid silently away along the wall. Given one thing and another, he thought he would rather be in his bed and seemingly asleep when Basset next saw him than be caught here listening.

  Chapter 7

  In the morning Joliffe was, as usual, first to awake among the others. He lay in the darkness, listening to the early rustle and murmur of birds in the barn’s rafters and thatch and the even breathings of his fellow players. For a mercy none of them—including him, he supposed, or he would have heard about it by now—was given to snoring. “Would take too much effort,” Basset had grumbled when Joliffe once mentioned it. “Or maybe nobody wants to die, because I’ll kill any fool who wakes me from a good sleep.”

  To judge by the deep rumble of his breathing, Basset was sleeping soundly enough now. And well he should be, after his lurking last night, Joliffe thought.

  Joliffe had been well settled on his bed and feigning sleep by the time Basset returned to the barn; had fallen actually to sleep while Basset was readying to lie down and had awakened only enough when Rose and Ellis came back to know they were there before falling straight back to sleep, his tiredness greater than his curiosity about how their evening had gone.

  He was fully awake now, though, and it wasn’t their evening he was wondering about but what he had heard between Basset and Penteney. He had been already sure they had known each other before now and had half thought their secrecy was because Penteney did not want to admit acquaintance with a player and Basset had been willing to accept that. But last night Joliffe had unmistakably heard a friendship still warm between them after apparently years of never speaking to or seeing one another. Friendship . . . and some trouble heavy enough to keep friends apart. A trouble that despite they were years away from it, they felt they still had to pay the price of it because there were still people who could be “reminded” of it. Reminded of what? What had Basset and Penteney known or done—or, St. Genesius forbid, known and done—that it was dangerous even now for people to remember they had known each other?

  And who was this Roger who was “best not spoken of”?

  Joliffe rolled onto his back and damned his curiosity for dragging him into this. He couldn’t even pretend to himself he would let it go and forget about it. His questions would twitch at him worse than an itch would. Likewise worse than an itch, he couldn’t even go straight at them. There was no simply asking Basset. Even aside from the fact he shouldn’t have been listening at all, there was the never-spoken pact among the players never to ask about each others’ lives before they had met. Any of them could tell whatever he chose to tell, but no one ever asked questions. “It’s the best way to keep throats from being slit, boy,” Basset had said in their early days together. “What a man doesn’t know, he can’t use against you if there’s a falling out or we end up going separate ways. All we need know about one another is that we all do our work, share and share alike, in plays and otherwise, no slacking, and the rest doesn’t matter.”

  That had suited Joliffe well enough at the time and still did, but it meant there was no way he could be asking Basset outright what was toward between him and Master Penteney.

  Come to that, how had Basset and Penteney come to know each other at all? Or at least to know each other well enough to get into such trouble. On the face of it, there wasn’t
much likelihood of it. Players were set too far aside—below, some would say, but Joliffe made his own choices on how to see things—from a settled, wealthy merchant like Penteney for there to be any deep dealings between them, let alone ground on which friendship could grow.

  Joliffe stretched his arms out to the sides and muttered toward the roof, “This is what comes of being lazy.” If he had fought his curiosity instead of letting it haul him out of his bed last night, he’d have no problems this morning beyond making sure of his lines for Pride and hoping Ellis wasn’t quarrelsomely sore-headed from too much ale. It served him right and on a platter to be stuck with questions he had small hope of ever having answered and maybe he’d finally learn his lesson by it.

  That settled, he closed his eyes, determined to slip to sleep again. And promptly opened them to stare into the thinning darkness. He hadn’t even a prayer of fooling himself into believing he would let his questions go or convince himself to make light of whatever was between Basset and Penteney. Whatever it was, they were still so wary about knowing each other that last night Basset had left the gate open behind him so he could make a swift retreat if need be, and if the thing was that dangerous to Basset, it was dangerous to all of them, if only because without Basset there would be no company and not even the thin livelihood they presently had. If nothing else, without Basset they would be down to two men and a boy and there were too few plays they could do with only that many. As it was, they were almost too few. Only Basset’s determination and Joliffe’s skill at making over plays to fit them had kept them going this long. But more than that, it was Basset who had brought them together, Basset who kept them together. Without Basset it would all be over.

  Not that they couldn’t find work of one kind or another elsewhere. They could even join other companies of players if they were that daft; but staring into the rafters now taking shape out of the darkness, Joliffe had to admit—to the darkness and to himself but never to anyone else—he liked the company he was in. He was used to them and they to him and he was not minded to be forced to change. If Basset was in trouble, so were they all and Joliffe wanted to know what the trouble was, either to help Basset if he could, or else be forewarned of disaster coming.

  Besides, all else set aside, he was curious. Damn it.

  He was still lying there when Rose awoke and eased from under her blanket. The dawn was cool enough that she paused to be sure Piers was still covered, no bare back or leg thrust out from beneath his blanket, before she pulled her gown on over her shift and went silently, a shadow-shape in the barely lightened darkness, to the cart, took something from the small chest that held her few belongings, sat down on one of the hampers, and set to un-braiding her long hair that during the day she wore wound up and fastened out of sight under her headkerchief, never seen. Going on pretending sleep, Joliffe watched her as she shook her hair out loose to her waist and began to comb it in long, slow strokes unlike her usual briskness toward everything she did.

  Watching her, it came to him that their stay at the Penteneys was holiday time for her even more than for the rest of them. For the while they were here, she was spared most of the things she usually had to do. No worry over the buying or bartering for their food; no cooking of it and cleaning up afterwards; no constant troubling over where and how their things were packed and unpacked from the cart—nothing put where it couldn’t be readily found when they next stopped and needed it, nor anything left behind when they moved on—no bother with starting a fire and keeping it going when they spent the night by the road rather than at an inn or somewhere. Her other usual worries were still with her—of seeing to their clothing and such of their properties that might need finer mending than what the men could do—but the great worries of food and travel were put by for now and instead of her usual early morning bustle she was simply sitting, combing and combing her hair.

  It was a soothing thing to watch a woman comb her hair that way, and Joliffe was somewhat back toward sleep again when Ellis and Basset began to stir. That meant time for him to stir, too, and he did, stretching as if just awakening before getting up and going outside about his business. When he came back, Basset was sitting up on his bed, rubbing his face and grumbling to himself—mornings were not his best time—and Ellis was prodding Piers awake, saying, “Time to fetch water, you slug.”

  Piers made to grab Ellis’s bare ankle but Ellis was too quick for that and Piers—a grumbling small copy of his grandfather—shambled up and toward the water bucket. His mother caught him on the way and combed down his hair, saying, “Let’s at least pretend we’re seemly folk, shall we?” before letting him go.

  Piers was gone, still grumbling, and the rest of them were straightening their blankets over their beds when Ellis said, “Know what we heard last night after you left, Basset?”

  “Of course. I always sneak back into a tavern to listen to you after I’ve gone to bed.”

  Ellis ignored that. “Rose and I fell into talk with some Penteney servants that were there. Lewis is to marry the Penteney girl.”

  Basset turned around from his tidied bed. “Marry her?” “Marry her,” Ellis repeated.

  “They’re going to marry her—what’s her name?—to Lewis?”

  “Kathyrn,” said Joliffe. He looked to Rose. “Truly?”

  “Truly,” she said.

  “The Penteneys have been putting it off on the likelihood he’d die before he came of age,” Ellis said, “but he hasn’t, and he comes of age at midsummer. So while Penteney still has control of Lewis’s marriage they’re going to marry him to this Kathryn and be done with it. The talk is they mean to do the betrothal this week, while Lord Lovell is here to witness it.”

  “I’d have thought they’d rather have young Simon for her,” Basset said. “Penteney holds right to his marriage, too, as I understand it.”

  “Simon isn’t the heir.” Ellis was dry about that.

  Basset frowned. “Not that I have anything against Lewis, but I wonder why they haven’t seen to having him set aside from inheriting. Given how he is, that would be possible.”

  “Costly, too, what with lawyers and fees to the king and Church and all,” Ellis pointed out. “Besides, if it’s set up for Simon to inherit when he comes of age, he’ll surely take everything into his own hands, the way Lewis never can.”

  “Ah,” said Basset, immediately seeing the point.

  Joliffe saw it, too. Had seen it earlier, in his talk with the serving man at supper their first night here. With Lewis married to Kathryn, Master Penteney would go on running the Fairfield properties and go on having the profit of them just as he had for all these years, rather than giving everything up to Simon, to Simon’s profit.

  Thinking aloud from there, Joliffe said, “And even if Lewis dies after he’s wed, Master Penteney will likely go on running the properties for his daughter’s sake.”

  “So the girl is to be sacrificed to the idiot on the great altar of her father’s profits,” said Rose coldly.

  “Or the girl is to be set up for life as prosperous wife and prosperous widow,” Basset returned. “There’s few would quarrel with that. And they have waited as long as they could, in hope it wouldn’t come to this. You have to give Penteney that. Lewis has already lived past the time most of his kind die. He’s not likely to last all that much longer, come what may, but even if he doesn’t get a child on her, to keep all the Fairfield properties in the family, the girl’s dower-third of it in Penteney hands will be better than none. And she’ll be free to marry again.”

  All that was not so much heartless as merely reasonable. As Basset said often enough about other matters, there was rarely point in shying clear of what was true and couldn’t be helped; but Rose nonetheless gave him her disgusted look that said, “Men,” though aloud, she only warned, “Best not say anything of this around Master Ears.” Meaning Piers.

  To that they all nodded agreement and got on with the day.

  After breakfast Basset talked with Mistress Pent
eney, and at his asking the hall was given over to them at mid-morning, that they might run the play there with Lewis so he would be used to doing it there. Until then, they worked at Pride, Basset beginning to be satisfied with it by the time they had to go to the hall.

  The practice there went well, too. Lewis was happy with his devil’s tunic and twitching tail, and though he made a larger, more lumbering demon than Piers, it somehow made the business the funnier. And he remembered to be careful with his spear, never once jabbing Ellis.

  They were not without lookers-on. Matthew was there, of course, sitting out of the way on a stool, and sometimes a servant’s head would ease around the corner of the doorway to the screens passage for a brief look. Mistress Geva came once, carrying on her hip the little boy Joliffe had seen in the garden. She stood near Matthew until there was a pause and then went to Basset while Rose mended some stitches in Lewis’s tail—she had come with her sewing basket in expectation of the need—and said, “Mistress Penteney sent me to remind you Lewy isn’t to do too much and tire himself.”

  The little boy on her hip waved at Lewis, calling, “Lewy!”