Authors: Margaret Frazer
A Play of Heresy (10 page)
Powet, going to the board in her place, said to Sendell and Joliffe, “This is my nephew Herry Byfeld. He has mercer’s blood in his veins and no doubt about it. Given the chance, he could sell coal to the Devil to keep the fires of hell burning.”
“And you’d smooth-talk him into giving it back to you for nothing,” Herry Byfeld said with open affection for his uncle but a questioning look at Joliffe and Sendell.
Powet said who they were. Herry said, “You’re going to make a Christ out of Dick, are you? Luck with that.”
“What we’re here for,” said Powet, “is that length of lampas-woven silk. You know the one I mean?”
“Surely.” Herry Byfeld went to a far corner of the shop, shifted some things, and came back with a folded piece of cloth that he opened with a flourish across the board. There was hardly a wide yard of it, but it was richly made with red and gray silks woven in a pattern of pomegranates and vines.
“Yes,” Sendell breathed. “That would be perfect.” He made to touch it but must have remembered that was not the way to bargain, drew back his hand, and said with belated solemn consideration, “Perhaps. What are you asking for it?”
Powet named a price likely far too low, because Herry looked at him with badly hidden dismay. Sendell offered something even lower. Powet countered, and for far less than Joliffe guessed the cloth was worth, they had it. Herry, with a sidewise look at his uncle that said they would talk about this later, began to fold it again as Sendell laid the coins out on the board. Powet, ignoring his nephew’s look, said, “Now you have to find someone to sew it.”
Herry, gathering up the coins, said, “Cecily. She could do it for you.”
“Well thought!” Powet said. “Is she in?”
“Where else?”
“Come then,” Powet said to Sendell. He paused. “Unless you’ve someone else in mind?”
Sendell looked to Joliffe. “Rose?”
“She’d probably stick a needle in me if I offered her more to sew than she has.”
“Cecily, then,” said Powet and led them through the door standing open beside the shop into a stone-floored passageway and toward whatever rooms were beyond. As he went, he explained, “Cecily’s family fell on hard times a few years ago. Or had hard times fall on them would maybe be the better way to say it. Mercers until things went bad for them. Now my niece rents them a room here—Cecily, her father, and brother—and Cecily helps for their keep while her brother tries to bring back the family’s good fortune.”
They came out of the passageway into a kitchen that Joliffe guessed also served as the heart of the house, because whatever chambers lay beyond the doors they had passed in the passageway or up the stairs, this looked to be where the family did much of their living. Besides the well-scoured work table and expected gathering of cooking things near the wide hearth against the room’s end wall, there were a scattering of three-legged stools, one with someone’s abandoned shirt tossed across it, and a tall-backed bench with a writing slate with what looked like a half-finished lesson lying on one end and, at its other, a sewing basket, a black-worsted hose hanging out of it with a half-mended heel.
Presently, though, no one was there but an old man hunched in a round-backed, tall chair near the hearth, staring at the floor, and a young woman, her hair bound up under a simple coif, tending to a large kettle hung over the hearth’s low fire. Not a woman, Joliffe amended as she turned from the hearth. A girl. The man did not stir in his chair but the girl, prettily flushed from the heat, looked with surprise at Sendell and Joliffe while she said to Powet with kind concern, “Have you had your dinner? There’s pottage with lamb if you haven’t.”
“I’ll want it shortly,” Powet said. “Thank you, Cecily. First, though, this is Master Sendell who’s doing what he can with this benighted play of ours, and Master Joliffe who’s a player by occupation and going to show us how playing is properly done.”
How much bitterness was under that jest? Joliffe wondered, while Cecily turned her kindness and a smile toward him and Sendell. “I wish you joy of it all,” she said to them both and made to return to her cooking, but Powet said, “Master Sendell has a request to ask of you.”
“A request for what?” a woman said, coming into the kitchen behind Powet, Sendell, and Joliffe. She had a covered basket on her arm, and Dick was behind her, carrying another basket.
“Help with the play,” Powet said.
“Oh, Uncle,” she laughed, setting her basket on the table. “From what you say, the only hope is for everyone to say their words as fast as may be and be done with it.”
“That’s maybe changing,” Powet said stiffly. “These are Master Sendell who’s already made it better than I thought it could be, and Master Joliffe who’s helping and a player, too.”
“But you’ll still be Joseph and not happy about it,” she said.
“My niece Mistress Deyster,” Powet said by way of making her known, adding as Dick thumped his basket onto the table beside the other, “Her graceless brother Dick you already know.”
The boy grinned. “I’ve started learning my words, Master Sendell. I’ve been saying them while we marketed.”
“He has that, Christ help us all,” Dick’s sister said, beginning to take things from her basket.
Joliffe guessed she was not much older than Cecily, but there was sufficient difference between the plain-gowned girl at the hearth with her work-spotted apron and bare coif, and Mistress Deyster in her go-to-market gown of fine light linen and white, starched wimple, and many-folded veil to tell who was servant and who was mistress here.
“What we’re in need of,” Powet said, “is for Cecily to make a frontlet for this robe here”—he gestured to it, still hung over Joliffe’s arm—“from this silk.” Sendell held up the newly-bought piece. “Master Sendell will pay.”
“There’s other sewing we’ll need done, too,” Sendell said as Cecily turned from the fire, wiping her hands on her apron and looking interested. “Some garments to alter, some to make new.”
“For how much by way of pay?” Mistress Deyster asked.
Sendell named a sum. Mistress Deyster looked ready to bargain on Cecily’s behalf but was forestalled by the girl saying, “Yes. That’s fair. I’ll do it.”
She was right—it was fair. Mistress Deyster gave a shrug and went back to putting eggs from her basket into a waiting bowl. Cecily said, “Dick, will you stir while I see what Master Sendell wants done?”
Dick obliged while Powet said to Joliffe, “We’d best shift out of everyone’s way,” and led him out the rear door into a short, paved yard between the blank wall of a neighbor’s building and a two-storied rear wing of Powet’s house. A well was cramped into the far corner of the yard near a low gate that gave glimpse of green trees beyond—likely the garden that went with most town houses—but Powet sat down on the stairs to the wing’s upper floor, gestured for Joliffe to do the same, and said, “Let me ask pardon for my niece not being as welcoming as she might. She’s had to put up with much these two years and more since her husband died and she had to come back to live with her mother and us and all.”
“This isn’t her house, then?” Joliffe asked, surprised.
“Nay. It’s her mother’s. Mistress Byfeld’s. In truth Mistress Byfeld is my niece, as happens. Anna—Mistress Deyster, that is—and her swarm of brothers are my greats, properly speaking. Then there’s old John that my niece—she being friends with his wife—took in when they lost all. But she’s dead now, is his wife, God keep her soul, and old John sits by the fire with his wits gone and his daughter seeing to the cooking and not much more than the life of a servant to look forward to unless her brother can remake the family’s fortune. He may do. He’s a sharp young fellow. But my niece is not best pleased about the understanding that’s been growing between him and Anna. She wants Anna to marry better than what he has to offer yet. But Anna married ‘better’ the first time and see how that turned out.”
“Not so well,” Joliffe hazarded, mildly interested.
“Not so well,” Powet agreed. “Master Deyster was sound enough. My niece wouldn’t make a mistake that way. But”—Powet suddenly dropped his voice low, as if there might be listeners lurking somewhere in the bare yard—“the trouble came from his son from his first marriage. The young fool got mixed into that Lollard business a few years back, and his father wrecked himself to buy him out of trouble. Then, wouldn’t you know, the young fool goes and dies of lung sickness two winters later, and his father just gives up. By the time
he
dies there’s nothing left but debts. To buy free of them, Anna had to sell off all that should have been hers except for one place she’s held onto out of what should have been her dower.” The portion of a man’s property he gave at his marriage for his wife to use if she were widowed. He could leave her more in his will, if it came to that, but her dower property was hers no matter what, if things went as they were supposed to. “A shop and house near Gosford Gate. She rents it out, and there’s her income she uses to build her share in the Byfeld side of things and all, and here she is and not likely to listen to her mother on who to marry next.”
he
dies there’s nothing left but debts. To buy free of them, Anna had to sell off all that should have been hers except for one place she’s held onto out of what should have been her dower.” The portion of a man’s property he gave at his marriage for his wife to use if she were widowed. He could leave her more in his will, if it came to that, but her dower property was hers no matter what, if things went as they were supposed to. “A shop and house near Gosford Gate. She rents it out, and there’s her income she uses to build her share in the Byfeld side of things and all, and here she is and not likely to listen to her mother on who to marry next.”
Powet shook his head, in a brooding sort of way, but Joliffe with studied indifference asked, “So Master Deyster and his son were Lollards?”
Powet snorted. “Deyster was never so dusty as that. He wouldn’t have given the fools the time of day. My niece wouldn’t have had him for Anna if he did. Nor did that son of his care half a pin for any of all they argue about. He just took to the chance to take up billhook and run about yelling and making trouble with other fools. Got more than they bargained for when Duke Humphrey came down on them all.” He sounded both disgusted at them and satisfied by their fate.
So no Lollards in this household, Joliffe guessed. He was looking for an unsuspicious way to ask other Lollard-shaped questions, only to be forestalled by Powet changing away to what likely interested him more than family troubles, saying as he rubbed a hand on the shadow of gray along his jaw, “I’ve begun to grow my beard for Joseph. Likely there’ll be something to show when the time comes. Save hanging a false one on my face.”
Fortunate man, thought Joliffe. No Lollards for him, just the challenge of playing.
Still rubbing at his jaw, Powet made a tching sound and shook his head. “I should have been a player like you and Master Sendell. I did nobody any good staying here in Coventry all my days.” He dropped his hands between his knees. “You truly think I can make Joseph into something more than an old fool to be laughed at?”
For Powet’s sake as much as for the sake of Sendell’s play, Joliffe said strongly, “It’s maybe not there so much in the words, but you were finding it there last night.” He poked Powet’s near leg, friendliwise. “Next practice, just wait and see what I do with the First Prophet. That will show you how far you can play beyond the words.”
Chapter 8
J
oliffe enjoyed that evening’s practice. Sendell’s plan was that they read through the whole play again but this time on their feet, with him beginning to set their movements, the playing space of the pageant wagon outlined by the benches, the stage house with its stairs to an upper level at one end marked by other benches and Sendell saying, “The stairs are there.”
oliffe enjoyed that evening’s practice. Sendell’s plan was that they read through the whole play again but this time on their feet, with him beginning to set their movements, the playing space of the pageant wagon outlined by the benches, the stage house with its stairs to an upper level at one end marked by other benches and Sendell saying, “The stairs are there.”
He also warned, “I’ll likely change some things later, but we’ll make a start. We’ve a change already, come to that. Our ‘Gabriel’ wasn’t here last night and today sent word he’s had to drop out altogether. So, Ned, I want to combine your First Angel with Gabriel, make them both Gabriel for simpleness’ sake. Well enough?”
Ned accepted with a glowing smile and a nod and a triumphant glance sidewise at Richard Eme, who frowned a little as if uncertain he was as pleased as Ned. What was that about? Joliffe wondered.
“Let’s begin, then,” Sendell said. “Prophets.”
Scripts in hand, Joliffe and Richard Eme stood up. Sendell showed how he wanted Richard to come from the stage house and up the stairs to the upper level where he was to take the stance of a wise scholar contemplating the heavens.
“Or maybe just your own deep thoughts,” Sendell said.
Richard nodded his approval of that, took his place and his stance.
“Now, Master Joliffe, you enter suddenly and excited. Play it large. You’re not saying anything folk don’t know already, so you have to make them want to listen.”
Just as if he and Sendell had not already talked over how to play this, Joliffe nodded earnestly, understanding they were “playing” this part of it for the others, to let them see how directions were given and taken. From what would be the stage house, he burst forward onto what would be the stage with arms wide and exclaiming, “Great astronomers now awake, with your famous fathers of philosophy—” He broke off and looked around confusedly as if trying to find these astronomers and philosophers, then seeing Richard Eme “above him” on the yet-to-exist stairs, he brightened and continued grandly, “And look to the Orient-East where news and strange sights be come of late, affirming the saying of old prophecy”—By then he was pointing eastward and almost bouncing with excitement, and Richard Eme was staring at him in utter disbelief—“that a star should appear upon the hill of Vaus among us here!”
Richard recovered and began reading, “You brothers all, then be of good cheer, for those tidings make my heart full light.” Far from being light, he was all stiff with leaden dignity. “We have desired for many a year of that star to have a sight and especially of that king of might—”
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