Authors: Margaret Frazer
A Play of Heresy (17 page)
“The black sheep son,” Joliffe suggested wisely.
“Nay. Nothing so much. More the tedious son they’re tired of listening to.”
“And here I thought it was his brother we were tired of listening to,” Joliffe said.
He and Powet laughed together over that and drank deep and soon after that got up to go their separate ways for the while. Joliffe waited until they were in the street before he made show of being taken by a sudden thought, laid a hand on Powet’s arm, and asked with a slightly drunk man’s rude curiosity, “
You’re
not a Lollard, are you?”
You’re
not a Lollard, are you?”
Powet reared back a little in mock horror. “God and the saints forbid.” Then he chuckled and said, as if imparting deep wisdom, “Here’s what I say. I say let the priests tell us what to do and be done with it. Seems from what they say that by obeying them we’ve done our duty. So if they’re wrong about anything, the fault and sin of it lies on
their
heads, not on ours, I say. Only fools like Lollards want to take the whole business onto their own heads. I say let it lie on the priests.”
their
heads, not on ours, I say. Only fools like Lollards want to take the whole business onto their own heads. I say let it lie on the priests.”
“Right enough,” Joliffe slurred. “That’s what I say, too.”
They nodded to each other, pleased with their mutual wisdom, and parted company, Joliffe feeling a little guilty and worried over how befuddled or with headache to come he had left Powet. His time and coin had been well-spent, though. Or well enough spent. He had not learned much that was new, but had confirmed some of what Powet had said before and had better understanding of which way things went, at least with the Byfeld household and the Emes. There seeming not much more to learn that way, what he needed now was to delve deeper and find more in other directions.
He used what was left of the late afternoon to make his way between other alehouses and taverns. There were nearly always at least some folk talking about Kydwa’s murder for him to overhear and sometimes join in. More than once, in answer to someone’s right curiosity about himself, he had to explain who he was, why he was in Coventry. That he was a player and part of the plays was always answer enough. To that, he could add that since his company of players traveled nearly all the time, they had as much interest as any merchant in where they might run onto trouble, which gave sufficient reason for his interest and let him freely join in other men’s talk.
Unfortunately, his efforts gained him nothing of use. There was too much he could not ask. The furthest he dared press matters was to wonder who of Coventry might have been on the way to Bristol about the same time. “On the chance they saw something, heard about something, even saw someone that didn’t mean anything at the time but could now,” he said.
The most he got were questioning looks at each other among the men, followed by shrugs. Someone said, “Something for the sheriff to ask, surely.” The other men there nodded and that was all.
Joliffe heard nothing at all about Lollards and chose not to ask, nor did anyone stir a suspicion in him that they might be a fellow spy. Although he had to grant wryly to himself that a good spy would not let himself be suspected at his work, would he? He assuredly hoped he went unsuspected by anyone.
Either way, he was glad when time came to give over the whole effort for the day and head back to spend a while with Basset and the others. He bought his supper as he went, intending that when they went to theirs in the Silcoks’ hall, he would sit alone with his in their chamber, alone being very much what he wanted after the day’s surfeit of people and talk and thought. Not that he had hope of stopping his thoughts. If nothing else, he would be thinking how tired he was of talk and ale.
He found the whole company gathered. Rose looked up from sewing a seam in a heaviness of cloth laid across her lap and greeted him with a smile. Basset, Ellis, and Gil were variously sitting or sprawled on the floor cushions while Piers was in the clear middle of the room, just finishing a forward somersault—hands to the floor and a flip of his body, ending with him upright on his feet—in apparent demonstration of what Joliffe had been teaching the other boys, because Piers said scornfully as he finished, “That. Simple. I’ve known how to do it since I was a baby.”
“Nearly,” Ellis said with laughter behind his words. “We did wait until you could walk before we taught you.”
“Until then,” Joliffe offered, “we juggled you. Tossed you around with the painted balls. Painted you, too, come to that.”
“You didn’t!” Piers protested scornfully. “You weren’t even in the company when I was that small.”
“Just as well for you,” said Gil. “The way Joliffe juggles, you would have been dropped on your head, surely.”
“Someone must have dropped him,” Joliffe said. “How else did his wits get so addled?” He reached to rumple Piers’ curls. Piers ducked away, and Joliffe went on before Piers’ outrage turned into words, “But those other boys have never tumbled at all until now, so of course you’re far better and that’s why you’ll surely be lead-demon when the time comes.”
“Will I be?” Piers demanded, his wrath immediately diverted.
“How not?” Joliffe returned.
Piers immediately flipped forward into a handstand, flipped back onto his feet, was readying for more when his mother said, “Enough. Go to the yard if you want to do that,” sternly enough that Piers stopped. Or maybe it was because he knew that when he disobeyed his mother, Ellis tended to give him the flat of a hand to the back of his head, one of the few things that could turn Piers from something he purposed.
They all went to supper soon after that, except Basset hung back to say as the others thumped away down the stairs, “How goes it with Will Sendell and all?”
“Better all the time. He’s making something worth watching out of what we all doubted.”
“How is he handling his people?”
“Better than at least one of them deserves,” Joliffe said, thinking of Richard Eme. “The others I think he’ll get their best out of them.”
“How are you and he doing together?”
“Well.” Joliffe let his surprise show in his voice. “Better than ever we did when we worked together before. He knows what he’s about.”
“That can happen as we grow older,” Basset said dryly. “If we’re fortunate.” He let go the dryness. “And you. How go things with you?”
Because Joliffe had kept to himself what else he was doing, he supposed the question had no hidden sides to it and answered simply, “I’m enjoying it all. It’s satisfying work.”
“Good,” said Basset. “That’s good.” Rose called from the foot of the stairs for him to come on. He slapped Joliffe companionably on the shoulder and went, and Joliffe sat down to his own meal, ending with the treat of a berry tart.
He was somewhat behindhand in getting to rehearsal that night. Instead of being among the first, he was among the last. Not the very last, though. That was Hew, skidding out of a run into the gateway behind him, panting to Joliffe who turned to grin at him, “I’m late, aren’t I?”
“Not yet,” Joliffe reassured him. “Master Sendell is just coming down the stairs. You’re doing well with your angel, by the way.”
The boy beamed. “My thanks. Ned has helped me with the singing.” He dashed ahead to sit on a bench beside Dick so they could shove elbows into each other’s ribs until someone would tell them to stop.
Joliffe’s choice of where to sit was between sharing a bench with Powet and Ned Eme, or another with Master Smale, Tom Maydeford, and Richard Eme, the latter bending the ears of his two companions with probably his usual talk about other parts he had played unbelievably well in other plays. He never seeming to wonder why, if he was so outstandingly good, he had been left to this play, rather than taken up by someone else. Caught between that and Ned Eme’s probably moanings over Anna Deyster (if the woe-ridden look on his face was anything to go by), Joliffe reluctantly went to sit on Powet’s far side in time to hear Powet saying, “She’s only just lost the man she thought she would marry. Let it rest a time. It’s too soon to be wooing her to turn to another,” and see Ned curl his fingers closed over a glint of bright metal—a brooch or maybe a gilt belt buckle or figured aglets. Something for Anna Deyster, anyway, Joliffe guessed.
Aggrieved, Ned protested at Powet, “Now is perfectly the time. When she’s in most need. Before she finds someone else instead of me to turn to.”
“I’m only telling you that to wait may gain you all.” He pointed at Ned’s hand. “That won’t.”
Ned made a face at him and turned away, sullenly fumbling whatever he held into his belt pouch.
The rehearsal went well. Tom as Mary would need more help but was beginning to find his way into—as it were—motherhood. Powet as Joseph was making stronger the man beneath the comic husband, a man as aware as Mary of the duty they had been given and trying to lighten the burden of her worry with his lighter humour but no less concern. Hew was still perhaps a shade too stiff but no longer rigid as a stone statue and there was no faulting his voice, while Ned had all the grace of voice and looks that could be desired of an angel. Richard Eme was . . . well, he went on being Richard Eme, but that sufficed to give Masters Burbage and Smale clearer ways to their own Doctors, playing off Eme and to each other at Sendell’s skilled direction.
Once, though, Sendell brought the practice to a stop, to ask of everyone not a Doctor in the Temple the why of their smothered laughter. Fingers pointed, forcing Burbage to confess he was copying the all-too-familiar voice and gestures of the senior priest at St. Michael’s. Sendell frowned in thought, looked at the merry faces, and finally said, “Pull it in somewhat and lose it altogether when you begin to take Christ seriously. Yes?”
“Yes,” Burbage agreed, and thereafter obligingly did. Having directed plays himself in other years, he likely understood there were few things someone directing a play loved better than a player who took direction.
The evening’s high surprise was Dick’s Christ. Dick was not easy in the part yet nor anywhere near to knowing his lines off by heart, but he was far better than he had been and was
working
at being better, which was more than he had done before. Sendell managed to keep both surprise and relief out of his voice at evening’s end as he told Dick how well he had done, before dismissing everyone until tomorrow.
working
at being better, which was more than he had done before. Sendell managed to keep both surprise and relief out of his voice at evening’s end as he told Dick how well he had done, before dismissing everyone until tomorrow.
Powet caught Joliffe’s eye and made a gesture of raising a cup to his mouth, silently asking if Joliffe wanted to go drinking, but added by a twitch of his head toward Dick that he would have to see the boy home first.
Joliffe’s answer was forestalled by Sendell saying, “Master Joliffe, could you stay a time longer, please you?”
“Assuredly.” He traded a regretful shrug with Powet but in truth sat back down on the bench willingly enough. Since he had probably drained Eustace Powet of all the information he safely could for the while, it was just as well to let him go now rather than risk more talk.
For his part, Powet probably did more than shrug when he realized Ned Eme was waiting at the gate for him, undoubtedly wanting more chance to bend Powet’s patience with plaint about Anna Deyster. Joliffe was duly grateful for his own double escape as Sendell straddled the bench beside him, sat down, and asked, “What did you do to young Dick Byfeld today? He was almost good just now.”
“Hai!” Joliffe protested. “He was well toward what you need him to be.”
“Closer than he was last time I had to suffer through him mauling his lines,” Sendell granted. “What did you do to him? I may have to do it to someone else sometime.”
“I made him see that the Doctors in the Temple don’t know the boy who shows up to talk at them is anything but a bold brat, that he has to charm them into listening to him because if some half-grown whelp came on all pompous at them, they’d simply clout him alongside his head and send him on his way.”
“That did it?”
“Not quite. He still didn’t quite have it. Not until I asked him if he meant to sound like Richard Eme being Richard Eme at his worst.”
Sendell gasped on a surprised laugh.
“It made Dick laugh, too,” Joliffe said with satisfaction. “That was when he finally started trying to say the words as if they were
his
words, not something painted a foot high on a church wall.”
his
words, not something painted a foot high on a church wall.”
“Richard Eme as a dread example. I will remember that,” Sendell said. “My thanks, Joliffe.”
He said it so simply that for a moment Joliffe hardly understood, then said, trying to match Sendell’s quietness, “You’re shaping a good play here. I’m pleased to be in it and help as I can.”
Sendell regarded him in such grave silence for a long moment that Joliffe added, “I mean it. It’s shaping well.”
Another moment passed before Sendell said quietly, “It is, isn’t it?” And then, even more quietly, “I almost begin to hope,” sounding as if hope were something he hardly recognized.
Chapter 13
A
few days followed that were as near to ordinary as Joliffe was used to anymore. He worked twice with the young devils for Hell’s harrowing. He firmed his lines as the Prophet and Ane into his mind. He strolled out once to see how Tisbe and Ramus were doing where they were pastured outside of Coventry. He spent time with Basset and the others, helping with their cart and gear, Basset having decreed that this while off the road was the perfect time to give a good tending to everything, from greasing the wheels and checking all the underpinnings and harness to laying out every one of their playing properties, to mend those that needed it and dispose of such as were past decent use. Basset set Joliffe and Gil on quest to find and buy what could be used in place of the latter, a quest which diverted Joliffe and Gil for most of a day and gave Joliffe chance to be in places around Coventry for which he might otherwise have lacked excuse. Not that he learned aught of notable use. Kydwa’s murder was widely talked of, but he heard nothing new. Never any mention that Lollards were part of it or—come to that—anything about Lollards at all, beyond once an overheard mutter between other men at a tavern that old Master Kydwa had had no luck at all these past years, what with his wife and all. Then the talk had sheered away to the weather in a way that made Joliffe think it was not
to
the weather the men were going but
away
from old Master Kydwa’s Lollard wife.
few days followed that were as near to ordinary as Joliffe was used to anymore. He worked twice with the young devils for Hell’s harrowing. He firmed his lines as the Prophet and Ane into his mind. He strolled out once to see how Tisbe and Ramus were doing where they were pastured outside of Coventry. He spent time with Basset and the others, helping with their cart and gear, Basset having decreed that this while off the road was the perfect time to give a good tending to everything, from greasing the wheels and checking all the underpinnings and harness to laying out every one of their playing properties, to mend those that needed it and dispose of such as were past decent use. Basset set Joliffe and Gil on quest to find and buy what could be used in place of the latter, a quest which diverted Joliffe and Gil for most of a day and gave Joliffe chance to be in places around Coventry for which he might otherwise have lacked excuse. Not that he learned aught of notable use. Kydwa’s murder was widely talked of, but he heard nothing new. Never any mention that Lollards were part of it or—come to that—anything about Lollards at all, beyond once an overheard mutter between other men at a tavern that old Master Kydwa had had no luck at all these past years, what with his wife and all. Then the talk had sheered away to the weather in a way that made Joliffe think it was not
to
the weather the men were going but
away
from old Master Kydwa’s Lollard wife.
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