A Play of Isaac (17 page)

Basset made him, of course, a flourishing bow. “Good sir, here
is
our business. We’re the players who will be using this scaffold tomorrow. We wanted to see it aforetime.”

The old man went from crabbed to pleased. “The players, are you? Good! You’ll find naught wrong with this scaffold, I’ll tell you. I made it myself, almost twenty years ago, and it’s done good service ever since with never a complaint from no one.”

“I can see there wouldn’t be,” Basset said. While the old man talked, he was already looking to see how well the front posts joined to the stage, leaving Ellis and Joliffe to circle the scaffold, likewise looking at everything as the old man went on, “My sons put it together now I can’t. They took over my carpenter’s trade when I had to give it up, but I still keep my eye on their doings. There’s no mistakes or I’d know the reason why.”

There was indeed nothing to complain of. Scaffold and stage were well made and worth the old man’s pride.

“And now you’re guarding it?” Basset asked.

“Through the day. I’ve a grandson who’ll do it tonight.” The old man cracked a laugh. “And that won’t cost the priest a penny. He set it to young Nick for penance, he did. Me, I get two pence for my sitting here, so I’m happy.”

“You mean to fight troublemakers off with that club?” Ellis asked, jesting at him.

The old man cracked another laugh. “I’m smarter than that, you young louter.” He reached behind him and lifted a long-handled fry-pan into sight from where it had been leaning against the stool. “I bang away on this and there’ll be folk come do my fighting for me.” He put the pan behind him again. “But there won’t be trouble. There’s nobody doesn’t want to see the plays.”

“Even Lollards?” Joliffe asked. “I hear Oxford has more than its share.”

The old man spat into the grass beside him. “Lollards. They’d best know enough to keep their heads down and their mouths shut after the way Duke Humphrey finished with ’em, God bless and keep our good duke of Gloucester.” He brightened. “Have ye heard there was a Lollard killed here last night? Not here but hereabouts? Stabbed full of holes and thrown into somebody’s stableyard with his head beaten in and serve him right, God damn ’em all.”

Rose who had been standing with her hand on Piers’s shoulder tightened her grip, warning Piers to hold his tongue, while Joliffe and Ellis carefully showed nothing and Basset said smoothly, “We’ve heard that, yes. What a pity to come to an end like that without chance to make his peace with God.”

The old man spat again. “If he’d not been a fool of a Lollard, he’d not have been in such need of making peace with God. Probably wouldn’t have come to such an end neither.”

“May we go up, to have a feel for how much room we’ll have?” Basset asked.

“Surely, surely. Go on with you,” the old man obliged cheerfully. “You’ll find no splinters or aught else to trouble you.”

Nor did they. Ladder and stage were as smooth as hope would have them. Likewise, a little subtle jouncing by Joliffe and Ellis made not even the slightest sway, and Basset pushed and shoved at the frame that would hold the backcloth without wiggling it the least. Piers had scrambled up the ladder after them but was content to stand at the forward edge, feet wide, hands on hips, gazing out on where their audience would be.

Rose had stayed below, in talk with the old man, and had him laughing when they descended the steps. Basset pointed to the wooden pegs driven upward-slanting around three insides of the scaffold’s frame and asked, “For the hanging?” that would close the understage and stairs from view.

“That’s it, and a handsomer cloth you won’t see at any of the other churches, mark me. Here’s Sire John. He’ll tell you.”

A man in hale middle years, in a priest’s plain black gown and sober plain hat, had come into the churchyard and was crossing toward them, smiling. As he came near, he exclaimed, “Master Basset!” and reached to grasp Basset’s hand before Basset could bow, then turned his smile on the rest of the company. “And your fellow players.” He rested a hand on Piers’s curly head. “Our lamb of almost-sacrifice. Young Isaac, aren’t you?”

Piers gave a bow worthy of his grandfather. “If it please you, sir, yes,” he said in his brightest, I’m-a-good-boy voice.

“And Master Basset is God. That I know,” Sire John said. He turned a questioning look on Joliffe and Ellis. “That leaves you two to be Abraham and the Angel.”

They both bowed and Ellis said, “I’m Abraham, yes, and he’ll be the Angel,” with a nod at Joliffe.

“I heard you asking about the hanging,” Sire John said to Basset. “You’ll find no fault with it.”

“I supposed not,” Basset answered graciously.

“No, indeed. We’ve had it but four years. Some of our wealthiest parishioners paid for it and a mercer of the parish provided it. It will do you proud, I promise.”

“We hope to do it proud, too,” Basset said.

“There’s provision made, too, for keeping folk from coming too far around the scaffold, just as you asked. Tomorrow there’ll be some of our sturdiest young men to keep folk from seeing anything behind your curtains there.” He nodded at the frame above the stage.

“You are a most excellent patron,” Basset said. “I have to say we’ve never had better.”

“My pleasure, I assure you. My pleasure indeed.”

With mutual pleasures and their thanks to Sire John and the old man, they took their leave and were out of the churchyard and going back toward the North Gate before Ellis turned on Joliffe and demanded, “What is it with you and your mouth? What was that with bringing up Lollards for no good reason?”

“Ellis . . .” Basset started.

“Look!” Piers made to bound forward but Rose caught him by his doublet’s collar and hauled him back.

“You stay with us,” she said.

“But look! Something’s going on!” Piers pointed more insistently and no one argued that he wasn’t right. Ahead of them the flow of people had thickened and bunched and come to a stop with all their heads craned leftward, completely blocking any way onto Northgate Street and to the gateway. Across the street more crowd was gathered, looking the same way and now the players were close enough to catch the excited repeating of “Lord Lovell. It’s Lord Lovell.”

“That’s what it is, then,” Basset said. “Lord Lovell and his people are come and heading toward the Penteneys.”

“I want to see!” Piers demanded. So did the rest of them, but there was small hope of pushing through the crowd. The best they could hope for was seeing past other people’s heads, except Ellis swung Piers up to straddle his shoulders with the warning, “Don’t kick me or you’ll come down head-first, whelp.”

Piers exclaimed, “Here they are!” as the first horsemen came into view. Their horses were mostly out of sight beyond the crowd but the riders were plain enough—men in matching livery of muted red, Lord Lovell’s foreriders making sure the way was cleared for their lord and lady. Behind them came another rider bearing aloft the Lovell banner with its nebully bars of gold and gules across it, and after him rode Lord Lovell and his lady themselves, both dressed in red that matched their banner but Lord Lovell with a green hat with a wide liripipe draped from one side of the padded roll and slung over his shoulders, while Lady Lovell had only the smallest of wimples circling her face under the slightest of padded circlets from which her white veil floated lightly back.

Lord Lovell looked a hale, long-faced man with a long-swooped nose; Lady Lovell showed as fine and fair a lady as comfortable living and good care could make her; and they both nodded and smiled friendliwise to the crowd on either side as they passed. It raised Joliffe’s hope that they would be willing to be pleased by the play tonight. There were few things worse than playing to people determined not to be diverted.

They passed out of sight through the gateway. There was a glimpse of the top of the heads of two children riding behind them and then the rest of their household was passing pair by pair, men and women both—knights and ladies, squires and gentlemen, Joliffe supposed—maybe a dozen altogether and all in holiday finery of bright summer colors—greens and blues and flower-reds and sunshine yellow—and after them the necessary servants, easy to know in their Lovell livery. Not interested in servants, the crowd was breaking up, with grumbling from some that no coins by way of largess had been scattered to make it worthwhile to watch at all.

“Cheap, that’s what he is,” one man was saying as he and another elbowed between Joliffe and Basset. “Spend a fortune on himself and his, but never a half-penny for anyone else, I’ve heard.”

Ellis, setting Piers down, muttered for only the other players to hear, “Why
should
he pay for them to gawk at him doing naught but ride by?”

“Because they want him to pay, that’s why,” said Joliffe. “What better reason than ‘I want’ do most men need?”

“Don’t turn philosopher on me,” Ellis snapped. “You’ll philosophize to the devils dragging you down to Hell when the time comes.”

“I’ll not. I’ll be too busy arguing mightily they’ve made a grave mistake and should be tossing me up the other way.”

Piers bent over with a whoop of laughter. “Grave mistake. Because you’ll be dead and buried in a grave. Grave mistake!”

The others looked at each other over his head, Rose fighting a smile before Ellis said grumpily, “Well, I’m not for going back to Penteneys yet, with that lot being sorted out all over the place. Who’s for a drink to pass an hour until we can go back?”

Rose was readying a protest against that but Basset slapped him on the shoulder, said, “I’ll stand you your drink, man,” and sent Rose a glance that said he’d see to it being all right. “You, too, Joliffe?”

Knowing he would probably give way to the urge to aggravate Ellis and that this was not the time for that, Joliffe said, “No. I think I’ll walk about a bit.”

“Me, too,” Piers declared. “I’ll go with you.”

“And so will I,” Rose said, taking firm hold on Piers’s hand.

“You’re just afraid I’ll lose him in the crowds,” Joliffe said, unoffended because he supposed he probably would. Not that Piers was likely to come to harm and couldn’t find his way back to the Penteneys easily enough if he wanted to.

“It’s not your losing him I fear,” said Rose. “It’s what he’ll get up to once he’s lost
you
that I worry on.”

Joliffe laughed, took Piers’s other hand, and the three of them turned back past the church again, leaving Basset and Ellis to whatever tavern they chose.

If the crowding in the streets had not already shown the in-flow of folk for the Corpus Christi holidaying was well under way, the booths set and being set up along the street, ready to sell food and overpriced ale and wine, would have done it. So, too, would the gaudy-dressed jugglers, minstrels, and others with entertainments to offer spread through the crowd, hoping to catch people’s eyes and farthings with their sports. Joliffe, all too certain that was what he and the others would have been doing except for Lewis and the Penteneys, turned a kindly eye their way but kept his farthings to himself.

Not so kindly, Piers said as they edged along the outside of a small gathering around a man juggling rainbow-dyed, leather-covered balls, “Ellis and I can do that better.” Nor was he much more interested in a well-kept bear with shining black fur being led along on a chain, because neither the bear nor his bearward were doing anything, just going somewhere. The street widened where it passed another gateway through the town wall, giving space for a greater crowding of booths and people, but it was all much of the same with what they had already seen and Piers tugged at Joliffe and Rose’s restraining hands, complaining, “I want to
do
something.”

“Tomorrow there’ll be things to do,” Rose said.

“Tomorrow there’s the play to do,” Piers griped. “There’s no sport in that.”

“You didn’t say you wanted sport,” Joliffe pointed out. “You said you wanted to do something.”

“You know what I meant!”

Rose, living not only with Piers but with three men who could turn cheerful talk into cheerful quarrelling as fast as she could turn a flat-cake on a griddle, was good at sudden distractions. They were just turning a corner in the street and she asked, “What’s that place?” with a nod ahead of them toward yet another stone-towered gateway, this one with its thick oaken gates standing open to a wide, stone-paved yard surrounded by tall buildings.

Joliffe knew distraction when it was offered and answered readily, “That’s New College. Not that it’s all that new. Some bishop of Winchester founded it about fifty years ago. But it’s the newest in Oxford, I think, unless there’s been one made since . . .”

He broke off from what he had nearly said.

“Since when?” Piers promptly prodded.

“Since last I took any notice of colleges in Oxford,” Joliffe said easily back.

“When did you ever take notice of colleges?” Piers jeered.

“When it was either think about them or else about rude little boys with no manners,” Joliffe jeered back.

“Leave off,” Rose said.

Beyond the gateway there was a sudden flurry of boys and young men crossing the college’s yard from one place to someplace else, dark scholars’ gowns flapping about them and their voices raised in loud, confused talk with each other.

“Idiots,” said Piers. “Shutting themselves up for years with nothing better to do than read books and talk at each other.”

“May be,” said Rose, “but those who see it through come out fit for making a good living at more ease than we’re ever likely to know.”

“You won’t find me shut up like that for any reason,” Piers retorted.

“That’s sure,” Rose agreed tartly. “Because even if you wanted it, we couldn’t pay the cost.”

And yet behind the tartness Joliffe heard, even if Piers did not, her half-wish—faint with knowing it was useless even as she wished it—that there was hope of some other way for Piers than this way they lived, uncertain of everything from day to day and week to week, none of them even daring to think about year to year; and because a little hope was better than none, Joliffe said lightly, seemingly to Piers but meant for her, “Well, if ever you change your mind, boy, there are some get their learning here as someone else’s servant. They wait on a paying scholar and learn along with him.”