A Play of Isaac (6 page)

“You’ve finished your studies then?” Joliffe asked.

“Nearly. If things go as planned, I’ll be ordained priest sometime in next Lent.”

“Well done,” Joliffe said, fully meaning it. Priesthood had been something John Thamys had wanted ever since they had met at New College as scrub-faced boys.

“And you,” Thamys said. “What have you been at since I last saw you?”

“As you see.” Joliffe held out his arms as if his well-worn, plain clothing told all. “Wandering.”

Turning into Queen’s Lane’s narrow way, they were suddenly clear of the crowd, and Thamys came to a halt to look him openly down and up before saying, “But not idly wandering, I’d guess. You were never idle.”

“As I recall, one of the great complaints against me in my days here was that I never worked enough.”

“The great complaint was that you rarely worked at what you were supposed to work at. But idle? No, you were never that. In truth,” Thamys said judiciously, “there were times when you would have been better idle than doing what you did. Such as the ten cats in the privyhouse.”

“Eleven cats.”

“A close count was difficult at the time,” Thamys said, solemn as if they were settling a theological point.

“I’d hoped to make it twelve.”

“I’m sure you did,” Thamys agreed. “But when you consider the effect upon Master Hampton when he opened the privy door, I think we may agree that ten cats—eleven, I beg your pardon—was sufficient to your purpose, was it not?”

“Yes,” Joliffe granted as solemnly, “I’d have to say it was.”

They regarded each other straight-facedly a moment and then, together, convulsed with laughter at mutual memory of Master Hampton standing in the way of a surge of angry cats intent on being somewhere else.

A flurry of scholars, robes flapping with their hurry, surged by, much like the cats in their somewhat heedless haste to be elsewhere. Joliffe and Thamys faded aside, against the housewall there, and then drifted in their wake along the narrow street, Thamys asking again, “But what have you been at? More than merely wandering, surely.”

“I’m a player.”

“Are you?” Thamys looked at him with widened eyes and laughter. “That suits, at any rate. You’re here for the Corpus Christi plays then?”

“We’re to play St. Michael Northgate’s
Abraham and Isaac
.”

“A small company then.”

“Yes.”

“But successful or you’d not be here. Is this your first time back to Oxford in all this time?”

“Contrariwise. We come once most years and sometimes twice.”

“And you never came to see me in all this while?”

“You never came to see me,” Joliffe pointed out.

“True. But that’s because I don’t go to see players and didn’t know you were here, while you knew quite well that I was.”

Joliffe paused, then said in all seriousness, “I wasn’t certain how welcomed I’d be.”

“Joliffe! Considering all else I’d seen you at, you think I’d balk at you being a player?”

“There was . . .” Joliffe searched out the best word. “. . . scant approval of my leaving, as I remember.”

They were nearly to the gateway into St. Edmund’s yard. Thamys stopped short of where they might be heard by the porter sitting easily on a barrel beside the gate, keeping eye on who came and went. “I don’t know how you’d remember whether there was approval or not of your leaving,” Thamys said, “let be whether it was scant or otherwise. One morning you were here and then, come supper time, there was only your note saying you were gone and weren’t coming back. Nor did you. I think that was the only time I was ever truly angry at you. Except,” he added thoughtfully, “for when you put the dried toad inside my borrowed copy of the
Polychronicon.
”

“There was naught wrong with that toad,” Joliffe protested. “It couldn’t have been flatter than it was.”

“Flat or otherwise, the
Polychronicon
is no place for a dried toad.”

“Better a dried toad than a wet one,” Joliffe pointed out. “Consider, too, that it cost me a right sum from the apothecary, when I could have had a live one free for the catching.”

“True, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to thank you for the dried one.”

“Better it was a dried one anyway,” Joliffe mused, “considering you threw it at me.”

“I would have thrown the
Polychronicon
at you, too, if it hadn’t been only borrowed.”

Joliffe shook his head in mock sorrow. “It’s a sad thing when mortal man is so adverse to one of God’s creatures.”

“Nor do I much like toads either,” Thamys said blandly.

They laughed together again. Joliffe had forgotten how easily he and Thamys had been friends—better friends than he had remembered, for them to take it up so readily from where they had left off.

Thamys nodded toward the gateway and its watching porter. “I’m not going to ask you in.”

Joliffe would have been surprised if he had and said, unoffended, “Better not to be seen with someone as riff-raff as me?”

“Precisely so,” Thamys agreed. “Though if anyone asked, I suppose I could always explain I wished to show you to my students as example of what happens to someone who deserts the scholar’s life for lesser ways.” Thamys shifted from the blandness that nearly always meant he was jesting, said crisply instead, “No, you idiot. I have to deliver this to Master Bryton and then ready lessons for tomorrow that I should have done yesterday. Where are you staying?”

“We’ve been taken on by a Master Penteney for the week.”

“Master Penteney the victualler?” Thamys asked.

“You know him?”

“Somewhat. A good man and something of a friend to St. Edmund’s. He gives us good consideration on what we buy from him. I’m to dine with some others at his house Wednesday evening.”

“Then you’ll be seeing me. We’re to perform for his guests that night.”

“Good then,” Thamys said with what looked real pleasure. “I’ll look forward to it.”

“Until then,” Joliffe said, beginning to draw away in parting, then thought to add, “Oh, by the way, if for some unlikely reason you hear me called by the name Southwell, don’t mind. It seems to be who I presently am.”

Thamys frowned. “Are you in trouble of some sort? Will I give away too much if I know you?”

“No. It’s nothing more than that when I met Master Basset, I wouldn’t tell him all my name at first. For the sport of it, he gave me one of his own choosing and ever since then gives me a different one now and again, as the fancy takes him.”

“I may like your Master Basset,” Thamys said, smiled farewell, and turned away into St. Edmund’s gateway with its paved courtyard with the usual long buildings of student rooms and lecture halls on either side, leaving Joliffe to go his own way.

Joliffe did, wondering as he went why Thamys had not asked why he had left Oxford as he had. Was it because he thought the business was Joliffe’s own and not his . . . or because he knew the reason?

Chapter 4

Joliffe reached the Penteneys’ in time to go into the house to supper with the other players. There in the great hall they were shown to a place near the low end of one of the two long tables that faced each other down the length of the hall for those of the household who were not serving the meal, while Master Penteney sat at the center of the table on the dais at the hall’s other end, able to overlook the lower tables. A round-faced, smiling woman who must be Mistress Penteney was seated beside him, with Simon next to her, then Lewis, then a somewhat younger fair-featured girl. To Master Penteney’s other side were Mistress Geva and Master Richard.

Joliffe sorted them to his satisfaction: Master and Mistress Penteney; and their son (their one son?) Master Richard and his wife; and Lewis and Simon Fairfield, Master Penteney’s wards. That left only the fair-featured girl unplaced. Was she a Fairfield or a Penteney or someone else altogether? Perhaps another profitable ward to Master Penteney?

Servants began to bring in food then and Joliffe lost interest in the high table. He could not see what was carried up the hall to the Penteneys, but what came his way among the lower servants was rabbit in a spiced sauce, a salad of greens, leeks, and garlic, and a date-laden cheesecake, all of it cooked well, nothing scanted or burned or underdone, and all of it in generous portions. Joliffe said something to the household man on his right about how the eating looked to be good here, and the man readily agreed, “Aye. There’s no stinting in this house. They’re a good master and mistress, are the Penteneys.”

“They’ve just the one son?” Joliffe asked.

“Master Richard, aye. There’s nothing to be said against him either. He has his father’s head and enough of his mother’s heart to do him good.”

“I’ve met him and his wife. Mistress Geva, is she?”

“That’s her. Mistress Geva. She does well enough, too. Given us a grandson, she has. Master Giles. It goes hard with her, though, I’ve heard some of the women say, her not to have place of her own but being under Mistress Penteney’s sway. Still, she’s young. Her time will come.”

Joliffe had learned early on from Basset that the better a player knew a household, the better was his chance of doing well in it, and since this fellow seemed ready to talk, he tried. “I’ve talked with Master Fairfield and Master Simon, too.”

The man, having just spooned a piece of rabbit and sauce into his mouth, nodded while he chewed, swallowed, and said, “Same as family, they are. Grew up here after their father died and Master Penteney got their wardships and all. Master Simon likes books out of the ordinary but is good enough. It’s pity he’s not the heir, but there it is. When you get used to Master Fairfield, he’s none so bad either. Wouldn’t want that Matthew’s job, though.”

Making busy with cutting a piece of rabbit to stir into the sauce, Joliffe murmured, “I’m surprised, though, Master Fairfield hasn’t been set aside in favor of his brother.”

“There’s many as is surprised by that.” The man was cutting his own share of rabbit into smaller bits and so had chance to talk but that was all he said.

Joliffe, though, had been thinking things through in his walk and ventured, “Is it because if Master Simon was heir, when he came of age he’d take over his properties and all? With Lewis as heir, it’s likely, isn’t it, Master Penteney will keep control of everything?”

The man favored him with a sharp, approving look and agreed, “Aye. This way, look you, he’ll not lose by having kept such good care of him all this time, see.”

He knifed a bit of rabbit into his mouth and Joliffe took the chance to say, “Sounds good sense to me. Now, who’s the girl sitting next to Lewis?”

“Kathryn Penteney, aye,” the man answered around his mouthful “Master’s daughter. Going to be betrothed . . .”

The woman on the man’s other side jostled his arm, wanting him to pass over the tall mug of ale they were sharing, and Piers on Joliffe’s other side began to pester for Joliffe’s share of cheesecake.

Their lengthy debate over why Joliffe was not going to give it to him saw them through to the meal’s end and then, during the general upheaval of servants starting to clear away the meal’s dishes and table linens so other servants could take the tables down and out of the way, Basset gave the word and the players slipped together out of the hall, back to the yard and away to the barn. If they lingered in the hall there was likelihood someone among the household folk would think that since they were players they should play something. Then there would be hard feelings on the household side if they did not, and hard feelings on their own if they did. That made it easiest just to leave, but as soon as they were back at the barn, Ellis said, “Who’s for going out for a drink?”

“Plans first. Ale later,” Basset said. “It’s time we talk about this week.”

“Money first, ale later, plans tomorrow?” Ellis suggested hopefully; but when Basset shook his head against that, he sat down on a cushion beside where there would have been a fire if they’d had one and said on a martyred sigh, “Where’s the horse, Piers?”

Piers was already fetching the thing from the small chest beside the cart where his own things were kept. The horse had started as a piece of beechwood picked up at the edge of a clearing where they’d camped last week. Piers had claimed its rough shape was something like a horse—“If you’ve had enough to drink or a cant-eye,” Joliffe had said unhelpfully—but it looked much more like one now that Ellis had been whittling at it a few evenings. It would be a warhorse, Piers had decided. “Then next you can make a knight to ride it and then we’ll do like we did before.”

Which did not mean Piers would play with it. Joliffe could not recall when last he had seen Piers play with a toy, not counting the rag doll he dangled in the St. Ursula play when he was supposed to be a sweet little girl saved by St. Ursula from an evil stepmother’s plan to kill her. Joliffe’s own thought was that if the little girl was anything like Piers really was, it was the stepmother who would likely have needed rescuing, but no one would let him rewrite the play in her favor.

As for the wooden horse, if things went the way they had other times with other bits of wood, Ellis would make what Piers told him to make and it would be quite good because Ellis was good with his hands that way. Then Piers would paint whatever was made with some of the paint kept for touching up the painted cloths that mostly dressed their playing places, and then he would sell it to someone—a mother, a peddler, a shopkeeper, whoever seemed likely to pay the most. Then he’d keep all the money for himself and Ellis would let him because Ellis was besotted with Rose and happy to make her son happy. For all the good it did him. Despite Piers’s father had gone his own way before Joliffe ever joined the company, with never word heard from him since, Rose held that until she knew differently she had to believe she was still married and therefore there could be nothing between her and Ellis except friendship or else adultery.