A Play of Piety (17 page)

At the end, the sexton and Joliffe carried the shrouded body from the trestled boards where it had rested before the altar out of the church to the readied grave on a far side of the churchyard. That was too much more walking for Basset and old Ned. They waited on the church porch with Daveth while Sister Petronilla followed Joliffe and the sexton and Father Richard for the priest’s final prayers over the body when it had been lowered into the ground. After that, there was nothing but the slow return to the hospital, leaving the sexton to fill the grave and Father Richard to whatever his own next duties were.

Later Joliffe took the chance, when he carried the mid-day meal up to Master Soule and Master Hewstere, to ask Master Soule about where and when the play might be done, only to find that Mistress Thorncoffyn had been before him in the matter.

“She summoned me to her this morning,” said Master Soule. The way he said it told something of how he felt about being “summoned” in his own hospital. “She wants it played in the garth, where she can watch from her window. What, by the by, is it you mean to play?”

He was so openly ready to disapprove that Joliffe was pleased to be able to say it would be
Saint Nicholas and the Thief.
He told the story, and Master Soule granted, “That sounds well enough.”

Encouraged, Joliffe said, carefully the humble servant, “If we play, it should be for the men in the hall as well as for Mistress Thorncoffyn, and if for them, then it will surely be easier for her to shift into the hall than for them to shift out of it, such of them as could; and some couldn’t, after all. If we played it at the chapel end, we’d have to set up nothing but a box, just use the doors that are there for our coming and going, and making as little disturbance of matters here as might be. There, the men could see all without leaving their beds.”

Master Hewstere, only listening until now, said, “Won’t my lady balk at sharing this play she sees as being done for her?”

Master Soule slightly stiffened, probably at thought of how unpleasant Mistress Thorncoffyn would try to make his life and everyone else’s if she were displeased; but Joliffe said smoothly, “By your leave, sirs, we aren’t doing the play for Mistress Thorncoffyn. We’re doing it as a gift to the hospital.”

“She won’t pay you for that,” Master Hewstere said in flat warning.

Mentally shrugging aside Ellis’ undoubted irk at that, Joliffe said, still to Master Soule, “We can do the play as soon as this afternoon’s end if you like, sir,” and saw his own thought of “not leaving her much time to complain” pass across the master’s face. “But my fellows will need time to unpack and ready our playing gear. Nor they can’t come straight from the fields to do this. At best, to ready themselves and everything they need to be let off the harvest by mid-afternoon.”

Hindering the harvest was never lightly done. It was likely the thought of that gave Master Soule almost as deep a pause as thought of Mistress Thorncoffyn’s displeasure had before he said with decision, “Let it be so. When you go to fetch them from the fields, say I gave the word for it. Tell Sister Ursula it’s to go forward and all.”

Joliffe bowed, ready to leave, but Master Hewstere said, “Will you be in this play?”

“I will, sir.”

“So you need time off your duties, too.”

“Some.”

“No wonder you’re so eager for it all.”

Several sharp answers to that wanted loose from Joliffe’s tongue. Holding back from them all, he answered with face and voice both empty, “Sir,” which was no answer at all, and with another bow got himself out of the room, fighting his anger to quietness as he went down the stairs. After all, this was hardly the first time he had encountered that manner of thought about his work. All too usually, doing a play was thought to be merely light sport by people who did not know how a player could spend more of his body and mind in the while of playing than, say, a clerk might in a whole day at his desk. It depended on the play, of course, and on the player, but at the best it was not simply a matter of moving yourself around the playing space and saying the right words when you were supposed to. Poorly skilled players were satisfied with being no more than themselves in a play, enjoying simply showing off to the onlookers, but a truly skilled player worked to put himself aside and become the part he was playing, all the while never forgetting he was only playing at being someone else. That meant that to all outward show he was someone other than himself but at the same time, inwardly, he was remembering not only all the words he had to say and where to be when he said them, but having to pay heed to where the other players were and what they were doing,
and
judging how the lookers-on were taking what was being done. To do all that all at the same time took skill and strength of both mind and body, and if either mind or body—or one of the other players—faltered, so might the play. That meant that failure or success depended not only on one player having it right but on all of them, all at that same time.

So, no, doing a play was not the light-hearted sport and excuse to avoid “true work” that people like Master Hewstere seemed to think it was, and, yes, Joliffe and Ellis and Gil and Piers needed time to ready for even something as outwardly simple as
Saint Nicholas and the Thief
.

Sister Ursula at least made no trouble over him leaving when the time came. She even asked Rose if she needed to go, too. Somewhat too readily, to Joliffe’s mind, Rose answered, “No, I’ll not be needed,” as if she were more than willing to have no part in the business at all, and he left the kitchen wondering just how tired she had become of the players’ life, to want not even this small part of it here and now.

On his part, he was finding how much he missed his right work as a player. Close to nine months away from it was far too long—long enough that he was even looking forward to doing tired old
Saint Nicholas and the Thief.
More than that, he missed being day by day on the road, always on the way to somewhere else. There had been change and travel and different places in plenty these past months, but much of it had been . . .

He shook his mind away from where the nightmares came.

He was leaving the hospital’s rear-yard, setting out along the cart track for where he was told the harvesters were at work today, when another thought slapped into his mind, bringing him to a stop. Did it matter, after all, if people wondered how the players came by a second horse? If anyone thought to question it, why not say a bounty from Lord Lovell had made it possible? That was not altogether a lie: Lord Lovell had set them on the way that had brought Joliffe to Bishop Beaufort’s sight. The point was that with another horse to the cart, Basset would be able to ride instead of walk and they could be away from here, could be about their right business, with Basset bettering while they traveled, now that he was so much better already.

Joliffe started walking again, poking at the thought as he went, disconcerted, now he looked at it, to find how wide apart in his mind he had been keeping his life of these past months from his player’s life. Was he was trying to make himself into two people, the halves of himself walled away from each other? His nightmares, let alone his common sense, should have shown him how impossible that was going to be, but he had been trying it, even blocking one part of his life from the other when there was help to be had between them. He felt a fool.

Or did he mean a coward? What had he thought to gain by keeping his life in separate pieces? Yes, surely when he first became a player there had been a separating in his life, old part from new. There had been no way not to separate from all his earlier life; no one in his earlier life would have understood his choice or even—probably—forgiven him for taking that choice, had he given them the chance. Some would likely have gone so far as try to stop him. So he had left all that part of his life—and them—behind.

But that had been a matter of going onward, with never a denying to himself who he had been or from where he had grown, never this trying to hide one part of himself from another as he had been doing lately.

But now that he had seen what he was doing, he was going to . . . do what?

Think about it, he supposed.

But not now. It would keep until later. Whatever tangles he had made—was making—would make—in his life, here and now there was a play to do, and in a player’s life, all else went to the side when there was a play to do.

On Master Soule’s word there was no trouble having Ellis, Gil, and Piers away from the harvest, although Tisbe had to stay behind, given over to another boy to lead, and all their readying went smoothly, the necessary garb and gear readily unpacked from the cart and carried to the hospital. From visiting Basset, Ellis, Gil, and Piers had some knowledge of what would be their playing space in the hall. Now, coming in through the kitchen, Joliffe showed them how the pantry led between the kitchen and the sacristy on the chapel’s far side. They would change into their garb in the sacristy, and Gil as the Merchant Woman enter from there, first with Piers staggering behind her, carrying her “heavy” money chest to put in Saint Nicholas’ keeping, and again when she returned to find the chest had been stolen, while Ellis would go back through the pantry into the kitchen and into the small passageway beside Joliffe’s room, to enter from the hall’s other side as the Thief.

Ellis and Gil went back and forth several times, muttering each other’s lines from the play as they went (they all had done this play so often that everyone knew everyone else’s lines) to be sure they would be in time for whenever they had to enter. Joliffe used the time and Piers to shift joint stools to where the sisters and Rose could sit between beds to have good view without blocking any of the men’s or Mistress Thorncoffyn’s. He presumed she would be sitting where she did when she came to Mass since there was enough of her to block several men’s views if she sat closer. He knew that was an unkind thought, knew that in charity he should curb it, but unkind or not, it was also the truth and would be the truth whether or not he thought it. So he shrugged away any guilt for the unkindness and let Piers persuade him back to the kitchen where Piers undoubtedly had hope of wheedling something to eat from someone.

That happened to prove no challenge. Ellis and Gil were already at the table, being given bread and ale by Sister Ursula. Piers happily joined them for a share while Joliffe went on to the laundry, to tell Emme and Amice they should soon come to the hall.

“Unless you can’t bear to leave your laundering for a while,” he suggested lightly.

“The laundering will wait for us,” Emme said cheerily back. “Sheets and all can soak while we’re away.”

Amice, already untying her apron, asked, “Is someone gone to tell Jack?”

“Daveth will,” said Joliffe, glad to be reminded, and when he was back in the kitchen he asked if Daveth would.

Sister Petronilla promptly sent the boy, then asked in her turn, “Will it be all right for Heinrich to be at your play?”

Knowing that if Heinrich did not come, then either she or Daveth could not, Joliffe said, “Surely. You can hold him on your lap, say?”

She said, smiling, “That would be no trouble.”

Ellis, Gil, and Piers were already gone to the sacristy to change into the play’s garb. Joliffe’s change into the bishop’s beard and robes would be easier to do once the complications of Gil being gowned for the Woman Merchant were done, so rather than joining them straight away, he went back to the hall, going along the cloister walk to enter by the far door, closest to Basset’s bed. Basset was sitting up. So were as many other of the men as could, the others were propped on their pillows as much as might be. Even John Oxyn was in one of the respites that came in his fever and taking an interest. As Basset had said, they were all ready for something that would put their fellow’s death further off from them, and with a hard look Basset asked him, “What are you doing here instead of readying?”

“Giving Gil a chance to be ready before I take my turn. The sacristy is narrow.”

Basset gave a nod, accepting that, then said what was probably truly on his mind. “Do you know, I’ve never seen my players play.”

Joliffe gave a short laugh of surprise, but saw that was true. Basset oversaw them in their practicing, but when they actually performed for lookers-on, he was always
in
the play, not seeing it. With equal surprise, Joliffe said, “Come to that, I haven’t either.” Not since he had talked his way into the company those years ago. “Nor have I seen this play from Saint Nicholas’ side of it,” he added. How different a shape would it have for him, played from that way?

Idany came in, ending their talk. Behind her, Master Aylton was carrying Mistress Thorncoffyn’s stool that served her at Mass. “There,” said Idany, pointing toward the chapel. “Put it right there, between the first two beds.”

Joliffe did not need the protesting lift of Basset’s hand. He was already stepping forward into Master Aylton’s way, saying, “No.”

Brought to a stop, both Master Aylton and Idany stared at him, before Idany said tartly, “Yes. That’s where my lady means to sit. Close. She’s said so.”

“She’ll block some of the men from seeing all the play if she sits there,” Joliffe returned. “She can sit here and see as well as anybody.” He pointed to where he was standing at the foot of Basset’s bed.

“That’s not where she means to sit,” Idany repeated.

“She’s not going to sit where she blocks what everyone else sees.”

“Fellow,” Master Aylton put in. “This play is being done at her behest and for her.”

“We’re being allowed to do it here by Master Soule’s leave, for the sake of the men,” Joliffe returned. “She’ll see it all very well from here without trouble to her or anyone else.”

“You are a servant here,” Idany said. “It’s not for you to say what’s done and not done.”

Joliffe felt the subtle shift in his body from simply being there to a straightening into command and heard the same change in his voice as he said, “I’m speaking for the players now, not as anyone’s servant. If I answer to anyone, it’s to Master Soule as our patron for this time.” He shifted his look to Master Aylton and pointed. “The stool goes there.”