A Play of Lords

by Margaret Frazer

  “That’s the way of things,” Basset agreed. “Men mar and women mend.”

  And men’s stupidity in marring each other was something Rose had pointed out to them more than once, Joliffe thought. But this time it had not been any of their fault, he protested, if only to himself. They’d none of them done aught to earn that attack.

  Except that, belatedly, memory of the stinking-breathed man’s words came back to him.

  “Eh, well,” John Hyche said. “I’d best see how our younglings do. The youngest will roll out of bed and then sleep on the floor if she’s not watched. If there’s still some ale in our pitcher, I’ll bring it when I come back.”

  He went. The inn was sunk in night-time quiet and shadows except for a faint lamp-glow at one high window in the house and the single lanterns hung at the hall door and here beside the gate. Joliffe liked the sense of safety that shut gate gave him. For what that safety was worth. They could not stay inside forever, and beyond the gate London was still there.

  London—and whoever wanted them to stop what they were doing.

  But what were they doing? It had to be the play the fellow had meant. They had done nothing else for anyone to see and be offended by, and clearly they had badly offended someone.

  Basset sat down on the doorstep, wincing, and put a hand to his belly. Joliffe, deciding not to hazard sitting until he had to, laid a hand on his own belly and said, “Me, too.” He gave Gil a one-sided smile. “How’s your back?”

  Gil tried a smile back at him. “Well enough.”

  “My thanks for getting Piers away,” Basset said.

  Gil sat down beside him, looking none too happy. “The thing was . . . I didn’t mind running,” he said shamefacedly.

  “Ha,” said Joliffe. “I wouldn’t have minded running either. All I lacked was the chance.”

  “I’m with you there,” said Basset feelingly. “As it was, they could have done worse to us than they did.” He failed to sound as if he were taking much comfort in that, and he looked around as if there was chance of being overheard, which there was not, but Joliffe had the same urge to watch his back just now and he understood why Basset dropped his voice to ask, “Did you get told anything by the fellow that hit you?”

  “Yes,” Joliffe said. “You, too, then.”

  “Me, too.”

  Gil was looking back and forth between them questioningly. “They said something?” he asked.

  “They did,” Joliffe answered somewhat grimly.

  “What did yours say?” Basset asked.

  “That we’d best—” Joliffe paused to be sure of the words. “That we’d best ‘think again’ about what we’re doing. Yours?”

  “‘Forget the play.’ That was all. Just ‘Forget the play.’”

  “To the point,” Joliffe said. “That’s why they didn’t do more or try to rob us. They were to warn us, not hurt us.” This time, he did not add.

  “Too bad for Ellis they got it wrong.” Basset rubbed at his face with both hands. “Still, we did get their message.”

  “That we’re to ‘forget the play’?” Gil asked. “The one we just did?” Then he answered himself. “Has to be. It’s almost the only one we’ve done, and the others can’t matter to anyone.”

  “It has to be that,” Basset agreed. He took off his hat, ran a hand into his hair. “I’ve been a fool. I’ve let myself think this play would pass as a bit of sport, despite what Bishop Beaufort told us. I didn’t want to think otherwise about it, so I didn’t. Saint Genesius, what have I got us into?”

  “What have we got ourselves into,” Joliffe corrected. “I heard him as clearly as you did and didn’t let it slow me.” He tried to lighten his voice. “Only I don’t think we should say that to Ellis. We’d never hear the end of being blamed for his hurt.”

  Basset gave an unwilling laugh at that. “True.”

  John Hyche came out his own door carrying a pitcher, and their talk fell into a brief pause as Joliffe went inside to get the players’ cups. Ellis was still on the table, still on his side but with a pillow under his head now while Rose washed his wound with wine again. She looked questioningly at Joliffe who said, “He’ll be back when he can,” and escaped out the door again.

  He and the others were barely through their first cup when a scratching at the wicket door took John Hyche to it, first to open it slightly, then wide enough for Mak to slide in, triumphantly holding up a clutch of pale horse-hair in one hand but not pausing, just going straight inside where Rose greeted him gladly, Ellis grumblingly, and Maud Hyche practically by saying, “There. Well done. Now out with you.”

  Mak obeyed, coming out to join the rest of them and be given a full cup by Joliffe and thanks by Basset.

  “Know someone works in a hire-stable toward Newgate,” Mak said. “No trouble.”

  But he did not sound as pleased with himself as he might, Joliffe thought.

  There was the thin cry of a child from the gatekeeper’s room across the way, and John Hyche sighed, handed the pitcher to Basset, and went to find out why. Mak, taking a long drink of ale, waited until he was gone and then burst out angrily but mindful to keep his voice low, “It was my doing you were attacked. How likely was it all the lanterns at that end of Foster Lane were gone out at once? I should have thought, and I didn’t. If I’d given heed, we’d have swung wide and not given ’em their chance at you.”

  “I doubt that would have made much difference to it,” Basset said. “They would have come anyway. Or found some other time. It was us they wanted and none other, and they were probably paid to do it.”

  “Whoever paid them bought cheap,” Joliffe said, “and got what he paid for. They should have waited until we were past them and come at us from behind. Not that we seemed to have done them any harm.” He rubbed his stomach gently where it still hurt. “What did the man say who hit you, Mak?”

  Mak put a hand to the back of his head. “Say? He clubbed me with something, and I went down. What was to say?”

  “The one who went for me told me we should ‘think again’ about what we’re doing. The one who hit Basset said ‘Forget the play.’”

  Careful of how he moved his head, Mak looked from one to the other of them.“‘Forget the play’? You mean they were saying to stop doing it?”

  “Seems so,” Basset said. “Seems that’s why they attacked us. To tell us that and fright us enough we’d obey.”

  “Will you?” Mak asked. “Forget the play? Stop doing it?”

  Joliffe noted that Mak questioned no more than he and Basset had which play was meant, even while answering strongly, “No,” as Gil shook his head and Basset said, more consideringly, “No one has asked us to play it again.”

  “But if someone does ask?” Gil asked quietly. “And supposing Ellis can.”

  “Then we will,” Basset as quietly answered.

  “Because,” said Joliffe, “if it comes down to choosing between having his grace the cardinal bishop of Winchester angry at us, or an unknown someone, we’re more likely to choose the devil we know over—” He broke off, thinking better of having just called the bishop of Winchester a devil.

  “Over the devil you don’t,” Mak finished for him broodingly. “Aye. There’s good sense to that. Still . . .” He pulled a face, looking as if he were thinking hard about something that was not coming easily past the ache in his head. “This attack. It’s not how things are done among the lords. Attacks on servants. In the dark. In the streets. That’s not what’s done.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “It had to be Burgundians.”

  “Mine sounded English enough,” Joliffe said.

  “And mine,” agreed Basset.

  “I mean Burgundians hired ’em. To stop your insults to their duke.” He brightened as much as a sore head allowed. “So that means the Burgundians still here aren’t just lying low, waiting for things to sort out. They’re doing things. That’s something the bishop will want to know.”

  Inside, Ellis yelped. They all winced in s
ympathy and waited to hear if there would be more, but that was all, and after a moment Mak heaved the sigh of a very tired man and said, “Anyway, all we have to do is keep better guard after this, now we know we have to. I’m going to my bed.”

  They bade him good night, and he went away into the yard’s shadows. Joliffe looked over Basset’s and Gil’s heads into the room where Rose seemed to be finishing with Ellis, wrapping a bandage around his thigh to hold a clean cloth over the wound while Maud Hyche tidied around them.

  Quite abruptly the long day’s earning of weariness swept over Joliffe in a single rush, and all he wanted was his bed and no need to think about anything until tomorrow. But his bed was not even laid out on the floor yet, and neither Basset nor Gil was making any move from the doorstep, Basset saying, brooding after his own thoughts, “We’ve always stayed clear of lords’ business when we can. I never meant us to be part of any here in London, that’s sure.”

  “Do you see any way out of it?” Joliffe asked, hoping Basset did because he did not.

  “No.” Basset stood up, a slow business of stiff joints. Either weariness had hit him, too, or his arthritics were playing up. Or both. But it was surely weariness in his voice as he added, “If you think of one, let me know.”

  Saying, “Coming out, please,” Maud Hyche bustled toward them, carrying the basin of water that had washed Ellis’ wound, and Gil joined Basset in moving aside to let her pass. The water was long since cooled, was surely no longer clean, and she dumped it into the stone gutter running under the gate into the street while saying, “You can go in now. It’s safe,” with a woman’s scorn for men’s uneasy stomachs.

  Chapter 12

  Things looked no simpler in the morning than they had in the night. For one thing, Ellis’ humour was far worse. The relief of being alive and with a wound far less than it might have been had worn off, leaving him with pain-fueled anger at everything. He snarled at Joliffe and Gil when they helped him out to the privy. He snapped at Rose over the breakfast of bread, meat, and ale she brought him from the hall. He cursed when Mak came to tell them there would be a constable coming to question them about last night’s attack, and when Mak said it wasn’t his doing, Ellis cursed the Hyches for not keeping their mouths shut.

  “It was John Hyche’s duty to report such a thing,” Rose pointed out.

  “To Hell with duty and everything else,” Ellis snarled. He was sitting uncomfortably sidewise on the piled cushions, trying to find a way to sit or lie that eased his hip, and while he shifted one way and another, he went on to tell quite clearly what he would do to any of their attackers should he get his hands on one of them.

  “Lacking that,” said Joliffe dryly, “you’re going to make us suffer in their stead.”

  “I’m not,” Ellis snapped.

  “Well, you’re making Rose suffer,” Joliffe shot back at him.

  Ellis whipped his head around, fast enough to see the tears in Rose’s eyes before she could finish turning away from him, and he exclaimed, “Rose!” with instant contrition and thrust out a hand toward her. “Rose-love, I’m sorry. I’d rather bite my own head off than yours.”

  “We’d not know it,” she said on a swallowed sob and trying to smile. She reached to put her hand into his and let him draw her down to his side. “Oh, Ellis.” She touched his cheek gently with her free hand, “I’m so glad you’re alive. But if you don’t stop snarling at all of us—”

  “—we’re going to make you wish you weren’t,” said Joliffe. “Alive, that is.”

  “Joliffe!” Rose protested.

  “We will, though,” Piers said, scowling from where he had been keeping a safe distance across the room.

  “Hai!” Ellis protested. “I’m the one with a slice in his flank. Where’s the pity?”

  “I think you wore it out about the third time you snarled at one of us this morning,” Basset said.

  “Yes, well, I’m sorry,” Ellis grudged, probably meaning it, however little he sounded like it. “But it hurts!”

  “So we’ll buy a potion from an apothecary and put you to sleep until it doesn’t,” Joliffe said.

  “You’ll walk stiff for a while, right enough,” Basset said. “But you’re still upright and able to walk.”

  “Instead of coffined,” Joliffe said.

  “Joliffe!” Rose protested again, while Ellis growled at him.

  “You’d think,” Joliffe said with injured innocence, “that with the bleeding he did, his humours would be in better balance.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t enough bleeding. We could—” Gil started helpfully.

  “No!” Ellis declared. Everyone laughed, and he gave way to half of an unwilling smile. “All right then,” he admitted almost grudgingly, still fighting the smile. “So I’m going to live unless I keep grutching. What about our playing?”

  “We could do The Death of Robin Hood,” Joliffe suggested. “But start with Robin dead. Then all you’d have to do is lie there.”

  Before Ellis could rise to that bait, Basset said, “I’ve thought on that. For the while, we can just go back to what we did before Gil joined us. The small plays. Gil can take your place in them, Ellis. A few quick runs through them for him to shift from his parts to yours, and we’ll be set, I’d judge.”

  He was probably right, and that would be surely the simplest way to mend matters while Ellis mended. It was Mak, sitting on his heels beside the door, who asked what all of them had been not saying. “What about The Duke and the Dauphin?”

  A moment of flat silence and no one looking at Ellis met that question before Basset said, “We’ll do it when we can. We can’t do it without all of us.”

  Another silent moment followed that. Then Mak said what Joliffe had not thought of until this morning and had been trying not to think of ever since.

  “So maybe wounding him wasn’t a chance thing.”

  The silence that answered that was more complete than before. Because what could be said to it? Then Ellis turned away from it altogether, returning to griping, saying sharply, “I don’t want the bother of a constable. I don’t want the bother of his questions and the bother of showing him my hurt.”

  “You’re not the only one being bothered,” Rose said, freeing her hand from Ellis’ hold and reaching to take up her sewing basket. “I have the bother of mending your torn hose.”

  Ellis caught her hand again. “And of nursing me,” he said winningly.

  “One more task,” Rose said tartly, but she left her hand in his and reached with her other one to stroke his curling hair back from his brow.

  The already gray day outside their open door was darkened further by someone blocking the doorway, and a friendly voice said,“‘Day’s greeting to you, Mak. You part of this, too?”

  Pushing himself to his feet, Mak said, “Jem. It’s you then.”

  “It’s me then,” Jem agreed. He had already seen Ellis with his bandaged leg and said at him now, “You’re the one who was hurt.” He looked around at the rest of the company. “So you must be the others who were there.”

  “All but my daughter,” Basset said. “You’re the constable, I gather.”

  “James Smithcot,” Mak said. “Presently constable of Farrington Ward.”

  “For my sins,” Jem said. He was a large, somewhat beefy man with a full, smooth face and a slow voice that Joliffe suspected did not match his wits. His look around at them all was sharp enough, surely, while he asked Mak, “Were you there, too?”