A Play of Knaves

by Margaret Frazer

  “We’ve had rights to that wood time out of mind,” the man snarled back at him.

  “There’s those that do and those that don’t, and you’re one of those that don’t. And even if you were, you’re not careful what you take or how, and I’m telling you to keep off and away from it!”

  “You’re a grip-fisted cur, Walter Gosyn, and there’s those that . . .”

  Gosyn’s wife, the coin dropped on the table, moved toward both men, saying firmly, “Now you leave off that talk, Wat Offington. You know better than that, or if you don’t, your wife does anyway.”

  Given the size of Wat’s anger, Joliffe expected Wat would stretch it to her, but instead he made a quick duck of his head her way and said, “I’ll be first to say you were good to my Bartrice when that rheum settled to her chest, Geretruda. She’d have my ears and all if I denied it. It’s not with you but with your husband’s grabbing ways I’ve got quarrel.”

  “I’ve never taken what wasn’t mine!” Gosyn declared hotly. “There’s not a man can say otherwise except he lies!”

  “You’ve had luck!” Wat flung back at him, his wrath right back where it had been. “That’s what you’ve had, and you’ve no pity for those of us who don’t!”

  “I don’t have pity for those too slothful to make their ‘luck’ by hard work the way I have and then come stealing from me to make up for it!”

  They would be at blows in another moment or two, Joliffe thought and readied to draw Piers away because, once started, something like that always spread. But Geretruda Gosyn, for all she was a little, bony woman who hardly rose to either man’s shoulder, put herself between them with a hand on her husband’s arm, murmuring something to him and then to Wat that Joliffe could not hear. Whatever it was, neither man was ready to come to blows across her. They each even took an unwilling step away from one another just before Master Ashewell and another man came shoving toward them from among from the gathering gawkers.

  Both Ashewell and the newcomer seemed to know more about the quarrel than what Joliffe had heard. Smiling and easy, Ashewell went to Gosyn, saying, “What-hey, Walter. Can’t let work go even on holiday?” The other man went toward Wat Offington, who held up his hands shoulder-high and took another step backward, claiming, “T’wasn’t me who started the jawing here, Master Kyping. Anybody can tell you t’wasn’t me.”

  Despite Master Kyping being younger than the other three men, he clearly had some manner of authority here. But rather than throwing his weight ahead of him, he said as easily as Ashewell and on half a laugh, “If it wasn’t you started it, it was only because Gosyn got his words in first by a thumb’s breadth. Look you, both of you, I know what you’re on about and it’s a matter for the manor court, not the middle of the marketplace on a Sunday, right?”

  Both Gosyn and Wat acknowledged that with grudging shrugs and half-nods. Geretruda still had a hand on her husband’s arm and Ashewell was standing near him. Now Master Kyping clapped a hand on Wat’s shoulder as if he, at least, was with Wat in this, and that was sharp of him, Joliffe thought. Someone like Wat, once he began to feel “everybody was against him,” would only be the worse to deal with. As it was, Kyping looked to be siding with him, giving Wat the chance to draw off without loss of face, and to Wat’s credit he took the chance. “Right,” he said, starting to turn to leave. “Manor court then. Right.”

  Behind him Gosyn growled. “Just see you keep away from what isn’t yours in the meanwhile.”

  “Walter!” Geretruda said at him sharply as Wat started to swing angrily back toward him.

  But Master Kyping had his hand on Wat’s shoulder again and his other hand raised at Gosyn, one finger up in warning as he said as sharply as Geretruda, “Gosyn! Let it go! Or the first business at the manor court will be a fine on you.”

  Ashewell, an arm firmly around Gosyn’s shoulders now, said cheerily, “Come on. All this can wait. You haven’t done your part in ale-festing yet.”

  Gosyn let himself be turned away, grumbling, between his wife and friend while Master Kyping saw Wat away the other way, talking with him friendliwise as they went. The gawkers went back to their other pleasures, and Joliffe looked to see what Piers was doing, only to find that the Gosyns seemed to be destined for quarrels today. Claire had stayed beside the wreath-maker’s table, sensibly out of the way, but in the brief while of the quarrel and its end, Hal Medcote and his sister, Eleanor, had joined her there. And while Eleanor was standing aside with a look that made Joliffe think she would rather not be there, Hal was far too close to Claire; had her backed against the table, unable to slip sideways away from him as he held a wreath above her head with both hands while leaning toward her in what could have been a lover’s way if they had not been in so public a place and Claire had not been staring up at him with angry dislike and maybe fear. And in unthinking answer to that, Joliffe took a step toward them, only to have Ellis, come from somewhere, clamp a hand on his near arm, saying, “Don’t even think it. Back off away.”

  He was right. Among the many things of which players had to be wary was becoming part of quarrels none of their business among people with no reason to take their side and all too likely to turn on them instead of on each other. As Basset was wont to say, “What’s ours is ours and what’s theirs is theirs and we’re best to keep them well apart.”

  So Joliffe did not pull free of Ellis’ hold, which was just as well, as Nicholas Ashewell came shoving past Eleanor to grab Hal by the arm and jerk him around and away from Claire, saying too loudly, “Leave her alone!”

  Even if he had remembered that a soft word was supposed to turn aside wrath, Joliffe thought it would probably not have sufficed here, given how readily Hal’s momentary surprise leapt into sharp-edged delight at Nicholas’ challenge. With a sharp jerk he freed himself, gave a shove at Nicholas’ shoulder that pushed him back a step, and said, “Keep your hands to yourself, bird-shot boy.”

  Nicholas flushed hot-red. Claire said, “Don’t!” at both of them, and Eleanor moved toward her brother, saying, “Hal, let be.”

  Ignoring them both, Hal said at Nicholas, “Where’s your birding-bow, boy? Don’t tell me you’ll take someone on without it.” He put out his hand to shove at Nicholas again, with Nicholas’ hand already on the hilt of the dagger hung from his belt and no doubt in Joliffe’s mind that Hal was hoping he would draw it, because Hal could surely have his own dagger out as quickly as Nicholas could have his, and then . . .

  Ellis was firmly drawing Joliffe further back, and Joliffe let him. Gosyn was now shoving his way toward the wreath-maker’s table with black wrath on his face and Master Ashewell and Geretruda in his wake with no likelihood they would be able to stop him. Not that Master Ashewell looked like stopping Gosyn was what he had in mind. Instead he looked as angry for his son’s sake as Gosyn was for his daughter’s. But somehow Master Kyping was quicker than any of them, away from Wat Offington and to Hal and Nicholas before the others reached them, drawing Eleanor aside with one hand while blocking Gosyn’s and Ashewell’s way and saying with laughter at both Hal and Nicholas, “If you overset Jenet’s stall in your quarreling, you’ll find yourself not only paying for all her wreaths but having to wear them yourselves for the rest of the day, I promise you. And a pretty pair you’ll surely make.”

  That startled Nicholas and Hal into looking away from each other and to him, and he went laughingly on, “So go your ways and save us all a deal of trouble.” He caught up a wreath from the table. “Claire, these flowers suit your fair hair the best. May I?” Setting the wreath on her head himself with one hand while leaning to hand a coin to Jenet behind the table, he put himself between Hal and Nicholas so that they drew back from one another without he seemed to force them to it, saying to them on his next breath, as he pointed one way along the street, “Hal, there’s the way I think you should go. And Nicholas”—pointing the other way—“I think there’s your way.”

  It was all done too briskly to give anyone time to turn their q
uarrel on him, and now he drew Claire away to her father and mother before turning to clamp a firm friendly hand on Hal’s shoulder, saying, “Come to it, why don’t I go with you? I’ve heard Jack Twyne has some of the best ale here and he’s the way you’re going. Eleanor, as always, it is my pleasure to see you,” he added with a smooth bow of his head to her but not pausing as he had Hal away.

  From the smile quirked on Hal’s face, Joliffe guessed he full well knew he was being baited away, but he went anyway. Behind them, Eleanor Medcote said to Nicholas and his father, sounding angry and embarrassed together—or angry because she was embarrassed—“I’m sorry.” And to Nicholas more than to his father, “For it all.”

  Master Ashewell did not look as if he thought her “sorry” was worth much, but Nicholas ducked his head in awkward acceptance of it and stammered out, “I am, too. It wasn’t any fault of yours.”

  “Or yours,” Eleanor said, trying an uncertain smile at him that he did not return. He only ducked his head in another awkward bow before she gave way to Master Ashewell’s glare and left them. She was a comely enough woman in her way, but woman she was, while Nicholas was still in that uncertain place between being boy and being man, done with one but only beginning to be the other. Aside from what her father wanted, did she want to be married to a boy, or did she feel more as Nicholas clearly did? And what of Hal? For a very certainty Hal had not looked like someone who wanted Nicholas part of his family.

  But if this Master Kyping was the Master Kyping who was bailiff here, that would be good, because he looked to be someone who would take what they had to tell him and make best use of it.

  Of more immediate matter, though, Ellis asked with sudden suspicion, “Where’s Piers? Have you lost him?”

  Chapter 9

  For a wonder, Piers was where Joliffe had left him. If he had turned from the table at all, he was turned back, too held by the bright promise of the sugar sticks to bother much with lesser matters. With him safely seen, Ellis nodded to Joliffe and went whatever way he had been going, leaving Joliffe to rejoin Piers, who had finally made his choice. Holding a green sugar stick, he looked up at Joliffe hopefully, but Joliffe, reading the look a-right, said, “You have money. Buy your own.”

  Piers grimaced at him and turned back to the seller, digging his other hand into his belt-pouch.

  Joliffe reached past him, chose a red stick and a yellow one, paid for them over Piers’ shoulder, and when Piers turned away from the table, handed the yellow one to him, saying, “But I’ll buy you one, too.”

  Piers grabbed it, remembered to say, “Thank you!” and with a sugar stick in either hand, licking at them turn and turnabout, started away to see what else there was to see, rightly supposing Joliffe would follow him.

  There wasn’t much else. It was a goodly gathering for the place and the short warning of it there had been, but used as Joliffe and Piers were to fairs and markets in larger towns, this was not much. When the shadow on the sundial carved high up on the south side of the church’s tower showed it was time to go back to the cart, Piers made no trouble about it, darting ahead of Joliffe and through the churchyard gateway just ahead of a woman coming out, leading a child by the hand. Mary and her small son, James.

  Joliffe stepped aside with a slight bow, out of her way, ready to pretend they did not know each other, expecting she would pretend the same, but she paused and asked, with a look after Piers, “Yours?”

  “God forbid!” Joliffe said with such real horror that she laughed at him. He laughed, too, and added, “His mother is daughter to our master player. We all take turns keeping him from driving her mad.”

  “Ah.” Mary nodded with a mother’s understanding. “I know well how that goes.” Her own son had seen the sugar sticks and was pulling at her hand toward them and, smiling, she said, “I have to go.”

  Smiling back at her, Joliffe agreed, “Indeed. So must I.”

  And they did, going yet again their separate ways, with a warm shared night on a thyme-scented flank of the downs far and ever farther away.

  Gil caught up to him as he crossed the churchyard. Basset was still on guard at their playing place, but Ellis and Piers were already at the cart, where Rose had all their red and yellow Lovell tabards ready and was helping Piers into his. While the rest of them slipped their own on, she handed Piers the pipes and tabor, handed the short trumpet to Joliffe when he was ready, and left Ellis to get out the bright-dyed, leather-covered juggling balls for himself.

  Joliffe never ceased to wonder at how much displeasure could be shown in the simple act of not doing something.

  Ready themselves, they took Basset’s tabard to him, and while putting it on, he told them, “I can’t see there’s need to make much of a show of announcing we’re here and what we’re going to do. We’ll just go up the street here, announce ourselves at the crossroads, then proceed back through the churchyard to here. Gil, you’ll stay here to hold back the curious throngs as they gather. Ellis, Joliffe, Piers, ready?”

  They chorused that they were.

  “Then let’s away.”

  Piers led, dancing a merry-footed jig while playing the pipes and rattling on the tabor. People moved willingly out of his way, smiling and laughing. Ellis came behind him, fountaining the colored balls as he walked, followed by Basset, who strode along with head up and shoulders back, looking lord of them all and bending his head graciously from side to side, apparently unknowing of Joliffe capering and generally playing the fool behind him, doing everything with the trumpet except playing it, including using it for outright rude gestures at Basset’s back, to loud laughter and some glad shouts.

  Basset had bought the trumpet—second- or third-hand and somewhat battered—last winter. Because Joliffe was good at neither juggling nor tumbling for their street work and his lute was not always suitable, Basset had set him the task of learning to play the thing. His first blatting attempts to do so had been unappreciated, although Ellis had said, hands over his ears, “Still, he can’t talk while he does it. There’s something to be thankful for.”

  Joliffe had blown a particularly loud blatt at him, and Basset had said, “Why don’t you go to the far corner of the next field and work at it, Joliffe?”

  All in all, he had spent a good deal of time in far corners of fields for a while, until now, despite there being no likelihood of any town hiring him to play with their waits, he was no longer an offense to everyone’s ears all of the time.

  But more than playing on it could be done with a trumpet, and just now, as they made procession up the lane with folk watching and laughing, Basset began to look back at him suspiciously. Whenever he did, he saw Joliffe striding in a solemn copy of him that turned to mockery as soon as Basset turned away, bringing more laughter from the lookers-on and more suspicious looks from Basset. Following Piers, they circled the widening of the lanes that was Ashewell village’s marketplace, and people gathered to see them better, until finally Piers marched into the center of the place and gave a final great beating of his tabor, at the end of which Basset suddenly spun around and caught Joliffe being particularly rude with the trumpet. Joliffe froze. Basset roared, faked a clout up the side of Joliffe’s head, and violently gestured for him to play the thing. Joliffe, trying to recover dignity he had not had, flourished the trumpet, made a show of working his mouth to ready it, made to play, paused to spit, made to play, paused to ready his mouth again, and Basset, forgetting all dignity, booted his backside. Joliffe staggered forward with a startled blatt from the trumpet, bringing more laughter from the crowd so that he drew himself up with offended, tattered dignity and got out three notes of a fairly credible fanfare before Basset pushed the trumpet down with one hand, flung out his other hand widely to the crowd, and declared, “We come, good folk, to play for you!”

  Their crowd was with them, roused and ready, but now Basset had to bring them around to readiness not for more foolery but for the plays they would actually see today. Joliffe, finally standing quietl
y with the other players, watched the watching faces change, led by Basset with practiced skill and a carefully readied speech from their present eagerness toward a different eagerness as they understood it was their Lord’s life they were going to see, with Basset finishing, “And now, good folk, by your fair leave we go to ready for our play, that you may see and bend your knee before our Savior’s victory.”

  At that, Joliffe raised the trumpet and played a quite sufficient flourish that Piers answered with a marching beat on the tabor that saw them forward—the crowd opening before them—to the churchyard gate and through it and across the churchyard to the playing place, leaving the crowd jostling through the gateway behind them.

  Out of sight behind their curtains, the players hurriedly dumped juggling balls, tabor, pipes, and trumpet into a waiting hamper, stripped off their hats and outer clothing and dumped them out of the way into the hamper, too. Rose—already garbed and bearded—was standing ready to help Ellis into Christ’s loose white robe and longhaired wig while the others helped each other into their garb, with Basset setting Judas’ red hair firmly over Joliffe’s own fair hair for him. That done, Basset looked around at them all and asked, “Ready?”

  “Ready,” they answered.

  “How many?” he asked at Piers, who was peeking around one end of the fore-curtain.

  “A couple score or so,” Piers answered.

  That was a goodly number when playing so small a place as Ashewell. Basset nodded, satisfied. He looked at Gil. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” Gil said firmly.

  “Then go,” Basset said, and Gil went out, around one side of the fore-curtain into full view of all the lookers-on, and with the speech Joliffe had written yesterday began the players’ headlong run forward through the four plays.

  The speech, telling of Christ’s coming to Jerusalem “that fatal week when evil sought God’s good for to destroy,” went well, Joliffe thought, and then it was his own time to go out, around the other end of the curtain from where Gil was retreating, to be Judas at the beginning of Christ Against the Money-changers, deep in frowning worry that Christ was become “too bold at challenging both lords and priests, bringing trouble down on all our heads.”