A Play Of Heresy Part 2

That, at least, would not be a problem here: the story was too familiar, and probably the whole play, too, it being done every year for Corpus Christi here, but that of course was a problem in itself-the play might be too familiar. How to make the familiar exciting nonetheless was the challenge Ba.s.set had taken up, and Joliffe read with that in his mind. The prophet Isaiah's single long speech at the play's very beginning was not a trouble. Besides giving the lookers-on time to shuffle about and settle to heeding what came next, once it was done whoever played Isaiah would be free to change garb and be someone else in the play. Next came the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary to announce the Christ child's coming. Angelic wings were always a problem, both for the wearer and for anyone around them, but they were a familiar trouble, and familiar, too, was the exchange between Mary and Joseph when, outraged and disappointed, he learns she is with child, only to be rea.s.sured by the Angel reappearing to calm him.

It was from there that Joliffe saw the worth of Ellis' grumbles about the play. Pageant wagons were never over-large. They could not be, since they were pulled through town streets, sometimes around tight corners, from playing place to playing place by a guild's journeymen. Mary, Joseph, and Gabriel would be no problem (even with the wings), but Joliffe quickly saw that for this play there would have to be some sort of stage house on the wagon, making the playing area smaller, and in that smaller playing s.p.a.ce Joseph and Mary had to journey to Bethlehem, go into the stable-beyond doubt the stage house in this case-where Mary stayed while Joseph went in search of a midwife. He presumably closed a curtain to hide Mary, because with him gone, three Shepherds were to come on, meeting each other supposedly out in the hills somewhere to talk and eat and drink and then be awed by a suddenly appearing star and then by Angels singing.

They were still there, being awed, as Joseph came back to the stable to find (putting aside the curtain Joliffe supposed would be there) that the Child had been born. The Angels were then to tell the Shepherds to seek out the Child. They would go as they were bid and afterward leave the stage, while Joseph had to close the curtain again because now Herod and his Messenger were to come on for Herod to boast of how great a king he was. Loud music was called for, to accompany him when he went off. Then the Three Kings were to appear "in the street," the script said, to show they have come from afar, but they were to join Herod and Messenger on the stage. Having ordered them to find the Child, Herod and Messenger were to leave, while the Three Kings went the perforce very short distance to the stage house to present their gifts to the Child. Warned afterward by the Angel to escape Herod, they then left, and Herod and Messenger came back on for the Messenger to tell Herod the Three Kings were gone. Helpfully, the script said that Herod was then to do his famous raging not simply on the wagon but in the street as well, ending by ordering his Soldiers (come on from somewhere) to kill the children in Bethlehem. Herod, Messenger, and Soldiers then had to all go somewhere out of sight because the Angel reappeared to warn Mary and Joseph to flee, which they did as the women of Bethlehem came on, singing to their doomed children until the Soldiers returned and slaughtered the Innocents, the play then ending with Herod learning the holy family had fled to Egypt and violently swearing he would follow them.

Joliffe wished Ba.s.set luck with it. In the wrong hands, it would be a wallowing beast of a play.

Fortunately for the play and its guild, Ba.s.set's were likely to be the right hands, because whoever had first written this play had had skill at both words and stagecraft. It could be made to work beautifully, and Joliffe saw why Ba.s.set was pleased to have it. With the wealth and ambition of the shearmen and tailors behind him, he would surely make the most of its possibilities, would turn it into something rich and rare.

Always supposing he had men who could play the parts well enough, not strut like idiots and mangle the language past hope.

Still, Ba.s.set had seemed unworried about that part of the business, so maybe he was in luck there, too.

Joliffe rolled back through the scroll to Herod and the Messenger. The latter's part was nothing much. The writer had probably seen little point in troubling to do much with only a messenger when it was Herod's rage that everyone was waiting to see. Joliffe had yet to watch a Herod who did not thrash and rage all over the stage in over-played fury. It was what Herod, any Herod, was expected to do, and all the lookers-on were waiting for it, ready to laugh and jeer and cheer. Whoever had written this play had understood the Messenger was there only because someone had to report one thing and another to Herod so Herod could fall into one and another of his expected rages.

Nonetheless Joliffe could see possibilities and began to scribble on a sc.r.a.p of parchment on the slant-topped box that served him for a desk and held his quills, stoppered bottle of ink, and such paper and parchment as he had. By the time his belly told him that the morning was well gone toward dinnertime, he was satisfied with what he had so far done. With no qualm about leaving it for later finishing, he put everything away and crawled from the cart. Stiff with having sat still for so long, he stretched and bent and stretched again, careful of his bruised ribs but not careful enough. He straightened with a wince, and behind him Ba.s.set said, "What's that for? That wince?"

Putting an easy smile on his face, Joliffe turned to him. "Just a bruised rib or two. I b.u.mped into something harder than I am." Or, more correctly, the pommel of someone's sword had been driven hard against his side. Not that he much complained about that: if Joliffe had been less quick to close with him, it would have been the blade in his side. A little carelessness in his questioning about why Lord Ferrers was gathering such a large affinity of men had made one of Lord Ferrers' men suspicious and then angry at Joliffe one drunken evening. It had come to blows, but since it was the man who was drunk and Joliffe not, nothing worse had come of it than bruised ribs and a need for Joliffe to leave that particular place before the next dawn. None of that being something he meant to tell Ba.s.set, he went lightly on, "I must learn to stagger less when I'm drunk."

"Taken to heavy drinking, have you?" Ba.s.set said dryly, letting his doubt show but not pressing the matter, saying instead, "How goes it between you and my Messenger?"

"Your Messenger is become a wry-witted man who knows very well what a fool his master is and lets the lookers-on know he knows it, while all the while seeming nothing but respectful to his king."

Ba.s.set brightened. "Yes! Good! I can play that more easily than the flat nothing he's been. Are you ready for your dinner?"

Joliffe looked along the yard toward the kitchen door from where good smells and an occasional bustling servant were coming. "Here?"

"Not for you, I fear. I spoke with Mistress Silc.o.k this morning. You're welcome to sleeping s.p.a.ce with us, but since you're no part of the play, she does not feel it right they do more. You're on your own for meals."

Joliffe had foreseen that. The last of yesterday's bread and cheese from his belt pouch had done for today's breakfast, and he had coins enough to see him through for a goodly while to come. Besides, going one place and another around Coventry for his meals would give him chance to do more of what Sebastian had wanted. So he shrugged easily and offered, "Shall I take you out to dinner, then? My paying."

Ba.s.set gave him a half bow. "I've always taught that a player never turns down an offer to be fed. To be true to my teaching and set you a proper example, I must perforce accept your offer."

Joliffe half bowed in return. "You are most kind, as well as faithful to your word."

"Also," Ba.s.set added briskly, "I know where Will Sendell is likely to be dining."

Joliffe committed himself to no more than, "Ah," being still uncertain how he felt about meeting up with Sendell after all this while.

Out of the yard and into the street, they turned the opposite way from the tavern where Joliffe had stopped yesterday. A slight early morning rain followed by a clearing sky had Coventry shining in warm summer sunlight, and the scattered crowd of various folk bustling about late morning errands or heading home or elsewhere to their own dinners seemed in a general good humour. Weaving their way among them, Joliffe said as much to Ba.s.set who agreed, adding, "This is their time of year, as it were. With Corpus Christi coming and the weather promising to go on as it has been, there'll be hundreds of out-comers pouring into town for the plays, spending money to make the merchants, innkeepers, tavern-holders, and everyone who works for them joyous with prosperity."

"And us."

"I am already joyous with prosperity," Ba.s.set said. "They can only make me more joyous."

They turned into a narrower street than Earl Street, well-paved between scrubbed doorsteps of shop-fronted houses, then soon turned again, down a short pa.s.sage into a cobbled yard set about with benches beside a few trestle tables. One table, set across one of the doorways into the yard, had a servant man standing behind it, pouring something from a leather jack into a wooden cup held by a man across from him. Perhaps a dozen other people were scattered among the tables with cups and food. Ba.s.set, with no apparent need to look around, turned toward a table and two men in the yard's nearest corner. Both men were sitting with hunched shoulders, their hands wrapped tightly around the cups on the table in front of them, seemingly brooding into their cups' depths as if there were their last hope on earth before d.a.m.nation took them. They both looked up as Ba.s.set and Joliffe came their way. One of the men was altogether unfamiliar. The other . . .

Will Sendell had not aged well in the years since Joliffe had last seen him. Never a st.u.r.dily built man and already begun to lose his hair all those years ago, he was well toward bald now and as weathered away and roughened as an old gatepost beaten on by too many seasons of bad weather. He had always been someone full of thoughts and forward-driving ambitions, who would sit leaning forward beside the players' fire in the nights, debating with Ba.s.set across the flames what the company should try next, where they should go. In the days before times turned to the bad, he had strode along roads with his head up and a readiness for whatever the next town or village or manor might offer.

Here, now, he looked only aged and tired.

And defeated? Was that defeat instead of only weariness in the slump of his head and shoulders?

At any rate, there was nothing there of him as Joliffe had last seen him, setting off on the road away from the company with no backward look or wave, a man just coming into the fullness of his life and ready to face all. Presently he looked ready to face nothing, including the effort of raising that cup to his mouth.

That Joliffe knew him immediately despite all that was as disconcerting as the rest. How much did a man have to change before someone who had known him would fail to know him again?

Just as disconcertingly, Joliffe found he was asking the question about himself.

"Will!" Ba.s.set said heartily. "Here he is. I said he'd finally show himself. Joliffe, sit you down. I'll fetch ours."

Ba.s.set veered away toward the serving table. Joliffe, feeling abandoned, sat himself down on the nearer bench beside the man he did not know, across from Will Sendell who had raised his head at Ba.s.set's greeting and now stared at Joliffe as if he were trying to care he were there. Joliffe had more than half thought he would be drunk, but he was not. His gaze was fuddled with misery maybe, but not with drink. Clear-voiced enough and even with a kind of welcome, he said, "Joliffe. After all this time. Who would have thought it?"

Remembering what Ba.s.set had told him about Will Sendell's past few years, Joliffe thought better of asking him how things were with him; instead said, "Who would have thought it indeed. How goes this play I hear you have in hand?"

Sendell's face twisted into wry bitterness. "It's a b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a play. Endless talking and nothing else. Worse, I have to find a half-grown boy who can look like holy Christ and not gibber his lines. Much luck may I have at that."

"There's Powet's nephew," the other man said. "You might as well try him. Powet says he's likely to do if there's none other."

"I may have to," Sendell said, much as if admitting need to have a tooth pulled, but his gaze had stayed on Joliffe, and he now demanded, "Ever got around to telling anyone your whole name?"

From the first, Ba.s.set had made a jest of Joliffe never telling his whole name and over the years gave him various names in place of the missing one, with "Joliffe" sometimes first, sometimes second, keeping the jest going and no one else in the company caring except Will Sendell. For him the whole thing had grown into some kind of offense. It still seemed to be, but when Joliffe answered, deliberately lightly, "No," Sendell unexpectedly grinned and said, albeit with a bitter edge, "That's the way. Don't give away more to the world than you have to. Lesson well learned."

Ba.s.set returned, a thick-pastried pork pie on a wooden plate balanced on top of the two cups he carried. Setting it all on the table, he said to the man beside Joliffe, "Master Burbage. How goes the world with you?"

"As ever. And you?"

"As ever and all the better for Joliffe being here." Ba.s.set shifted around to sit beside Sendell, across from Joliffe. With his belt-hung dagger, he cut the pie into reasonably equal quarters and handed a piece to Joliffe while asking Sendell, "So. Think you can find a use for him?"

"Probably. Better than letting him wander around with nothing to do." Sendell and Ellis had always shared a belief that Joliffe needed watching.

Joliffe, taking a first sip from his cup, made a surprised sound. He had been paying heed to Ba.s.set and Sendell, not to the ale he expected. Now he held the cup away from him, peering into it as he said, "Wine? When did we rise to heights affording wine?" He looked around the yard, with all its seeming of an alewife's place, and added, "Coventry is so prospering that they drink wine where the rest of the world can only afford ale?"

Ba.s.set laughed at him, and Master Burbage answered, "Master Dagette is a wine merchant here. This is wine that suffered enough in its travels that he doesn't think it good enough for his high-paying folk. So he gives it over to his wife for this that used to be her ale shop. We get it not too highly priced, which makes us happy, and she and Master Dagette make a profit on it after all, which keeps them from being too gloomy." He took up his own mostly-eaten pork pie from the table and added, "A while back, for good measure, Mistress Dagette decided the cookshop down the street was making money she would rather have. So she added food to what she sells here."

"That can't have pleased the cookshop," Joliffe said.

"She buys it from the cookshop, then sells it to us for dearer than she paid. But the wine is here, so here we are, too, with no need to go anywhere else from day's beginning to day's end if we don't want to."

As he bit heavily into the pie and chewed away, Ba.s.set belatedly said by way of proper introduction, "Joliffe, this is Master John Burbage of Bayley Lane. Master Burbage, this is our straying player, come to roost. Likely he's going to share the honors with you in Master Sendell's play."

"He can have my share and welcome to them," Master Burbage said thickly around a mouthful of pie.

"Supposing Master Sendell is indeed taking me on," Joliffe said.

"Oh, aye," said Sendell. "No reason not to." He brightened a little. "Likely you can have a try at leading Eustace Powet's nephew toward being more Christ and less a Coventry street-brat."

Seemingly much cheered by that thought, he set about finishing his own piece of pie as if food suddenly interested him. Joliffe went warily at his own, only to find it was richly savory. Nor was the wine bad, either. On the whole and aside from Sendell and his apparently despised play, he thought that, given the chance, he could get fond of Coventry. What pity he had met Sebastian on the way to here. Sooner or later, like it or not, he would have to give some manner of heed toward the questions Sebastian wanted asked. The trouble with those questions was that Joliffe could hardly, out of nowhere, ask someone, "Know anything about a Master Kydwa?" or-even less possible-"So. What do you know of Lollards hereabouts?"

That left him willing to suppose the best he could do for now was let the matter ride its own way. Here and now the wine was good, the pie was good, and he switched his mind back to the other men's talk, with Sendell presently saying, "Aye, Ba.s.set. You'll do well with the Nativity and all. I'm glad it's you that got it. You're someone who'll make the most and more of what's there. But what am I going to do with Christ at the Temple? There's nothing there!"

Master Burbage nodded ready agreement. "A whole play of nothing happening. It's painful, is what it is. Other years all the lookers-on have taken the chance to go to a tavern while waiting for it to move on and the next play roll into place."

Sendell looked at Joliffe. "Do you know the play?"

Caught with his mouth full of pie, Joliffe shook his head that he did not. Not as it was done here in Coventry anyway.

Like a man who has to keep picking at a sore or digging at an itch, Sendell said, "Prophets. It starts with two prophets. They stand there talking about everything that was in the play everyone just saw. Ba.s.set's play, that'll be. Speeches and speeches of talking about what everyone has just seen."

"That's when people start going away to the taverns," Master Burbage offered.

"The prophets finally finish, and then Simeon comes on, and he talks," Sendell said.

"And talks," Master Burbage added unhelpfully.

"Then Ane comes on and she and Simeon both talk. She leaves and an Angel comes and talks, telling Simeon what will happen next."

"Angels can save a play," Ba.s.set offered.

"Or at least slow its sinking like a holed ship," Sendell returned. "That's the best I can hope for here. I've some thought of keeping things afloat with some celestial music. Hire someone with a portative organ."

"That could well be useful," Ba.s.set agreed. A portative organ, with its short board of keys and single or double rank of pipes and easily carried, could well be used for a play.

Joliffe, swallowing, nodded matching approval. "That's a good thought. Ba.s.set, you're not having other than singing, are you?"

"Just singing by my angels and the cradle-song by the Bethlehem mothers."

Sendell went on, "The Angel goes away and Simeon talks to his clerk. Then the Angel appears to Mary to tell her to take the Child to the Temple, and there's a long bit between her and Joseph, with Joseph doing the foolish-old-man business that everyone expects of Joseph. Then the Angel appears to him and after that he and Mary take the Infant Christ to the Temple where everybody talks and Simeon does his Nunc Dimittis."

"Which is no surprise to anyone," Master Burbage said. "Those that are still there."

"Then," Sendell said gloomily, "it's suddenly twelve years later, and Mary and Joseph are losing the twelve-year-old Christ at the Temple and finding him with the scholarly Doctors there. Talking."

"Lots and lots of talking," Master Burbage agreed. "I'm Primus Doctor."

"Then it's over," Sendell said, "and everybody who hasn't been listening to us comes back from the tavern and the pageant wagon is hauled on for us to be tedious at the next site."

Joliffe could not deny that it was certainly tedious in the telling, but for something to say to the good, he tried, "Have you started to rehea.r.s.e yet?"

"We read through the thing yesterday evening," Sendell said. All too openly, that had given him no joy. "The trouble is that everyone knows the play. So, except for Master Burbage here, all among our good citizens who are any good at playing have chosen to go into other plays if they could. I'm left with a pack not fit for anyone else to take."

"That's not all to the fair," Burbage protested. "There's Eustace Powet and Ned Eme. They're fit enough. That's three of us."

"And me," Joliffe said with forced brightness, hoping to give an upward turn to the talk.

"And you," Sendell granted. "Do you still play women's parts?"

"Not much anymore, but I still can." Joliffe was no longer as suited to playing maidens and fair damsels as when he had been a barely bearded youth. Those were Gil's parts now, but he could still play an older woman if need be.

Sendell brooded at him. "I could use you for Ane the Prophetess maybe. n.o.body wants to be her. I'd rather have you for the Angel, but there's no hope of pulling Ned loose from that."

"He won't be shifted," Burbage confirmed. "Fancies himself in flowing robes and those high wings too much. He could have my Second Prophet, though, and welcome."

Sendell looked at him, surprised. "You'd give it up?"

"Willingly. I have the demons in the Harrowing of h.e.l.l on my hands, remember, and could do with less here. I'll stay a Doctor in the Temple, and Master Joliffe can face off with Richard Eme." He added to Joliffe, to explain that last, "Our Richard fancies himself giving those great, long prophet-speeches."

"Fancies himself altogether too much," Sendell muttered. "I may have to start the organ playing even before the Angel comes on, just to drown his droning."

Ba.s.set clapped him on the shoulder. "Heart up, Will. Have Joliffe look at your script. He's done some bettering of mine. There might be something he can do to yours."

"Like turn it into a different play," Sendell said. He stood up. "I'm off to talk with Master Grynder, to see what money the weavers are willing to put toward this thing. I've hope of prying some more out of them than they've muttered about so far." He gave Ba.s.set a one-sided twist of a smile. "They're a bit worried about what they're hearing the shearmen and tailors have in hand for the Nativity and all."

"Tell him you've heard talk they're dealing with the goldsmiths to have real jewels and better than well-shined bra.s.s for the Three Kings' crowns," Ba.s.set said.

Sendell stared, startled. "Are they?"

"No, but just now you heard talk of it."

Sendell's smile came back and spread into a fox-grin so that he looked suddenly something like the high-hearted rascal Joliffe remembered he had been. "I have, haven't I? Just now I have indeed heard talk."

Chapter 5.

Before he went his way, Will Sendell offered to come for Joliffe late in the afternoon, to take him where his company (said somewhat scornfully) would have their practice. He added, "If we're somewhat before the others, you can have a chance to look through the script, to see if there's aught to be done with it."

True to that, he came for Joliffe just past Vespers. Plainly he had been at the Silc.o.ks' before: he came up the stairs to the players' chamber as if familiar there and was greeted easily by everyone, even Ellis, who had spoken the harshest about him at the company's breaking up. The women who had spent the afternoon sewing with Rose were long since left to see to their households' suppers, and the players were just readying to go to their own in the Silc.o.ks' hall. "We'll buy ourselves something on the way," Sendell told Joliffe, sounding in far better spirit than he had been earlier, before saying triumphantly to Ba.s.set, "The guild masters did not like hearing what I'd *heard by the way.' They've turned most of the money they had set aside for new banners toward their play instead!"

"Well done!" Ba.s.set enthused. "White samite for Christ then?"

Sendell laughed. "Probably not, but finest white wool maybe. There'll be gilt and gilding for Simeon and the Doctors anyway, and that will help. At least there's hope of us looking good now."

Some of his high spirit faded when he and Joliffe had left the others. As they stopped at a cookshop for small pies, he said, broodingly, "There's still the script. There's not much to be done with that, I fear."

"We'll see," said Joliffe, giving over coins for his pie and Sendell's as well. "I remember you were good at finding more in a part than looked to be there at first."

That was truth, not simply flattery, and Sendell agreed to it with a nod but said as they walked on, pies in hand and eating as they went, "One thought I've had is about those two Prophets at the beginning. There's something I want to try. Couldn't hope to have it work with the two townsmen I have. For one, Richard Eme has decided prophets are as stiff with dignity as a bishop's crozier and already made it plain he's someone who knows how to play a part better than I can tell him and won't shift no matter what I say to him."

Joliffe made a wincing sound of sympathy. Those kind made poor players and worse playmasters, if ever anyone was benighted enough to give them power.

"But since Master Burbage is willing to give up playing Second Prophet, I'm thinking to shift Richard Eme from First Prophet to Second, set you for First, and have you play it as if all the *news' you're giving at such length about the star and the kings and all was actually news indeed and you're all brim-full with the excitement of it all. Then Richard Eme can be as much like a post as he wants and it won't matter."

"Because he'll be a counter-weight to me and the piece all the more diverting for it," Joliffe said, easily seeing the possibilities. He grinned. "Almost in despite of him."