A Play of Dux Moraud (20 page)

“Somewhat,” Piers put in crushingly.

“. . . and Ellis can’t do either,” Joliffe continued smoothly. “And mind you,” he added thoughtfully, “for
his
lack of skill we’ve yet to find any use at all, while mine is good for something.”

“If not much,” Piers said.

He had come in reach again and Joliffe gave him a solid shove on the shoulder, saying, “If I want to be insulted, I’ll ask Ellis. He does well enough at it without you help him out.”

“But it’s so—”

“If you say ‘easy,’ I
will
shove you in the ditch and take what comes.”

Darting ahead and out of reach, Piers cried, “. . . easy!” and set off at a run for the drawbridge.

Joliffe gave Gil a friendly nod. “Go on with him, if you want.”

Gil shook his head, looking as if he was gone suddenly shy, and it came to Joliffe that after all Gil was about half the way from Piers to him in age and very probably would prefer other company than a small boy’s. Piers was old for his years in many ways but still a small boy in most, and Joliffe was not so far from being Gil’s age that he couldn’t remember the urge to be even farther away from childhood. So he smiled friendliwise and asked, “How goes it with you? Still want to be a player?”

“I do,” Gil said instantly. “The more I learn, the better it is.”

St. Genesius help the boy, Joliffe prayed silently and said aloud, “This isn’t much the way it mostly goes. Mostly we’re from place to place one day after another, not lying about like this.”

Gil bobbed his head in ready understanding. “I know. This has just been good chance for me, giving me time to learn more before we move on. But the moving on is part of the good part of being a player, isn’t it? The always being somewhere different?”

“That’s part of the good, yes,” Joliffe granted—and didn’t add that sometimes that was a very small good against the weariness there could be in forever being somewhere else. Gil’s pleasure in the traveling would wax and wane like everyone’s. Or else just wane completely and he’d find something else to do with his life. For now, though, he thought he wanted to be a player, and Joliffe asked, “What are you finding hardest to learn of Basset’s lessons thus far?”

“How to be a girl,” Gil said so quickly and from the heart that Joliffe had to hold back a laugh.

Waiting until sure his voice would be sober enough, he agreed, “That can be hard, yes. Skirts and voice and gestures and all. You’re doing well from what I’ve seen.”

“Not good enough, though.”

“It will come. You have to start feeling you’re a girl, and that takes a time.”

“How can I feel like a girl? I’m not.”

That was a fair question and a good one and Joliffe paused over his answer, then said, “It isn’t true just of playing a girl. It’s what you have to do when playing anyone. None of us have ever really been most of what we play, a multitude of saints be thanked for that. We’re not likely ever to be a hero or a tragic lover or a saint and certainly never the Devil or God. We play the seeming of a great many people we’ll never be, without ever becoming them. In truth—and if Basset hasn’t told you this, he will—for us to think ourselves into fully being whatever we play would be the worst thing we could do to our playing. Has Basset told you about the layers of your mind you need when playing?”

“No.”

“He will,” Joliffe said with deep feeling. It was one of Basset’s best lessons and he had said more than once, to set it firmly in mind. “That’s not to be you out there for the audience to see. Nobody is likely to pay coins to look at you, my fellow. Or any of us, come to that. But if
you
ever forget it’s you out there playing the part, I’ll whip you black and blue afterwards.” Which he would not have done; that was only to show how deeply he meant what he was saying as he went on, “When you’re playing, there should be three layers all happening together in your mind. Outwardly, for the world to see, everything you say and do are the words and gestures of whoever you’re playing. You should even be thinking as whoever you’re playing. But only with the outermost layer of your mind. Behind that outward seeming, there’s you yourself—the craftsman never losing judgment over his work, never losing heed of the play. That will be the layer of your mind that saves you if anything goes wrong, the part that makes sure the play doesn’t take over so strongly that it’s running you instead of the other way on. Behind that, there’ll be the back part of your mind that has better things to do altogether and will be wondering if the ale is good in the nearest tavern and why is that woman talking to the woman next to her among the lookers-on instead of watching you and if there’ll be roast beef for dinner or only porridge.”

Since Basset would be saying all that when the time came for it, Joliffe chose not to burden Gil with it just yet and settled for saying, “What will maybe help you best now is to remember that you’re not learning to
be
a girl. You’re learning to
seem
a girl. Just as you’re learning the skills that will help you seem to be a saint and a tragic lover and everything else you’ll ever play. You’ll find no better master for teaching you that than Basset.” Easily, careful not to come too heavy-handed about it, he added, “But if you aren’t willing to seem to be anything and everything, you’ve no business being a player at all.”

He hoped it was a good thing that Gil made no answer to that, merely looked deeply thoughtful the rest of the way back to the cartshed. There, despite Basset looked to be right about a drier afternoon—the clouds were thinning, streaks of blue beginning to appear among them—Piers wailed when Basset, still seated on the piled cushions but looking somewhat less ill-eased, said he and Gil were still to take Tisbe out to her grazing this afternoon.

“We’ve just been walking our legs off,” he protested. “You want us to walk more?”

“You can ride Tisbe out and Gil can ride her back if you’re feeling feeble,” his grandfather said.

“She’s bony! Her spine cuts right into me!”

“Then you can walk,” Basset said pleasantly. “Your choice. Just get on with it.”

“It’s Joliffe’s turn to take her!”

“I need to talk with Joliffe.”

“Gil needs more lessons.”

“Gil will have them, but not just now.” Basset pointed firmly away. “Go.”

Gil already had Tisbe untied and was waiting, the mare nuzzling and nibbling at his shoulder to show she was ready if no one else was. Piers tried one more time, pitiful now. “I didn’t have much dinner, you know.”

“Good,” his grandfather said. “You’re getting soft. This will toughen you up for the road we’ll be on again in a few days.”

Scuffling and put upon, Piers joined Gil and Tisbe and they went. For a moment Basset waited, probably half-expecting Piers would pop back with one last try. The carpenter was at work; the tap-tap-tap of wooden pegs being gently hammered into holes suggested he was joining something. It was a small, friendly sound, as sounds went, and when it was plain that Piers was not coming back, Basset said, as if one of them had commented on the tapping, “That isn’t bad. He was sawing ere dinner. That wears worse on the ear. Mariena was at dinner, by the way. She looked much recovered. Amyas hovered most attentively.”

“How was everyone else?” Joliffe asked.

“I would say tired.”

“Did you learn aught from Father Morice?”

“If he didn’t, it wasn’t by lack of trying,” Ellis grumbled from where he stood on the other side of the firepit.

“We had a pleasant talk,” Basset said. “Thank you, too, for asking how I do.”

“You’re doing far better,” Joliffe said, “or you wouldn’t have so much enjoyed thwarting Piers.
Did
you learn aught from Father Morice?”

“He’s not a happy man. I think he’s not very good at priesting.”

“He wouldn’t be the first,” said Ellis.

“Hush,” said Rose. She was sitting near him, sewing in her lap. She reached out and tugged gently at the hem of his tunic. “Sit down here with me. They’re only doing what they have to do.”

“It’s going to get us into trouble,” Ellis complained.

“We’re players,” said Basset smoothly. “We’re always in trouble, one way or another. The thing with this trouble is that we have Lord Lovell behind us and I don’t doubt we’ll be in worse trouble if we don’t please him.”

Ellis made a wordless mutter in answer to that and gave way to Rose’s pull, sitting down beside her and taking up a stick to poke angrily into the fire. Rose leaned over and kissed his cheek, then drew him sideways to lean his head on her shoulder. There he eased, shutting his eyes with a sigh, and she returned to her sewing.

Not to disturb the peace more than need be, Basset said quietly, “He’s not very good at being a priest and unhappily he knows it. I’d judge he would have been happier as someone’s clerk, but somebody was probably ambitious for him and here he is.”

“I thought there was more unhappiness in him than that,” Rose said quietly, still stitching. “When you made talk about Mariena’s marriage, he should have been happier that it’s all but done with.”

“Why should he be happy or unhappy about it?” Joliffe asked lightly. “It’s not his marriage.”

Without opening his eyes or shifting from Rose’s shoulder, Ellis said, “What he sounded about it was relieved.”

Joliffe wordlessly asked Basset with raised eyebrows if that was true.

Basset slowly nodded that it was.

“Maybe relieved, yes,” Rose said. “But unhappy about something else, then.”

“There was naught seemed wrong about him when you first met him in the village, was there?” Joliffe asked Basset.

“We were two strangers talking about plays. I didn’t note anything in particular.” Basset thought a moment. “He drank quickly and deeply and drank some more after that as soon as he sat down. That could have mellowed him.”

“By St. Thomas the Doubter,” Ellis said impatiently, “you two
want
to find trouble.” He started to lift his head from Rose’s shoulder, but she left off her sewing to curve her hand around the side of his face and hold him there, whispering something in his ear that quieted him again.

Lowering his voice as if that would be enough not to rouse Ellis despite he could still hear everything, Joliffe said, “So he’s relieved about this marriage but unhappy about something. Were you able to find out why the Harcourt marriage-talks were so much harder than these seem to have been?”

“When I made comment that I’d heard they had been, all he said was, yes, they had been, and went very glum, I thought. I didn’t see how to have more out of him.”

“He probably didn’t like that marriage because he’s heard Lady Benedicta is supposed to have affaired with this John Harcourt’s father years ago. A marriage that way maybe seemed not right.”

“If Sir Edmund could countenance it, what was it to him?” Basset said.

“Maybe Sir Edmund hasn’t heard about his wife.”

Basset grunted disbelief of that.

“Or,” Joliffe tried, “maybe he doesn’t believe it. Or he doesn’t care.”

“Any of that’s possible,” Basset granted. “The thing is, he wanted the marriage.”

Rose had gone back to sewing. Without looking up from her stitching, she asked, “When did Lady Benedicta ‘affair’ with this man? Could Father Morice have feared Mariena and this boy were half-brother and -sister?”

“That’s been thought of,” Joliffe said, “but the alewife says Mariena was born well more than nine months afterward.”

“She knows so unerringly when matters ended between Lady Benedicta and this man?” Basset asked.

“It had to do with Sir Edmund being gone to Westminster and then coming home. So far as the village thinks, everything happened between then and no talk of anything more between them.”

“How much afterward was Mariena born?” Rose asked.

“I don’t know,” Joliffe said.

“You might try to find that out. There is such a thing as a nine-and-a-half-months child.”

Both Joliffe and Basset paused on that thought. Then Joliffe said slowly, “That would mean Sir Edmund didn’t know of the affair, had no suspicion the girl might not be his own.”

“But Lady Benedicta would have known,” Basset pointed out.

“But we’ve not heard she ever protested against the Harcourt marriage, have we?” Joliffe asked.

“None,” Basset confirmed. “Nor could Father Morice have suspected aught was wrong or he would have protested it.”

“If he only suspected it, he might have kept quiet,” Joliffe said. “If he only suspected, he might have . . .” He broke off, considering what he had been about to say.

Basset finished for him. “He might have made as many difficulties about the marriage as possible.”

“Which we know he did,” Joliffe said.

“Though that doesn’t mean Mariena isn’t Sir Edmund’s daughter,” Rose put in.

“You were just saying . . .” Ellis started to protest without lifting his head or opening his eyes.

“I was just saying Joliffe should find out something, that’s all. She could well be Sir Edmund’s daughter and not half-sister to this John Harcourt, and Father Morice still feel uneasy about them marrying after what maybe—only
maybe,
mind you—passed between Lady Benedicta and this John Harcourt’s father.”

To Joliffe, that Lady Benedicta had not resisted the Harcourt marriage was strong sign she had seen no problem with it. If indeed she had affaired with John Harcourt’s father, however briefly, she perhaps still had strong enough feelings about him that she had welcomed her daughter marrying his son as a fulfilling of . . . what? A lost love? A lost lust?

“Heed,” said Basset quietly as Will came around the corner of the carpenter shed.

Will was smiling, but his hurry slowed and his smile faded as his quick look took in that neither Piers nor Gil were there. Understanding his look, Basset said, “They’ve taken our mare out to graze while the rain holds off. They’ll be sorry to have missed you. Will you pardon me not standing up?”