A Play of Heresy (5 page)
Authors: Margaret Frazer
“Meaning I’ll be trying to make them understand that ‘royal’ is not the same as ‘pompous ass,’” Ellis growled.
Rose leaned sideways and kissed his cheek. “Shhh,” she said. “You’ll wake Piers.”
Although nothing but actual sleep was likely to keep Piers as quiet as he had been this while, Joliffe nonetheless eyed him distrustfully. Anyone who would add those several inches of height in hardly a month was likely to anything. Gil, seeing Joliffe’s look, said, “He’s been having a fine time running with Coventry boys.”
Ellis had given up his grumbling in favor of kissing Rose, but she turned away long enough to say to her father, “I’m worried on that.”
“Now Joliffe is here, he can take them in hand,” Basset said comfortably.
“I beg not!” Joliffe protested.
But Basset went cheerfully on, “The girdlers have the Harrowing of Hell this year. I’ve suggested that an array of different-sized demons for Christ to send away in terror might not come amiss. I’ve likewise pointed out that Piers could be their leader, being practiced in the work in our company.”
“Whoever is doing the Harrowing took to that thought?”
“The master girdler to whom I suggested it was quite taken with the thought,” Basset said in a voice of pious virtue.
Gil laughed. “Given that two of his sons are some of the demons Piers is running with, Master Burbage was undoubtedly glad to find a use for them.”
“I likewise offered your steadying hand to work with them a few times,” Basset went on, beaming at Joliffe as if presenting a great honor.
“Hai!” Joliffe exclaimed.
Basset, choosing to take that for acceptance rather than protest, said, still beaming, “Good.”
Joliffe bowed his head to him, accepting the inevitable and hiding his grin. A chance to order Piers to something and be obeyed at it was not to be missed.
Although there was a last lingering of light in the sky beyond the one window, the shadows were thickening toward darkness in the chamber, meaning it was time to lay out the sleeping pallets, the blankets, and the pillows. No one seemed ready, though, to disturb the resting quiet with that much effort just yet. Gil had returned to playing the small pipe in an evening-quiet sort of way. Ellis and Rose were whispering together. Joliffe, enjoying talk about playing as he had not been able to do these past weeks, asked Basset, “So other than Rose keeping busy with her days full of sewing, what are you doing with the rest of your time here?” Since he could not believe Basset would waste the company’s time with idleness.
“A good many days we’ve been hired to play at one merchant’s or another’s house. The town is prospering and the citizens like to show each other just how rich they are. In between whiles we’ve tried doing a bit of nothing. We’re being paid well enough we can afford that for this while.” Which was a far crying from the days when the almost daily question was whether they would earn enough with their next playing in a village to buy some bread and cheese for a poor supper. “I’ve something for you to do, too, if you will.”
Dryly, Joliffe asked, “Beyond the two things you’ve already found for me?” And not counting what Sebastian had charged him with.
Ignoring the dryness, Basset said, “I’m playing the Messenger to Herod in our play. The part is flat. He’s mostly there for no more than Herod to bounce orders off him. Sometimes all there is on stage is Herod raving and the Messenger standing there like a block, dodging a blow ever now and then. I’d be glad of you having a look at the script to see what more might be done with him.”
“Yes. Gladly,” Joliffe said, meaning it. Even in the days when his playing was worth nothing better than next-to-nothing parts, he had earned his place in the company by his deft way with words, bettering what plays the company had, changing them when the company shrank or grew, sometimes even making an altogether new one when need be. He mostly enjoyed the working with words, expected he would enjoy it now, but said on a half-stifled yawn, “Not tonight, though.”
Basset matched him with a yawn not stifled at all and agreed, “Not tonight.”
“I’d best get my bedding from the cart then. By the by, where are Tisbe and Pyramus?” The company’s two horses.
“Master Silcok is paying for their keep in someone’s pasture outside the town.”
“Master Silcok is being very good to you all.”
“Master and Mistress Silcok are ambitious to stand large in Coventry. Part of that seems to mean being generous patrons to the players who will make their guild’s play the best that’s ever been seen here.”
“Board and lodging for us
and
our horses. Very fine.”
and
our horses. Very fine.”
“Very fine indeed,” Basset agreed.
Rose, readying to ease Piers’ head from her lap so she could rise, said quietly, “Nor you’ve no need to go out. Your bedding is already here, over there with the rest of ours.”
Joliffe, already on his feet, bowed his thanks.
Ellis, up, too, and heading toward the pile of bedding, added in his grumbling way, “After all, it took you long enough to come. We’ve been expecting you to show your face here any time these past few days.”
Joliffe bowed again, to Ellis this time and mockingly, hiding how inwardly glad he was to be as “home” as he was ever likely to be.
Chapter 4
S
ince there was no peace to be had in the players’ upper chamber once several women gathered to their sewing there with Rose, Joliffe spent the next morning cramped into a corner of the players’ cart with the scroll of the Nativity (it being called that for simplicity’s sake) play entrusted to him by Basset. Before seeing what might be done with the Messenger, he made a quick read through the whole play, this being Basset’s copy and so all of it. Everyone else in the play would have only his own part and whatever line from someone else’s speech cued each of his own speeches. That saved on ink and paper but could make confusion over what happened when and with whom until everyone became familiar with whatever play they were doing.
ince there was no peace to be had in the players’ upper chamber once several women gathered to their sewing there with Rose, Joliffe spent the next morning cramped into a corner of the players’ cart with the scroll of the Nativity (it being called that for simplicity’s sake) play entrusted to him by Basset. Before seeing what might be done with the Messenger, he made a quick read through the whole play, this being Basset’s copy and so all of it. Everyone else in the play would have only his own part and whatever line from someone else’s speech cued each of his own speeches. That saved on ink and paper but could make confusion over what happened when and with whom until everyone became familiar with whatever play they were doing.
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 Basset 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 reassured by the Angel reappearing to calm him.
too
familiar. How to make the familiar exciting nonetheless was the challenge Basset 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 reassured 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 space 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 Basset luck with it. In the wrong hands, it would be a wallowing beast of a play.
Fortunately for the play and its guild, Basset’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 Basset 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.
could
be made to work beautifully, and Joliffe saw why Basset 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, Basset 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 scrap 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 Basset 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 bumped 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 Basset, he went lightly on, “I must learn to stagger less when I’m drunk.”
“Taken to heavy drinking, have you?” Basset 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.”
Basset 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 Silcok this morning. You’re welcome to sleeping space 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.”
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