A Play of Isaac (20 page)

Crossing the room to set it on the table, he said, “Mistress Penteney thought you’d probably welcome this.”

“We do indeed,” Basset said. “Pray, give her our great thanks.”

“She said to tell you that you well deserve it.”

“Again, our thanks.”

“But, also, Master Penteney asks you for the favor of waiting here past the feast’s end. There’s to be dancing afterward. While the tables are cleared away for it, he means to bring Lord and Lady Lovell and some other of his guests in here to be out of the way. He hopes you’ll stay to meet them.”

That Master Penteney requested rather than ordered was gracious of him, although it came to the same thing, and Basset said smoothly they’d very happily oblige, keeping a straight face until the man was gone. Only when the door was shut did he turn to the rest of the company as they all of them broke into wide smiles and Piers did a quick-footed little dance of delight. They had no need to say among themselves their instant hope of what might come if Lord Lovell was sufficiently impressed with them, but when Ellis had poured the wine—“Wine, not ale,” Rose said wonderingly—they raised their goblets to one another and Basset said for all of them, “To good fortune. May it come and never leave.”

Having drank to that, they put their hampers under the table, out of the way and almost out of sight, then enjoyed the food and the rest of the wine before, a while later, the scraping back of benches across the hall’s floor gave warning that the feast had ended. The players immediately drew well away from the door, arraying themselves near the window, Joliffe, Ellis, Basset and Piers side by side, Rose standing behind Piers, her hands on his shoulders. Servants came first, moving quickly, one clearing away the players’ tray, another setting a tray with silver pitcher and silver goblets in its place, a third bringing a tall lampstand hung with half a dozen lighted oil lamps that he set near the fireplace before lighting the candles on the table, needed now that the last daylight was fading.

All that took them hardly more than a moment, and then Master Penteney was outside the door, bowing low for Lord and Lady Lovell to enter ahead of him. As one, the players bowed, too, even lower, and Rose curtsied almost to the floor. Only when they straightened up did Joliffe have a first near, clear look at Lord and Lady Lovell.

He was a man of middle years and middle height and wore his ankle-length dark burgundy houpelande with the unconsidered awareness of his worth and dignity. Lady Lovell was all graceful, wealthy womanhood in a gown of heavy green velvet, one hand holding up the front of her trailing skirts to show the blue under-gown. Her headdress was far finer than what she had worn for riding, fashionably wide and draped with a pale veil that floated to the sides and behind her as she moved. Her dark eyes were lively, seeming ready to laughter, and her voice pleasantly matched them as she came forward from her husband’s side toward the players, saying, “Good sirs, thank you for the pleasure your play gave us.”

They all bowed again and Basset said, “The pleasure and honor were ours, my lady.”

She smiled at Rose. “Much of the work to having them so lordly clothed was yours, I’ll warrant.”

“It was, my lady,” Rose said with a curtsy.

Lady Lovell smiled down at Piers standing straight and bright-eyed, his curls particularly golden in the lamplight. “You, young man. However do you keep all those words in your head?”

Piers immediately hung his head and wiped at a feigned tear, murmuring, “They beat me, my lady.”

She laughed at him. “They do not. You’d not have such a wicked glint in your eyes if they did.”

Piers looked up at her, all smiles and charm again. “They maybe beat me just a little?”

“They well may for telling lies like that,” she returned.

She smiled again at Rose, who said, smiling, too. “You must have children of your own, my lady.”

“I do, and one of them reminds me very much of yours, for his mischief if nothing else.”

Master Penteney had seen the last of the favored guests into the parlor and Lord Lovell was turned away to join them but Mistress Penteney—resplendently different from her everyday self in a bright blue gown with narrow bands of white fur at the throat and around the hanging sleeves and a cauled headdress and veil—crossed the room with another woman to join Lady Lovell. Joliffe silently wished Rose and Piers well with them as Master Penteney beckoned for Basset, Ellis, and him. They of course obeyed, Joliffe falling behind Basset and Ellis with seeming respect but in truth to give himself time to assess who else was here.

One of the men with Master Penteney looked to be another prosperous townsman and it was likely his wife now across the room, cooing something at Piers. Mistress Geva was the only other woman present, still near the door with Master Richard who was close in talk with Master Barentyne. As of this morning, the crowner had not been invited to the feast, Joliffe knew from what Master Penteney had said in the yard this morning, so it was clever on Master Penteney’s part to have him here now, welcoming him as a guest instead of keeping him at wary arm’s length. Or was the cleverness equally on Master Barentyne’s side? Joliffe suddenly wondered. Had the crowner accepted the invitation for the better chance it gave him to see things inside the Penteney household?

If he had, it meant he had not yet let go the possibility that someone here had indeed had something to do with the murder. And that thought took away some of Joliffe’s pleasure with the evening.

Chapter 12

Joliffe was turned from his worry by seeing, a few paces behind Master Penteney, John Thamys in intent, smiling talk with Simon Fairfield. He looked forward to hearing what Thamys would have to say about the play, but meanwhile had to join Basset and Ellis in bowing as Master Penteney presented them, first, to Lord Lovell, then to another man who, like Thamys, wore a scholar’s dark gown. It was the gown of a far wealthier scholar than Thamys was—amply cut and of a worsted so fine it looked almost like silk, with the turned-out collar of deep velvet open at the throat to show a black doublet of worked damask underneath. Add to that the wide, jeweled rings enriching the hand fondling the gold chain spread across the man’s chest and over his shoulder, and Joliffe altered his assessment from wealthy to
very
wealthy scholar.

“Doctor Thomas Gascoigne,” Master Penteney said. “Chancellor of the University.”

The players all bowed, and Doctor Gascoigne with rather heavy graciousness said, “You gave an interesting display. I have seen worse in my time.”

There was no telling whether he meant that for a back-handed compliment or simply failed to see the insult in it at all; but while Master Penteney’s face went stiff and Lord Lovell frowned, none of the players was so unskilled as to show offense. Basset merely murmured faint thanks for the doctor’s kindness and Ellis and Joliffe said nothing.

It was John Thamys who came to something like the rescue. Close enough that he and Simon must have heard what had passed, he said, just quickly enough that Joliffe knew he was trying to head off worse, “It must be difficult to find plays for so small a company, Master Basset.”

“In truth, sir, it’s nigh to impossible,” Basset agreed. He was now playing the part of the bluff craftsman honored by his betters so graciously noticing him. “We’d be hard put but that we’re fortunate in young Master Southwell here. He’s reshaped a number of plays to our need. As he did the one we played tonight.”

There were appreciative murmurs among the men, and Joliffe bowed his thanks.

“A literate young man,” Doctor Gascoigne said, disdain tingeing his voice. He eyed Joliffe as if he were an interesting example of deformity. “What a pity to put such a skill with words to such illicit use.”

“Sir?” Joliffe said politely, feigning ignorance of what the man could possibly mean but able to guess where he was bound and willing to help him along.

Not that Doctor Gascoigne needed help. Sounding much like a great lord being gracious to peasants, he explained grandly, “One must consider that your words are used by you and your fellows for the sake of dishonestly, shamefully displaying your bodies for the sake of profit. Such display is a thing done only by players, whores, and others of such kind, and . . .”

“Do you mean ‘shamefully’ or ‘shamelessly’?” Joliffe said.

Doctor Gascoigne drew himself up more straightly and stiffly, eyes widening, mouth tightening, plainly unused to being interrupted. “What?” he demanded harshly.

Very kind about it, Joliffe explained, “They’re not the same, you know. Shamefully. Shamelessly. They mean different things.”

“I know that,” Doctor Gascoigne snapped. “But shame is at the root of both and both well apply to your so-called work. Only players and those benighted souls possessed by devils gesture thus.” He made a cramped movement with one hand, meant to demonstrate mad flailing, Joliffe supposed. “So crudely. So . . .” He had to seek for another sufficient word. “. . . visibly.”

“There being little use in gesturing
in
visibly,” Joliffe suggested mildly.

Master Penteney, Simon, and the merchant looked uncertain they had heard him a-right, but Lord Lovell pressed a hand over his mouth, covering what might have been merely a cough, and John Thamys turned his head away, taking a smile with it. For his own part, Joliffe beamed with sublime innocence at Doctor Gascoigne who by now understood he was being sported with and thrust a finger at him, declaring, “In your profane plays you and all your kind blasphemously mock God’s most precious creation—Man himself. You . . .”

“What exactly did we mock tonight?” Joliffe asked, all innocence. “We showed worldly pride in all its foolishness and doom. We showed the Devil’s wiles and God’s mercy. Where was the mockery in any of that?”

“The mere doing of it was the mockery! This play, any play, and the japing and prattling of you and your kind are a mockery of God’s work. Your base display makes sport of Man’s struggle for salvation. You trifle with the awful reality of Man and God and the Devil, too, and thereby imperil men’s souls.” His voice had begun to roll out in a thunder of self-satisfaction. “With your follies, you stir men’s irrational fears and lusts rather than seeking to rouse their minds to the pure contemplation of God and of salvation!”

Joliffe, doubting Gascoigne had ever contemplated anything more pure than his own exalted self, took advantage of the man’s pause for breath to look away from him to John Thamys and ask in a sweetly reasonable voice, “Would you say, sir, that the fears raised by tonight’s debate between God and Devil for Man’s soul were irrational? Or that we roused any lust except for salvation?”

Seriously and with apparently due consideration, Thamys said, “I would say that the fears you raised are fears we all must have. Of falling from grace to damnation and the possible losing of our soul to the devil. As for lust, I saw and heard nothing in the play that roused
me
to any other lust than for salvation. I cannot speak, of course, for Doctor Gascoigne.”

While Gascoigne choked in his haste to answer—and probably to protest—the implication in that, Joliffe said, still to Thamys, “Then you would say that if someone chose to be damned rather than saved after hearing the arguments presented in the play tonight, he could not by any means be judged a rational creature?”

As if still considering a point of deep reason, Thamys granted, “Considering that the arguments on both sides were clearly presented and the choice obvious, I would have to say that anyone who, after hearing them, chose damnation over salvation could, as you say, by no means be considered a rational creature. I might even say . . .” There was a sudden gleam in Thamys’ eyes despite he went on judiciously enough. “No, I correct myself. I
would
say that anyone who mistook the arguments of the play tonight as raising unreasonable fears or as incitations to lust must be someone already so far gone in irrationality as to be unreachable by reason.”

“And therefore,” Joliffe said quickly, cutting off Gascoigne yet again, “what we did was not, in itself, an incitation to irrationality and base passions, as Doctor Gascoigne has claimed, but in fact the play’s point could only have been taken wrongly by an already irrational and perhaps even willfully sinning man?”

“I think that can be granted, yes,” Thamys said. “It . . .”

Gascoigne burst in furiously, “But a rational man would not need such a feigned demonstration! Being already convinced that virtue is superior to sin, he needs no encouragement of his certainty. Therefore the whole business is nothing but vanity and pointless display.”

Joliffe drifted a long look down the rich length of Gascoigne’s gown while saying, his voice only slightly edged, “Yes. Vanity and pointless display are always things to be avoided.” He smiled into the man’s face. “But from your argument—that when a man is once certain that virtue is preferable to sin, he needs no reinforcement of his certainty—it follows that all the preaching of sermons and suchlike is a waste of time. A priest need only show once to his people the folly of sin and damnation and then be done with it, the matter being settled and certain in their minds.”

Tight-faced with anger, Gascoigne snapped, “That’s fools’ talk! I said rational men. Others must be taught and taught again, must have the lessons against sin ever renewed because they are ever threatened by the Devil’s wiles and the World’s lures.”

“Then,” Joliffe said with a slight bow, “might it not be well argued that such displays as ours serve the godly, goodly purpose of leading back to virtue those lesser minds? Those not so endowed with the powers of reason as yourself, shall we say?”

Red with irk, Gascoigne was certainly going to say something, but Mistress Penteney, crossing the room, trailing Lady Lovell and the merchant’s wife behind her, sailed bright-voiced into the conversation with, “Good Master Basset and the rest of you, did you know my Lord and Lady Lovell’s children watched your play from the gallery? And our grandson, too. They’ll all be late to their beds but it would have been too unkind for them to miss it.”