A Play of Isaac (31 page)

The porter, undoubtedly reconciled by the large pitcher of ale and plate of cakes on a stool beside him to staying where he was while others holidayed, grudgingly admitted that Master Thamys was not gone out today, was probably in his chamber if someone wanted to see him. After that, it took two farthings to convince him to call out a servant—who was grumpily less resigned to his day’s duties—and send him to see if Master Thamys would see . . . The porter cocked a questioning eye at Joliffe, apparently not impressed by what he saw.

“Master Joliffe of Gloucester Abbey,” Joliffe said.

The porter looked as if he doubted that—rightly, as it happened—but he sent the servant anyway, and the man came back soon enough with word that Master Thamys would see Master Joliffe if it pleased him to come up. Joliffe granted that it pleased him well and followed the man into the passageway beyond the door and into a long yard, went slantwise across that to a door to a narrow stairway up to a well-windowed room, not over-large and sparsely furnished with several plain-backed chairs, two wall-shelves laden with books, a small fireplace, and a large desk with a slanted lectern for reading. Except for the books and fireplace, the white-washed walls were plain, like the scrubbed-boarded floor, but the desk from which John Thamys was rising was laid out with carefully stacked papers, pens laid in a wooden holder, and an ink bottle that Thamys was stoppering as he said, “Master Joliffe, how good to see you. Thank you, Henry. If you could bring some ale, please.”

Henry took himself away and Joliffe said, looking around the room, “Very good. And a separate bedroom, too.” He nodded toward the closed door at the room’s other end. “This isn’t bad at all.”

“And someone to light a fire for me on cold mornings and a roof that keeps off the rain,” Thamys said. “Not bad at all, I find.”

“And books.” Joliffe had crossed to the shelves and was looking at what Thamys had there.

“You could have done as well, you know, ‘Master’ Joliffe.”

“I couldn’t have,” Joliffe said, turning from the shelves to face him. They were both smiling. “My sense of jest would have come in the way.” Over the years he had grown at ease with that certainty. Equally easily, he added, “But don’t ‘master’ me in that tone of voice. I’m a master of my craft as surely as any smith or merchant.”

“You assuredly are,” Thamys agreed. “I neglected to tell you how much I admired
The Pride of Life
, and I’ve rarely been so moved as I was by your
Abraham and Isaac
yesterday. I could even forget it was you who were the Angel.”

Joliffe bowed slightly. “Thank you.”

“But ‘of Gloucester Abbey’?”

“It seemed the easiest way to get in here.”

Henry returned with a pitcher of ale, fetched two tankards from the other room, and poured while Joliffe and Thamys went to stand near the window overlooking the courtyard, making slight talk about the good weather and how Thamys was taking the chance of a quiet day to get on with his work instead of holidaying. Only when Henry had gone out and down the stairs did Thamys say, “I was sorry to hear about the trouble at the Penteneys and the boy’s death. Were you sick along with the rest? You look well enough now.”

Joliffe explained how he and the other players had stayed well and asked, “How do you come to know about it so quickly, shut up here with your work?”

“Henry and Cobbe at the gate are unceasing fountains of news of every kind. Word of Oxford’s latest doings outside and inside scholarly walls comes along with every meal Henry brings me and sometimes between whiles if it’s news enough to warrant it.”

“Have you heard Lollards mentioned as part of last night’s trouble?”

Thamys sobered. “I have and it doesn’t make good hearing. Do you think it’s likely?”

“No.”

Joliffe’s flat certainty of that surprised himself as well as Thamys, who asked, “You don’t think at all it might have been Lollards taking some kind of revenge on Master Penteney?”

“For what?”

“For that man’s death the other night?” Thamys said doubtfully. “Despite what the crowner seems to think?”

“That’s a long stretch,” Joliffe said. “Unless someone knows more than has been said about Master Penteney and Lollards. Or more than I’ve heard, anyway. Have you heard anything that way? Talk about Master Penteney and Lollards together? Before now, I mean.”

“Until now, I’ve never heard aught but good about Master Penteney.”

“Not even from nasty Gascoigne? If there’s anything bad to say about someone, he surely would say it.”

“You took a deep dislike to him, didn’t you?” Thamys grinned.

“I did, and fairly enough, I think. He dislikes me and my kind for no good reason at all. Therefore, I feel free, for that very good reason, to dislike him in return.”

“I suspect there’s a severe flaw in that reasoning, on grounds of Christian charity if nothing else,” Thamys said, “but I’m not minded to challenge you on it. What in particular are you wondering if I’ve heard?”

“About Master Penteney’s Lollard brother.”

“His Lollard brother? I’ve heard about him yes.” Thamys seemed both surprised and puzzled. “But not until this week, as it happens.”

“Not until after the dead Lollard was found?” Joliffe asked. “Nothing before then?”

“Before then, nothing.”

“What exactly is being said? About him and against Master Penteney?”

Thamys paused, searching his mind before saying, “Nothing against Master Penteney, really. The talk that I’ve heard is merely that he had a brother who went to the bad, is long gone from Oxford and probably dead. All old news, but old news is still news when folk can’t find anything else to say.”

“But until now there’s been no talk of him, this missing brother? Even by Gascoigne?”

“Even by Gascoigne,” Thamys said soothingly. “I’d guess the matter was so forgotten it took a dead Lollard on Master Penteney’s doorstep to drag it out of the depths of someone’s memory and set the talk going. What are you up to, Joliffe?”

Realizing he was frowning with thought, Joliffe smoothed his face and asked blandly, “What about Master Wymond the baker? What’s the talk about him?”

“You mean, is he a Lollard?” Thamys said dryly. “I haven’t heard anything at all that way, and I’ll thank you to start none. He makes the best apple tarts in Oxford.”

“I mean is he well known for often being late with things ordered from him?”

“Master Wymond? Never at all. How long would he have anyone’s business and a shop in the High Street if he couldn’t be depended on? We use him ourselves here at St. Edmund. What are you about?”

Joliffe looked elaborately innocent. “About? I’m just asking questions is all.”

“When a scholar asks a string of questions, it’s because he’s looking for an answer at the end of them.”

“Ah, but I’m not a scholar, remember. Just a poor, wandering player without two wits to rub together,” Joliffe said cheerfully.

Equally cheerfully, Thamys answered, “You’re such a liar.”

“I’m not!” Joliffe protested. “Some people make sport with quoits or balls of dice. You make sport with ideas. I make sport with questions. To each their own.”

“I know you’re not half the rascal you’d have me think,” Thamys returned.

Joliffe laid a finger to his lips. “Let that be our secret.” He moved away. “I’d best go now, but my thanks for the ale and talk.”

“You’re very welcome.” Thamys followed him toward the door. “But only on condition you tell me later what you’re at with all these questions.”

“I will,” Joliffe said, “if only to give you a goodly laugh at what a fool I’m being.”

But if he was not being a fool, then something doubly dire was going on; and he left Thamys and went rapidly down the stairs because time might well be getting thin between now and worse.

Chapter 18

At the barn again, Joliffe found only Basset, sitting alone beside the cart, oiling a piece of Tisbe’s harness. As Joliffe crossed toward him he looked up and said, “Rose and Ellis have taken Piers out and about. Better than moping here, they thought. Where did you go?”

“Out to see Tisbe.” Joliffe sat down where he could reach oil and a rag and another piece of the harness. He had returned to the barn to try some of his thoughts against Basset’s sharpness before he went further and was glad the others were gone. “I talked a while with Master Penteney’s man there. Walter Glover. He . . .”

“Walter Glover?” Basset echoed, pausing at his work. “About my age? Thick sandy hair?”

“About your age, yes, and he has sandy hair, right enough,” Joliffe said, surprised. “Not what I’d call thick, though. Especially on top.”

“It could well be thin by now,” Basset said complacently. He took open pleasure in his own barely withdrawn hairline.

“You know him.”

“He sounds like the Walter Glover apprenticed to old Master Penteney when I was. What did you say he’s doing?”

“He sees to Master Penteney’s pasturing north of town.”

“Huh,” Basset said, taking up his work again. “Who would have thought it. I’d have supposed he’d be a victualler in his own right by now, if I’d thought about it at all. He was shaping toward it well enough when I left. Had a busy brain, he did.”

Pretending more interest than he actually had in the rein he was oiling, Joliffe asked, “He was your friend, along with Master Penteney and his brother?”

“Walter? He was more just there than actually our friend. A few years younger and following along with what we did. You know how it goes.”

“Taken up with lollardy like the rest of you were, was he?” Joliffe asked carefully.

Not carefully enough. Basset worked at the strap for a silent moment before, still working, he answered, “Pretty much.”

“Or more taken up,” Joliffe pressed. “The way Master Penteney’s brother was?”

Basset gave up on the strap, gave Joliffe a long look, and said, “He shied off when the rest of us did. That’s what I remember.”

“Did he? Shy off, I mean.”

For a long moment the twitter and flit of sparrows among the far rafters was the only sound in the barn, until Basset said, “You think maybe he didn’t?”

“The way he talked just now, he sounded near to blaming Master Penteney for prospering at his brother’s expense. As if Penteney were at fault for gaining everything that his brother lost.”

“I suppose,” Basset said slowly, “that if I had ever been asked, I would have said Walter followed closer on Roger’s heels than on Hal’s or mine in those days.”

“Not so close as to follow him into exile, though.”

“Not that close, no. But close enough that maybe, yes, he might resent Penteney had all the gain and his brother all the loss.”

“And yet he works for Penteney to this day.”

“Works for him,” Basset said, “when he was apprenticed to be a victualler in his own right someday. Something went wrong somewhere, for him to be only a hired man instead of his own master.”

“Master Penteney hasn’t said anything about him when you’ve talked, though?”

“Not a word. Joliffe, what are you aiming at?”

“A target I’m just starting to guess,” Joliffe said. He put aside the piece of harness and the rag and stood up, frowning not at Basset but at his own thoughts. “I have to go somewhere. I’ll be back.”

“I trust so,” Basset said.

 
 
Master Barentyne was more easily found than Joliffe had feared he might be. The servant standing watch outside the Penteneys’ streetward gate—whether to greet anyone coming to offer sympathy or on guard against the curious, Joliffe could not tell—was able to tell him Master Barentyne was staying at a cousin’s house near the Guildhall, and as fortune would have it, Master Barentyne was in, rather than holidaying somewhere in the streets. The servant who met Joliffe at the door there was unwilling to admit that until Joliffe said he had come about “the Penteney trouble.” That got him in but did not make him welcome; he was left standing just inside the door while the servant went in search of Master Barentyne, who came himself, rather than having Joliffe brought to him, asking without other greeting, “Is there new trouble?”

“Just the old,” Joliffe said. “It’s about this Hubert Leonard and his lollardy and maybe Master Penteney’s brother.”

“Shall I guess here isn’t the best place to talk about this?”

“A fair guess, yes,” Joliffe granted, and Master Barentyne led him inside, into the house’s hall. Like the house itself, it was an altogether more modest place than the Penteneys’ but large enough that when Master Barentyne stopped in its middle and faced around to him, they were enough away from any doors to be safe from being overheard so long as they kept their voices down.

“What about Leonard?” Master Barentyne asked. “You’re not thinking he was Penteney’s brother, are you? Because he wasn’t, worse luck. He’s been named for certain by two men from Abingdon, come to Oxford with their families for Corpus Christi and to visit relatives.”

“You’ve no reason to doubt them?”

“One is the abbot’s bailiff there and the other a well-known merchant. They both say they’ve known this Leonard off and on since boyhood. He’s been gone more than not these past years. ‘In foreign parts,’ one of them said. But they knew him well enough when they saw him. Neither of them seemed to mind much he was dead. I gather that had nothing to do with him being a Lollard, if that’s what he was. They just didn’t like him. So, no, he’s not Penteney’s brother.”

“There was never much likelihood he was. What I really came to ask was how much you do truly know about Master Penteney’s brother.”

“What Master Penteney told us, and the talk that’s come up about him since this started, the way talk does. That he was a Lollard and some way a troublemaker and he’s long gone and probably dead. Why?”

“Had you heard about this brother before now? Not from Master Penteney, but from anyone?” Joliffe insisted.