A PLAY OF PIETY

Chapter One

It was the golden time of year, the wide fields of ripened grains standing tall under the hot August sky or already turned to golden stubble where the harvesters had passed with sickle and scythe and soon the geese and cattle would be turned to graze, to fatten for Michaelmas and winter.

After three years of failed harvests and the dearth that followed, with hungry winters and starving springs, those golden fields under a cloudless sky would have been enough to raise Joliffe’s heart high as he long-strided along the summer-dusty road, but besides the hope of a fat winter, he was free for the first time in more than half a year from lessons, from being taught and tested and then set to learning more.  He had forgotten, in the years since he had been a boy and a scholar, how good it felt to be let out from school, but he was remembering it now.  He had, in truth, enjoyed much of these past months’ learning and some of the work that went with it, but this was better – to be on his way toward somewhere he had never been, with the sun warm on his back, coins in his belt pouch, and no one wanting him for anything.   

Time was that he would have added, along with all else to the good, that no one in particular knew where he was, but anymore he had to doubt that was true, and somewhere far down in his mind he knew how little he liked that thought, but there was nothing he could do about it.  Last year he had said certain words to a powerful man, and eight months ago, in answer to those words, he had been summoned out of his familiar life.  Now, feeling crammed to the crop with new knowledge and new skills, he was on his way to rejoin the wandering company of players that had been his life and livelihood for years.  There had been good times in those years, and some very bad times, and for the past two years -- since the wealthy Lord Lovell had made the company his own and under his protection – increasingly good times.  

Through all of them, Joliffe had never been away from the company for any time long enough to be worth counting, until last winter when he was summoned away.  He had been told then that when time came for him to rejoin them, someone would know where they were.  That had proved true enough, which was both a comfort and a discomfort.  It was good to know where to find the players again, a discomfort to know some manner of watch was being kept on them at the order of someone whose heed they might well have been better without.  

“Report is they’re at place called Barton, about three days easy travel from here,” Master Smith had said.  Although Joliffe doubted “Smith” was truly his name.

“Any thought on where they’ll be by the time I reach them?”  Traveling players never being long in any one place.

But, “Likely still there.  There’s a hospital there.  St. Giles’.  One of them is in it.”

“Who?” Joliffe had demanded.

“The only word was ‘one of them’.  It’d not have been wise to ask too closely and maybe have someone wonder why the asking.”

One of them, out of a company of five:  Thomas Basset, the master of the company; Ellis and Gil who shared the playing with him; Rose, his daughter who saw to keeping them fed and their garb ready; Piers, her half-grown son who played parts in their plays, too, when need be.

“What of the others?” Joliffe had asked.

“There, too.  Working.”

“At what?”

“That wasn’t said.”

So as Joliffe closed what had to be the last miles between him and this hospital of St. Giles, he was carrying worry with him as well as his canvas sack of belongings and walking faster than he might have otherwise in the afternoon’s heat.  Sweat was wet across his forehead and under his shirt, and he would have been glad of something to drink besides the warm water in the leather bottle hung from his belt.  Still, he was better off than the men and women working at the harvest in the long open field he was presently passing.  He had, one time and another, worked enough harvests to know how much the back was aching by this end of the day after the hours bent double, grasping the grain with one hand, swinging the sickle to cut it with the other, moving on.  Grasping, cutting, moving on.  Grasping, cutting, moving on.  Binding what was cut.  Moving on.  Hour after hour under the hot sun, until the daylight faded.  Then doing it again the next day.  And the day after that.  And the day after that until every field was cleared of its ripe-headed grain.  Then on to the harvest of the peas and the beans rattling dry in their cods.  Praying day and night that the weather would hold until everything was safely stored in granary and barn, because a good harvest meant life for another year, where a poor harvest meant hunger for everyone and death for some.  Or -- if the dearth were bad enough -- death for many.

It meant poor living for the players, too, because they were often paid in kind rather than in coin, and people could not give what they did not have, and even if the players were paid in coins, there might be little or no food to buy with them.  They had always got by, one way and another and usually thanks to Basset’s skill at leading of them and Rose’s skill at making the best of what was to be had.  

They would be free of that trouble this year though.  By everything Joliffe had seen on his way these few days on the road, this year was going to be one of plenty, making it maybe an easy year for the players, too, so far as being paid and able to eat went.

Unless whatever awaited him at this St. Giles was bad and an end to everything.

In the last village through which he had passed, he had asked his way, to be sure of it, and been told by the alewife, “That’s some three miles on.  If it’s the hospital you’re for, you’ll come to it before you come to the church and all.”  So Joliffe supposed the squat stone tower he could see ahead of him now above the hedges was where he was going, and he was ready for it to be.  In his worry for the other players, he had been walking maybe somewhat too fast, hurrying to learn just how worried he should be, and he was tired and willing to admit it, glad he did not have to keep on until the last daylight faded, the way the workers in the barley field he was presently passing would do.  Another quarter mile and he would have shade and a chance to sit and surely be offered a cup of something to drink, even if only cold well water.

Come to it, cold well water sounded especially good, both to drink and to splash in his hot face.

A last long curve of the road brought him into full sight of the tower he thought would be the hospital, and he found he had been wrong.  The tower was that of a small, stone-built church.  An old one, to judge by the round-topped doorway facing the road and, to judge by the aged grey thatch of its roof, not a well-kept one, Joliffe noted without much thought about it.  He immediately shifted guess of the hospital to the stretch of freshly white-washed wooden wall nearer to him along the road.  Beyond it were the bright-thatched roofs of low buildings, and a sturdy timber-and-plastered-wattle gatehouse with a single, wagon-wide gate and a porter’s room above it, making a short passageway into whose shade Joliffe went gratefully.  The gate stood a little open, but Joliffe stopped there in the shade, slipped his sack from his shoulder, set it down, and gave a light pull to the bell rope hanging through a hole in the floor of the room above him.  There was a muffled clank from overhead and a muffled voice saying something that might have been, “Coming.”

Joliffe waited, hearing the uneven thud of someone limping down wooden steps, followed by a pause as whoever it was must have reached the bottom, before a stooped old man pulled the gate a little more open, looked out at him, and said in practiced greeting, “Welcome to this place.  God have you in his keeping.”  And then more sharply, “You look hale enough.  What do you want here?  There’s honest work to be had in the fields, if that’s what you’re after.  If it isn’t, best you be on your way.”

Not an old man, Joliffe revised, having a longer look at him.  Middle-aged at the most, his stoop not from age but because of a badly humped back that was probably part of whatever infirmity had likewise shriveled and stiffened his right arm into a crook at his side and given him the limp Joliffe had heard on the stairs.  There would be no fieldwork for him, surely, nor much in the way of any craft he could do.  He might have been made gatekeeper here out of plain charity, but the sharpness of both his judgment and his demand at Joliffe said he was good at his work, and Joliffe said as plainly back, “I was told a friend was here in hospital.”

“His name would be?” the gatekeeper demanded, unyielding.

“Ah.”  Joliffe paused, awkward with lack of that.  “We’re a company of players.  I was apart for a while, and all I’ve heard is one of us is here, without the man who told me being able to say who.”

Instantly friendlier, the gatekeeper said with a smile, “That will be Thomas the Player you mean,” and stepped back, drawing the gate wider open to let Joliffe into the yard beyond it.  The yard was a wide space, dusty in the August heat, with various timber-and-plaster buildings around it.  By the glance Joliffe gave them, those at one end of the yard looked to be a stable and storerooms.  The other end of the yard was a long, open-sided, empty shed.  Facing the gateway was the gable end of a high-roofed great hall and the long side of a two-floored building with narrow windows above and below.  A wide doorway up a single step led into a foreporch, with presently the door at its far end standing open to the warm day.

To Joliffe it looked much like any number of manor yards into which he had come over the years, except that no one was there save himself and the bent-backed gatekeeper.  Such unnatural quiet could only be because everyone was out to the harvest, Joliffe supposed as the gatekeeper began to shuffle toward the porch across the yard, saying, “I’ll just see you to him, to be sure he’s the man you want.”

And to see me right back out if he’s not, Joliffe thought.

He would have been holding back a smile at the man’s busy assurance if his worry had not been keeping any smile at bay as he picked up his sack and followed.  He could have hoped the gatekeeper’s light mention of Basset meant there was nothing greatly ill with him, but the thought was forestalled by knowing that Basset would not have been here except he was too ill for Rose to care for him.

The door led not into any room but a passage that went straight through the narrow building, with another door standing open at its other end, giving glimpse of a roofed walk, but there were two doors on the right, too, and another on the left, and it was through the latter that Joliffe was led into what, from the outside, had seemed no more than a usual great hall.  Inwardly, too, it partly matched that look, being broad and long, with a heavily beamed roof open to the high rafters, but where a usual hall would have been open from one end to the other for space to set up the trestle tables at mealtimes and for the gathering of the household for one thing and another at other times, this place was broken by posts and curtains into – he counted quickly as the gatekeeper led him into a middle aisle that ran the length of the hall to its far end -- eight stalls, he supposed he could call them, four to each side, lined along the walls, their end to the aisle open but separated from one another by rough-woven, dark red-brown curtains hung on wooden rods just above head-height.

He had no time to note more just then as, ahead of him, the gatekeeper stopped at the first stall and said, “Is this someone you know?” to someone inside it.

Joliffe joined him, and there, stretched out on a wood-framed bed, was Basset.  Enough propped up on two pillows that he need not raise his head to see who was come, he exclaimed, “Joliffe!”, sat further up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.  “How come you here?”

“On my own two feet, as always,” Joliffe said.

The gatekeeper said, satisfied, “He knows you then.  I’ll leave you to it,” and shuffled away as an old man’s voice demanded from the next stall, “Who’s there?  Thomas Player, who’s come?”

“One of my company.  You hush and let me have his news.  I’ll tell it to you later.”

“Have him push aside the curtain and speak up.”

“Not until I know what he has to tell is fit for your chaste ears.”

That brought a rasping, long-drawn chuckling from the curtain’s other side but no more questions as Basset grasped Joliffe by the wrist and pulled him down to sit on the bed’s edge with him.  The booth was perhaps six feet across and mostly taken up with the narrow wooden bedstead standing with its head against the whitewashed wall, its foot toward the aisle between the booths.  There was room enough – but only barely – on either side of the bed for a thin person to stand, and other than the bed and its bedclothes, there was nothing but a small, square wooden table beside the bed’s head, set with a pottery pitcher, a wooden cup, and a partly unrolled scroll on which Joliffe recognized his own handwriting.  A narrow window high up the wall – one of a row along the hall’s length and matched by others on the hall’s other side – let in afternoon sunlight strongly enough for Joliffe to see how cleanly kept everything was.  Floor and bedding and Basset all had a scrubbed look to them, with no sign of illness on Basset at all, so that Joliffe said with mock indignation hiding his relief, “Why do you look so well?  You’re supposed to be ill.”

Some of the delight went from Basset’s face and what remained was forced.  He lifted his bare legs.  He was wearing under-braies and a loose, thigh-long shirt, sufficient clothing in the warm day.  He nodded toward his bare legs and feet and said, “Those are still the worst.  About St. Mary Magdalene day the arthritics flared all through me like they’ve never done before.  I couldn’t walk.”

He said it evenly, nearly no feeling in his voice, and the very blankness told Joliffe something of how bad it must have been.  Quietly he asked, “How is it now?”

Basset circled his feet from the ankles and grimaced.  “Those are still solid pain when I try to walk on them, but the hips are better, the knees bearable, the back no worse than it’s usually been.”  

“So you’re bettering.”

“I’m bettering,” Basset agreed.  “When I first came in here, you’d not have seen me sit up the way I did just now.  So, yes, I’m bettering.”  There was maybe a false note under his assurance, but he gave no time for Joliffe to be certain of it, going on, “Their physician here is good.”  He lowered his voice more.  “And their medica is maybe even better, but it would be a point of wisdom not to say so where Master Hewstere might hear.”  Keeping his voice low, he added, “Now, how did it go with you?  Where’ve you been all this while?”

Since Basset wanted to change their talk’s course, Joliffe obliged, equally low-voiced, with, “These past few months I’ve been in Northamptonshire.”  Where he had been before then was best unsaid.  “Being taught like an over-sized schoolboy.”  He tried to make it sound a lightsome pastime.  “All in all, they were satisfied with me, I think.”  

Leaving “they” vague, he looked for something he could tell beyond that.  That he was more skilled at riding than he had been would be safe enough to say, but he would rather pass over how far more skilled at dagger- and sword-work he was become.  Nor should he say anything about how much he now knew about the reading and writing of ciphers and of a powerful bishop’s net of spies and “privy friends” spread across England and beyond.  Instead, groping quickly among all the lessons he had been put through these past months, he came up with, “My skill at lute and recorder are somewhat more than they were, anyway.”

In-held laughter creased the corners of Basset’s eyes.  “The lute and recorder?  That’s what you were away to learn?”

“Among other things,” Joliffe said, weighting the words a little.

“Ah.  Other things,” Basset echoed and let them go, as if understanding Joliffe was not going to tell him and that probably he would be better not knowing.  “Well, I’ll leave it to Piers and Ellis to make rude comment about your supposedly bettered skills that way.  We can make use of them anyway when we’re back . . .”  He fumbled, then recovered control of his thoughts and voice.  “. . . when we’re back on the road again.”  His voice fell lower again.  “Someone knew where we were, to tell you.”

Joliffe nodded agreement.

“Are we wanted for anything?”  The company’s skills had been called to the bishop’s use last year, and there was nothing to say they would not be again.

“No,” Joliffe said, glad that he could, but he in fairness had to add, “Not yet.”  Then he asked, “What reason do we have for my being gone from the company and now coming here?  Or am I to be a full surprise to these folk?”

“They know one of our company had gone off on some private matter of his own, to do with family, we think.  Now you’ve found us again.  That’s all.”

Joliffe nodded approval of that.  Tell enough but not too much, and never more than need be – that had been one of the lessons in his just-past “schooling” but also one that the players had long since learned for themselves.  Ever on the move from place to place, landless and for many years lordless, they were usually welcomed for their skills wherever they went, but were always suspect as folk who did not belong anywhere.  That had changed for the better when Lord Lovell had made them his company, with the right to wear his colors and carry his letters of protection, but the old habits of wariness -- of keeping themselves to themselves – were still with them and likely always would be, because they would go on being strangers, not belonging to anywhere through which they passed.  Which raised questions about this place they could not leave until Basset was healed, and Joliffe asked, “How is it here?  Any trouble?”

Basset, more than anyone, understood the levels of questioning behind those plain ones and answered, “This is a good place.  We’ve been treated well.”  He shifted, stretching himself out on the bed again, a small groan betraying the effort’s pain as he settled against the pillows before going on, “There’s some better than others, just like anywhere, but on the whole, it’s a good place.”

A flicker of laughter behind Basset’s words made Joliffe wonder with light wariness what was not being said, but only said himself, jibing a little, “So here you are, Basset, sitting proud and prettily.  What of the others?”

Basset settled himself more comfortably on the pillows and folded hands on his stomach in a way that Joliffe could only call self-satisfied.   “Happily, it’s harvest time.  There’s always need for more hands at harvest time.  Ellis and Gil are doing fieldwork . . .”

“Ellis must be hating that,” Joliffe said with a grin.

“Don’t grin, my lad.  You’ll likely find yourself there tomorrow,” Basset warned.  “And don’t think Piers will let you take over from him.  He has Tisbe in charge.  We’ve hired her out to pull one of the harvest wains, with him to lead her to make sure too much isn’t asked of her.”

Seeing that he indeed was unlikely to wrest that fairly easy work from Piers, Joliffe resigned himself to the likelihood he would indeed be bent-backed under the hot sun in some field tomorrow.  “And Rose?” he asked.

“In the kitchen here.  Content enough, from all she says.”

A little silence fell between them, full of much that neither of them wanted to say.  To go past it, Joliffe reached out and took up the scroll that he saw now was one of the longer plays he had reworked for the company’s use.  “Planning for when we move on?” he asked.

With a startling fierceness, Basset said, “Always.”  Then he let go all pretense, his hands clenching into fists on the sheet beneath him as he added with deep and aching earnestness, “I’m truly doing all I can to get well and get us out of here.  I truly am.”

In a gesture not usual between them, Joliffe put a hand over Basset’s near one.  “I know,” he said.  “It’s just a matter of waiting while you better.  Then we’ll be on the move again.”  He hoped.  He very deeply hoped.

READ CHAPTER TWO