Back at the cartshed, Rose piled everyone's cushions on top of each other against a cartwheel, so Ba.s.set could sit higher than the ground. That left the rest of them to stand, squat on their heels, or sit on the dirt, but none objected, pretending not to see how Ba.s.set eased himself onto the stacked cushions, his mouth tight-held to keep in a groan. If he said nothing, then neither would they, but it was always a worse sign when Ba.s.set ceased to grumble about his infirmity. His silence when so obviously in pain meant the pain was gone past complaint into plain enduring.

Once he was set, though, he looked them over and said cheerfully, "Here's how I think today should go. Piers, you and Gil will take Tisbe to graze this morning and collect us firewood while you do. The rest of you, we need more talk over what plays we'll be doing these next few days. Then, Joliffe, I want you to get on with your writing, while Ellis and Rose and I go through the garb and properties to be sure of everything. This afternoon we'll continue young Gil's training."

"It's raining," Piers complained.

"You'll not melt," his grandfather a.s.sured him.

"Joliffe always takes Tisbe."

That was true but Joliffe suggested, "It will give you chance to tell Gil stories about us all without us overhearing you."

"And smacking you hard for it," Ellis added.

Piers brightened. "Come on, Gil."

"Before you go, though," Ba.s.set added, "do duty with the shovel and find the stable's dung heap."

Piers groaned. When on the road they left certain horse-based problems by the wayside when they moved on. Here, lacking that advantage, Tisbe's dung had to be seen to.

"And Gil," Ba.s.set went on, "you might as well fill the water bucket again while he does that."

The boys went, and Ellis looked up from wooing the fire to flames again to ask Ba.s.set, "Are you planning to play Gil again tonight?"

"Last night gave him confidence. Now we give him training," Ba.s.set said. "He's had a taste of applause. He'll take even better to the work."

"So tonight we do what?" Ellis asked.

"I think . . ." Ba.s.set paused, looking from Ellis to Joliffe and back again with a glint of mischief. ". . . tonight we'll do The Fox and the Grapes."

Joliffe and Ellis both groaned far more loudly than Piers had. Since the play was done in dumbshow and therefore they had no words to remember, it could have been thought an easier play for them to do, but while Ba.s.set told the storya"beginning where Aesop had but soon turning it into something else altogethera"Ellis, Joliffe, and Piers had to play it out, pretending to be more dismayed and frantic and desperate as the story went further and further astray. By the end the lookers-on were helpless with laughter, and Ellis, Joliffe, and Piers were worn out.

Quite aware of their dislike, Ba.s.set went on, "I'm gambling they will finish with the marriage talk today and be ready for a release to laughter. Tomorrow and the days after, while the banns are being read, we can do The Husband Becomes the Wife, The Baker's Cake, and Tisbe and Pyramus. If more is needed, we can decide when the time comes, but I've thought Griselda the Patient for the wedding feast, with Gil taking the Daughter . . ."

"And a well-grown little girl he'll be," said Joliffe.

". . . who has but the one speech, but it should please Lord Lovell to see him already at work," Ba.s.set went on. "We'll throw in another speech that lets Piers be the son." Someone in the story they had done without until now, Piers having to be the daughter.

Ellis with a wordless grumble and Joliffe with a nod accepted that, both of them trusting Ba.s.set's skill at choosing plays that matched an audience's humour of the moment. A very necessary skill among players and one at which Ba.s.set was very good.

"Then," said Ba.s.set, "to work. Joliffe, some speech for Griselda's lord if you will. You might even add a few lines to Gil's part. This will be, after all"a"Ba.s.set put on a grand voicea""his first chance to speak as a player."

"And if he makes a dog's mess of it," said Ellis, "most people will be too drunk to note it."

"Especially the happy wedding couple, drunk with delight," Joliffe said.

"Um," Ellis agreed. "I thought she looked well-beddable, too."

Ignoring that jibe, Rose said to her father, "You stay sitting. We'll see to things and you'll tell us if we're doing it right. There's a dress I think will do for Gil but it's in the hamper under the cart seat. Ellis, come. You'll have to take out all the others for me to come at it." Which meant she had not ignored the jibe and Ellis was now going to pay for it.

Joliffe took his writing box and the box in which the company's copies of plays were kept back to the corner and out of the way. Piers and Gil returned with cleaned shovel and full water bucket, collected the basket for bringing back firewood, and leading Tisbe between them, left again. Ba.s.set, enthroned on his cushions, oversaw Ellis' and Rose's busyness as the hampers came out of the cart. Behind the cart, Joliffe, without a cushion under him today, was aware of the dirt floor's creeping damp until he lost himself in his work. Soon done with adding lines to the Daughter's single speech for Gil and another speech for Ellis as Griselda's lord, he was resisting the urge to work on Dux Moraud againa"he was still unsure how to make better believable the duke's turn from depraved depths to utter repentancea"in favor something more useable, when Ba.s.set raised his voice to say, "Welcome, Master William. You've escaped the bonds of scholarship again?"

Joliffe leaned over to see Will standing under the cartshed's eave, out of the small rain but hesitating to come in as he eyed Ellis and Rose at work while answering Ba.s.set, "For the last time maybe. They're nearly done, they're saying."

"Then doubly welcome," Ba.s.set a.s.sured him. "Come in, if you will. Two of us are gone, as you see, to graze our horse along the woodsh.o.r.e, but you're welcome to watch what we're doing here. Though you must promise to keep secret whatever secrets of our craft you find out while doing so."

Will promised eagerly that he would and Joliffe returned, smiling, to his work, shutting his ears to Will's questions and Ba.s.set's answers about one thing and another. It seemed this was their morning for visitors, though, and the next to come interested Joliffe more. Hearing voices approaching, he looked under the cart again and saw the bridegroom-to-be, Amyas Breche, and Harry Wyot, who had been Sir Edmund's ward, come talking together around the corner of the blacksmith's shed into the cart-yard, followed by the stolid Deykus. Ba.s.set stood up to greet them with a bow, as did Ellis while Rose curtsied. Joliffe considered staying where he was and only listening, then decided he would rather see the two men more nearly than the length of the great hall and put aside his work to join the others in time for Ba.s.set to introduce him at the end.

He bowed, but neither Amyas Breche nor Harry Wyot gave him much heed, busy with looking over the three open hampers and the array of garb and properties laid out on the closed top of a fourth.

"You get all this into that cart of yours and go around the countryside with it?" Amyas asked.

"We do, sir," Ba.s.set said.

"That's a good-looking crown," Harry Wyot said, reaching for it.

"You're not supposed to touch," Will said quickly.

Wyot stopped, surprised. Ba.s.set said, fully polite and apologizing, "It's a rule we have, to keep folk from handling things too much. If you'd like to lift it, though, please do."

Wyot did and said, more surprised, "It weighs so little."

"It's of tin, sir," Ba.s.set explained. "A little bra.s.s laid thinly over tin is all it is, to make it look of gold. The jewel is gla.s.s, of course."

The crown was, in fact, one of their most used properties, kings being always popular on stage, but it would not stand up to hard handling. Wyot set it down carefully. Rose, smiling at him, took it up and put it away in its wooden box while Will asked with a wary look sideways at Deykus, "You haven't come to tell me I'm wanted, have you?"

"No, Will," Amyas a.s.sured him. "We've come to escape the women. While my uncle and Sir Edmund do their agreeing together," he said to Ba.s.set, "Harry and I have been left to keep much company with the women these past days."

"Until now we're heartily sick of it," Wyot said, "and have escaped."

"That's not it," Amyas protested, laughing. "It's that everything has come around to Mariena's wedding gown and we're far too much in the way."

"Is she going to get a new one after all?" Will said with all a younger brother's indignation.

"Did you think she wouldn't?" Wyot answered mockingly.

"It's tender of her not to want to wear the gown made for her other wedding," Amyas protested.

"It's her way of getting another new gown," Will said, all scornful at Amyas' innocence about such things.

Joliffe, rapidly watching all their faces, thought he saw silent agreement with that statement on Wyot's, but Amyas laughed and shook Will by one shoulder, telling him, "You sound just like a little brother."

Will glowered at him, and Ba.s.set quickly took up one of the players' false swords, saying to Amyas and Harry together, "Here's something will make you laugh."

They took turns handling the sword and did laugh at its poor balance, dull edges, and round point, until Amyas, handing it back to Ba.s.set, said to Wyot, "Well, it looks as if the rain is stopping. Maybe we'll be able to go hawking this afternoon after all." He cast an arm around Will's shoulders. "Let's see how things are in the mews with the hawks and all, shall we?"

Arm still around Will, he left the boy no real choice about going, but Wyot agreed to it readily enough and they all went, the man Deykus stolidly behind them. With them gone, Ba.s.set eased down onto the cushions again and said, "So that's Sir Edmund's second choice of a bridegroom for his girl. Or third. I wonder . . ."

"What are you talking about?" Ellis asked. "Second. Third."

"Hm?" Ba.s.set had been thinking aloud without thinking what the others did not know. "Oh. Seems the daughter was nigh married to someone else a few months ago, except he died."

Ba.s.set made it sound of little matter, because in the usual way of things that's all it would have been to them; and all Ellis did in answer was shrug and say, "Maybe best we don't do Tisbe and Pyramus here then. No tragic deaths of young lovers." Which Ellis would regret, because he was particularly fine as a tragic young lover and his playing of Pyramus could usually bring at least a few women to tears. Joliffe's suggestion that sometime when they played at a village with a stream or pond, they do a Hero and Leander so Ellis could try a tragic speech while drowning had yet to be met with anything but Ellis' irk.

"Robin and Marian then?" Ba.s.set suggested. "That's merry enough."

Piers and Gil came back with their own Tisbe and firewood in time for the mid-day dinner. "Some of this is even dry," Piers said, setting down the wood with an air of triumph, since dry wood for burning was always troublesome to have in wet weather. The trick was to have enough dry wood to burn to dry the wet enough to burn in its turn.

"You are both n.o.ble youths of exceeding skill and shall be rewarded as best beseemth," Ba.s.set declared. From the direction of the great hall someone began to ring a handbell. "By being fed," Ba.s.set finished. He stood up stiffly, with Ellis' hand under his elbow to help him, but again he seemed to better as they walked toward the hall.

At dinner the talk was that all was finally settled about the marriage, agreement fully made, and that Sir Edmund, his family, and guests were to go hawking along the river this afternoon while Father Morice saw to everything being copied out several times over in a fair hand, to be signed this evening before witnesses.

The serving woman was still giving Joliffe enough heed to show she found him more interesting than all the talk of her master's success, and at the meal's end, while the players were leaving the hall, Ellis and Piers ahead in debate over something, and Rose talking with Gil, Ba.s.set said quietly to Joliffe, "Now's the time, maybe, for you to hang about the kitchen yard and hear what you can there."

Joliffe almost protested that. He had been thinking about what he might do to their Robin and Marian to include Gil, trying to guess how much of a part he could be trusted with just yet, so that spending time in idle servant talk instead did not appeal. But Ba.s.set was right. They had at least to try to find out what they could, to meet Lord Lovell's behest. So instead of protest, he nodded agreement and drifted aside, leaving the others to go on without him.

No one seemed to note him as he strolled into the kitchen yard at the near end of the great hall. Separated from the main yard by a waist-high wattle fence, the kitchen's yard was a world unto itself, with the tall-chimneyed kitchen linked by a covered walkway to the hall's rear door and at its other side what was surely the bakehouse. Between kitchen and bakehouse was a stone-walled well sheltered under a low-pitched roof on tall posts. Joliffe strolled that way. Knowing better than to put himself into harm's way in a kitchen where clean-up after a meal was going on, he leaned himself against one of the posts like someone with nothing else to do and nowhere else to be and waited.

He hadn't waited long before a half-grown girl in a greasy ap.r.o.n came out the kitchen door, carrying a wooden bucket, coming to the well. She smiled shyly at him as she came and he smiled back and went to the well ahead of her, to send the bucket there down into the dark with a splash. He was winding it back up when she set her empty one on the well-rim and said, "You're one of the players, aren't you?"

"I am," Joliffe agreed. He paused in drawing up the bucket to make her a small bow.

She smothered a smile with a dirty hand and made a small curtsy back to him. Joliffe swung the well's dripping bucket to the well-edge and filled hers, let the well bucket go, and handed hers to her. She never took her eyes from him while he did but thanked him as she took it and then, openly deciding to be very brave, said, "I liked the play last night."

"I'm glad you got to see it."

The girl hesitated, decided to be even more bold, and asked, "You aren't really a devil, though?" The part he had played in last night's play. "Are you?"

"No more than I'm the blushing maiden you'll see me pretend to be another of these nights," Joliffe a.s.sured her, looking as benign as he possibly could.

The girl gave a bubbling laugh, said, "I'll tell Sia you're here," and went away, back to the kitchen.

Little doubting who Sia was, Joliffe had almost no wait at all before the maidservant who'd been making bold at him in the hall came out, likewise carrying a bucket. Joliffe again sent the well's bucket down and was drawing it up when Sia, with none of the girl's shyness, joined him, standing with her hip hardly a handsbreadth away from his, not touching but temptingly close, just as her lips were temptingly close when she looked slantwise up at him from under her eyelashes and smiled with a sweetness that said she was here for more than water.

Joliffe returned her slantwise look and promise-of-something-more smile and said, "I'm supposed to find out what I can about the household, to help with better choosing what we'll play for them. Will you talk with me a while?"

"Talk?" Her hip drifted slightly toward him, brushing against his doublet. "I'll gladly talk." Letting him know she'd gladly do more than that.

Aware of his own charms though he was, Joliffe thought her l.u.s.t seemed a general thing rather than particular to hima"as if he were a male-body to be used, rather than someone who, in himself, interested her at all. That was fair enough, though, he supposed, since he was here in like hope of using her. Albeit in a different sense from her clear intent for him. It relieved him of any scruple he might have had; he could hardly lead her on when she was already so far ahead of him, and smiling, he nodded for her to set her bucket on the well-rim, pulled the full bucket to him, and emptied it into hers, asking while he did, "Is everyone as pleased about this coming marriage as they seem to be? Can we count on happy folk when we perform?"

"Aye, they're all pleased enough. Master Henney says Sir Edmund and Master Breche have come to an agreement that suits them both, so they're happy. That Amyas likes the look of Mariena and doesn't know better, so he's happy . . ."

"Doesn't know better?" Joliffe asked, smiling into her eyes.

"You know." Sia shrugged one shoulder forward, in a way that shifted one of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s toward him. "She's lovely. He'll have her and a goodly dowry, too. What else does he have to think about it? He'll find out," Sia added darkly.

"Less lovely within than without?" Joliffe suggested.

"She likes her own way, let's say."

And who doesn't? Joliffe thought. The trouble was that most couldn't get their own way as often as they liked. "He's not known her long, then?" he asked.

"Just these two weeks while Sir Edmund and Master Breche have been dealing here."

"How did it come about, this dealing? Sir Edmund and Master Breche knew each other but Amyas hadn't met Mariena?"

He had set the emptied bucket down beside hers, his hand still resting on its rim. Sia moved her hand from her bucket's rim to his, just touching his fingertips with her own while she said, "They've only just met, too, Sir Edmund and Master Breche. It was Mistress Wyot's father told Master Breche there was this chance of marrying up. Out of the town into the gentry, see."

"Ah," Joliffe said, sounding as if now he understood it all. He let his fingers stray forward onto hers and stroked gently along them to the back of her hand. "But if Sir Edmund is willing to marry his daughter that way, what about Harry Wyot? Wasn't he Sir Edmund's ward? Why wasn't he married to Mariena? Wasn't he rich enough?"

Sia gave a small, warm laugh. "He's rich enough. But he wouldn't." She turned her hand over, took gentle hold on Joliffe's, and drew it toward her. "He refused to marry her, flat out."

"Sir Edmund didn't hold his marriage-right then?" The right that let whoever held it choose whom an under-aged heir would marrya"taking the profit from that marriage either by way of marrying a child of his own to the ward or selling the ward in marriage to someone else.

"He held it, right enough." Sia was enjoying herself, tattling to someone for whom it was all new. "But Harry Wyot wouldn't marry her. There was yelling about it, let me tell you. Sir Edmund swore he would and Harry swore he wouldn't and it ended up he didn't."

"Why wouldn't he?"

"Knew her too well, very like. Was brought up here in the household from when he was half-grown. Lady Benedicta didn't favor the marriage either, and that helped him. She maybe even warned him off it, we've thought." Sia shifted so no one looking from kitchen or bakehouse could see as she laid Joliffe's hand to her hip, her own hand over his to hold him there while she smiled into his eyes. "So Sir Edmund sold him to Master c.o.ket of Cirencester for Master c.o.ket's daughter, this Idonea. Master c.o.ket is a draper there and . . ." Sia leaned nearer Joliffe to say low in his ear, one breast touching him, "It's said Sir Edmund owed him money and paid him off with Harry Wyot. Settled his debts and paid back Harry for refusing a knight's daughter by sticking him with a merchant's girl instead. Harry goes down and Idonea c.o.ket comes up. They're even still living with her family because he's not of age yet."

Despite Sia straightened away from him as she finished, Joliffe found he was having trouble keeping his mind to his questions but asked, "Harry Wyot didn't object?"

Sia frowned, not at Joliffe's hand now feeling at her hip but with thought. "He didn't. It was more like he was glad of it. Of marrying her. And maybe of being away from here."

"He's back now, though."

"That's because he's turned friends with this Amyas Breche in Cirencester. He's here to keep him company."

"I heard there was try at another marriage not so long ago."

"Oh, now that was sad, it was." Sia looked truly distressed. "That John Harcourt was as comely a young man as you could want. And mannerly." For a moment, a dream of how things could be softened Sia's voice with something besides l.u.s.t, while Joliffe realized this was the first time he had heard the man's name. Sia was gazing past him into the distance of some place she would never go and said softly, "It was something to see them together. Him all gallant and Mariena all loveliness."

Another maidservant came out from the kitchen and started across the kitchen-yard toward them and Sia snapped back from her dreaming. "And then he died," she said abruptly.

"Sia!" the other maid called in a hushed, urgent voice. "You're missed. You'd best come back."

Sia gave a put-upon sigh, leaned briefly into Joliffe's hand on her hip, smiled into his face, and asked, "Later?"

"Later," he promised. She started away. He held onto her skirt, stopping her. "The water?" he said.

With an impatient click of her tongue, she turned to take the bucket with her. The other maid reached them, saying, "Sia . . ."

"I know," Sia said back and hurried away, sloshing water as she went.

The other maid lingered. Like Sia, she had a pretty enough face but was more full of bodya"someone easy to take hold on in bed, as the saying went. Before Joliffe could decide what her look of speculation at him meant, she asked, "That other player, the dark one, is he married to that woman with you?"

"Ellis? No, he's not married."

The maid gleamed a wide smile. "Tell him I'm not either but . . ."