“And pleasant it must be to have the money for putting up new when the old isn’t falling down yet,” Ellis had grumbled when Rose mentioned she had heard it. He had been stitching a new patch onto their old tent at the time and not been happy at his work.
“Lord Lovell is doing well enough by us,” Basset had said back. “Don’t you complain about his money.”
“Not so long as enough of it comes our way,” Joliffe had added. But fear that an end of it might be coming their way was in him and undoubtedly in Basset, no matter how straight-backed and at seeming ease they went together into the low-beamed room where Lord Lovell awaited them, standing at a glassed window that looked out at an orchard.
He turned as they entered, a man of medium height with a long swoop of a nose and eyes set rather too near it, dressed in a floor-long houpelande of deep blue wool, its thick folds gathered low on his waist by a wide belt set with silver, its end hanging past his knees. Between the French war and his many lands across England, he was a wealthy man, who—from what Joliffe had seen here—failed in no comforts for himself or his family. At a ready guess, the room was where he did business, with a wide table set to catch the best light from the window, a row of scrolls laid at one end of it with pens and inkpot beside them, and chests and a closed-door aumbry along one wall where other scrolls and documents could be kept. There was a single chair beside the table, with a wide, curved seat and carven arms and back, and as Basset and Joliffe made their deep bows to him, marking the gulf between his high place in the world and their low one, Lord Lovell sat down and regarded them with a benevolence that somewhat eased Joliffe’s mind. He did not look like a man about to unhire them.
Nor was he. Instead he smiled and said, “With one thing and another, I’ve had little chance to say how well pleased I’ve been with your company, Master Basset. That you could raise laughs so often after this glum harvest-time is tribute to your skill, besides that my lady wife was most particularly moved by your play of
Cain and Abel
.”
Basset bowed again. “Our pleasure in pleasing you is twice-doubled by knowing she was pleased.”
“My steward delivered your quarter’s money to you?”
“He did, my lord. Thank you for this chance to thank you for it myself.”
“I’ve noted, though, that you’ve added no one to your company. I thought by now you would have.”
They did indeed need and want to have a larger company. With only three men—with Joliffe usually playing the women’s roles—and a small boy, the plays they might do were limited; but Basset said, “As yet we’ve had no place for someone else. Joliffe”—Joliffe bowed—“is reworking plays to that end, but until then another player would not earn his way, I fear.”
Lord Lovell took several silver coins from the flat leather purse hung from his belt beside his dagger, laid them on the table, and pushed them toward Basset. “Would that help toward taking on another man? Or boy.”
Basset glanced easily at the coins, as if they were not as much as the company might have earned in a very good month, and said smoothly, “Your lordship has someone in mind?”
Lord Lovell barked a pleased laugh. “Sharp, Master Basset. Very sharp. Yes, I’ve someone in mind. He’s a younger son of one of my bailiffs. Thus far, he’s not proved suited to anything his father has set him. After watching your company, he claims he wants to be a player. His father, for lack of anything else to do with him, has asked if I might place him with you.”
Standing where he was, Joliffe could not see Basset’s face but he kept his own carefully brightly interested in Lord Lovell’s words, and probably Basset was doing the same—hiding his sure dismay at the likelihood of being saddled with some moonstruck youngling of surely no skill and possibly few wits—though Joliffe would willing grant that a certain degree of witlessness was necessary in anyone who became a player. Otherwise they’d not choose to be a player.
“In truth,” Lord Lovell finished, “no one knows what else to do with him.”
Whether Basset could do anything with him was beside the point, since there was no wise way to turn down what Lord Lovell asked of them; and putting the best front to it that he could, Basset bowed and said with apparent willingness, “I’ll be pleased to give him a chance.”
Lord Lovell nodded, satisfied. “I can have my clerk draw up a formal contract of apprenticeship while the boy packs.”
Quickly Basset said, “By your leave, my lord, no contract.”
“No?” Lord Lovell asked, surprised. A successful lord, like a successful merchant, knew the benefit of contracts.
So did Basset, but, “Someone is either a player or they’re not, my lord. It would be shame to bind the lad and find he hates the life. Besides that, there are skills I can teach anyone, but there are other things that are either in a man or not, and only time and trying will tell. Binding with a contract will make no difference.”
And if the boy proved impossible, being rid of him would be the easier if there were no contract. But Basset did not say that, and if Lord Lovell thought it, he let it go, too, simply said crisply, “Well enough. I’ll have him sent to you as soon as we’re done here. Now, there’s another matter.” One that he was less easy about: he paused to shift one of the scrolls lying on the table a little to one side and then back to where it had been before he looked up, not at Basset but past him, for the first time fully at Joliffe. “Last summer. That business at the Penteneys. You found your way through the tangle before anyone else did.”
There was much to be said for a player’s skill at keeping one thing on his face while his mind raced through any number of very other thoughts. Just now Joliffe held his face to a mild interest while in his mind he quickly shifted what he had supposed about the matter at the Penteneys. Yes, he had sorted out the tangle but those who knew that were few and he had not thought Lord Lovell was among them. Keeping his surprise to himself, he simply bowed, and said mildly, “Yes, my lord.”
Lord Lovell shifted the scroll again, to one side and back again, and this time did not look up as he said, “That had much to do with my interest in taking on your company as my own. I wanted to be able to call on your wits if need be.”
With the slightest twitch of their heads, Joliffe and Basset shared a glance. They were both shifting their thoughts, and by the smallest of nods Basset told Joliffe the game was his for now. Putting a careful edge of interest to his voice’s mildness, Joliffe said, “And now there’s need, my lord?”
Lord Lovell looked up at him. “Now there’s need. As players, you can go unquestioned to places anyone else I might send would be suspect. You can be in the midst of a household, seeing things, without anyone wondering why you’re there.”
“Where would you have us go, my lord?” Joliffe asked, even-voiced, showing reasonable interest and keeping his instant wariness from sight.
“One of my feofees”—holding land from Lord Lovell in return for service if called on for it—“Sir Edmund Deneby, is readying a marriage between his daughter and the nephew of another man I know and am friendly with. It’s a reasonable marriage. I’ve encouraged it. The only thing is that the girl was betrothed before but the man died not long before the wedding.”
“Suspiciously, I take it?” Joliffe asked, the guess not difficult.
“He fell ill of a flux that couldn’t be stopped. Such things happen.” Lord Lovell said it easily but was not at ease about it. He might be unable to say in clear and certain words
why
he was uneasy but nonetheless he was.
“No one else fell ill?” Joliffe asked. Since they were in this with no way out, he might as well know more. “He was a hale man but it came on suddenly and killed him too quickly?”
“You know about it?” Lord Lovell asked in quick return. “You’ve heard something of it?”
“No, my lord. Those simply seemed the most reasonable things to make you uneasy about what might otherwise seem straight-forward mischance.”
Sitting back in his chair, Lord Lovell smiled and rapped his knuckles against the tabletop. “There! That’s what I want. Sharp wits looking at this thing.” He looked to Basset. “Master Basset, I’m sending your company to Sir Edmund as a sort of betrothal present. He and Master Breche are presently at Deneby Manor, working out final matters before the betrothal, settling the contract for Mariena and Amyas’ marriage. Amyas. A fool name. What did they think he was going to be, some hero out of a French romance? Anyway, I’ve had dealings with Master Breche and I’ve backed this marriage, so no one will wonder if I send my players there for this while before the marriage.”
“How long will we have?” Basset asked.
“As I understand it, they’re in the last of the betrothal talks. Everything should be agreed within a few days, the betrothal will be made, the banns immediately given on the three following days, and the marriage held the day after the last of them.”
That was a quick moving toward the marriage. The usual way was for the banns announcing it to be read at the church door for three Sundays in a row and the marriage to follow sometime soon after. It was possible—though rare—to do it more quickly and, “Why the haste?” Joliffe asked. “Is that part of your suspicion?”
“No. Master Breche has merchant interests abroad. He’s due to be in Calais by Martinmas. Amyas is his heir. He wants him settled before he goes.”
“Is the girl Sir Edmund’s heir?”
“There’s a son. Much younger. So she’s not the heir, but Sir Edmund is giving a good dowry with her and she’ll have considerable lands from her mother when her mother dies.”
And her brother might die. Then she would have everything, if—“Is the estate entailed in the male line only?” Joliffe asked. Because that would mean the property could go only from male to male, never to a daughter, however sidewise that might take it, even to remote cousins.
“No,” Lord Lovell said, with a level look at Joliffe that said he understood what lay behind the question. While a well-dowered knight’s daughter was a very good thing, a daughter who was heir to all that knight’s property was even better, and here was someone with only a younger brother in the way to that. But even without that, it was likely a good marriage just as it was, because by way of it, a merchant’s heir would rise into the gentry and a knight’s daughter acquire a wealthy husband.
Besides, it seemed that Lord Lovell feared for the bridegroom, not the brother.
Even as all that chased through his mind, Joliffe asked, enjoying this chance to question a lord, rather than merely obey. “Is there more you could tell us about what has you uneasy?”
“I would there were. As it is, the best I can offer is that you just go there, make of matters what you can, and let me know.”
“How do we let you know, my lord?” Basset asked.
“My lady wife and I are coming to the wedding. We’ll be there the day before and I’ll make occasion to talk to you. If there’s any reason not to go forward with the marriage, I can deal with it then.”
Unless the bridegroom died sooner, Joliffe thought but did not say; but found Lord Lovell adding, level-voiced and looking straight at him as if reading his mind, “In the meantime, if you see need to keep anyone alive, please do so.” He pulled a scroll toward him, dropping his gaze to it, dismissing them with, “I’ll have Gil sent to you directly.”
Joliffe followed Basset in deeply bowing and retreating from the room. A servant waiting outside went in as they left, probably to receive an order about this Gil with whom they were going to be saddled, but neither Basset nor Joliffe said anything until they were in the middle of the yard, away from anyone to hear Joliffe ask, “What do we tell the others?”
Without slowing or looking at him, Basset said, “What my lord told us. That he has a boy who wants to be a player and we’re to take him on, and we’re being sent as a betrothal gift to this Sir Edmund Deneby.”
“And about the other?”
“Nothing.”
The briefness of Basset’s answer told how he felt about the business set on them.
“We’ve been asked to do worse,” Joliffe pointed out.
“And when we refused, we lost our then-patron and have been living narrowly ever since,” Basset pointed out in return.
“But this time we’ve accepted,” Joliffe said cheerfully. “We’ll do what we can, which probably won’t be much, and there’ll be an end of it. Although,” he went on thoughtfully, “if my lord thinks I’m going to hurl my body in front of an assassin’s dagger or suchlike to protect this Amyas Breche, he can think another thought about it.”
“Watch what you don’t wish for,” Basset muttered. “You might get it. What we need to talk about is this thought Lord Lovell has that we can do his spying for him because of the Penteney business.”
Because that matter had been much Joliffe’s doing, he started somewhat uneasily, “I—”
“Later,” said Basset. “When there’s time.”
The others were waiting for them with all the hampers and baskets packed into the cart and the mare Tisbe hitched between the shafts. While Joliffe went to be sure of her harness’ straps and buckles, Basset explained about this Gil that was to join them.
All in all, the others took it not so badly as they might. Ellis said, “He’ll be the one who was all but falling into the playing area with staring at us, whatever we did here.”
“If it is,” Rose said encouragingly, “at least he’s neither lame nor ugly.”
Over Tisbe’s back, Joliffe said, “A player can do with being ugly. Look at Ellis.”
“I’ll look at you with a stick the next time you’re in reach,” Ellis returned without heat. “That’ll help your looks, anyway.”
“It’s what his voice is like and whether he’s trainable,” Basset said.
“Even Joliffe has been mostly trainable,” Piers said from where he sat on the cart’s tail, legs swinging.
“I get enough of that from Ellis,” Joliffe said. “Don’t you start.”