“You give enough of that to Ellis,” Rose said. “All of you stop it.” She was Basset’s daughter and Piers’ mother and Ellis’ love and often sounded as if she would willingly knock all their heads together if she had the chance. “Father, you haven’t noted the cart.”
“The cart? What’s wrong with the cart?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Rose said. “Look.”
Piers helpfully pointed at the cart’s curved canvas top. The high-sided cart carried all the properties needed for their work and what little else there was in their lives. Sturdily made to begin with and carefully kept these many years, it rarely failed them, but it was the canvas cover over curved wooden struts that kept the weather off everything, and despite the best of mending, it was simply wearing out. Patched, blotched, and gray with use, it told all too well how low the players’ fortunes had sunk these past few years. Except that instead of that cover there was another one now—crisp with newness, without patch, blotch, or mend to be seen, and brightly painted gold and red in the bold, curving, nebully lines of Lord Lovell’s heraldic arms.
Both Basset and Joliffe must have very satisfactorily gaped at it because Rose and Ellis and Piers all burst into laughter together; and while Joliffe stood back to admire it and Basset circled the cart, staring, Ellis said, “The man who brought it said it was Lord Lovell’s gift. He left a cask of paint, too, for us to paint the cart red to match when we’ve a chance.”
Still staring, Basset breathed, “Blessed St. Genesius.” The patron saint of actors.
“You really didn’t see it?” Rose insisted.
Basset shook his head, picked up Piers from where he had fallen off the cart-tail with laughter, and said without taking his eyes from the splendor that had so suddenly overtaken them, “I never did. I was thinking about where we’re going.” He blinked and gathered his thoughts. “Do you know, I don’t know the way to Deneby Manor. We’ll have to ask.”
“I know the way,” said someone from the outer corner of the shed.
They all turned to look at the boy standing there with a long bundle clasped to him with both arms. The same boy—as Ellis had guessed—who had been at everything they had performed at Minster Lovell this week. Until now there had never been reason to note more than that about him, but that had changed and Joliffe made a first, quick assessing of him. Older than Piers by a few years, he was pleasant-featured enough, with straw-brown hair and a well-limbed body, compact enough that it might never take him through a gawking, awkward time. All that, at least, was to the good. More, including his voice and whether he was trainable, would have to wait. Basset was saying, surely while making his own judgment, “You do? To Deneby? That will be a help. You’re Gil, I take it?”
The boy ducked his head in awkward acknowledgment, thought better of that, and tried a slight bow from his waist instead, more awkward because of the bundle clutched to him. As he straightened, his gaze flickered to all of them looking back at him, and Joliffe remembered his own first moment of joining Basset’s company. That had been before the disaster had come on them, so there were more people looking at him—five men and Rose and another woman—but the feeling must be the same for this Gil as it had been for him: the lone outsider being judged by a close-grown group who knew each other, did not know him, and were unsure they wanted to. Basset had done then just as he did now—said with hearty goodwill, “Welcome, young man—” and went on to make them all known to him. “Ellis Halowe, who does our villains and heroes, depending on which we need. Joliffe Ripon, who mostly plays our women’s roles as well as anything else that’s needed. My daughter Rose, who’ll keep you clothed and teach you your share of the cooking. Her son Piers, who’ll make trouble for you, just as he does for the rest of us.”
Gil smiled and nodded at each of them. They smiled and nodded back.
“It’s your last name we don’t know,” Basset said.
“Densell, if you please, sir,” Gil said.
“Well, Gil Densell, it’s time we were on our way. That’s all your gear?” Basset asked. “Put it in the back of the cart. Show him where, Piers.”
“There’s a meat pie on the top,” Gil said. “For all of . . . us.” He offered that “us” uncertainly. “From my mother,” he added, abashed.
“Then doubly welcome,” Basset said heartily.
Young Gil would learn soon enough, thought Joliffe, that food from anyone for any reason was always welcome among them.
But even now, with Piers showing Gil where to stow his bag and no reason left not to be on their way, Rose said, “There’s one more thing.”
Joliffe, going to Tisbe’s head to start her away, turned back to see Piers handing his mother a folded cloth that must have been lying at the cart’s back. He and his mother and Ellis were all smiling as if to burst, and before Joliffe or Basset could ask why, Rose shook out the cloth and held it up, showing it was a tabard of strong red cloth painted with Lord Lovell’s badge of a silver wolf-dog—playing off Latin
lupellus
and Lovell—stitched on its front. Slipped over the head, the tabard would hang loose in back and front and by the Lovell badge tell to the world whose players they were.
“From Lady Lovell,” Rose said. “There’s one for each of you and Piers and Ellis, too.”
“The Lord and St. Anne and the blessed Virgin love her,” Basset breathed, staring much as the Israelites must have stared at the manna from heaven. “I . . .”
Words failed him. Joliffe did not even try for any. A few months ago they had been near to ruin and now they were a lord’s players, with all the marks of honor that could go with being so.
“We’ll wear them,” Basset said. “As we leave. To let my lady know we honor her gift.”
“And then put them away for later,” Rose said firmly. While Piers tossed folded cloths to Ellis and Joliffe, she went to her father and slipped the tabard over his head, settling and straightening it as she had his surcoat. He struck a pose and she nodded at him, smiling approval. Then she turned to Ellis, waiting for her help though he did not need it; and when she had the tabard on him, her hands lingered on his shoulders, and he put his hands over hers, the both of them smiling at each other with smiles far different from what she had shared with her father.
Joliffe, putting on his own tabard, held in his own smile at sight of them. The affection between them was too often an uneasy thing and it was good to see them being simply glad of each other, brief though it lasted before Rose had to untangle Piers’ head from his tabard, saying to Gil while she did, “I’m afraid there’s none for you yet.”
Lifting his chin, the boy said cheerfully enough, “That’s no matter. After all, I’m not a player yet.”
Joliffe began to have hope of him.
Chapter 2
The day’s rain held off until the players were a mile or more from Minster Lovell. Their tabards were safely stowed in one of the hampers by then and they had their cloaks on and their hoods up against the soft drizzle that would likely last all day but was better than a downpour. Drizzle took longer to soak through thick-woven wool.
According to Gil, who had been there with his father a few times—“When he still thought he might make a bailiff of me,” the boy said simply, with neither triumph that his father had failed nor bitterness that he had tried—the manor of Deneby was north and east from Minster Lovell, a day and a half ’s travel at the cart’s pace. “We’ll be there early tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “All going well.”
The boy might be addled enough to want to be a player, Joliffe thought, but he was at least sensible enough to add that “all going well.” And he made no word of complaint about the rain or the walking either, and that was to the good, since walking and rain were both inevitable in a player’s life. Unless, Joliffe amended, a player prospered to the point of affording a riding horse—which was so rare a thing as to be a laughable thought—or else fell so ill he had to ride in the cart—which God forbid. A player could no more afford to be ill than he could afford a riding horse.
At least this Gil looked healthy enough, striding steadily beside Basset. With Minster Lovell behind them, they had all taken their usual places around the cart: Basset on one side, Ellis on the other, Joliffe at Tisbe’s head, Rose and Piers behind. Sometimes it went other ways; sometimes they walked together or in various pairs, and in good weather Piers often roamed forward to Ellis’ side or his grandfather’s or Joliffe’s, but today he kept beside his mother, slogging with the rest of them, and Basset had called Gil to his side to talk with him while they walked.
Joliffe remembered his first walk and talk with Basset, when Basset had skillfully drawn him out with questions and at the same time given him to understand what his place in the company would be and, for good measure, gave him his first lesson in playing. “Your voice and your body do your work,” he had said. “Your voice and body. They’re the tools of your trade. However sharp your mind is, boy—and I suspect yours is sharp enough you’ve cut yourself more than once—it’s no good to us if you can’t work your voice and body into whoever you need to be in a play, and you’re going to have to be everyone there ever was if you’re going to be in this company—from sweet maiden to old man, from angel to devil, to everyone and everything between. We’ve no use for someone who can only be himself.”
Remembering, Joliffe smiled to himself. He had learned, and he was good, and he took pleasure in both the work and in being good at it. He smiled, too, because his years of almost always playing the woman or girl in any play they did were maybe done. He was become somewhat old for playing maidens. If Gil proved any good at all, he was more than welcome to become every maiden there was in all their plays.
Their plays. Despite his boots were in mud and rain was dripping off his hood’s edge past his eyes, Joliffe smiled wider at the thought of what he could do with their plays if Gil proved good. When their company had broken up and shrunk, he had reworked what plays of theirs he could to fit the few of them that were left, with him and Basset and Ellis often shifting to play two or more parts apiece in a single play. Too many of their plays, though, could not be altered enough to be playable by so small a company and had languished these years in the bottom of the box where their scripts were kept. With even one more player, possibilities opened up and through the summer, after Lord Lovell had taken the company for his own, Joliffe had begun to work over the plays, seeing what could be done.
Now, with Gil to be maybe of their company, he could think more directly about possibilities, ignoring Tisbe while he did, knowing full well she did not need him. The mare had been with the company long enough that she knew her business. Set out along a road, she simply kept on going. If she came to a crossroads and no one told her otherwise, she stopped until told which way to turn. If she came to a bad stretch of mud, holes, ruts, or rocks, she waited for someone to guide her and the cart carefully past it. When a village or town came into sight, she slowed until told whether or not the players meant to stop and make ready to perform there or else go straight on. This last year, things being as bad as they were with the ruined harvest, they had played everywhere they came to, needing whatever farthings or foodstuffs were given them in return.
Supposing any were given at all.
With Lord Lovell’s coins in their purse these past few months, they had done a little more choosing; and today, with more of Lord Lovell’s coins in hand and some place particular they were supposed to be, they simply traveled on. Not that there were many places to pause the way they were going, north and east through the wide forest of Wychwood, but by late afternoon they were beyond it, and with early dark drawing in because of the rain, they stopped for the night in a village where the reeve agreed they could shelter in his barn in return for performing for his family after supper.
That was a good enough exchange. “Though we don’t have to give as much as we might, since we’re feeding ourselves,” Basset said over the players’ own supper of Gil’s meat pie and a leather bottle of ale brought from Minster Lovell. “This is excellent pie, young Gil. Our thanks to your mother and welcome to you.”
Basset lifted his handleless cup as he said it and the others followed suit. Gil grinned and lifted his in return. “My thanks to you,” he said. “For taking me on.”
“We’ll see how thankful you are in a week or so, once Basset has put you to work,” Ellis said. But he was smiling. He tended toward black-browed frowns more than any of them, but even he was presently in good humour, being well-fed, well-sheltered, and with money in hand.
As the players had expected, after supper they found most of the village crowded into the reeve’s house. There was not much space left for them to play but they were used to that and began with some juggling by Basset, Ellis, and Piers. Then Joliffe played his lute (his juggling skills were execrable) while Piers sang in his bright, clear child’s voice. Basset’s sleight-of-hand tricks followed, accompanied by a running exchange of practiced insults between Joliffe and Ellis that rocked their lookers-on with laughter and approving shouts.
Rose kept aside, near the door with Gil, and slipped him away as Basset began his flowered closing speech of thanks to all, interrupted by Joliffe and Ellis snipping insults at each other behind his back until with a roar he chased them both out the door, leaving Piers to make the final bow all by himself with a flourish of his feathered cap and a wide, triumphant smile before running after the others, leaving shouts, laughter, and clapping behind him.
All the brightness of performance was gone from them, though, while they laid out their pads and blankets on the barn’s packed-earth floor by the small light of a single tallow candle in a lantern. With no one to see them, they moved with the tiredness earned by a day’s walking and an evening’s work, and Gil asked somewhat shyly, “Do you have to do that all the time? Play at the day’s end?”