A Play Of Heresy Part 3

"Yes! Saint Genesius, it's good to talk with someone who knows what I'm saying!"

That was said so from the heart and with an edge of desperation that Joliffe wondered how long Sendell had been on his own, laboring forward in grief and defeats since his company died. Just staying upright under that double burden could wear a man down to nothing under the plain weight if the struggle went on long enough; no matter how great a man's courage was, it could not save him if he had no strength left to make it good. Bleed a man dry and all the courage in the world would not be enough to keep him going. How close to bled dry by grief and defeats had Sendell come before he came to this chance here in Coventry? And how much longer could he keep going if this chance failed him?

Making no hurry of wending their way among the traffic of carts and others afoot, Sendell was saying, "We turn here. Mill Lane," when someone called out, "Master Sendell," and Sendell looked around and called in return, "Master Powet."

The man crossing Earl Street toward them pulled up short to avoid being knocked over by a bustling woman laden with a market basket on either arm, then came on, cutting around the back of a trundling cart. Sendell, paused to wait for him, said low-voiced to Joliffe, "One of mine," and, louder as the man joined them, "Master Powet. Well met. How goes it with you?"

"None so bad as it might and never so good as I wish," Master Powet returned with an edge of grumble instead of lightly as he might have. He had likely been a goodly-looking man in his youth and none so bad in his middle years, but he was well-withered toward elderly now and no longer what he had been. The look he gave Joliffe was sharp enough, though, and Sendell answered it with, "Master Powet, this is Master Joliffe. He's usually a player in the company that's seeing to the Nativity, but he's late-come and they've no place for him, so he'll be with us instead."

"Another cast-off, eh?" said Powet. There was no mistaking the grumble in that. "Mind the stones," he added.

Indeed, not much around the corner that they were just turning a half dozen or so flat paving stones were stacked almost to toppling while two men in the street's middle, at risk of being stumbled into by a careless pa.s.serby or run over by someone's horse or cart, were levering the broken pieces of other flat stones out of the shallow, stone-lined gutter there, slanted with the street for water to flow into it and away rather than toward house fronts and doorways.

"Mending it at last, and about time they were at it," said Master Powet somewhat more cheerfully as he led the way around the piled stones. "I said, Master Sendell, didn't I, that you'll see all the streets being cleaned and mended to a fare-thee-well these last days. Shop signs are being new-painted everywhere, and every rush-strewn tavern and inn floor will be fresh-rushed by the end of next week when folk can be expected to start arriving. By then all the usual troublemakers will have had the bailiffs' hands laid heavily on their shoulders and suggestion given that they change their ways for this while or, better yet, leave town."

"Will they?" Joliffe asked. "Change or leave?"

"Some will. Others, without the wit to do one or the other, will find themselves locked all together in someone's cellar for the few days that matter."

"It's this way every year?"

"When the mayor feels he has a strong enough hold over things to make it happen. It's good for the town when he does. Having the streets mended is never a bad thing anyway, Corpus Christi or no."

"Here we are." Sendell went leftward through a wide gateway. Joliffe and Master Powet followed him into a wide paved yard surrounded by a three-floored building, stone-built below, of timber and plaster on the upper floors. "The pageant wagon is there," Sendell said, pointing to double doors at the yard's far end. "We'll have it out in a week or so, to begin readying it. Today we'll be at practice here in the yard, but my room is above, if you want to have sight of the script before the others come."

"If there's time," Joliffe said.

"If you read fast," Sendell returned.

"I'll bring out the benches," Master Powet offered.

Sendell said thanks for that as he led Joliffe up a tired wooden stairway with a single thin bar for railing, to a door he paused to unlock before opening it into a room above the pageant's place. The room was bare of comforts. There was a stuffed mattress with one pillow and a disheveled blanket on the floor against one wall. A cloak and a bag of probably Sendell's belongings hung on wall pegs. Otherwise there were only a joint stool beside a table with a roll of parchment and a candle in a plain candleholder. The wooden floor was bare. So were the plastered walls. The shutter was slid down from a small window high up in the west wall, giving the room some afternoon light. The rest of a day the place would be fairly dark unless the door was left standing open.

"It was all they offered me," Sendell said in answer to nothing Joliffe had said. "It serves, it's free, and saves me the cost of paying for somewhere better. No meals given, except when one or another of the guild or someone invites me to one. Here's the script." He took up the parchment scroll from the table and handed it to Joliffe. "You look through it. I'm going to see about the benches being set the way I want them. Bring this when you come."

He went out, and Joliffe sat down on the joint stool, unrolled the scroll at its beginning, and began a rapid read toward its end. He quickly saw that Sendell's unsparing moan about it being all words and little doing was generally true enough. He hoped they had someone well-voiced for Simeon. For Ane the Prophetess, whom he was apparently going to be, he saw very little he could do except be there. He had only got to Christ and the Doctors when a boy put his head in at the door to say, "Master Sendell says you're to come now and bring the script when you do." Rather than retreat then, as he might have done, his message given, the boy waited, only starting down the stairs just ahead of Joliffe and asking as they went, "Are you truly a player? All of the time, not just for now?"

"I am. All of the time." One way and another. "Are you one of the angels, or will you be Christ?"

"One of the angels," the boy said disgustedly. "I want to be Christ, but I sing too well, so I have to be an angel, Master Sendell says, and my da says I have to do what Master Sendell said."

"Your da being?"

"One of the masters of the Weavers Guild."

"So you're an apprentice weaver, I suppose."

"I am that. Would rather be a player, though. If I could do something besides play angels."

"Angels are hard," Joliffe said in sympathy, knowing that was not what the boy had meant.

"That they're not," the boy protested. They had reached the stairfoot; he turned to face Joliffe. "All angels do is stand there, say something, and sing. Or just sing-I just sing. Then they go away. None of that's hard."

"It is if you sing like I do," Joliffe said cheerfully. "But it's the looking like an angel I've always found hardest."

"That's not hard," the boy returned scornfully. "You're put in a white robe, and they put wings on you, and you're an angel."

Joliffe slumped his shoulders, s.h.i.+fted to stand hipshot, and c.o.c.ked his head to one side. "There. Imagine me with a white robe and wings. Would I look like an angel now?"

The boy laughed. "Not standing like that you don't. Angels don't stand that way."

"What way do they stand?"

With hardly a thought, the boy twitched his own shoulders back, straightened his spine, centered his body on itself, and raised his chin. Then he looked startled at the difference. He raised his hands uncertainly, as if they suddenly did not belong to him. "These," he said. "Where do I put these?" He answered himself by pressing them together prayerfully. "Like this?"

"I don't know," Joliffe answered. "Try different ways and see what feels best."

Sendell called, "Hew, time to be over here."

A cold sickness slid down Joliffe's spine and into his belly. There had been another Hew who wanted to be a player, and the memories there were not good. This Hew, though, left off being an angel to obey Sendell's call and headed toward the benches now set in a U-shape and sat upon by a variety of men and another boy. Joliffe, following Hew, saw him make to sit beside the other boy, but a strong-featured older man said, "Hew," and pointed to a s.p.a.ce beside himself. Hew grudgingly sat himself there while Sendell, taking the rolled script Joliffe offered him, said to everyone, just as he had to Master Powet, "This is Master Joliffe. He's usually a player in the company that's seeing to the Nativity-" A few good-humoured hisses answered that. "But they've no place for him as things are now, so he'll be with us instead."

"Who's he to be?" a tall, fair youth demanded. As it happened, Joliffe had sat down facing him, fully open to his suspicious stare.

"Ane in the Temple," Sendell said.

The youth eased.

Sendell added, "And one of the prophets."

The youth, who must be Richard Eme, the other Prophet, stiffened.

Giving no sign he saw that, Sendell went on, "Master Burbage will stay as Primus Doctor but has given over his part as a Prophet."

The youth eased again, openly mollified by that, until Sendell continued, "But Master Joliffe will now be First Prophet and you, Richard, will instead be Second."

Richard began an immediate bristling but got only so far as opening his mouth before Sendell smoothly cut off whatever protest was coming by saying, "I need you for that final speech, Richard. The one where the Prophet is alone on the pageant, speaking to the audience all by himself. That's why the change."

On the instant the youth's protest turned to preening. "I understand perfectly," he said. "I accept." He smirked at Joliffe.

Joliffe smiled blandly back, easily able to judge what Sendell was up against with him. For one thing, no sensible player ever told his playmaster that he "accepted" the playmaster's decision-not in that tone of voice at any rate.

"So if you'll give your script to Master Joliffe," Sendell went on, "and if Master Burbage will give you his, and here, Joliffe, is Ane's part."

The exchanges were made while Sendell went on, "Master Powet, I take it this is your nephew who may do for our Christ," nodding toward the boy wiggling on the bench beside Powet.

"Christ help us, yes," Powet said and gave the boy a light shove with an elbow. "Sit still, d.i.c.k."

d.i.c.k gave another wiggle but then tried to sit still, grinning first at his uncle, then around at everyone else. If it were granted that Christ might be slightly gap-toothed and very ragged-haired, Joliffe saw the boy might serve the part. Of course there would be the long Christ-wig to cover the hair and did Christ smile all that much? What mattered more was what manner of voice he had and if he could use it well, but Sendell put off such revelation as lay that way by saying, "You're welcome to our company, d.i.c.k. We'll see how you do when we come to your part. First, though, we're going to read through again from the beginning, now we have everyone. Ned and Hew, have you tried your singing together?"

"Already?" protested the young man who must be Ned.

With a patience that Joliffe did not remember in him years ago, Sendell said, "We've not that much time until Corpus Christi. You want to be better than only good by then. You want to be as fine as may be. We'll work together on it when we've finished reading through today. For now, just sing as best you can when we come to those parts. Master Joliffe, begin when you're ready."

Glad he had had chance to see this much of the script anyway, Joliffe began to read, pitching his voice to almost play-level, to be heard a wide way and the words very clear but holding back from the strength and excitement Sendell had talked of for the part. That could wait until he knew the part better and everyone was more familiar with him.

Great astronomers, now awake,

With your famous fathers of philosophy,

And to the Orient your heed take,

Where news and strange sights be come of late.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Sendell nod approval.

Chapter 6.

On the whole the practice went well enough. richard Eme, reciting the Second Prophet as if he were a particularly pompous Lord Mayor of London, would be simplicity itself to play off of. Joliffe's change from Prophet into the prophetess Ane should be no trouble: he would have the Second Prophet's long closing speech and Simeon's longer opening one to throw the Prophet's robe off, leaving him in a woman's gown worn underneath, and only a woman's cap, wimple, and veil to put on. Ane's own speeches were few and mostly brief, unlike Simeon's, so it was to the good that the man doing Simeon proved to have a deep voice that he used gravely, suitable to an aged priest of the Temple promised by G.o.d that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. He sang his Nunc Dimittis-"Now dismiss your servant, Lord, according to your word in peace . . ."-already well-learned and from the heart.

The two angels-Ned and Hew-were a mixed bag at best. Ned spoke clearly and with suitable angelic dignity and grace, but Hew sounded as if he was not sure what words were for. Sendell would have to work with him.

The slender youth playing Mary was somewhat too soft of voice, but he at least seemed to understand the meaning of the words he was saying.

Richard Eme as one of the doctors who talked with the young Christ in the Temple played it the same as when he was a prophet. Joliffe had expected that, knowing Richard Eme's kind of playing. Any part someone like Eme was given he would make to his own size, changing the world to match himself, rather than taking on the challenge of changing himself to match the world, even the brief world of a play.

To the thankful good, both Master Burbage and the man who was playing Tertius Doctor had clear voices and some sense that who they played should not just be themselves with fancy words to say. With time and work on them by Sendell, they would likely do well enough.

It was Eustace Powet who took Joliffe by full surprise. As Joseph, Powet was better than only good. By voice alone, since they were only reading this evening, not up and moving, he caught Joseph's doddering age as well as his querulousness, yet somehow showed, too, the old man's deep devotion to his young wife and her son. He made Joseph both a figure for laughter, as he was supposed to be, and at the same time almost as heart-touching as-at best-he should be, too.

Powet's nephew d.i.c.k, on the other hand, made a very poor Christ. He had a clear voice and that much was to the good, but he seemed to have taken Richard Eme's style of playing for his own and that was not good. Why couldn't he have taken after his uncle instead? As it was, Joliffe silently wished Sendell luck with changing the boy.

Interestingly, what came clear as they read the play to the end was that its "bones" were surprisingly strong. True enough, it lacked the Nativity's possibilities for dazzling, and that showed in the flat looks among the men and dispirited rerolling of their scrolls when they were at its end, but Joliffe could see that, well-played, all the play's differences from the Nativity would be a goodly, needed balance to the excesses of Herod and the murdering of the infants of Bethlehem played just before it.

The catch was in that "well-played." The skills among the men and boys were very uneven. Much was going to depend on how far Sendell could bring them in the all-too-few days he had before Corpus Christi. That was surely in Sendell's mind as, starting to reroll the master scroll from its end back to its beginning, he said, "There's hope in it. Tomorrow we take it onto its feet. Joliffe, not then but the day after I'm going to want you to work with our Mary on how to move. So, Tom Maydeford, I need you to bring a dress you can wear for that."

"Why can't I just use what I'll wear for the play? I'm not likely to hurt the tired old thing."

"Because I'm probably going to use that tired old thing to wipe the stage clean. You can't wear what you'll wear for the play because we don't have it yet." Sendell paused, giving the men time to be puzzled by that, then said triumphantly, "I've talked the guild into money for some new garments and for fresh paint and a bit of gilt on the pageant wagon."

Glum faces brightened, and there were exclaims of "Well then!" and "Hai-mai!" and "Not before time!" There was even some slapping of thighs and everyone in altogether merrier minds when they left the yard than when they had come. Only d.i.c.k was made unhappy by Sendell saying he wanted him to stay a while longer. The boy grimaced but, clouted on his shoulder by his uncle, granted he had nowhere to be just then.

"Except home to bed," Powet said. "Nay, he can stay, Master Sendell."

"It's that the whole last part of the play depends on the young Christ," Sendell said. "That's why I want us to work particularly at it, d.i.c.k. There's a while of daylight left. I won't use it all up. Let's sit here." He moved to the farthest end of the benches and gestured for d.i.c.k to join him.

d.i.c.k grumpily did. Powet sat down on another bench, well away from them. Joliffe, who had lingered for a chance to talk to Sendell, went to sit beside him. The two scrolls of his parts were still in his hand, and Powet asked, nodding at them, "You mind having just those for your parts?"

"Mind?" Joliffe echoed, surprised.

"You're the one of us does this for your living. You should be doing more than a dull prophet and a woman who's only there because the Bible says she is, not because she does aught that matters in the play."

"She gives Simeon someone to talk to besides himself. That's useful," Joliffe pointed out. "And, no, the size of the parts doesn't trouble me. Like always, I'll try to play them the best I can. That's what matters."

Powet made a humphing sound that neither accepted nor rejected any of that and s.h.i.+fted to stare at the cobbles in front of his feet. Mindful that the man knew Coventry better than anyone with whom he had yet had chance to talk alone, Joliffe said, in hope of drawing him on, "You're a weaver, then?"

"Nay. I'm a mercer of sorts, although these days I mostly stand front for my niece, she having the greater skill and her husband being dead and all."

"So the guilds aren't tight about who can be in their plays? Only mercers in the mercers'? Only butchers in the butchers'?"

Joliffe would have been surprised if that was the way of it. The plays were too important for the guilds to hobble themselves like that. He simply wanted to keep Powet talking, and the man obliged with, "Nay, nothing like that. They all just want the best they can get. Mind, if you're good and your guild has a place for you in their own play, that's where you go before elsewhere, but there's more who want to be in the plays than there are parts for, so those as direct have some chance to choose who they want. I've been in the mercers' play more than once in my day, but other guilds' plays, too. Good parts in all of them. Have been Christ twice. Pontius Pilate three times. The Devil more than once. Four times one and another of the Three Kings. G.o.d himself in the Doomsday one year. Like that. I was good enough to be wanted. Now-" He shook his head. "Now the knees are not to be trusted, and I've lost strength in my voice. Not fit for anything anymore but old, doddering Joseph, and soon I likely won't even be up to playing old and doddering. I'll just be old and doddering, no play about it at all. They all know I'm past my best. That's why I'm here in this play. n.o.body else wanted me this year."

Mindful of how well Powet had read Joseph, Joliffe said carefully, "You need a new best. That's all."

"Oh, you're young. You don't know yet there comes a time when there's no more *best' to be had. Only *not so bad' followed by *not so bad as it might be' followed by *that's the end then.' "

Having long since learned there was never sufficient answer to "You're young. You don't know," Joliffe made none. The best he could hope for was that someday he would be old enough to say it to someone and irk them as much as it irked him now.

Powet went gloomily on, brooding at his hands twisting together between his knees, "Last year I was the prophet Elias and faced off with the Antichrist. That wasn't so bad, but I knew I got the part because I'm aging out of all the rest. Can't sing well enough to be Simeon, so there I am. Down to Joseph or nothing. Comic old Joseph." He looked at Joliffe and demanded, "Come. It must fret you, you being who you are-making your living by playing and all-to be cramped into little parts like your dull prophet and Ane."

Sensing a right answer might make great difference to Powet, Joliffe paused before trying, "I don't feel cramped. For one thing, what are called *small' parts matter as much in a play as something large. What's hard to see from the outside is that *small' parts can take as much skill as I have to make them work well." Not scrupling to choose someone Powet knew, he smiled evilly and added, "Just think how someone like Richard Eme can make a large part into something not worth spitting at."

Powet gave a barked laugh of both surprise and recognition. "Saint Swithin, yes! All you ever see of what he does is Richard Eme. Large part or small. Though G.o.d help whoever tries to give him a small part!"

"And I'll warrant there's no one so fond of Richard Eme-save himself and maybe his mother-as wants to see only him and n.o.body else in everyone he plays," Joliffe said.

"No!" Powet agreed on another bark of laughter.