A Play of Heresy by Margaret Frazer Read Free Book Online Page A

him various names in place of the missing one, with “Joliffe” sometimes first, sometimes second, keeping the jest going and no one else in the company caring except Will Sendell. For him the whole thing had grown into some kind of offense. It still seemed to be, but when Joliffe answered, deliberately lightly, “No,” Sendell unexpectedly grinned and said, albeit with a bitter edge, “That’s the way. Don’t give away more to the world than you have to. Lesson well learned.”
    Basset returned, a thick-pastried pork pie on a wooden plate balanced on top of the two cups he carried. Setting it all on the table, he said to the man beside Joliffe, “Master Burbage. How goes the world with you?”
    “As ever. And you?”
    “As ever and all the better for Joliffe being here.” Basset shifted around to sit beside Sendell, across from Joliffe. With his belt-hung dagger, he cut the pie into reasonably equal quarters and handed a piece to Joliffe while asking Sendell, “So. Think you can find a use for him?”
    “Probably. Better than letting him wander around with nothing to do.” Sendell and Ellis had always shared a belief that Joliffe needed watching.
    Joliffe, taking a first sip from his cup, made a surprised sound. He had been paying heed to Basset and Sendell, not to the ale he expected. Now he held the cup away from him, peering into it as he said, “Wine? When did we rise to heights affording wine?” He looked around the yard, with all its seeming of an alewife’s place, and added, “Coventry is so prospering that they drink wine where the rest of the world can only afford ale?”
    Basset laughed at him, and Master Burbage answered, “Master Dagette is a wine merchant here. This is wine that suffered enough in its travels that he doesn’t think it good enough for his high-paying folk. So he gives it over to his wife for this that used to be her ale shop. We get it not too highly priced, which makes us happy, and she and Master Dagette make a profit on it after all, which keeps them from being too gloomy.” He took up his own mostly-eaten pork pie from the table and added, “A while back, for good measure, Mistress Dagette decided the cookshop down the street was making money she would rather have. So she added food to what she sells here.”
    “That can’t have pleased the cookshop,” Joliffe said.
    “She buys it from the cookshop, then sells it to us for dearer than she paid. But the wine is here, so here we are, too, with no need to go anywhere else from day’s beginning to day’s end if we don’t want to.”
    As he bit heavily into the pie and chewed away, Basset belatedly said by way of proper introduction, “Joliffe, this is Master John Burbage of Bayley Lane. Master Burbage, this is our straying player, come to roost. Likely he’s going to share the honors with you in Master Sendell’s play.”
    “He can have my share and welcome to them,” Master Burbage said thickly around a mouthful of pie.
    “Supposing Master Sendell is indeed taking me on,” Joliffe said.
    “Oh, aye,” said Sendell. “No reason not to.” He brightened a little. “Likely you can have a try at leading Eustace Powet’s nephew toward being more Christ and less a Coventry street-brat.”
    Seemingly much cheered by that thought, he set about finishing his own piece of pie as if food suddenly interested him. Joliffe went warily at his own, only to find it was richly savory. Nor was the wine bad, either. On the whole and aside from Sendell and his apparently despised play, he thought that, given the chance, he could get fond of Coventry. What pity he had met Sebastian on the way to here. Sooner or later, like it or not, he would have to give some manner of heed toward the questions Sebastian wanted asked. The trouble with those questions was that Joliffe could hardly, out of nowhere, ask someone, “Know anything about a Master Kydwa?” or—even less possible—“So. What do you know of Lollards