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

hereabouts?”
    That left him willing to suppose the best he could do for now was let the matter ride its own way. Here and now the wine was good, the pie was good, and he switched his mind back to the other men’s talk, with Sendell presently saying, “Aye, Basset. You’ll do well with the Nativity and all. I’m glad it’s you that got it. You’re someone who’ll make the most and more of what’s there. But what am I going to do with Christ at the Temple? There’s nothing there!”
    Master Burbage nodded ready agreement. “A whole play of nothing happening. It’s painful, is what it is. Other years all the lookers-on have taken the chance to go to a tavern while waiting for it to move on and the next play roll into place.”
    Sendell looked at Joliffe. “Do you know the play?”
    Caught with his mouth full of pie, Joliffe shook his head that he did not. Not as it was done here in Coventry anyway.
    Like a man who has to keep picking at a sore or digging at an itch, Sendell said, “Prophets. It starts with two prophets. They stand there talking about everything that was in the play everyone just saw. Basset’s play, that’ll be. Speeches and speeches of talking about what everyone has just seen.”
    “That’s when people start going away to the taverns,” Master Burbage offered.
    “The prophets finally finish, and then Simeon comes on, and he talks,” Sendell said.
    “And talks,” Master Burbage added unhelpfully.
    “Then Ane comes on and she and Simeon both talk. She leaves and an Angel comes and talks, telling Simeon what will happen next.”
    “Angels can save a play,” Basset offered.
    “Or at least slow its sinking like a holed ship,” Sendell returned. “That’s the best I can hope for here. I’ve some thought of keeping things afloat with some celestial music. Hire someone with a portative organ.”
    “That could well be useful,” Basset agreed. A portative organ, with its short board of keys and single or double rank of pipes and easily carried, could well be used for a play.
    Joliffe, swallowing, nodded matching approval. “That’s a good thought. Basset, you’re not having other than singing, are you?”
    “Just singing by my angels and the cradle-song by the Bethlehem mothers.”
    Sendell went on, “The Angel goes away and Simeon talks to his clerk. Then the Angel appears to Mary to tell her to take the Child to the Temple, and there’s a long bit between her and Joseph, with Joseph doing the foolish-old-man business that everyone expects of Joseph. Then the Angel appears to him and after that he and Mary take the Infant Christ to the Temple where everybody talks and Simeon does his Nunc Dimittis . ”
    “Which is no surprise to anyone,” Master Burbage said. “Those that are still there.”
    “Then,” Sendell said gloomily, “it’s suddenly twelve years later, and Mary and Joseph are losing the twelve-year-old Christ at the Temple and finding him with the scholarly Doctors there. Talking.”
    “Lots and lots of talking,” Master Burbage agreed. “I’m Primus Doctor.”
    “Then it’s over,” Sendell said, “and everybody who hasn’t been listening to us comes back from the tavern and the pageant wagon is hauled on for us to be tedious at the next site.”
    Joliffe could not deny that it was certainly tedious in the telling, but for something to say to the good, he tried, “Have you started to rehearse yet?”
    “We read through the thing yesterday evening,” Sendell said. All too openly, that had given him no joy. “The trouble is that everyone knows the play. So, except for Master Burbage here, all among our good citizens who are any good at playing have chosen to go into other plays if they could. I’m left with a pack not fit for anyone else to take.”
    “That’s not all to the fair,” Burbage protested. “There’s Eustace Powet and Ned Eme. They’re fit enough. That’s three of us.”
    “And me,” Joliffe said with forced brightness, hoping to