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

table.”
    “ That brought you to think of me? I never did that.”
    “That’s why you came to mind. I wondered how you’d come to miss that trick. You tried enough other things.”
    “I never had the money to buy that much extra cinnamon. Nor,” Joliffe added thoughtfully, “cared to waste good wine that way.”
    “That explains it,” Thamys said as if deeply satisfied on some point of difficult scholarship. He shifted the leather case again. “Which way are you bound?”
    “Townward.”
    “Go a ways with me, then? This thing is heavy and I’d rather be quit of it sooner than later.”
    “Gladly,” Joliffe said, surprised to find himself more willing to company than he would have thought likely a few moments ago. On his side, he couldn’t have said when he had last thought of Thamys, but they had been friends in their time and it was good to see him again and see him so obviously thriving, too. His scholar’s gown was of good cloth and cut and he did not look under-fed, as scholars did whose love of learning outmatched their income and forced the choice of books over food.
    Jostled together as they came off the bridge into the crowding of people toward the East Gate, Joliffe asked, “You’re still at New College?”
    “Not these three years past. I’m at St. Edmund’s Hall, assistant master to Master Bryton now.”
    “Are you? How did that come about?”
    Thamys shifted his burden back to both arms, carrying it against his chest, but around its awkwardness he managed a shrug. “I was ready to move on from being only a scholar. I wanted to do as well as to learn. Master Bryton offered me this chance and I took it. Do you remember Master Bryton?”
    “Maybe.” Joliffe had never clung to his Oxford memories. A great deal of lesser matter had faded, including Master Bryton. “Not to put a face to.”
    “A good man, a solid scholar. Not brilliant, but then most of us aren’t.”
    “Speak for yourself.”
    “You weren’t brilliant. Merely brazen.”
    Joliffe laughed. Into broad High Street now, they were walking less crowdedly, drifting toward the right through the homeward flow of folk. Toward Queen’s Lane, Joliffe guessed; if he remembered rightly where St. Edmund’s Hall was.
    There were places like St. Edmund’s Hall all over Oxford, lacking the rich endowments and patronage that supported the great colleges and dependent on luck and their masters’ skills to keep them going, but they offered residence and learning to students who otherwise could not have afforded them. Such places rented spaces here and there as chance and their ever-imperiled finances allowed, gaining or losing students by the master’s reputation, flourishing or fading for, sometimes, no discernable reason at all. At best, running such halls was a chancy business, but St. Edmund’s was still here after more than a few years, and that Thamys had involved himself with it suggested it stood a good chance of going on a few years more. There had never been anything slack about Thamys’ wits.
    “You’ve finished your studies then?” Joliffe asked.
    “Nearly. If things go as planned, I’ll be ordained priest sometime in next Lent.”
    “Well done,” Joliffe said, fully meaning it. Priesthood had been something John Thamys had wanted ever since they had met at New College as scrub-faced boys.
    “And you,” Thamys said. “What have you been at since I last saw you?”
    “As you see.” Joliffe held out his arms as if his well-worn, plain clothing told all. “Wandering.”
    Turning into Queen’s Lane’s narrow way, they were suddenly clear of the crowd, and Thamys came to a halt to look him openly down and up before saying, “But not idly wandering, I’d guess. You were never idle.”
    “As I recall, one of the great complaints against me in my days here was that I never worked enough.”
    “The great complaint was that you rarely worked at what you were supposed to work at. But idle? No, you were never that.