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

In truth,” Thamys said judiciously, “there were times when you would have been better idle than doing what you did. Such as the ten cats in the privyhouse.”
    “Eleven cats.”
    “A close count was difficult at the time,” Thamys said, solemn as if they were settling a theological point.
    “I’d hoped to make it twelve.”
    “I’m sure you did,” Thamys agreed. “But when you consider the effect upon Master Hampton when he opened the privy door, I think we may agree that ten cats—eleven, I beg your pardon—was sufficient to your purpose, was it not?”
    “Yes,” Joliffe granted as solemnly, “I’d have to say it was.”
    They regarded each other straight-facedly a moment and then, together, convulsed with laughter at mutual memory of Master Hampton standing in the way of a surge of angry cats intent on being somewhere else.
    A flurry of scholars, robes flapping with their hurry, surged by, much like the cats in their somewhat heedless haste to be elsewhere. Joliffe and Thamys faded aside, against the housewall there, and then drifted in their wake along the narrow street, Thamys asking again, “But what have you been at? More than merely wandering, surely.”
    “I’m a player.”
    “Are you?” Thamys looked at him with widened eyes and laughter. “That suits, at any rate. You’re here for the Corpus Christi plays then?”
    “We’re to play St. Michael Northgate’s Abraham and Isaac .”
    “A small company then.”
    “Yes.”
    “But successful or you’d not be here. Is this your first time back to Oxford in all this time?”
    “Contrariwise. We come once most years and sometimes twice.”
    “And you never came to see me in all this while?”
    “You never came to see me,” Joliffe pointed out.
    “True. But that’s because I don’t go to see players and didn’t know you were here, while you knew quite well that I was.”
    Joliffe paused, then said in all seriousness, “I wasn’t certain how welcomed I’d be.”
    “Joliffe! Considering all else I’d seen you at, you think I’d balk at you being a player?”
    “There was . . .” Joliffe searched out the best word. “. . . scant approval of my leaving, as I remember.”
    They were nearly to the gateway into St. Edmund’s yard. Thamys stopped short of where they might be heard by the porter sitting easily on a barrel beside the gate, keeping eye on who came and went. “I don’t know how you’d remember whether there was approval or not of your leaving,” Thamys said, “let be whether it was scant or otherwise. One morning you were here and then, come supper time, there was only your note saying you were gone and weren’t coming back. Nor did you. I think that was the only time I was ever truly angry at you. Except,” he added thoughtfully, “for when you put the dried toad inside my borrowed copy of the Polychronicon. ”
    “There was naught wrong with that toad,” Joliffe protested. “It couldn’t have been flatter than it was.”
    “Flat or otherwise, the Polychronicon is no place for a dried toad.”
    “Better a dried toad than a wet one,” Joliffe pointed out. “Consider, too, that it cost me a right sum from the apothecary, when I could have had a live one free for the catching.”
    “True, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to thank you for the dried one.”
    “Better it was a dried one anyway,” Joliffe mused, “considering you threw it at me.”
    “I would have thrown the Polychronicon at you, too, if it hadn’t been only borrowed.”
    Joliffe shook his head in mock sorrow. “It’s a sad thing when mortal man is so adverse to one of God’s creatures.”
    “Nor do I much like toads either,” Thamys said blandly.
    They laughed together again. Joliffe had forgotten how easily he and Thamys had been friends—better friends than he had remembered, for them to take it up so readily from where they had left off.
    Thamys nodded toward the gateway and its watching porter. “I’m not going to ask you