The Bastard's Tale by Margaret Frazer Read Free Book Online Page B

their own and far more interested in making demands than agreeing to the king’s desires. There were undoubtedly cross-purposes and dealings everywhere, made worse by the private passions and cares that people always had. The play when it was performed would provide a welcome pleasure, but until then Frevisse doubted that anyone not in it or of it had more than a passing thought about it at all.
     
    For Master Wilde, however, it was all and everything, and so there was a desperate stitching by anyone with hands to spare who could be trusted with a needle. At least Wisdom and Lady Soul would be fully clothed and surely splendid. Near to Frevisse now, the woman Joane was sitting with her lap draped in fold upon fold of Lady Soul’s white cloth-of-gold gown, stitching gold-threaded trim around its far more yards of hem than Frevisse presently worked at, while a little farther down the hall Mistress Wilde had a little while ago folded Wisdom’s yards upon yards of gown away into a hamper and now sat with small John standing for her to mark the sleeve-length on his black demon’s tunic.
     
    But sewing was not the only work in hand in the hall. Master Wilde was not yet come to start the afternoon’s practice but the six men who would be the Mights and Devils were walking through their dance at the hall’s upper end to the tapping of a small drum by another of Master Wilde’s sons, in front of the tower that in two days’ time would be Heaven but was presently being painted blue by young Giles and the older of the company’s two musicians in grimy tunics and hosen, with charcoal-burning braziers set around to hurry the paint’s drying because Master Wilde meant to run through the whole play this afternoon. “From beginning to end without stopping no matter how rough it goes,” he had said yesterday. “We’ve need to see how the whole thing hangs together, and woe to anyone who doesn’t have his lines down pat by then.”
     
    Joliffe, standing next to small John sitting on the bench beside Frevisse, had leaned over and asked the boy, low-voiced in his ear, “You have your words all learned, haven’t you?”
     
    Swinging his feet happily, John had said back, “I know mine better than you know yours!” An ongoing jest between them because John had no lines. His part, with Giles, was to slither from beneath Lady Soul’s befouled and ugly mantle after she had fallen prey to Lucifer’s lures, dragging black, twisted ropes and dirty ribbons behind them and around her in an ugly little dance to show her vileness. He only had to know when to move and where, while Joliffe, as Lucifer tempting Lady Soul to her foolishness and sin, had a great many lines, and at John’s challenge he had laid a tragical hand to his forehead, said, “Too true, my lord, too true. I’d best go practice,” and after a bow to John and Frevisse, had taken himself away.
     
    Frevisse had noted these past few days how good he was at taking himself away without much said to her. Though he sometimes came aside to talk with John, he had never spoken more to her at any one time than when they had first met here. Not that there was need he should, but neither was there reason why he should so avoid it as he seemed to, and she was therefore surprised, happening to look up, to see Joliffe was just come into the hall in company with a young man she did not know and was crossing toward her.
     
    That they were coming to her was so clear that she laid her sewing in her lap and waited, watching them. Joliffe was tall but the newcomer somewhat taller, with a long-boned, well-featured face, dark gold hair, and an uncertain manner, as if he knew he shouldn’t be there.
     
    Nor should he be. What was in Joliffe’s mind to bring him, and what was Master Wilde going to say?
     
    Reaching her, they both bowed and Joliffe said, “My lady, a favor, if you will.”
     
    As formal as he was, she said back, “If it’s within right and