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

hay-piled bed. Joliffe sat beside the cart, leaning back against a wheel, ready to prop his head against the spokes and drowse if talk went on too long.
    Basset started off briskly enough anyway, saying, “Foremost of everything this week, we have to be sure as possible of the Abraham and Isaac . First thing come the morning, before breakfast even, we’ll run through our lines.”
    “For Christ’s sake . . .” Ellis started in protest.
    “Precisely,” Basset said. “For Christ’s sake we want this to be as good as can be. Then we owe the Penteneys a play and we want to make it a good one in return for all that Master Penteney is doing for us. So we have to decide what we’ll do and rehearse it, too.”
    Ellis groaned and Joliffe could have echoed him but didn’t, just put his head back against the wheel and looked up at the broad barn rafters disappearing into shadows while he waited for more.
    “Then there’s Lewis to keep pleased.”
    Ellis did not even bother to groan, just shook his head and kept on carving.
    “Piers,” said Basset, “if we put on The Steward and the Devil for the Penteneys—not for Wednesday night when there’ll be the feast and fine company, but tomorrow maybe, for just the household—do you think Lewis could be a devil with you in it?”
    Ellis gave a disbelieving croak and stopped carving to look at Basset, apparently expecting to see other signs he’d lost his mind. Even Rose frowned slightly. Joliffe just waited, somewhat interested.
    “No lines,” Basset went on. “Just capering with you on the stage. Could he do that, do you think?”
    “Aye, he could do that,” Piers said, poking Ellis to set him carving again. “Lewis isn’t stupid. He’s just . . .” he made a face, looking for the word, “. . . simple.”
    Ellis, who had started to carve again, stopped and cocked his head around, eye to eye with Piers. “You understand the difference there?”
    “Aye,” Piers said with the patience of someone much put upon by lesser folk. “It’s like there’s not as many wits in his head as other people have, but what he has he makes good use of. Not like some who have all their wits and don’t half use them. Like Joliffe.”
    “Best use your wits to curb your tongue or there’ll be burrs under your blanket by morning,” Joliffe said without heat. Burrs in the bed were a constant threat between Piers and him. Once Piers had even done it. But only once, because in return Joliffe had put burrs in the toes of Piers’s hosen. Working them to the bottom of the hosen’s feet had been tedious, but Piers’s yelp when his toes met them and the grumbling he had done while working them out—with bits left behind to bother him through a few days afterward—had made it worth the while. Since then burrs had remained a threat, not a practice, and Piers made a face at him while Rose asked, keeping to Lewis, “Will his folk let him? Be in a play, I mean.”
    “We’ll have to ask,” Basset answered. “I doubt there’s harm in asking and I’m willing to warrant they will. His man Matthew seemed to have no trouble with the thought, anyway.”
    Ellis sighed and went back to his carving. “Ask away. It can’t hurt.”
    Rose and Joliffe both nodded agreement.
    They talked a while more, and the choice for Wednesday’s play came down to The Pride of Life , one of their best. It was more work than they truly wanted to do, with Corpus Christi the next day and the need to have the Abraham and Isaac as perfect as might be for it, but neither did they want to cheat Master Penteney.
    “Besides,” said Basset, “it won’t hurt to do our best in front of Lord and Lady Lovell either, let alone whoever else may be there. But it’s been a while since we’ve done it, so best we run its lines tomorrow morning even before Abraham and Isaac .”
    That brought groans from Ellis and Joliffe both: The Pride of Life was longer by far than Abraham and Isaac . But groan was all they did because