Read Online A Play of Piety by Margaret Frazer - Free Book Online Page A

has likely given word there that he wants us to the end. It was so the reeve could have our bodies for the harvest that Basset got taken into the hospital at all. I swear it.”
    “Nah,” protested Gil, reaching for more bread. “It was for our playing the day before. He can’t bear to part with us after that.” He explained to Joliffe, “The village was mostly in the fields when we came into town that day. So Basset asked at the hospital if they’d like us to do some holy saint’s play for the men there. The master was willing, only he said maybe something to make them laugh would be best. So we did Saint Uncumber and the Bad Husband to give them both.”
    The play, where the determinedly virginal Uncumber, after fending off her new, unwanted husband’s attentions in various laughable ways, prayed to be made ugly to keep him away from her and was promptly blessed with a thick beard, to her delight and her husband’s dismay, always set folk to laughter.
    “Then we did Robin Hood and Maid Marian for the village in the evening,” Gil said.
    “Short and sweet,” added Ellis. “Before full dark came on.”
    That made them note that while they had eaten and talked, today’s dark had come on in its turn. With the fire in low coals in the firepit, their eyes had grown used to the thickening shadows around them without their thought about it until now. The year was something like two months past mid-summer, so the nights were lengthening but still not long enough after a long day’s work in the fields: it was time and past to be to bed, and Ellis finished, “Then the next morning Basset was so stiff and pained there was nothing for it but to ask help at the hospital, and here we are.”
    Rose stood up, asking as she gathered the empty bowls out of everyone’s hands, “Does anyone want to finish the pot?”
    Gil and Piers both quickly scooped out and ate what little pottage was left, leaving it to Ellis and Joliffe to take bedding and straw-stuffed pads and pillows from the cart. With the nights warm and dry, there was no need for the tent. They simply laid everything out on the grass, Ellis asking of Joliffe, “You’re here for tonight?”
    Joliffe, holding back from pointing out that was why he was laying out a bed for himself, simply said, “Saves me from the walk back.” He did not add how he had been sleeping under roofs and inside walls for weeks now and was ready to have the sky over him again. Or, presently, sky and apple branches.
    Gil and Piers had finished with the pottage. Rose put the bowls and spoons in the pot and sloshed water from the bucket over them, sufficient to soak them overnight but leaving water enough in the bucket for face-washing come the morning. Necessities were done away among the trees, most clothing was taken off, and everyone lay down to their sleep, Joliffe no less readily than the others. He was maybe awake the longest, listening to their breathing go even around him and watching a bright star straight overhead appear and disappear with the gentle sway of apple boughs. Somewhere away in the darkness, Tisbe was tearing grass, and now that talk had stopped, he was aware of the unconsidered sounds of night-insects in trees and grass. Not for the first time in these past weeks, he wondered what had led him to be fool enough to accept Bishop Beaufort’s offer. A player’s life was a hard one, but in all the different ways of living there were, what life in its own way was not? You chose the hard one that had the most about it that you liked, and he had chosen to be a player and still loved the life that had come with that choice. Given that, why was he imperiling it all?
    He did not know. Except that he had wanted not only the life he had been living but more. Not other, and not instead, but more. Bishop Beaufort had offered that more.
    He realized he was not seeing the star anymore because his eyes had closed. His lids were too heavy to open again, nor did he want to. Sleep was