A Play of Isaac Read Free Page B

say they can stay and then there’ll be no need for tempers lost at all.”
    Except perhaps by Geva who said, “We can’t troop through the streets with a band of players at our heels. I won’t!”
    She sounded as ready to make trouble over having her own way as Lewis was, but Basset, putting something of her own dismay into his voice, instantly agreed, “Assuredly not, my good lady. But if I came and . . .” He threw a quick look past Ellis in his shirt and hosen and bare feet to Joliffe, marginally more dressed with shoes already on and his workaday brown doublet in his hand. “. . . and Master Southwell with me, we can talk to whomever the decision lies with or . . .” He dropped his voice and leaned a little forward, conspirator-wise. “. . . at least have Master Fairfield home without trouble. You see what I mean.”
    She saw, and her struggle between choosing to go through the streets with a wailing Lewis or with two men who, after all, looked presentable enough, despite what they were, was both visible to Joliffe and brief before she said, taking hold of her husband’s arm again, “Yes. That would do. Yes, let’s do that. Simon, would you make him come now?”
    Simon turned back to Lewis, quiet now that things seemed to be going his way. Joliffe flung on his doublet, and Basset turned to Rose who briskly smoothed his hair, centered his belt buckle, handed him his hat, and when he had put it on, nodded he was fit to be seen. She was his daughter and Piers his grandson but she saw to them both with an almost identical and frequently aggravated affection. Now, for good measure, she also ran a quick eye over Joliffe to be sure of him, which he acknowledged with a twitch of a grin at the corners of his mouth, knowing that to Rose he and Piers were much of an age and often of like trouble.
    With the dignity he kept despite how much the world at large sought to take it from him, Basset faced Richard again. “We’re ready when you are, Master Fairfield.”
    “Penteney,” Richard corrected. “I’m Master Richard Penteney. Master Fairfield and his brother Master Simon are my father’s wards.”
    Which went some way to straightening how matters stood—but not to explaining the mingled glint of wariness and question that crossed Basset’s face, there and quickly gone and probably undiscernable to anyone who didn’t know his face as well as Joliffe did. Besides that, Joliffe knew, too, how well Basset could keep hidden behind his face what he wanted to keep hidden. What had disconcerted him that much in the little that Master Richard Penteney had said?
    There was time only to wonder at it in passing. Lewis, persuaded by Simon that at least some of the players were coming with them and the rest would follow, was eager to go; but after taking Simon’s hand he turned back to say at Joliffe again, “You were the Devil.”
    Joliffe admitted that with a slight bow. “I was, indeed.”
    “I liked you.”
    “You were supposed to,” Joliffe said, answering Lewis’s grin with his own.
    “Lewy, come on,” Mistress Geva ordered from ahead, already away into the innyard on her husband’s arm. “Be a good boy.”
    “Good boy, good boy,” Lewis repeated under his breath, as if the words tasted bad, but Joliffe patted his shoulder and said, “Go ahead. We’ll be with you,” and Lewis went away with Simon, leaving Joliffe and Basset to follow in their wake as they left the innyard.
    Joliffe took the chance to shift near enough to Basset to say, private under the general talk of passers-by around them, “What are you about? You really think they’ll have us to stay? Or are you just being obliging, helping them take their idiot home?”
    “Obliging, to be sure, my lad, and at the worst likely to have a few pence for our trouble. Then again, this is a very well-kept idiot. If they indulge him this far, they’re likely to indulge him farther, maybe even to keeping us these few days to keep him happy.”
    “And