Free A Play of Dux Moraud by Margaret Frazer Page A

do while here before going on with more of Gil’s training.
    Joliffe, supposing that Basset and Ellis could see to Gil, asked if he could spend this uncommon leisure time writing over Dux Moraud, an old play among the ones they hadn’t used for a time, while he had the chance.
    “Are you still set on trying to make that thing work?” Ellis said. “It’s ugly.”
    “People will love it,” Joliffe returned.
    “It’s sickening.”
    “You’ll play the duke.”
    Ellis glowered. Whatever he thought about the rest of the play, the duke’s role was too good for him even to pretend he would not savor it. Their argument over the play always went this way, but this time he said, “So you’re thinking Gil would play the daughter and you’d be the wife?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then,” said Ellis with great satisfaction, “I could at least play from the heart the part where I order your death.”
    Piers laughed. Joliffe feigned a clout along side of his head, and grinning, got out the small, slant-topped box where he kept ink and quills and what paper they could afford. With that and a cushion, he was about to go to the cartshed’s corner beyond their cart and set himself to work when the boy Will came around the corner of the carpentry shop. The look he gave over his shoulder as he came betrayed he was supposed to be somewhere else, and Basset asked him, friendly enough and much as he would have Piers, “In flight from lessons, young master?”
    “From my mother. She said I should spend the afternoon with the women. I told her Father Morice wanted me. He’ll tell her later he didn’t, but by then I won’t have been with the women all afternoon.”
    “Surely your Father Morice wouldn’t betray you,” Basset said.
    “He’s not my Father Morice,” Will said with an edge of scorn. “He’s Mother’s. She chose him. St. Augustine’s is her church, see.”
    “Her church?” Basset asked, all mild and encouraging interest, not for the mere sake of talk but because the more they understood about the family, the less likely they were to set a foot wrong. “The manor came to your father by marriage, then?”
    “Oh, no.” Will was brightening under Basset’s easy attention to him. “The manor was his all along, but Mother’s family held the church and half the village. The families had meant to marry together for years, because Father’s family held the mill by Mother’s family’s manor. If they married, they could trade properties, you see, and it would all suit better. They kept having all sons, though. Both families. Until Mother. So that’s why they married, but she kept the right to choose the priest here as part of the marriage agreement and she chose Father Morice.” Will dropped his voice as if to impart a secret, his eyes gleaming with mischief. “Father says Father Morice is a waggle-tongued old woman.”
    Basset chuckled appreciatively. “So you don’t mind giving up your tutor for this week or so?”
    “No!” Will was triumphant about it.
    Openly musing, Basset led on, “It’s a long while they’re at this marriage talk.”
    “It’s all the dealing they’re doing. Who gets what and gives what. Mother says Master Breche is too much the merchant.” Will put scorn into the word. “He’ll give up no more than he must and as little as may be and yet still have the marriage.”
    Joliffe held back from pointing out that Sir Edmund must be “merchanting” just as hard if the dealing was going on this long. Instead, he offered, “Still, Father Morice must be well-witted enough, if Sir Edmund wants his help with it all.”
    Will laughed. “Father says he finds more fiddling small points to be talked out than a mouse finds wheat kernels in a granary.”
    So the priest was talkative but sharp enough that he was valued by Sir Edmund. And he liked plays. Basset had done well to gain his good will last night. A priest who took against players and could put his case well would have been a bother,