A Play of Isaac by Margaret Frazer Page A

balance, they made for disease of body and mind. But Joliffe gestured her protest aside with, “It’s an oversight on the part of physicians throughout history. There is a sky-blue humour and I am filled with it.”
    Rose heaved an impatient sigh at him. “Are you staying or going? Basset is having a few words with Master Penteney. The others are waiting at the gate.”
    “I’m by all means staying.” Because he had not liked Jack Melton the other times they had met. As Basset well knew. Joliffe waved a hand at her. “Go and disport yourselves. I’ll tend to my own business here.”
    “Tend to your lines in Pride ,” Rose said, to remind him all wasn’t as well with the world as he might think, and left.
    Too used to her ways to be bothered at all, Joliffe took his time over the food. It was both plentiful and good which spoke well of Mistress Penteney’s housekeeping. She did not do the cooking herself but surely she had chosen and oversaw whoever was the cook and she likewise determined what was cooked and how it was apportioned, and he thought he might fall in love with her on account of the meat pie alone, never mind the berry tart in its cream.
    Food finished, a long drink of ale taken to wash it all down, and the bowl cleaned and set by to be returned to the hall, he took out The Pride of Life ’s playbook and, not to suit Rose but because he had intended to, went twice over his lines. By the time the light was faded enough that reading was passing from difficult to impossible, he knew both his part and Ellis’s well enough to count on making fair fun of Ellis tomorrow when they practiced.
    The playbook put away, he strolled to the barn door again and stood looking out, stretching his back and considering what to do next. It was too early to sleep and he was weary of words, spoken or read, and even if he had felt like going to some tavern after all and locked the barn behind him, there was no spare key to the padlock, no way for the others to get back in if they returned before he did. That was no problem, though, since he did not feel like being in company of any kind. Nor did he look in any danger of having any here, that was sure. On a warm summer’s evening of a holiday week, with the day’s work done and sports of one kind and another to be had all over Oxford, no one seemed to have lingered around the yard for someone to find something for them to do. The place had an air of pleasant desertion. Except for . . .
    Joliffe cocked his head, listening to laughter from beyond the line of sheds, muffled by them but seeming to come from behind the house.
    Deciding he could leave the cart to itself for a while, he pulled the barn door shut without padlocking it and crossed the few open yards between the barn and the sheds to the narrow gap out of which Piers and Lewis had come this morning. The sheds were made with close-joined plank walls instead of wattle-and-daub, and the roofs were of slate instead of simply thatch. All of that and the locks on every door testified to the worth of whatever goods and foodstuffs Master Penteney kept stored here. Since he was a victualler and therefore dealt in a variety of things, not all of them on the hoof, that was very reasonable and expected. What was not reasonable—and still in Joliffe’s mind—was that moment of understanding between him and Basset when they first met. They were two men with nothing alike in their lives except they were something of the same age. Where or how had they come to know something about each other that made them want to keep secret they knew each other at all?
    Tiredness and satisfaction yesterday and work today had kept Joliffe from wondering about that, but the wondering came back now as he went into the gap between the sheds. He knew nothing about Master Penteney beyond these two days but the man looked so set and settled into his life that it was hard to think he had ever been other than he was. And Basset, on his side, had the