A Play of Isaac Read Online Free PDF Page A

could stay where they were if they could pay and so long as he didn’t need the space for someone who would pay more. “As for rehearsing, we know the play well. Our practicing will be slight and otherwise our time is our own. Or yours, if we may be of service,” he added with a slight, respectful bow.
    Master Penteney was probably no more deceived by Basset’s smooth words than Joliffe was. Just as Basset would not have survived his years as a player without sharp wits and skill at bargaining, neither would Master Penteney be where he was without the same. Apparently he likewise appreciated good bargaining when he met it, because he said, level-voiced but with a warm glint of laughter in his face, “Well, Master Fairfield has taken an interest in you . . .”
    “Plays,” Lewis said happily. “They can do plays for me.”
    “. . . and I see no reason to deny him the diversion, if it’s convenient to you. Besides, we’re to have guests this week. Somewhat many and of importance at an evening feast on Wednesday, a few friends and neighbors to Thursday supper. Would you be interested to perform for us those times?”
    “In return for staying here?” Basset asked politely.
    “If that would seem a fair exchange to you. Board and lodging these five days in return for obliging Lewis and performing for our guests?” Master Penteney asked back as politely.
    The offer was more than fair. It was all that Basset had hoped for and probably more than he’d thought to get and it had come more as a gift than by bargaining. But Master Richard said with the quiet certainty of someone pointing out a reasonable thing, “Father, there’s going to be no room to spare. Once Lord and Lady Lovell and their people come . . .”
    “I hardly think Master Basset and his company expect to stay in our guest rooms,” Master Penteney said.
    Basset immediately, smoothly, agreed. “Assuredly not, sir. A corner of any clean place suits us very well.”
    And when pushed to it, so did unclean places if there was no other way to have a roof and walls between them and the weather, but neither he nor Joliffe was about to say so.
    “There then,” Master Penteney said to his son. “The winter stores are mostly emptied and the hay hardly yet begun to come in. Why not the great barn? They can stay there at no one’s inconvenience, surely.”
    “Who’s going to see to Lewis going back and forth to them?” Master Richard asked.
    “Matthew, as always. Nor is there any reason they can’t come to the hall. They’ll want to work in it before they perform in it anyway.”
    Master Penteney was knowledgeable as well as generous, Joliffe thought. All too often people had to be persuaded players did not step out of thin air into a place to do a play.
    He was knowledgeable of more than that, too: he had said Basset’s name without—to the best of Joliffe’s remembering—anyone having said it either here or at the inn.
    “It’s going to mean five more people to feed,” Master Richard said. “Shouldn’t you ask Mother . . .”
    “Five more mouths won’t break us. Say we do it in honor and for the sake of our Lord’s Body.”
    Everyone, Lewis a little behind the others, crossed themselves at the mention of Corpus Christi. Then Master Penteney paused as if waiting for something. When nothing came, he cocked a questioning look at his son. “No other objections?”
    Master Richard solemnly shook his head.
    “I can’t say you made much of a case against them being here,” his father complained.
    “I didn’t see there was much of one to be made,” Master Richard returned. “If there’s somewhere for them to stay and you’re willing to feed them and they’ll earn their keep, what else was there to protest?”
    “That they’re vagabonds and therefore probably rascals and so shouldn’t be allowed inside our gates, let be spend whole nights here, able to work who knows what ill doings?” Master Penteney suggested.
    Master Richard smiled.