Joliffe gave her a small, respectful bow. “Alas, that’s a matter oft debated. But surely you must know quite well how tedious it is to live too closed in with people for hours into days into weeks on end? No matter one’s mutual interests, the tedium does grow.” Frevisse lifted her chin at his presumption. But Joliffe grinned at her, friendly and knowing together, and despite herself her mouth tweaked toward an answering smile. As often, truth lay in a jest; she understood exactly what he meant, especially being so newly come from chapter meeting. But Joliffe did not press the advantage of her tacit admission. Instead he said, no more seriously, “I should warn you, though, that Ellis is in a black mood. Piers being ill has waked the father in him and made him perilous to live with. Or at least direly unpleasant.”
Suppressing an urge toward another smile, Frevisse said, “I doubt Piers’s peril is very great. Kept warm and quiet, he should mend. I didn’t realize he was Ellis’s son.” She glanced toward the courtyard gateway where a man dressed like a noble’s servant was riding in.
Joliffe followed her look but went on with his banter. “He maybe is and maybe isn’t. Ellis is happy to think so. But he’s maybe Bassett’s. Or maybe mine. Rose won’t say, bless her for a clever wench.” He sighed and placed a dramatic hand more or less over his heart. “We’d have a happier time of it if Ellis were only like me, all dismal, my heart in tatters at a small boy’s peril, but my temper ever soft and flowing as a silken ribbon.”
“But now and again Ellis takes his possibility of fatherhood too seriously?”
“It comes from too much sobriety. If it goes on too long, he begins to have temper and fancies.”
“He’s given to drink?” She hoped not. If he were, the players’ stay might be less easy than she had hoped.
“Not of ale or wine. It’s emotions he craves. A few days without performing and his unused feelings build up in him, turning him tense and very…tedious.”
Frevisse turned that thought over in her mind. Unused emotions, held in too long, were a common enough trouble in a nunnery. She might even admit that her own tolerance for tedium was thinner than it ought to be; and a volatile man could indeed be burdensome to those around him. “Then mayhap I’ve a solution for you. Our lady prioress is wondering if you would perform for us.” She caught a glint of impure mischief in Joliffe’s eyes and added, “Something suitable to the season and the place, you understand.”
Joliffe’s expression changed to show surprise that she could imagine he would ever think anything else. “My lady, your prioress honors us by her request. Surely we have something proper to this time and place.”
She glanced over to see that a servant was taking care of the new visitor. Frevisse judged that he was probably someone’s messenger seeking brief respite from the cold. Any of the guesthall servants could see to him; he did not need to concern her.
Joliffe had begun to walk toward the guesthall. Frevisse fell into step beside him, her own long stride matching his as she said, with due consideration, “If there’s chance that Piers is yours, you set to the business very young.” She gave Joliffe a slantwise look to match his own at her and added, with an eyebrow raised in caustic questioning, “Or are you perhaps trying to shock me?”
Joliffe laughed out loud delightedly, delightfully, and paused to flourish her a bow. “You are a very Solomon!” More soberly he added, “It’s Rose’s way of keeping us together. She shares his fatherhood among us, and because none of us wants to lose his claim on him, our band stays together. And has stayed together so long now that we’ve grown into something better than the usual ragtag miscellany of road folk banded together for a season or a year or two.”
The servant who had been talking to the newcomer crossed the yard to intercept them. He bowed and said, “If it please you, my lady, there is a man with a letter for you.”
Frevisse looked over to see that the messenger was waiting while another servant led his horse away toward the stable. Now that she looked closer, something about him was familiar. For a moment she hesitated, then went toward him, and he responded by eagerly coming to meet her. He bowed low to her and as he straightened, she exclaimed, “Hobden! It is you, then?”
“Aye, lady. It’s me.” He grinned all across his broad face. “And I was thinking it was you. Even all dressed like that, you’re still you and no mistaking. When were you last on a horse, is my question?”
“A good long while, I promise you. But I’ve not forgotten. I could still give you a race if we came to it.”
“There’s no doubting that. You had a way in the saddle that lasts longer than lessons.”
“Is May well? And your girls?”
“May is well, thank you for asking. And the girls have made me a grandfather thrice over now.”
“Have I been gone that long?” Hobden’s daughters had only begun to look at boys when she had left her uncle’s keeping to enter St. Frideswide’s. “Yes,” she added before he could answer. “I suppose I have.”
“Long and long, lady,” Hobden agreed.
He was, indeed, now that she looked at him, far older in his face than he had been when he was one of her uncle’s main stable hands. And so must she be, too, she thought, though lack of mirrors in St. Frideswide’s spared her too detailed knowledge of the fact.
“But that’s the way of things.” He was cheerful enough about it. “If you don’t grow older, it’s because you’re dead, and I’m not ready for that yet.”
“And my uncle. How does he?” she asked eagerly, and then belatedly, “And my lady aunt?” Aunt Matilda was her mother’s sister, and Thomas Chaucer her uncle only by marriage, but it was with him she had been closest while growing up in their household. Their friendship, begun when she came at age eleven, had lasted the years despite how rarely they saw each other anymore.
“Well, lady. Both of them very well. And here”-Hobden drew a packet from his belt pouch-“is a letter from him for you.”
Frevisse took it with delight, recognizing both her uncle’s clear script and his seal. “Hobden, much thanks. Will you be here a while, that I’ll have time to write an answer?”
“Surely. Master Chaucer gave me leave for that if you wished. And I’d rather sit by a good fire than travel the road this bitter day.”
“Then let me see you to the guesthall and assure the servants you’re to have their special care.”
She took him to the greater guesthall and gave him into the keeping of one of the kitchen servants there with orders that he was to be made comfortable and well fed. She looked at the letter, but thought she would like a leisurely time over it, and instead of opening it, tucked it up her sleeve.
As she went down the steps and turned toward the lesser guesthall, she realized her pleasure in seeing old Hobden had been much like her pleasure in bantering with Joliffe; and that was odd, because she had known Hobden for years of her life, and Joliffe hardly a few hours, and yet felt the same fellowship with him.
Actually, it was not just with Joliffe, it was with all of the players. She liked them, she trusted them, they brightened her day with their presence. Why?
Because of the way they were with one another. That was what made her like and trust them beyond the ordinary. They were bound to one another not only by the needs of their work, but by a strong tie of caring deliberately made and kept by Rose around her son. Frevisse knew full well how strong a tie that could be, and what a shield against the troubles of the road, no matter how unblessed its basis was.