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there is on stage is Herod raving and the Messenger standing there like a block, dodging a blow ever now and then. I’d be glad of you having a look at the script to see what more might be done with him.”
    “Yes. Gladly,” Joliffe said, meaning it. Even in the days when his playing was worth nothing better than next-to-nothing parts, he had earned his place in the company by his deft way with words, bettering what plays the company had, changing them when the company shrank or grew, sometimes even making an altogether new one when need be. He mostly enjoyed the working with words, expected he would enjoy it now, but said on a half-stifled yawn, “Not tonight, though.”
    Basset matched him with a yawn not stifled at all and agreed, “Not tonight.”
    “I’d best get my bedding from the cart then. By the by, where are Tisbe and Pyramus?” The company’s two horses.
    “Master Silcok is paying for their keep in someone’s pasture outside the town.”
    “Master Silcok is being very good to you all.”
    “Master and Mistress Silcok are ambitious to stand large in Coventry. Part of that seems to mean being generous patrons to the players who will make their guild’s play the best that’s ever been seen here.”
    “Board and lodging for us and our horses. Very fine.”
    “Very fine indeed,” Basset agreed.
    Rose, readying to ease Piers’ head from her lap so she could rise, said quietly, “Nor you’ve no need to go out. Your bedding is already here, over there with the rest of ours.”
    Joliffe, already on his feet, bowed his thanks.
    Ellis, up, too, and heading toward the pile of bedding, added in his grumbling way, “After all, it took you long enough to come. We’ve been expecting you to show your face here any time these past few days.”
    Joliffe bowed again, to Ellis this time and mockingly, hiding how inwardly glad he was to be as “home” as he was ever likely to be.

Chapter 4
     
    S ince there was no peace to be had in the players’ upper chamber once several women gathered to their sewing there with Rose, Joliffe spent the next morning cramped into a corner of the players’ cart with the scroll of the Nativity (it being called that for simplicity’s sake) play entrusted to him by Basset. Before seeing what might be done with the Messenger, he made a quick read through the whole play, this being Basset’s copy and so all of it. Everyone else in the play would have only his own part and whatever line from someone else’s speech cued each of his own speeches. That saved on ink and paper but could make confusion over what happened when and with whom until everyone became familiar with whatever play they were doing.
    That, at least, would not be a problem here: the story was too familiar, and probably the whole play, too, it being done every year for Corpus Christi here, but that of course was a problem in itself—the play might be too familiar. How to make the familiar exciting nonetheless was the challenge Basset had taken up, and Joliffe read with that in his mind. The prophet Isaiah’s single long speech at the play’s very beginning was not a trouble. Besides giving the lookers-on time to shuffle about and settle to heeding what came next, once it was done whoever played Isaiah would be free to change garb and be someone else in the play. Next came the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary to announce the Christ child’s coming. Angelic wings were always a problem, both for the wearer and for anyone around them, but they were a familiar trouble, and familiar, too, was the exchange between Mary and Joseph when, outraged and disappointed, he learns she is with child, only to be reassured by the Angel reappearing to calm him.
    It was from there that Joliffe saw the worth of Ellis’ grumbles about the play. Pageant wagons were never over-large. They could not be, since they were pulled through town streets, sometimes around tight corners, from playing place to playing place by a guild’s