A Play of Treachery

by Margaret Frazer

  “He came to read to us. He made us laugh,” Guillemete said, and added to Joliffe, “You are better at the reading than Master Strugge was. He did not make us laugh at all. Except when he had to speak French. His French made me laugh.”

  “And she did,” Alizon said despairingly. “To his face.”

  “He did not even try to make it better,” Guillemete went on. “But then he did not like being here. He was afraid.” She gave a shrug of one shoulder. “As if we are not more safe in Rouen than anywhere.”

  Joliffe, to rescue Alizon from her sister’s burbling, jibed at Cauvet, “So have you come, like the others, to learn manners among the duchess’ ladies?”

  “No. I’ve come to collect my lord’s young men and take them back where they belong, before the dragon breathes fire and burns them all to a crisp nothing.” Cauvet shifted his eyes sideways toward M’dame sitting in the shadows beyond the bed, unnoted by Joliffe until then, her gimlet gaze surely taking in all details of what passed, even if she could not overhear everything.

  “Just as we will be, for having been too long in talk with only Master Ripon,” Alizon said.

  She laid a hand on her sister’s arm to draw her away. Letting herself be drawn, Guillemete said cheerfully, “Oh, we shall blame it all on me. M’dame will believe that.”

  Cauvet, his eyes on them as they went away to join a laughing pair of other girls and several youths—the glowering Alain not among them—shook his head. “A household of children. That’s what we have here.”

  “M’dame would be pleased to be thought that young,” Joliffe observed.

  “She would not. Poor woman. His grace the duke of Bedford did not want his young wife to take up all a wife’s cares and duties before she had done being a child. He let her keep many of her young companions this while. But they’re of an age that time is come for them to be married away. My lord her uncle purposes to give her older companions in their place. The dragon will have an easier time of it then.”

  “If the Lady Jacquetta agrees to these changes,” Joliffe murmured, half in doubt, half in question.

  Cauvet answered both the question and the doubt with, “She understands her place as the duke of Bedford’s widow, and all that she owes her uncle. She will do as she is bid.”

  Joliffe supposed she would. After all, doing as she was bid was part of the price a high-born woman paid to live in such comfort and safety.

  Chapter 9

  The morning brought the cascading call of Rouen’s church bells from all over the town, summoning people to Sunday Mass and prayers. Lady Jacquetta and all those of her household and of the bishop’s not needed at immediate duties elsewhere went to Joyeux Repos’ own chapel, as they did every morning. It was a beautiful place, not over-large but delicately made, with slenderly fluted pillars of pale stone arching to a stone-vaulted ceiling painted gold and cream. Tall windows full of deepest-blue glass curved behind the altar in an apse whose ceiling was of a matching blue flecked with heaven’s golden stars. It was a place that graced the eye with beauty while minds and hearts were graced with God’s word, and for added measure, there was a choir of several well-voiced clergy and half a dozen boys who sang their parts of the service with angelic purity. More than that, today Bishop Louys himself performed the Mass, with added prayers of thanks for his safe return from England and much incense.

  By the time it was done, Joliffe had had quite enough of holiness, and in the general leaving from the chapel, he wove his way through the lesser household folk with whom he had stood, trying to move quickly without seeming to, but nonetheless among the first away. Passing through the great hall, he took a share of the bread and cheese set out there on a trestle table for everyone’s breakfasting but kept going, eating as he went, all the way back and up to his sleeping place where he snatched his cloak from its peg and immediately pelted back down the stairs to the yard. He finished the bread and cheese on the way and swung his cloak around his shoulders as he went out into the morning cold that was even colder once he was through the gateway and into the wind cutting along the street, pushing him into a huddled rush among the huddled rush of other folk as ready to be out of the cold as soon as might be.

  He found his way to the cathedral easily enough, spent no time admiring it from outside but hurried in by the first open door. He did not expect the cathedral’s stone-vaulted vastness to be noticeably warmer than the outside, but to be out of the wind was something, and he found that braziers were burning here and there along the nave and transepts, making small islands of warmth. He unchilled his hands at one of them, then set to wandering. The place was well-worth wandering in, but he saw less than he might have, centered too much on the very many chapels there were, all of them feasts of color with their painted screens and the stained glass windows, the richly embroidered altar cloths and kneeling cushions and painted pictures of each chapel’s particular saint, all bathed in the light of many prayerfully lighted candles.

  He happened to be in St. Nicholas’ chapel, standing considering the retable showing St. Nicholas in his bishop-robes working his series of miracles for young women, schoolboys, and sailors, when a woman sidled to his side. He was surprised. For no good reason, he had been expecting a man, and certainly not a woman who looked a respectable housewife of middle years, pleasantly plump, her wimple and veil clean and white, her cloak anonymously gray. Her voice was plain, too, as she asked him in English, “Is this the only sort of beauty you’ve in mind, good sir? Or might you be interested in a warmer kind?”

  “A warmer kind?” Joliffe returned. “What warmer kind might that be?”

  “A black-haired woman warmer kind? With soft curves and willing ways?”

  “Yourself?”

  That surprised a laugh from her, quickly curbed, although her eyes were still merry as she answered, “No. You just come along with me, young sir, and you won’t be disappointed. I promise you.”

  He made a small gesture of acceptance that bade her lead the way.

  She said, “Best you keep some paces behind me and don’t keep looking about to see if we’re followed; just come,” and walked away from him.

  He stayed where he was a few moments longer, head bowed in apparent prayer. It unexpectedly turned into true prayer. St. Nicholas was after all protector of sailors in peril, and Joliffe was sharply aware that, in a sense, he was about to embark on a new and probably perilous course on an unknown sea, so to say. A prayer to St. Nicholas seemed reasonable, and he briefly made it, crossed himself, and left the chapel.

  The woman was standing not far away, gazing up raptly at one of the nave’s high windows glowing azure, crimson, and gold against sunlight briefly escaping the day’s clouds. As Joliffe neared her, she gave a great sigh, as of pleasure or satisfaction at so much beauty, and without seeming to see him, turned away and joined the come-and-go of other townsfolk through a near transept door. Joliffe, not seeming to see her any more than she had him, followed.

  The wind was tattering the clouds away, but the sunlight had no particular warmth and no one was lingering anywhere in the streets. The woman hurried, too, but Joliffe had no trouble keeping her in sight the short way they went from the cathedral, along one street and then another. He saw when she turned into an alleyway and turned into it after her. She was waiting in its shadows, lingered only long enough to say, “Learn this way,” and went on.

  The alley ran narrowly between head-high plank fences of rear yards. Since it apparently did not matter if he were seen here with the woman—not that there was anyone else here to see them, and only a few windows in the taller houses might give view over the high fences—Joliffe kept close behind her, avoiding the refuse heaps beside some of the back-gates and paying heed to the various turns they made, until at a blank-faced gate where the woman rattled a latch open, went in, stood aside for Joliffe to pass her, then shut the gate behind him while he stood aside to let her lead on, up the path between straw-covered garden beds to the back door of a tall and narr
ow house not different from any of its neighbors.

  That back door opened into a long, stone-floored passageway that looked to lead straight through to the front of the house, but the woman said, “Wait here,” and turned aside, into a kitchen where a girl was stirring a pot hung over low-burning coals on a wide cooking hearth. From where he had been left in the doorway, Joliffe could smell it was a meat-rich stew in the pot and saw the woman take the spoon from the girl, give a firm stir, give the spoon back with an approving nod, and open the door of a bread oven for a quick look at whatever was there. She must have approved of that, too, because she immediately closed the door and turned back to Joliffe, saying as she rejoined him, “This way now,” and led him on along the passageway to a narrow stairs.

  “You go up those,” she said. “When he’s done with you, come back to the kitchen and you’ll be fed.”

  With the good smell of the stew in his nose, Joliffe would have preferred to be fed now, but he only nodded, and started up the stairs as she went busily back toward the kitchen. He had had no clear thought about what he would find, but the stairs brought him simply to an ordinary room, long and narrow like the house, with the plastered walls painted a pleasant yellow and thick-woven rush matting on the floor. At one end, a wood-framed window overlooked the street, a long table set under it. At the other end, blue curtains were closed around a bed. A small fire burned in the fireplace of a brick chimney rising from the kitchen, and a short settle and a barrel-backed chair, both cushioned, stood angled to the fire in homely comfort.

  A man was just rising from the chair. He was as lean as Joliffe, somewhat taller, and a good number of years older, with white edging his dark hair. The full cut and gray-furred edging of his dark-gray surcoat over his plain dark doublet told he was prosperous, but there was nothing else to show what his place in the world might be, only that it was surely higher than Joliffe’s, and Joliffe took off his hat and bowed as the man turned toward him and said in English, “Master Ripon.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Will you be able to find this house again, by the way you just came?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “The alleyway is between the fourth and fifth houses on the left-hand side when coming from the cathedral. There’s a deep notch cut hip-high into the corner post of the houses on each side of the alleyway, to mark it. After ten paces, the way splits to right and left. A notch is cut in a fence there to show you go right. After that, your gate is fifteen paces along, with a deep notch cut on the left-side post of the gateway to make it certain.” He hesitated before adding, “I’m not sure if there’s something particular needed to loosen the latch.”

  “There is, and you’ll be shown it,” the man said. He smiled. It was a warm and ordinary smile that went with the warm and ordinary room. “You’re settling well in the duchess’ household?”

  “I seem to be satisfactory. No one has complained yet about my work or seems suspicious of me. Last night I read aloud to the duchess and her people and think I’ll be asked to do it again.”

  “What of your French? Is it good or ill?”

  “It’s acceptably poor, I think. I understand it better than I speak it, but haven’t admitted to how much I understand, except to Master Wydeville.”

  The man made a sudden right-handed slap at Joliffe’s face. Without thought Joliffe threw up his left arm, blocking the blow. At the same time, equally without thought, he grabbed low for the man’s left wrist coming with a fist for his stomach. For an intense moment they stood frozen in that pose of block-and-grab, staring into each other’s eyes, before the man smiled, eased, and drew back a step at the same moment Joliffe smiled and let him go. The man nodded his approval. “Good. Not slow. Not over-driven to strike back. We’ll go upstairs now.”

  Another steep, narrow rise of stairs against one side of the room took them to the floor above. Joliffe expected there would be another room there, if the house were that tall, or else simply the sloped place under the roof where servants would sleep. Indeed, there was a room there, and it was directly under the slope of the roof, but only because the ceiling that might have been between it and the attic had been removed, leaving an unexpectedly tall space, the purpose of which Joliffe immediately understood as he saw the various weapons racked along one wall.

  “A training place,” he said.

  “It is. With what weapons do you think yourself skilled?”

  Joliffe held in a smile at that “think yourself” and answered, “What I’ve used most is a club.”

  “Have you done much dagger-work?”

  “Not enough to say I’m good at it.”

  “Good. Knowing what you don’t know is a fine place to start.”

  Joliffe gestured sideways. “Won’t we be heard?” The walls of plaster and wattle shared with the houses on either side would hardly be sufficient to muffle any great noise of clashing weapons.

  The man nodded to one side. “There the house is empty and will stay so. To the other side—that happens to be Master Wydeville’s own house and he’s a solitary man whose few servants ask no questions.”

  “Is it”—Joliffe considered how best to ask this—“well done to have somewhere like this at next door to the spymaster’s own house? Given there’s been trouble of late over spies being too known?”

  The man made a small nod, not so much answering the question as approving the asking of it as he answered, “What’s known about me is that I’ve been in France for twenty years, come upward from plain archer to prosperity and no longer a soldier; that I give training here to anyone willing to pay to better their weapon-skills; and that I’ve long been a friend of Master Wydeville. I can’t help what else may be suspected. You will, in the next few days, let people know you’re becoming very uneasy at all the talk of Armagnacs and Burgundians and war. Someone will, where others can hear it, recommend me. I’m well known as a weapons master. Then you’ll be able to come in by the front door here once in a while with no one taking heed. Other times you’ll come by that back way, for lessons in other than weapons.”

  “You’ll be teaching me those, too?”

  The man gave a grin that showed his dog-teeth. “No. Weapons are what I do. Master Wydeville prefers his spies be subtle enough to need no use of dagger or sword, but there’s always the chance, and if it comes, best they be good at it. That’s what I’m for. I’m Master Doncaster, by the way. So. We’ll begin.”

  They began not with daggers, as Joliffe expected, but—stripped to their shirts and hosen—with wrestling.

  “Your body is as much a part of the fight as whatever weapon you have in hand,” Master Doncaster said. “You need awareness of it.”

  The man who had taught wrestling to Joliffe years ago had said much the same. Since then, Joliffe had not much used the skills he had learned; he was thrown more than once before a particularly jarring fall seemed to shake them all back into his head, and at his next grappling with Master Doncaster, he hooked a leg around one of Master Doncaster’s and with a twist and a shift of his balance he had forgotten until then, he had the man down. After that, they traded one fall apiece, and Master Doncaster said he was satisfied that sometime, somewhere, Joliffe had had some manner of good training at it.

  He did not ask when or where, and Joliffe did not offer to say.

  They went to wooden practice daggers, balanced and weighted to the feel of true ones. As with the wrestling, his training with weapons was long past, but with his once-skill probably reawakened by the wrestling, Joliffe did “not so badly as you might,” according to Master Doncaster at the end of trying him for a lengthy while. Joliffe nonetheless knew by the ache on his thigh when he had downward-blocked a thrust away from his ribs but not far enough aside to miss his leg that he would be bruised there when he looked.

  When they were dressed again, Master Doncaster asked to see Joliffe’s own dagger, looked at it carefully, tried its balance, and said, “A fine one. Sheffield ste
el, I think. Somewhat misused but still sound. In need of right sharpening, though.” He showed how a fine blade should be wooed by a whetstone, as he put it, then polished the blade with a soft cloth and handed the dagger back to Joliffe, warning, “It will cut the wind now, as they say. So be careful of it. Best, too, you put it away for now and get a different dagger the first chance you have. Some hearty pig-sticker with a fool’s hilt, to go with your talk of being worried over the war. That will make plain past questioning your need to be sent to me for lessons.”

  Joliffe nodded that he understood, keeping to himself his resolve to oblige Master Wydeville’s desire that his spies be subtle enough to avoid the need to use dagger or sword—devoutly adding his own hope that no one would ever have desire to use dagger against him, either. Or—saints forbid—a sword.

  A while later, he left Master Doncaster’s with a bowlful of the good stew inside him, followed the alley back to the street, and strolled along it, meaning to see if he could tell which were Master Doncaster’s and Master Wydeville’s houses but finding it no challenge because of the sign painted with crossed swords hung above what had to be Master Doncaster’s door. Ah, well.

  Then, on the chance someone might ask where he had been for so much of the day, he set to briskly walking as much of Rouen as seemed reasonable to allow for his absence if he had been merely strolling all this while. For good measure, he spent time in a tavern near the quay, to be able to name somewhere particular he had been. But he returned to Joyeux Repos to find clusters of angrily talking men crowding the great hall, and seeing his fellow-clerk George was in one of the near clusters, Joliffe edged up to him to ask, “What’s amiss? What’s happened?”

  “Where’ve you been, to miss the uproar? Taking a nap?” George returned. “It’s Burgundy, damn him. All the bishop’s going to England in hope of making a peace was a farce and a waste. Damned Burgundy never meant anything but war from the first.”