A Play of Treachery

by Margaret Frazer

  One of the other men protested, “That’s not altogether the way of it. He maybe meant it when he asked Luxembourg to ask his brother to go. It was the letters from England that threw it all to nothing.”

  “Ha!” George threw back. “Burgundy was playing for time, nothing else. He’d have found one excuse or another whenever he was ready.”

  “King Henry didn’t have to give him such a fine one on a platter,” another man grumbled.

  “What excuse?” Joliffe asked.

  “There’s that,” George granted, agreeing with the man, not answering Joliffe. “The royal council had no business sending off those letters.”

  “It wasn’t the council,” the second man countered. “It was King Henry signed them.”

  “Don’t be such a simple-head,” a third man snapped. “It’s been King Henry’s name on the council’s orders since he was nine months old. This wasn’t his doing any more than anything has been since then.”

  “Lay you odds that it was,” George said. “King Henry’s of age to take things into his own hands, and aren’t these letters more surely a youth’s throwing of a gauntlet at Burgundy’s face than something the old sober-sides of the royal council would do?”

  “What letters?” Joliffe persisted.

  “Letters to the Zealand towns,” George said. “Letters out of England urging them to rise in revolt against their rotten duke, saying England would back them if they did.”

  The second man laughed. “They’re saying Burgundy fair foamed at the mouth when he heard about it.”

  “Would he would choke on his own bile,” the first man said.

  “It’s wiped out any good might have come from our lord’s time in England, that’s sure,” said the third man gloomily. “Burgundy will settle for nothing but war now.”

  To Joliffe, George said somewhat grimly, “Report is that he’s swearing vengeance and destruction on everything English.”

  “That’s all he’s wanted from the beginning, I tell you,” one of the other men said, which brought the talk back to where it had been when Joliffe joined it. As it started through the same round again, he drifted off, to hear what else was being said around the hall but, finding it all fairly much the same, the only variation being, “Would to God the royal council would choose a new governor and get him here,” which told him word was not yet open about the duke of York.

  When he had heard, several times over, everything there was to hear, he went away, up to the dormer. The wrestling, dagger-work, and walking had somewhat tired him. So had the swirl of anger and talk. Wrapped in his cloak for more warmth, he lay down on his bed. At this hour, the dormer was blessedly quiet, giving him chance to think for a while. Not that he much liked his thoughts. These Zealand letters looked to have set the bad blood between England and Burgundy even further to the bad, and that could not be good for Normandy or what England held in France. Not that anybody had seemed to deeply expect anything else in the long—or maybe even short—run of things, but the Zealand letters had exploded Burgundy’s false front of wanting peace, meaning whatever was going to happen was going to happen all the more soon.

  To the good, Joliffe thought, it all gave him open reason for proclaiming his “fears” to the world and getting that pig-sticker dagger. Beyond that . . .

  He longed for home.

  The thought came from seemingly nowhere and surprised him. He had, by his own deliberate choice, left what had been his home a good many years ago. To find himself missing it now made him look hard at the feeling, distrusting it. Was it only wariness about where he was now, not truly a missing of “home,” that he was feeling? But a closer look showed it was not a place in particular he was missing. What he missed was the familiarity of belonging. In truth, if belonging was “home,” then the other players had been his “home” this while past, and it was them he was missing. Basset, Rose, Ellis, Gil. Even Piers. No matter the changes that daily came with being traveling players, these last few years there had always been them, a familiar core to his life. Now there was no familiar core. There was only change and strangeness. There was only himself.

  He stared at the wood grain of the blank wall beside him. Was he lonely? Was that it? Why should he be? After all, no matter where or with whom he ever was, he had always been alone with himself. At the core of everything there was only himself. Once he had come to understand that, having only himself for company had never been a particular trouble to him.

  Was this maybe more a matter of where he was alone—that he was more completely a stranger here than anywhere he had ever been?

  Players, of necessity always on the move, were used to being constantly strangers, with anyone on the look-out to make trouble willing to turn on them if no one else was to hand. It was simply something players faced, along with days of walking roads and occasionally going hungry—familiar troubles. Here in Normandy, in Rouen, the troubles were unfamiliar ones, and he had the very bad certainty that he barely understood many of them, and the worse certainty that he had not even begun to guess at what some of them might be. More than that, here he was not simply a stranger—to some people he was an outright enemy simply because he was English.

  And today he had begun to learn how to kill men.

  That was part of his deep unease, too. He had never doubted he could kill if he had to, if it came to living rather than dying for himself or a friend. But to learn to kill as a skill . . . To learn it very deliberately . . .

  He did not like the thought of learning how to kill. Of course he liked the thought of being killed even less. But the two went together, didn’t they? He was going to learn how to kill because someday someone might want to kill him, and then he would . . . know how to kill instead of being killed.

  He got abruptly up, dropped his cloak across the bedfoot, and headed for the stairs. Warmth, light, company, talk, and soon supper—those were what he wanted just now. Not thinking.

  Chapter 10

  Because neither Bishop Louys nor Lady Jacquetta came to supper in the hall that evening, there was no ceremony to the meal. The servants served, people ate, and it was done. Through it, the talk was still about Burgundy and what was likely to come next, and minding Master Doncaster’s bidding, Joliffe showed himself very ill-eased and unhappy, even muttering that Strugge knew what he was doing, taking himself back to England.

  “Strugge is an old woman!” George declared. “We’re in Rouen, for God’s sake. There’s no place safer!”

  Other of the men chorused that, but at the meal’s end, when George and some half-dozen other of them were for going out to a nearby tavern, Joliffe said he should see if he was wanted by Lady Jacquetta. He was jeered at good-humouredly for being afraid of the dark, with a squire claiming, “He’s afraid the French are already in the streets,” then saying with mock surprise, “But wait. They are! This is Rouen. It’s full of French!”

  That sally of wit and accompanying laughter carried George and the others out the foredoor on a swirl of ice-touched wind. Content not to be going out into the cold dark with them, Joliffe went upward, expecting there would be more talk of the news from Burgundy among Lady Jacquetta’s people, but that her rooms would be warm, brightly lighted, and less loud than any tavern.

  What he did not expect, as he came into the outer chamber, were raised voices from the bedchamber beyond, and the demoiselle Guillemete and two others of the ladies whose names he did not yet know clustered tightly just inside the bedchamber doorway, either for protection or in readiness to retreat from Lady Jacquetta, who was out of sight but declaring furiously, “Because I’m weary of it! Weary and sick of it!”

  Or maybe their wariness was of M’dame, answering with equally raised voice, “Your weariness does not matter in this! You are barely four months into your mourning. You . . .”

  “Four months! Yes!” Lady Jacquetta cried. “And eight more before I am to wear anything but black or do anything but sit like a dull old woman.”

  “A year of full mourn
ing is what you owe his grace the duke your husband. At the very least. For your own honor as well as his, you owe him that!”

  By now Joliffe was close behind the demoiselles, able to see over their shoulders into the bedchamber. Rather than last evening’s gathering, there were only Lady Jacquetta’s women there, a lone older man, M’dame, and Lady Jacquetta standing with her arms folded fiercely across herself, saying angrily, “But to have no sport at all! All Christmastide was tedious with doing nothing. A few card games. A little dull music. Nothing more. No dancing. No sport. Nothing! Now you say Shrovetide must be the same. Then it will be Lent, and Lent is always tedious, and this year it will be worse. I will have something at Shrovetide!” She turned sharply toward the man. “Master Fouet, say something! What can we do? I want more than card games and prayers at Shrovetide. What can you offer?”

  Master Fouet had Joliffe’s instant sympathy. He vaguely knew the man was choirmaster of the chapel, which meant that, among other things, he had charge of training and overseeing the boys who sang in the household chapel. Now it seemed he was also expected to be the household’s revel-master, and caught between Lady Jacquetta’s demand at him and M’dame’s gimlet gaze warning him off any rash offers, he looked back and forth between them, his mouth opening and closing with no words coming. Joliffe, out of pity and with pure folly, edged past Guillemete, saying as he went, “What of a play, Master Fouet? A psychomachia? Sins in battle against Virtues?”

  He did not know from where that thought sprang—or why he then let it spring out of his mouth—but as M’dame turned her narrowed gaze upon him, he hurriedly added, “Nothing riotous. No outright fighting. A debate and a formal dance.” He was making this up as he went and gained himself a moment by his low bow to Lady Jacquetta, who did not look taken with any of that, until he straightened from the bow and added, “You could of course be no part of the play itself, my lady”—that was to forestall M’dame—“but some of your ladies might dance, and there would be their lessons to, um, watch, and their dresses to make,” he ended somewhat lamely.

  He thought Lady Jacquetta was showing a spark of wary interest, but Master Fouet protested, “I have no such play!”

  “I can write you one,” Joliffe said before he could stop himself. Gone too far for going back and with everyone looking hard at him, he outright lied, “I did one once for my lord of Winchester’s household. A small one. One year at Shrovetide.”

  Master Fouet’s dignity kept him from outright pleading, but he was near to it as he said toward M’dame, “A thing suitable for the cardinal bishop of Winchester’s household at Shrovetide would surely be seemly here.”

  “Surely!” Lady Jacquetta agreed, glaring at M’dame.

  Giving no sign she noted her lady’s glare, M’dame eyed first Joliffe, then Master Fouet, then said at Joliffe, “I would need to read this play before I agree to it, Master Ripon.”

  Seeing too late the very large flaw in what he had said, Joliffe said quickly, “I have no copy of it here. Not the one I wrote. But I can write it a-new, for you to approve. If it please you, my lady.”

  Master Fouet said worriedly, “We’re not that far from Shrovetide.”

  “The speeches are short. Easily learned,” Joliffe promised. “I’ll make as quick work of writing it as my duties allow.”

  “Your other duties can wait. Begin at once,” Lady Jacquetta ordered.

  Resisting any look toward M’dame—knowing Lady Jacquetta would resent it and equally certain that if M’dame had objection she would make it—Joliffe made a low, acknowledging bow.

  Far too late, he was remembering the proverb that warned against digging a pit with your mouth and then falling into it.

  As he straightened from the bow, Lady Jacquetta gave a sharp clap of her hands and said, “Even before reading the play, we can decide who of my ladies will play which Virtues.”

  Master Fouet began, startled, “I had thought the play would be for the boys of the chapel to . . .”

  “There are only six of them,” Lady Jacquetta said with gleaming mischief. “There are seven Sins and seven Virtues. Now, how would it be if all the Sins were played by my gentlemen and all the Virtues by my ladies? Yes. I like that thought. Yes.”

  Master Fouet turned to Joliffe as if to an ally. Which they now were, Joliffe supposed. At least, they had better be allies, if they were to survive this. And in answer to the choirmaster’s silent plea, he said with a bow to Lady Jacquetta, “It might be best to wait until the play is written before we choose, my lady.” And added, to win Master Fouet and himself more respite, “Would my lady have me read to her again this evening? It being somewhat late to begin taxing my wits with writing tonight.”

  Lady Jacquetta hesitated, then accepted that graciously, and while one of her ladies fetched Reynard, Master Fouet bowed himself out, so that it was only to the ladies Joliffe read, and at the end he escaped with an honest plea of tiredness as the ladies began to talk of which Virtue they would like to be. Although Guillemete said happily that she would rather be one of the Sins. To them all, trying not to let his retreat seem like the flight it actually was, Joliffe smiled and said, “We’ll have to see,” and got himself away.

  But morning inevitably came, and while Joliffe lay listening to the scuffling, moaning, and griping from the other men along the dormer, putting off crawling from under his own blankets and cloak, he considered what he would do. He had once thrown together a play about Sins and Virtues. That much was true. But it had been a farce for mad-cap scholars rather than something fit to play in the bishop of Winchester’s household, and it would not serve for here.

  So.

  A play about the seven deadly Sins and the seven soul-saving Virtues sufficient to divert a bored young duchess while not offending M’dame, and simple enough to be practiced and performed in a very short time before Lent began. Joliffe encouraged himself with the thought that, to the good, once the thing was written, his part in it would be done, the rest of the problem all Master Fouet’s. With that comfort, he finally got himself out of his bed’s warmth and into the morning’s cold, to dress and hurry down to the hall, among the last of the household taking a share of the breakfast ale and bread.

  Being too low in the household to be required to attend every morning’s Mass with Lady Jacquetta and her ladies, he chose not to today and went up to his desk, thoughts about Sins and Virtues twitching in his mind. He found word of his new duty was there ahead of him and that no one seemed to envy him for it. Henri said right out, “I’m glad it is not me.”

  Jacques, clerk of the kitchen accounts, asked, “Is it to be in French or English?”

  Joliffe had not thought that far about it yet but answered immediately and from the heart, “If it’s to be played in French, someone will have to turn it from my English, that’s sure!”

  The others laughed at him and returned to their work. Among the scratching of pens that was soon the only sound among them, Joliffe’s was the least as he played with thoughts. The matter seemed straight enough. After all, there was only so much that could be done with a psychomachia. The Sins—Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, Lust—and the Virtues—which were various, according the purpose of whoever was making a list, but for this would be Humility, Kindness, Patience, Diligence, Liberality, Temperance, and Chastity—had to present themselves, quarrel against each other, and the Virtues be victorious at the end. That was all. What each Sin and Virtue had to say for themselves and to each other was fairly well set out in any number of treatises and other works. All Joliffe need do was write out short verses of no particular original thought for each, and leave it to Master Fouet to put dances or whatever else around them. No, not even verses, since surely the play would be turned to French. Short speeches, then, and anyway it would be the dancing that people most wanted to watch, rather than listening to badly delivered speeches by giggling girls and stiff young men, if this went like every household-done play Joliffe had ever seen in his younger days. B
esides, he should not write it too well. Among the last things he needed was for people to fix in their minds that he had skill that way, because if they did, there might be no end to what was asked of him.

  By late morning he had a number of random-seeming lines scribbled down on paper, but the whole shape of the thing was in his mind, and by late afternoon the Sins’ opening speeches were well toward being finished, and he doubted the Virtues would give him much more trouble. His one worry through supper was that he would be summoned to Lady Jacquetta that evening, and when George slapped him on the shoulder at the meal’s end and asked if he wanted to join some of the fellows at the Crescent Moon tonight—“I’ve heard they’ve opened a cask that’s not so bad.”—Joliffe agreed more readily than he might have otherwise.

  Besides, it would give him a chance to play up both John Ripon’s insistence he must not drink too much and his worries about the war, and he started while he and George were crossing the yard toward the gateway by asking, “George, while we’re out—that fellow that’s said to teach sword-work—the one someone was talking of yesterday—could you show me where he lives? Maybe recommend me to him?”

  “Saint Agatha’s breasts! I don’t know the man,” George protested. “I’ve only heard of him. You’re not truly set on this, are you? You’re in Rouen, not out in the bleeding countryside!”

  “Strugge didn’t think here was all that safe,” Joliffe said with an edge of stubborn whine. “This Master Doncaster is good?”

  “Experienced, anyway. Fought at Agincourt and all that.”

  “Ha!” someone said, coming up behind them. “Like every other old soldier in Normandy, he was at Agincourt. Ha!”

  George slapped a hand on the newcomer’s shoulder and said to Joliffe, “Estienne, clerk of the chamber to his grace the bishop, and a right good drinking companion. Coming to the Crescent with us?”

  Estienne was a short, bustling man, perhaps a little older than George, dressed in a dark clerk-gown much like their own, and he said he would most willingly go to the Crescent with them, adding scornfully as they passed through the gateway, “If every Englishman who says he was at Agincourt had truly been there, your King Henry’s army would have been double the size of the French and his victory none so glorious after all.”