A Play of Treachery

by Margaret Frazer

  “Those robes indeed. They were planned to be blue embroidered with golden stars. My cousin had four women madly stitching to finish them this morning when word came that Lady Jacquetta had provided otherwise.”

  “Provided otherwise?” Joliffe echoed.

  “Provided otherwise.” Mischief sparkled in Perrette’s eyes. “Those cloth-of-gold robes they wore instead—those were the duke of Bedford’s and his late wife’s. Their robes of estate.”

  Joliffe felt his jaw start to drop and pulled it firmly closed. Robes of estate were something to be worn at a coronation, or for the reception of a king, or at a royal wedding. Not . . . Almost choking on his surprise, he asked, “Who was mad enough to let her give them to use in a play?”

  “The question you need to ask is how she kept it secret from her uncle. Secret from everyone until it was done and too late. And how persuaded M’dame to it, too. Because M’dame would have had to know.” Perrette laughed. “I would much like to hear what her uncle says to her when he does hear of it. He’s here to keep everything seemly around his niece’s widowhood, and yet she slides this past him easily as anything.”

  “If he’s wise,” Joliffe said, “he’ll say nothing to her at all.”

  “True. She’s galled by her life at present, I think. He’d do best not to rub the sore, lest it worsen.”

  Joliffe looked toward the dais. Lady Jacquetta was standing, M’dame beside her, in talk with Sir Richard and Alizon. They were no longer in the cloth-of-gold robes, only their own clothing, but the glow of the play’s other-world was still on them. And on Lady Jacquetta, too, it seemed, because while Alizon and Sir Richard looked to be answering something M’dame had said, Lady Jacquetta was looking at Sir Richard in a way that made the thought cross Joliffe’s mind that maybe Master Wydeville should be warned.

  Of what? That Lady Jacquetta had twice now looked at his son in a way that might not be—safe? Master Wydeville, standing not far away on the dais with several other household officers, could see as much for himself if he looked. And if he did not see for himself, would he want to be told?

  As the saying went: least said, soonest mended.

  Or as Basset had once snapped at Ellis, “You can break more with your mouth than you can mend. So think before you say.”

  He was distracted from his thoughts by Perrette saying, “We should not be seen long together. So I am going to laugh at you and go away.” And just that abruptly she did.

  To anyone watching them, it would seem Joliffe must have said something that offended her. Joliffe, on his part, had no trouble looking momentarily startled at her suddenness, before shaking his head with a show of apparent disgust and heading back to the table in quest of more food and drink. Encountering Master Fouet, he took the chance to congratulate him on the play’s success. Master Fouet, with the giddy air of relief at having the thing over and done with, thanked him and congratulated him back. That was all there need have been, but Joliffe took the chance to say, “You were especially fortunate in Lord Justice and Lady Wisdom. Was this their first time at such playing?”

  “For the Lady Alizon, yes. But Sir Richard, no. He has done this manner of thing before now, here in the household.”

  Feigning light puzzlement, Joliffe said easily, “Oh. For some reason, I thought he was new to the household.”

  “Sir Richard? But no. He was in my lord of Bedford’s household from boyhood.”

  Which changed the question from who had been foolish enough to let him into the young widow’s household to who had been foolish enough to leave him there.

  “His father being my lord of Bedford’s chamberlain and all, you see,” said Master Fouet.

  “Ah,” Joliffe said, and because someone came up then with more congratulations for Master Fouet, he slipped aside, saying no more. He looked for Perrette but she was gone, and although through the next few hours he joined in various of the games and ate and drank as well as anyone, he was glad enough when time came to go to bed.

  The next day was the first of Lent, the beginning of its weeks of fasting and penance, a humbling time for considering one’s sins in preparation for Easter’s glories, and Joliffe went with the rest of the lesser household folk to take turn at making confession to a priest in the chapel. As usual, he found himself regretting how petty his sins of the past year had been. True, a soul could be nibbled away to damnation by many, many little sins as surely as by one or two great ones, but on the whole Joliffe thought he would prefer—if he were so stupid as not to repent at the end and be saved—to go to Hell for some great soul-shattering sin than for a clutter of small, dull ones. The trouble was that, thus far, he had never been tempted to any great sins, only paltry everyday ones, and those not so much from temptation but simply because they were almost impossible not to stumble over, being constantly in the way, like being unable to avoid every stone on a rocky road, where no matter how carefully you went, you could not help stubbing a toe once in a while. Groveling to God for the equivalent of every stubbed toe seemed hardly worth his bother.

  Or God’s, come to that.

  But maybe that was Lent’s purpose—to gather up all those toe-stubbing sins in one heap, do penance for them, and go forward with life.

  Which unfortunately, inevitably, included promptly beginning to accumulate new sins. And unfortunately his present great, daily, on-going sin of lying was one he could not yet confess. Telling a priest might be safe enough, but forgiveness could not be had for a sin he meant to continue committing, and he expected to go on with his daily lying.

  So he admitted to Lust, unfulfilled though it presently was, and Gluttony, which must be a common enough sin from Shrovetide, and then, for good measure, to Pride in having written last night’s play. He was shriven for all of that and given the penance of saying a rote number of prayers on his knees in front of Saint John’s altar here in the chapel between now and Palm Sunday. Thus cleansed, he knelt in the chapel to have a priest draw a cross in ashes on his forehead, signifying Lent was well and truly under way.

  The while after that was, on the whole, dreary. The short, chill days and long, cold nights gave no clear promise that spring would ever trouble itself to come. The humours of both households darkened, and while Joliffe was still sometimes summoned to read aloud to Lady Jacquetta, it was from books of devotion and saints’ lives suitable to the season. Those, being mostly meant to deepen the listeners’ sense of sin and need of penitence, did nothing to raise anyone’s spirits.

  If anything passed between Lady Jacquetta and her uncle concerning the cloth-of-gold robes, they kept it private between themselves. Likewise, Joliffe came to doubt he had seen anything that mattered in her look at Sir Richard the play’s night. He saw no more sign that anything was changed between them, anyway, just as there was no trace of displeasure at Remon Durevis despite her anger in the garden that one day—unless it was that he seemed less often at her side in the evenings and most often at Lady Alizon’s.

  In like wise, Guillemete and Alain were much in each other’s company. Somewhat too much, Joliffe thought. From what he had seen of Alain, the youth was far too given to feeling passion for the sake of feeling passion, rather than in anything like a true loving of the supposed beloved. As for Guillemete, young and foolish did not always go together, but Joliffe suspected they did with her.

  Still, it was for M’dame to deal with as she saw fit. Certainly, the triflings that had grown among the other demoiselles and youths while they played at being Sins and Virtues were faded away quickly enough under her sharp watch, and the saints knew there were matters of more urgent interest in the world than Guillemete and Alain. Despite the days remained dreary, the year was on the turn, and with the winter’s harsher weather waning, no day went by without news or else rumors foaming through the household of what was going on in the wider world. The autumn-into-winter surge of Armagnacs through Normandy that had made Joliffe’s arrival perilous had long since been pushed back, but it had left behind a scum of b
rigands infesting the countryside beyond Rouen’s walls. Now, word of brigand troubles was increasing at the same time there were more reports of Armagnac raids in the east and that the Armagnac force south of the Seine was still growing, definitely swelled by Richemont and his men out of Brittany. Mixed with all that were endless rumors of troubles in Paris, although common opinion was that, at the most, the Parisians would roil up, butcher each other in the streets for a while—“the way they’re always doing there,” as George said—and then settle down long before any Armagnac attack came, supposing any ever did.

  Generally more troubling was sure report that the duke of Burgundy was still enraged over King Henry’s winter letters urging the Zealand towns to an uprising, and had sworn to siege and take Calais. For Rouen that was better news than that he meant to turn on Normandy, but it was nonetheless not good. The port of Calais, close across the Channel from Dover, had been England’s wool-port and foot-hold on the continent for the reigns of five kings now, but was surrounded on its landward side by Burgundy’s lands, making his threatened siege easily possible. Tavern talk had it that, “He’ll be sorry if he tries it, see if he isn’t,” but reports varied wildly of what would be done to counter him. Either a massive force was being raised in England to come to Calais’ relief, or else the lords around the king were locked in discord, with nothing going forward. There was fear the duke of York and the men he was supposed to bring into Normandy would be sent Calais-ward instead, but there was talk, too, that King Henry himself might go. Being fourteen years old, it was time he was bloodied, and why not against damned Burgundy?

  Whatever happened, though, everyone agreed that men must not be drawn out of Normandy. Whether the Armagnacs meant to attack Rouen, or sweep toward Paris, or move against the Channel ports to cut off English help coming up the Seine, Normandy needed all the men it had. The most hopeful thought was doubt the Armagnacs could gather enough men to the Dauphin’s impoverished cause to be a true threat in any direction, but when George said as much in a tavern-gathered group, someone else said, “You forget la Pucelle,” and the silence that followed told Joliffe that no one had forgotten the witch who had nearly broken England’s hold on France a mere hand’s count of years ago. Finally captured, she was found guilty of heresy by a church court, but most folk knew her greater guilt lay in having brought the Dauphin’s dying claim to France’s crown back to vigorous life—in having united his wrangling lords and roused them to a fierce string of victories before she was captured and her madness shown for the devil’s work it was. After her death, the war had settled back into its duller ways, but parts of France lost then were not yet recovered, and memory of “the Maid” was plainly still sharp. In truth, Joliffe realized as he shifted his gaze among the faces around him, some of these men had probably seen her burn at the stake here in Rouen’s marketplace.

  All the while through those uneasy days, his lessons that were no part of his household duties went on. He was now become too familiar in Lady Jacquetta’s household to be of particular interest to anyone—even Estienne no longer troubled him with undue questions—but he could believably have only so many weapon lessons from Master Doncaster, and he learned to say sometimes, tipping a wink, that he was off to read in St. Ouen’s library. That brought winks and knowing laughter back at him from his fellows, “reading in St. Ouen’s” being off-talk for dice-play and whoring. To keep it the more believable, he complained of his losses or strutted a little about his wins, and avoided talk of the supposed whoring by saying that those who “did” had no need to “talk,” which got him laughter and fewer questions.

  Laughably enough, among his lessons with maps, ciphers, and weapons, he was coming to know Rouen’s gambling holes and brothels. As Master Doncaster put it, “Where men are being most stupid, that’s where you’re likely to learn what they ought to keep secret,” and led by Ivo, a rough-mannered, scar-faced man-at-arms, Joliffe gambled some (“Be sure to quit while you’re losing. You’ll be the more welcomed when next you come.”) and whored not at all but sat listening to how much Ivo could learn in easy talk with a whore over a pottle of good wine in her room—in her room but not in her bed. (“And mind that it’s good wine. They know the difference, don’t think they don’t. You’ll get quality for quality, don’t think you won’t.”)

  Likewise from Ivo, he learned a rough French of a sort not to be picked up in the ducal household—or to be used there either, once he learned it. He did, though, take George and Estienne gaming one evening at a place where John Ripon was known, and was satisfied to hear them laughing about it to others in the household afterward, but it gave him an odd feeling to know that, for them, John Ripon was real and he—Joliffe—did not exist at all.

  He might have settled for thinking that was the base of the unease he increasingly felt in himself, or accepted that his years of being constantly on the move as a player had made him unused to being tethered so long in one place, so that with the newness of everything here worn off and his household duties become familiar, he was simply grown restless. There was more to his unease than that, though. When he looked closely at it, he knew it came from his deepening sense of the households’ undercurrents, even if he still could not clearly read them all. Taut worries over which way the world was going to jump were plain enough. Others, grown out of the likes, dislikes, ambitions, weaknesses, subtle alliances, and close-kept angers common to any household, were beyond Joliffe’s French to lay hold on, so that he had a feeling much like sitting in a kettle of water up to his chin, unable to see the fire beneath it but feeling the water getting hotter and closer toward boiling all around him with no way for him to get out. And there were moments when he very much wanted out, or else for something clear and sure to happen, to break the bonds of all the unsure waiting.

  At the same time, he knew that when that something happened—as it surely sometime must—he would probably not be pleased about it. It was all very well to moan for “a change, a change,” but all too often when change came, the refrain altered to “not this change, not this change.”

  Time with Perrette might have helped, but of her he saw and heard nothing. He once asked Matilde about her, but Matilde only answered, unconcerned, “She’s about somewhere. Comes and goes.”

  He was left with his duties as Lady Jacquetta’s secretary and whatever lessons Master Wydeville set him and to listening to men’s talk in tavern and hall, with their mix of news and rumors of the wide world and reports of which Rouen alehouse had the latest brew of ale.

  Some change came early in March, when Sir Richard, Remon Durevis, and others of the young men of both households left, to take their turn riding guard for the supply wagons going out of Rouen to the castles and lesser fortresses through Normandy and to do some brigand-hunting along the way. As Joliffe had foreseen, the change was not to the good. Their going lowered the humours of everyone left behind, not only among the few youths, like Alain, who did not go, but Lady Jacquetta’s, too. Joliffe was summoned more often to read to her and her demoiselles out of the solemn, suitable books, and in apparently casting about for new ways to occupy herself, she took more especial interest in her English properties than she had. Because of that, late one morning Joliffe was at his desk going through letters come with the latest messenger from England, to be ready when she would send to him to know about them, but rather than the expected summons, he heard her chamber-man Foulke saying hurriedly to Master Wydeville in the outer office, “My lady has been summoned to her uncle. She wants you to come to her. She’s gone to him.”

  “Do you know why?” Master Wydeville returned.

  “It’s about something from the king’s council in England? An oath?” Foulke said uncertainly. “I didn’t hear it all, but she ordered I was to say you were to come to her as soon as might be.”

  “Master Ripon,” Master Wydeville called. “You’re her English secretary. Best you come, too.”

  More than willing, Joliffe sprang to his feet and obeyed. Master Wydevill
e had already started down the stairs. Joliffe caught and kept up with him only by long-legged effort, all the way down from Lady Jacquetta’s side of the hôtel to the great hall and beyond it to the richly tapestried room that was Bishop Louys’ great council chamber. The bishop was there, standing with perhaps a dozen of his officers and men, Cauvet among them. Lady Jacquetta, attended only by M’dame, stood facing him—a slight, lone girl all in black among the men and the tall, bright figures of lords and ladies that filled the ceiling-high tapestries. She should perhaps have seemed small, but the tapestried lords and ladies were caught in the stillness of their woven moment while Lady Jacquetta—if Joliffe read her rigid back and raised chin a-right—was in a fury, while her uncle was saying at her with forced soothing, “It’s no great matter. It’s an oath often asked of widows.”

  “I doubt that,” Lady Jacquetta snapped. “It’s asked of me because I am the duchess of Bedford.”

  “Of course it is!” her uncle returned.

  Lady Jacquetta lifted her chin a defiant inch higher. “Then you should say it is a common enough oath to ask of a duchess of Bedford. Not of ‘widows,’ as if we were all of a piece.” She looked sharply aside to Master Wydeville as he and Joliffe bowed to her uncle and her. “Good. You’ve come. My uncle asks something of me that I do not think he should. I wish to hear what you advise, so long my husband’s friend.”

  “This oath is not my doing,” Bishop Louys said with thinning patience. “The king’s council in England has asked—”

  “Demanded,” said Lady Jacquetta bitterly.

  “—asked for her vow never to marry without the king’s consent. She objects to it.”

  “Because the matter is not the king’s council’s concern. It is mine,” Lady Jacquetta returned.

  “You are the king’s uncle’s widow. You have considerable dower land in England. The council is concerned that you—”

  “That I will be a fool and marry someone who will use my English wealth against England here in France,” Lady Jacquetta interrupted. “Why should this council in England think I would so dishonor my late husband by making such a marriage? They have no right to think that!”