A Play of Treachery

by Margaret Frazer

  Blanche missed it, but Isabelle said instantly, “Oh!” and clamped a hand onto Blanche’s wrist. “He saw her. He does not want to remember. Let him be.”

  “But Lady Jacquetta saw her, too,” Blanche protested.

  “Would you dare to ask her to remember?” Ydoine demanded. “No. Then do not ask him either. Think how you would feel if it were you being asked.”

  Blanche’s eyes widened and her mouth made a silent O as that new thought took hold on her.

  Joliffe judged that if the secrets Alizon had been delightedly hoping to tell Durevis did truly exist, Blanche would not be someone likely to suspect them—was unlikely to see a secret even set openly in front of her unless it came with bells and ribbons on it. But others among the demoiselles were sharper—Ydoine for one, certainly. If those secrets did exist, they surely had to do with Lady Jacquetta’s household because Alizon was never elsewhere, and now—suddenly and belatedly—Joliffe wondered who else among the demoiselles might know them. Because if Alizon was dead because of them, whoever else knew them could be in like danger. Come to that, in how much danger would he be himself if he came close to them?

  Rather than following that thought, he chose instead to play off Blanche’s dismay by bowing his head and saying, still brokenly, “I just keep hoping . . . hoping that . . .”

  “That she died quickly,” said Foulke helpfully from the doorway.

  Joliffe held back from giving an irked glance his way. Instead he shook his head and said, “No, not that. I mean, yes, I hope that. But . . . I just keep hoping that she was happy in her last days. Or her last day.”

  That was crudely done, he knew, but was rewarded as he raised his gaze to see looks passing hither and thither among the demoiselles. There was uncertainty, questioning, some surprise, he thought—but no guilt, no sudden wariness; and when Michielle said, “I suppose she was, yes. She was just as always,” a general nodding agreed with her, except that Marie added, “I thought she was very merry yesterday and trying to hide it.”

  “That was because she had her secret hope of meeting Remon.” Blanche sighed.

  “It was a fool thing for him to be doing, meeting her like that,” Foulke grumbled.

  “It was even more foolish to have killed her!” Ydoine flashed back at him.

  “Why did he?” Joliffe asked with an edge of anguish meant to draw answers.

  “We don’t know,” Isabelle cried back at him, and Marie said, “We’ve talked and talked it over. We thought at first it might be because—”

  She broke off as if away from something that should not be said aloud, but Blanche said, “She was not, though. Lady Jacquetta asked the coroner outright.”

  “Not with child,” Marie explained, on the chance the men had not understood.

  “Was there maybe someone jealous of her meeting Master Durevis?” Joliffe tried, trying to watch everyone at once and seeing looks again pass among them but again not as if hiding anything, only silently asking each other what they each thought, before there was a general lifting of shoulders and shaking of heads, and Ydoine said, “No. We would have already told if we thought there was, but there isn’t.”

  They knew each other very well, these demoiselles who shared each other’s lives hour by hour through most of every day. Secrets must be very hard to keep from each other, Joliffe thought. What could Alizon have known no one else did? And how had she come by it?

  “So it had to be Remon,” Isabelle sighed. “We just do not know why.”

  “Or maybe it’s that someone has killed him,” Marie said rather hopefully. “Then threw his body into the river, and that’s why he has not been found. Then they killed Alizon, because she saw them do it. Or . . .”

  “If Remon is missing, it’s because he’s guilty,” Alain said angrily, unnoticed in the parlor’s outer doorway until he spoke. “He went out from the castle yesterday afternoon and hasn’t come back. What else can it be but he killed Lady Alizon and then fled? If ever I find him, I’ll kill him!”

  “Oh, you,” Marie said scornfully.

  Alain went red-faced. He started angrily, “I—” but from the bedchamber’s doorway across the parlor, M’dame said sternly, “We do not need foolish talk of killing here.”

  An instant hush took everyone, and at a sharp gesture from M’dame as she stepped aside from the doorway, those not already standing stood up, and everyone together gave deep courtesies to Bishop Louys and a priest coming out of the bedchamber. The bishop swept past, but the priest paused long enough to make the sign of the cross and a murmured blessing over their bowed heads before leaving, too. As the demoiselles rose and Joliffe, Alain, and Foulke straightened, M’dame gestured for the demoiselles to go into the chamber and said, “Master Ripon, my lady is ready to be read to for a time. You may come, too. No one else, Foulke, until my lady says otherwise.”

  Alain started forward.

  “No,” M’dame said at him. “Not you either.” She turned away into the bedchamber with a single, sharp beckon for Joliffe to follow her, and he did, leaving Alain standing beside Foulke with a stiffened, stricken face.

  Chapter 22

  In the bedchamber, Joliffe saw that M’dame was undoubtedly right to spare Alain, who would have been both discomfited and probably useless here among the weeping now being shared by Michielle and Blanche and Guillemete, all clinging together in the middle of the room while Marie sniffed heavily as she handed the little dog to Lady Jacquetta sitting on the chest at the bedfoot, the other dog nestled in her skirts. Even Ydoine, gone to pour a goblet of wine at the table beside the wall so that her back was to the room, had a betraying shudder to her shoulders, as if struggling against tears.

  “All is decided?” Marie asked faintly.

  Lady Jacquetta nodded. Her little dog pressed to the side of her face, she looked to Joliffe, and said, “Read to us, please.”

  M’dame was already bringing him a book. He had finished Reynard and begun an Alexander before Lent had brought its different sort of reading, but it was the Alexander M’dame now gave him, and he took up the siege of Porus’ city with its walls of gold and palace gates of ivory and ebony. Even if hardly suited with the black misery of the room, at least it was other than the grief and he read strongly and was nonetheless glad when after a time Lady Jacquetta held up a hand to silence him and said, “There is enough for now. My thanks.” She looked around at her women. “Our thanks.” And added as Joliffe bowed in answer, “Ydoine, give him some wine, that he not go from us thirsty as well as tired.”

  He had been searching, while reading, for a reason to keep him there, to give him chance to ask more questions, and he took this one gratefully, saying, “Thank you, my lady. I can read more if you like. I’m thirsty, yes, and grieving with you, but not tired.”

  “Grieving with us,” Lady Jacquetta said, taking that up as he had hoped she would. “Yes. More than others may. You were there. You found her. You saw all.”

  Hoping to keep the talk to yesterday, Joliffe demurred, “I was only one of those who found her. Foulke and Master Queton were there, too.”

  Lady Jacquetta lifted one hand, dismissing their part in it, saying, “They only saw that she was dead, then left her. You stayed with her.”

  Joliffe wanted to defend at least Foulke but instead tried, as Ydoine handed him a filled goblet, “I understand there’s search for Remon Durevis.”

  All Lady Jacquetta’s ladies became suddenly interested in their laps or hands. Lady Jacquetta flashed a sharp look around at them all and said, her voice suddenly hard, “Yes. I hoped his time gone from here would let passions cool between him and Lady Alizon. M’dame had even spoken to her about it. To no good, it seems.”

  Guillemete faltered, “My lady, they had talked of betrothal. They . . .”

  “Pah! There could be no question of that, and Remon well knew it. So did Alizon, or she was a fool.”

  “My lady,” M’dame reproved, but Lady Jacquetta was already crossing herself, saying a quick
prayer for forgiveness for ill-speaking the dead.

  Joliffe copied everyone else in echoing her gesture, but asked as they finished, while he still had the chance, “How did she know to meet him, though? Surely there were no open messages between them.”

  “That has been asked,” Lady Jacquetta said. Her accusing look went around her ladies again. “No one seems to know.”

  Blanche protested, “We don’t!” and Isabelle added unhappily, “We’ve told all we know of it. Truly.”

  “You should have kept her from going,” Michielle said, earning resentful looks as Blanche protested, “We didn’t know it would come to this!”

  “No,” Lady Jacquetta agreed. “You did not know it would come to Alizon’s death. But to her disgrace—that you had to know was possible.”

  “She would not have let herself be used that way. Never!” Guillemete cried from her handkerchief.

  But Michielle said, hushed with horror, “That may be why Remon killed her. Because she would not let him . . . use her.”

  “But we don’t know it was Remon who killed her!” Marie protested. “He may have been killed, too, and that could be why Alizon was killed. Because she was with him.”

  That was a theme Marie had followed in the outer chamber, Joliffe remembered, and for something different he tried—deliberately sounding hapless and hopeless, “Or Master Durevis was killed because he was with her. But that brings it back to who would have reason to kill her, doesn’t it?” He looked around at all of them and finished feebly, “And no one did, did they?” on the chance of catching some betraying look somewhere.

  Instead, he caught bewilderment on some faces, several head-shakes of agreeing denial from others, and a tightening of M’dame’s mouth that warned he had maybe pressed too far. But he went on, still working to sound no more than stupidly wondering, “Besides, who would even know she was gone to the garden at all? She would not have told anyone she was going to meet Master Durevis, surely.”

  Isabelle said, “Even Blanche and I did not know for any certainty where and why she was gone. We only guessed at it. I doubt she would have said more to anyone else.”

  Blanche nodded ready agreement with that but unwarily added, “Nor would we have told anyone anyway, even had we known.”

  “And let what came of your silence lesson you against it another time,” M’dame snapped.

  Everyone momentarily froze. Then Guillemete burst into open sobbing and collapsed sideways, her face into Lady Jacquetta’s lap. As Lady Jacquetta bent over her, stroking her hair and murmuring to her, Blanche and Marie broke into matching weeping, and M’dame gave a cold nod of permission at Joliffe, letting him know he could leave.

  He did, setting aside on a chest the goblet he had forgotten he still held as he made his escape, glad to leave the weeping but regretting as he closed the door that he had not learned more. Come to it, had he learned much at all or anything of use? Not who besides Blanche and Isabelle had known Alizon had gone out, nor how word had come to Alizon to meet Durevis. Marie at least seemed willing to think he was not the murderer but a victim, too. Was that simply from blind hope, or because she knew something she was not saying? And could he find chance to ask her without others there to hear him? He had not yet fully shaken free of the thought that Alizon might have been killed simply because she was in the way of someone’s attempt at Durevis. Did Marie might know something that would help there?

  An altogether new thought came to him—that there was nothing to say that the man who had attacked Durevis was the same as whoever stabbed Alizon.

  Joliffe gave an inward shudder of refusal against that possibility. Better to keep to the likelihood they were the same man. And if Durevis told truly when he said whoever had stabbed him had run out of the garden as if back to the hôtel—always remembering that Durevis and truth might not keep close company much of the time—then the murderer was almost surely someone of either the bishop’s or Lady Jacquetta’s household. And if—for some reason—this someone needed Durevis dead now but had no other likely way to come at him, that could explain the hazard-laden chance they had taken in the garden.

  But, again, if Durevis was the intended victim, why not make more certain of his death, instead of taking that single ill-done stab and then fleeing? Someone ruthless enough to kill Alizon to have her out of the way would surely have made sure of Durevis.

  No, this had to do with Alizon and, almost to a certainty, with the secrets she had laughingly said she might have to tell. Almost surely she had been killed to keep her from telling any secrets. And Durevis had been killed because . . .

  Not because he “was there” when Alizon was killed. He had not been there. Nor had he come so soon afterward that he might have caught her murderer just after the act. By the evidence of the blood, there had been time enough for the murderer to get well away. Why had he risked lingering long enough to kill Durevis? Did he think Alizon had already told these secrets and killed her in punishment, then attempted to kill Durevis for the same reason?

  But if the murderer knew enough to know Alizon had learned these secrets, whatever they were, didn’t he know she had not yet had chance to tell Durevis? Or had he been uncertain whether she had or not, and so decided that her death would serve either as a sure silencing—or else as punishment?

  But why kill Durevis? The questions kept coming back to that. If Alizon had already told him these secrets, he could be expected to have already done with them whatever he meant to do, already told whomever he meant to tell, making killing him a pointless trouble once Alizon was dead, whether for punishment or revenge.

  What were these damnable secrets?

  Supposing they even existed.

  Durevis said Alizon thought she would have something to tell him. What if this whole business of “secrets” was not part of the matter at all?

  If it was not, then Joliffe was even further than he feared from finding a trail to the murderer. He did not even know the nature of Alizon’s supposed secrets. Were they the murderer’s, and so he had killed to protect them? Or were they someone else’s, and the murderer had killed on that someone’s behalf? Estienne as an Armagnac spy might well have secrets he needed to keep. But how would Alizon know anything of his secrets?

  No, the secrets were here. In these rooms. Among these women.

  But how to learn them?

  “Master Ripon?” Foulke asked uneasily.

  Joliffe became aware he was standing in the middle of the parlor, staring into air. Alain was gone, but Foulke was standing at the outer doorway, feet apart, hands behind his back in the patient waiting way he spent so much of his time, to be ready when needed, and looking at him worriedly.

  Joliffe shook himself and said, going forward, “I was just giving thanks to be out of there.”

  “How goes it with them?”

  “Fairly much as it was when they were out here. They’re weeping and wondering, and blaming themselves for letting Alizon go out, and telling each other they aren’t to blame.”

  “I’ll warrant M’dame isn’t telling them they aren’t to blame.”

  Joliffe gave a short laugh of agreement and almost went on, not wanting to lose the track of his thoughts in talk, but stopped with another thought and asked, “What of you? Is she blaming you?”

  “No, for a mercy. There were some heated questions yesterday, but my duty is to keep the unwanted out, not pen the women in. I’d no way to know the girl was going anywhere she shouldn’t.”

  But someone had known and followed her to the garden; and since everyone in a household had duties that set where they should be at most times of any day, who, yesterday, had not been where they should have been? That question alone maybe served to lessen possibilities, because anyone in the bishop’s household would have difficulty keeping close enough watch on Alizon to know when she went out, let alone have chance to follow her then and linger in the garden and not be missed. And that narrowed the matter to someone among Lady Jacquetta’s people�
�an ugly thought. But everything about this was ugly.

  “We’re all wondering why she went out at all,” he said.

  “Ah, that’s known well enough,” Foulke said. “It was to meet Master Durevis. The hunt is up for him, no mistake.”

  “I wonder how he got message to her to meet him. It surely didn’t come openly?”

  Foulke frowned with thought. “No one’s said aught about a message coming for her. You’re right, though. She must have heard from him somehow.”

  Frowning, too, to show John Ripon was thinking deeply, Joliffe tried, “Someone could have passed secret word to her at dinner in the great hall, I suppose.”

  “My lady and the rest of them dined here, not in the hall,” Foulke said. “Broke their morning fast and had dinner here yesterday.”

  “In the chapel then, at the morning’s Mass.”

  “Aye, that’s possible,” Foulke granted.

  “Or someone who came here that day, or maybe the day before?” Joliffe ventured.

  Foulke considered that with a, “Hm,” a pause, and then, “Nobody in particular comes to mind. Not anybody I saw talking to her, anyway. For what that’s worth.” He named several names of household servants, and then, “There was Master Cauvet in the morning. He came early with some message from her uncle to my lady. He had to wait until she finished dressing. I don’t know but what he talked some with Alizon or some other of the women while he waited?”

  Foulke did not sound certain of it but Joliffe supposed that, yes, Cauvet might well have done so, with no one thinking twice about it, and easily able to pass a small written message to Alizon secretly. But that would mean . . . regrettable things about Cauvet.

  It could also mean that Cauvet might well have known when and where Alizon and Durevis would be.

  For appearance’s sake, Joliffe gave a regretful shake of his head and said, “None of it makes sense, does it?”