A Play of Treachery

by Margaret Frazer

  “No. I never have.” And wanted never to do it again, wanted to say it had happened without he meant it to, that he had simply done what Master Doncaster’s lessons had taught him to do.

  But he had known those lessons were for that. Their whole purpose had been how to kill and keep from being killed. Now he had done as he had been taught, and all he wanted was to be rid of memory of it.

  But that was hardly something he was going to say to Master Wydeville, and he said instead, “It shouldn’t have come to killing him. If I had sorted out sooner that it had to have been Alain in the garden, it wouldn’t have come to my killing him.”

  “Could you have sorted it out sooner?”

  Joliffe had to stretch his mind to think back across the wide gulf between then and now before he was able to answer slowly, “The last piece, the one that told everything, I only had and fitted to the others just before he came into the bedchamber.”

  “Then I would say that you sorted it out in good time. Would you have understood so quickly what Alain meant to do and moved in time to stop him, if you had not worked your way to knowing his guilt? And remember it would not have come to killing him if he had not chosen to play the utter fool there. Because he meant to kill again, didn’t he?”

  Sharp-edged memory flashed in Joliffe’s mind. Yes, at that moment Alain had assuredly meant to kill. Against whom he had been set was less sure, whether Sir Richard or Lady Jacquetta or maybe both of them if he could, but yes, he had been intent on killing, and no matter what Joliffe felt about having killed him instead, it was better than living with having failed to stop him.

  That was what Master Wydville wanted him to see, and he did and accepted it but could not help saying bitterly, “M’dame knew. She knew all the while what he had done.”

  “So she has told me, now. Do you understand why she kept it secret?”

  “To protect Lady Jacquetta. To protect your son. Even though their marriage can’t be secret much longer.”

  As if he did not hear the accusation in Joliffe’s voice, Master Wydeville answered evenly, “Gain of even a little more time helps.”

  “Helps what?”

  “To have things in order for their leaving here. They’ve known all along they cannot stay in France, that it will have to be England for them. Now, with the child coming, they will have to go very soon.”

  “Did Bishop Louys know their secret before today?”

  “No. Nor does he fully know it now.”

  “How could he not? Alain’s babbling surely gave it all away?”

  “As you say, it was babbling. I have since made suggestion to my lord bishop that, for this time being, he might do well to let it go at that.”

  “He accepted that?”

  Only after a noticeable pause did Master Wydeville answer, his gaze steady on Joliffe, “My lord bishop and I have worked together a long while. He was willing to take my advice that present ignorance could serve him well in future trouble. Master Ripon, Alain Queton was a fool. He chose to live by his passions, forgoing reasoned choices. He killed Lady Alizon for no good reason. He tried to kill Remon Durevis with even less reason. Today he meant to kill again if he could, simply because he could not bear his passions nor bother to think through what he intended. He was a fool and he died for it, and if you had not killed him, he would have died just as surely but more slowly at his execution. Let him go from your mind.”

  Because the simplest answer—and perhaps the best—was agreement, Joliffe gave it with a silent nod.

  “Good,” Master Wydeville said. “Food will be brought soon. Then you should sleep again. You’re at some surgeon’s place, not here. Your wound is being given out as worse than it is, which is why no one has come to question you. Instead, it’s being accepted that you told M’dame, while she tended to you, that you saw Alain start forward with the dagger and moved to stop him. That you know no more than that about anything.”

  Joliffe nodded again, again because agreeing was easiest. But he could not help, “One other question, if you’ll grant it.”

  Master Wydeville made a small gesture of permission.

  “How did M’dame know to set Alain on to watch Alizon that day?”

  “Sir Richard, in his message to her that arranged they meet at the goldsmith’s to exchange his letter and Lady Jacquetta’s, warned he thought Durevis hoped to somehow meet with Alizon. He wrote that if M’dame thought Alizon knew or had guessed too much and might tell, they should be kept from each other. So she set Alain to watch her.”

  And Alain had “played the fool” that day as badly as he had today, Joliffe thought and was abruptly tired beyond words with the hurting in his mind and his arm. He closed his eyes and gratefully listened to Master Wydeville leave; but he was equally grateful when Pierres came in soon afterward with food and drink.

  Joliffe ate and drank because his body wanted food and drink. Worn out by the effort of that, he slept, that seeming the most useful thing to do, and awoke in daylight to find more food and drink had been left for him beside the bed. Awkward with his hurt arm and no one to help him, he ate and drank and slept again, and awoke in what had to be late afternoon to find Perrette sitting at the window, sewing—mending his doublet, Joliffe realized in the moment before she said, without looking up from her work, “These have been washed. I’ve finished with your clerk’s gown and am nearly done with this. There is a new shirt for you. Your other was beyond hope.”

  “Perrette.” The word croaked from his dry throat. He took up the cup waiting by the bed and drank and said again, because she had gone on sewing and not looked at him, “Perrette.”

  Her hands went quiet, and she lifted and turned her head to him. The day’s light was behind her, keeping her face in shadow.

  He held out his hand. “Perrette, come sit beside me.”

  She put his doublet aside and came, sat down on the bed, and let him take her hand, all silently. With her there, Joliffe after all did not know what to say and simply held her hand a while before finally asking, “Perrette, how much do you know of this?”

  “What happened in the Lady Jacquetta’s chamber yesterday and something of why. Although not all of it, I think.”

  Joliffe made to say something. Perrette raised her free hand, stopping him. “Nor should you tell me more.”

  No, probably not. Not without Master Wydeville’s leave. He shifted away from what he might have said and said instead, hoping the words were right, “Perrette, Lady Jacquetta will be going to England soon and not returning. All her household will go with her. I will be going with her.” And glad he would be of it. “Perrette, come with me.”

  Perrette curved her free hand gently around his that held her other one and said quietly, “No.”

  He had been expecting that refusal and so had an answer ready for it, saying quickly, “Perrette, there’s peace in England. There isn’t war and death hanging over everything. There . . .”

  “Death is everywhere.”

  “Yes. Well. Yes. But it clusters more thickly some places than others. Here, if not now, then soon. In England you would be safe from that. We could be together. We—”

  “My life is here,” she said, the words flat.

  “It doesn’t have to be. You—”

  “It has to be. My life is my penance. It has to be lived here.”

  “Your penance?” he blurted. “For what?”

  “For being still alive.”

  Joliffe lay still, with no answer to make to that and no question he dared to ask that he thought she would answer. She met his gaze for a long moment more, then took her hands from him, stood up from the bed, and went back to the window and her sewing.

  Neither of them spoke again, and when she had finished and folded the doublet and laid it on his gown on a stool at the bedfoot, she came to him one last time and, still silent, kissed him long and lingeringly on the lips. In answer, he briefly took hold on her hand again, but there still seemed no words worth saying between them, and she
again took her hand from his and left the room, closing the door silently behind her.

  It was another day before he returned to Joyeux Repos, and by then he was restlessly more than ready. The surgeon had briefly seen him in the morning and pronounced the wound free of infection and healing well, and long before Pierres came for him in the late afternoon he had struggled into his shirt and doublet and was trying to be used to the leather strap looped from his neck to hold his hurt arm. Pierres helped him put on his gown, leaving the left sleeve hanging loose, and laid his cloak around his shoulders, something nearly impossible to do one-armed, Joliffe realized.

  Eager though he was to be away from Master Wydeville’s, the walk back to the hôtel tired him more than he wanted it to, and the stairs up to the offices nearly finished him, so that he was glad to sit down at his desk and put up with the jibing and careful back-slapping that served for welcome from George, Henri, Jacques, and Bernard. There was jesting about Sir Richard having to be saved from “mad Alain” by a secretary, but nothing that showed anything was guessed at about Lady Jacquetta. Joliffe answered questions with what Master Wydeville had said he was to say. In return, he was told the search for Remon Durevis had been given up, that he was presumed killed by Alain and shoved into the river, and that Lady Guillemete had left that morning, taking her sister’s body home as intended.

  No one said what had become of Alain’s body, and Joliffe did not ask.

  That evening, when he would rather have taken to his bed, he made himself go to the great hall for supper, supposing it best to get done with whatever more jesting, jibing, and questions might come his way there, only to find word had come that afternoon and was excitedly spreading through both households that there was no more doubt the duke of Burgundy had preparations well forward for an attack on Calais. Word was that the duke of Gloucester would lead an army out of England to counter him, which was to the good for Normandy, since it meant most effort here could be turned to whatever the Armagnacs, led by the comte de Richemont, were set to do. Talk was loud and split between whether that would be the long-expected attack on Normandy in force or else the long-feared attempt to reach and take Paris.

  In all the loud talk and much swearing, the happenings of two days ago seemed near to forgotten, for which Joliffe was greatly grateful. Only Cauvet and Estienne said anything at length to him about what had happened—what they knew of it, anyway—and he was able to answer Cauvet’s sympathy and Estienne’s curiosity without saying anything he should not. His hope was to go gratefully to his bed as soon as supper was done, but a servant found him while he was still in the hall and said he was summoned to Lady Jacquetta. Wearily, his arm paining him, he went.

  As on so many of the other evenings he had been summoned to her, she was in her candle-lighted bedchamber, her ladies around her, her dogs curled against her skirts, but tonight there were too few demoiselles, and no youths in bright talk with them, and no laughter. Nor did Lady Jacquetta ask him to read to her but beckoned him forward to kneel in front of her where she sat on the cushioned chest at the bedfoot. In her widow’s wimple and black veil, she was paler even than usual, but had no sign of lately crying, and her voice was steady as she said, “You know you have my very great thanks, Master Ripon. My thanks and those of Sir Richard. This is but outward and poor token of what we owe you.”

  She held out a small, drawstringed purse. It was of silk, embroidered with the Luxembourg lion, and weighed heavily in Joliffe’s hand as he took it from her. He thanked her, kissed the hand she held out to him, and understood—by the way M’dame moved forward from beyond the bed—that nothing more was wanted of him here. Glad of that, he stood up, bowed deeply to Lady Jacquetta, and let M’dame show him from the chamber, expecting her to see him only to the door, but she followed him into the parlor, shut the door behind her, and said, levelly and quietly, “I equally owe you thanks, Master Ripon. I would have not been able to stop him from reaching my lady.”

  Joliffe bowed his head, acknowledging her thanks, not knowing what other answer to make. No right words coming to mind, he gave up and asked, “Would you answer me one thing, M’dame?”

  “If I may,” she said, austerely as ever.

  “This marriage. Your given duty is to guard Lady Jacquetta. This is a rash thing she’s done, yet instead of stopping her, you stood witness to it, in despite of all your duty. Why?”

  “My duty is to my lady,” M’dame said. “I am here not to be her gaoler but to guard and guide her. I warned her of everything there is to be feared for her in this marriage. When she then made her choice despite it all, my duty was to guard her and her secret. That I have done and will do for the while until it is no longer a secret.”

  Joliffe bowed, able to say nothing in answer to that. She gave him a short nod in return and turned back to the bedchamber and her duty.

  For his part, more tired than ever and his arm aching, he returned to the dormer, slipped his arm from its sling, and sat on his bed, cradling it. The dormer’s silence around him was welcome. He only wished his thoughts were as silent, but like his arm’s aching, they went on.

  The blazing talk of the war had spared him questions in the hall that evening, and against all the deaths in the fighting past and to come, Alizon’s was surely only a little death, and Alain’s an even lesser one, and both already disappearing from men’s minds; but they were deaths nonetheless and not disappearing from his mind. All the living Alizon might have had was stolen from her, and Alain was dead along with all his wild, unthinking desires and hopes—dead and perhaps damned, with no chance to become the man he might have steadied into being.

  And Guillemete. She lived, but how deep were the scars she would bear in her heart through the rest of her life?

  All because of a secret marriage that, will or nill, could not be a secret for much longer, and when the scandal and the angers about it had faded, when the marriage had become simply a marriage and there was the child and in the inevitable way of things probably more children—Alizon and Alain would still be dead.

  Joliffe found he was rocking gently forward and back, partly to comfort his arm’s ache, partly to comfort the ache in his mind, and maybe to comfort the thought that if, in that desperate moment in the bedchamber, he had been illfortuned or only a little less skilled, he would be among the dead now.

  He was glad that in barely a few weeks he would be back in England.

  The next day, with his strength increasingly come back to him, he went to thank Master Doncaster. As expected, the weapon-master responded, “You’re supposed to kill without taking hurt yourself,” before adding, grimly approving, “Nevertheless, well done.”

  It was the day after that when Master Wydeville stopped him at the afternoon’s end, as he was leaving his desk. With everyone else gone, he took the duke of Orleans’ silver bowl that Master Wydeville offered him and drank and was all the while wary of why he was there, and for no good reason all the more wary when Master Wydeville said, “It’s set that Lady Jacquetta will sail for England in two weeks time. You’ve perhaps thought you will go with her.”

  “I had thought it likely, yes,” Joliffe granted carefully.

  “As part of her household, you surely would have, but you are to leave her service and go into the bishop of Therouanne’s household. Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? The bishop’s household?” Joliffe echoed, both wariness and protest open in his voice.

  “You’ve proven yourself too valuable to let go simply back to England. Nor do I think Bishop Beaufort wants you there yet. So you will now serve Bishop Louys.” Master Wydeville paused, his gaze steady on Joliffe’s face, as he finished, “Which means that four days from now you will be among those who go with him to Paris, where he will do what can be done there against the comte de Richemont’s coming.”

  Joliffe’s stomach did a slow knot around on itself. “To Paris,” he said, trying to make the words mean something else.

  “To Paris,” Master Wydeville agreed.r />
  Author’s Note

  There are a number of historical people serving as characters in this book, including Lady Jacquetta and her uncle Louys de Luxembourg, bishop of Therouanne. Historical, too, are Master Richard Wydeville and his son Sir Richard, who are rather too frequently confused with one another in modern historical accounts, but are well worth while keeping separate because they followed quite different careers. That Master Wydeville was the duke of Bedford’s spymaster is my own choice, but what we know of his career does not preclude the possibility. The political situation as detailed here is as it actually was in the dangerous year of 1436. Many details have had to be left out or skimmed over, but nothing has been distorted or “made convenient” for the story, and while many incidents specific to the story are imagined, Lady Jacquetta was indeed required to swear not to marry without the royal council’s or king’s consent at a time when she was either already secretly married or soon would be.

  Likewise, there is record from early in that year of a female spy for the English reporting the Bretons would soon attack Normandy. It’s one of those frustratingly tiny pieces of information about which one would like to know so much more but probably never will.

  As for the books read to the duchess and her ladies, a version of Reynard the Fox’s adventures that might be close to what they heard can be had in The History of Reynard the Fox, translated from the Dutch original by William Caxton and edited by N. F. Blake for the Early English Text Society, 1970. There are numerous medieval works about Alexander the Great; the one they heard here could be related to The Prose Life of Alexander, edited by J. S. Blake for the Early English Text Society, 1913. The poem Joliffe was reading in Chapter 2 is by Thomas Hoccleve (or Occleve) who was writing poetry in Middle English in the early part of the 1400s. There are various editions of his works, and selections of his poetry can be found in various anthologies of Middle English poetry.

  The maps Joliffe is set to memorizing would hardly be recognizable by modern eyes as guides to anywhere, but medieval maps are a delightful study, revealing a relationship to the world sufficiently different from our own that the shift in thinking needed to move from our modern perception of geography to a medieval one is an excellent exercise in seeing what different ways there are for relating to the world around us.