A Play of Lords

by Margaret Frazer

  “In the middle of it,” Mak said, as if it were something to be proud at. Only regretfully he added, “Didn’t see much, though. One of them clouted me over the head, and I went down like a butcher’s axed ox right at the start.”

  “Not much help, that,” Jem said. “Too many folk who want to clout you over the head. But you,” he said to Basset, apparently having decided for himself who led here. “Any one mad at you and your folk? Or was it just chance and plain robbery?”

  With an inward jar, Joliffe realized they had not agreed on how much—or how little—they were going to say of what had happened. He thought “little” would be the better way to go, but it was too late to say so.

  As it happened, Basset must have thought the same, because he told only the bare bones of what had happened, with no mention of any warnings said, and finished with laying a hand over the front of his doublet and, “Nor we weren’t robbed even. I think it might all just be someone’s lark gone bad.”

  Jem Smithcot sniffed, whether with a rheum or doubt, Joliffe could not tell, and looked around to ask the rest of them in a general way, “Is that what you think, too?”

  Used to following Basset’s lead, they all nodded their agreement, with Mak adding, “That’s the way I see it.”

  “Given you didn’t see much, that helps little,” Jem jested at him. “You,” he said at Ellis. “How bad is the hurt?”

  “Stings some,” Ellis said lightly. “But I should be easy on my feet again in a day or two.”

  Jem sighed as if the whole business were a mighty weight on him. “Well, if you didn’t see them well enough to know them again and you’ve no thought on who they could have been, there’s not much I can do except keep an ear out for someone talking about it. But that I’ll do anyway.”

  “Likely to take a lot of listening in a lot of taverns, that will,” said Mak.

  Jem gave him a friendly buffet on the shoulder. “If it does, then likely I’ll see you more than a few times.” He gave a general nod all around to the rest of them and left, big and slow and far from a fool, Joliffe thought. Whether he believed or doubted that Basset had told him everything, Jem Smithcot knew when to let a matter lie.

  With him gone, the players looked at each other, not finding anything in particular to say, until Joliffe asked on the sudden, “So we’re not going to play anywhere this morning?”

  “And maybe not this afternoon either,” Basset said. “We’re earning coin enough that I, for one, am willing to sit about and give work a chance to come to us rather than we go looking for it for a change.”

  That was a change and, on the whole, a good one, since it gave them a chance to choose leisure just now when they needed it. But Joliffe stood up and said, “I’ll go for a walk then. Stretch my legs a bit. Clear my head. Mak, come with me. Show me some more of London.”

  He did not give anyone the chance to offer to come with him or leave Mak with a choice but set a hand friendliwise on his shoulder and steered him out the door with him. Mak went willingly enough. Only when they were in the street and Joliffe loosed him did he rub at his shoulder and shift it doubtfully, saying, “You’re stronger than you look. What was that for?”

  “Let’s walk on,” Joliffe said, starting randomly away. “We’re less likely to be overheard if we’re walking, yes?”

  “Aye,” Mak granted, coming into step beside him. “Are we going to be saying things we don’t want overheard?”

  “Is it Bishop Beaufort you work for, or someone else?”

  Mak met that with momentary dead silence among the general noise of London and the near noise of a baker’s boy passing by with a tray of, “Hot meat pies! Hot from the oven! Hot meat pies!”

  Then Mak said, still easily, “I work for my Lord Lovell. I told you.”

  “Uh-huh,” Joliffe granted. “But for Bishop Beaufort as well. Or someone like.”

  Mak turned away from that and somewhat aside to buy an apple from a passing girl’s basket. Joliffe followed him, smiled at the girl, but bought nothing, and then they walked on together, Mak making small tosses of the apple rather than eating it and only finally answering, “I don’t work for the bishop or anyone but Lord Lovell, but I’m wondering why you think so.”

  “Because last night when you heard what those men said at us, you first made certain we meant to keep doing the Burgundian play. Then you started to judge who might want us not to do it and who was likely behind the attack. Then you said Bishop Beaufort would want to know. Or that ‘the bishop’ would want to know. I’ve just supposed you meant Bishop Beaufort.”

  “I never said all that,” Mak protested.

  “You did.”

  Mak put a hand to the back of his head as if to find any other thoughts that might have slipped out when he had not meant them to and said, “Didn’t mean anything by it. Was just thinking out aloud.”

  Joliffe did not answer that. It was better to let Mak think he was as certain as he sounded about his suspicion.

  They had been crossing wide Cheapside at a long angle, wending between people, horses, and carts. Now Mak, as if come to some decision but still silent, turned into a southward-running street. Joliffe kept beside him but left him to his silence until they came out of that street, crossed another, and started along it. Only then did Joliffe finally ask, “Where are we going?

  “To Brooke’s Wharf, by the river.”

  “So you can push me in?”

  “Tide’s out. You’d only land on the mud.” Mak turned at a corner and started down a narrow lane. “Nay, I just like looking at the river while I think.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m not. Not until I get to the river.”

  “I’m thinking,” said Joliffe.

  “Better you than me,” Mak snapped. He was still carrying the uneaten apple clutched in one hand, as if he had forgotten he had it.

  “I’m thinking,” said Joliffe. “I’m thinking the French are as likely as the Burgundians to want a stop to our play. It’s as unkind about the Dauphin as about the duke of Burgundy. More unkind maybe.”

  “No one here has had a kind thing to say about the Dauphin for years,” Mak said. “Or maybe ever. Doubt your play would make that much difference to whoever his privy friends are here.”

  “Privy friends?”

  “Spies,” Mak said.

  They came out from between warehouses into a broad, graveled openness bounded by wooden pilings. If this was Brooke’s Wharf, Master Brooke was not doing well; there was almost no one there, and Joliffe, who had thought to find it as thronged as London’s streets, said, “Not much happening.”

  “Tide’s out,” Mak said again.

  It surely was. Under the overcast sky the Thames was a far-off narrow gray band flowing between broad gray stretches of mud to which the quay’s landing stairs led pointlessly down. Two half-grown boys were on the stairs with buckets and rags, scrubbing away the river-left mud and slime so that when the tide turned and the river returned and was rising up the steps again, anyone using them to reach a boat would have less chance at slipping.

  Mak nodded toward the boys and said, “There’s something as needs doing again and again. I’ve earned many a penny doing it when I was their age.”

  “And how do you earn your pennies now?” Joliffe asked.

  Mak turned from him and walked to the quay’s farthest corner from the stairs. Joliffe followed him until he stopped at the quay’s edge. Mak sat down there, his legs dangling over the edge. So did Joliffe. And finally, looking out across the mud, Mak said, “The bishop pays in better than pennies.”

  Joliffe kept to himself his satisfaction at being right; only said, matching Mak’s even voice, “Which bishop?”

  With indignation at having to say the obvious, Mak answered, “Our bishop of Winchester, surely.”

  The question remained, of course, whether he was telling the truth. He had had time enough on their way here to put together what he would say. For the time being, though,
Joliffe was willing to let him say what he wanted and said, to keep the talk going, “So we’re on the same side in this. Does Lord Lovell know whose man you are?”

  “Not supposed to. But then you’re not supposed to.”

  “It was talking that gave you away to me. I don’t suppose you spend a lot of time talking with Lord Lovell.”

  Mak gave a short snort that was almost laughter. “There’s true enough. His clerk that hands me my wages and whoever gives me my orders, that’s who I talk to, not my Lord Lovell. Suits me fine.”

  “And Bishop Beaufort?”

  “I don’t suppose he’s talked at all to Lord Lovell’s clerk and all.”

  “Ha. Ha,” Joliffe said in token laughter.

  “Nor have I talked with the bishop myself,” Mak went on as if he grudged the fact. “There’s someone in his household I tell things to and who passes my pay back to me. What I’m mostly set to do is watch and hear what’s toward in London. You lot are about the first thing there’s been out of the usual way of things. Nor I’ve not done too well at it, either, going by last night and that you’ve found me out,” he grumbled toward the river and finally took a large bite out of the apple.

  “There’s naught I can do about last night, but I won’t tell anyone I’ve found you out,” Joliffe offered.

  “I’ll have to tell,” Mak mumbled glumly around his mouthful of apple.

  That was Mak’s problem. Joliffe went back to what interested him more. “So, if you don’t think it’s the French who want to stop us, what about other players? Robin Newcum, for one. That would be simpler than Burgundian spies.”

  “Maybe. But I’d think hiring those men would take more coin than Robin would—or maybe could—part with.”

  “Could be they’re his brothers-in-law or cousins or suchlike, doing him a favor.”

  “I know some as is his cousins and suchlike. They’d want more money for it than anyone. I’d still put my bet on Burgundians. Tide’s turned.”

  Joliffe, who had been staring down at an odd-shaped something sticking up from the mud a few yards out from the quay, trying to guess what it was, raised his gaze to the river that looked no different than it had a few minutes ago. “How can you tell?”

  “You can hear it starting to churn under the bridge.”

  Joliffe listened, and there it was: a growl of water that was the Thames turning back on itself and beginning to thrash between the stone and timbers holding up the bridge.

  “Gets louder,” said Mak. “There’s times of the year, too, when the tide on the turn is fair to deafen you. I don’t know how they live with it, those that live on the bridge.”

  Since he did not expect ever to do more than pass over the bridge, Joliffe left that problem to those who had it and said, “What I’m wondering is who knew to set men on us at all. It’s not as if we’ve been all over London with the play. The earl of Mortain’s one night. Philip Malpas’ the next. That’s all.”

  “Plenty of people at each place to see it,” Mak pointed out.

  “I doubt there was time after we played last night to set up that attack.”

  “Aye.” Mak did not sound happy in his agreement. “Doesn’t seem likely. So it was someone that saw it at the earl of Mortain’s. But that’s still several handfuls of folk, that is.”

  “Or someone at Lord Lovell’s maybe saw enough of it when we were rehearsing.”

  “Seemed to me you kept it all pretty close. Don’t know anyone saw or heard much. Nor I never heard any of you say enough to give it away, and others are saying what a close-mouthed lot you are.”

  “Are we?” Joliffe said, surprised. But they were, he supposed. Taken up with their work and with few things in common with household folk, what did they have to say to people they hardly knew? Gil, from his father being one of Lord Lovell’s bailiffs, might well have more to say among the household folk, but Joliffe had not noted that he did. Still, Joliffe supposed he’d have to be asked.

  “There’s always the Hyches,” Mak said. “No telling what they heard of what you did in your room, saying your lines and all, but I doubt they thought that much about it, to be telling people, off-hand like, what you were about.”

  “So it was probably someone at the earl of Mortain’s two nights ago who took offense,” Joliffe said. “And no way to tell who it might have been.”

  “No,” Mak agreed. “No way.”

  The gray band of the river had silver edges now where the water starting to spread thin over the mud was catching a gleam of sun breaking through the clouds. Joliffe and Mak watched it in silence a while, until Joliffe asked, “How did it come about you work for Bishop Beaufort?”

  “Was asked.”

  “To spy on Lord Lovell in particular?”

  “More because his inn is in a good place for seeing what goes on that end of London. It’s not like Lord Lovell is one of the large players in the government, for his grace of Winchester to needs worry over.”

  “Do you work for other than Bishop Beaufort?”

  “Oh, and you think it likely I’d tell you if I did?” Mak asked. “But I don’t, no. He’s enough.”

  “I thought Londoners favored the duke of Gloucester.”

  “Not much use favoring him these days.” Mak drummed his heels against the wharf’s wooden wall. “The duke of Bedford and the rest, they fairly well bearwarded him ten years ago. He has a foot spiked to the ground, as ’twere.”

  “He’s not without power, though.”

  “Oh, aye. He does and no doubt about it. What I mean is he can’t do much of what he would if he could.”

  “Such as?”

  “For one thing, if he’d had his way, he’d have given the duke of Burgundy a poke in the eye years ago. He was stopped because the duke of Bedford, God keep his soul, was counting on Burgundy’s help against the Dauphin. For all the good that’s come of that,” Mak said bitterly. “And all along Gloucester has wanted to put a curb on foreigners here in London having their own way over everything and walking off with profits that should be Englishmen’s, not some German’s or Italian’s or Portuguese’s or Fleming’s or Burgundian’s.” He spat down onto the mud—for lack of a foreigner to spit on, Joliffe guessed. “But the bishop of Winchester and other such, sometimes it’s like they’d rather slit an English throat than lose a foreign groat.” Mak chuckled, pleased with his “verse.”

  “But you work for Bishop Beaufort,” Joliffe pointed out.

  “Oh, aye, well, a body has to work for somebody to keep coin in the purse.”

  “And if it’s coin you want, Bishop Beaufort has plenty of them,” Joliffe said.

  “He does that. Not that his grace of Gloucester does so badly. Indeed not. He has money and to spare like the rest of the lords. But it’s said he spends a small fortune on . . . ” Mak paused to shake his head as if barely able to believe what he was going to say. “ . . . books. Even sends to foreigners to make him books.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Joliffe said solemnly. “Gives books away, too.” To the university at Oxford, for one. Joliffe had seen for himself the excitement there had been at one gift from the duke: a whole chest of books, including Plato’s Phaedo, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Flores Historiarum, and even several works of Cicero.

  Mak was still shaking his head. “Buys them. Gives them away. Books. Who knows what goes through lords’ heads?”

  “Not that this gets us any nearer who wants to stop us doing the play,” Joliffe said. “Could it be the duke of Gloucester, not wanting to chance the anger against Burgundy being eased at all?”