With more apple in his mouth, Mak considered that, then said, “Well, there’s talk Burgundy will threaten Calais before he’s much older and that Gloucester could be given an army to go against him there.”
Joliffe could see that as a reason Gloucester might want to keep anger high against the duke of Burgundy, but Mak went on, still considering, “Or then there’s the earl of Mortain. There’s talk of him being made governor of Normandy in Bedford’s place, and his brother is still a French prisoner. He might think it worth his while not to make dealing with the French any harder than it already it is, by making folk angrier at the Dauphin.”
“Can folk be angrier?” Joliffe asked.
Mak scrunched his face into a grimace. “Hard to say, isn’t it?”
“What I’m having trouble seeing is why someone went to the trouble of threatening us at all. Whatever Bishop Beaufort thinks, I have to doubt it’s going to make much difference in how people see things.”
“Somebody must agree with him,” Mak pointed out. “Otherwise last night wouldn’t have happened.”
“The thing is . . .” Joliffe paused while working his way into another thought. “. . . even if the play should sway people, what good will it do? The Burgundian envoys are gone. That makes an end of talking, doesn’t it? Bridges broken and boats burned, as they say. Nothing left for it but war. What can our play change?”
“Don’t know about boats and bridges,” said Mak. “But that bishop out of Normandy is still here.”
That stopped Joliffe for a moment, until he gave up and admitted, “I’m trying to remember who that is.”
With the patience of the knowledgeable informing the ignorant, Mak said, “Him that was the duke of Bedford’s chancellor there. He was at Bishop Beaufort’s the day you played there. The bishop of Therouenne.” He presented the name like giving a prize.
“The chancellor of Normandy. Yes.” Joliffe remembered now. “Here somewhat on the quiet.” Joliffe remembered something else. “He was at the earl of Mortain’s, too.” He paused, then was forced to add, “There was something else about him you told us, but I forget.”
“One of his brothers is the count of Luxembourg, one of the duke of Burgundy’s great lords. His other brother is Sir John of Luxembourg?” Making a question of it, not as if he doubted it himself, only whether it would mean anything to Joliffe.
But like welcoming the dawn, Joliffe said, “Sir John of Luxembourg! Him I know of.” Because for the past decade and more he had been one of the great captains of the French war and one of the few Burgundians steadily supporting the English in actual fighting against the Dauphinists.
Still and all, he was a Burgundian, and so must be the bishop of Therouenne, even if he was high in the government of Normandy. So . . .
The rumble of rolling wooden barrels distracted both Joliffe and Mak into looking around. The doors of the warehouse behind them had been set wide open, and several men were trundling barrels out of the darkness toward the quay edge.
“To be ready to load when the tide’s at full and the boats come,” Mak said. He threw the apple core away to the mud and got to his feet. “Time we shifted.”
Joliffe stood up, too, and followed him aside, out of the way of the coming barrels but moving slowly, saying at Mak’s back, “Why is this bishop, with one of his feet in Normandy and the other in Burgundy, here? What’s being said about him?”
They were well away from the barrels and other men, and Mak stopped and turned around to Joliffe. “What I’ve heard from some that maybe knows more than they’re supposed to is that he’s here because his brothers asked him to come. To see, all on the quiet, like, if there’s a way to keep Burgundy and England having to come to open war between them despite what was done at Arras. And it’s said that his brothers were asked to ask it of him by the duke of Burgundy himself.”
“Who says all that?” Joliffe asked.
“Just them that are where they hear things other folk might not,” Mak said and clamped his mouth shut in a way that told how unpleased he was with all the answering he had been doing.
He went on walking away, and Joliffe fell into step beside him, busy with thinking. Looked at as a whole, he had learned only a little from Mak. It was an interesting little, letting him see somewhat into how—behind the simple front of things—matters twisted around among the lords, taking shapes that did not show to plain people on the outside of it all. Unfortunately, this little bit further he now saw into things did not yet give him any better guess why the players were in danger, or from whom, and he said to Mak as they were crossing Cheapside again and almost back to Lovell’s inn, “For lack of a better way to find out things, would there be any use in our taking to taverns and alehouses this afternoon, to join Jem Smithcot in listening for whatever there might be to hear about why we were attacked?”
“I can’t say I ever mind spending an afternoon listening in taverns and alehouses,” Mak said cheerfully enough, although to Joliffe’s ear the cheer sounded somewhat forced. Mak was not pleased at having been found out.
Nothing more was going on as they went through the gateway into the inn’s yard than the usual stroll and hurry of household folk about their work, but when Joliffe gave a hard-knuckled rap on the door standing open to the players’ room to announce that he and Mak were back, Basset, Gil, and Piers all rushing at him before he was over the threshold, Piers grabbing his hands to drag him into the room and starting to dance around him while Basset exclaimed, “We’re summoned to play at the duke of Gloucester’s tomorrow!”
Chapter 13
In the midst of Gil pummeling his shoulder and Piers dancing around him chanting, “Gloucester, Gloucester, Gloucester,” Joliffe was aware of Mak slipping away but could not care, was too busy asking Basset, “What about Ellis? What will we play without Ellis?” Because their best work needed him.
From where he still sat on the cushions, his back against the wall, Ellis said, “I’ve already tried being on my feet. It’s The Duke and the Dauphin has been asked for. I can do it. Slow today. Better tomorrow.”
Joliffe silently questioned that with a look at Basset, but Basset, his thumbs hooked in his belt in his gesture of utter satisfaction, nodded and said, “He’ll do it.”
Joliffe gave way and started to grin. “The duke of Gloucester’s? Truly? Tomorrow?”
“Truly,” Basset assured him. “Tomorrow. With Lord Lovell’s blessing. Look.”
He turned toward the table, but Piers was quicker, darting past him to snatch up what looked to be a folded length of dark green cloth lying there, until Piers flourished it out of its folds into a houppelande—a man’s long gown—many-pleated across the front, with a high-standing collar and fashionable bagged sleeves so large a loaf of bread could have been carried in each one.
A little awed by the richness of it, Joliffe went to touch its close-woven wool, almost as if to be certain it was real.
“An old one of Lord Lovell’s, we’re told,” Basset said with proud pleasure. “His gift for our ‘Duke of Burgundy’ to wear.”
“If Rose sees you touching that with your grubby hands,” Ellis said warningly at Piers, “she’ll have the hair off your head.”
“My hands are washed!” Piers protested but let his grandfather take the gown from him and fold it again while Joliffe asked, finally noting the one lack among them, “Where is Rose?”
“Gone buying,” Gil said.
Joliffe queried Basset with a look.
Basset patted the folded houppelande. “We have to live up to this now. She and Maud Hyche have gone to find what they can at second-hand in some regraters’ shops for the rest of you. Or else to see what they can sew between now and then.”
“Between now and tomorrow night?” Joliffe said incredulously.
“Between now and tomorrow mid-day,” Basset corrected.
“Mid-day?” Joliffe protested. “Why would Gloucester be giving a feast then? What of parliament?”
“It’s in its
pause while the Commons are choosing their Speaker, before they get down to work. So the duke of Gloucester is giving a feast to help his fellow lords pass their time until they can start their public arguing in parliament.”
And meanwhile do their private dealing over who was to be governor of Normandy, Joliffe supposed. But it was all too much and too sudden, and he sat down heavily on the joint stool, saying, “Merciful Saint Genesius,” not minding that he sounded as dazed as he felt. “We’re going to be playing for the king’s uncle.”
Helpfully, Gil said, “He’s heir to the throne, too. Until the king marries and fathers a child, Gloucester is his heir.”
Basset and Ellis turned glares upon him while Joliffe sank his head between his hands.
“What’s the trouble with that?” Gil asked, confused.
“That’s not something we need in our heads when we’re in front of him,” Joliffe said dryly. A year and a half ago they had been pleased beyond measure when asked to play for a merchant’s household in Oxford. Now they were to play for the heir to the throne.
But Piers, glowing with the wonder instead of the worry, asked, “Do you think there’s chance the king will be there?”
“There’s chance the world will end tomorrow,” Ellis said. “I doubt either is likely.”
“But if not tomorrow, then maybe the day after!” Basset said. “Not the world ending but playing for the king. Who knows? So hearts up! A play is a play. An audience is an audience. We’ve done this play well enough a duke wants to see it! That’s what we think on: that we’ve been that good and will be that good tomorrow.”
“Yes!” Piers began to whirl, arms out, in delight. Joliffe stood up and grabbed him by one hand. Gil caught him by the other and then Joliffe by his free hand and the three of them circled in a merry-footed jig the room was too small for, so that Ellis shifted his leg out of their way, protesting, “Hai! Ware there!” and they fell apart, laughing.
Basset, holding to his dignity, said, “Besides bettering our garb, I’ve likewise sent to the fellow who helped so well with last night’s music to ask if he’ll help again.”
“You’re paying for musicians?” Joliffe exclaimed.
“Only for the one, if he’ll do it. John Trebell. He can play trumpet and pipes and drum himself I gather from last night.”
“Not all at once,” Joliffe pointed out.
Ellis said, “We don’t need them all at once, you fool,” and threw a wooden cup at him.
Joliffe deftly caught it and tossed it back, laughing, and Ellis laughed with him.
Rose prospered in her buying, coming back with a gown for Lady Honor that, while not new, had far less wear on it than the one that Gil—and Joliffe before him—had been wearing for many parts over many months. Freshly re-dyed before they came to London and with the hem turned under to hide the worn edge, it had served well enough until now, but the “new” one made Gil whistle with delight.
For Ellis as the Devil she had found a short black cape edged with fur. “Only dyed squirrel, I think,” she said. “But it looks well enough.”
Ellis immediately put it on and began to flinging it back over one shoulder and then the other, trying for the most gallant look he could find.
“Don’t forget to practice your strutting, too,” Joliffe suggested.
“It’s envy with you,” Ellis said, craning his neck over one shoulder to see what sort of folds the cloak had fallen into this time.
“I should think so,” Joliffe said, holding up the broad neckchain Rose had found for the Dauphin to wear. It was larger than the one he had been wearing and far uglier, made of some base metal that had been painted to look gold but the paint was scabbing off, and although a wide medallion hung from it, whatever glass “jewel” had been in the center was gone, leaving a hole.
“There’s these, too,” Rose said, holding out a pair of shoes to him.
Joliffe stepped back in pretended horror. He could see why someone had got rid of them before they were worn out, but how many years had they been hanging in some re-grater’s shop? Even more to be asked was why there had ever been fashion for shoes half again as long as the wearer’s foot, their pointed tip so long it was curled up and had to be held by a chain or lace around the wearer’s calf.
“I even found some yellow laces to fasten them with,” Rose said, laughing at Joliffe’s dismay.
“I shall look perfectly, utterly a fool!” He threw his arms around her and kissed her soundly on the cheek. “Thank you!”
“Best you practice walking in those horrors,” Basset said. “The Dauphin breaking his neck isn’t part of the play.”
Rose had also bought new hosen for all of them except Piers. With how he had been growing of late, his present ones were new enough, but he whined a little anyway before going happily off to see if Ivo Hyche was back from morning school yet.
“Doesn’t he have school in the afternoon, too?” Ellis called after Piers’ departing back.
“We have plans,” Piers said back and kept going.
“Oh-oh,” said Ellis to no one in particular. “We won’t be liked for Piers leading the Hyche’s son astray.”
“That’s hardly fair,” said Basset, mockingly sententious. “For all we know, it’s poor Piers who’s being led astray.”
“That,” said Joliffe, “will be the day the world ends.”
Time, in its treacherous way, rushed through the rest of the day as if determined to leave too little of itself for what they needed to do. When they were bade to play for Lady Lovell and the household after supper, Lord Lovell being somewhere else, Joliffe at least welcomed the relief of losing himself for a while in the familiar, knockabout The Baker’s Cake. Lady Lovell and the household had seen it before but not lately nor with the changes needed by Ellis’ absence, and their ready laughter gave ease from worry toward the morrow.
Then the morrow came, and as he had sworn he could, Ellis was up and walking, somehow turning his slight limp into a swagger and claiming that so long as nothing more than that was asked of him, he would be fine. While Rose finished her careful packing of the hamper, Basset sent Piers to find Mak and said to the rest of them while they put on their Lovell tabards, “Everything is as done as might be. We’re as ready as ever we’re going to be. So hearts up and heads firm.” He frowned thoughtfully, then added, “And heads up and hearts firm as well. No reason not to be thorough.”
Rose turned from pulling the last hamper strap tight as Piers returned with Mak and Harry, both of them in red doublets with Lord Lovell’s badge on their shoulder. Joliffe had not laid eyes on Mak since they parted in the yard yesterday, and Mak did not look at him now but said to Basset, “’Tisn’t far to Baynard’s Castle. We’ll be there in good time, no fear. You take that end, Harry.”
While he and Harry lifted the hamper and started out the door with it, the players all looked at Rose and she looked at them. They were all too taut for smiling, so it was solemnly that Rose went first to her father, put her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him on the cheek. Then she did the same to Ellis, to Joliffe, and to Gil. Only when she came to Piers, for once waiting instead of trying to duck away, did she pause. Looking down at him—but not so far down as she had used to even a few months ago—she said, “Be very wicked,” and then kissed him.
Possibly to his surprise and certainly to hers, Piers gave her a sudden kiss back, landing it somewhere near her ear. Then, while she was still surprised, he darted away out the door, calling to Mak, “Come on! If we wait for them, we’ll never get there!”
As Mak had said, the duke of Gloucester’s London home was not far. He led them half around St. Paul’s cathedral first and then left and right and left again along several streets and downhill toward the Thames, finally coming out on a wide street on whose far side was the high, long front of a stone-built mansion. Blank-walled at street-level, the storeys above that were well-windowed, and all the windows were glassed. At either end of the long front, angled towers rose even highe
r, with a banner cresting both of them, lifted on a light wind from the river to show the crimson and azure royal arms, differenced by the plain white border of a king’s younger son.
A Play of Lords Page 18