“Is there choice?”
That had only one answer, with no need for Basset to give it, and he did not.
Joliffe stood up. “There’s a while yet before I need be there. I think I’ll see something more of London until then.” With coins in his belt-pouch and restlessness all through him, why not?
Basset did not trouble to stand again, just looked steeply up at him and said, “You know what I’m thinking.”
“You’re thinking you’d like to warn me to be careful.”
“I am that.” And there was no jest about it as there had been other times.
Nor was there any jest in Joliffe’s answering, “I will be.”
Behind Basset, Piers had stirred out of his nap but was not enough awake yet to be more than sitting up, rubbing his eyes. Rose was lying beside still-sleeping Ellis, maybe not sleeping herself but curved against his back, one arm protectively over him. Only Gil was upright and fully awake, sitting at the table with one of their play-rolls in his hands, not looking very interested but as if he could not trouble to think of something else to do.
It was the slough that came after a hard push of work, when wits and body both had been hard-used and were paused, regathering themselves before going on. It was a necessary time but could feel a lonely, discouraging one, too, and Joliffe said, knowing one of the cures for it, “Hai, Gil, want to come see something more of London with me?”
Dropping the roll in his haste, Gil shot to his feet. “Yes!”
“Come on then. Toss me my hat.”
There were hats and then there were hats. Joliffe’s was a plain one of rounded crown and rolled brim, the better to survive the rigors of a player’s traveling life, but he knew how to make something more of it and set it angled toward the back of his head and held in a smile at seeing Gil do the same with his own plain hat. When the company had taken Gil on somewhat more than a year ago, it had been only half-willing and at Lord Lovell’s behest. Being about midway between Piers’ age and Joliffe’s, he had at first, by some manner of default, been left mostly to companion Piers between whiles of being trained to take on many of the “maiden” roles that Joliffe had been outgrowing, but he was long since become fully part of the company, no longer abandoned to only Piers, with no reason for Joliffe not to want his company.
He was still next-to-youngest in the company, though, and pointing a finger at him, Basset said, “No matter what Joliffe gets up to, you be back here before dark. We still don’t know what that trouble two nights ago was about, and we don’t want to find out more the hard way.”
“What about Joliffe?” Gil asked.
“He has business of his own, and I can’t help it.” Basset’s tone told he very much wished he could. “But you, you be back here.”
“Come on,” said Joliffe. “That gives us an hour or more.”
“Best you take your cloaks, too,” Basset said. “It’ll draw on to chill fast as the sun goes.”
Gil ducked back inside, grabbed their cloaks from the wallpole beside the door, and tossed Joliffe’s to him as they both headed for the gate.
They made the most of their hour, though they did not do much beyond saunter and look. London was a fine place for both pastimes, and when time came to go their separate ways, they were at the middle of London bridge, leaning side by side on the stone railing beside the tall and buttressed chapel where the Burgundian had taken sanctuary. Below them the river roiled and swirled, its rumble low and ceaseless under the street-noises behind them.
Joliffe had bought them a meat pasty apiece from a baker’s shop before they had strolled onto the bridge. Now Gil tossed away the last of his too-thick crust, watched it arc over the river, fall, and disappear with no splash worth the mention into the river’s swift flow. Seemingly still watching where it had last been, he said, “Basset is afraid you’re going into trouble.”
Joliffe was down to the last of his crust, too. No more wanting it than Gil had wanted his, he held it out at arm’s length, let it fall, and leaned over the railing to see it disappear into the water before agreeing, “He is, yes.”
Gil seemed to consider that, then asked, “Are you?”
Joliffe considered back and finally said, “I don’t know.”
They went on watching the river, silent together for a long moment, until Gil said, “I could come with you. No matter what Basset says.”
Joliffe considered how to answer. Gil could not go with him, and Basset’s forbidding had little to do with it, but Gil did not know that, and it was a generous offer, particularly since Joliffe had never seen sign that Gil was braver than life generally required. So he put regret into his voice as he answered, “It’s not so much what he said when we left as what he’d say when we got back.”
Gil nodded understanding of that.
“So you’d best be heading back and I’d best—”
Joliffe broke off as he realized that by going on across the bridge he would leave small doubt where he was going. He had not thought of that when they came this way.
Gil grinned at him, apparently reading his thoughts, but only said, “Take care. Saint Genesius may be tired of watching out for you.”
“Just get yourself straight back to Lord Lovell’s,” Joliffe said with mock sternness. “Basset will chew your ears if the sun is down before you get there, and it’s going fast.”
It was, and the clouds that were moving in would bring dusk all the earlier. Still, while Gil went his way quickly enough, Joliffe made no hurry the rest of his way across the bridge and into Southwark, was just come off the bridge when a man eased into step beside him. Because the man’s hands were in the open and a quick look around showed no other men giving heed their way, Joliffe kept clear of his own dagger and smiled and shook his head while the man offered to show him the way to where women beyond his dreams of beautiful were waiting to pleasure him.
The man took his refusal in good part, probably from certainty there would be other, more willing men tonight. Brothels, because forbidden in London, were Southwark’s business, gathered in such quantity as to be, for centuries past, the place’s fame. Or infamy, depending on how darkly someone took such matters. For his own part, Joliffe had never been so hard-driven by his loins as to have recourse to such, and certainly now was not the time to start.
It would have been easy enough to do it, though. When he had come this way before, it had been with the other players, and they had been very plainly about business. This time he was a lone man and apparently fair game; before he reached the turning toward the bishop’s palace two more men approached him with various promises of women to be had, just come this way, young sir. Even one woman made bold on her own behalf, but Joliffe shook his head to all of them and kept on his way, glad to find himself left in peace after he turned out of the wider street and toward the bishop’s palace. Maybe because no bishops of Winchester, owners of much of Southwark, wanted to ride past open reminders of this one particular source of their wealth, this lesser street looked to be where the ordinary shopkeepers and folk who worked at the palace lived their honest lives.
Most of them were indoors to their suppers by now, out of the growing evening chill, and that meant, Joliffe hoped, there was no one saw his walk change from his own usual long stride to something shorter, close to lumbering, like a countryman used to walking his byre-yard and fields day by day, instead of the miles of road that were Joliffe’s usual lot. At the same time he shifted his hat to sit simply on top of his head and sank his shoulders and his spine, curving them to lessen his height and give a sense of a thicker body under his cloak that was plain enough to carry through the seeming of a simple countryman. For good measure, when he came to the bishop’s gateway and held out to the guards the token Mak had given him, he said in a broadly bastard form of some countryman’s speech, “Coom ta sae a Mawster Foowler. Bain tald hay’s hare und hay’ll sae mae ef aw shu thase.”
The two guards looked at one another as if hoping one of them had understood that
.
Joliffe shook the parchment and seal at them with seeming impatience. “Ta sae Mawster Foowler.”
One of the guards took the token from him and held it to the light of one of the torches burning beside the gateway, then handed it back, saying, “Good enough. Master Fowler. Know him.” He flicked a finger for Joliffe to follow him, went a few steps through the gateway, called through an open doorway into the tower there, “Hai, Morice, here’s someone to take to the bishop’s man Fowler.”
Giving Joliffe a nod, he started back to his place outside the gateway. Joliffe, who had followed him in, started to follow him out. The man stopped, pointed back at the doorway where a stripling in the bishop’s livery had just come out, and said in the louder way that was supposed to make idiots understand, “No. You go with him. He’ll take you to Fowler.” Adding in a mutter, “Dowsy northerners.”
“Ah. Aye,” said Joliffe as if he had not heard that last, saying only as he turned away to follow the stripling and as if to himself, “Daft suthners.”
From the glimpse Joliffe took through the tower doorway as he passed, the stripling had been called away from a dice game being played on the floor among four others of his kind, youths starting their way up in the household of a lord where their father or uncle or maybe a brother already served and had found them a place. How far or not someone went in a lord’s service from that beginning depended on both their wits and how much interest they brought to the business. Joliffe did not know about Morice’s wits, but he did not seem to bring much interest. By the light of the torches ringing the courtyard, he gave Joliffe a short dismissing look down and up, made it plain he saw nothing to impress him, said, “Follow me,” beckoned to be sure the dowsy northerner understood him, and started away across the courtyard.
Enjoying himself, Joliffe followed. There were few people to be seen in the yard, and the tall windows of the great hall were only slightly lighted. A quiet evening for Bishop Beaufort, then. Supposing he was not somewhere else, with Joliffe expected to wait for him. As it was, Morice led him by way of several lesser rooms to a narrow, tightly curved, back stairway and part of the way up it to a lone, closed door where Morice stopped and knocked. They had left behind most of the light from the lamp burning on a stand at the stairway’s foot and had only a hint of light from above them, around the stairs’ upward curve, so the line of lamp- or candlelight showing under the door’s lower edge was saffron-bright and hopefully meant someone was there beyond the door. Still, there was pause long enough that Morice had raised his hand to knock again before a man said, not as if he were pleased about it, “Come in.”
Morice opened the door, letting out a swathe of light into the stairway’s shadows, said, “A man here says he’s to see you,” and started to step aside, out of Joliffe’s way.
“Name,” the man inside demanded. “You’re to say the name.”
Morice made a muttered half of an oath under his breath and glared at Joliffe who obligingly said, still broadly, “Adam Thwaite.”
“Adam Thwaite,” Morice repeated, succeeding at sounding respectful and resentful together. “Some northerner,” he added, as if that would help.
“Let him come in. Then you may go,” said the voice, sounding, in return, as if Morice were a tedium he could barely endure and his going away the greatest favor Morice could give.
Morice went, taking the stairs two at time, and Joliffe went in. The room was small and made smaller by a tall, wide, wooden-doored ambry filling most of one wall while a wide table took up most of what remained of the space. A narrow window with cross-leaded panes showed only night beyond it but even on the best of days it would let in little light. Joliffe guessed the man seated behind the table lived mostly by lamplight, as he was now. Certainly he was pale enough, even in the warm light of the three-wicked oil lamp burning beside him, glinting off the glass in the thick-rimmed pair of spectacles he wore, held on by ribbons around his ears. He was sitting straightly, though, not crouched over like a work-beaten clerk, and behind the glint of his spectacles his eyes were sharp on Joliffe as Joliffe stepped forward and laid the token on the table in front of him. Master Fowler gave it a look long enough to be sure of what it was, then returned his gaze to Joliffe and said, “You’re not, I suppose, really any ‘Adam Thwaite’?”
“No,” Joliffe granted in his own voice. “I’m the player his grace wished to see tonight.”
“Nor are you a northerner.”
“The word I had was that I’d do well to seem other than I am.”
Lips pursed with apparent thought, Master Fowler nodded as if that answer satisfied him. He rose from his chair, gathering the token to him as he did, and said, “I’ll take you to his grace.”
That meant going farther up the stairs and along a very narrow passage, seeing no one as they went, to a door where Master Fowler lightly knocked.
From beyond it Bishop Beaufort said in his deep, certain voice, “Enter.”
As before, he was alone and at his desk. With a small movement of one hand, Master Fowler told Joliffe to wait where he was but went forward himself, laid the token on the desk, and said something to the bishop too low for Joliffe to make out any of it. Bishop Beaufort nodded to whatever it was and said something in reply. Master Fowler stepped back from the desk, bowed, and left, passing Joliffe with a look that Joliffe could not read; but something in the way the man quietly shut the door gave Joliffe the feeling that any retreat was cut off.
Hoping he kept that feeling to himself and staying where he was, he took off his cap and bowed low to Bishop Beaufort. The room was well lighted by cresset lamps hung in clusters on two tall and finely curved iron stands, one to either side of the desk. The red stone set in a gold-banded ring on Bishop Beaufort’s hand caught the light, momentarily like a burning spark itself, as he gestured for Joliffe to come forward. Joliffe did, his gaze on the bishop as openly as the bishop’s tight-mouthed stare was on him, but it was the bishop’s place to speak first and he did, saying, “Show me your ‘northerner.’”
Hoping he hid his surprise, Joliffe slumped back to his “northerner’s” body and said in voice to match, “Ee’ve coom aws ee was bad und hap ee sae yur wurship weel, an eet pleese yur grawse.”
Bishop Beaufort put up a hand to cover his mouth, but the smile had already reached his eyes, and he dropped his hand, gave in to a short, deep-chested laugh, and took Joliffe more aback by asking, “That’s your ‘northerner’?”
“Your guard took it for such, and I didn’t say different.”
Bishop Beaufort nodded his approval but was abruptly sober and back to business. “I gather from what I’ve heard that you’ve done all that I asked with your play.”
Joliffe slightly bowed. “Thank you, your grace.”
“You played at the duke of Gloucester’s today.”
“We did.”
“You know how matters stand between the duke and myself?”
“Badly, from all I’ve heard.”
“Indeed. ‘Badly’ sums it well. That didn’t give your company pause when asked to play for him?”
“We were asked as Lord Lovell’s players. Which we are,” Joliffe returned, refusing any qualm, thinking he was on good ground here. “And he is the duke of Gloucester.”
The unexpected smile pulled at Bishop Beaufort’s mouth again. “He is,” he granted. “Nor have I complaint that you played there. You should play anywhere you’re asked. What have you noted about people who see this play?”
Bishop Beaufort had surely heard answer to that from others, but if he wanted to hear about it again, it was not Joliffe’s place to question, only to answer straightly, “They laugh. They enjoy it greatly. We’re paid for it. Whether it shifts anyone’s mind about the duke of Burgundy, I can’t say.”
“Nor can I. Today you had chance to see my nephew of Gloucester and his guests from the minstrels’ gallery. What did you think of what you saw?”
Joliffe paused over his answer, somewhat unsettled that Bish
op Beaufort knew where they had been and more unsettled that he wanted to know his thought on it, so that he answered carefully, “They seemed all friendly together.” He could—maybe should—have stopped there but instead added, “They would look friendly, though, being there and where everyone could see them.”
A Play of Lords Page 21