A Play of Lords

by Margaret Frazer

  Judging he had gone far enough now to be out of sight among the other passers-by—supposing the fellow had taken the trouble to watch him away along the street—Joliffe turned at the next corner, more or less back toward St. Paul’s. As he did, his thoughts turned, too. What if the fellow was sharper-witted than he had seemed and had lied about how he was hired and by whom? After all, he was a player, and Joliffe knew well enough how he himself could seem other than he was and spin a tale to go with the seeming when need be.

  Come to it, he had just done so. What was to say the other man had not done the same? If he had, then Joliffe knew no more now than he did before he had talked with him. His instinct was that the man had not been feigning, that he had been just as he showed himself, but whether he was or not, either way, what he had said was all that Joliffe had. So, if the fellow had told him true, what did he have?

  First, there had to be a suspicion that Bishop Beaufort was playing a doubled game—that at the same time he had hired Basset’s company to ease angers against the Flemings and the duke of Burgundy, he was using others to keep those same angers going. If that was true, it meant . . . what?

  Joliffe went into an inn with the sign of bells hanging above its door, bought a pottery goblet of Bordeaux wine, and went to lean at a corner of the streetward window, thinking further at the business while watching to see if he had after all been followed. If he had, it would tell him something more about the riot-rouser anyway. Unless someone had been following the fellow and was now following him. If that was the way of it, things were more twisted around than would be good for him.

  No one came into the inn soon after him, nor did he see anyone who seemed to be lingering in the street outside.

  For what that was worth. If someone was truly good at their work, he might well not note them; but while he waited to see if anyone betrayed an interest in him, he went on thinking. There were undoubtedly layers under layers of things that he had no thought about going on among the greater lords. Hell’s great clanging bells, he had not even known how hand-in-glove Lord Lovell was with Bishop Beaufort, and Lord Lovell was his own lord!

  He had to face that he had no way of telling certainly what one lord or another might or might not do, beginning with Bishop Beaufort, who might be playing two sides of a game to which Joliffe could not see the third side, and if that was the way of it, Joliffe supposed he had a whore’s chance of heaven of finding out anything more.

  But then if that were the way of it, he did not know that he wanted to find out more. If that were the way of it, not knowing might be the best way to be.

  Still, what about the man whom the other player thought was of the bishop’s household? If he was of Bishop Beaufort’s household, maybe he was the one playing two sides in all of this—in Bishop Beaufort’s service but serving someone else. That was very possible. But that only brought the problem around to who, then, did the man secretly work for? Someone who wanted to keep angers white-hot at the duke of Burgundy and the Flemings, yes, but that likelihood brought Joliffe up—again—against all the things he did not know.

  Well enough. Let him work with what he did know.

  First, a man maybe of Bishop Beaufort’s household had hired one of the duke of Gloucester’s players to raise a riot against Flemings. But had he known the player was Gloucester’s and hired him deliberately to make trouble for Gloucester if he were caught (and maybe even meant for him to be caught, sooner or later)? Or had it been merely by chance, the man looking to hire someone to make trouble and happening on the player?

  Joliffe had to favor the first of those two possibilities. Who better to play the part of a riot-rouser than a player? And if someone had been looking to hire a player, he probably knew whose player the fellow was.

  Given that—and keeping to the possibility the man who did the hiring was of Bishop Beaufort’s household but maybe working a double game—more than trouble against Flemings could well lie behind this latest riot. Let too much become known, and Bishop Beaufort and the duke of Gloucester could begin flinging accusations at each other about who was causing these troubles. At the least, that would distract the government from Burgundy and the French war. At the worst, the long quarrel between the two lords could break out into open war again, as it had done ten years ago.

  So. Who would be in favor of war here in England?

  The duke of Burgundy, for one.

  War here in England would forestall England turning the full force of its anger on him.

  That equally held true for the Dauphin, come to that. Bring an outbreak of war among the lords here, and the flow of men and money to the French war would surely dry up.

  But then Gloucester’s player had not been certain the man who hired him was of Bishop Beaufort’s household. What if the man indeed was not? What if the matter was not so twisty as all that, but simply someone’s straightforward wish to kill any chance of peace with the duke of Burgundy by keeping angers stirred here in London? There were surely men who would rather pay the duke of Burgundy with “honorable” war for his treachery than with “dishonorable” peace—war being an “easier” answer than longer, peaceful ways around to an end. Sometimes, true, there was no choice, times when war was the only way through to safety. There seemed presently to be a choice which way it would go with Burgundy, but mayhap some lord wanted to make certain the choice was war.

  And he did not even have to be an English lord. What of the Burgundians themselves? They might very likely be as divided as the English were between settling for war or trying for peace. Come to it, what of that bishop come from Normandy who had feasted at Winchester House and at the earl of Mortain’s, the one with a foot set on either side—chancellor for the king in Normandy but brother to two Burgundian lords and said to be here on the hope he might make a way to keep England and Burgundy from splitting any further apart. What if his purpose was actually otherwise? But why would it be?

  Joliffe drank slowly, trying to remember to enjoy the wine but barely aware of it.

  Maybe the Burgundian lords that claimed they wanted peace actually wanted war, and their kinsman the bishop of Therouenne was here to ensure it happened despite he was chancellor for the English in Normandy.

  Joliffe shook his head against that. That was as twisted as supposing Bishop Beaufort was both trying to soothe anger against the Burgundians and cause it at the same time.

  Not that it was impossible Bishop Beaufort was doing that. No one with clear sense ever seriously claimed that everyone with power had the wits to use it well.

  Still and nonetheless, Joliffe was hard put to think Bishop Beaufort was that kind of a fool. If he was playing that twisted of a game, there had to be a deep, deep reason for it.

  Too deep for Joliffe to have any hope of thinking his way to it.

  He swallowed that certainty along with more wine. Time to drop it all, he told himself—drop it and get on with what he understood in his own life, not tangle himself into lords’ matters.

  But like picking at a scab that ought to be left alone, he went right back to wondering who might want to keep the trouble against Burgundy going. Suppose, as Joliffe had already done, that the duke of Gloucester’s player was right about it being someone of Bishop Beaufort’s household that hired him, and suppose that someone was also in the pay of some other lord who was seeking to use both Beaufort and Gloucester as a blind to hide behind while he pursued his own ends . . .

  Except of course it did not have to be a lord at all, Joliffe thought suddenly. A loud number of the commons were making it plain they wanted war with Burgundy more than they wanted peace, although on the whole that probably counted for little, Joliffe thought. People could be loud without having power to do anything except yell about what they wanted and even then be all too readily swayed one way and another by whatever they were told or shown without they understood it at all.

  But that did not mean there were not those among the commons who understood both what they wanted and how to go abou
t getting it. Wealthy men like Master Catworth and Philip Malpas did not get to be that wealthy without both understanding and using power. Nor, on the whole, did a man get to be as wealthy as, say, Catworth and Malpas without wanting to be wealthier. From what Joliffe had seen, where wealth was concerned, much was never enough.

  But then, when it came to wealth and power, not only did it not have to be a lord behind this, it did not even have to be either an Englishman or a Burgundian. Couldn’t there be others with an interest in crippling the wool trade with Flanders, in keeping England and the duke of Burgundy angry at each other? Maybe the Italians for one, the Hanseatic merchants out of Germany for another. Didn’t they both buy English wool?

  But there again Joliffe came up against his own ignorance. He knew nothing much about the wool trade. There had been a Hanseatic merchant and an Italian at the earl of Mortain’s, hadn’t there? And Italian merchants at both the duke of Gloucester’s and Philip Malpas’. Unfortunately, that told him nothing in particular. He knew altogether too little to make any worthwhile guesses about what mattered to any of those men or how any of it might fit into what else he knew too little about.

  He found himself increasingly irked at how much he did not know, even when it was something that, by all good sense, need not matter to him, something that had not mattered to him a week ago. But a week ago he had had no thought of the matter at all, and now he did, and he hated that there was a tangle he could not sort into sense.

  Besides that, there was the hovering question of how much Lord Lovell’s interest in the players depended on how well or ill he served Bishop Beaufort in this present matter.

  Still, no one knew he had seen and known the duke of Gloucester’s player today. All he had to do was walk away and pretend the problem had never come his way. That would be simple enough.

  Except that he knew himself well enough to know he would not, knew himself well enough to know that even learning enough to let him understand what was happening would not be enough to satisfy him, because for him it was not enough to know the what of a thing. What was only the outermost part. What truly mattered was the why, and it was the why of all this that he most wanted to know.

  Done with the wine and as certain as he could be that no one was taking any interest in him, he left the inn and headed roundabout toward Lord Lovell’s by streets he had not tried before, less for the sake of losing any follower he might not have noted than out of curiosity to see more of London while he had the chance, until eventually his wandering brought him along a street where the shops seemed to be selling either paternoster beads (of more kinds than he had ever thought existed) or else books laid out on the shopboards for hoped-for buyers to look at.

  Joliffe had no need of beads to help him pray, but his steps slowed as he passed the books. There had been a time when books had been the center around which his days had swung—books and talk with others whose lives were likewise lived around books and the thoughts that came from them. His great pleasure then had been finding new ways to think about the world, new ways to see mankind and even heaven itself.

  Then one day, for reasons that had been good and sufficient at the time, he had walked away from it all. Had been, in truth, walking ever since, although that was more because walking was how players mostly got from place to place than because he was still walking away from anything. But the sum of it was that books were no longer a part of his life. For one thing, until lately there had been no money for anything much beyond daily necessities. But now, with what he had earned here in London . . .

  There were others paused outside one and another of the scriveners’ shops: a black-gowned priest peering nearsightedly at something, a pair of girls laughing softly together over whatever they were reading, a plain-garbed youth who kept taking guilty looks along the street as if he should have been somewhere else, a merchant in a well-furred robe who, after turning over pages outside one shop, went inside; and Joliffe found that he was fingering coins in his purse and wondering more than idly if he might not buy just one small copy of something or other.

  That was going too far. There was no room for idle books in a player’s life, lived out of the back of a cart as it was, and taking firm hold on himself, he made himself walk on. What warmth the day had had was fading, and he was glad when he soon came to Lovell’s inn to find not only the rest of the players gathered in their room but a coal fire pleasantly burning in the small hearth, letting him willingly lay aside his cloak while Basset said, “You’re back in good time. I want us to go through our lines for this Burgundian thing again before we play it tonight at Master Hatherley’s, to get it firm in our heads now we’re not doing it in mind-goading panic.”

  Joliffe groaned, as he was expected to.

  “That won’t help,” Ellis said. “I’ve tried it.”

  Whatever anyone’s unwillingness, the running of their lines went well, and when they were done, Basset said, as if deeply surprised, “Saint Genesius be thanked. All this rich living hasn’t rotted your brains yet.”

  “The biggest peril I see is that some of us will get too fat to fit our garb,” Joliffe said with a hard stare at Ellis.

  With a matching hard stare back at him, Ellis said, “Or that some of us will get fatter heads than they already have.”

  “More surely a problem,” said Basset, “is what we’re going to do now that Piers is growing too big to be slung around the way he has been.”

  “Do you want to hear what I think we should do with him?” Joliffe asked.

  A general chorus of “No!” answered that, most loudly from Piers, and then Rose said it was time they washed, to be ready when Mak and Harry came to carry the hamper and show the way to Master Hatherley’s.

  “I’ve the water warm there,” she said, pointing to the bucket near the fire. “Piers, I’ll do your neck.”

  Why necks should be so much a trouble Joliffe did not know, only that it had been the same with him when he was Piers’ age and been given the same scrubbing by his mother that Piers now got from Rose, and been given the same lack of sympathy when he whined at it.

  They were putting on their Lovell tabards when Mak and Harry and another man came to see them to Master Hatherley’s. Besides that there was one more man than necessary, all three men were in matching red doublets with Lord Lovell’s badge on their shoulder, and Basset eyed them with something of Joliffe’s own curiosity at this sudden display while saying, “There’s but the one hamper to be carried, and it won’t need three men.”

  The newcomer among the men—and the largest—answered, hand on his sword hilt, “I’m come as guard. My lord doesn’t want more of what happened the other night.”

  “Our thanks to Lord Lovell, then,” Basset said, as if this were merely their due, but Joliffe suspected they were all equally relieved, no matter that they had said nothing about it among themselves.

  Even better, as they passed through the gateway John Hyche handed their large guard a long-shafted pike with polished steel ax-head that the man hefted to his shoulder as easily as a plain stick as he fell into place behind them.

  Master Hatherley, by the look of his house and all, was maybe not Philip Malpas’ match for wealth, but he was wealthier than many a country knight the players had played for—there had to be poor London merchants, Joliffe supposed, but he had yet to knowingly see one—and nonetheless his guests were a disappointment so far as Joliffe cared. There was no one noble or anyone unusual, only other Londoners, an Italian merchant whose name was unfamiliar, and a German whose name Joliffe thought he remembered from somewhere; and he inwardly smiled at how readily this week in London had brought him to think of Italians and Germans as common rather than unusual.

  The players also found they were to be the main sport that evening, with Ned and a juggler the only others there, disappointing Joliffe’s hope of seeing the red-haired woman Pet, but Ned greeted them interestingly with, “Robin Newcum’s nose is so out of joint he’s nearly sniffing in his own ear.”
>
  “Out of joint because of us?” Basset said with commendable appearance of having no thought why that could be.

  “None other,” Ned said cheerfully. “I’ve tried to tell him you’ll be gone on your way in a few weeks at the most . . . ?”

  He trailed that off into a question that Basset answered with a shrug and an “Oh, very probably” that could be taken to mean what he said or precisely the opposite as he added, “It’s for Lord Lovell to say, after all.” Very carefully not looking at Joliffe as he said it, both of them knowing their staying or going was more probably for Bishop Beaufort to say, not Lord Lovell.