A Play of Treachery (18 page)

Estienne grinned. “Well enough to get you into trouble.”

The other men laughed. Joliffe swayed, looking befuddled, and George threw an arm around his shoulders, saying, “Come on, then. Early to bed for you, don’t you think?”

“Um,” Joliffe agreed.

“You. Master Ripon,” said someone behind him.

Joliffe turned unsteadily from under George’s arm to find Lady Jacquetta’s squire Alain there. “Sir,” he said in answer.

“Her grace required you to read to her tonight. You couldn’t be found.”

Back on John Ripon’s unsteady dignity, Joliffe gave the bow needed to show his respect not to Alain but to the high place of the lady who had sent him and said, “I was out. I can come now.”

Pretending drunk in front of Lady Jacquetta was not something he wanted to do, but as he had hoped, Alain said, albeit curtly, “No. The hour is too late now. She was hoping, too, to hear how her play goes.”

“It goes well. I should be able to share what I’ve done with Master Fouet after another day or two, to see if it meets his need.”

“My lady will wish to hear it as soon as may be.”

Joliffe drew himself up, standing straightly as he said, firm-voiced like someone sure of his ground, “She will be more diverted if she does not hear it until it is performed. I will give the completed play to Master Fouet. He will, of course, take counsel with her, and if he chooses to share it with her, that will be his business.” Joliffe intended that once the play was written, everything about it would be altogether Master Fouet’s business, with himself out of the middle.

Alain stared at him, seeming taken aback, perhaps at Joliffe’s tone that said he expected no contradiction. Joliffe’s thought was that if Alain did not like his tone, the squire should try a different one himself.

Finally, coldly, Alain said, “I’ll tell her grace,” turned, and walked stiff-backed away.

“What was that about?” asked one of the gathered men, someone of the bishop’s household.

Joliffe explained about Lady Jacquetta’s desire for a Shrovetide diversion. The men began immediately to jest about which sins they wanted to be. Lust was the main choice, although Estienne put his hand to his hip as if to the hilt of an imaginary sword and declared he wanted to be Wrath, while George first declared for Lust but changed to, “No, I want to be Sloth.”

“Alas, no Sloth for me,” Joliffe said. “If I’m to have this play done, I’d best to bed tonight, to have my wits back come the morning.”

No one could gainsay that excuse for him to leave, but George said, laughing, “At least you’ll be ready then to write against the sin of drunken Gluttony, yes?”

Joliffe made the pained sound of a man who did not want to think about that and went away, leaving their laughter behind him.

T
he next days were ordinary. Or what passed as ordinary for Joliffe just then. The psychomachia gave him little trouble. Everything a Sin or Virtue might say was so known to everyone that he went to no great lengths to be clever about it, suspecting it was more important the little speeches gave the same number of lines to each Sin and Virtue, to keep happy those who judged their part’s worth by how many lines it had. Unhappily, those who did so were usually better at counting their lines than saying them.

When he gave Master Fouet the roll of the completed play, he pointed out the short speeches and equal lines, and the choirmaster said gratefully, “My many thanks for that. My lords and ladies will care more for what they wear in the play than what they say, but for a certainty every one of them will know if they have more or less to say than someone else.”

He also asked that Joliffe stay while he read through the play, and as he came near the end, he asked, “But this? They dance their battle against each other, yes. But who are this Lord Justice and Lady Wisdom that come in and end it before the Virtues have triumphed?”

This being the one thing Joliffe had added beyond the necessary, he answered readily, “It seems to me the Virtues have yet to win full victory over Sins, and unlikely they would have one now. Thus, Lord Justice and Lady Wisdom appear in splendor to put an end to it.”

“With Lady Wisdom taking the Virtues to her, and Lord Justice driving the Sins away before him. Yes.” Master Fouet nodded. “Good. Good. But who shall play them, to be so much more splendid than the rest?”

“That I must leave to you,” Joliffe said, beginning his retreat. “Nor,” he added, “can I put it into French for you.”

“That will be something for my scholars to do. That, and copy out the separate parts.” Because no one but Master Fouet himself would have the whole play. Except for the last line of the speech before theirs for their cue, everyone else would have only what they had to say themselves. Master Fouet was nodding, pleased, saying, “Yes. This will go well enough,” as Joliffe escaped.

With the play done, Joliffe turned back to his right duties. Writing on the play had set him behind with the English accounts and letters but not kept him from becoming more familiar with Joyeux Repos. Although “Joyous Rest” seemed increasingly a less-than-apt name. From what Joliffe was able to see from the fringes of it all, Bishop Louys certainly had little rest just now. As chancellor of Normandy, he was often gone to council meetings and constantly beset by men, messengers, and fellow-councilors coming and going. Joliffe gathered from the general talk that neither the hoped-for soldiers nor any new governor were on their way from England yet, that every report concerning Burgundy continued ill, and that a present lessening of Armagnac raids was taken to mean their men were being gathered into a single force for something large to come.

“Paris, most likely,” Cauvet said one evening. “It will be Paris they’re after. Then they’ll move west into Normandy, and if we’re truly ill-fated, Burgundy will move on us from the north at the same time.”

Cauvet was rarely in the hall, but Joliffe always welcomed the chance of talk with him when it came. Not that Cauvet often had anything comfortable to say. Besides the war, he had become caught in the bishop’s efforts to lessen Lady Jacquetta’s household. Officers of both households were supposed to be dealing together toward that end, but from the few things Cauvet said about it, Lady Jacquetta was not submitting with the seemly quiet suitable to a young widow grateful for her uncle’s care. Joliffe, going to her rooms one day to ask her mind about a letter just come from England, found her ladies sitting rigidly silent in the parlor, intent on voices in the bedchamber. Several raised warning fingers to lips at him, but Guillemete, nearest the bedchamber’s open door, beckoned him forward. Willing to be curious, Joliffe went, keeping aside to be unseen, and heard Bishop Louys saying with patient firmness, “There is too little for them to do. You will be paying them to do nothing.”

“Then I shall pay them to do nothing,” Lady Jacquetta answered with matching firmness. “It is, after all, my money, and so my choice.”

“You are young. These are choices . . .”

“I am the widow of the duke of Bedford, who was a good and wise man who trusted me to do rightly for his people. If he did not, he would have said otherwise in his will. Did he say otherwise in his will?”

“No. But . . .”

“You are here to guard my good name, yes. But this is my house and household, and I want my cook in my kitchen, and my cook wants his own people with him, and therefore so do I. What happens to your cook is no concern of mine.
My
cook stays where he is.
Your
cook will stay away from him.”

In the pause that came then, Joliffe sorely wished he could see the bishop’s face and was surprised when he finally went on, stiffly, “Well, then. The stables.”

“The stables?” Lady Jacquetta sounded caught by surprise, too, as if she had expected a longer argument. But she rallied quickly and said evenly, “I do not ride out much anymore, true. Good enough. You may send some of my horses away.”

“I was thinking some could be sold, and some stablemen dismissed.”

“No. No horses sold. No one dismissed.”

“You will keep your mare, surely, and some others. But not all. Merrak, for one, can . . .”

“Merrak? Part with Merrak? My lord husband’s favorite? No!”

“Jacquetta . . .”

“His warhorse, yes. Merrak, no.”

“Jacquetta!” For the first time, Bishop Louys sounded openly impatient. He probably saw as bad enough he had to take time away from greater matters because his niece resisted other persuasion without she defied him to his face.

“No!”

From somewhere in the bedchamber, M’dame said, “My lady,” so evenly that Joliffe could not tell whether she was warning or chiding.

Whichever it was, after a silent moment Lady Jacquetta said coolly, “Some of the horses may be sold if you think it needful, my lord. Not Merrak, though. As for dismissing anyone, if any of my household wish to leave, I will not insist they stay. Even those who have not served their agreed time. So. Will that do well enough?”

Bishop Louys must have decided to settle for what he had. He granted, “For now, yes. Thank you, niece.”

The demoiselles became busy with whatever tasks they had in hand, and Joliffe moved well aside from the doorway in hope of going unnoticed as Bishop Louys swept out a few moments later, accompanied by two of his gentlemen, one of them Cauvet, carrying several parchment scrolls tucked under an arm. Joliffe, feeling that now might not be the best of times to ask more decisions from Lady Jacquetta, gave them time to be well away, then matched their retreat, but encountering Cauvet in the great hall at suppertime, he asked, “What was that between my lord bishop and Lady Jacquetta today?”

To his surprise, Cauvet not only answered readily but smiled widely while he did, “That was my lord bishop discovering his niece is not the biddable girl he might wish she was. How much did you hear?”

“Just the end, I think. About cooks and stables and people leaving if they wish.”

“That was most of it. You missed where he explained how the mingled households were making it difficult for the clerks to keep the household accounts accurately. She answered that if the accounts were difficult, she would surely need all of her present clerks who ‘understand what needs to be understood better than you or I could do.’ ”

“He surely pointed out that if her household was reduced, she’d not need so many clerks,” Joliffe said.

“He did. She answered that when her household was sufficiently reduced, then they could decide about the clerks, but for now, from what he had said, surely they were needed. She then refused almost all his other suggestions.”

“Is he badly displeased with her for it?” Joliffe asked.

“But no! I think he is pleased to find she was able to hold to her own but willing to bargain fairly. It would hardly suit him to have a fool for a niece.”

Joliffe would have preferred to stay in talk with Cauvet, but Cauvet’s gaze went past Joliffe, his face stiffening a little, just before Estienne slapped Joliffe on the shoulder and said, “Some of us are away to the Crescent Moon. Come, too.”

As John Ripon, Joliffe went all rueful and regretful. “No, I think not. Not tonight. My thanks, but no.”

Cauvet, without having greeted Estienne, murmured excuse and left them. Watching him go, Estienne said, “A dry stick, that one. You’re sure you won’t come?”

John Ripon was hesitant, but Joliffe quite surely did not feel like pretending to be even slightly drunk tonight, or having more of Estienne’s too many questions about Bishop Beaufort and matters in England. The man seemed to think every small piece of English gossip he might have out of John Ripon was valuable.

“Then what of some of Rouen’s other pleasures?” Estienne offered. “A certain house I could show you, where the women are willing? Eh? You know. After supper maybe?”

Joliffe had the sudden but very certain feeling that among the last things he wanted was any more of Estienne’s company. He was shaping a refusal when Sir Richard—the fair-faced knight of Lady Jacquetta’s household, so often close-companioned with her in the evenings—came up to them and said to Joliffe, with no sign he saw Estienne at all, “Lady Jacquetta wishes for you to read to her this evening after supper, Master Ripon.”

Joliffe promptly bowed as if to Lady Jacquetta herself. “It will be my pleasure.”

Estienne, apparently determined to be acknowledged, said with a bow, “Sir Richard.”

Sir Richard, already turning away, paused long enough to say “Master Doguet,” acknowledging his presence but showing no pleasure at it, then walked off.

Estienne watched his departing back with an open twitch of distaste and said, “Our Sir Richard Wydeville is somewhat over-proud for a nothing-knight, I think.”

“Wydeville?” Joliffe echoed in surprise. “He’s kin to Master Wydeville?”

“You don’t know? He’s Master Wydeville’s son and heir. Knighted when still a child by the hand of King Henry VI himself.”

“Master Wydevill’s son is a knight and he’s not?”

“By Master Wydeville’s own choice, so it is said.”

“But how did the son come to be knighted then?” Joliffe asked, thoroughly puzzled.

Estienne shrugged. “There was a great peace-making between angry lords, years ago, in England. The king’s uncles—the duke of Gloucester and your bishop of Winchester—had been quarreling. My lord of Bedford brought them into accord, and there was a great ceremony of knighting as part of the celebration of it. Several dozen sons of noblemen and others were knighted. Master Wydeville’s son was one of them, making him
Sir
Richard.” Estienne’s scorn matched Sir Richard’s distain toward him.

Joliffe failed to see why either one should matter to the other at all. Or was it that Estienne had a hidden desire to be a knight himself, instead of a clerk, and resented the squire’s son’s easy knighthood?

But that did not explain Sir Richard’s cold rudeness toward him. What was the cause of that? Joliffe found he was not curious enough about it to keep in Estienne’s company and soon pried himself loose of it.