A Play of Treachery (19 page)

Later that evening, he had his answer anyway. Finished reading more of Reynard the Fox’s adventures aloud to the duchess and her companions, he was in talk with Alizon and two other demoiselles, all of them watching Lady Jacquetta trying, hand in hand with red-haired Remon Durevis, to teach a circling dance to several of the bishop’s young gentlemen partnered with others of her ladies, including Guillemete. To judge by the general laughter, the effort was effecting more hilarity than success, and Sir Richard, wandering the sides of the chamber rather than joining in, paused beside Joliffe to say, smiling, “Alizon, Ydoine, Michielle, shouldn’t you give your companions relief? I think Isabelle is about to kick Thierry if he steps on her skirt again, and James almost sent Blanche to the floor there.”

Joliffe supposed James was the youth who had just confused slide-slide-turn with cross-step-turn, entangled his feet around each other, and lurched into the girl beside him. Alizon, Ydoine, and Michielle laughed agreement and went. Joliffe supposed Sir Richard would go, too, but instead he stayed and said, his gaze on the re-sorting of partners and his voice low, “You’d do well to stay as clear of Estienne Doguet as possible.”

Joliffe was surprised into saying, “Willingly.” Then added lightly, to see where the talk would go, “I haven’t decided yet whether he’s a mere mischief-maker or some brothel’s way-man. Either way, I’m not taken with his company.”

“He is a nasty little French spy who’s no good at what he does.”

Joliffe tried to keep his smile, to seem as if he and Sir Richard were no more than speaking of the dancing, but said, startled, “He’s what?”

“A French spy.”

“He’s known but he’s allowed to stay?”

“Bishop Louys prefers a spy who can be spied on to a spy we don’t know of. So he stays. But you’ll do well to keep away from him.”

“And if he insists on my company, I tell him nothing. Not that I know anything a spy would care about anyway,” he added.

“You have it,” Sir Richard said.

How much did he know of his father’s work? If anything, he was not giving it away, simply went on, raising his voice for the benefit of Guillemete and Alain, come aside from the dance, “We’re all curious who shall play which Sins and which Virtues. Her grace charged me to find out, if I could.”

Joliffe spread his hands to show helplessness. “I can’t tell what I don’t know. The matter is all Master Fouet’s now.”

“He shall be laid siege to, then,” said Guillemete merrily. “We are perishing to know who we are to be.” She caught Sir Richard by the hand and drew him forward. “Lady Jacquetta says you know this dance and must come to help.”

Sir Richard went with her, leaving Alain behind, but Lady Jacquetta gave Remon Durevis over to Guillemete and took Sir Richard’s hand herself, saying, “Here. Help me to show how it should be done.”

Joliffe, left with Alain, asked him, “You’re not joining again?”

Alain shook his head. “I’m not needed. It’s enough that I may watch her.”

“Her?”

“The prize of all prizes. The loveliest of the lovely. The . . . the . . .” Alain fumbled, invention failing him.

“The rose of all roses?” Joliffe suggested. “The jewel of all jewels?”

“
Yes
,” Alain agreed, fervently.

“And she is . . . ?” Joliffe prompted.

Voice low and throbbing, Alain declared, “My Lady Jacquetta.”

Yes, it would be, Joliffe thought dryly, and said, carefully keeping mockery out of his voice, “You hope high.”

“No.” Alain drew out the word on a trembling sigh of infinite melancholy. “I hope not at all. No more than I would hope to hold the sun, a star, the . . .” Invention failed him again.

“The moon?” Joliffe offered.

“The silver-shining moon!” Alain agreed eagerly.

Dear Saint Valentine, he has it badly, Joliffe thought, fighting to keep his face schooled to sympathy.

“But still I may gaze upon her,” Alain sighed. “If nothing else, I may gaze upon her.”

“Feeding your soul, despite your heart languishes,” Joliffe offered and immediately wished he had bitten his tongue instead as Alain turned to him, wildly grateful.

“You understand. You
know
.”

Unwillingly, Joliffe granted, “I have, um, loved in my time.” Although never so pathetically or poetically, thank the saints. But Alain, convinced he had found a fellow-sufferer, wanted to know more, that they might suffer together. Joliffe resisted, claiming that even to speak of his supposed lost love was too pain-filled for him, and finally escaped.

Admittedly in flight, he went up to the dorter. Several of the household men were sitting on the floor between the sleeping stalls, playing at dice by a candle’s light. They invited him to join them, but he said he preferred bed just now, which was no lie. He would also have preferred to fall straight to sleep, but his bed was cold, and he lay awake for a time, wrapped in his blankets and under his cloak, thinking.

So. Estienne Doguet was a French spy. A French spy tolerated here because he was known to be a spy.

Master Wydeville had surely considered Estienne could be a blind for an unsuspected French spy among them, but did Sir Richard Wydeville’s warning come from the open dislike between him and Estienne or because report had been made to Master Wydeville of the interest Estienne was taking in John Ripon’s company, and Sir Richard been given order to warn Joliffe away? Joliffe little liked the thought that he was being particularly watched, but he equally supposed Master Wydeville would be a fool
not
to have him watched while he was still such an unknown quantity in the household. But did Sir Richard know of his father’s work? Was he part of it? Probably. Possibly. Perhaps not.

Joliffe was briefly diverted by the thought that maybe he would only know he was fully trusted—or as much trusted as Master Wydeville likely trusted anyone—when he was asked to spy on someone else in the household, rather than be spied on himself.

Or was it less a matter of trust or distrust than that Master Wydeville simply found it useful to have his spies spy on each other, to know what they were doing?

Joliffe had found little in his right work as secretary to hold and interest him, but he was increasingly curious about what he was coming to understand of the households here. In them, lives were layered onto each other, from the lowly kitchen scullions up through the higher and yet higher servants to the middle order where he himself was, on to the gentlemen and ladies attending and serving most closely on those for whom the households existed at all—Bishop Louys and Lady Jacquetta. Ordered and orderly though those layers might be in theory, they were made of people, and there were cross-currents, under-currents, even over-currents constantly running, and from what he was starting to see of them, he was fascinated. And wary. Because it would be a bad thing for him to be caught the wrong way into any of it.

That slid his thought away to foolish Alain and from there to wondering about Lady Jacquetta and her strange place at the center of so many other people’s lives and plans but with such little final say in any of all that swirled around her. Thought about what was to become of her had to be very much to the fore of her mind. Widowed so young, she was unlikely to stay unmarried. In the common way of things, her family would reclaim her, to make use of her in another marriage, but there was nothing common in the matter. A return to her family would put her back in reach of the duke of Burgundy, something neither her family nor the English were said to want. Come to it, would the English let her go back to her family even if they wanted it, if it meant she would come under Burgundy’s control? Very possibly not.

Joliffe noted that the one thing he was not asking was what Lady Jacquetta might want. To be a widow immured in Joyeux Repos by her widowhood was surely not all she wished for herself, but bound as she was by her blood and her wealth, her choices were few. Her family and the English had made use of her to their own ends so far, and would go on doing so, and what she might wish would probably count for very little in the end. At best, she could, in theory, refuse to marry anyone again, could live a widow all the rest of her days and win a measure of freedom that way. But even though today she had fairly well fended off her uncle’s attempt to lessen her life, she had had to give way on some of it, and would surely be forced to give up more as time went on. Was she likely to be content with widowhood forever?

Still, she had time. There were eight more months of her year of mourning to be gone through before any great changes could be made for or by her. She had that much time, at least.

Ah well. Her life was not a problem he had to solve. Most likely sooner or later after her year of mourning was done a satisfactory marriage would be urged on her and she would take it. That was the usual way of things.

With the blankets finally warm around him, and the rattling of dice on floorboards and men’s swearing and laughter not troubling him, his final thought as he drifted to sleep was a vague wondering—not for the first time—how the woman Perrette was doing at Master Doncaster’s.

T
he next day was some French saint’s day, and so half a holiday for the household. Joliffe had thought before now that giving holidays on holy days was the surest way to have people remember saints with thankfulness, and although he was not able to make out this saint’s name, he did give grateful thanks when he was able to slip away unnoted from the
hôtel
after the mid-day meal, not having need to make excuse for his going or refuse anyone’s company as he went. With an hour before he was expected at Master Doncaster’s, he wandered roundabout for a time, seeing what the various shops open-fronted to the streets had to offer and taking the chance to buy a particularly vile dagger—the blade not bad but the hilt and sheath cheaply gaudy with badly dyed red leather and pewter bits pretending to be silver. The cutler was as glad to be rid of it as John Ripon was pleased to have it. Joliffe thought he could get tired of John Ripon.

It was as he left the cutler’s shop that he glimpsed the fellow in the bright blue cap for the second time. Glimpsed once, pausing at a neighboring shop at the same moment Joliffe had paused to look at a first cutler’s display of knives, the man had been nobody. Glimpsed now a second time, again paused at a neighboring shop and the same distance away that he had been before, he caught Joliffe’s heed, and after that, Joliffe found him always the same distance away, always pausing when Joliffe paused and still there even after Joliffe had turned in to several different streets. Joliffe briefly considered how to lose him but doubted he could, since the man probably knew Rouen better than he did.

His watchfulness told him something else, though, and he was holding in a smile when he finally took himself to Master Doncaster’s street, pleased that he found it easily but paused by sight of a large hand-cart at the next door to Master Doncaster’s. Master Doncaster had said that house was kept deliberately empty, but two—no, three—small children chased out of its door, ran laughing around the cart and the men unloading a large wooden chest from it, and darted back into the house. Distracted from thought of the blue-capped man, Joliffe knocked at Master Doncaster’s door, hoping he could be heard over the shrieks of the children racing out the neighboring door again and around the men now carrying the chest into the house, leaving several wicker hampers waiting their turn.

Jeanne answered his knock. “You’re to go up,” she said, and he did, to find Master Doncaster standing at the table by the front window, in company with Master Wydeville and a man whom Joliffe did not know.

Because of the third man, he slipped into being John Ripon, took off his cap, and said, bowing, “If now is not a good time after all, Master Doncaster—”

“Now does very well,” Master Doncaster returned. “You see I’m getting new neighbors?”

“With children,” Joliffe agreed.

Master Doncaster nodded his head toward the unknown man. “They’re Master Roussel’s. He serves in our Chambre des Comptes in Paris. He wished to have his family away from there, and here they are.”

“What does that tell you?” Master Wydeville asked crisply.

Joliffe had a moment of blank puzzlement that he tried to hide, before a thought took him so by surprise that he said, “Oh!” He paused to straighten the thought, then said, “That Master Roussel wanted his family somewhere safer than Paris. Which means the rumor that the Armagnacs are going to move against it is—likely more than a rumor.”

“Somewhat right,” Master Wydeville granted. “He does want his family away from Paris. But he wanted that before there was word yet of the Armagnacs’ likely move against it this spring. What does
that
tell you?”

Unwilling to believe what it told him, Joliffe said slowly, “That matters were already bad enough in Paris, even without word of the Armagnacs, for Master Roussel to want his family away.” Watching the men’s faces, he added even more slowly, “Bad enough that he thinks there’s strong chance it’s only a matter of short time until Paris is lost.”

No one made answer aloud to that, but Joliffe thought he saw the answer plainly enough in Master Roussel’s face. Having traveled with small children could account for the taut tiredness there, but Joliffe thought the strain went far deeper than that. To uproot and shift a family was no small thing at the best of times, but to do it this way, with fear behind it . . .

A small child’s wail of outrage rose from the street. Master Roussel made a sound both impatient and resigned as he started for the stairs, saying, “If you’ll pardon me—”

Scant moments later he could be heard below the open window saying, “Madelaine, what did you do to your brother?”

Master Doncaster pulled the window closed. Joliffe used the moment to say, “I was followed to here.”

Both men looked sharply at him, but it was Master Wydeville who asked, “What makes you think so?”