A Play of Treachery (21 page)

All in all, he thought that by evening’s end John Ripon was considered quite a fool, if not an outright coward. Poor John Ripon, he thought as he was going bedward. If the fellow did not annoy him so much, he would have felt very sorry for him.

T
he days after that were an unsettling mix of ordinary and not. Mostly, it was work at his desk, with occasional need to consult with one or another of the household officers over some small matter or, more rarely, with Lady Jacquetta herself. He avoided doing the latter when he could, wary of being drawn into anything about the play that seemed to have taken over her chambers and her demoiselles’ lives. Twice when he went to her, both parlor and bedchamber were over-filled by the necessities of the Sins’ bright gowns, the sempster there with scissors and pins, and Perrette on her knees, basting the hem of Ydoine’s gown the first time and Marie’s gown the next.

Each of the ladies now had her Sin, while the youths chosen from both households to be Virtues seemed to have been let off most of their other duties so they might learn their parts, which seemed to require they keep close company with Lady Jacquetta’s demoiselles. At least they certainly were one afternoon when Joliffe went with a question about a plan to drain some Northamptonshire acreage, wondering how Lady Jacquetta was expected to make sensible decisions about land she knew nothing about—although he understood why her steward in England was hesitant to make them completely on his own—and found Sins and Virtues sitting in their pairs around the parlor, heads close together as they supposedly memorized their speeches with each other under M’dame’s sharply watchful gaze from the bedchamber doorway.

Catching words being said by a sandy-haired youth near him, Joliffe judged he was Generosity, which meant Blanche, now answering him, was Greed; and away in a corner, Guillemete was waving a fist in a way that suggested she was Wrath, so Alain, there with her, must be Patience, the unsuitableness of both momentarily diverting Joliffe. The only pairing he knew without guessing was that of Sir Richard and Alizon as Lord Justice and Lady Wisdom, and he was somewhat surprised to see they were not sitting together. Instead, she was with the squire Remon Durevis and just putting a hand over her mouth, to cover laughter at something he must have said, while Sir Richard sat with Lady Jacquetta at the window, where she looked to be helping him learn his words. She was watching a paper on her lap, and he was muttering toward the ceiling, his eyes tightly shut as if his words might be written on the inside of his eyelids.

Sitting on cushions near the hearth, the demoiselle Marie and the well-favored youth with whom she was partnered leaned nearer each other with a shared warm look that had nothing to do with anything Joliffe had written between a Sin and a Virtue. As M’dame glided forward from the doorway, Marie and the youth sat back from each other, abruptly intent on the pages they held, and M’dame shifted her course to come to Joliffe. “You have need to speak with my lady?” she asked quietly.

“If I may. The matter is not urgent.”

“Neither is any of this,” M’dame returned.

At the window, Lady Jacquetta reached out a forefinger and gently touched the back of Sir Richard’s hand. His eyes flew open and to her face, his own face going scarlet.

M’dame, who maybe saw it from the corner of her eye, left Joliffe, crossed to Lady Jacquetta and said something at which Lady Jacquetta immediately beckoned for Joliffe to come forward. He did, thinking M’dame did well to keep her sharp-eyed watch here in the close-confines of a young and widowed duchess’ household, where too much could grow that should not.

In his own time, he continued to avoid Estienne’s attempts at “friendship” as much as he might, and once found chance to ask Master Wydeville about the possibility of a more skillful spy hidden behind Estienne, but for answer got only a level look and, “That would be something for you to find out,” leaving him uncertain whether such a finding out was a challenge to discover the unknown or a test to see if he could learn what Master Wydeville already knew.

Either way, it gave an edge to his growing awareness of how much happened under the smoothly running surface of things among the double households’ scores of people that he did not understand and probably altogether missed.

What no one could miss was the steady flow of reports and rumors of what was happening—or said to be happening—or feared to be happening—in the rest of the world beyond Rouen’s walls. None of it was good, so far as Joliffe could tell, although he did hear someone among the men gathered to dinner one mid-day in the great hall dismiss the rumors that Paris was dangerously full of unrest with a laugh and, “It’s Paris! It would hardly be Paris if there weren’t troubles there!”

One evening during those days he went openly to Master Doncaster’s house for a weapons lesson. Somewhat early, he found the loose-limbed son of a Rouen craftsman having his own lesson. Joliffe gathered it was far from the youth’s first, but Master Doncaster set them to try each other’s skill with wooden daggers, and Joliffe’s first wariness turned to pity as it became quickly plain the youth had no instinct at all for fighting nor much grasp of what Master Doncaster had surely tried to teach him. Despite that, at the end of their short bout, the boy said, panting and pleased, “That went well, didn’t it? I did well, didn’t I? Did better, anyway.”

“No,” Master Doncaster returned bluntly. “You did not. Nor do I think you ever will. Tell your father there will be no more lessons.”

The boy’s face darkened into scowling anger. “I’ll tell him,” he snapped while snatching his doublet and cloak from the bench, and flung over a shoulder as he started down the stairs, “Then I’ll make him send me to Master Walters.
He’ll
be able to teach me since
you
can’t.”

Master Doncaster waited while he thundered down the stairs and slammed out the front door, then said grimly, “If he ever goes into a true fight, he’ll be dead before he’s struck three blows. Unless he meets someone as bad as he is. Then he may last six or seven.” He turned a hard eye on Joliffe. “You, on the other hand, went into that fight warily. Why?”

“Because I didn’t know how well he fought. I thought I’d best learn before I gave my own skill away.”

“Not so bad a way to go into a fight, yes,” Master Doncaster granted. He took up the youth’s abandoned wooden dagger. “Now let’s see to getting you good enough you won’t have too much worry that way because you’ll have your man dead before he’s trouble.”

 

 

A few days of good weather brought a messenger from England with general news including, finally, word the duke of York was to be the new governor. “Young for it,” was about half of what Joliffe heard. That was balanced by those who remembered when he had been in Normandy for the king’s French coronation six years ago, and how well Bedford had thought of him then.

Either way, on the whole there was simply plain relief to have the matter settled and, “All we need now is for him to get here, with a sizable army at his back,” George said.

Among the letters in the messenger’s bag were several concerning Lady Jacquetta’s English holdings. Those came to Master Ripon, and after consulting the account rolls in his keeping, Joliffe went to see if he could have word with Lady Jacquetta about some matters in them. He found her in the chapel, watching practice for the play, and he knew he should withdraw, bring his question to her later and elsewhere. But he stayed, watching, too, envisioning how Basset would have made a shining, living whole out of the wealth of words, people, and rich garb that Master Fouet had here. The choirmaster was doing well enough, from what Joliffe saw, but did he really think the Virtues were such dull things they should move with the dignity of wooden poles on stiff legs? Speaking for himself, if he were a Sin, Virtues like that were the last things in God’s creation to which he would give way. And if the demoiselle Isabelle giggled one more time when it was her turn to speak . . .

Better this was Master Fouet’s task than his, Joliffe thought, and went away. He would after all consult with Lady Jacquetta later.

By the morrow’s mid-afternoon he had all the letters’ business sorted to satisfaction and the rough drafts of the answers made, and when he was summoned to Master Wydeville, he left his desk with alacrity, hoping Master Wydeville had something of interest for him to do.

Unfortunately, it seemed not. Master Wydeville merely asked for report of how he—how Master Ripon—was doing with his work and if he was become at ease in the household and in Rouen. Joliffe, on John Ripon’s behalf, answered that he was doing well, was well content.

“And keeping sober?” Master Wydeville asked.

Joliffe hung his head. “Mostly,” he muttered. “All but—once.” If only the time he had feigned it at the Crescent Moon was counted and not the twice he had deliberately become somewhat “unsteady” in the hall.

As if to be beyond hearing of his clerk Pierres pen-scratching across paper on the chamber’s far side, Master Wydeville gestured for Joliffe to come aside to the window. There, as far from any door as from Pierres, Master Wydeville said very quietly, “You’re doing well, both at seeming John Ripon and at your lessons at Master Doncaster’s, both with weapons and the maps. Tell me the way from here to Honfleur.”

Joliffe did.

“From here to Paris,” Master Wydeville said.

Joliffe did, with only one confusion that he sorted for himself.

“And from Dover to Winchester?” Master Wydeville asked, because a map of England had become part of Joliffe’s lessons, too.

Joliffe answered that most easily, and when he had done, Master Wydeville nodded in moderate approval and said, “Good enough. You will continue that learning. This evening, though, I’d have you go to Master Doncaster’s to begin your study of ciphers. Can you get away to that without trouble?”

“I’m to go out after supper with George and some of the others, now Shrovetide is started. There’ll be crowds in the street here as much as in England?” These being the last few days before Ash Wednesday, folk generally crammed as much excess into them as might be before Lent with its fasting and penance began.

Master Wydeville nodded agreement, and Joliffe said, “Then I should be able to ‘lose’ myself and go to Master Doncaster’s.”

“By the back way, not the front this time.”

“Yes.”

Master Wydeville turned away from the window, raising his voice to normal pitch as he said sternly, for anyone to overhear who might, “Then see to it you remember it, Master Ripon, and keep better rein on yourself hereafter. Her grace is pleased with your work and with this play you made for her. I do not want her
dis
pleased by anything otherwise you do.”

Joliffe gave a jerking bow suitable to John Ripon’s chastened unhappiness, muttered, “Yes, sir,” and at Master Wydeville’s dismissing gesture hurried—head bunched between his shoulders—back to his desk.

He did not in the least mind losing his companions that evening. George and Bernard were not the most diverting of men, and Estienne was tedious. Nor was losing them any harder than he had thought it would be. People—many already masked—were out in milling crowds, looking for sport and pleasure by flaring torchlight and pole-hung lanterns. Shops were open and all manner of pastimes were happening at every widening of a street as well as in the marketplace below the cathedral’s west front where rough booths were set up for the selling of festive foods and, most especially, much ales, beers, and wines.

That was where George and the others headed first, and there that Joliffe chose to lose them, becoming apparently so interested in watching a juggler of firebrands that he seemed not to note being left behind. He trusted that when he looked around and around, unable to find them, he gave the seeming of someone somewhat alarmed to find himself abandoned. On the chance they might yet see him, he pretended to look for them while carefully going other than the way they had disappeared into the crowd. He twisted in and out of the crowd and between and around booths until he was certain no one could have kept him in sight and only then made for the back way to Master Doncaster’s.

Even along it a few lanterns had been hung tonight, but Master Doncaster’s gate was in shadow. The latch gave in well-oiled silence to his pull and he let himself into the garden, shut the gate silently behind him, and went up the path through darkness to the rear door. His careful tap there was shortly answered by someone who barely opened the door and asked, “Who?”

“Master Ripon,” he said back softly and was let into another darkness, until the door was shut behind him and whoever was there put aside a curtain hung across the passageway perhaps a yard in from the door. He understood that was to lessen the escape of light that would mark anyone’s coming or going from the house, and saw now it was the servant girl called Jeanne who had let him in.

Smiling, she led him to the kitchen, where warmth and the hearthfire’s leaping light met him. Matilde was scrubbing the top of the worktable with the vigor of a woman devoted to cleanliness, and Jeanne returned to the pot she had been scrubbing in a basin of water set on a low stool. Beside the hearth on another low stool, Perrette sat, her long hair loose over one shoulder, her head bent to one side to let the dark, damp fall of it hang free almost to the floor, the firelight shining auburn through it while she slowly drew a wooden comb down it.

Matilde was laughing at something Perrette must have just said. Both women were smiling as they looked toward him. “Ah!” Perrette said lightly, “The duchess’ English secretary who wrote the play that is giving us all so much trouble.”

The still face and downcast eyes she had at the
hôtel
were gone, and as he shed his cloak and cap onto the bench beside the table, Joliffe met her light mockery with a bow and, “Ah! The sempster’s humble helper, who works to cover in beauty the error of my ways.”