A Play of Treachery (24 page)

Having joined the elbowing toward the food and drink, Joliffe was just drawing back with a cup of wine when he caught a man saying to another as they elbowed forward in their turn, “There’ll be hell to pay when my lord bishop hears about those robes.”

Joliffe would have liked hearing more but was pressed away from them in the crowding, and now the Sins and Virtues were returning to the hall. Someone had seen to having the white tabards off the Virtues, leaving the men to party in their own doublets, colorful like the Sins still in their bright gowns among all the mourning-black. Sins and Virtues alike were merry with their success and ready for everyone’s praise, making Joliffe smile at how openly they shared every player’s belief that he was the world’s center. But after all, every player
was
the world’s center while he played, at least for all the lookers-on whose eyes and minds were fixed on him. The hard part was to grasp that when the play was done, the world’s eyes—the world’s center—shifted elsewhere. As Basset had had to point out to him in his young days as a player, “You’re only of worth to them while you’re being someone else. Think on that, my fine-strutting fellow. Once the play is done, you’re back to being you, and you’re not the center of anything. Except to yourself, of course. So if I were you, I’d make that self someone worth your while to be with and not count on the world and all.”

A sharp missing of Basset panged through Joliffe. Aside from having been mad enough to become a player, Basset had been the most centered-in-the-world man Joliffe had ever known.

He caught himself up sharply. Not
had been.
Not
had known
. Somewhere Basset still was. And Rose and Ellis and Gil and Piers. Where they were or how they were he had no way of knowing, but surely they were somewhere and making merriment for someone. They still
were
, and for an unsteady moment Joliffe wished he was with them wherever they were, whatever wearily familiar work they were playing.

Someone’s little finger crooked around his free hand’s little finger. Little finger to little finger was the way a pair of lovers might walk properly together, and he jerked his head around to find it was Perrette making so bold with his hand and smiling at him. She wore a plainly cut but beautifully dyed crimson gown, its neckline curved somewhat over-low, showing her white shoulders and subtly making plain the soft swell of her breasts. Only the narrowest of wimples curved under her chin, leaving her slender throat bare, and the light veil over her hair floated gently as she tilted her head, watching him enjoy all he was seeing.

Happy to let his enjoyment show, he said, “The evening has been blessed with Justice and Wisdom. Now you doubly bless it with Beauty.” And more practically, “You’re here to help your cousin have the players in and out of their finery.”

“I am, and with the tabards folded and safely packed away, I have this while to enjoy . . .” She paused, her eyes daring him to finish the thought.

Not about to be led into libidinous hopes, Joliffe said, “My company and some ducal wine.”

Perrette laughed at him and turned toward the tables. She had let go his finger, but he kept close behind her as she wove in reach of wine and a platter of meat pasties. She passed a pasty to him, took one and a cup of wine for herself, and with food and drink in hands, they drew away to a lee corner beside the screens, where they ate and drank and Perrette said, “So. Your play went well.”

“It did. But why did I just hear someone say there would be hell to pay when Bishop Louys heard about the robes. Which robes? Justices’s and Wisdom’s?”

“Those robes indeed. They were planned to be blue embroidered with golden stars. My cousin had four women madly stitching to finish them this morning when word came that Lady Jacquetta had provided otherwise.”

“Provided otherwise?” Joliffe echoed.

“Provided otherwise.” Mischief sparkled in Perrette’s eyes. “Those cloth-of-gold robes they wore instead—those were the duke of Bedford’s and his late wife’s. Their robes of estate.”

Joliffe felt his jaw start to drop and pulled it firmly closed. Robes of estate were something to be worn at a coronation, or for the reception of a king, or at a royal wedding. Not . . . Almost choking on his surprise, he asked, “Who was mad enough to let her give them to use in a play?”

“The question you need to ask is how she kept it secret from her uncle. Secret from everyone until it was done and too late. And how persuaded M’dame to it, too. Because M’dame would have had to know.” Perrette laughed. “I would much like to hear what her uncle says to her when he does hear of it. He’s here to keep everything seemly around his niece’s widowhood, and yet she slides this past him easily as anything.”

“If he’s wise,” Joliffe said, “he’ll say nothing to her at all.”

“True. She’s galled by her life at present, I think. He’d do best not to rub the sore, lest it worsen.”

Joliffe looked toward the dais. Lady Jacquetta was standing, M’dame beside her, in talk with Sir Richard and Alizon. They were no longer in the cloth-of-gold robes, only their own clothing, but the glow of the play’s other-world was still on them. And on Lady Jacquetta, too, it seemed, because while Alizon and Sir Richard looked to be answering something M’dame had said, Lady Jacquetta was looking at Sir Richard in a way that made the thought cross Joliffe’s mind that maybe Master Wydeville should be warned.

Of what? That Lady Jacquetta had twice now looked at his son in a way that might not be—safe? Master Wydeville, standing not far away on the dais with several other household officers, could see as much for himself if he looked. And if he did not see for himself, would he want to be told?

As the saying went: least said, soonest mended.

Or as Basset had once snapped at Ellis, “You can break more with your mouth than you can mend. So think before you say.”

He was distracted from his thoughts by Perrette saying, “We should not be seen long together. So I am going to laugh at you and go away.” And just that abruptly she did.

To anyone watching them, it would seem Joliffe must have said something that offended her. Joliffe, on his part, had no trouble looking momentarily startled at her suddenness, before shaking his head with a show of apparent disgust and heading back to the table in quest of more food and drink. Encountering Master Fouet, he took the chance to congratulate him on the play’s success. Master Fouet, with the giddy air of relief at having the thing over and done with, thanked him and congratulated him back. That was all there need have been, but Joliffe took the chance to say, “You were especially fortunate in Lord Justice and Lady Wisdom. Was this their first time at such playing?”

“For the Lady Alizon, yes. But Sir Richard, no. He has done this manner of thing before now, here in the household.”

Feigning light puzzlement, Joliffe said easily, “Oh. For some reason, I thought he was new to the household.”

“Sir Richard? But no. He was in my lord of Bedford’s household from boyhood.”

Which changed the question from who had been foolish enough to let him into the young widow’s household to who had been foolish enough to leave him there.

“His father being my lord of Bedford’s chamberlain and all, you see,” said Master Fouet.

“Ah,” Joliffe said, and because someone came up then with more congratulations for Master Fouet, he slipped aside, saying no more. He looked for Perrette but she was gone, and although through the next few hours he joined in various of the games and ate and drank as well as anyone, he was glad enough when time came to go to bed.

The next day was the first of Lent, the beginning of its weeks of fasting and penance, a humbling time for considering one’s sins in preparation for Easter’s glories, and Joliffe went with the rest of the lesser household folk to take turn at making confession to a priest in the chapel. As usual, he found himself regretting how petty his sins of the past year had been. True, a soul could be nibbled away to damnation by many, many little sins as surely as by one or two great ones, but on the whole Joliffe thought he would prefer—if he were so stupid as not to repent at the end and be saved—to go to Hell for some great soul-shattering sin than for a clutter of small, dull ones. The trouble was that, thus far, he had never been tempted to any great sins, only paltry everyday ones, and those not so much from temptation but simply because they were almost impossible not to stumble over, being constantly in the way, like being unable to avoid every stone on a rocky road, where no matter how carefully you went, you could not help stubbing a toe once in a while. Groveling to God for the equivalent of every stubbed toe seemed hardly worth his bother.

Or God’s, come to that.

But maybe that was Lent’s purpose—to gather up all those toe-stubbing sins in one heap, do penance for them, and go forward with life.

Which unfortunately, inevitably, included promptly beginning to accumulate new sins. And unfortunately his present great, daily, on-going sin of lying was one he could not yet confess. Telling a priest might be safe enough, but forgiveness could not be had for a sin he meant to continue committing, and he expected to go on with his daily lying.

So he admitted to Lust, unfulfilled though it presently was, and Gluttony, which must be a common enough sin from Shrovetide, and then, for good measure, to Pride in having written last night’s play. He was shriven for all of that and given the penance of saying a rote number of prayers on his knees in front of Saint John’s altar here in the chapel between now and Palm Sunday. Thus cleansed, he knelt in the chapel to have a priest draw a cross in ashes on his forehead, signifying Lent was well and truly under way.

 

 

The while after that was, on the whole, dreary. The short, chill days and long, cold nights gave no clear promise that spring would ever trouble itself to come. The humours of both households darkened, and while Joliffe was still sometimes summoned to read aloud to Lady Jacquetta, it was from books of devotion and saints’ lives suitable to the season. Those, being mostly meant to deepen the listeners’ sense of sin and need of penitence, did nothing to raise anyone’s spirits.

If anything passed between Lady Jacquetta and her uncle concerning the cloth-of-gold robes, they kept it private between themselves. Likewise, Joliffe came to doubt he had seen anything that mattered in her look at Sir Richard the play’s night. He saw no more sign that anything was changed between them, anyway, just as there was no trace of displeasure at Remon Durevis despite her anger in the garden that one day—unless it was that he seemed less often at her side in the evenings and most often at Lady Alizon’s.

In like wise, Guillemete and Alain were much in each other’s company. Somewhat too much, Joliffe thought. From what he had seen of Alain, the youth was far too given to feeling passion for the sake of feeling passion, rather than in anything like a true loving of the supposed beloved. As for Guillemete, young and foolish did not always go together, but Joliffe suspected they did with her.

Still, it was for M’dame to deal with as she saw fit. Certainly, the triflings that had grown among the other demoiselles and youths while they played at being Sins and Virtues were faded away quickly enough under her sharp watch, and the saints knew there were matters of more urgent interest in the world than Guillemete and Alain. Despite the days remained dreary, the year was on the turn, and with the winter’s harsher weather waning, no day went by without news or else rumors foaming through the household of what was going on in the wider world. The autumn-into-winter surge of Armagnacs through Normandy that had made Joliffe’s arrival perilous had long since been pushed back, but it had left behind a scum of brigands infesting the countryside beyond Rouen’s walls. Now, word of brigand troubles was increasing at the same time there were more reports of Armagnac raids in the east and that the Armagnac force south of the Seine was still growing, definitely swelled by Richemont and his men out of Brittany. Mixed with all that were endless rumors of troubles in Paris, although common opinion was that, at the most, the Parisians would roil up, butcher each other in the streets for a while—“the way they’re always doing there,” as George said—and then settle down long before any Armagnac attack came, supposing any ever did.

Generally more troubling was sure report that the duke of Burgundy was still enraged over King Henry’s winter letters urging the Zealand towns to an uprising, and had sworn to siege and take Calais. For Rouen that was better news than that he meant to turn on Normandy, but it was nonetheless not good. The port of Calais, close across the Channel from Dover, had been England’s wool-port and foot-hold on the continent for the reigns of five kings now, but was surrounded on its landward side by Burgundy’s lands, making his threatened siege easily possible. Tavern talk had it that, “He’ll be sorry if he tries it, see if he isn’t,” but reports varied wildly of what would be done to counter him. Either a massive force was being raised in England to come to Calais’ relief, or else the lords around the king were locked in discord, with nothing going forward. There was fear the duke of York and the men he was supposed to bring into Normandy would be sent Calais-ward instead, but there was talk, too, that King Henry himself might go. Being fourteen years old, it was time he was bloodied, and why not against damned Burgundy?

Whatever happened, though, everyone agreed that men must not be drawn out of Normandy. Whether the Armagnacs meant to attack Rouen, or sweep toward Paris, or move against the Channel ports to cut off English help coming up the Seine, Normandy needed all the men it had. The most hopeful thought was doubt the Armagnacs could gather enough men to the Dauphin’s impoverished cause to be a true threat in
any
direction, but when George said as much in a tavern-gathered group, someone else said, “You forget
la Pucelle
,” and the silence that followed told Joliffe that no one had forgotten the witch who had nearly broken England’s hold on France a mere hand’s count of years ago. Finally captured, she was found guilty of heresy by a church court, but most folk knew her greater guilt lay in having brought the Dauphin’s dying claim to France’s crown back to vigorous life—in having united his wrangling lords and roused them to a fierce string of victories before she was captured and her madness shown for the devil’s work it was. After her death, the war had settled back into its duller ways, but parts of France lost then were not yet recovered, and memory of “the Maid” was plainly still sharp. In truth, Joliffe realized as he shifted his gaze among the faces around him, some of these men had probably seen her burn at the stake here in Rouen’s marketplace.