A Play of Treachery (31 page)

Keeping his warm, tight hold around her, Joliffe answered softly, “Yes.”

“Ah.” No more than that small, single sound, but it seemed to Joliffe to carry a world of grieving, not only for Alizon but for all the lovely things that died before they should have.

They stood together a moment longer, until Perrette stepped back from his hold with the firmness of having given as much of herself as she intended to give and became as she had almost always been—quick and assured and needing nothing and no one except herself as she gathered up her cloak and said again, “Best we go our ways now.”

Joliffe, picking up his own cloak more slowly, said, “Perrette. One thing. It was not you who was in the garden with Alizon yesterday?”

Perrette stopped in the midst of fastening her cloak at the throat and looked at him. Rather than offense, merriment danced in her eyes. “No,” she said. “Was it you?”

“No,” he said, no more offended that she seemed to be. It was a fair return-question, after all. But apology seemed needed, too. “I thought I should ask.”

“So you should. Although it might have been better to do so before putting yourself at my mercy by falling to sleep. And of course I could be lying to you.” Mischief was added to the merriment. “Instead of merely lying
with
you.”

“I could be the one who is lying,” Joliffe pointed out.

“You could be, and if so, then I am the foolish one.” She went to the door into the passageway. “Fortunately, we both survived the night.”

Following her, Joliffe protested lightly, “But what was that you said about ‘merely’ lying with me? There was more than ‘merely’ about it.” He went deliberately sorrowful. “Wasn’t there?”

Her only answer was to laugh at him, as he had meant her to do, laughter being a better way than some to return to the world they had let go for a few blessed hours.

Outside, they went separate ways without more farewells, Joliffe taking his straightest way back to Joyeux Repos, save for a stop at an early-opened tavern—although not all that early; the morning was well along toward noon, he found—to make sure his breath smelled of wine. After that, he rumpled his hair and slacked open the collar of his doublet and shirt front, and for good measure, let loose two of the points holding up one of his hosen and was hobble-hopping, trying to tie them again while walking, as he came up to the
hôtel
’s gateway. The guards there were rude-humoured at him, favoring him with their opinion of someone fool enough to disappear after there had been a murder. Still fumbling at his points, Joliffe muttered thickly, “You didn’t see her dead. I did. Blood everywhere, and there she was, lying in it, and . . .”

“Clerks,” one of the guards grunted. “Can’t face anything brighter than ink.” He pushed Joliffe, not unfriendly, through the gateway. “Get on with you.”

“Best you go straight to Master Wydeville, if you know what’s good for you,” the other one offered.

Master Wydeville being very much whom Joliffe wanted to see, he took that advice, cutting across the courtyard to the tower door beside the stableyard as quickly as John Ripon’s unsteady condition would allow. Nor did he give up his seeming when inside and on the stairs, but went up them with an occasional lurch against the wall and a few groans just loud enough to be heard ahead of him. By the time he shuffled into the office, Master Wydeville was ready for him, glaring. Pierres and Henri were also there, holding various papers and looking uncertain whether to be openly amused or safely disapproving.

Master Wydeville had no such ambiguity. Coldly angry, he said, “Master Ripon.”

Joliffe flinched and clutched his head with both hands. “Sir. I. Yesterday. The blood. And all. I.”

“Pierres, Henri, we’ll finish later,” Master Wydeville snapped. “I’d best see to this now.”

Both men bowed and retreated. Master Wydeville followed them far enough to be certain the door was closed behind them, saying while he did, “Master Ripon, you’re a fool. By disappearing as you did, you’ve caused trouble where we did not need more trouble. Neither my lady nor I are pleased with you.” Turning back from the door, he went on, his voice still stern but too low to be heard beyond the room, “He’s safe away?”

His voice even lower than Master Wydeville’s, Joliffe said, “Yes.”

“Without trouble on the way?”

“None.”

“Afterward?”

“None then, either.”

“I meant, where have you been?”

“Perrette gave me place to stay. The hour being so late. Then we slept late into this morning.”

With no sign of taking other than what the bare words said, Master Wydeville accepted that with a nod but went on, “The misfortune is that, no matter how well you’ve done, John Ripon has done badly and must suffer for it.”

Having been certain of that, Joliffe gave a quick nod of understanding, and took the chance to ask, “How is it with Master Durevis?”

“He still lives. I was able to question him somewhat in the while he was in his senses toward dawn. I let him understand he’s in danger of being thought Alizon’s murderer. That made him willing to tell what he could, but it’s little enough beyond what you already had from him.” Master Wydeville was still speaking sternly and now rapidly, because there was only so much time the chamberlain would waste on John Ripon but the spymaster needed to tell as much as need be. “First and foremost, he
is
the duke of Burgundy’s man, as we feared.”

“He admitted it straight out?”

“Because he hopes to be ransomed rather than hung. He was to learn what he could against Lady Jacquetta, to send it straight to Burgundy to give the duke a lever against her uncles.”

“Against her uncles? Not her brother?”

“Her brother, as the count of Saint-Pol, is held, perforce, to playing Burgundy’s game, to keep his lands and people safe. Her uncle Sir Jean de Luxembourg is less bound that way, and while he can no longer fight with us against the Armagnacs, neither will he fight against us. He prefers to hold to his past oaths more faithfully than Burgundy does, and Burgundy wants to bring him to heel. As for Bishop Louys, his bishopric is in Burgundy’s hands but he’s beyond Burgundy’s hold. But Burgundy would make use of any infamy proved against Lady Jacquetta to show the bishop has failed in his duty to his niece, disgracing the family.”

“There is no infamy, though,” Joliffe said.

“That does not mean Durevis could not have twisted something to that end. Lies will serve where truth does not, but they’re all the better if built on even the thinnest strand of truth.”

“And Alizon was helping him to betray Lady Jacquetta?”

“Not knowingly, if Durevis says true. He thought all she would have to share was merry household talk about what he would have known if he hadn’t had to ride out against the Armagnacs.”

Joliffe had never heard the word “merry” said so grimly, and if Durevis had been wooing Alizon only for what she might unwittingly betray to him, it seemed a waste of her loveliness. But her loveliness was all wasted now, and he asked a thing he had already wondered about. “What was he doing back here at all?” Raising his voice and turning it into John Ripon’s on the last four words for the sake of anyone trying to overhear.

Master Wydville gave a silent “Ha,” of approval before answering, “He came back to Rouen two days ago with others of the household men. Because they were to ride out today in guard of more supply wagons, they were kept at the castle, rather than being so briefly here.”

His voice low again, Joliffe asked, “When did she promise him ‘secrets’ then?”

“Before he rode out, she laughed that if what she thought turned out true, she would have two fine secrets when next they met. That’s why he troubled, this first time he returned to Rouen, to send her a message to meet him in the garden. He hoped to learn these secrets.”

But he had not, because . . . Slowly Joliffe said, “Someone killed Alizon to keep her from telling those secrets? Is that the way of it, do you think? Which means those secrets exist, and Alizon knew them or else that someone believed she did. Or . . . maybe there are no secrets, and she was killed for some other reason entirely.”

“Whichever of those is true, we need to find who did it,” Master Wydeville said. “Questions have to be asked about who was where in the household yesterday afternoon, and when. The marshal and coroner have done that to some degree, but you are nearer it all, will see what they do not, ask questions differently than they can, and be answered differently. You see what I want you to do?”

Joliffe curtly nodded and asked, “What’s been learned thus far?”

“Very little. M’dame, who would usually know most, was gone out. An errand for Lady Jacquetta’s coming birthday, so that she wanted to go to a goldsmith’s shop herself. Lady Jacquetta was in the chapel in prayer. Other than that, there’s been too much weeping and wailing among the demoiselles for much sense to be had from them.” His voice rose and went irked. “I’ve let you make excuses enough, Ripon. None of them suffice. Go to your duties for now. No. Where is your gown?”

Pitching his voice into the humiliated John Ripon’s carrying whine, Joliffe said his gown was in the dorter.

“Then go dress yourself properly to be seen in my lady’s house,” Master Wydeville snapped.

Joliffe cringed a bow and left hurriedly. In the dorter, he tossed his cloak onto the bed and shrugged into his black gown, all the while going through what Master Wydeville had told him and he otherwise knew. Durevis had been using Alizon in hope of learning something against Lady Jacquetta. If the killing was not from plain stupidity, then either Alizon had found out such a thing, or else someone feared she had, and that someone had silenced her. Someone who had come to the garden before Durevis. From the
hôtel
, following Alizon—or through the door from the riverside path? From the
hôtel
, most likely. So the someone was likely still here, because it would be too simple if whoever in the household was guilty had simply run off and was openly missing. As he had been, himself, last night. But he was also among those who could not be guilty, because he had his fellow secretaries and clerks to say where he was when Alizon was killed. Just as he knew where they had been—a hands-count of men he did not have to find out about. That only left how many in the household still to go?

Too many.

Begin simply, he told himself. There were a goodly number who almost certainly could not have followed Alizon, would not even have known when she went from the
hôtel
. Anyone of the kitchen could be discounted. Or maybe not. There were knives in plenty in the kitchen. Easy enough to take up one and later return it. Even if not wiped completely clean, a bloodied knife could easily go unremarked in a kitchen if slipped in among others waiting to be cleaned. Master Wydeville had said the killing was done with a dagger but . . .

Joliffe took firm hold on that trail of thought. It was stretching likelihood that someone of the kitchen had chanced to leave there, taking a knife with them, at just the right time to follow Alizon to the garden and kill her, then known to lie in wait for Durevis, and after leaving him for dead, return to the kitchen with never anyone taking note that they had been gone for no good reason. Even if this supposed-someone had made some manner of excuse yesterday of where they had been, after Alizon was found surely some new questions about where they had been would have been roused.

Or perhaps not. People could be curiously incurious about things that should raise a warning.

Still, there were more likely possibilities to be followed first, he thought as he started downstairs again. Beginning with those of the household closest to Lady Jacquetta, and therefore closest to Alizon. Fortunately, that included very few men. Which brought him immediately to Alain. But Alain had been giving heed to Guillemete since Shrovetide. Why should he have followed Alizon to the garden—or cared what she did there? Or, at least, cared enough to kill her? No, this had to be deeper than Alain was.

Or did Guillemete have something to gain from her older sister’s death?

There was an ugly thought Joliffe did not want to have.

Downstairs again and aware of John Ripon’s disgrace, he slunk with lowered gaze and hunched shoulders through Master Wydeville’s office under Pierres’ disapproving look. In his own office, silence, save for the scratching of busy pens, was his only greeting among his fellows as he slipped to his desk, except that after a few minutes Henri hissed, “At least fasten your collars.”

Having left his shirt and doublet undone so someone could disapprove, Joliffe hurriedly laid down the pen he had just finished sharpening and fumbled them closed. He had pen in hand again when George asked, “So, just what did you see in the garden, that you had to run off and get drunk?”

Henri hissed disapproval at him, while Joliffe again dropped his pen, sank his head onto the desk, and moaned, “Blood. She was lying there in all that blood.” He clutched his head between his hands. “Oh, god and the saints! All that blood!”

“Leave it for now,” Henri said angrily.

Everyone turned back to his own work, leaving John Ripon to his misery and Joliffe to his thoughts. Among the scratching of pens and the rustling of papers and parchments, he set to fair-copying a letter he had drafted yesterday, his mind going its own way while his hand moved across the paper. Speaking of blood had reminded him that blood was a part of the problem. How much might have got on the murderer? If much, being rid of it would have been troublesome. But that was surely something Master Wydeville at least had thought of and seen to questions among the household—someone with a change of clothing, or bloodied clothing found discarded. And perhaps the murderer had had the good fortune not to be betrayingly blood-bespattered.

The trouble was the murderer seemed to have been altogether too fortunate in too many ways.