A Play of Treachery (10 page)

Just for mischief, Joliffe asked in seeming-innocence, “But that’s close to Wales, isn’t it? Trouble can come out of Wales, too, you know.”

“Huh. Where I mean to be, there’s the wide Severn to keep the Welsh away. Nor will I be near the coast either. The French have come a-raiding along there before now, and the way things are going, they will again, and I mean never even to see another Frenchman if I can help it.”

Joliffe suspected that any French who knew Strugge probably felt the same about him.

What Joliffe would have liked to hear more about was Lady Jacquetta herself. So far, he had been no more than presented to her by Strugge, had bowed low to her, and had her say to him in careful English as he straightened, “I am pleased you are come to join my household, Master Ripon.”

“As am I pleased to be here, my lady,” he had answered.

She had smiled, given a small nod that was agreement and dismissal together, and that had been that.

Beyond it, he had only been able to draw out of Strugge that she was “not a difficult lady.” Whatever that might mean. Certainly, Joliffe had been surprised at how young she was. Could she be even twenty years old? If so, how young had she been when Bedford married her? She did have the fair-haired, fair-skinned, fine-boned loveliness that looks young “for an unfair number of years,” as he had once heard an envious woman say, so he was maybe ill-guessing her age, and he could not bring himself to ask Strugge outright.

“Mind you keep a wary eye for old Wydeville,” Strugge was reminding him again. “I’ve shown you there’s not so much work that you’ll be sent cross-eyed by it. But you have to look busy enough you don’t get saddled with other work. Wydeville doesn’t think a man’s time should be his own.”

Joliffe suspected his time would indeed not be his own once Master Wydeville took him in hand, but meanwhile he did indeed wonder how there was enough work as secretary to spin into even the appearance of being fully busy. His main dealing would be with the letters and account rolls from the English properties that had come to Lady Jacquetta as her dowry at her marriage and her dower at Bedford’s death. Income and properties had been settled on her as part of the actual marriage agreement, but by law, at Bedford’s death, one-third of his other properties became hers for life as his widow. In the case of a royal duke, that one-third was considerable, but with the duke hardly four months’ dead, and the winter’s bad weather making cross-Channel travel uncertain, the details of precisely what was now Lady Jacquetta’s were still being worked out among the late duke’s executors and officers in England and in Normandy, Lady Jacquetta’s own household officers here, and several of Bishop Louys’ officers, the bishop rightly taking an interest in his niece’s welfare since no other of her near-kin were to hand. “Except a cousin,” Strugge had warned. “M’dame. Old enough to be my lady’s mother and acts like an old hen with one chick. If it has to do with the household or my lady’s person, M’dame has the say, even over old Wydeville. Nor don’t go giving love-eyed looks Lady Jacquetta’s way. M’dame will rap more than your knuckles if she sees you at it.” Strugge had paused as if hearing what he had said, then added, “I’ve seen her do it,” to show, unconvincingly, that it had not happened to him.

For his own part, Joliffe rather thought he could avoid being foolish over a duke’s widow. His years as a player had given him a very firm understanding of the perils of pushing beyond his low place in the world’s way of things. The understanding had not always kept him where he ought to be, but it had made him wary of being more of a fool than need be, and he did not think he was fool enough to fall into any pointless longing after a duchess, no matter how young and lovely and gracious she might be. If nothing else, dust-dry account rolls, stiff letters of business, and whatever Master Wydeville was going to require of him should be sufficient safe-guard against time for idle indulgence in pointless languishing over the fair and unobtainable.

“Oh,” said Strugge now as he strapped shut his bag. “Sometimes her grace will want you to read to her in English and talk English with her. My lord of Bedford spoke French like a Frenchman, but he wanted her to know English, too. Seems a waste of time now. It’s not likely she’ll go to England anymore. But she sometimes keeps it up. Just so you’re warned.”

Joliffe thanked him.

Strugge hefted his bag off the bed, looked around the small room, said, “That’s it, then. I wish you good luck with it all.”

“And to you good luck with your travel and homecoming,” Joliffe answered.

“I get seasick,” Strugge said glumly and left.

Feeling no need to see him through whatever other good-byes he might want to make, Joliffe stayed sitting on the joint stool for a few long moments more, partly waiting to be certain Strugge was truly gone but mostly savoring being alone for the first time in days. Then he rose and, by way of claiming the place for his own, emptied the sparse contents of his sack into a small chest beside the bed and shoved the sack down beside them. His cloak already hung on a wall peg beside the wall-pole where his daily clothing would hang at night. He had so far spent his nights on a thin straw-filled pallet on the room’s rush-matted floor. Minded now to try the bed, he lay down on it, to find its somewhat thicker straw-filled mattress on boards not much better, but being off the floor would be warmer, and given he had spent most of his nights these past years sleeping on the ground, he hardly had reason for complaint about boards; and the blankets were good. He would be comfortable enough, he supposed as he looked around this place that was now “his.” As high in the house and close under the roof as the dorter for the bishop’s men, the dorter here at least had board walls between the beds, and rough-woven gray curtains across their outer ends, giving the lesser men of Lady Jacquetta’s household a sort of privacy. If not a room—given its length and narrowness, it was more like a stall—at least it was his own.

He sat up. He could not expect this kind of ease after today, and he saw no use in wasting it lingering here in utter idleness. Tomorrow would be soon enough to take to Strugge’s desk—
my
desk, Joliffe reminded himself—in the small chamber the English secretary shared with the duchess’ French secretary and several other officers and clerks of the household, just beyond the room where he had met with Master Wydeville. What he needed was to learn more about this part of the
hôtel
. Strugge had led him over much of it yesterday afternoon, but had balanced fairly evenly between complaint and vagueness with very little detail in between: “That way goes to the kitchen. You shouldn’t ever have to bother with that,” and “The privy on this floor is along there,” with a vague pointing, as if that were sufficient for someone else to understand everything. Joliffe had never decided if people who did that simply supposed that if they knew a thing, then you must know it, too, or that they took a private delight in feeling superior because they knew a thing and kept you from knowing it.

Either way, now looked the best time to learn at least this half of the
hôtel
better than he yet did, before either Master Wydeville or Lady Jacquetta had need of him. Without Strugge, he might still be unfamiliar enough to be challenged, but he had his loose black over-gown that made him plainly a member of the household. It was part of his pay, this robe. They had been given out to much of the household after Bedford’s death, to make an outward show of mourning to match the inward there should be. Plain servants, such as had come to the quay, had to settle for wearing a black band across their usual livery, but Joliffe, being higher in the household, had the gown. As befitted his moderate place in the household, it was of well-dyed wool of medium weight and went to somewhat below his knees. The collar, standing high under his chin, and the long sleeves, close-fitted to his wrists, hid his far less worthy shirt. His own hosen were satisfactorily black, but the clerk of the household’s wardrobe, having given him the gown, had eyed his travel-worn brown leather shoes with disfavor and handed him a pair in black leather, made of finer leather than he was used to and meant for house-wear, not days and miles of solid walking. They still felt unfamiliar on his feet. Not uncomfortable. Just unfamiliar.

So did the gown, come to that. He was only used to wearing fine garments when he was playing a part in a play that needed them, not when simply being himself. But he was not being himself here, he reminded himself as he left the dorter by the same spiraled stairs that led down past the offices. Here he was being John Ripon, a disgraced clerk who—while not worth much himself—was at least used to being around life’s finer things. Whatever unease Joliffe might have, John Ripon, having been in Cardinal Beaufort’s wealthy household, would not be uncomfortable here. He had to keep that in mind.

As it happened, no one challenged his right to be anywhere in the while he roamed down and up and around Lady Jacquetta’s part of the
hôtel
. He did not waste time going all the way down the stairs from the dorter. Strugge had showed him that at their bottom a door opened into a corner where the forward courtyard and the stableyard met. “But you’re not likely to be riding,” Strugge had said. “My lady has ridden no further than the cathedral these months since my lord of Bedford died. Things haven’t been safe enough outside the walls, and that doesn’t look like changing.”

Since Joliffe had no desire to leave the safety of Rouen’s walls, that suited him well enough. He had noted, though, in the brief moment he stepped outside the door, that it was angled so that whoever came or went that way through the stableyard would not be readily seen from almost anywhere in the foreyard—something surely useful for the subtle coming and going of anyone Master Wydeville wished to come and go subtly, Joliffe had thought as Strugge turned back into the
hôtel
, saying, “If we were going to the gardens, it would be from here, around through the back gate from the stableyard, but it’s not the weather for gardens.”

Nor was it today, to Joliffe’s mind, and he chose instead to wend all the way down to the cellars instead, where a clerk was counting off the gallon pitchers of cider several servants were carrying out, undoubtedly drawn from a barrel somewhere among the stores of wine and foods and other goods stored vault-high among the thick stone pillars and cold shadows. After there, the warm, well-smelling, busy kitchen was welcome, but he no more than looked in, to avoid the likely irk of the cooks, their kind never pleased to have someone of no use to them in their way. He went on to try various stairways and put his head cautiously around open doors. He found both ways into the minstrels gallery that looked out on the great hall from above the screens passage, and roamed the three great chambers—outer, solar, and bed—off the long gallery that in the duke of Bedford’s lifetime were only somewhat less public than the great hall itself and intended to show his wealth and power to such lords and others as were granted the favor of coming there. Glass, both plain and colored, was in every window, and high-set hooks showed that ceiling-high tapestries had once hung on almost every wall, but the chambers were empty now, tapestries and furnishings gone, and undoubtedly the rooms—this whole side of the
hôtel
—were older and less fine than the side Bishop Louys now had. Joliffe had asked about that while Strugge was taking him briskly through them.

With a shrug and not much interest, Strugge had answered, “This side is what was here when my lord of Bedford bought Joyeux Repos. He had it made over and used it while the new half was built, but Lady Anne died about the time it was finished, and he went cold toward it. When he married Lady Jacquetta, he gave it over to her, and she lived there without he ever really did. He always kept more to this side when he wasn’t at the castle or altogether gone from Rouen. Now that she’s his widow and living quiet in her widowhood, it’s better sense for Bishop Louys to have the finer side, and for her to shift here. Not these rooms of course. There’s no sense to having them opened, while she’s still living so private in her mourning. That’s why she has those lesser rooms above here. Where I made you known to her.” Said as if Joliffe might have somehow let slip from mind being shown to Lady Jacquetta the day before. Strugge’s voice had turned pious. “She has those, and her uncle has the fine new side of the
hôtel
, and the duke lies in the cathedral in that small room we all come to at the last. There’s the turn of Fortuna’s wheel for you.”

John Ripon had murmured solemn agreement with that piece of commonplace piety that Joliffe could have done without. What he wanted was to know more about how matters had been between the duke of Bedford and his apparently neglected young wife. He had held back from asking because the less Strugge had to remember or mention about John Ripon, the better, and the less John Ripon asked or said, the less there would be left about him in Strugge’s mind.

Always supposing Strugge didn’t forget John Ripon and everything else about Rouen as soon as he was safe in Gloucestershire again.

But Joliffe’s curiosity remained, and having seen as much as he freely could around the
hôtel
, he thought that perhaps time was come for John Ripon to betake himself deliberately into the Lady Jacquetta’s presence, to see if she might have any present use for him—and maybe to satisfy some of his curiosity.

The January day being gray, cold, and blustered by a strong wind, Joliffe supposed the duchess and her ladies were not in the gardens; and since there had been no bustle of them going altogether out from Joyeux Repos or even down to the great hall, they must be in her rooms. Those were reached by a stairway from a corner of the outermost of the three great chambers and were, yes, less fine, but to Joliffe, in the brief while he was there, they had seemed ample of space and comforts, being originally intended less to impress the world than for the more private living of Joyeux Repos’ lord and lady, he supposed.