A Play of Treachery (12 page)

“Burgundian,” Master Wydeville said. “Not something we’ll be having more of any time soon. Not from Burgundy itself anyway.”

He drank again. Not so deeply as he seemed to, Joliffe thought, and drank very slightly himself, minding how quickly wine this rich and unwatered would fuddle his wits.

As they both lowered their bowls again, Master Wydeville asked as evenly as he had commented on the wine, “What did Master Strugge tell you of matters here in France and Normandy?”

“Mostly that he was more than ready to be away from them.”

Master Wydeville said with a slow and serious nod, “Yes. However uninteresting a man he is, he is not a fool.”

He looked at Joliffe as if waiting for more. Watching Master Wydeville in return, Joliffe went on warily. “He seemed to think that on the whole, matters presently look ill here. He did not think either the Seine or Rouen’s walls were likely of much use, should things go as far to the bad as he thought they might.”

“Did he give you some thought on how badly things are presently gone?”

Still warily, Joliffe said, “The Armagnacs are across the Seine and north of Rouen, where they haven’t been for years. Or at least not in force like this. They’re being swept out again by Lord Talbot and—I think he said Lord Scales—but there’s nothing to keep them out. Some crossing of the Seine near Paris was lately lost?”

“Charenton, yes. We have
baleniers d’armée
on the Seine from Honfleur to Meulan, to keep the river open to us and bar the Armagnacs crossing, but that’s small use if they hold too many of the bridges. What else have you gathered from Master Strugge or others?”

“He seemed to think that the Armagnacs taking of the castle here four years ago showed how quickly things could fall apart.”

“Many of us think the same. Although some of us knew it well enough before then.” Master Wydeville raised and turned his bowl so that the lamplight caught and shone on its polished silver. Seeming to take up another thought, he went on, “Those of us who have prospered here in France have lived more richly than we were ever likely to have done in England. My lord of Bedford once said that we’re living richly on dead men’s bones.”

He paused, as if considering that thought along with the sheen of the lamplight on the silver bowl, then said, “But then don’t we all live on what’s been made and left by those came before us? But in our own case”—he turned the silver pitcher to show Joliffe the bright, enameled heraldic arms affixed to it—three gold fleur-de-lis on deep azure with a silver label of three points—“my lord spoke in the closer sense of gnawing on the very bones themselves. This pitcher and these bowls were the duke of Orleans’. After the battle at Agincourt, they were plundered from his tent. He was taken prisoner at that battle. Is still a prisoner these twenty-one years later and likely to be so for the rest of his life, while we drink wine from his bowls and lay claim to his lands. The tapestries that hang in the great council chamber here were taken from duke of Bar’s
hôtel
in Paris. Here in Rouen I live in a house I bought for a pittance of its worth because its owner, once a wealthy merchant, was broken by King Henry’s siege that gained us Rouen. Many and many English here in Rouen and other towns we’ve taken have come by property that way. There are men who slept on straw in England who now sleep on feather beds they never would have had if they’d not taken them from Frenchmen.”

Certain that none of this was mere idle talk on Master Wydeville’s part, Joliffe said cautiously, “That’s the usual way in war, isn’t it? Those who win, plunder?”

“The better way to say it,” Master Wydeville returned, “is that, whichever side they’re on, men plunder as the chance comes to them. War is profit for some, ruin for others. The trouble here has been that, having plundered, we then sat down to govern those we had plundered. Our late King Henry, God keep his soul, claimed the duchy of Normandy and the crown of France as his by right of blood. He proved his right in war, then confirmed it by treaty and marriage. What folk forget now is that—right of blood or not—he never could have done it except the French lords were too busy ripping at each other’s vitals to join together against him. You will likely hear, sooner or later, how all the ills in France and Normandy are because of the English, that the English have robbed and ruined Normandy with war. What you will have to listen harder to hear is the truth that France and Normandy were well on their way to ruin before ever the English came. The French lords had been rending the government and people to pieces for years, and would be at it again the moment there were no English here to hate.”

Joliffe, to show he was listening, said into the pause then, “But meanwhile there
are
English here to hate.”

“There are. And every lord, petty thief, and brigand who wants to make trouble uses us as an excuse to make it. Before we came, they used each other for excuse. Now they use us, and the outcome is the same. Ruin for the common folk and countryside. Most folk wouldn’t care who ruled them so long as they could live in safety and their taxes not be too heavy. We haven’t been able to give them safety, and their taxes are high because of the war. So they hate us the way they hated their French lords, forgetting their quarreling French lords were the cause of their troubles before we came, are the root cause of their troubles now, and would go on being the cause of trouble if every Englishman left France and Normandy tomorrow.”

Disgust had darkened Master Wydeville’s voice. Maybe at the follies of mankind. Maybe only with the frustrations of dealing with those follies. Maybe with both.

He nodded at the bowl in Joliffe’s hand. “More wine?”

Joliffe had drunk very little, had noted Master Wydeville had drunk even less, and shook his head. “Thank you, not yet. Is Master Strugge right, then? Should anyone who can, scuttle out of here now, rather than later?”

Master Wydeville frowned, maybe less at the question than at how to answer it, before saying, “My lord of Bedford wore himself into an early grave trying to firm Normandy to peace. He died knowing he had failed. But he succeeded well enough that I doubt Normandy is on the verge of being lost.”

There was a gap in that assurance. After a moment Joliffe asked, very quietly, “But France?”

Master Wydeville gave him a nod of bitter approval for the question and answered, “My lord of Bedford doubted we could keep hold on Paris if Philippe of Burgundy turned against us. Now he has, and if Paris slides away, our hold on France goes with it. With Paris and France slipped away, the keeping of Normandy becomes a harder business for a time.”

“For a time?”

“Until Burgundy and the Dauphin fall out with one another again. Despite all their present love-fest, sooner or later they and their factious lords will go back to what they do best—snapping, snarling, and tearing at each other. Then we’ll be able, just as we’ve done before, to return into France through the gaping holes they’ve made in her sides. That was the way my lord of Bedford saw it and said it. It was the only hope he found in the matter—that if we could not hold onto France and Paris now, we would recover them later, and meanwhile firm our hold on Normandy. Supposing we do indeed lose France. Which is not altogether certain,” he added sternly and set a hard, assessing look on Joliffe. “I tell you all this because that is the purpose you are here to serve. A double purpose. To do what can be done to lessen the likelihood of losing France, while safeguarding against stabs-in-the-back that might lose us Normandy. Do you understand?”

Joliffe took time over his answer, putting together what he knew for certain with what Master Wydeville had been saying, before he offered, “I understand the purposes and the need of them. I don’t understand what my part in it is to be.”

“Nor do I,” Master Wydeville said bluntly. “It will depend on what skills you are found to have, and then on how I decide to use you. From what I’ve been told and what I’ve seen, you have sharp wits, are good with words and at deceiving in your seeming. All that is to the good with what we do.”

He paused, looking at the wine in his bowl. Joliffe waited. Still regarding his wine, Master Wydeville finally went on, with words that Joliffe sensed were again the late duke of Bedford’s, used now as his own. “In this world there are matters that powerful men talk over face-to-face in broad daylight, with great ceremony and the fanfare of trumpets, to let the world know their doings. When talk fails, matters are given over to men wielding weapons in open battle, their praises afterward sung for the world to know their bravery. But there are also those matters that can only be done well if the world and all know nothing of them. Secret questions asked. Hidden messages passed. No one’s praises are ever sung for it. But the powerful men’s talk, and maybe the fighting afterward, often come because of those secret questions, those hidden messages.” He looked at Joliffe and said, probably seeing it in his face, “You understand.”

Joliffe understood. Understood, too, that this unseen work could be as tangled and deadly as any open battle.

“There will be skills you need to learn,” Master Wydeville went on. “Not here, nor openly, but fitted in around your given work, to keep suspicion aside from you. Tomorrow being Sunday, you will go to Mass with my lady and the rest of the household in the chapel here. Then you will have time to yourself for the day and will go to the cathedral and wander in it. A usual thing for someone new to Rouen. In one of the chapels someone will offer you the favors of a black-haired woman. You will accept and then be led to somewhere that has nothing to do with any black-haired woman. There you will begin to learn your needed skills. Repeat what I have just said.”

Joliffe had been listening as closely as if for his cue in an unfamiliar play and repeated not all the actual words Master Wydeville had said but many of them, and all the meaning.

Master Wydeville nodded as if sufficiently satisfied. “Meanwhile, you are to read to her grace this evening. You will read well, I trust?”

Sure of his skill, Joliffe almost answered, “I will,” but instead asked warily, “Do you wish I should?”

“Yes. She did not like Master Strugge and had him rarely around her. If it can be otherwise with you, I’d have better thought then how matters are with her.”

“You mean I’m to spy on her.”

“I mean you’re to see what everyone else around her sees and then to tell me of it. Less spying than a passing on of common gossip. The tittle-tattle any of her women might share among themselves. Let you understand the present difficulties around the Lady Jacquetta. You’ve maybe heard jibing talk about my lord of Bedford marrying a girl so much younger than himself.”

There had indeed been ribaldous talk and laughter about it in English alehouses and taverns at the time. Joliffe gave a small nod.

“Her youth and that he married so soon after his wife, the Lady Anne, died, gave talk. As he knew it would. More than that, Lady Anne was the duke of Burgundy’s sister and a bond between Burgundy and my lord of Bedford. Burgundy saw this new marriage as an insult, worse for being to the daughter of one of his own vassals. So it’s been easy for many to see the marriage as a foolish, unpolitic, unwise indulgence on my lord of Bedford’s part, gaining England nothing except the duke of Burgundy’s anger. But it was neither foolish, unpolitic, nor unwise. Burgundy had long been looking for a way to slip free of his alliance with us. His fondness for his sister was nearly the only thing that held him back. With her dead, it was sure he would shortly give way to treachery, whatever my lord of Bedford did or did not do.”

And so Bedford had said be-damned to Burgundy and married to suit himself, Joliffe thought.

But Master Wydeville went on, “Not all in allegiance to Burgundy think as he does, though. Among those who would rather hold with England are the Lady Jacquetta’s family. Her father who was count of Saint-Pol. Her brother who now is count. Her uncle the bishop of Therouanne. Her other uncle who has been one of our best war-captains against the Armagnacs. They’ve all been long wary of Burgundy’s interest in Lady Jacquetta, worried he would urge a marriage for her they could not refuse. The trouble is that marriages that Burgundy has ‘urged’ on other people seem always to work—through one way and another, including the deaths of other heirs—to Burgundy’s advantage. Lady Jacquetta’s father, brother, and uncles thought they would rather she was married out of Burgundy’s reach. Besides that my lord of Bedford was the only man with power enough to stand out against Burgundy’s displeasure, he also owed Bishop Louys and his brother Sir Jean a great deal for their loyalty and service, often done in despite of Burgundy. The bishop in the government here, Sir Jean in the war. There being no hope of any longer keeping Burgundy either pleased or loyal, and with possibly much to be gained by allying with her family, my lord of Bedford married her. Despite how it looks to those who do not know his reasons, the marriage was neither unpolitic nor foolish.”

Joliffe started a question but stopped, unsure if he was allowed questions.

“Say it out,” Master Wydeville said.

“But wasn’t marrying her too much like slapping a bear across the muzzle? If it wasn’t angry before, it surely would be then.”

“If the bear is already on its hind legs with a paw pulled back to sweep at you, you’ve little to lose by hitting it first,” Master Wydeville said grimly. “Too, the marriage meant the Luxembourgs were a little more able to stand out against Burgundy’s demands for treachery when the time came. They had somewhere else to be than altogether under Burgundy’s thumb.”

“How much of all this did—does—Lady Jacquetta understand?”

“Her father, her uncles, and my lord of Bedford made certain she understood the why of their marriage. She has likewise had her uncle the bishop to guide her much of the time here in Rouen. Now that her father is dead, her brother is count of Saint-Pol, and while he and her other uncle perforce serve Burgundy, as the duke of Bedford’s widow and with her nearer uncle presently chancellor of Normandy, her fortune and future are with England. I’m taking time to make all this as clear to you as may be, that you be able to make better sense of whatever you see around Lady Jacquetta. Do you have any questions about it all?”