A Play of Treachery (35 page)

“We are not wanted,” one of them said. “Last night was no time for us, surely, but Master Cauvet passed word from Bishop Louys that our company might be welcomed tonight.”

“But no,” another said. “Her grace and her demoiselles keep alone in their mourning.”

“It’s M’dame’s doing,” Alain said angrily. “She says they’re to keep apart until after the funeral. But it’s only to keep me from Guillemete when Guillemete needs me!”

Draping an arm over Alain’s shoulders, another squire said in rough comfort, “Your Guillemete will still need you in two days’ time. Come away. If we’re not wanted here, there are other places to be.”

Alain looked still ready to grumble but let himself be led off toward the great hall. Joliffe waited until they were gone from sight, then took himself up the stairs despite what they had said. Mathei, standing guard, answered his question of whether the ladies might want his reading with, “I’ve only orders against the bright-eyed youths. There’s been a harper let in. Your reading might be welcome, too. If you’re willing to dare the dragon, go on.”

Joliffe decided to dare and went in. Only the harper—one of the household’s musicians—was in the parlor, sitting alone in a single candle’s light, rippling soft music from his harpstrings. He and Joliffe exchanged silent nods as Joliffe passed him toward the bedchamber door that stood a little open, probably for the music’s sake. Joliffe’s soft scratch at the doorframe was answered by M’dame, looking more dragon than ever, ready to deny and defy anyone who might be there, but seeing only him, she asked over her shoulder if he should come in and, at Lady Jacquetta’s answer, opened the door to him.

U
nlike the parlor, the bedchamber was full of candlelight, as well as over-warm from a large fire in the fireplace, but sadness hung like a pall in the air. The demoiselles were seated here and there around the room, none crying but none pretending to any task except Michielle at an embroidery frame. Guillemete, her head bent to rest on a cushion she was clutching to her breast with both arms, sat rocking gently side to side on the bench below the shuttered window. Lady Jacquetta, on the long, cushioned chest at the bedfoot, one of her dogs nestled beside her, the other in the folds of her skirt on the floor, was turning over the page of a book lying open on her lap—the
Alexander
again, Joliffe saw as he made his bow to her and she said musingly to him, without looking up, “This is another book my lord of Bedford had made for me, that I might take pleasure in learning English. I think much of the time he saw me more as a daughter to be taught, than a wife to be loved.”

M’dame, just sitting down on the far end of the chest, said, “My lady,” in a voice layered with warning and other things less easy to read. But Lady Jacquetta answered firmly, “No. It is good to remember him, to talk of him sometimes.” She turned another page. “He said once that his first wife told him that if she died, he was to marry someone young and beautiful. He told it to me to please me, you see. But I would never tell my husband such a thing. I would want my husband never to marry again, to live always remembering me or else to die when I died. She must not have loved him, to tell him to marry again.” She looked at Joliffe. “Is that not so?”

Joliffe had supposed her lost in her memories and thoughts, and was startled to find himself questioned. He hesitated, then answered, careful of his words, “I think love takes many different forms, my lady.”

“That is what a priest would say,” Lady Jacquetta returned somewhat sharply. “You are not a priest, are you, Master Ripon?”

“No, my lady.”

“Nor have you truly loved, to say such a thing. Do you think Lady Alizon loved Master Durevis?”

“I—have no way to know, my lady.”

“She was sadly deceived in him if she did. If he was who killed her. Although one can be deceived without murder following,” she added bitterly.

“My lady,” M’dame said again.

“Yes,” Lady Jacquetta replied impatiently. She thrust the book at Joliffe. “Read to us, Master Ripon. Make our minds think on other things.”

Joliffe obeyed, but the over-warm room, thick with all the grief he could not comfort and questions he could not ask, weighed down on him, oppressing his thoughts as it must be oppressing Lady Jacquetta, if her talk was true echo of her thoughts. Last night and this morning with Perrette seemed days away, rather than only hours, and he could not see what good use he could make of being here, now that he was. Even if, somehow, he had chance to talk alone with, say, Guillemete, what was he to say? He could hardly ask outright, “Where were you when your sister died, and do you know what she knew that got her murdered?” Master Wydeville might ask her those things; John Ripon was too much nobody to dare it. He wished he had stayed in the hall or gone out—no, John Ripon was forbidden that—or maybe just gone to bed.

But he read as if none of that was in his mind until eventually Lady Jacquetta said, “Thank you, Master Ripon,” held out her hand for the book, and asked just as she had on other, better evenings, “Would you care for wine before you go?”

He was about to refuse when Guillemete said unexpectedly, “I’ll bring it.”

Silent looks of surprise passed among everyone as she put her cushion aside and hurriedly rose, but Lady Jacquetta said only, mildly, “Thank you, Guillemete.”

Joliffe followed as she went to the table where the pitcher and goblets stood. He wondered if he was alone in seeing she needed both hands to steady the pitcher as she poured, while asking him in a desperate whisper, “Please, have you seen Alain?”

Aware from the side of his eye that a gesture from M’dame had set Ydoine moving toward them, he answered, quiet-voiced and quickly as she set the pitcher down and took up the goblet, “He seems to be forever downstairs, hoping for chance to see you. He’s miserable that he can’t be with you.” He took the slightly trembling goblet from her hand. “Has he seen you at all since . . . yesterday?”

Guillemete shook her head and slipped away, back toward the window. Ydoine took her place in front of him, held out a small plate of gingerbread slices as if that had been all her purpose in coming to him and said, “Guillemete is to go home with her sister’s body after the funeral.”

“That will be hard for her,” Joliffe said, then decided bold was as good a way to go as any and asked, “Where was she when Lady Alizon died?”

“Where was she?” Ydoine echoed, somewhat sharply.

As if not hearing the sharpness, Joliffe said with apparently only ordinary concern, “I wondered that perhaps she feels somehow guilty she was not with her yesterday. You know—that the guilt too often felt for no good reason, only because we’re alive when someone else isn’t?”

Ydoine accepted that with a sad down-turn of her mouth and a nod. “I think that likely, yes. Blanche has said that after M’dame and I went out, Guillemete slipped away to meet Alain somewhere. Behind M’dame’s back, you see. So she may feel doubly guilty.”

“Ah.” Joliffe nodded his understanding. Alain had said he had forgotten to go with M’dame. It seemed “forgot” had maybe not been quite the way of it. But a thought jarred into his mind from seemingly nowhere. He had been wondering how Durevis had got word to Alizon to meet him in the garden. What he had not wondered was how Durevis knew M’dame would be gone, giving Alizon that chance to meet him; and trying to make it seem an idle question, he asked, “Was it a sudden thing, M’dame choosing to go out yesterday?”

“To me she said nothing until just before dinner. When she first thought of it, I do not know.”

Perhaps no sooner than when a message maybe came to her in the chapel that morning. He had already thought of that as a way Alizon could have known to meet Durevis. What if . . .

Ydoine left him with the goblet in one hand, a piece of gingerbread in the other, and a flow of thoughts in his head that he hoped he was keeping from his face. What if at Mass, it was M’dame who received some message that decided her to leave the
hôtel
? There was no way yet to know what such a message might have been, but suppose there had been such a message. No one would much question if she said she was going out that afternoon. It was her place to question what went on around Lady Jacquetta, not to be questioned herself. But once she had said she would be going out, someone in the household, bribed before this to keep Durevis informed of just such a chance, saw to Durevis learning of it. How that was done was something to be found out later. What mattered was that then Durevis must have sent word to Alizon to meet him in the garden and . . .

Or Alizon, when she knew M’dame was going to be gone, had sent word to
him
. Or . . .

It was too tangled. A maze of messages flying secretly in and out of the household were possible, of course, but so many in the small time there seemed to have been for them—that was possible, of course, but “possible” and “likely” were two different things.

Yet Durevis had to have known M’dame was going to be gone, for him to think Alizon would have any chance of coming to meet him secretly. How had he known?

Could he have sent a false message to M’dame, to draw her off? What could such a message have been? Nothing deeply secret, since she had taken Ydoine with her. But if there had been a false message to draw her off, surely she would have said as much to Master Wydeville or someone by now.

He found he had nibbled the gingerbread away and finished the wine. He was about to set the goblet aside and bow his retreat when someone spoke sharply to Mathei at the outer door and started across the parlor with the rapid tread of someone who did not mean to be stopped. Joliffe’s first thought was that the young fool Alain had finally decided to force his way to Guillemete, but it was Sir Richard Wydeville who paused in the bedchamber doorway long enough to say over his shoulder to someone, “No. If I’m not needed here, then I’ll go. But I’ll know for myself.
No
.”

That must have been to his father, because Master Wydeville came in close behind him, no longer trying to stop him. Lady Jacquetta rose to her feet exclaiming, “Sir Richard!” at the same moment M’dame, likewise rising, said, sharp with warning, “Sir!” As Lady Jacquetta held out her hands to Sir Richard in open welcome, Joliffe saw not only the exchange of looks between M’dame and Master Wydeville but also the single sideways jerk of his head that denied or refused something she had not said. M’dame, perhaps in answer, said crisply, “We’ll leave you, my lady,” and ordered at the demoiselles, “Come,” nodding toward the parlor.

They went, although M’dame had to take bewildered Guillemete by one arm and guide her firmly after the others. Joliffe moved quickly to stand beside the door, bending in a hurried half-bow while they passed him with a heavy whispering of skirts that cost him any chance of hearing whatever Sir Richard was saying, low-voiced, to Lady Jacquetta across the room. Down on one knee in front of her, he was grasping both her hands, and she was leaning toward him. Master Wydeville moved to where he somewhat blocked them from view from the other room and with a gesture silently ordered Joliffe to leave, too. Joliffe did, and at his back Master Wydeville swung the door closed enough that nothing could be seen of Lady Jacquetta and Sir Richard but open enough that she could not be said to have been left alone with two men.

Her ladies, wide-eyed and confused at the suddenness, were clustered around Guillemete, who was crying again, at the parlor’s far end, but M’dame was still beside the door, looking as if she meant to stay there. On guard? Or simply waiting for a summons from Lady Jacquetta? Or both?

Pieces were shifting in Joliffe’s mind, and he stopped in front of M’dame, turned so his back was to everyone else, and said, low-voiced, “M’dame, that day you sent me to the garden to interrupt whatever was happening between Master Durevis and Lady Jacquetta—why did you want me in particular?”

M’dame regarded him with unrevealing eyes. “Did I? I think not.”

“You said, ‘There you are. That saves time.’ As if you were seeking me in particular.”

“How strange. You are dismissed for this evening, Master Ripon. You should leave.”

“You sought me that day because you know that I serve Master Wydeville.”

M’dame’s brows rose. Somewhat disdainfully, she said, “I thought you served my lady, not her chamberlain.”

“You know my meaning.”

He was playing it more boldly than he felt, and for a moment under her unwavering, cold stare, he thought he had played it badly, until the barest of possible smiles twitched at M’dame’s stern mouth and she said, “Yes.”

Greatly relieved behind his front of confidence, Joliffe tried, “You know who he is, beyond being my lady’s chamberlain, and who I am in his service. That’s why you sought me in particular that day. You work together, you and Master Wydeville, for Lady Jacquetta’s safety.”

“It would make good sense for us to do so,” she granted.

Joliffe would have welcomed a stronger confirmation from her, but supposing he would not get it, he thrust directly on. “Master Durevis and Lady Jacquetta were not friendly together that day. What did he want from her?”

M’dame surprised him more than she already had by answering, “For her to tell him things. He thought he knew something. He wanted to know more. He thought she would tell him. She would not.”

“What did he want her to tell him?”

M’dame shook her head, refusing him that.

Joliffe let it go, said instead, “It was after that he began to give heed to Lady Alizon. He wanted from her what he did not get from Lady Jacquetta.”

“So we thought,” M’dame granted.

Who did that “we” encompass? She and Master Wydeville? Lady Jacquetta? Hoping to set her at least a little off balance, he asked sideways, “Yesterday, you planned somewhat suddenly to go to the goldsmith’s.”

Not set off balance at all, she returned evenly, “Did I?” Joliffe persisted, “And somehow Master Durevis knew that you would be gone and that Lady Alizon would have her best chance to slip away to the garden while you were away. The question is how he knew you would be out.”