A Play of Treachery (36 page)

Her look at him sharpened.

He kept on. “You said nothing about going out until late morning. It was during the Mass, in the chapel, that someone passed you some message. A message that Master Durevis had to know of, despite he was not there nor anywhere about Joyeux Repos.”

“Messages and messengers can go astray,” M’dame said evenly, neither confirming nor denying what he had said.

Given no help with the way he was trying to go, Joliffe said, “Lady Alizon almost surely received her message to meet Master Durevis then, too. That gives two new questions. Why did you have to go out that day so suddenly? And how did Master Durevis know of it so well ahead of the time? Which brings us to two other things that are not questions. Where he was that morning, and who you met while you were out. He has been sharing duty and probably a good deal of company with Sir Richard Wydeville. And it was Sir Richard you met while you were out.”

“Sir Richard chanced to be passing the goldsmith’s. That is all.”

“I think he neither chanced nor was passing. I think it was arranged you would meet him there, a thing Master Durevis could have learned easily enough if he were indeed making effort to know about Sir Richard’s doings, and I think he must have been. I think he was making effort to know because Lady Alizon had told him she might have secrets to tell him. Secrets about something he already suspected.”

“Secrets are best left secret,” M’dame said, her voice still level.

“There are secrets that won’t keep, and someone has already died for them.” He paused. He was about to step out over a deep pit, either onto an invisible bridge he was almost sure was there, or else to his doom. Taking a grip on his certainty and with memory of what he had just seen in the bedchamber, he said, “Lady Jacquetta and Sir Richard are lovers.”

Michielle chose this moment to turn from the other demoiselles and start across the parlor toward M’dame. Not removing her gaze from Joliffe’s face, M’dame raised an abrupt hand toward her. The girl promptly retreated, and M’dame with her gaze still fixed on Joliffe said softly, “They are not lovers. They are married.”

Joliffe just barely kept from blurting out his first, idiot thought—To each other?

M’dame continued, flat-voiced, “They were married at Twelfth Night. Here. Secretly.”

Twelfth Night, Joliffe thought, picking one clear thought out of his jumble of other ones. That last of the Christmas holidays, when everyone in the household would have been busy, early and late, with their own merriment.

Well before her uncle’s return from England.

Long before the king’s council had required her oath never to marry without royal permission.

Her oath. She had given her oath to her uncle that day that she would never marry without the king’s—or else the council’s—consent. No. That was not what she had sworn. She had been refusing to swear that, had summoned Master Wydeville to her with claim she wanted his advice. But what she had truly wanted was his help in escaping an oath she could not honestly give. And he had given her an oath she
could
give—that she would not marry without royal consent
from this time forth
.

Barely able to say it, Joliffe forced out, “Master Wydeville knows this, too.”

M’dame granted that with the smallest of small inclinations of her head, watching his face all the while.

“Who else?” he asked.

“The priest who took their vows. None other.”

“But her women suspect. Surely they must suspect.”

“Lady Alizon surely did. Now you know it for certain
and
what you have to keep secret while you ask your questions about her death. But we have been in talk over-long. You should leave.” And a little raising her voice, she finished, “Thank you, Master Ripon. I will consider it.”

He took that dismissal gladly, bowed first to her, then toward the demoiselles, and escaped without looking toward the bedchamber as he went. Deeply in need of a chance to re-gather his thoughts and sort them, he was not sure where he was going and was very unpleased to come on Alain in the long gallery—and even less pleased when Alain hurried at him saying furiously, “M’dame allowed you in and then Sir Richard. Why you and him and not me?”

“All I know is that Lady Jacquetta allowed it. I read aloud for a while, that’s all. Sir Richard ”—Joliffe shrugged—“ he was with his father, not there on his own.”

“But why them and no one else?” Alain demanded in agony.

Rather than try for a lie that might divert him, Joliffe offered, “Guillemete made chance to ask after you.”

Very satisfactorily diverted, Alain cried, “How is she?”

“Sorrowing. She’s to accompany her sister’s body home after the funeral.”

“I have to see her before then! I have to talk to her!”

Did he ever do more than demand and exclaim? Joliffe wondered. He did not want the bother of Alain just now, but at the same time could not help but pity him and said, “Alain, I’ll put your plea to M’dame.”

Alain grasped his arm. “Will you? Now?”

“Not now. After the Wydevilles leave.”

“But tonight?”

“I was dismissed for the night. I will in the morning.” He loosed Alain’s grip from his arm. “What you have to do is go down to the hall, find a game to gamble in and something to drink.” A lot to drink, he thought to himself. “If I have word with Guillemete before you do, is there anything I should say for you?”

“Tell her . . . No. Tell her . . . No.” Alain shook his head helplessly. “Tell her to wait until we have talked. Tell her that.”

“To wait until you have talked. Yes.” He turned Alain toward the downward stairs. “Now go to the hall and join the others. That will be better than waiting here.”

The advice was good and Alain took it. Joliffe did not. The long gallery was cold and mostly dark except for a lantern by the stairs at each end. He had it to himself as he paced its length and back, then paced it again. He wished he had his cloak, but the need to speak to Master Wydeville was stronger than his urge to comfort, and after all it was not so very long before he and Sir Richard came, their voices ahead of them sounding as if they were in a low-voiced argument.

If they were, they broke it off at sight of him. Sir Richard swore, mostly under his breath. His father, more calmly, said, “Master Ripon. Good. There’s need we speak together. Richard, there’s no more to be done here. Return to the castle for now.”

Sir Richard started to protest that.

Master Wydeville cut him off with “But, yes, you’re in the right about the other thing. We’ve come to the end of it.”

Sir Richard’s mouth snapped closed, apparently with surprise, before he gathered himself and said, “You see it has to be that way?”

“The whole world will be seeing it before long,” Master Wydeville said curtly. “Best we not wait for that. For now, go.”

Sir Richard went, not hallward but toward the narrow twist of stairs down to the corner of the foreyard.

“As if that will keep his coming here a secret,” Master Wydeville said somewhat bitterly when he was beyond being heard. He turned his look on Joliffe. “M’dame told you they’re married.”

“Yes.”

“Besides that,” Master Wydeville said grimly, “Lady Jacquetta is with child. Something I’ve only now been told.”

“Then those,” Joliffe said slowly, covering the race of his thoughts, “would be the secrets Lady Alizon thought she would learn and was going to tell to Durevis.” Two grave secrets. Even the first was dark enough. For a common-born knight to marry the nobly born widow of a royal duke disparaged both her
and
her family. That she was childing, too. . .

The duke of Burgundy, cheated of using Lady Jacquetta to his own ends in some marriage, would surely find ways for making ill-use of the scandal.

Slowly, wary of the words, Joliffe said, “You knew of the marriage. M’dame said you witnessed it.”

“As my lord of Bedford would have wished me to do,” Master Wydeville answered steadily.

“He would have wished your son to marry his widow?”

Despite Joliffe’s try, he failed to keep disbelief and accusation altogether out of his voice, but Master Wydeville answered evenly, “My lord of Bedford knew that after his death she would of necessity be married again, being too useful and now too wealthy to be left a widow. He married her to keep her safe from the duke of Burgundy. Her brother is already being pressed by Burgundy to demand she come back to her family, meaning into Burgundy’s reach again. This marriage forestalls that. She will go to England, out of his reach forever.”

“She could have gone to England without the marriage.”

“Where she would have been used in some marriage chosen for her by the royal council and the king. My lord of Bedford was used by king and royal council all his life. At the end he did not want her to spend her life as such another pawn.”

“So you provided your son.”

“No,” Master Wydeville said curtly. “Anyone but a fool could foresee what would likely come of a fair-faced youth and a beautiful girl being together in a household. My lord of Bedford was no fool, but when he did not send my son away, I told him that he should, before anything could even begin. He told me he chose not to, that he trusted them both, and I’ll grant that he had the right of it. While he lived there was a great liking but nothing dishonorable between them. Then, when he was deathly ill, when he knew that he would die, he told me I was to let matters go the way they would, that Lady Jacquetta, for good or ill, was to make her own choice for her life. She has. She has chosen my son, and I am not happy for it. There are too many ills too likely to come of this marriage.” He said it with the sternly controlled displeasure of a man indeed not pleased by what others would see as his son’s great good fortune; and in the same controlled voice, he went flatly on, “But whatever comes will be for them to deal with. Once I’ve seen them away to England, I’ll have done all I could. I would rather not have told you any of this, but you’ve done well at guessing much, and having it all may help you toward finding Lady Alizon’s murderer. So, what have you learned toward that end?”

With an effort, Joliffe pulled his mind around from the marriage and told as briefly as he could what he had so far pieced together. In the telling it did not seem much, and he ended with his own question. “Has Master Durevis had any more to say?”

“He’s carefully admitting nothing more. He’s still hoping to be ransomed back to Burgundy.”

“I’ll warrant he at least suspected more,” Joliffe said. “Have you asked her about what passed between them in the garden that day?”

“She claims he was trying to lure her into telling him any secret he might find useful by pretending to know more than he did.”

“And all she did was turn angry at him,” Joliffe said, “and that set him to winning Lady Alizon, in hope of what
she
might tell him.”

“It would seem so.”

“Will he be ransomed back to Burgundy?”

“Very likely. Despite he’ll take with him the settled thought that it was Lady Jacquetta who ordered Lady Alizon’s murder and his.”

That startled Joliffe into saying, “Did she?”

“Not so far as we’ve yet learned,” Master Wydeville said evenly. Which was uncomfortably far from a firm “no.”

Joliffe stared past him at an empty wall without really seeing it, wondering just how much of a fool he would have to be to ask the next question. A fairly great fool, he determined, and returned his gaze to Master Wydeville and asked it anyway. “What of M’dame? Did
she
order it?”

As evenly as before, Master Wydeville said, “She says not.”

Another infirm answer.

He waited for Joliffe to ask more, but Joliffe, already knowing more than felt safe to know, found there was nothing else he wanted—or was it dared?—to ask just then, and he settled for, “It might be helpful if Master Durevis would tell how he knew M’dame would be out, and how he got word to Alizon to meet him.”

Master Wydeville nodded. “Well thought. If he hasn’t been asked, he will be.”

Footfall and voices on the hallward stairs said people were coming. Joliffe, out of things he wanted to ask or say, welcomed the reason to escape, bowed and said clearly enough to be overheard, “Sir, by your leave, if there’s no more?”

In kind, Master Wydeville responded, “There’s no more. You may go.” And added sternly for the benefit of whoever was coming, “But see you’re at your desk in good time tomorrow morning, to make up for today, Master Ripon. No one is pleased with you.”

T
he past two days had been long enough and last night short enough that, once lain down on his bed, Joliffe simply slept, immediately and soundly, with no dreams left over to trouble him when he awoke in the dark sometime before anyone else was rousing for the morning. He did not rouse either, but stayed warm where he was. His mind, though, unfortunately began to churn as soon as he was awake enough for thoughts. The after-troubling of a dream would have been better, because it would have had the good grace to fade once he left his bed and took on the day. Unlike his thoughts. And he found his first and strongest thought was that . . . he was afraid.

Probably with good reason, but there was no comfort in that. He was gone far beyond any familiar depth. The things that served in the making of all people’s lives and choices—loves, angers, lusts, hatreds, kindnesses, greeds—were as real here as anywhere else, but were all tangled here into worse by the overlay of high matters among powerful men, the ambitions of great lords, and the secret workings of men who lived by lies in the service of those great lords. Men like Remon Durevis.

And Master Wydeville.

And himself these past months.

Joliffe shifted uncomfortably on a mattress that seemed suddenly lumped with rocks. There were too many layers here that he understood not enough. He could understand a secret marriage between two people with more passion than sense, but this marriage went beyond that because it would be objected to by very many people for very many reasons, all of which Lady Jacquetta and Sir Richard surely knew, beginning with the high scandal of the disparaging distance between their places in the world, but beyond that—and even more likely to bring fury down on the pair—was that a pawn had presumed to take herself out of political play. None of the several sides that had wanted to use her were going to be pleased at the loss, and their displeasure could be fierce.