A Play of Treachery (38 page)

Joliffe heard Foulke and Mathei take over herding them away, but stayed kneeling at the hearth, tending the fire that no longer needed him, while he watched Isabelle fluttering with concern at Lady Jacquetta and being waved back by Sir Richard. Ydoine, ever the more practical among the demoiselles, had been pouring wine, and was just turning to take it to Lady Jacquetta when M’dame came in from the parlor and snapped, more with demand than concern, “My lady?”

Lady Jacquetta whispered, “The air is helping,” without opening her eyes or lifting her head from Sir Richard’s shoulder.

Taking the goblet from Ydoine, M’dame advanced on her. “So will this. Sir Richard, you should go.”

Lady Jacquetta’s eyes flew open and she clutched at him. “No!”

Warningly, M’dame began, “My lady—”

Sir Richard said soothingly, holding out his free hand for the goblet, “The wine will help, my lady. Here.”

M’dame grimly gave him the goblet, and at his gentle encouraging Lady Jacquetta was drinking a little when Marie, Michielle, and Blanche shepherded weeping Guillemete into the room. They were all crying at least a little, Marie perhaps the least as she said, “It’s done. The funeral. Oh, M’dame, Alain is . . .”

She did not have to finish about Alain. He was there in the bedchamber doorway, with Foulke catching him by the arm from behind, saying, “Here. You’re not wanted now. Come away.”

M’dame started toward him, ordering, “Out!”

Alain cast her a glare and twisted to be free of Foulke, openly intent on reaching Guillemete, who would have gone to him if Marie, Michielle, and Blanche had not been all around her.

Sharply M’dame ordered, “Master Ripon, help Foulke.” Joliffe obeyed, he and Foulke together having Alain out of the room before he could much resist, but in the parlor he made to struggle against their holds on his arms until Joliffe warned, “Stop it. She’ll call guards to take you. You know she will.”

Alain went slack in their hold with a despairing gasp. Looking back over his shoulder, he demanded, sounding close to angry tears, “Why? Why another Englishman?
Why
?”

“Because he happened to reach her first in the chapel,” Foulke said. “That’s all. Come away now.”

“He’s nobody,” Alain groaned. “Nobody. My lord of Bedford was at least noble. English, yes, but royal-blooded. This one—he’s nobody—he’s common.”

“He happened to be nearest her,” Joliffe insisted. “That’s all.”

Foulke, out of patience, said grimly, “You come, sir, or M’dame will have the hair off both of us.” He still held one of Alain’s arms and now gave it a twist behind his back. Alain gasped and was abruptly ready to do what he was told, so that Joliffe let go his own hold and turned back to the bedchamber, to be met just inside its door by Ydoine who handed him wine while looking past him at the departing Alain.

“Poor boy,” she said sadly, too low for M’dame across the room to hear. “Poor Guillemete.”

Agreeing with her, sorry for them both and grateful for the wine, Joliffe said, “Surely M’dame could forgive him by now. It might a little ease Lady Guillemete if they could at least speak together.”

Ydoine looked at him, seeming confused. “Forgive him? For what?”

Confused in turn, Joliffe said, “For not going with her that day. To the goldsmith’s.”

Ydoine shook her head as if not understanding him. “Go with her? She told him he need not come.”

“No, he forgot,” Joliffe said. Well, forgot on purpose, for a chance to be alone with Guillemete, but—unsettled by Ydoine’s certainty, he asked, suddenly doubtful, “Didn’t he?”

“No,” Ydoine said, quite certain. “He was not there when we were ready to leave. I asked should I send Mathei to find him. M’dame said there was no need, he wasn’t to come after all.”

“He wasn’t?” Joliffe echoed, sounding stupid even to himself.

Certainly Ydoine looked at him as if wondering about his wits. “No,” she insisted. “He wasn’t. M’dame had told him he was not needed.” Still looking doubtful of his wits, she left him, going to attend to the wine.

That was . . . strange, Joliffe thought. Alain had said M’dame was angry at him because he had forgotten to go with her. Then yesterday Ydoine had said—no, Ydoine had said
Blanche
said he and Guillemete had taken the chance of M’dame being gone to be secretly together, which made Alain’s “forgot” into a lie, but a small one, presumably meant to protect Guillemete.

But if what Ydoine had just said was right, “forgot” was even less the truth than Joliffe had thought it was. If what Ydoine had said was true, Alain’s “forgot” was a large, outright, and unneeded lie. But why?

With an itch of unease and a careful eye toward M’dame lest she send him out as firmly as she had sent Alain—but she was in close talk with Lady Jacquetta and Sir Richard, heeding nothing else—he sidled around the room’s edge, to where Guillemete sat on the chest at the bedfoot between Blanche and Michielle. Their mutual tears were worn out for at least a while, but Guillemete was drooping sideways, her head leaning on Michielle’s shoulder, while Michielle held and patted one of her hands and Blanche the other. She looked a worn out child, and Joliffe thought that for mercy’s sake she should be given a sleeping draught and put to bed to sleep for as long as might be. But he said quietly, “Lady Guillemete.”

She opened her grief-rimmed eyes without lifting her head and looked at him as if nothing would ever matter to her again. Feeling ever worse at what he was doing, he said with all the gentleness he could, “When you were with Master Queton the other day—the day when—the other day—when M’dame was out.” As if not saying “the day your sister died” would make it better. It did not; Guillemete drew a trembling breath toward new tears, and Joliffe said quickly, “When you and Master Queton were together that day, that afternoon, you . . .”

“We weren’t,” Guillemete quavered. She lifted her head from Michielle’s shoulder. “We were supposed to be, but I waited and waited, and he never came. That’s what makes it all so worse. I should have been with Alizon, because then she wouldn’t have gone out and then nothing would have happened to her. But I wasn’t!” Weeping overtook her again. Michielle and Blanche wrapped their arms around her in a tangle of comforting, but she sobbed on, “I waited and waited until I couldn’t wait longer, and then Alizon was dead and everything is terrible!”

She covered her tear-wracked face. Michielle made a small shooing gesture at Joliffe, but with careful quiet, he asked, “Lady Guillemete, where did you wait for Master Queton?”

The fast-flowing tears escaping from her tightly shut eyes, Guillemete choked out, “The minstrels’ gallery. He said no one is there that time of day. He said he would ‘forget’ to go with M’dame, even if it put him into trouble. He said we would have at least that little time all to each other. But he had to go with M’dame after all, but I didn’t know, and I waited until I had to come back here, and . . . and . . .” Sobbing completely overwhelmed her.

Marie, coming to join Michielle and Blanche in trying to comfort her, glared at him. His thoughts racing far away from Guilllemete’s grief, he backed away, retreated to the hearth, and knelt down to make a show of adding wood to the fire. He had thought Guillemete and Alain accounted for each other through the time when Alizon was killed and Durevis stabbed. Now it seemed they did not. And if what Ydoine said was true—that M’dame had released Alain from going with her—then Alain had lied when he said he had forgotten to go with her. Why? The lie had made sense when Joliffe supposed it was to hide he had been secretly meeting Guillemete, but Guillemete said he had never come to the minstrels’ gallery.

But there was only Guillemete’s word that they had been supposed to meet at all.

But Guillemete surely,
surely
, had not killed her sister.

But why would Alain? And why attack Durevis afterward?

Joliffe had rarely been satisfied with knowing merely the
what
of things. The
why
was what drew him, and mixed in with the
why
was always
who
, because
who
explained
why
—or else
why
explained
who
—nearly every time. Part of the trouble these past days was that with both
who
and
why
unknown, his foremost questions had been about
how
.

Now he was come on a knot made by someone’s lying, and the
why
of that lie had to lead somewhere.

He took himself slowly through it again. Alain said he forgot to go with M’dame and that was why she was angry at him. Yet Ydoine said M’dame had told him he need not come with her. And while Guillemete said Alain had never meant to go with M’dame, she also said he had failed to meet her as he said he would, despite he had not gone with M’dame.

Of course Guillemete might be lying to protect herself, not understanding it were better she and Alain could say where both were at the time Alizon died. Or she could be lying about ever meaning to meet Alain, her claim to have waited for him in the minstrels’ gallery false. Or Ydoine might be lying when she said M’dame had excused Alain from going with her.

But was Guillemete sharp-witted enough to lie that thoroughly and hold to it so believably? And why would Ydoine lie about what M’dame had said? And why would M’dame tell Ydoine she had told Alain he need not come with her, if she had not indeed told him he need not come? Alain’s claim to have forgotten looked more and more to be an outright lie.

But why say he had forgotten, if the simple truth was that M’dame had freed him from going? And why not meet Guillemete in the gallery? Always supposing Guillemete was telling the truth about not meeting him there, and almost surely she was. Where had he been if not with M’dame and not with Guillemete? Where had he been when it seemed he was not anywhere he should have been?

The thought that had to come was that he had been with Alizon in the garden.

But why?

Why be there? Why kill her? Why try to kill Durevis?

Why
?

J
oliffe would have gone in search of Alain with those questions—or perhaps to Master Wydeville, but as he stood up and turned from the fireplace, he saw Alain was yet again in the bedchamber doorway, staring angrily, stubbornly around the chamber.

Silently damning Foulke for not having got better rid of him, Joliffe started toward him, hoping to have him away before either M’dame—busy over Lady Jacquetta—or Guillemete—now weeping on Michielle’s lap—knew he was there. And because he was moving toward him, Joliffe saw the backward jerk of his head as if he had been brutally slapped, saw his eyes widen, his mouth twist open in—disbelief? denial?—or just plain rage, because in the next moment a suffusion of blood darkened Alain’s face and his mouth clamped shut in what could only be read as rage and outrage.

Joliffe flashed a look to where he was staring, saw that M’dame was just moving aside from where Sir Richard still sat with Lady Jacquetta, holding her close to him with one arm curved around her waist while his free hand lay on her skirts over her stomach in a gesture of care and worry and familiarity.

A gesture of possession too plain to be mistaken.

Sir Richard leaned to whisper something very near in Lady Jacquetta’s ear, and Alain started toward them, rage raw as madness on his face, drawing his dagger as he went.

Even had Sir Richard seen him coming and instantly believed what he was seeing, there would have been too little time for him to move away from Lady Jacquetta, to rise and draw his own dagger in defense. But he did not see.

It was M’dame, turning away as she was at that moment, who saw and understood and, weaponless though she was, made to come into Alain’s way.

And Joliffe, who only understood because his just-past thoughts had already wide-awakened his suspicions, likewise saw and moved almost all in a single instant, throwing open his loose clerk’s gown to come at his own dagger—John Ripon’s jest of a dagger but a dagger nonetheless—wrenching it from the sheath at his doublet’s belt as he flung forward, reaching M’dame a bare, gasped instant before Alain did, shouldering her violently aside as he grabbed leftward, seizing Alain’s dagger-wrist in the way Master Doncaster had made him do and do again in practice. Alain twisted, trying to lunge past him, past M’dame, to come at Sir Richard, maybe at Lady Jacquetta, but Joliffe, still holding his dagger-wrist, had followed through with his own dagger, driving it in low and deep below Alain’s ribs—again just as Master Doncaster had made him do again and yet again until there was no seeming thought to it, only reaction to action.

Except that this time it was not wooden blade jarring against padded jerkin but sharpened steel sinking through clothing and into a man’s flesh. Into a man’s guts.

For the time of short-held breath Joliffe and Alain stood frozen, staring into each other’s eyes, almost as close as lovers, both equally disbelieving what was done.

Then Joliffe let go of his dagger and Alain’s wrist, and Alain staggered a backward step, let fall his dagger, buckled at his knees, and sagged to the floor, to kneel there, his arms slack at his sides, his head bent forward to stare down at the dagger hilt sticking so strangely out from his doublet’s front.

Somewhere in the room someone began to scream.

Then there was much screaming and suddenly far more people in the chamber than there had been—Foulke and Mathei and other men—and M’dame was giving sharp orders that had Foulke lifting Alain under the arms, another man taking his legs, to carry him from the room while Mathei saw to crowding the other men out, freeing her to turn on Sir Richard, held where he was by Lady Jacquetta clinging to him, crying wildly against him, and say, “Keep her here. Let her see nothing more,” before ordering at everyone else, “Isabelle, help him with her. Wine. The oil of lavender. Valerian. Michielle, stand at the door. Close it behind me. Let no one in. Guillemete, that’s screaming enough. Marie, take her out. Not through the parlor, fool! By the corner stairs. Somewhere away until she gathers her wits. Blanche, you and your wailing go with them. Ydoine, bring water, cloths, wine.” Turning finally on Joliffe still standing frozen, rigid-legged, in the middle of it all.