A Play of Treachery (9 page)

“Sir,” Joliffe responded, slightly bowing again, remembering to keep the rounded shoulders and uncertain, cowed-dog look he thought John Ripon might well have in front of anyone so much his better.

Master Wydeville raised a hand, dismissing the man who had brought Joliffe.

“Sir,” the man said and went onward, into the next room, closing the door behind him while Master Wydeville said at Joliffe, “I’m told you are sent by the bishop of Winchester to serve in my lord the bishop of Therouanne’s household. That you are leaving some disgrace behind you.”

“I fear so, but hoping to redeem myself and regain my lord of Winchester’s good opinion,” Joliffe answered while shifting quickly through surprise that Bishop Louys in the short while since coming here should have already spoken with—or else had troubled to send a message to—Master Wydeville about him. From there he passed to a wary wondering why the spymaster, knowing nothing of the packet Joliffe carried, had wanted to see him so immediately. That mix of wariness and uncertainty held him from slipping the letter from his doublet and presenting it, while Master Wydeville went on, “What was the nature of your disgrace?”

Joliffe bent his head with Ripon’s shame and muttered toward the floor, “Drunkenness, sir.”

“Just drunkenness? Or gambling and women, too?”

Joliffe lifted his head as if stung and said with the earnestness of a man who feels himself wronged, “No. Never either of those! Just . . .” He looked down at his toes again and muttered as if in shame, “. . . drinking too much. Too much and too often.”

“How is your French?”

Joliffe raised his head again, blinking at Master Wydeville with a simple man’s surprise at the change of questioning. “Poor, sir, I’m afraid.”

“Do you write a fair hand in English?”

Judging it was time for what little pride John Ripon might have, Joliffe said sturdily, “I do.”

“And your Latin is satisfactory.”

That was statement rather than question, but it gave Joliffe pause. He had let Bishop Beaufort believe he knew no Latin, but a clerk in a bishop’s household would surely have it, and he admitted unwillingly—but truthfully—“I can do plain Latin. No one would want me to translate Virgil, though.”

“I will not,” said Master Wydeville. “Nor I doubt will anyone else. My lady of Bedford is in need of an English secretary. I have leave to offer the place to you. I advise you to take it.”

Master Wydeville seemed not a man who trifled over things. Neither would he be a man who appreciated trifling in return, and Joliffe grabbed hold on his surprise, mixed as it was with dismay at the suddenness of all this, and stuttered out with what he thought would be John Ripon’s blinking uncertainty, “You do? Uh, yes. I do. Yes. Thank you. I will. Gladly. Thank you.” He added a half-bow for good measure.

Straightening from it, he found Master Wydeville regarding him with a shuttered, unreadable look. A silent pause drew out between them, with Joliffe waiting for his next cue to what he should say or do, but Master Wydeville not giving him any, until with sudden wild surmise, Joliffe straightened his shoulders and said in more of his own voice, putting a hand to the front of his doublet, “By your leave, I’ve something here I was told to give you.”

Giving not even a flicker of surprise, Master Wydeville slightly bowed his head, giving leave to give it. Joliffe, deliberately not hurrying lest he betray how much the man’s silence unnerved him, undid his doublet at the waist enough that he could slide in a hand and bring out the packet. It was crumpled and creased from its hard passage, the wax seal cracked but still mostly there. He held it out to Master Wydeville who took it, broke the last of the seal away, unwrapped the cord it had held around the packet, then unwrapped the oiled cloth from around a folded parchment likewise held closed by a wax seal. This one was intact, and Master Wydeville gave it a close look, holding it to the window’s light to see it the better—not for sake of whatever the image on it was, Joliffe guessed, but trying to tell if it had been meddled with—before he broke it, unfolded the parchment, and read whatever was there with what seemed to Joliffe painful slowness. Only when Master Wydeville set the parchment aside on the desk did Joliffe glimpse there were no words on it, only a jumble of letters.

Cipher, he thought.

Master Wydeville, his hands now folded together in front of him, regarded Joliffe with narrow-eyed assessment through another long moment of silence, then asked, “What were you told about me?”

Guessing he was not asking that of John Ripon, Joliffe answered not as Ripon but as himself, “That you were the duke of Bedford’s spymaster. That you are to have the training and directing of me.” He paused, then went on, “Which says that you are still someone’s spymaster. I would guess Cardinal Beaufort’s. Or the bishop of Therouanne’s. Or more likely the both of them, since they share interests, Cardinal Beaufort being high in England’s government and Bishop Louys head of the Council here until the duke of York comes as governor.”

He added that last very deliberately, to see how his knowing that would count with the spymaster.

Master Wydeville’s eyes slightly widened, not with surprise, Joliffe judged, but approval before he asked, his voice nonetheless level, “You know that by what means?”

With matching level voice, Joliffe said back, “Men talked on the journey here. I listened.”

“Then you have one of your first lessons well begun. Pierres.”

Master Wydeville had barely raised his voice on the name, but Joliffe’s guide came immediately back into the room. His look still on Joliffe, Master Wydeville went on, “Pierres, Master Ripon has accepted a place as my lady’s secretary. It will be several days before Master Strugge will leave us. Give Master Ripon over to him, to be shown where he will sleep and to learn such of his duties as he may in the while before Master Strugge takes ship.” Then, to Joliffe, “Let me see ‘John Ripon’ again.”

That was so near to something that Basset might say— “I’m not seeing the comic baker. I’m seeing Joliffe
pretending
to be a comic baker.”—that Joliffe with all of Basset’s training behind him immediately shifted, rounded his shoulders forward again and sank his head a little, his eyes going all uncertain and shying aside as John Ripon might well do in front of someone who knew his shame. He held the look under Master Wydeville’s assessing gaze, until Master Wydeville said, “Good. You look like someone I can only barely approve of for service to my lady. We’ll suppose your confidence will grow as you settle into the household, but for now craven uncertainty is good.”

On the advantage of that approval, Joliffe dared ask, in Ripon’s slightly whining voice, “Won’t it be thought odd you’ve taken such interest in getting Lady Jacquetta a secretary? And so promptly after my coming here?”

Without pause, as if granting Joliffe had a right both to question him and to have an answer, Master Wydeville said, “I was chamberlain of the duke of Bedford’s household. Mostly I gave these duties over to a deputy, but since my lord’s death, I have taken more on myself, claiming age as reason to stay here in the household, continuing as chamberlain for her grace Duchess Jacquetta. It’s only reasonable that her uncle the bishop is concerned how his niece has faired in these first months of her widowhood and that he should wish to hear from me immediately how she has been during his absence and how her household fares. It’s also reasonable I would speak of my lady’s need of a new English secretary and that you, having been added will-we-nill-we to the household and something having to be done with you, should be named as sufficing for the place and be immediately provided to it. All that should settle any question of ‘oddness’ in the matter. Pierres.”

Pierres bowed to Master Wydeville and held out a hand to show Joliffe should follow him. Joliffe made his own bow to Master Wydeville and did.

F
or Joliffe the next two days were a stern jumble of learning his way about the
hôtel
, the household, and his duties. Or rather the house
holds
, since it seemed Bishop Louys’ and Lady Jacquetta’s were to be kept separate from one another. Uncle and niece did indeed dine together in formal estate and apparent amiability at the high table on the day of the bishop’s return, and certainly members of the two households met and mingled easily in the great hall, both at mealtimes and when they were not needed to attend in chamber or elsewhere on their respective lord or lady, but however it had been before the duke of Bedford’s death, Lady Jacquetta and her people now kept to the side of the
hôtel
where Joliffe had met Master Wydeville, while all the
hôtel
beyond the great hall was become the bishop’s.

Joliffe’s own shift from one household to the other was as simple as collecting his sack from the chamber he would after all not be sharing with the bishop’s men and being led by Pierres back to Lady Jacquetta’s part of the house and up to the slot of a room, under the rafters there, that he would have to himself once William Strugge, the present English secretary, was gone. After that, the most he knew of Bishop Louys was that there was much coming and going of various men on business to him and that he sometimes rode out among a clutter of attendants to other places in Rouen. Joliffe meant to have talk with Cauvet when there was chance, but for the while he had more than enough else to take in, with William Strugge so eager to be away that he gabbled hour by hour, pouring into Joliffe’s ears a mix of what his duties would be, household gossip, and his own readiness to be safe back in England, as he kept saying.

He was saying it yet again as he wrapped one of his three books in a clean shirt and thrust it down into the bag he was packing early in this afternoon, readying to go on board a ship that would sail on the evening tide.

“Safe back in England. In Gloucestershire. That’s from where I come. That’s to where I’m going back. The other side of England from Normandy and all of France, and not far enough at that.”

Joliffe was sitting high-kneed on the low three-legged stool in the corner, as out of the way as he could be in the short, narrow room. By now familiar with Strugge’s theme, he suggested with deliberate ignorance, “I’d think you’d feel safe enough here in Rouen, what with the walls, the Seine, and the whole of England’s army to hand.”

“What have I told you?” Strugge snapped impatiently. “These past two months the Armagnacs have been swarming everywhere the length and breadth of Normandy. Yes, Lord Talbot and Lord Scales have been scouring them out of the Caux since Christmas, but that will go for nothing when the duke of Burgundy finally comes down on us with all his force. He’s going to. It’s only a matter of time. I am beyond glad I won’t be here when it happens. That’s what I keep telling you. Don’t you listen?”

Joliffe had been listening, but had long since learned that the different ways someone told the same thing several times over could add much that had not been there in the first or even the second telling. Not in Strugge’s case, however, and the tedium of listening to him was become painful. But since John Ripon had not shown himself over-clever to Strugge, Joliffe whined, “I know. You keep saying. But with the river and walls and army and all, Rouen has to be safe if anywhere is.”

“Just so!” Strugge turned from his packing, a fist set impatiently on one hip and aggravation in his voice. “There’s not likely anywhere safer in Normandy, and I’ve told you what happened four years ago. The French broke into the castle itself! Took it by surprise in the night, let in by a traitor. Lord Maltravers and a handful of his men skinned out just before too late. We had to turn the city’s guns on our own castle. If the French hadn’t surrendered then, we would have had to batter down our own castle walls. You call that safe?” He turned back to his packing. “Huh.”

“It was four years ago,” Joliffe protested. “It’s not something that will happen again.”

“Until it did, I would have said surely it would never happen at all. What I’m saying now is that I’m glad not to be staying around to see what the French do next. Or the god-cursed duke of Burgundy.” Strugge swung around again, pointing at Joliffe in accusation. “There’s where your Seine won’t do you any good. It’s to the south. It was Burgundy who kept the Armagnacs from coming at us from the east and north. Now Burgundy is welcoming them through, God damn him.” Strugge grabbed up his cloak, started to fold it fiercely, probably realized he would need it soon, threw it aside, and took up something else to stuff into his bag, muttering, “Not that the Burgundians have been that much use to us of late anyway. May they and their duke all rot together.”

Joliffe murmured protest, “But Lady Jacquetta is Burgundian.”

“The Lady Jacquetta is
not
Burgundian. Nor is her uncle this bishop of Therouanne or her brother the count de Saint-Pol. How often must I needs say that to you? They—are—not—
Burgundian
.”

“But . . .”

“They’re of Luxembourg. Which is one of the very many counties, duchies, lordships, and territories the duke of Burgundy has gobbled up, taken over, claimed lordship of—however you wish to say it—one way and another over these past years. Just because the duke has a grip on a place doesn’t mean it’s Burgundian. That’s why Bishop Louys was in England. Because his brother and his nephew don’t want to give up their oaths to us. So they were hoping some manner of peace could be patched up between god-damned Burgundy and King Henry.”

“It’s tangled,” Joliffe-as-John-Ripon whined.

Strugge gave a heavy sigh. “Yes. It’s tangled, and I can’t tell you how glad I am to be getting out of it.”

On the contrary, he had told Joliffe often and in detail how glad he was to be getting out of it, and now he began on another of his favorite themes. “It was different when my lord of Bedford was here.
There
was a prince worth the name. Not the best-looking of men. And devil-awful tall. Seeing him together with my Lady Jacquetta, you had to wonder. Beast and beauty. It was his first wife matched him best in years and all. God keep her beautiful soul.” Strugge crossed himself and shook his head. “My lord was never the same after she died. Then he married into the Luxembourg alliance. There was no one who doubted that would set Burgundy against him. Not but what everyone was all sure-to-a-safe-bet by then that Burgundy was set on foreswearing all his oaths anyway and going over to the Armagnacs. Though the bastard could have waited until Bedford was dead before he did it. I wish you joy of the duke of Burgundy and all his treacheries, that I do. It’s Gloucestershire for me.”