A Play of Treachery

by Margaret Frazer

  Chapter 7

  Done with seeing what he wanted of the hôtel and with no thought of what better he might do, he changed his mind and decided to venture a little acquaintance with his work. After all, he had to do better than seem Lady Jacquetta’s English secretary. He had to be her English secretary, and if she did indeed intend to make a beginning on the Michaelmas accounts the day after tomorrow, he might do well to look at them today.

  When he passed through Master Wydeville’s chamber to reach that shared by the secretaries and clerks of the duchess’ household, Master Wydeville was standing at the desk beside the window, talking to Pierres over some papers there. Joliffe gave a brief bow of his head as he went by them, but neither man gave even a glance his way. In truth, Master Wydeville had shown no interest at all in him these past days. Joliffe was waiting with mingled curiosity and wariness for when that would change, but for now facing the men at their desks in the next chamber, all of them looking up from their work at him as he came in, was sufficient challenge.

  Save for Henri, who oversaw Lady Jacquetta’s letters of business in Normandy and France, they were clerks of the ducal household, charged with keeping record of everything the household bought, spent, gave, and got day by day—from how much bread, meat, and other foods were provided at the day’s meals, to the hay for horses in the stable, the bundles of firewood used in ovens and hearths, and how much spiced wine was taken to the duchess’ bedchamber each evening. Strugge had brought Joliffe here long enough to show him his desk, name him to his fellow clerks and all of them to him, and say how to go about getting ink, pens, paper, and parchment when need be. Afterward he had bothered to add, “You may do well enough with George. He’s English. The others, well, they’re French. You’ll have to decide for yourself,” making it plain his own decision had been unfavorable.

  Joliffe suspected his fellow-clerks were probably as glad of Strugge’s going as Strugge was.

  With all of them looking at him, he paused, smiled brightly, and said, deliberately clumsily, “Good afternoon. Er. Um. Bon jour?”

  Jacques and Bernard frowned as if trying to remember who he was. The secretary Henri frowned as if remembering him but not much pleased about it. Only George gave him a friendly nod and said, “He’s gone, then, is he?”

  “He’s on ship by now and waiting for the tide,” Joliffe said.

  There were general nods in answer to that—of satisfaction, Joliffe thought—before they all bent back to their pen-scratching. Taking his cue from their diligence, he went to the desk that he had to think of as his. The rolls of papers and parchments and the sealed letters that were now his duty were in the small locked chest beside it, and with the key Strugge had given him, he knelt, unlocked and opened the chest, and took out not the leather bag on top but the strap-bound gathering of parchment rolls below it. The label hanging from it told they were last year’s records, and he thought that beginning with those would help him better judge what this year’s records had to say. With perfect awareness that he knew very little about what he was doing, he sat at the desk and began to read.

  Lady Jacquetta’s dower properties from her marriage were a small part of all the duke of Bedford had held, but not far through these reports of her lands’ and other properties’ worth, and her income from them, Joliffe began to be overwhelmed. As a player, he was used to eking out his days on pence, with some days very few of even those. At present, all that he owned was on his body or in the chest beside his bed in the dormer or else in the back of the players’ cart, wherever that might presently be. Except for the wits between his ears, that was all his full worth, while here in front of him was record of income reckoned in pounds and shillings to the point where the pence and ha’penny of the sums seemed hardly worth the bother of writing them down. As he worked his way through enough of last year’s rolls to begin to understand them, he did not know whether he admired or was appalled by her receivers’ skill in apparently missing nothing that was due—or overdue—to their lady and recording all of it in careful detail. The figures he was reading from the parchment were only ink, but his imagination was more than sufficient to translate them into acres of land, scores of buildings, and hundreds of people owing rents and other payments, all to the profit of the black-gowned girl he had lately bowed to. And these were only her English lands. How much more was hers in France?

  Deep into his work, he hardly knew how far the afternoon’s gray light had faded, until Henri straightened on his stool and said, “There,” with the air of someone putting an end to his day’s work. “Is anyone doing anything that needs lamp-oil wasted over it?”

  He was answered by a general shaking of heads and chorused “Non” as everyone else straightened from their desks, with Joliffe surprised to find how near his nose had come to the parchment he was reading.

  He could have copied Jacques in groaning and pressing a hand to his back, but simply joined his fellows in a general rustling of papers and parchment, tidying work away into chests to be locked up for the night before they went down to the great hall where there would be warmth and light and others of the household gathering in the way of the hall-servants readying the long tables for supper. His brief wrestling with his own unfamiliar lock and its key made him last to leave, finding in the outer chamber that Pierres was gone, the shutters had been closed across the window, and a pair of oil lamps hanging on a tri-footed stand lighted, giving warm light to Master Wydeville standing at the open door of a squat ambry beside his desk, not looking up from the paper he held as Henri and the passing clerks, one after the other, gave quick bows of heads and murmured “Sir,” toward him as they passed. But as Joliffe did the same, he said, “Master Ripon. I’d speak with you.”

  Joliffe stopped sharply enough he would have slid if on a slippery floor. George, just ahead of him, looked backward over a shoulder and grimaced with apparent sympathy before disappearing into the stairway after the others. Joliffe stayed where he was. Master Wydeville went on looking at the paper in his hand the few moments more until the men were far enough down the stairs to feel free of their work and gave way to talk and someone’s loud laughter.

  Master Wydeville put the paper back in the ambry and said, “Close the door.”

  Joliffe obeyed, then turned to him, carefully blending courtesy and curiosity on his face. He had long since learned that some look on the face was better than trying for bland or blank. Bland or blank suggested an effort to hide something and was therefore best not used when indeed trying to hide something. Or when having nothing to hide, as presently.

  “You are settling into your place here, I trust?” Master Wydeville asked.

  “I am, sir.”

  “Master Strugge gave sufficient explanation of your duties?”

  “I believe so. I’ll be better able to say in a few days.”

  “Surely,” Master Wydeville agreed. He had turned to a silver pitcher standing at one corner of the table by the window and was pouring deeply red wine into two silver bowls. “You have also seen Lady Jacquetta. Her dogs did not bite you, so that went well.”

  For a moment, Joliffe thought Master Wydeville had made a light jest, then decided by the look on his face that he was serious.

  Oh.

  Master Wydeville set down the pitcher, took up one of the bowls, and held it out to Joliffe. Joliffe took it, his fingers curving around its graceful shape. Too long used to the clumsiness of wood cups and alehouse pottery, he had a moment of awkward uncertainty before memory came back, and as Master Wydeville took up the other bowl and drank, Joliffe raised his own with the needed graceful bend of his wrist and drank, too. The wine was fulsome; he gave an admiring nod as he lowered the bowl.

  “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 wi
ts.

  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 k
now 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.”