A Play of Lords

by Margaret Frazer

  As soon as the words were out, he wished he had not said them, because someone could all too readily ask how he knew that much about back-of-beyond Yorkshire; and even though no one seemed to have much heeded him, he added, to go a different way, “He’s one of the lords talked of to take the duke of Bedford’s place in France, isn’t he? Salisbury?”

  “Him and the earl of Warwick and the earl of Suffolk,” Mak answered. “They’re in closest running, with Mortain having a chance if there’s no agreement can be made otherwise.”

  “Not the duke of York at all?” Joliffe asked.

  Mak screwed his face into a tight frown. “Rich enough, but too young, seems. If the Nevilles backed him, then maybe, but they’re for Salisbury.”

  “York’s much the same age as Mortain, isn’t he?” Joliffe asked.

  “Oh, aye,” Mak agreed. “But it’s Mortain’s a bit older and has Bishop Beaufort for an uncle.”

  “The bishop is Salisbury’s uncle, too,” Auntie pointed out. “Salisbury’s mother’s his sister.”

  “There’s that,” Mak granted. “So the bishop may go that way after all, though there’s been no word he favors the Nevilles at all. But then, it’s not like Mortain’s strong in the running. It seems to lie most between my lords of Salisbury and Warwick. Though there’s those willing to put their coin on the earl of Suffolk. He’s been keeping a fine balance of being everybody’s friend and nobody’s particular follower.”

  “Where’ve you put your coin?” Joliffe asked Mak.

  “Him?” his aunt said. “He doesn’t gamble. Hasn’t warm enough blood for it. ‘Never-risk Mak’ he’s known as among his kin.”

  Mak went pink, and she laughed at him. The lords were gone on along the street. It was their scores of followers passing under the window now, not so spendidly arrayed as their lords or on matching horses but making the point of their lords’ power by the great number of them and all with their lord’s badge on their left shoulder: York’s white rose, Salisbury’s griffin, and others that Joliffe could not put to one lord or another.

  “Where do they all stay?” Rose wondered. “That many horses and men in London. There hardly seems space for them.”

  “The trick is that they don’t stay,” said Mak cheerfully. “Not in London. The lords make their show riding into London when they first come and keep this crowd around until they’ve made their show riding to open parliament. Then most of the men and horses are sent home.”

  “Unless there’s trouble stirring,” Auntie said. “Mak’s too young to remember ten years ago when it came to blows between Gloucester’s men and Bishop Beaufort’s in the streets here over who would have the upper hand around the little king, God keep him.”

  “I remember!” Mak said indignantly. “I threw my stones with the rest of the boys!”

  “At which side?” his aunt demanded.

  Mak grinned. “Didn’t matter. It was the throwing that counted.”

  “Those were bad days,” Auntie said, a little sober with remembering. “The duke of Bedford had to come back from France to sort them out and set things right way round.”

  “Put a stop to our sport, he did,” Mak grumbled.

  “Well, the duke of Bedford’s dead now,” Auntie said back at him. “So maybe you’ll have sport again, if Bishop Beaufort and Gloucester take up where they left off.”

  “Nah,” Mak answered. “That won’t happen. The king’s so near to being old enough to rule there’d not be much sense anymore to them quarreling over who has the government, would there be?”

  “I’ve not noted men’s quarrels need much sense,” Auntie said back at him. “They seem able to quarrel well enough without it more often than not.”

  “But we have the Burgundians to hate now,” said Mak cheerfully. “I’ll warrant there’ll be no coming to blows among the lords while we’re all hating the duke of Burgundy’s guts.”

  Startled, Joliffe turned his head toward Basset and found Basset looking back at him with probably the same unsettled thought. Their new play was meant to ease the hatred of the duke of Burgundy. For the sake of trade, Bishop Beaufort had said. What if it was less for trade and more to make chance to open his quarrel with the duke of Gloucester again?

  Chapter 10

  Neither Joliffe nor Basset said anything of their sudden, discomfiting thought, either then or through the day. Instead, when there were no more lords “worth the seeing” as Auntie put it, the players gave her great thanks and left, with Basset putting a coin in Mak’s hand and telling him to get his aunt a good dinner on their behalf, for her kindness.

  “She’ll invite you back again for that,” Mak said with his ready grin. “What are you folk doing today, though? Need me for aught?”

  “Not until it’s time to go to Malpas’. Will you be able to help us with that?” Basset said.

  “Sure as anything,” Mak answered. “What are you planning for the rest of the day?”

  “The Tower!” declared Piers.

  “St. Paul’s,” said Rose. “We’ve not been inside yet.”

  “And the Tower!” Piers insisted.

  “The Tower, too,” Basset said. “They won’t be letting us in, though.”

  “And we’d just as soon you didn’t do anything to get us put in,” said Joliffe at Piers.

  Piers stuck his tongue out at him, while Mak said, “Mind you see the king’s beasts in the Lion Tower. They’ll let you that far if you’ve the penny to pay for it.”

  “The king’s beasts?” Piers asked warily, suspicious it was a jest.

  “Truly. There’s some lions. Might even still have a camel if it hasn’t died.”

  Piers grabbed hold on his grandfather’s arm. “Lions! May we? May we, please? We have to see those!”

  “Surely we do,” Basset agreed.

  And they did; and because the Tower was at the other end of London, going and coming they passed more shops with more things to sell than—as Ellis put it—there were in any five other towns put together. They did not buy, though. There was little room in their traveling life for more than they had, even now when they had the money for more. And while the Tower’s beasts were indeed something to wonder at—Piers kept a wide-eyed silence for an unusually long while after leaving there—they were at the same time, to Joliffe’s mind, a sad lot of creatures, living behind bars and stared at, with nothing of the life their kinds were supposed to live. Whatever those kinds of life were, Joliffe thought, realizing he had no more than a guess at them.

  Or maybe it was the shadow of fellow-feeling he was having, he thought. After all, players spent much of their time being stared at, were even sometimes, by some folk, treated like strange beasts. It added to the day’s pleasure that for just now they were nobody among the London crowds, that they could have been anybody. Basset would pass as the head of a happy family group, with Rose and Ellis as husband and wife, Piers their son, Gil someone’s brother, and himself . . . the idiot cousin, maybe?

  Those thoughts diverted him the while they wended their way from the Tower back toward St. Paul’s by way of wide Tower Street with all its lure of shops displaying things the players did not need but were a delight to stare at. Then, at Gil’s guess, they turned up a narrower street slanted upslope from the river and, before too long, came out in broad, familiar Cheapside, with St. Paul’s spire above the rooftops and crowds to draw them on.

  Too much of the day was gone for them to go there, though. It was Rose who said so, along with, “This walking on paving stones is harder on the feet than plain country roads. I’m ready to be off mine, and all of you should rest before tonight.”

  “True,” Basset agreed. “The cathedral will be there tomorrow and the day after, likely.”

  So it was back to Lord Lovell’s inn, where John Hyche told them that, no, they’d not missed Lord Lovell riding to Westminster; he’d gone by barge, and a deal of trouble that saved everyone here, not having the place crowded up with horses and liveried men while they readied to ride
with him when he came back.

  John Hyche was plainly a man who liked a quiet life. It was Mak, coming a while after they were all settled comfortably off their feet in their room, who was full of talk about what he and they had missed while watching the lords that morning.

  “It was the duke of Burgundy’s ambassadors,” he said, choking on laughter. “That fool friar and the heralds. They used the lords’ going to Westminster as their chance to slip out of London while everyone was looking the other way. Only not everyone was! They were spotted hurrying toward the Custom House with a few of the sheriffs’ men around them. The cry was put up and to Hell with Burgundian dignity, they had to make a run for it!” He gave up and broke down, helplessly laughing.

  “They got away, though?” Basset asked.

  Wiping his wet eyes, Mak choked out, “Oh, aye, they did. Tumbled down the water stairs and into the barge that was waiting for them. The sheriffs’ men kept between them and the rout just long enough for the barge to pull away, but one of my cousins saw them when they reached their ship. He says they scrambled up the side and fell over onto the deck like the devil was nipping their buttocks. By now, with the tide, they’re somewhere past Greenwich and well rid of them we are. The duke of Burgundy’s ears are going to burn with what they have to tell him.”

  Joliffe could not help asking, “But what of the Burgundian Flemings still here?”

  Mak gave him a well-toothed smile. “If they’ve any wits about ’em at all, they’ll lie low until something happens as gives folk something else to think on.”

  “Something else to be angry about,” Joliffe said.

  Mak gave him a wink. “Angry at or else to love. Both keep a man’s mind off his own troubles.”

  “The trouble there is that anger is easier come by than love,” Joliffe said.

  “Only thing easier is lust,” Mak returned. “Still, once parliament sets about its business, there’ll likely be things enough to set men angry. But I’m forgetting. Harry that helped with the hamper yesterday can’t tonight. Will me and one of you be good enough?”

  Basset said it would be, not adding that since usually it was two of them doing it for themselves, they were still ahead.

  Mak went away, and they were busy saying the play aloud among themselves—to put it yet more firmly in their heads, Basset said, and no one argued at that—when Lord Lovell returned. He and the dozen or so men he had taken with him for his dignity came in talking loudly and laughing easily. So things must have gone right enough at Westminster today. But then how far awry could things go on just the first day? It was going to be the days after where things would happen.

  Thinking that, Joliffe missed his turn to speak, was called back to heed by a kick on the shin from Ellis, and set his mind to work and away from idle wondering. While they worked, Rose finished going through all they had worn and used last night, to be sure nothing was in need of mending. Nothing was, and she had it all packed back into the hamper by the time they had finished their lines, and soon thereafter Mak returned, saying they should go now. Rose had already said she did not mean to go with them tonight, would sit with Maud Hyche and simply enjoy the evening, but she saw them away with a wish for all to go well and a kiss on Ellis’ cheek. She would have given Piers one, but he ducked away, protesting, “Ah, Mam!”

  From where he stood holding one end of the hamper Joliffe said, “I’ll take his.”

  “You’ll take yourself away and not make trouble,” Rose said mock-sternly at him and saw them out the gate with a smile and wave.

  Philip Malpas’ house was well away across London. “But the way is as easy as easy is,” Mak said and named the streets as they went. “East on Cheap to Poultry. Poultry comes into the Stocks Market, and we cross the north side of that into Cornhill and carry on right across Bishopsgate and Gracechurch to Malpas’.”

  As they reached their goal—a house stone-built below, of timber and plaster above, and set end-on to the street beside a pair of green-painted gates—Mak said, “It’s an older place. Talk is Malpas’ll be tearing down and building new. Not fine enough for who he is, folk say. Or not fine enough for who he means to be.”

  The place looked fine enough to Joliffe and looked finer as they went through the gateway into a paved yard that ran the house’s length to another building across its end. On its fourth side it was closed by the blank wall of what was probably the side of another house, while from the yard here various stairways went down to cellar doors and a wide stairway under a penticed roof went up to a wide door undoubtedly into the hall. Other doorways opened straight from the yard, likely to warehouses and maybe work-rooms. All the choices of where to go gave even Mak pause, until he chose a door at the yard’s far end, probably because of the busyness of servants in and out of it. It proved a good choice, turning out to be the kitchen’s door, and someone readily saw them through to someone who knew where they should be.

  As yesterday, they were allowed to see the great hall and found it did not match the earl of Mortain’s in length and breadth nor, judging by the tables, were there going to be as many guests. Joliffe would guess at twenty along the lower tables and perhaps eight at the high table on its dais, but he did not try to count how many places were set, too busy trying to keep from gaping at the wealth there was spread out around him. White cloths covered all the tables, as was to be expected, but goblets that shone like silver sat at every place along them, and the plates being set out looked to be silver, too, and not just at the high table.

  Besides that, the walls were hung with the finest painted tapestries he had ever seen. They covered the plastered walls below the high-set windows in broad bands of repeating white and green, the white patterned with fan-tailed blue peacocks, the green with gold oak branches, but they were nothing to the woven tapestry hanging behind the high table. There, larger than life, on a green ground in a grove of slender trees, was the Judgment of Paris, with the three beautifully gowned goddesses facing a somewhat bewildered-looking prince holding the golden Apple of Discord in an out-stretched hand. Joliffe wished he could go closer for a long stare. Everything here proclaimed that, although the realm’s nobility might have pride in their high blood, there were merchants who could match and pass them for worldly wealth. And according to Mak, Malpas was only among the up-and-coming, not among the wealthiest.

  But Basset was asking who they would play for tonight, and the officer answered, lofty with his master’s importance, “Tonight Lord Cromwell will be here with his lady. Likewise there’ll be our mayor Master Catworth and his wife and some Lombard merchants of my master’s close acquaintance.”

  “Jacopo Ricci?” Joliffe asked, for no better reason than to show the players were not so ignorant as the man’s demeanor said he thought they were.

  The man betrayed a faint surprise that was eased by Joliffe being wrong. “No. Arnoldo Villani and Francesco Tolomei.”

  Whoever they might be. But Joliffe nodded as if the names meant something.

  The man led them from the hall and along the screens passage, telling them they were to play between the two removes.

  “Only two removes?” Joliffe asked as if it were nearly below the players’ dignity to perform where only two removes were being served.

  Ellis poked him in the back with displeasure.

  Malpas’ man, not discomposed in the slightest, answered, “But such removes they will be.” His tone carried visions of whole roast pigs, pie crusts full of live blackbirds waiting to sing, and marzipan wonders—with the expectation it would all be beyond mere players’ ability to comprehend.

  He showed them into the room where they would ready and wait. No one else was there, and Basset asked if there was to be no one else.

  “There will be talk and fine music,” the man said. “And you.”

  Basset bent his head as graciously as if the man had been gracious in saying so, but when the man had left them, Gil asked the same thing Joliffe was wondering. “You mean we’re the whole sport fo
r tonight?”