A Play of Lords

by Margaret Frazer

  Bishop Beaufort regarded him silently for a moment, giving nothing away, then asked, “Who, besides Gloucester and his lady, were there?”

  Trying to guess what Bishop Beaufort was asking behind questions to which he already knew the answers, Joliffe answered slowly, “The duke of York and the earl of Salisbury. Their wives. The earl of Suffolk and his wife. Two Italians that I was told were scholars.”

  “One was. Titus Livius of Ferrara. Poet. Orator. Now newly of the duke of Gloucester’s household. The other was Francesco Tolomei, a merchant who saw you play at the earl of Mortain’s, too.”

  That was a very deliberate sharing of information when there was no apparent need. It told Joliffe that Bishop Beaufort wanted more from him. But what? Still slowly, despite his mind was racing, Joliffe tried, “They’re all kin to you. Except the Italians. Everyone there at the high table. By marriage if not by blood they’re all your kin. Even the earl of Suffolk.”

  “Even the earl of Suffolk,” Bishop Beaufort agreed somewhat dryly. “Married to my cousin Thomas Chaucer’s daughter Alice.”

  And the earl of Salisbury and the duchess of York were son and daughter of the bishop’s sister, the countess of Westmorland, while the duke of York, besides being her son-in-law, was a cousin to both her and Bishop Beaufort by way of their mutual royal blood from long-dead King Edward III.

  “But—” Joliffe started, then stopped, thought a little more, aware of Bishop Beaufort watching him and waiting, and finally said, “The other thing is that both Salisbury and Suffolk are being talked of to succeed the duke of Bedford in France. And York would be, too, if he weren’t so young. Meanwhile, it’s known you favor your nephew, the earl of Mortain, to be governor there.”

  “It’s thought I favor my nephew,” Bishop Beaufort corrected quietly. “It isn’t known.”

  Keeping his gaze on the bishop’s face, Joliffe bowed his head slightly, acknowledging the difference. “It’s thought you favor the earl of Mortain. So all his likely rivals were at Gloucester’s today, making friendly among themselves. Who does the duke of Gloucester favor to take his brother’s place?”

  “Himself, as always. Knowing there’s no chance of that, he’s likely to come down for Salisbury or Suffolk. He will very certainly never agree to the earl of Mortain.”

  Joliffe had not expected an answer to his question. Emboldened by getting one, he asked, “Then who are you likely to support instead?”

  “The earl of Salisbury is also my nephew.”

  “But maybe needed more on the Scottish marches than in France,” Joliffe said, because Salisbury had been a warden of one march or the other there since the days when he was plain Sir Richard Neville. “And, as you say, he’s your nephew, too. That will likely balance Gloucester against him.”

  Bishop Beaufort nodded silent agreement to that.

  “Unless there’s something to weigh against Salisbury being your nephew,” Joliffe said. “Is there?”

  Bishop Beaufort regarded him blandly, giving nothing away by look or movement.

  Too caught up in thinking it through to be put off by that, Joliffe said, “If there isn’t, that leaves the earl of Suffolk. He’s had experience in the French war and that will count for much. He’s also wealthy. That will help.” It being known that the duke of Bedford had more than once used his own wealth to pay garrisons and officers when royal moneys were late or failed.

  “My lord of Suffolk is also, beyond the ordinary, winning in his ways,” Bishop Beaufort said. “A man clever and easily liked as well as—as you say—wealthy, and with experience in the French war.”

  “But?” Joliffe asked.

  “But?” Bishop Beaufort returned.

  “But,” Joliffe repeated. He had most assuredly heard a “but” behind the bishop’s good words about Suffolk.

  This time only the corners of Bishop Beaufort’s mouth twitched toward a smile, but at least they did that much before he agreed, “But. Too often when Suffolk has had solitary command over any part of an army’s field-work in France he has made a beggar’s breakfast of it. As I say, he’s well-witted, yes, but not, I think, intelligent, and while I confess I would rather he were in France than here, I do not believe he should be governor. For his sake as well as everyone else’s.”

  Joliffe stood silent, weighing all of that and finding that among the likely men there was no one left who would not be opposed by Gloucester or else by Bishop Beaufort; and slowly, trying out the thought, he said, “The duke of York.”

  “What of him?” Bishop Beaufort asked with a mildness that said little and told much.

  “Unless the earl of Warwick is willing to be taken away from the king—”

  “He is not.”

  “—there’s only the duke of York.”

  “Who is young and quite untried.”

  “Wasn’t he in France when King Henry was? Didn’t he have experience then, when the duke of Bedford was guiding the war?”

  “He did, yes.”

  “So is he too much a fool to have learned anything then?

  “I understand that Bedford found him very apt at the business.”

  Hoping he hid his triumph at having had that much from the bishop, Joliffe went on, “And he’s wealthy. The wealthiest lord in England, I’ve heard.”

  “It’s possible he is,” Bishop Beaufort granted.

  “And he’s no more closely related to you than he is to the duke of Gloucester. Nor have I heard he’s more on one side than another.” Not that that meant much; there was surely a great deal Joliffe had not heard, and well he knew it. That was not the point he was trying to reach. “If neither you nor Gloucester have particular objection to make against him, he could be someone you might both agree on.” Joliffe almost held back from saying his next thought, then did, simply because he could not help himself. “Then, once York has been helped forward and is governor of France, you and the duke of Gloucester could contest between you to make him more grateful to one of you over the other, with his gratitude more worth the having once he was governor of France.”

  Bishop Beaufort’s eyes were now partly hooded by half-lowered lids, and neither his face nor his voice gave any sign of his deeper thoughts as he said, level-voiced, “You’ve put pieces together well and are drawing possibly useful thoughts from them.”

  Joliffe waited for more, until it was plain that was all he was going to have. So matching the bishop’s level voice he asked, “And I can get away with saying all this to you because even if I was fool enough to go about telling of it later, who would believe I traded talk and thoughts like this with you, or you with a player?”

  Bishop Beaufort lifted his gaze. “Yes,” he agreed. He had been sitting with his hands folded together. Now he laid them flat on the desk in front of him and said, “So. Now that I have some thought of how your mind works, are you willing to become useful to me in ways besides simply as a player?”

  Chapter 16

  Only a few times in his life had Joliffe felt his mind go completely blank—frozen between thoughts—the way it did at Bishop Beaufort’s question.

  Afterward he would think it was like a hare that, suddenly aware of danger, freezes where it is in hope of staying safe.

  Then he heard himself saying, quite calmly, “Is it that you need someone to do what Mak does?”

  Bishop Beaufort paused, seeming to be studying his hands lying on the desk in front of him, then clasped them quietly together again and said, “Yes. And something of what my man murdered last night did.” He lifted his gaze from his hands to Joliffe. “Mak listens and looks and reports what he hears and sees. The man killed last night did much the same. From you I would want that and what you think about what you hear and see.”

  “Mak thinks,” Joliffe said, keeping to ground he knew. “He doesn’t just talk about things. I’ve heard him try to fit pieces together, to make bigger sense out of them. Of course,” he could not resist adding, “sometimes there just isn’t any sense to things. But you never
know until you look. Mak looks.”

  “I have hopes for Mak,” Bishop Beaufort returned. “If he learns to hold his tongue better. But Mak is a Londoner to the bone. Will always be only a Londoner because that’s all he wants to be. You, though, have both the desire to range beyond London’s bounds and honest reason to do so.”

  “As a player.”

  “As a player, yes. As such you have good reason to go many places and be a stranger where a stranger would otherwise be wondered at.”

  “I have no wish to leave Basset’s company,” Joliffe said stiffly.

  “Nor do I want you to.”

  “I would have to tell the others what I was doing. I won’t put them at hazard with them unwitting of it. One of us has already been hurt because of your ‘business.’ Probably because of your business,” he added in fairness.

  “That should not have happened,” Bishop Beaufort said with an edge of anger that was not at Joliffe. “Like the murder last night, that attack on your company was wrong. That is not how things are done.”

  “Someone is doing it.”

  “Someone is. Perhaps you can find them out.”

  Joliffe, coming suddenly to his good sense, held up his hands in refusal. “I’m a player. That’s all I am.”

  “I’ve heard otherwise from Lord Lovell.”

  Lacking answer to that, Joliffe held silent.

  “But we are entirely ahead of ourselves,” Bishop Beaufort said in the even tones of reason. “Let us be content to see, first, how matters go here in London. Decisions about longer alliance can come later.”

  It crossed Joliffe’s mind that “alliance” was hardly the word, “alliance” being more a thing between equals and there being nothing equal between him and Bishop Beaufort. He would be of use to the bishop or he would be nothing to him; “alliance” was no part of it. But keeping that thought to himself, he said, “If I understood more of what you think may be happening, I’d know better what’s of use when I see it. If I see anything.”

  “Or you might be blinded from seeing what’s truly happening by knowing what you’re looking for,” Bishop Beaufort returned.

  Joliffe bent his head, acknowledging that possibility, while Bishop Beaufort went on, “What I ask of you at present is that while you and your company are here in London you simply go on doing what you are already doing. Playing where you are asked. Thinking about what you see and hear. Later, should you be interested in going further into my service, I would ask more. If I do, there might be need for you to be instructed in certain things.”

  Joliffe had meant to say nothing more that he did not have to say, but despite himself, startled, he asked, “My lord?”

  Bishop Beaufort went on regarding his folded hands while answering evenly, “There are certain skills that would be useful for you to have. Should you choose to become useful to me in ways beyond simply those of a player, you would want those skills. Then there is the matter of payment. It can amount to more than a man might care to carry on himself, nor would it do to have it come openly from me. One of my people in some town or other would have your pay in his charge. Could even, if you wish, invest it in different enterprises and increase it between the whiles you wanted use of it yourself.” He raised his gaze to Joliffe’s face. Joliffe could only hope he kept his own face as smoothly bland as Bishop Beaufort kept his while going on, “But all that is for later and if you decide to come more fully into my service. For now, continue to perform your play whenever you can. If I have not said so plainly enough, I am very pleased with what I hear about it. Tell Master Basset so. Continue, too, to think about what you see and hear.” He took up the token from the desk and held it out. “Best you keep this, should you need to come to me again. Go with God, my son. Master Fowler will see you away.”

  Knowing when he was dismissed, Joliffe took the token, stepped back from the desk, bowed as low as both Bishop Beaufort’s royal blood and high offices required, and made his . . . escape was what it felt like at the back of his neck as he went out the door by which he had come and closed it behind him. The passage was in darkness. The small light from the oil lamp on the stairway did not reach this far, but Joliffe did not wait for his eyes to usen to the dark. He wanted away from the door at his back and went forward and then down the stairs as quickly as he could.

  His urge was to keep going, but Master Fowler’s door was standing a little open, and because obeying Bishop Beaufort seemed a surer way out of Winchester House than finding his way on his own, Joliffe stopped and knocked.

  Rather than bidding him to come in, Master Fowler came to the door, said, “You’re to go back by river,” and went past him, expecting Joliffe to follow.

  Joliffe did, and they went down and along ways through the palace that he had not gone before, finally coming out yet another door into the chill night and a narrow yard. Lighted by torches set either side of the door, it ended not against a wall but in a stretching darkness that for a startled moment Joliffe did not recognize as the Thames. Distantly, beyond the darkness, a few orange-burning lights showed London was there, seeming much farther away than it did by daylight, and he was not happy to realize it was across that darkness he was going to go to reach it.

  Three men stood up from where they had been sitting at utter ease on a bench against the wall, and Master Fowler gave Joliffe over to them with, “Here he is,” so that they must have been waiting for him and no one else. Then Master Fowler was gone back inside, and one of the men said, “Which landing will it be you want?”

  “I’ve no thought,” Joliffe answered. “All I can tell you is that I’m staying just north of St. Paul’s.”

  “More to the east or the west?”

  “East.”

  “Let’s say Queenhithe then,” the man said. “Happen the tide’s to favor of that just now. Be stiff rowing still, but we can do it.” He started away toward the quay’s edge. He and another of the three men wore only heavy-woven shirts and sleeveless jerkins despite the cold; the third man was cloaked like Joliffe. They went with the first fellow and, perforce, Joliffe followed despite his thought that he might after all prefer the familiar dangers possible in Southwark’s and London’s streets to the unfamiliar peril of a boat and a wide, dark, tidal river.

  His doubt did not lessen at the top of the broad steps going down from the quay’s edge to disappear into the dark lapping water where a narrow boat rocked, ready with two pairs of oars laid along its sides and its rear quarter sheltered by a canvas tilt curved on hoops over the seat there. A lantern hung over the boat’s fore-part gave light enough to show that much and give safe footing on the stairs, and no matter that the boat looked far too little a thing to trust to the great, dark Thames, one of the boatmen went sure-footed down the stairs and took hold on it to keep it steady for the rest of them to come.

  There being no help for it, Joliffe went, not hesitating to take hold on the boatman’s shoulder to steady himself while stepping over the gunwale onto the give and shift of the boat.

  “Never crossed the Thames before?” the man asked, not unkindly. “Other than by the bridge?” Of which he sounded faintly scornful, as if going over the bridge was the weakling’s way.

  “Have done it farther up,” Joliffe said. “By ferries.” Wide, flat-bottomed, steady ferries, including once in the company’s poorer days when they had lacked coin and paid their passage with a brief show of juggling, tumbling, and foolery for the ferryman and his family.

  “You’ll find this as good. Better even. Not to worry. Just set you under the tilt, and we’ll be away.”

  “Not lost anyone yet,” his fellow said, still on the stairs while the cloaked man took his turn at boarding. “For all that he’s called Fyssher, we’ve never had to fish anyone out. Not anyone we were carrying anyway.”