A Play of Lords

by Margaret Frazer

  The “good sir” made the fellow grin all the way through telling them they were asked to play at Master Hatherley’s this evening, if they could. Behind his back, John Hyche nodded vigorously, Basset acknowledged gracefully that they would be pleased to do so, and after the fellow was gone, John Hyche was only too willing to tell them how wealthy Master Hatherley was and that he was likely to be the mayor of London one of these years soon.

  So that was to the good. “But meanwhile,” said Basset when Hyche had left them, “we have a day to ourselves. I propose to keep Ellis company in finding a sunny corner here and sitting still and very likely drowsing.” Ellis looked momentarily ready to protest that but caught Rose’s eye on him and said nothing while Basset went on, “The rest of you may do as you will so long as you’re back here well before the afternoon’s end.”

  Rose’s choice was to go to St. Paul’s at last, and she told Piers and Gil they were going with her. “You, too, Joliffe, if you will,” she added.

  “Probably later,” he said. “I think I’ll wander London somewhat more before I turn churchly.”

  He also had his hat already in hand and was out the door on the end of his words, pretending he did not see Gil wishing to go with him. There were times when he needed to be on his own, and there had been very little chance of it since they came to London; he was not going to give up this one, and never mind that the day was another gray-skied one promising rain. With all there was to see in London and with all that Joliffe did not want to think about just now, weather was almost the least of matters, and he wandered eastward for a while with no particular purpose except to go where he had not yet been. With St. Paul’s spire to return to, he would be hard put to get lost, so he did not worry about it, just strolled and looked. There were more kinds of goods laid out for sale on the shopboards of more shops than he would have thought there were in all England if he had ever thought about it, and he lost count of the churches he passed. He bought what food or drink caught his liking as he passed one vendor or another with trays strap-slung from their necks.

  Eventually he found himself among the market stalls of the place he remembered Mak had called the Stocks Market, where five of London’s streets all came together in a large marketplace. This time he saw from where its name came: a set of stocks raised on a high platform in an open place among the tightly gathered market stalls. Always put in as public a place as possible, stocks were a fine way to punish lesser offenders, whether in town or village or manor. Held by his legs through the holes in the heavy wooden bars, a man had no choice but to be seen by every passer-by, to be known and remembered thereafter as someone caught in one crime or another, with usually his fault made clear. A butcher might have his rotten meat hung on him, a cheating baker one of his bad loaves, a wine-drawer his false measure. There were limits to how much harm could be done to someone held in the stocks. He was not to be struck with hand or weapon, but jeering and name-calling by on-lookers were expected, and things could be thrown at him. Not stones or anything else to cause lasting hurt, but Joliffe knew from sorry occasion that a rotten egg against the side of the head smarted as well as smelled, and well-flung mud was no pleasure either.

  Today London’s stocks were empty, but there was a crowd in front of its steps, and Joliffe—inevitably curious and having just bought a crisp-crusted apple pastry from a pretty girl’s tray—sauntered to join the back edge of the crowd, enjoying the pastry as he went and thinking that he did not know that he would ever tire of London life, there was so much of it.

  The crowd at the stocks was a mixed lot. There was a scattering of honestly dressed men and women who looked to be merely paused, like himself, from wherever else they were going, but mostly the men and some women there were of the scruffier sort, with probably nowhere particular they should be and glad to be diverted by the man standing above them on the steps, demanding of them, “What are they still doing here? We don’t want them any more than we want their treacherous duke! Do we? Do we?”

  He was dressed like any number of other men there, in a plain, loose surcoat of coarse brown wool over a plain doublet and hosen, but the hood of his shoulder-short cape was gaily yellow, with a bush of black hair bursting out from under it; and there was something about his demand that made Joliffe take a harder look at him while much of the crowd, plainly already well-stirred, growled and rumbled back at him. Joliffe began to think about going away rather chancing getting caught up in whatever trouble was coming, because trouble was surely what the fellow was haranguing them toward, now with a fist raised over his head and declaring, “What I say is out with them all! That’s what I say! Out with them! What do you say?”

  “Out with ’em! Aye, out with ’em!” a good number of the crowd yelled back at him, with much head-nodding among most of the rest.

  “You’re with me then! You say like I do!” The fellow raised both fists, shaking them at their unseen foe and yelling, “Out with them all, the sooner the better, and to the devil with them if they won’t go otherwise! What do you say? Should we let ’em know that’s what we think?”

  More of the crowd shouted their agreement. A few of the better-dressed around its outer edge were starting to fade back, the way Joliffe knew he should, but he stayed, standing deliberately easily, his mouth half-full of pastry as he asked a retreating man, “What’s all this about, then? Flemings is it?”

  “What else?” the man said. “Let them rot in quiet, I say. They know what we think. If we really want rid of them, all we need do is not let them buy food for a while. They’ll go fast enough then. But this . . .” He gave a sideways twitch of his head toward the man. “This just makes trouble for everybody.”

  He went on his way, a virtuous man who would rather starve the enemy than kill them and never mind the Flemings he wanted to starve probably never wanted to be the enemy anyway.

  Joliffe stayed where he was, finishing his pastry and wiping his hand down the side of his leg, held not by the promise of trouble but by the fellow making it. For one thing, his yelling was too good. Not raw and hoarse with forcing it but more as if he knew what he was doing. For another, he was some way familiar. He was coming down the steps now, his crowd making way for him and shifting, ready to follow him to wherever they thought to find some Flemings, Joliffe supposed.

  A schoolboy with a book and his wooden tablet under one arm came into his way, following the crowd, too, and Joliffe laid a hand on the boy’s head. The boy looked up and around at him, startled, and Joliffe said in his best voice-of-authority, “This isn’t the way home to your dinner, is it? Best you go that way and not this.” With a smile to show there were no hard feelings, he gave the boy a light shove away. The boy, with a smile to show there were no hard feelings on his side either, went. Joliffe, with no one to tell him to be sensible in his turn, went onward with the crowd, keeping to the thin tail of it as it left the marketplace, among others who were not sure how much a part of it they wanted to be but not wanting to miss the sport altogether. He had lost sight of the troublemaker but could guess he was there ahead, among the general shouting and shaking of staffs and clubs over heads to show each other they were in earnest. They had a chant now—“Flemings out, out, out! Flemings out, out, out!”—getting louder as they turned into a lesser street and bunched more tightly together.

  With no way or wish in the narrower street to get near the head of the crowd and the riot-rouser, Joliffe hung farther back, to seem less a part of it all and have room for retreat when sooner or later the city watch or someone showed up to stop this. Ahead the crowd was bunching up outside a pair of wooden gates under a strongly built brick gateway. Wood began to thump and thud on wood and brick as the staffs and clubs came into use, useless though they were against either the heavy gates or the bricks. Why did a rout always sink to the level of its most idiot among them? Joliffe wondered while drawing yet farther back, nearer the street’s end, not willing to be trapped in its narrowness when trouble overtook this lot.

 
Then, among the scatter of other men and women hanging back and on-looking only, he saw the black-haired riot-rouser.

  Except the fellow was plainly intent on rousing nothing, most particularly any notice of himself. All the shouting and vigor were gone out of him. His yellow hood was shoved off his head and down around his shoulders, uncovering his bush of black hair, and he was moving like others around Joliffe who had seen enough and decided they had best be about other business.

  Only because Joliffe had been looking so hard at him before did he pick the fellow out as other than an honest man withdrawing honestly from dishonest trouble.

  And with that knew the man for what he had to be.

  A player.

  That had been what it was about him as he harangued the crowd—his skillful use of both his voice and body. And his use of his body now to seem so different from how he had been.

  Whoever he was, he was a player.

  And surely he had been hired—Joliffe was willing to wager every coin the company had gained since coming to London on it—to make this trouble today.

  Keeping to his own, slower retreat among the scatter of on-lookers, Joliffe let the man go past him toward the street’s end before fully turning away himself and following him.

  Unsurprisingly, the fellow did not go back to the Stocks Market but along a street away from both it and where he had deserted his crowd, and before long turned into a broader street busy with shoppers afoot, mounted travelers, and laden carts, all about their ordinary business, and ordinary was just how the fellow looked as he wove his way among it all.

  It was when he went around a cart that Joliffe almost lost him, because by the time Joliffe skirted the cart himself, the bushy black hair and yellow hood he had been following were gone. Where they could have disappeared to in the few steps the fellow could have taken in that while Joliffe did not know, but he was gone.

  Casting looks both ways, searching for him, Joliffe finished crossing the street, going toward a tavern there. With its shutter swung down from its wide front window making place for the several jugs and a gathering of pottery cups attended by an aproned woman, it was ready to serve drinkers outside as well as in, and if Joliffe had been on the move away from trouble, he would have gone inside, but his quarry was straight in front of him, buying a cup of ale or beer or wine from the woman there. The set of his shoulders caught Joliffe’s desperately searching gaze, but because the yellow hood and black hair were gone, he could not be sure until, as he went toward the tavern himself, the man turned away, giving Joliffe sight of his face.

  The hair had been a wig, then. And in passing the cart, the fellow had stripped off both it and the bright hood.

  More than that, Joliffe now knew him. He was the one of the duke of Gloucester’s players who had shoved into Ellis.

  Holding back from any triumphant smile, Joliffe went to buy a cup of ale from the woman himself, then turned to where the man had set himself down on one of two benches there, meant for the comfort of outside drinkers. Two women were sitting on the other bench, sharing a cup of something, their full market baskets at their feet. That made it reasonable for Joliffe to look around as if in search of somewhere to sit and then go to the same bench as his quarry, to sit not too near the man but near enough for talk. The fellow gave him a glance and half a nod and kept busy at turning his hood inside out. The wig had disappeared, probably into his surcoat, and now the yellow hood was becoming a black one lined with yellow that did not show at all after he had turned under the outer edge.

  Only when Joliffe, after a good drink of the ale—it was weak and probably yesterday’s—said lightly, “That was some rout you roused back there,” did the fellow snap his head around to look full at him, brows drawing toward a frown.

  As if not seeing that, Joliffe went on merrily, lifting the cup toward him, “Here’s to work well-done.” He drank, still seeming unaware the man was anything but pleased at the praise, lowered the cup, leaned a little toward him, and dropped his voice to ask, “But what in Hell’s name was it all about? You set ’em on for more than just the sport of it. If there’s someone paying for that kind of work, I’m for it.”

  The man’s face cleared. Seemingly someone willing to make trouble for money was someone he understood. But, “Can’t help you there,” he said.“‘Stir ’em up, set ’em on,’ the man said. ‘Five shillings for you, if you do it,’ he said.” The fellow patted the front of his surcoat where a bulge might have been a purse. “Paid beforehand and all. Said if I did good at it, there’d be more for me.”

  Joliffe made a silent whistle. “Where’d you meet him? I’d let him pay me that kind of money for work like that.”

  “Didn’t meet him anywhere. No, that’s the truth. Swear it. He came up to me in the street two days ago and made the offer.”

  “You don’t know him or anything?” Joliffe asked wonderingly. “And he paid you that kind of money?”

  “By the saints.” The man made a cross over his heart. “Never met him before.”

  “He must know you, though,” Joliffe tried as the man took a long drink from his cup. “To offer you that kind of money.”

  “Must,” the man said, wiping his upper lip. “Must have seen me sometime when I was . . .” He thought better of saying what he had been doing, but he did not need to. Knowing he was a player, Joliffe could easily guess he could have been seen any number of places by any number of people. Joliffe’s main worry was that the fellow would know him, but the man was looking one way and another along the street, rather than much at him, even while leaning a little toward him as if to share a secret and saying, “I’ll tell you this, though. I think I’ve seen him somewhere.” He straightened suddenly, looking back to the street he and Joliffe had come along, and said, “There they go,” as a scurry of several men came from it in a clotted rush and instantly scattered in all directions, losing themselves among the wider street’s ordinary busyness. Several others followed them and did the same, a hunted look to them, and the player gave a satisfied sigh, sat back, and said, “Didn’t take the bailiffs long to see to them. I’ll warrant there’s some head-whacking going on with those that didn’t run in time.” He raised his cup as if in praise of his own sharp wits, probably both for raising the trouble and getting away from it in good time.

  Joliffe raised his own cup as if in agreement with him, drank with him, then said, “You say you think you’ve seen your rich man somewhere?”

  “Aye. Not that it’ll help you any more than it does me. I doubt I’d care to walk up to him as if I knew him. But I’d just about lay money he’s one of the bishop of Winchester’s men. Just about lay money on it.” He guffawed. “One of Winchester’s men hiring me!”

  It was a jest he must suppose Joliffe could not share, thinking he did not know he was the duke of Gloucester’s man. Joliffe, even knowing that he was, saw nothing to laugh at in it. Instead, wary of asking him more, he finished his ale in one long draught, said, “Ah, well, if you can’t point me toward easy money, I’d best be off to earn it the hard way. Dame Fortune keep with you.”

  The man raised his cup to him. “May she find you soon, too.”

  Returning his own cup to the woman behind the tavern’s board, Joliffe headed away along the street, keeping in open sight, as if not worried he might be watched as he went.

  Chapter 18

  Joliffe’s own thought was that if he had just roused a riot and someone showed up asking questions of him, the least he would have done was afterward watch the fellow away, or even, more than likely, have followed him a while. He much doubted, though, that the player would take that much trouble. Not when he’d not troubled even to think much about what he had been hired to do, gave no sign of seeing the layers of trouble there were in someone of the duke of Gloucester’s household being hired to raise a riot by someone he thought was in Bishop Beaufort’s service.

  Without even trying, Joliffe could think of three treacheries possible in that.

  Which meant
there were very likely more.