A Play of Lords

by Margaret Frazer

  But then if the fellow had been somewhat more than stupid, he’d not have taken so unthinkingly to this business.

  Joliffe at least thought about how stupid he was being himself as he said, “Gil, you keep with Mak. I have to go somewhere.”

  Gil grabbed hold on his sleeve. “No you don’t! You get hurt, Basset will kill us both!”

  “I’m keeping away from the riot,” Joliffe said. “I swear it. Mak, see that man?”

  He did not point or even look straightly that way but made a twitch of his head and movement of his eyes serve, and Mak’s own sharpness did the rest. “Fellow in the gray doublet, yellow hood?” he said.

  “Him. I’m going to follow him. You two head back to Lord Lovell’s.”

  “We’ll come with you,” Gil said.

  “We’ll not,” Mak said strongly. “Following a man is best done alone. You let him go.”

  That saved Joliffe the trouble of arguing for himself, which was to the good because the fellow was shifting along quickly and would have been gone if Joliffe had not been so immediately after him.

  Even then it was none so easy. People were now well split between those headed toward the now-louder shouting in the near distance and those headed purposefully away. Along the street here goods were being cleared from shopboards by apprentices and their masters readying to shutter and bar their shops, clearly people who knew what to do when large trouble looked like it might come their way, and they only moved the faster as louder shouting burst up from the Stocks Market.

  That would be the Newgate guards charging into whatever crowd was there, Joliffe supposed, and ahead of him the duke of Gloucester’s player glanced back, widely grinning, almost as if he thought to see what was happening. He never noted Joliffe among all the other people there were, nor was anyone noting him any more than they were noting Joliffe.

  That was something that made London so perfect a place to make trouble. With so many people and with so much always going on all at once, a man could do a great deal without anyone taking particular heed of him, and if they did, there were usually crowds and always places in plenty into which he could disappear, especially if he knew London. And disappear was what Joliffe feared his quarry would do, trying to keep close enough not to lose him among the constant flow and shift of people but not daring to follow him too closely.

  It became a little easier when the man turned out of Cheapside into one of the lesser streets. There were still people in plenty to lose him among, but he must have thought he was well away because he slowed, lost his sharp wariness, began to walk as if not worried about where he had come from or where he was going, so that it was somewhat safer for Joliffe to close the distance between them, not so afraid the fellow would abruptly disappear.

  And then he did. Was suddenly gone from sight. There had briefly been two women with market baskets between him and Joliffe. In the time it took Joliffe to shift to see past them, the fellow was no longer in sight.

  Supposing he had not dissolved to nothing in an instant and therefore must have gone somewhere, Joliffe crowded forward past the women and saw, just where his quarry had vanished, the narrow opening into one of those London alleys that might lead into some hidden yard, as at Mak’s aunt’s.

  It might also lead into a trap, being somewhere that ambush could be too easily set.

  But since he doubted the man knew he was being followed, no trap or ambush was likely. And if he did not follow the man into the alley, he would lose him for certain. And . . .

  He went. Carefully, he told himself.

  But foolishly, the more sensible part of his mind said.

  The alley was maybe twenty paces long, and he could see it did open into a cobbled yard at its far end. He slowed, easing his way along, silent and wary, until he could, by craning his neck sideways, see out the alley’s end into at least part of the yard. It did not look to be a large yard, and at its far end on the other side another alleyway left it. Catching a sharp flicker of movement at its shadowed mouth, Joliffe froze where he was, waiting until he was sure the movement was someone leaving the yard, not coming into it, before he left his own shadows. If the other player had gone that way, then so would he.

  Except the other player was still here.

  Two shut doors led from the yard, looking as if they led to workshops or warehouses rather than homes. Joliffe’s quarry was standing with his back against the nearer one, his wide stare fixed on Joliffe. Joliffe froze, staring back at him, too startled to know what to do.

  Then the man, as if his legs were melting under him, began to slide slowly downward until, still slowly, his body slumped forward and sprawled face-down across the cobbles.

  Chapter 20

  The time that Joliffe stood staring at him lying there could not have lasted more than a single heartbeat, no matter that the moment seemed to stretch out and out forever before Joliffe was able to move, springing forward to grab the man by one shoulder and roll him over.

  If the flat-eyed stare at nothing had not told he was dead, the slit in the front of his doublet where dagger or sword had gone in, straight to the heart, would have sufficed.

  There was little blood. It had been a quick, clean kill and done in less than the time it had taken Joliffe to come the twenty paces from the street, and very abruptly he was glad there was another way out of the yard, because he doubted he would have survived meeting in the alleyway the man who had done this.

  But even as he thought that and while signing a cross over the dead man for whatever good it might do his surely startled soul, Joliffe was started toward the other way out of the yard and reached the other alley’s mouth in time to see the dark shape of a man—no, the dark shapes of two men—against the light at its far end.

  Now was the time to think about what he was doing. Think about it and then not do it. One part of his mind was telling him loudly he was being a fool. Another was part telling him with equal strength how afraid he was. And still he slid into the alley, keeping close to one wall, to be part of the shadows rather than a shape should either of the men ahead of him look back. Because even more than he was afraid, he was coldly furious.

  He had not thought well of the dead man when the fellow was alive. He did not think well of him now. But that did not lessen his anger at whoever had so treacherously murdered him. The fellow had come easy-witted and good-humoured, probably to meet whoever had hired him, and been paid not with coins but a dagger-thrust to the heart.

  Did that mean whoever had hired him had no more use for riots being raised against the Flemings?

  Or only that whoever-it-was did not like to use one tool too often, preferring to be rid of it and find a new one?

  He was only a few steps into the alley when the shapes ahead of him reached its other end. Briefly, Joliffe saw them as they went out, into the street there. A tall man and a shorter one. The tall one lean, the shorter one of wider build. In long doublets, one red, the other darker. No surcoats. The taller one with a long liripipe of cloth curved down from the padded roll of his hat and over one shoulder. The other with an unbrimmed hat as plain as Joliffe’s own. Nothing particularly to be marked about either of them. Give them even half a minute to blend themselves into the come-and-go of people along the street there and they would be as good as disappeared.

  They turned, were gone out of sight, and Joliffe sprang into a run, not meaning to give them that half a minute. But neither did he dare burst from the alley on their heels, and just at its end, he came to a sharp stop, drew a quick, steadying breath, and walked out with no apparent haste. Turning the same way the two men had, he saw them hardly ten yards away and looking in no hurry to put distance between themselves and the dead man.

  Of course looking like you were putting distance between yourself and trouble was a likely way to make yourself noted and remembered, Joliffe thought, but he was not in the least sure that, having just killed a man, he could have walked off as easily as these two were doing. But then if he could have kill
ed a man as easily as they had just done, probably he could have walked away that easily.

  It was not something he ever meant to find out about himself.

  He did not know the street he was now on. A lesser one than Cheapside anyway, and whatever was happening elsewhere in London had yet to unsettle things here. Shops were open, people were going ordinarily enough about their business, and the two men were going along it in a general way toward the river, looking as ordinary as anyone.

  The crowd that served them so well served Joliffe, too, as he trailed after them, trying to look as anybody as they did, until they turned from the street into a narrow lane that was enough like the alley that Joliffe nearly did not follow them into it. But he did and it after all was a proper lane, with shops and passers-by, and when the two men turned into one of the shops, Joliffe became a passer-by like any other, going on to the lane’s end, where it met another street. At the corner there, he paused, looking one way and another as if expecting to see someone he knew, then taking a stand with his back to a wall as if waiting to meet that someone, which gave him reason not only to look along the street but back along the lane.

  He had to wait rather longer than he liked before the men came out of the shop, and when they did, they turned the other way from him. He stayed where he was until he saw them turn at the far end of the lane to go on the way they had been first going. That set him free to leave his corner and head down his own street to where it met a wider one that the two men’s street had to likewise meet. Because he walked as fast as he dared, far faster than the men had been walking when he was last behind them, he had time at the corner there to pause and worry that he had somehow lost them—that they had turned back on their tracks or down another small side street or alley he was too ignorant of London to know of.

  But there they were, crossing the street he was watching. He nearly missed them because the taller man was no longer in his red doublet but one colored dark gold. Only when his eye caught on their heights was he sure of them.

  He had meant, if they turned toward him, to pretend interest in the nearest shop, but by the time he saw them, they were nearly across the street, clearly going onward, and he went after them, dodging among the crowding passers-by with somewhat less care than he had been using, gaining the next corner after they were out of sight. He turned it, did not immediately see the men among the other people passing there, but went on anyway, trying to seem ordinary in his going, and shortly was rewarded by sight of the taller man ahead of him by a safe many yards.

  Joliffe had a qualm then, not seeing the shorter man and wondering where he was. Turned back to guard their rear, suspicious they were being followed? Or maybe certain of it and meaning to put a stop to it?

  But Joliffe’s back had only begun to cringe when an eddy in the flow of people and carts gave him a glimpse of the man, still with his taller companion, and that particular knot in Joliffe’s spine eased a little.

  The street they were on ended where it met a far wider street, and this one Joliffe knew. Thames Street. It ran much of the length of London, with the Tower at one end and the duke of Gloucester’s Baynard’s Castle near the other. Joliffe had a momentary expectation they would turn toward the latter, but they did not; instead, they turned the other way and then shortly turned again, this time down a lane with the broad Thames at its end.

  Seeing the gray glint of the river there, Joliffe did not follow them any farther, let them go on without him until he was sure they had to be wherever they were going along the lane before he went along it himself and found it came out on one of the public quays. And there his quarry was.

  In a boat being rowed away from the waterstairs by a boatman.

  By the look of it, the boat was one of the common boats for hire, like the three others still tied along the quay, their boatmen huddled in cloaks against the wind that had not seemed so sharp in the shelter of the streets. Joliffe hesitated to ask any of them if they had heard either of the two men say where they wanted to go, was wary of showing even that much open interest in them, and instead went to the nearest of the boatmen and, using his thick north-countryman vowels, asked what the fare was to the Tower, then to Westminster, then to go across the river.

  “Where across the river?” the man asked without much interest, probably doubting by this time that Joliffe wanted to go anywhere. “You want St. Mary Overie, just above the bridge? Winchester House? Bankside?”

  “Uh. Winchester House,” Joliffe hazarded.

  The man named a price and added, “Should have come a few minutes earlier. You could have gone with them.”

  He jerked a thumb at the boat, now well out on the river, tossing on wind-chopped silver waves in a way that made Joliffe a little queasy just to look at. That must have shown on his face because the boatman said, eyeing him, “Or maybe just as well you didn’t. You’re not minded to cross just now, are you?”

  “Nay,” Joliffe said with full honesty. “Nay, ee’m not.” He had found out where the men were going. That was enough for now, and with that knowledge for burden, he went his way back through London’s streets to the lane and the narrow-fronted shop where one of the men must have changed at least his doublet.

  Passing it in their wake, Joliffe had not dared to give it a straight look but was not over-surprised to find it was a clothing regrater’s, a seller of second-handed clothing, the sort of place Rose had been buying the players’ “new” garb.

  On so narrow a lane there was no space to open shopboards out from a shop’s front. Instead, several doublets and a sleeveless jerkin were laid over the sill of the unshuttered front window, and a long-skirted, russet-dyed gown with a thin band of fur at the throat was hung at the window’s side. None of the doublets were red, and Joliffe went inside. Because the room beyond the doorway did not go deep, the open window gave light enough to show the many garments of all kinds hung over wallpoles around the room. More light would have helped a buyer to see them better; maybe that was why the light was so little. Still, more light would surely have helped the man working at the trestle table to one side of the room, his balding head bent close enough over a red doublet spread out there he must be able to smell it. He was busily blotting at the fabric in quick little circles with a wet cloth, and he did not look up as he said, “Yes, my master. What might I do for you?”

  “About that doublet there,” said Joliffe.

  The man flashed a look up at him and paused at his cleaning long enough to dip the cloth in a bowl of water beside him while saying, “Yes? This doublet?” He went back to his cleaning.

  “You’ve bought it within this hour, from a tall man.”

  The shopkeeper stopped his dabbing at the doublet and straightened to look shrewdly at Joliffe. “That I did. Had spilled wine on it, he said. Was going courting a fair widow and didn’t have time to go home for a clean doublet. Wanted to trade this one for a clean one as good. Trade! Ha!” He bent back to his work. “I took this one and sold him another. Took somewhat off the price, surely. That’s fair. But a straight trade? Ha. Nor this isn’t wine here neither, I’ll be sworn. If it isn’t blood, then I’m not a Christian.” He looked up at Joliffe again. “It’s blood and it’s trouble, too, isn’t it?”

  “Very probably,” Joliffe said evenly. “How about if I take it off your hands? Just as it is.”

  “Trade?” said the man cuttingly.

  “For money.”

  “Ah.” The man straightened. “It’s a very fine doublet, mind you. A lot of wear left to it. This stain, that I’ve nearly done with, won’t show so much it matters. I’d have to ask a fair price for it.”

  “Name it,” Joliffe said. He leaned on the table to bring himself nearer the man and dropping his voice to say, “Just remember I know where that fresh blood—it is fresh and it is blood—came from, and if I were you, I’d make haste to have it away from me before someone less friendly than I am comes asking about it.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed somewhat but none of the shr
ewdness went out of them. He named a price that was within reason and, more importantly, within reach of Joliffe’s purse. Joliffe paid it without question, had taken up the doublet and was folding it over his arm with the stain hidden when the man said, “I’ll tell you something for nothing, to go with it. I don’t know why the fellow even needed another doublet. He had one on under this one. A better one than the one he bought.”