Joliffe took up a medium cup, she told him the price, he put down his coin, and she poured a palely gold ale to nearly the cup’s brim, no stinting. He thanked her with a nod and turned around, seemingly to decide where to sit. But while crossing the room he had taken an encompassing glance across the several dozen men and a few women already there. They looked to be clerks and small-shopkeepers and their wives, done with their day’s work, here for a pleasant while and all of them familiar to one another but equally used to strangers, Southwark being a place that had much coming and going of strangers.
Being a stranger, Joliffe very reasonably went simply to the nearest empty place. It happened to be on the bench set along the room’s back wall, beside the door behind the ale-table, at the end of the line of tables and other benches running along the side wall, back toward the streetward door. It also happened to be a few feet aside from another man propped into the corner where the benches along the two walls met. The fellow was pale, as if he did not encounter much sunlight, which went with his plain black robe, as if he were some churchman’s clerk, and the wood-rimmed pair of spectacles braced on the bridge of his nose by ribbons around his ears, leaving little doubt that he must spend his life over books—probably account books: he had that look of someone constantly concerned that the record of profits and debts be precisely right lest the world fall apart around him.
As Joliffe sat down, keeping careful distance from him, the man briefly eyed him, very much as if Joliffe were another figure to be reckoned onto an account roll, returned a wordless nod to Joliffe’s own with no show of familiarity or any wish to talk, and went back to contemplating the world in front of him. For a few moments Joliffe did the same, wondering if the next move were his to make but not yet decided before another man, come in soon after him, turned from the ale-table with a tall cup of ale in hand and gave a sullen jerk of his free hand to show Joliffe should shift along the bench to make room for him there. Joliffe obligingly shifted, and sitting down, the man grunted, sounding not so much unfriendly as just tired, “Close to the ale here. Makes it easier.”
Joliffe made a wordless sound of understanding in answer and turned to the pale man now close on his other side and said, too low for the newcomer to hear him, “Pardon, if I’m crowding you, Master Fowler.”
Looking as if Joliffe were a sum of which he did not approve, Bishop Beaufort’s private clerk said as quietly, “It’s as it should be.” He gave a small flick of his eyes to the man on Joliffe’s other side. “Nor is there need to worry on him. If it seems we might be heard, he’ll begin to sing.”
“Ah,” said Joliffe, understanding. “What would you have done if I’d not remembered you and not sat down here?”
“Something else. Where are you staying? Not here.”
“The Christopher.”
Master Fowler showed mild approval, but that might have been only for the sake of making it seem to anyone noting them that they were in easy talk and nothing more, because it was without changing his face or voice that he went on. “At dawn tomorrow you will make yourself known to the master of the bishop of Therouanne’s men as they gather in the yard at Winchester House. You will then journey with the bishop and his household to France. There you will be given a place in . . .”
“France?” Joliffe got out on somewhat of a croak.
“France,” Master Fowler repeated firmly. “My lord of Winchester has use of you in France.”
“But . . .” There were so many things unlikely about that that Joliffe fumbled among them before saying, more in disbelief than otherwise, “Use for me in France?”
“Do you speak French?”
“Somewhat. Not well. It’s been years since I did at all.”
“Good. That will make you the more believable.”
“As what?”
“As a disgraced clerk from my lord’s household.”
After a pause to take firm grip on himself, Joliffe brought out evenly, “I’m to be a disgraced clerk from my lord bishop’s household being sent into France in apparent—exile? punishment?”
“Yes. Both. You drink too much. You have been a disappointment and a disgrace. But you have pleaded for mercy and a chance to do better. My lord sees promise in you of better things and does not wish to cast you out entirely, but this is your last chance to redeem yourself. You will travel to Rouen with the bishop of Therouanne’s household. There you will make yourself known to Master Richard Wydeville in the household of the widow of his grace the duke of Bedford, God have the duke’s soul in keeping.”
Master Fowler crossed himself. Joliffe copied the gesture while his mind played juggle-and-catch with what he knew—or at least half-knew—about any of that. The duke of Bedford had been one of the king’s two uncles, and while the younger uncle, the duke of Gloucester, had mis-stirred the pot of politics here in England and quarreled with Bishop Beaufort through these past dozen years and more, Bedford had worked to make good England’s hold on Normandy and France. From everything Joliffe had ever heard, it had not been Bedford’s fault the odds had been turning against him in the French war before he died last year, but his death had set into play a rivaling among lords here in England for who would take his place as governor of Normandy and France. The whole thing was tangled by King Henry—sixth of the name and son of the hero of the battle of Agincourt—being but fourteen years old and the government not yet in his hands but divided between councils running his realms of England and France, so that these four months on from Bedford’s death, no one was yet named to take over the war in France. And by all reports, that war was going badly since the duke of Burgundy had forsaken his alliance with the English and taken up the Dauphin’s cause on the French side.
Hesitantly, uncertain how much protest he might be allowed, Joliffe tried, “Uh. Isn’t sending me there somewhat like throwing me into a river in full flood before I’ve learned to paddle in a pool?”
“Very much like,” Master Fowler agreed, with an approving nod—whether at the throwing or at Joliffe for seeing it, Joliffe was not sure. “Unfortunately, because of how things have gone in Normandy of late, some of our men skilled at gathering privy knowledge are no longer of use.”
“Because they’re dead?” Joliffe asked dryly.
“Because they are known by those who are no longer our allies.”
“The Burgundians.”
“Indeed. So their usefulness is now limited, and while there are still those who are not known, someone new and unknown will surely be of use. More than that, Master Wydeville was spymaster to the duke of Bedford. He will have the directing and training of you, and better you could not have.”
“Ah,” said Joliffe. That seemed to cover the matter.
“Under the near edge of my robe,” Master Fowler went on, “for you to take when you’re sure no one is looking this way, there are two letters. They name you John Ripon. You may show openly to anyone the one with my lord’s seal. It gives my lord’s leave for you to join the bishop of Therouanne’s household and go into Normandy. It should be shown to Master Wydeville, too. The other, close-sealed, is for Master Wydeville only. It should be kept on you at all times and seen by no one else. That one is wrapped in oiled cloth for safety. A winter crossing to France is often perilous.”
Just what all this was in need of, Joliffe thought—more peril.
At the same time, though, a hot flame of excitement was strengthening in him. This all promised to be not only different from anything he had ever done, but
interestingly
different.
The heavily drinking man on his other side gave a belch and suddenly leaned sidewise, across Joliffe, to say into Master Fowler’s face, “Yer one of Winchester’s men, bain’t you? So when’s his mighty lordship coming back to Southwark, eh? There’s one of his household knaves owes me three shillings. When’s he going to be back here, eh?”
Blocked from anybody seeing what he did, Joliffe deftly slid the packet of letters from under the edge of Master Fowler’s robe with one hand while unfastening the clasp on his belt pouch with the other. While Master Fowler drew back from the man, very openly offended by his breath and his demand, Joliffe protested, “Here now!” making as if trying to shove the fellow off him to cover the twist of his body needed to slip the packet into his belt pouch. That safely done and the pouch re-clasped, he used both hands to shift the man back onto his seat while saying good-humouredly, “I’m just in the middle here. Don’t add me to your quarrel!”
Master Fowler was sliding away along the bench, toward a gap in the line of tables by which he could escape, saying in stiff and indignant protest, “I know nothing of my lord’s intents. It might be a week. It might be longer. I don’t know.” Reaching the gap, he stood up, slid through it, and disappeared beyond several men just come in together at the tavern’s door.
The fellow beside Joliffe flung an arm around Joliffe’s shoulders and assured him with well-aled breath, “Sorry to have you in the middle. No fault of yours. You don’t even know the fellow that owes me, right?”
“My first time in Southwark,” Joliffe assured him. Not quite the truth but good enough for now.
“The loins of London, as they say,” his companion told him happily. “That what you here for?” He prodded an elbow into Joliffe’s ribs. “For the loins? I know a place where there’s a woman . . .”
“I’m just here to deliver a horse to my master’s cousin,” Joliffe said. “That’s done and I’m heading home with an early start tomorrow. So an early bed tonight. Alone,” he added as the fellow opened his mouth for probably more ribaldry. He made to copy Master Fowler’s shift along the bench that was briefly clear, the two men who had sat down there gone to join some friends just seen across the room. Then he paused to lean over and put a coin onto the table in front of the fellow, saying, “Have a farewell cup for me.” And, dropping his voice to very low, “This was all to try me, wasn’t it?”
“I’ll drink to your health,” the man said with a hard-drinker’s happy grin as he picked up the coin. And added, matching Joliffe’s drop in voice and with no sign of drunkenness, “Every bit of it.”
Whatever curfew might be in Southwark—supposing it had one—Joliffe guessed he was well ahead of it as he went his way back to the Christopher. More lighted lanterns than need be hung beside and over doorways, that people not be discouraged in their comings and goings, he supposed, and surely the cold night seemed to be discouraging no one from seeking whatever pleasures were promised by loud voices and smoky light beyond open doorways through which sometimes laughter and often singing burst. Other possibilities were offered him as he passed, both by voices out of shadowed alleyways and bolder women in lantern-light beside some of the doorways, but Joliffe passed them all with no more than a smile and a shake of his head and was glad his own inn was a quieter place, turned to plain travelers and pilgrims rather than other ways of income. Coming into the place’s main room, he found perhaps a dozen folk among the various tables there, all in easy talk over their wine and ale while the landlord wiped down a cleared table and said friendliwise as Joliffe crossed the room toward the stairs, “Early back, sir.”
“Early back,” Joliffe agreed. “Early back, early to bed, and an early start tomorrow.”
“That’s the sensible way of it,” the landlord agreed. “A good night’s sleep is always the thing before taking to the road.”
Joliffe cheerfully agreed again, no matter that he doubted how much he would sleep tonight. He had too many thoughts running around and into each other in his head. Almost the strongest was: France! He was going to France!
But stronger, if no more insistent, was: in the name of all the saints, what had he got himself into?
Chapter 3
O
nly the first streaks of color were showing in the east as Joliffe passed through Southwark’s darkened and nearly empty streets to Winchester House, to find the palace’s courtyard lantern-lighted and bustling with servants and horses. By questions, he found the master of the bishop of Therouanne’s household among it all and presented himself. He was pointed toward the one baggage cart in sight and told to get himself on it. He did, scrambling over the tail-board as the cart lurched forward toward the gateway. Sitting himself on the nearest of the long chests roped in place there, he grabbed hold to one of the curved half-hoops of the canvas tilt to keep from being pitched about as the cart swayed into a turn outside the gateway, the carter snapping his whip over his horses’ backs.
From the back of the cart, Joliffe could not see where they were going, only where they had been, but he chose not to shout questions the cart’s long length to the carter or try to make his way forward over the chests and piled bundles. For worry his sack could be lost among them, he kept it slung over his shoulder, made himself as comfortable as might be—which was not much—and waited to see what happened next. Supposing the bishop—where in France was his bishopric of Therouanne, anyway?—meant to go by the pilgrim’s road to Canterbury and on to Dover, to take ship there for France, Joliffe expected a southward turn into the high street but it did not come. That confused him until the cart lurched to an unexpected stop, and with its rattling no longer in his ears, he heard waves slapping a wall and guessed where he was even before he thrust his head from under the tilt and found the cart was standing on a quay, the river lapping high against its pilings and at its end the masts and rigging of a ship standing black against the graying sky.
Along the quay and on the ship, men were going back and forth by lantern-light, doing things with ropes that Joliffe did not understand, but he did grasp that, rather than to the Canterbury road, the cart was come to the Thames and he was going to have a sea voyage some days sooner than he had expected.
He climbed from the cart. At the front of it, a man was asking the carter, “This the last of it, then?”