A Play of Treachery (37 page)

Why, then, had those who should have guarded most strongly against the marriage allowed it? He had Master Wydeville’s reason, for what that might or might not be worth. M’dame’s reason he was never likely to have, not being so foolish-bold as ever to ask it of her.

So.

This was a marriage that was going to make a great many powerful people very unhappy when they came to know of it, and they would likely do what they could in return to make the couple equally unhappy for it. For good measure, there were surely also some—such as the Armagnacs supporting the Dauphin—who would not care about the marriage itself, having nothing to lose or gain by it one way or the other, but be pleased for the trouble it made among their foes, while the duke of Burgundy would make what political use he could of the scandal.

There were reasons enough, then, to keep this marriage a secret as long as might be. But if Lady Jacquetta was indeed childing, the secret could not be kept much longer, come what may, nor the marriage be undone, no matter what angers there were.

Therefore there was no deep reason to kill to keep the secret.

Or was there? Why kill to keep a secret that would shortly, inevitably, not be a secret anymore? Perhaps the murderer did not know about the child. Or there was a reason why the secret had to be kept just the little while longer that it could be—some reason behind reasons, buried in the layers of ambitions and contentions among the powerful that he had only glimpsed or guessed at and maybe had no hope of understanding.

Joliffe turned back to what he did know. The narrow time in which Alizon’s murder and the attack on Remon had happened might be his surest way to the murderer. Whoever had done it must be someone of either the bishop’s household or Lady Jacquetta’s, because he had gone back to the
hôtel
after stabbing Durevis, and he had to have had a reason to kill both Alizon and Durevis when simply silencing Alizon would have been enough.

Or would silencing Alizon have been enough? Had she died for some other reason than Lady Jacquetta’s secrets? But if not because of those, then what? And why need Durevis dead, too? For revenge on him for being a spy willing to betray Lady Jacquetta? That was possible. And Alizon’s death seen as justified because of her intended foolish betrayal, even if she had not understood just how much of a betrayal it was, not knowing Durevis was a Burgundian spy?

But how would the murderer have known all of that about them? And how much more was playing out here behind what there was for everyone to see? The reason for Alizon’s death might well be hidden there. And if it was, how was he ever to come to it?

When the day had truly got under way for the household, he went to his desk after breaking fast and even made an outward effort at work until dinnertime took him and his fellows down to the hall for a Lenten-plain meal made the more subdued by the pall of waiting for the funeral that would come that afternoon. That might have been sooner in the day, but for a courtesy to his niece, Bishop Louys was to do it and could not until he had finished with some meeting of the council at the castle, and with no word yet of when the bishop would return, Joliffe was standing in talk with Cauvet and Henri in the hall before going their ways back to their duties, when Alain came up to them, nodded with vague respect and greeting at Cauvet and Henri, and begged at Joliffe, “Please, you must go and ask how Lady Guillemete does. I truly need to know.”

Henri said, “By the arrow in Saint Sebastian’s big toe, they will not kill you just for asking. Do it yourself. Master Ripon has his right duties.”

“I’m turned away at the door!” Alain cried. “No one will tell me anything!”

“Then there must be nothing you should know,” Cauvet suggested.

Plainly, Joliffe was not alone in being irked by Alain’s ways but he said, trying to sound resigned and pitying together, “I’ll go.”

“You belong at your desk,” Henri warned.

“I know,” Joliffe agreed and went anyway.

He made Alain stop in the long gallery and left him there, which proved a good thing because Foulke, on duty outside the parlor door, greeted him with a mock glower and, “At least you’re not that fool Alain. I’ve sworn I’ll throw him down the stairs if he comes bothering me again.”

“I’ve come on his behalf.”

Foulke rolled his eyes. “He’s not set you to plead with Lady Guillemete to see him.”

“He’ll settle now for knowing how she does. Although I can’t see the harm in him seeing her.”

“Ask M’dame. It’s on her orders no one goes in. Not that anyone with sense would want to. Near as I can hear, it’s a pit of weeping in there.”

“I have to tell the poor fool that I at least asked about her.”

“Your funeral,” Foulke said, then winced and added, “Or not.” His light scratching at the door was answered by Marie barely opening it and saying through the small gap, “What is it?”

“Master Ripon is here to ask how Lady Guillemete does,” Foulke said.

Marie paused, glanced over her shoulder, then opened the door a little more and beckoned to Joliffe. He had to slide in sideways, and she put out a hand to stop him until she had shut the door with great care. That gave him time to see Guillemete sitting at the window between Blanche and Michielle, twisting a handkerchief in her hands and staring at him piteously, before Marie, with a look toward the closed bedchamber door, whispered, “No one is to be here, but if you can tell Guillemete anything of Alain, do it quickly and be away before M’dame knows. Maybe it will help.”

Joliffe nodded that he understood, crossed the parlor, went down on one knee in front of Guillemete, and said, quickly and quietly, “My lady, Master Queton is desperate to know how you are. No one will tell him, so I have come in his stead.”

“Oh,” Guillemete gasped. She pressed her handkerchief-clutching hands against her breast, somewhere near her heart. “I want so much to see him. I
need
to see him, but M’dame will not let me. He
does
want to see me?”

“He’s been haunting outside the door, hoping for the chance,” Joliffe assured her.

Guillemete half-rose, as if to go on the instant. “I could go out to him now. I could go and be back before M’dame knew. I . . .”

Michielle grabbed her arm and pulled her back down, whispering fiercely, “You do not dare. Not now. After the funeral perhaps, but not now.”

Guillemete began to cry again. Blanche put her arms around her and said, comforting, “At least you had your time together the other day.”

For an instant Guillemete stared at her, at first confused, then stricken into a great sob of misery and even harder crying, burying her face in her handkerchief.

“
Idiot,
” Michiele hissed at Blanche.

“You’d best go now,” Marie said urgently to Joliffe, pulling on his arm.

More than willing to escape Guillemete’s tears, Joliffe stood up and let Marie herd him toward the door, but whispered as he went, “Is all this because M’dame is still angry at Alain for not going with her the other day when she went out?”

“What?” Marie said confusedly. “He went. Or if he did not, M’dame said nothing about it, was not angry at him.” She gave a fearful look toward the bedchamber and pleaded, “
Please.
”

He gladly slid out of the room, and she shut the door quickly at his back. Foulke, openly grinning, said, “Not eaten, then.”

“Not this time,” Joliffe said, overplaying relief. “But I wouldn’t care to chance it again.”

Foulke laughed and Joliffe went to satisfy Alain as best he could, finding him pacing the long gallery but breaking off and coming toward him demanding, “Did you see her? Did you speak with her? Did you tell her . . .”

“I saw her. I told her you are longing to see her. She longs to see you, too, and would come to you if they would let her.”

“If
M’dame
would let her,” Alain said bitterly.

Joliffe tried, “Things will ease after the funeral, surely.”

Alain granted sullenly, “I suppose,” and turned away without thanks.

Being rid of him was thanks enough for Joliffe, who went willingly back to his desk, even though questions old and new nagged through his mind. Always questions, never answers, he thought. If he could find answers as readily as he found questions, he would be further along by now, instead of still helplessly lost. When Alizon died, how many people had known M’dame was going out that afternoon? Had Master Wydeville had chance to have Durevis asked who had given Alizon word to meet him in the garden? Was it possible the demoiselles were all—or some—lying to him about which of them was where when Alizon slipped away to the garden? They were young; one of them might be strong enough to have stabbed her. But where would one of them have come by a dagger so readily, to have it to hand just when needed? Besides, Durevis had been certain it was a man who ran away after stabbing him. But what if he had been stabbed by someone else, not the same person who stabbed Alizon?

Joliffe gave a sharp shake of his head against that. That latter thought kept coming and he kept shoving it away, because if that was the way of it, then everything was even more twisted around and knotted. Let him get answers to the straightest questions and forget the more twisted ones until—Saint Genesius forbid—the more twisted were the only way left to go.

 

 

He accomplished little at his desk then, before time came to gather in the long gallery with others of Lady Jacquetta’s household and follow their lady and her demoiselles to the
hôtel
’s chapel for Lady Alizon’s funeral. What sun there had been in the morning was gone, leaving a heavily gray day well-suited to a funeral, Joliffe thought. The only brightness in the chapel’s gloom were the candles on their stands and the torches around Alizon’s bier, until even those were dimmed by the wreathing incense clouds thickening as the Mass went on.

He was not high enough in the household to have better place than among those crowded just inside the chapel’s door. Standing there, he could hear enough of what passed around the bier and at the altar but see only some of it, which suited him, but with most of his view blocked by the men around him, he only knew something untoward had happened when unexpected movement spasmed among the people somewhere toward the altar and Bishop Louys’ voice briefly broke off in the middle of a prayer. Another man’s voice rose, demanding, “Let me pass. Let me out!” and there began a shifting of people that went on even as Bishop Louys took up the interrupted prayer, until a moment later Joliffe was able to see Sir Richard Wydeville was shouldering his way toward the doorway, still ordering, “Let me pass. It’s too much for her. Let me pass,” carrying Lady Jacquetta in his arms.

She had not altogether fainted; her arms were tight around his neck, her face hidden against his shoulder, but assuredly she must have swooned at least somewhat, with the incense and torch-smoke to blame, Joliffe thought.

That—and that she was with child.

Her long skirts, trailing over Sir Richard’s arms to the floor, were hindering him as much as the press of people, too close-packed to shift readily out of his way. Joliffe, since he was near the door, took on himself to push people aside from it, first inside the chapel and then outside, where Foulke and Mathei joined him in making a way through the outer crowd of household folk until finally in the wider air of the great hall Joliffe, Foulke, and Mathei paused, and Sir Richard shoved past them and kept going.

Foulke and Mathei, guessing he was bound for Lady Jacquetta’s rooms, ran ahead to have doors open. Joliffe, from naked curiosity, followed among the perhaps half-dozen others, including Estienne, who were choosing curiosity over piety. They had reached the long gallery when Lady Jacquetta stirred in Sir Richard’s arms and must have said something because he said, “Of course, my lady,” and instead of toward her stairs, went to one of the windows and set her carefully on her feet but kept an arm around her waist while he unlatched and swung a window open. Lady Jacquetta, her eyes closed, leaned gratefully into the cold rush of clear air, breathing deeply.

Without looking away from her, Sir Richard swung his free arm, silently ordering everyone else to keep back. They did but were staring and talking with the excitement of it when M’dame, at last escaped from the crowded chapel, came in a grim rush, Ydoine and Isabelle behind her.

“Sir Richard,” she ordered, “help her to her rooms. Master Ripon, run to have the door open, and the window in her bedchamber, and stir up the fire there. The others of you are not needed.”

Joliffe elbowed away from the dismissed men and ran, met Foulke coming back down the stairs to find what had happened to everyone, turned him back with quick words, left him and Mathei ready at the parlor’s outer door to turn back the persistent curious, hasted to obey his own orders, and was kneeling at the bedchamber’s hearth, encouraging the fire into a blaze, when Sir Richard carried in Lady Jacquetta. Rather than to the bed, he took her to the window, lowered her gently onto the seat there, then sat beside her, leaning close in concern while at the outer parlor door M’dame firmly told those who had presumed to follow that far, “It was the incense. The too many people. Her grief. Go back. You should not have left the funeral.”