A Play of Treachery (33 page)

Marie lifted her cheek from the top of the dog’s head. “He and Alizon, they . . . since Shrovetide . . . they . . . liked to be together when they could.”

“Now he’s missing,” Isabelle said. “And there’s thought . . . some people think . . .”

She started to cry. Marie joined her. Feigning confusion, Joliffe said, “But he’s been gone from Rouen these several weeks, with all the others.”

“They came back two days ago,” Ydoine said. “Or some of them. Only for a little while, without time allowed them to come here. We wouldn’t even have known they were, except M’dame and I chanced to meet Sir Richard at the goldsmith’s when we were out yesterday.”

“M’dame went out to a goldsmith?” Joliffe asked, still playing ignorant. He had what Master Wydeville had told him, but he wanted to hear it from this side. “I would think there’s not a goldsmith in Rouen who wouldn’t gladly come here with his wares.”

“It was about a birthday gift for Lady Jacquetta,” Ydoine said. “That could hardly be done here without she knew everything. So M’dame went out. She stopped at a silversmith’s, too, and bought four silver spoons to send to a godchild, for excuse.”

“Was Sir Richard at the goldsmith’s about a birthday gift, too?” Joliffe asked as if only trying to make easy, distracting talk.

“He just happened past and saw us,” Ydoine answered. “Then he walked us back to here, but could not come in, which grieved us all. But he had to be back to the castle, he said. He left us at the gate.”

“And you came in and found Lady Alizon was missing,” Joliffe ventured.

“We came in, and Lady Jacquetta was just back from the chapel, and M’dame showed the spoons she had bought and said we had met Sir Richard. My lady asked how he did, and they talked of that a little, and then . . .” Ydoine looked around to the other women. “That was when M’dame asked where Alizon was, yes?”

“She asked before,” Marie said. “When she first came in. Remember? But then she had to show my lady the spoons and didn’t have answer until afterward.”

“If we’d paid heed earlier and looked for her,” Blanche said, choking on tears, “we might have found her before—found her in time to—”

“Would we have?” Ydoine demanded at Joliffe. “Blanche keeps saying that, but would we have? Wasn’t it long too late even before we began to look?”

“It was surely far too late,” Joliffe said, and possibly it was, but he was following his thought about whether Sir Richard could have had time to leave M’dame and Ydoine at the
hôtel
’s gate, go up the street and follow the riverside path to the door in the garden’s wall that was already unlocked for Durevis’s coming, go in, kill Alizon, wait for Durevis, stab him, and be away, with time after that for Durevis to recover enough to leave before Alizon’s body was found. It might have been possible. In the chill of the day, Alizon’s blood might have congealed even faster than Joliffe guessed that it had. But it all hung on Sir Richard knowing that Alizon and Durevis were going to meet and when the garden door was going to be unlocked.

And on him having a reason to want them both dead.

And why would he have encumbered himself with M’dame and Ydoine? If—as Ydoine said—he happened on them in passing, he could have gone on passing or made excuse not to accompany them back to Joyeux Repos.

But of course Durevis was certain whoever stabbed him had run from the garden toward the house. That would not be Sir Richard.

Supposing Durevis was telling the truth.

“What’s thought,” Ydoine said, “is that Remon must have sent word to Alizon to meet him secretly. Otherwise why would she have gone to the garden yesterday?”

“And now he’s missing and she’s dead,” Foulke said grimly from the doorway.

“So it’s thought he met Lady Alizon and killed her?” Joliffe pursued.

“Yes,” Ydoine said as if weary of the question.

“But it was truly too late to save her even before we began searching for her?” Blanche pleaded at him. “Truly it was already too late?”

Joliffe had never noticed her to have many thoughts, and so she must cling tightly to the few she had, he thought. She was surely clinging to this one, and to help her move onward from it, Joliffe said in a deliberately broken voice, “I’m . . . certain, my lady.”

Blanche missed it, but Isabelle said instantly, “Oh!” and clamped a hand onto Blanche’s wrist. “He saw her. He does not want to remember. Let him be.”

“But Lady Jacquetta saw her, too,” Blanche protested.

“Would you dare to ask
her
to remember?” Ydoine demanded. “No. Then do not ask him either. Think how you would feel if it were you being asked.”

Blanche’s eyes widened and her mouth made a silent O as that new thought took hold on her.

Joliffe judged that if the secrets Alizon had been delightedly hoping to tell Durevis did truly exist, Blanche would not be someone likely to suspect them—was unlikely to see a secret even set openly in front of her unless it came with bells and ribbons on it. But others among the demoiselles were sharper—Ydoine for one, certainly. If those secrets did exist, they surely had to do with Lady Jacquetta’s household because Alizon was never elsewhere, and now—suddenly and belatedly—Joliffe wondered who else among the demoiselles might know them. Because if Alizon was dead because of them, whoever else knew them could be in like danger. Come to that, in how much danger would he be himself if he came close to them?

Rather than following that thought, he chose instead to play off Blanche’s dismay by bowing his head and saying, still brokenly, “I just keep hoping . . . hoping that . . .”

“That she died quickly,” said Foulke helpfully from the doorway.

Joliffe held back from giving an irked glance his way. Instead he shook his head and said, “No, not that. I mean, yes, I hope that. But . . . I just keep hoping that she was happy in her last days. Or her last day.”

That was crudely done, he knew, but was rewarded as he raised his gaze to see looks passing hither and thither among the demoiselles. There was uncertainty, questioning, some surprise, he thought—but no guilt, no sudden wariness; and when Michielle said, “I suppose she was, yes. She was just as always,” a general nodding agreed with her, except that Marie added, “I thought she was very merry yesterday and trying to hide it.”

“That was because she had her secret hope of meeting Remon.” Blanche sighed.

“It was a fool thing for him to be doing, meeting her like that,” Foulke grumbled.

“It was even more foolish to have killed her!” Ydoine flashed back at him.

“Why did he?” Joliffe asked with an edge of anguish meant to draw answers.

“We don’t
know
,” Isabelle cried back at him, and Marie said, “We’ve talked and talked it over. We thought at first it might be because—”

She broke off as if away from something that should not be said aloud, but Blanche said, “She was not, though. Lady Jacquetta asked the coroner outright.”

“Not with child,” Marie explained, on the chance the men had not understood.

“Was there maybe someone jealous of her meeting Master Durevis?” Joliffe tried, trying to watch everyone at once and seeing looks again pass among them but again not as if hiding anything, only silently asking each other what they each thought, before there was a general lifting of shoulders and shaking of heads, and Ydoine said, “No. We would have already told if we thought there was, but there isn’t.”

They knew each other very well, these demoiselles who shared each other’s lives hour by hour through most of every day. Secrets must be very hard to keep from each other, Joliffe thought. What could Alizon have known no one else did? And how had she come by it?

“So it had to be Remon,” Isabelle sighed. “We just do not know
why
.”

“Or maybe it’s that someone has killed him,” Marie said rather hopefully. “Then threw his body into the river, and that’s why he has not been found. Then they killed Alizon, because she saw them do it. Or . . .”

“If Remon is missing, it’s because he’s guilty,” Alain said angrily, unnoticed in the parlor’s outer doorway until he spoke. “He went out from the castle yesterday afternoon and hasn’t come back. What else can it be but he killed Lady Alizon and then fled? If ever
I
find him, I’ll kill
him
!”

“Oh,
you
,” Marie said scornfully.

Alain went red-faced. He started angrily, “I—” but from the bedchamber’s doorway across the parlor, M’dame said sternly, “We do not need foolish talk of killing here.”

An instant hush took everyone, and at a sharp gesture from M’dame as she stepped aside from the doorway, those not already standing stood up, and everyone together gave deep courtesies to Bishop Louys and a priest coming out of the bedchamber. The bishop swept past, but the priest paused long enough to make the sign of the cross and a murmured blessing over their bowed heads before leaving, too. As the demoiselles rose and Joliffe, Alain, and Foulke straightened, M’dame gestured for the demoiselles to go into the chamber and said, “Master Ripon, my lady is ready to be read to for a time. You may come, too. No one else, Foulke, until my lady says otherwise.”

Alain started forward.

“No,” M’dame said at him. “Not you either.” She turned away into the bedchamber with a single, sharp beckon for Joliffe to follow her, and he did, leaving Alain standing beside Foulke with a stiffened, stricken face.

I
n the bedchamber, Joliffe saw that M’dame was undoubtedly right to spare Alain, who would have been both discomfited and probably useless here among the weeping now being shared by Michielle and Blanche and Guillemete, all clinging together in the middle of the room while Marie sniffed heavily as she handed the little dog to Lady Jacquetta sitting on the chest at the bedfoot, the other dog nestled in her skirts. Even Ydoine, gone to pour a goblet of wine at the table beside the wall so that her back was to the room, had a betraying shudder to her shoulders, as if struggling against tears.

“All is decided?” Marie asked faintly.

Lady Jacquetta nodded. Her little dog pressed to the side of her face, she looked to Joliffe, and said, “Read to us, please.”

M’dame was already bringing him a book. He had finished
Reynard
and begun an
Alexander
before Lent had brought its different sort of reading, but it was the
Alexander
M’dame now gave him
,
and he took up the siege of Porus’ city with its walls of gold and palace gates of ivory and ebony. Even if hardly suited with the black misery of the room, at least it was other than the grief and he read strongly and was nonetheless glad when after a time Lady Jacquetta held up a hand to silence him and said, “There is enough for now. My thanks.” She looked around at her women. “Our thanks.” And added as Joliffe bowed in answer, “Ydoine, give him some wine, that he not go from us thirsty as well as tired.”

He had been searching, while reading, for a reason to keep him there, to give him chance to ask more questions, and he took this one gratefully, saying, “Thank you, my lady. I can read more if you like. I’m thirsty, yes, and grieving with you, but not tired.”

“Grieving with us,” Lady Jacquetta said, taking that up as he had hoped she would. “Yes. More than others may. You were there. You found her. You saw all.”

Hoping to keep the talk to yesterday, Joliffe demurred, “I was only one of those who found her. Foulke and Master Queton were there, too.”

Lady Jacquetta lifted one hand, dismissing their part in it, saying, “They only saw that she was dead, then left her. You stayed with her.”

Joliffe wanted to defend at least Foulke but instead tried, as Ydoine handed him a filled goblet, “I understand there’s search for Remon Durevis.”

All Lady Jacquetta’s ladies became suddenly interested in their laps or hands. Lady Jacquetta flashed a sharp look around at them all and said, her voice suddenly hard, “Yes. I hoped his time gone from here would let passions cool between him and Lady Alizon. M’dame had even spoken to her about it. To no good, it seems.”

Guillemete faltered, “My lady, they had talked of betrothal. They . . .”

“Pah! There could be no question of that, and Remon well knew it. So did Alizon, or she was a fool.”

“My lady,” M’dame reproved, but Lady Jacquetta was already crossing herself, saying a quick prayer for forgiveness for ill-speaking the dead.

Joliffe copied everyone else in echoing her gesture, but asked as they finished, while he still had the chance, “How did she know to meet him, though? Surely there were no open messages between them.”

“That has been asked,” Lady Jacquetta said. Her accusing look went around her ladies again. “No one seems to know.”

Blanche protested, “We don’t!” and Isabelle added unhappily, “We’ve told all we know of it. Truly.”

“You should have kept her from going,” Michielle said, earning resentful looks as Blanche protested, “We didn’t know it would come to this!”

“No,” Lady Jacquetta agreed. “You did not know it would come to Alizon’s death. But to her disgrace—that you had to know was possible.”

“She would not have let herself be used that way. Never!” Guillemete cried from her handkerchief.

But Michielle said, hushed with horror, “That may be why Remon killed her. Because she would not let him . . . use her.”

“But we don’t know it was Remon who killed her!” Marie protested. “He may have been killed, too, and that could be why Alizon was killed. Because she was with him.”

That was a theme Marie had followed in the outer chamber, Joliffe remembered, and for something different he tried—deliberately sounding hapless and hopeless, “Or Master Durevis was killed because
he
was with
her
. But that brings it back to who would have reason to kill her, doesn’t it?” He looked around at all of them and finished feebly, “And no one did, did they?” on the chance of catching some betraying look somewhere.