A Play of Treachery (39 page)

“Come,” she said. “You need tending.”

Joliffe, still feeling in repeating horror the thrust of his blade into Alain’s flesh, did not know what she meant. Only when she took his right arm and drew him forward did he feel the pain and, surprised, jerk a look down at his left arm where a long slit in the upper sleeve of his black gown was darkly wet with apparently his own blood. He made a strangled sound and let M’dame draw him from the bedchamber into the parlor and to the window. There she ordered him to sit.

With his legs gone suddenly shaking under him, he did, an appalled part of his mind trying all the while to refuse sight of Alain across the room. Trying but failing.

The squire had been put into a chair; was sitting braced at a rigid backward slant against its tall back, gripping the arms with white-knuckled strength and no longer staring at the dagger hilt still standing out from his doublet but up at Bishop Louys bending over him.

Joliffe vaguely supposed that was where all the men in the bedchamber had suddenly come from. The bishop, after changing from his funeral vestments, must have been coming to see how his niece did and had walked in on this. His men were now jammed together at the parlor’s outer doorway, kept there by Foulke and Mathei, but someone among them would have gone for a doctor by now, Joliffe thought. He was trying to think of anything but his arm’s increasing pain. Of anything but the pain and Alain. Of anything but . . . He made to fumble open his gown one-handed. M’dame put his hand aside and deftly undid it for him, then his doublet. Cauvet and Foulke appeared beside her and together helped ease gown and doublet off him, baring his shirt with its blood-soaked sleeve. Using the tear already in it, M’dame ripped it wide, baring his arm. Joliffe took one look at the slantwise slice across the flesh of his upper arm and turned his head away, sickened.

Foulke, on the other hand, said approvingly, “It’s not deep. With a good cleaning and some stitches, you should mend fine. Be stiff for a while, that’s all.” Then to M’dame more than to Joliffe, “What happened in there?”

“Master Queton went mad and came at me with his dagger.” She met Joliffe’s sudden look at her with a straight stare that defied him to say otherwise. “Master Ripon stopped him.”

Cauvet said, “You needed those lessons after all, Ripon. Well done.”

“I doubt Master Doncaster will be pleased,” Joliffe said, making a shaky jest of it. “I think he intended I go unwounded.”

“Better wounded than dead.” Foulke sent a sobered look toward Alain. “You’ve done for him, anyway.”

Ydoine appeared with water-filled basin, a perilously held pitcher of wine, and clean cloths. M’dame told her to set them down beside Joliffe on the window seat, told her to see what help Lady Jacquetta might need, and sent Cauvet and Foulke away with thanks and, “People will want to hear from you what happened.” With them gone, she said to Joliffe, “I will only clean this and bind this for now. The surgeon can see to the stitching.”

Joliffe accepted that with a silent nod and made teeth-gritted readiness for what would come, as across the room Bishop Louys’ voice rose, insistent at Alain.

“You must confess. You are going to die. If you do not confess, I cannot shrive you and save your soul. Do you understand? You
must
confess.”

Alain, braced in the chair as if trying to back away from the pain in him, said, his own voice rising, choked and wild, following his own thoughts as if unhearing Bishop Louys, “I said she was lying. She laughed. She said it would be no secret soon enough. She said she was going to tell him. She laughed.” He writhed and gasped out, “Oh, God.
Pain.
” He seemed unable to get air enough into his lungs but panted, “She was going . . . to . . . tell him. It. Hurts. It . . .”

He made to grab the dagger’s hilt. Bishop Louys caught his hand and held it in a firm grip, demanding, “Who? Who was going to tell? Tell what to whom?”

M’dame pressed a wine-soaked cloth to Joliffe’s cut, ordered, “Hold that there,” and left him, going rapidly to Bishop Louys and saying something close to his ear.

He gave her a sharp and startled look. She returned a stare that he met for a long moment before he swung around and ordered at the men still at the parlor doorway, “Out. Everyone. Let in the surgeon when he comes. No one else. Out.”

They went. Alain had come enough back from wherever he was going to glare at M’dame and choke out, short-breathed, “
You
. You told me. I was to stop her. You said. She shouldn’t. Tell Remon anything.”

“You only had to keep her from meeting him,” M’dame said coldly. “I did not tell you to kill her.”

“She went. Before I could stop her. She was going to tell him. Even after I followed her. There. That lie. Those lies. She. Said I was a fool. That Lady Jacquetta . . . Lady Jacquetta . . .” He coughed, gasped with the pain of it, coughed again, and blood came out of his mouth.

Urgently, Bishop Louys said, still gripping his hand, “You have to confess. You have to make contrition. Then I can absolve you. Do you understand? You are going to die. I’m trying to save your soul.”

Alain, laboring for breath, stared at him as if unable to make sense of that until a spasm of pain stiffened him. Braced back in the chair again, he gasped, “I killed. Her. Because she was. Lying. But she wasn’t. In there. I saw. She.” Tears rose and spilled and washed down his face to mingle with his blood beside his mouth. Struggling for air enough for words, he gasped, “My lovely. My lovely. Lady. How could. She. With him. How . . .”

He coughed and more blood came, strangling off his words. Bishop Louys, maybe taking what he had said for sufficient confession and contrition, set to steadily praying, signing the cross again and again over him.

M’dame returned to Joliffe, took the cloth, put his hand aside, and set to cleaning the wound. Fighting to keep his words steady, he asked, low-voiced, “Was that the way of it? You set him simply to keep Lady Alizon from Master Durevis?”

“I told him to keep her from going to him,” M’dame said, going steadily on at his arm. “That was all. He failed at it. So he followed her to the garden. Angry at him for that, she foolishly told him what he did not want to hear about Lady Jacquetta. Then she mocked at him for doubting it. He lost his head and in his own anger killed her. Then he waited to kill Master Durevis, too, because to his mind it was Master Durevis’ fault he had killed Lady Alizon.”

“How long have you known all this?”

“He told me that day.”

“But you told no one.” Not even Master Wydeville? he did not ask.

“There were still Lady Jacquetta’s secrets to keep.”

“They can’t be kept much longer.”

“But for as long as they can be, they must. When there was no more need for silence, I would have told, if he was not found out before.”

Only the slightest tremble in M’dame’s voice betrayed she was not as steady as she outwardly showed, and somewhat less harshly than he might have, Joliffe said, “Meantime you meant to keep him from Guillemete.”

“He could not see why he should not talk with her, despite he had killed her sister. I could not allow that.”

She covered the wound with a folded pad of clean cloth and began to bind it in place with a strip of other cloth. The pain of that welcomely distracted Joliffe from Alain’s increasingly desperate struggle to breathe, but it also kept him from more questions before a bustle at the outer door brought in a man who must be the surgeon, carrying a box that would have his implements, and a priest from the chapel, carrying another box that would have the things necessary for the Last Rites. But from somewhere else Master Wydeville was also suddenly there, gripping Joliffe by his unhurt arm and lifting him to his feet, saying, “Best you be out of here. M’dame, too.”

Both obeyed, M’dame gathering up Joliffe’s doublet and gown and following as Master Wydeville took him back into the bedchamber.

Lady Jacquetta was now on the bed, propped up on pillows, with Sir Richard sitting beside her, his arms around her as she sobbed against his shoulder. It was a quiet sobbing, though, and Ydoine and Michielle stood by, ready with a damp cloth and a goblet. A glance must have satisfied M’dame that she was not immediately needed there, because she asked Master Wydeville, “What now?” with a look at Joliffe.

“I’m sending him to my house. Best to have him well out of the way for now.” Master Wydeville nodded at Joliffe’s doublet and gown. “Let’s have those on him as best we may. Master Ripon, you will keep to your feet, no matter how much you feel like falling down. Do you understand?”

Joliffe understood but did not know if he answered except by staying upright. Nothing around him seemed fully real. He found he had begun to shiver and could not stop and let them dress him, making small effort to help them nor resisting when Master Wydeville led him to the corner stairway and down it all the way to the garden, where he was given over to Pierres, who somehow was waiting there, and took him from Master Wydeville and away.

Without Joliffe being quite clear about any of it; they came to Master Wydeville’s house. There, he was grateful beyond measure when allowed to lie down on a bed in a room that turned slowly around and around him while Pierres piled blankets over him and brought a fire-warmed brick to put in the bed beside him. The shivering, that had been coming and going, stopped, and Joliffe, cradling his arm that now ached rather than outright pained, would have welcomed sleep’s oblivion as escape from what he kept seeing in his mind, but a surgeon came instead of sleep, and he had to sit up and be undressed again and the wound unbandaged for the surgeon to see. The man, after a little prodding that reawakened all the pain, pronounced the wound well-cleaned and stitched it closed, bandaged it again, told him to use the arm as little as might be for a few days, gave him a draught to dull the pain, and left him to Pierres, who put him under the blankets again with a newly-warmed brick.

“Sleep,” Pierres said.

Whatever the surgeon had given him to drink made that order easy to obey, Joliffe vaguely hoping as he slipped away that when he awakened, all this nightmare would somehow never have happened.

D
espite the surgeon’s draught, Joliffe’s sleep was unquiet and shallow, and he awoke from it to find Master Wydeville standing over him, a lighted candle in his hand and darkness beyond the chamber’s window.

The thought with which Joliffe had gone to sleep was the first that came to him as he came awake, and he asked, “Is he dead?”

Master Wydeville set the candle down on a chest beside the bed. “He’s dead. The surgeon said there was no hope. So when Bishop Louys had finished with him, they took the dagger out and he died.”

Joliffe did not know what he felt and tried to hide he was feeling anything by struggling to sit up. Protecting his hurt arm made him awkward, and Master Wydeville helped him, shifted the pillow to behind his back, then said, stepping away but watching his face, “You have not killed a man before this.”

“No. I never have.” And wanted never to do it again, wanted to say it had happened without he meant it to, that he had simply done what Master Doncaster’s lessons had taught him to do.

But he had known those lessons were for that. Their whole purpose had been how to kill and keep from being killed. Now he had done as he had been taught, and all he wanted was to be rid of memory of it.

But that was hardly something he was going to say to Master Wydeville, and he said instead, “It shouldn’t have come to killing him. If I had sorted out sooner that it had to have been Alain in the garden, it wouldn’t have come to my killing him.”

“Could you have sorted it out sooner?”

Joliffe had to stretch his mind to think back across the wide gulf between then and now before he was able to answer slowly, “The last piece, the one that told everything, I only had and fitted to the others just before he came into the bedchamber.”

“Then I would say that you sorted it out in good time. Would you have understood so quickly what Alain meant to do and moved in time to stop him, if you had not worked your way to knowing his guilt? And remember it would not have come to killing him if he had not chosen to play the utter fool there. Because he meant to kill again, didn’t he?”

Sharp-edged memory flashed in Joliffe’s mind. Yes, at that moment Alain had assuredly meant to kill. Against whom he had been set was less sure, whether Sir Richard or Lady Jacquetta or maybe both of them if he could, but yes, he had been intent on killing, and no matter what Joliffe felt about having killed him instead, it was better than living with having failed to stop him.

That was what Master Wydville wanted him to see, and he did and accepted it but could not help saying bitterly, “M’dame knew. She knew all the while what he had done.”

“So she has told me, now. Do you understand why she kept it secret?”

“To protect Lady Jacquetta. To protect your son. Even though their marriage can’t be secret much longer.”

As if he did not hear the accusation in Joliffe’s voice, Master Wydeville answered evenly, “Gain of even a little more time helps.”

“Helps what?”

“To have things in order for their leaving here. They’ve known all along they cannot stay in France, that it will have to be England for them. Now, with the child coming, they will have to go very soon.”

“Did Bishop Louys know their secret before today?”

“No. Nor does he fully know it now.”

“How could he not? Alain’s babbling surely gave it all away?”

“As you say, it was babbling. I have since made suggestion to my lord bishop that, for this time being, he might do well to let it go at that.”

“He accepted that?”

Only after a noticeable pause did Master Wydeville answer, his gaze steady on Joliffe, “My lord bishop and I have worked together a long while. He was willing to take my advice that present ignorance could serve him well in future trouble. Master Ripon, Alain Queton was a fool. He chose to live by his passions, forgoing reasoned choices. He killed Lady Alizon for no good reason. He tried to kill Remon Durevis with even less reason. Today he meant to kill again if he could, simply because he could not bear his passions nor bother to think through what he intended. He was a fool and he died for it, and if you had not killed him, he would have died just as surely but more slowly at his execution. Let him go from your mind.”