A PLAY OF LORDS

Chapter One

Taken all in all, this autumn of 1435 might not have been the best of times to first-come to London.

Or, then again, perhaps it was.

Joliffe supposed the difference lay in how much one valued a quiet life over a . . . not-quiet life. And given that he had chosen to be a player in a wandering company of players rather than settle into the other possibilities there had been for him, he had to suppose it was the not-quiet life he valued. Which was just as well, since quiet was what London presently and most particularly was not.

Not that London was likely ever a quiet place. Set tightly against the river Thames with its shipping out to all the wide world and back again, and crowded full with ten times more people than any other town in England, and with a good many of those people rich merchants and the rest hoping to become as rich, there was never more than a fool's prayer -- despite all London's churches and their clergy -- that it would ever be a quiet place. Add to that an in-gathering of lords and powerful commoners from all over England to the Parliament set to meet in a few days, mix it with word of how badly the war in France was presently going and the accompanying over-boiling of general anger at the newly traitorous duke of Burgundy, England's erstwhile ally, and Joliffe had no trouble guessing that London's noise and crowding were beyond even its usual froth and ferment.

The players had come into London only yesterday, part of Lord Lovell's household, a crowd of riders and carts and carriages bright with the Lovell colors of red and gold among all the other crowd of travelers, wagons, carts, and livestock that from a good three miles outside London had thickened and slowed each other into a crawl with much shouting but mostly good humour over what could not be helped, things being as they were. Joliffe thought that if the players had been on their own, if they had been the nobody they would have been here a few years ago, it might all have been too much and they would have turned aside before they ever came there. But to come as part of Lord Lovell's household meant they came as somebody. Meant, too, that once through Newgate's too-narrow gateway and into London's streets, they had not been faced with wondering where they should go and where they would stay. Lord Lovell had his own place kept for the times he was in London, and Joliffe had still been staring upward at the sky-scraping steeple of St. Paul's cathedral, giant over the lesser rooftops and towers and other steeples of London, when Basset jostled his arm and he found that Lord and Lady Lovell and the other riders at the head of the household train had turned and were disappearing through an arched gateway, the heraldic arms boldly painted over it telling this was Lord Lovell's inn.

The players were a small company and had been smaller, had been barely surviving lean times, before Lord Lovell took them into the safety of his service a few years ago. He was not one of the great lords of power but he had wealth in plenty, and under his protection Basset's small company had prospered. They mostly still traveled on their own with simply their own horse and cart around the countryside, coming only seasonally -- or when summoned -- to Lord Lovell's household. This time was the first he had summoned them to travel with him, with their own cart and horse left at one of the Lovell manors near to London, their hampers of garb and gear packed into one of the household's carts with some of the furnishings being brought to London, so that in the yard at Lovell's inn, Basset, Ellis, and Joliffe had quick work making certain their own hampers were stacked to one side and together, while Basset's daughter Rose kept watch over both the gathering of hampers and her son Piers, and Gil went to find out from the household steward or someone where the players were to stay in the several-storied buildings ranged around all four sides of the cobbled courtyard.

Being of somewhat less matter to the steward than the household furnishings and foodstuffs brought for Lord and Lady Lovell's comfort, it was a while before Gil came back with a stout, smiling man who said he was John Hyche and kept the gate here and they were to stay with him. "Or not with me, quite," he had said, all wide and welcoming. “What with the wife and children, you’d not much like that. But one of the gatehouse rooms that you can have all to your selves has been made ready for you. Come this way. I'll show you.”

Basset had said grateful things, and with John Hyche helping by taking a hamper's handle, they had been able to shift all their belongings out of the yard's purposeful chaos at once. The inn’s double gates still stood open to the street, deep-set under what had to be a long room overlooking both yard and street. Like the rest of Lovell's inn, the buildings flanking it were stone-built on their ground floors but of timber and plaster above, and it was into a small, stone-walled room on the gateway’s left side that John Hyche showed them, saying, "This would be the guards' chamber if there were need of guards these days, which there isn't, St. Erconwald be thanked. My wife and the younglings and I, we live the other side. Up there is a priest." He had pointed at the beams and floorboards overhead. "But he has his own stairway, so you'll have this place all to yourselves. Be able to lock the door, too, if you want. Mind I give you the key. There's the fireplace, too, see, and I've set by enough for your first fire, but I don't doubt you'll have to see to your own kindling and coal after this. You've your own bedding, I hope?" he had asked, worried, because the room was bare except for a battered joint stool, an equally battered wooden table, and the basket of coal and kindling sitting beside the small fireplace in one wall.

"We do," Basset assured him, with a nod toward the straw-stuffed pads lying over two hampers' tops.

"That's good then. They'll likely tell you about meals, if they haven't already. The jakes is the other side of the gateway. Water's to be had at the conduit in Cheapside, just off that way a ways." John Hyche had pointed vaguely away through a wall and added, giving Piers a grin, "At least you've a fine boy to do the carrying for you." He had looked around the bare little room again as if trying to find out something else to say about it but settled for, "You need anything, we’re just the gateway’s other side. You'll all do fine once you're settled in. He's a good lord, is Lord Lovell."

With ready agreements with that and assurances that everything looked very well here and that they would ask for any help they needed, the players had finally seen the helpful fellow out, looked at each other by the slight light of the single, small window set high on one wall, and heaved sighs all together that said "Well, here we are and not bad at all," without anyone saying the words aloud.

Used as they were to setting up camp or settling into a different place nearly every night, settling in here had not taken long. With their sleeping pads stacked against one wall, their hampers lined along two others, and their cushions for sitting tossed onto the floor, everything immediately needful thing was done; and Basset had looked at Piers bouncing impatiently from foot to foot and said, "We're not likely to be needed until later, supposing my lord wants us at all today. So shall we go have a look around?"

As Piers bolted for the door, his mother had caught him by the collar and swung him to a halt, saying firmly, "Together. Today we all go together."

And they had, although not so very far that first time. With every likelihood of being easily lost and there being so much to see at almost every step, they had settled for circling St. Paul's cathedral and that had proved to be walk enough. Besides that its spire, topped by a golden cross that flashed in the sun that came and went through wind-hurried clouds, was the tallest thing any of the players had ever seen, the church itself was as long as some villages they passed through on their travels and wider than Joliffe cared to guess. Its pale stone walls were cliff-high, arched all around by the spider-leg curves of buttresses and pierced with tall windows full of sun-reflecting glass. Buildings large in themselves but looking low and less against its size and grace were crowded around its flanks. Some had to be of the monastery of the monks who served the cathedral. Some were surely the bishop of London's palace. One was beyond doubting a bell tower, a peal ringing for mid-day prayers as the players were passing it, so that Ellis winced under the downpour of sound and said, "I'm going to tire of that fairly soon, near as we're staying to it."

"It will remind you to your prayers," Joliffe said in a pious voice, "and that can only be to the good."

"You being in such need of them!" Piers said; and ducked away from Ellis' friendly swing of a flat hand at his head and ran ahead without Rose calling him back because they could see Lord Lovell's gateway from there, the other side of a broad street with a busyness of people, horses, carts, and carriages among which Piers easily dodged, to disappear through the inn's gateway where the Lovell household's own carts and carriages, unloaded and empty now, were coming out, being taken out of the city until needed again, London being crowded enough without crowding more into it, Joliffe had thought as he watched them go.

He thought that even more so now, the next day, as he and Basset, Ellis, Gil, and Piers wove and jostled their way toward London's bridge in the wake of the two Lovell servants carrying the wicker hamper full of garb and properties needed for today's playing. Basset, as befitted the company's leader, walked with his head high and his tread firm, as if London were nothing more to him than any other place they had played, but Joliffe and Gil, coming behind, made no pretence; they stared all around them at everything. This being London, there was much to see and Joliffe was finding he loved the crowding and the sights and the surging excitement of it all. Ellis, to the contrary, was openly not so glad of it all. Head down and growling, he had one hand on his belt-hung dagger's hilt and the other gripped to young Piers' hood to keep the boy from disappearing into the crowd around them as they followed Lord Lovell's men and their hamper around a corner, out of one wide street into another that suddenly narrowed ahead of them, closely overhung with houses. A glimpse of sunlight on water beyond buildings let Joliffe realize with a start where the street narrowed it became other than a street. It was--

"London's bridge!" Piers exclaimed.

One of the men carrying their hamper looked back over his shoulder and said, grinning, "It is that. London's bridge and one of the world's wonders, so they say."

Not that there was at first anything of the river to be seen once they were on the bridge’s narrow roadway. The tall, lean houses were built shoulder to shoulder along both sides, with open shops fronting the street and, above those, each storey thrusting out beyond the one below it, narrowing the sky, some of them even grown together on their upper storeys so that the roadway became a shadowy tunnel. But the view from the back windows of those houses must be a wonder in itself, Joliffe thought, looking out as they did on the broad and ever-changing Thames in long views of London upriver and down. What the players might have seen down any short alleys between the houses was blocked by the flow and crowd of people, horses, and carts as thick here as on any other London street, there being no other bridge over the Thames for a good many miles. Only at a large gap beside a large church set at the bridge's mid-point was there a good chance to see more of the river, but there was no time for it just now, Ellis answering Piers' protest with, "We'll look longer when we come back."

The helpful servant said, over his shoulder again, "There's the drawbridge gateway ahead, and the drawbridge beyond it. You'll see the river there, if that's what you're missing. Then there's the south gate . . ."

"Is that where there’ll be traitors' heads on pikes!" Piers asked joyfully.

"Sometimes there are," the man granted, his grin matching Piers' eagerness. "On the drawbridge’s tower. Might not be any just now. There's not been a good execution for a while. Not one worth going to see, anywise."

"Hai," said his fellow, who had been paying heed ahead, steering them and the hamper around, instead of into, other people. "Trouble."

The players, being usually strangers wherever they were, had a weather-eye for trouble, since seeing ahead to it was their best hope of avoiding it. Among other things, they knew the sudden change in movements and sounds that warned that somewhere in a crowd trouble was starting and that it was time to be away from whatever was happening. Not that there was any warning or chance to be away from the burst of yelling and a sudden sharp scuffling among maybe half a dozen men on the drawbridge beyond the gateway ahead of them. Around whatever the trouble was, some people were crowding and shoving into each other, some drawing back as fast as they could, others crowding and shoving to get closer.

Piers would have been with the latter, wanting a better look, but Ellis kept hold on him, ready with the rest of the players to retreat swiftly if the fighting came their way. To Joliffe it looked as if the core of the trouble was five men or so who were yelling, "Burgundian! Burgundian!" as they struggled and dragged another man toward the bridge's railing, apparently intent on throwing him over.

"Damnation," Joliffe said.

He took a step forward, and Basset snapped, "Don’t even think it."

It was too late anyway. The Burgundian, if that was what he was, gave a great twist and heave out of his captors' confused holds on him, stumbled into the crowd on lookers-on, shoved through the closest of them, and tried a run for the London end of the bridge. Like hounds after a hare, his attackers gave chase, still yelling, "Burgundian!" and now, "Grab him!"

Some people tried, one woman swinging her market basket at his head as he dodged her, others catching at his clothing or arms. Others only wanted as out of the way as the players did. The Burgundian swerved and ducked among them all, and if he had been a slower or a stouter man, he would have had no chance, but was young and lithe, and as he came close past the players, Joliffe saw the desperation raw in his face; and Joliffe, without thinking, made what looked like a belated grab at the fellow that lurched himself into the way of a large man moving after the fugitive more purposefully than most. The large man jerked sideways to miss crashing into Joliffe and crashed into someone else instead, making a tangle in the way of the pursuing men who had started it all. Basset grabbed Joliffe backward from that by one arm at the same moment the talkative Lovell servant let his end of the hamper drop and sprang away in pursuit of the fleeing man, yelling with everyone else who was yelling.

"Hai! Mak!" his fellow called after him, but Ellis, without losing hold on Piers, picked up the abandoned end of the hamper and ordered angrily, "Move on. He can catch us up.” Adding in a mutter, “Or not, devils take him.”

The man obeyed while Basset let go of Joliffe, slapped him hard on the shoulder, and said, for no one else to hear, "Well done," which was better than Joliffe had thought to hear from him, because among the earliest things Basset had told him in his early days in the company was, "If there's trouble and it's not about us, then it's not our trouble." The Burgundian had surely not been their trouble, so Basset's approval surprised him, and not bothering to hide his grin, Joliffe said back, "You'd still like to box my ears for it, though."

"I would," Basset agreed and went to take Piers from Ellis, to help hurry their going, asking Mak's fellow as he did, "What and all was that about?"

"Some bloody Burgundian," the man grunted.

"Someone they knew? Some particular Burgundian?" Basset persisted.

"Didn't need to be. Maybe knew him from somewhere. Maybe just saw he was a Burgundian by the cut of his doublet. They're thick as fleas in London, are Burgundians. You get to know what they look like. Buying our wool while their duke sells himself to the French. Lower than dog turds, the lot of them. Should throw 'em all in the river and be done with ‘em. Them whose throats we don't just slit. That's what most folk are saying. Slit their lying throats and throw 'em in the river. Them and their rancy, prancy duke."

Walking beside Joliffe, Gil said to him, low-voiced, "If everyone feels that way, our play should go well enough today."

"It should indeed," Joliffe agreed and was pleased to think so. Last spring, when rumors of the duke of Burgundy's dealings with the French were spreading, he had written a short play making sport of the duke for abandoning Lady Honor in favor of Mistress Greed. Since then, as Burgundy's treachery became more open, Joliffe had made the play longer and sharper; and this morning when Lord Lovell had summoned Basset to him, to tell him he was sending the players, as a kind of gift, to perform for the bishop of Winchester at dinner today, he had also made suggestion they play their Burgundian play.

Since suggestion was as good as an order from him, the hamper was packed with the needed garb and properties, and as part of Lord Lovell's considerate bounty, two of his household men were carrying it. Or they had been, until Mak abandoned them for the chase. But he caught them up as they came off the bridge's far end into Southwark. Breathing heavily from the haste he must have made, he took back his end of the hamper from Ellis, saying, "He made it into St. Thomas' chapel. Took sanctuary. Even Burgundians are safe with God, seems."

Piers, dancing with curiosity, demanded, "Would they really have thrown him off the bridge?"

Mak looked back over his shoulder, merry-eyed with excitement as great as Piers' own. "Aye, they likely would have."

"He'd have drowned!" Piers exclaimed.

"Maybe not. With the tide going out, if they'd thrown him in upriver, he'd not have had much chance, caught in the water fighting its way through the arches. That's a thorough place to be drowned, that is. But they looked like they were going to throw him in the downriver side, see. That would have given him a chance to swim for it and maybe be picked up by a boatman who didn't know better."

"Always supposing he could swim," Joliffe said dryly.

"Aye. Supposing that," Mak agreed cheerily.

"Heed!" snapped his fellow, bringing him back to the business of getting the hamper where they were going, the crowd of people and carts as thick here as on the bridge and in London.

But Southwark here at the bridge’s southern end was not London. It was a town in its own right and, from all Joliffe had ever heard, a different matter altogether, the place where such things as were not welcomed in London were allowed, where folk came who did not want London's rich, ruling merchants staring down on all they did and telling them what they should and should not do.

Or – to put it briefly -- Southwark was where the brothels and hard wagering not wanted in London were.

But it was likewise the way into London from the south, and as the players followed Mak and his fellow the most particular thing that Joliffe noted was the number of inns, one after another, along the wide street, ready for travelers to or from the south and southeast coast and pilgrims bound to or from Canterbury.

Mak and his fellow were turning rightward now, into a lesser but still fine street running along what looked to be prosperous shops fronting more tall houses on one side and a tall stone wall standing blank-faced to the street on the other, hiding whatever was beyond it except for the high, leaded roofs and square tower of a large church that must loom over whatever lower buildings were around it. Joliffe thought briefly this was where they were going, but their guides and hamper went straight past its gateway and onward until, beyond where the wall itself turned away from the street and toward the river, there was a timber-walled inlet from the river, with landing stairs on either side with several small boats of various kinds tied up at them and a quick view of London across the Thames before another high stone wall started. But there was also a broad way between that wall and the inlet, and Mak and his fellow turned and went along it toward a wide gateway facing the widest of the landing stairs up from the river.

There being nowhere to go except through that gateway or into the river, Joliffe had no surprise when Mak and his fellow stopped outside the open gateway for Mak to announce loudly to the two red-doubleted guards leaning on their long-staffed halberds there, "Lord Lovell's players, come to play for his grace the bishop of Winchester!"

The guards gave no sign of being impressed. Their cool, disinterested glance at hamper and players said that far more important people than Lord Lovell's players came their way every day.

Joliffe did not doubt it. Bishop Beaufort – the bastard son of a royal duke of Lancaster – was not only bishop of Winchester but Cardinal of England and the present king’s great-uncle, a power in England's government these twenty years and more and very possibly the wealthiest man in either of the king’s realms of France and England. Certainly he was the man who loaned the royal government more money than anyone else was able to, with sometimes his loans the only thing that kept the war in France possible. Through King Henry's infancy and young boyhood, Bishop Beaufort and his nephew John, duke of Bedford had, between them, held the ambitions of John's brother, the duke Gloucester, in check; but Bedford was now dead, the war in France was in the worst trouble there had been since the burning of the French witch Jeanne d'Arc five years ago; and Joliffe expected that the king, at almost fourteen years of age, was probably beginning to have a mind of his own, let alone whatever the duke of Gloucester was now up to, and all in all, life must presently be very interesting for Bishop Beaufort of Winchester and Cardinal of England.

But his troubles were, happily, nothing to the players. Their only part in his life was to provide dinner-time sport for him and whomever were his guests this fine autumn day, and that was a chance that was beyond all but the wildest dreaming for a company as small and unknown as theirs. Yet here it was, it was happening, and Joliffe knew how much of his own outward calm and confidence was a pretence as he and the others followed Mak and his fellow through the gateway and into a large courtyard surrounded by fine stone buildings with blue slate roofs. Tallest was the great hall on the right, with tall-arched windows traceried with stone and a broad entrance up wide stone stairs finer than at any lord’s house Joliffe had ever played at. Judging by his own feelings and feigning, Joliffe could very well guess how much Basset, Ellis, Gil, and Piers were feigning their own outward shows of confidence as the five of them strode with heads up and backs straight across the yard as if they were certain both of where they were going and their reception when they reached there.

The thing to remember, as Basset had said before they set out from Lord Lovell's inn today, was that it was not where they played but how that mattered. "And if we play at our finest today, we'll be fine enough for any bishop," he had said. "Or the king himself, come to that, if he should be there. Which he won't be," he had added hastily to the dawning horror on Ellis' face. "Just you keep your minds on your playing and not on who's looking at you. That's what I'm saying. You do that, and we'll be fine."

Joliffe hoped so. He most assuredly did hope so...

READ CHAPTER TWO