Mary Gentle (13 page)

An experienced swordsman must expect to see younger challengers. To have been subjected to such acute humiliation by a younger man at Zaton’s, to have felt such intense and helpless hatred for him—well, no matter how my reputation hung in tatters, I had at least the consolation that it would be considered
natural
. Older duellists in time meet the man who will defeat them, and sometimes it is a remarkably gifted younger man.

I have been beaten by a woman.

Fumbling to return my rapier to the scabbard, I dropped it. I snatched it up again, recovering it from the sand, and succeeded at a second attempt. I felt on the edge of vomiting as the realisation finally sank in.

“We must clear up,” I said harshly, gathering my wits. “Drag the bodies into the sea. Take purses and any documents. The tide will make it look as if they are seamen from the wreck. And—
you
—wash yourself off!”

I turned away without looking at her again, strode down the beach, and reached down to grab the stiff doublet collar of the nearest man—Maignan’s killer, all the front of his doublet sopping red. I heaved him bodily after me as I went towards the waves. As I went, I stooped to grab another still-warm man under the sweat-soaked armpit and drag him, rejoicing in the plain strength that allows me to manhandle dead weight.
She cannot match this! She nor most men
….

It is no exaggeration to say I was bloodied from head to foot. I let that be my excuse for splashing waist-deep into the oncoming waves before I let the bodies go. I dipped my head, and ducked under the surface; rising to shake wet hair out of my face, and shiver under the bright sun.

Whether or not it would rinse blood out of my clothes—and how long the stuffed and padded garments would take to dry—I did not know or care. I stood, chilled, realising that I inflicted cold water on my body because of its rebellion. Because when I look at the young man who is a young woman, my prick stands proud, and I would die rather than let her see that.

I gazed out across the shifting waves. The sea-haze would hide the beach from the ship: the
Willibrod
’s crew would have made out nothing of what went on here. They would not suspect the skirmish, or murders; however a man chose to think of them.

Can I be as obsessed with her as when she was a boy? Impossible. Unnatural. Perverse!

Fighting the under-tow of the waves, I splashed back into shallow water. Mlle Dariole abandoned a body for me where the incoming tide touched its boots, and turned to trudge back to the others—
let her do a man’s work of disposing of corpses,
I thought bitterly,
since she is so ready to make them
.

I glanced down. The man’s hair had been muddy blond even before the sea soaked it. He had a close-trimmed beard, a doublet of plates, leather trunk-hose; all this along with a rapier that had snapped just below the extravagant pierced steel hilt. Sea-water turned all his clothing black.
I do not know his name, but here is an end to him
.

Dariole reached the remaining bodies, far over on the sand. The Nihonese foreigner was to the other side of me, poking along the weed that marked the upper tide-line.

He bent suddenly to the sea-weed again, disentangling something from the bladder-wrack. Metal flashed, and colour.

He scooped at the sand frantically, as if he expected there to be more; ran as far as the nearer rocks, kicking at the weed; apparently uncovered nothing, and fell down on his knees with a great shout of rage and misery.

I could not tell if the cry were anguish or aggression. Instantly, I drew my rapier and checked the beach.

Dariole—down-wind, and too far away to have heard shouting over the noise of the waves—stalked the Andalusian jennet as he picked his way across wet sand, leaving vanishing hoof-prints. She did not look.

No man else, except corpses, was visible out to where the sea-haze shut us in.

The foreign man cried out again.

I could not see his sword, or where he might have put it. Taking a firm grip across to my own hilt, aware that I had no certain guide to his reactions to anything, I strode wetly up the shore to the weeds.

A man with a sword is a source of physical danger; that is a truism worldwide. I judged his discomposure by the fact that he did not react to me walking up to him ready to draw steel. He got to his feet and brushed sand from his thin linen. I thought it as well not to comment on his lack of self-control, since he looked much embarrassed.

What he held was a helmet—the steel oddly coloured, and smothered in braid, but a helmet nonetheless.

He gazed up at me. Apropos of nothing that I could understand, he said, “You are very tall, even for a gaijin.”

“Yes,” I agreed, gravely.

He said a word that I did not comprehend; I had to ask him to repeat it two or three times before I properly heard it, and understood it to be his name. “Tanaka Saburo.”

“Rochefort.” There was no hint in his behaviour now about the helmet; he might never have howled. A helmet worn by a now-drowned comrade, I wondered?

“Have you found a dead body?” I struggled for the English. “Morte. One of your fellows?”

His expression was unreadable, a man of his own people excepted. He held up the sand-encrusted helmet. Made for a curiously deformed skull, by the look of it, but a helmet of war nonetheless. Out of instinct, I looked along the line of sea-weed.

“Hai.” Saburo nodded, sharply. “You are right. If there’s one armour, should be more, should be….”

He scowled, plainly searching for words.

“‘Cuirass?’ ‘Gauntlets?’ ‘Half-armour?’” I shrugged. “It’s a little old-fashioned to think so, monsieur, I grant you, but an armour should be complete. Is there no more of this?”

His features assumed an expression that could have been grief or fury. “The armours of gift are missing!”

“Armours of—”

“From Shogun-lord Tokugawa Hidetada to Emperor-English Iago!”

“‘James.’” I corrected automatically, and with that, concluded he had learned much of his English by way of men whose first language was Spanish. Another potential reason for distrust.

“Why do you throw those men in the sea?” Tanaka Saburo said abruptly. “The water is bringing them back up the shore.”

“It will be supposed they were sailors. From your ship, the wreck.” I stopped, then added, “Other men will come looking for these dead men, soon enough, when they don’t report back to their masters. I hope to disguise what happened to them for at least a short time.”

“Was bandits? Clan enemies?”

It was difficult to read his alien face. He was as wet as I. His head was bald at the front, and surrounded by long straggling black hair, more matt-black than my own. He swept the sodden hair up together as I watched, twisting it into a knot at the back of his head. His second term puzzled me.

“Enemies of my master, Monsieur Saburo,” I said, “if that makes them ‘clan enemies’?”

“Hai.” He grunted. Squinting down the beach at the remaining dead men, he added, “We have time, or not, take and prepare their heads for viewing?”

“Heads? Take
heads?
”

I goggled at this, and shook my own head. I saw now that he had two thick, black curved sticks put through the cloth sash he wore as a belt, and that they looked solid enough to conceal a blade such as he had wielded.

Tanaka Saburo shrugged. “There is no lord here to view them. The heads. Roshifua-san, we do not look for their horses? Man who holds them?”

I frowned, having answered that query already in my own mind. “He—or they—could be anywhere in this countryside. There’s no way to find them. And…their masters will not need a warning, to know that something has gone wrong here. They’ll know as soon as it becomes apparent their men are missing.”

Saburo glanced down the beach, where the bloodied sand began to be nibbled away at by wavelets and foam. I did not know if he were a man of keen intelligence, or merely a foreign version of the troopers I had commanded in the northern Low Countries.

“You killed many man,” he said. “Only the lady-sama killed more.”

I am not sure, but I think my expression was incomprehensible to him.

He added, “Will there be a port official? A magistrate? Coming out from the village?”

Not too stupid, then
. I nodded. “You are right, monsieur—if we are unlucky. If I am more unlucky, the master of these men here is close behind them, and expecting their report soon. Therefore, I cannot afford to wait for the tide, to board my ship.”

Abruptly, Tanaka Saburo dropped down on both knees, bending his spine and touching his forehead to the sand. He held the helmet in front of him. I confess myself taken aback. I stood frozen, hand on hilt, as he cried out something in his own language, then sat back up on his heels.

He pulled at his wet hair and his cheeks. “You would second me, if I were worthy! I am not. I am dishonoured.”

I was all on edge for him to spring at me, or else to injure himself; I could not tell whether this distress was normal for him, or what it meant.

“I have failed my patron lord!”

A man may flinch at a remark never meant for him. As I did, then.

“Messire Saburo,” I began.

He stood up, with a suppleness surprising in his age, cradling the helmet. “I have failed my lord. It’s up to me now to atone. For me to go to the Emperor-English and say, here is what little I have. I’ll apologise on my face and beg to return again to Nihon, and complete this mission.”

“There are none of your ship’s company alive?”

He shook his head. “Down by rocks, I see Ambassador dead.”

I put the lack of perceptible care in his tone down either to his being foreign, or having conceived a personal dislike of the man.

The Nihonese man said, “I can’t have the release of seppuku until I have completed my lord’s mission to
England
. Therefore, also, Rosh’-fu’-san—I can’t allow you to kill me.”

I hid a rueful amusement. “Is it so obvious?”

“This.” He pointed. “This is clan warfare, and you wish it concealed. If I stay here, I’m a witness. Your lord’s enemies will torture me, if they are like my own lord’s enemies. So I must either be killed by you, for silence, or leave this ‘Franz.’ I will leave.”

I made Tanaka Saburo that inclination of the head that passes for a court bow among equals. A shabby spy, fleeing from the authorities, and a civilised shipwrecked demon, are, I dare say, on an equal footing with each other.

He said, “You are too polite to a mere captain of ashigaru.”

I guessed
hashagar
to mean “soldier,” by his bearing. Speculatively, I said, “You go to
England
. Because your lord was, what, the ambassador?”

Saburo jerked his head in his aggressive nod.

As equably as I could, I said, “You are going to
England
, Messire Saburo—and so am I. I have contacts there among fellow nationals. I also know English noblemen at the court from when I visited there before, some six years ago. Messire, if I am disposed to let you live, are you perhaps disposed to take me as a guide to the English court?”

So that I may watch you, and consider if your death is necessary
.

His features gave me no indication how he considered my offer.

“If I am to hire you as—” He spoke another word I could not distinguish: I thought I made it out to be “ronin.” “Then I want no dishonour brought on me. Roshifua-san, I understand that you will be working for your lord’s interests. I ask only that they do not harm
my
lord’s interests.”

The noise of the jennet whuffling came across the sands. I turned my head, seeing M. Dariole leading him back as easily as a stable-boy could lead him towards food.

Tanaka Saburo’s head also turned in that direction. As if it had just occurred to him, he said, “You have no peasants—no servants.”

“No, indeed.” I tried not to show any emotion, gazing at the young woman.

Dariole grinned, catching the Nihonese man’s comment as she came up to us. “Rochefort can play the servant! Where are we going now?”

Before I could decide whether I would silence the Nihonese man or not, he said, “We go to England-land.”

“
England
? Oh, but, yes! I’ve got relatives in
England
, on my mother’s side of the family. We can stay with them!”

“If you have family, that is where every spy will expect the missing Mlle de la Roncière to run to,” I said crushingly.

The girl bounced on her toes like a much younger adolescent. “Not hardly: the Markhams haven’t seen me since I was five years old!
Besides, I’m not Mlle de la Roncière. I’m M. Dariole.
And no one would expect
me
to be in the company of M. Rochefort.”

“Markham” is a name I recall, I realised. From my time in London—is there not treachery of some sort associated with it, against the English crown? Albeit, it is a common enough family name….