Mary Gentle (18 page)

I winced as pain nagged at my groin. “I take it back. You have a superior patter to Nostradamus….”

Irrelevant details presented themselves in front of my eyes, as they will at such times. Sunlight casting a shadow from the gnomon onto the sundial’s face. The time, something past noon. And the worn letters cut into the bronze:
ME UMBRA REGIT VOS LUMEN
.
I am ruled by shadow, you are ruled by light
.

Fludd loosed my arm, and traced the words around the dial’s edge, his tenor voice reflective. “It is true, Monsieur de Cossé Brissac….
You
will be the light to lead us.”

The intensity of the fanatic blazed in his face. I gave him as stupid a look as I could manage, hoping to untangle clews from any words he dropped in his enthusiasm.

Fludd said, “I see further ahead than the necessary death of James Stuart. It is necessary so that certain other, more vital, things come about.”

He rested his ungloved hand on the sundial’s warm bronze.

“The old astrologers used to calculate disasters from the appearance of comets. There will be one such comet, in half a millennium from now, and when it appears in the sky, all human life and all human works will be…made extinct. These great extinctions have happened before. We are a new creation of God’s. He has destroyed others before through the power of the comet.”

Irreligious of you to wish to prevent it, then,
I thought, but didn’t say aloud.

“Now we’re given this way to help ourselves,” Fludd said. “What we do, here and now, changes the future. Your part in this is that you will kill King James.”

“That was tried.” I could not help a sardonic look. Rubbing ruefully at my crotch, I said, “If you are further Powder Conspirators, I am not about to play the part of Guido Fawkes. I do not like the end he came to.”

“Nor you will not have it.”

“And you know this, how?”

Every heartbeat that went by, the pain faded and my strength came back to me. Anger burned under it, though I kept it within strict discipline. I could break his thin neck in a moment, now.

“I cast the horoscopes of unborn futures. You will not kill me.” Robert Fludd spoke loudly enough that every man present must have been able to hear.

“Is it so obvious what I think?” Usually I have more confidence in my ability to hide my thoughts. “Or is it only that such a thing is the obvious thing to think, under these circumstances?”

“You aren’t a follower of the Art.” He shrugged. “I see in Time’s perspective glass. At a distance, at half a millennium, only the greatest and most significant catastrophes can be discerned. Close at hand—close, in Time—I can by this science tell what every man has done and what he will do.”

It felt theatrical to me, as if he and I put on a play or masque for the benefit of these mathematicians (if “Hues, Hariot, and Warner” were truly so) and their companions. The darker one of the two younger men, with the close-cut beard, watched me with unnervingly brilliant eyes.

“And so you know I will not kill you. Why am I here, messire?” I echoed Fludd obediently, calculating how I might best break out of this situation. Time to learn who M. Fludd is when I’m out of his company.

Kill Fludd, disarm the men with the pistols, take my weapons back; kill the others if necessary—

Fludd spoke. “I know I shall not die at your hands, Monsieur Rochefort. I have cast all calculations, and I know. The man who is to aid us in killing James Stuart, who is to strike the blow, is you. Aided by myself, and these men here.”

“Calculations.”

Political and religious conspirators are one thing, and God He knows I have falsely taken my place among many to spy them out. Such conspiracies when mixed with astrology, necromancy, prophecy, and prediction….

“You will excuse me,” I said civilly. “I had enough of this in the court of our late third Henri, as a young man.”

That King’s mother, Caterina de Medici, had—as well as her pet poisoner—her pet astrologer, and that hapless man Nostradamus. These things haunted my sleep when I was a boy newly at court. I have since learned to be more sanguine.

Each man present looked at the other.

That remark was expected, I thought suddenly.

“We have time,” Fludd observed. “It’s as yet only May the fourteenth.”

If anything could have raised a momentary shiver on my skin, with all this talk of prophecies, that would. It is mere coincidence that the true Gregorian fourteenth, ten days ago, marks the day that King Henri died.

“On the fifth of June, James’s eldest son, Henry, is to be declared Prince of Wales. It is his sixteenth year. He has his own court, Monsieur Rochefort,” Fludd added. “We of his faction require King James dead so that his son Henry can ascend the throne. As soon as possible after Henry is made Prince of Wales, you may kill the King.”

“Oh, may I?” I attempted not to appear sardonic. If Marie de Medici can procure men to kill her husband, it is no great surprise if Englishmen think they can again attempt the death of their sovereign. This time on behalf of their Prince—if he even knows anything of it!

I can accept, leave, make my way back to the out-parishes and the river, I thought, gazing as honestly down at M. Fludd as I could. But if I face having to search the whole of Southwark for Saburo and Dariole before I may leave, and pursue my plans against Madame the Queen Regent….

Then I must leave alone.

As if cautiously allowing the scheme credence, I ventured, “I do not see how it is to be done, sir. I’m a stranger here.”

“Naturally.” Fludd beamed, and there was a stir amongst his men.

Again, I’ve said something that was expected. I kept my gaze on Fludd. Expected, or predicted? But these are words such as any man in my position might say!

Fludd added, “You will need some days to plan. To search out the necessary details. You have a very few days: you must not delay.”

His stern voice lightened to confidence. “However, your business is spying; you’ve been at court here before. You will not have difficulty in getting access to court now. Then you will return and tell us how you will do this.”

Tell you how I will take wing and fly south with the pigs for the winter!
I reflected, allowing none of my incredulity to appear on my face.

“Take my purse.” Fludd undid the strings of his purse with a quick tug and held it out to me, open. I saw more silver than copper, and at least one gold English rose-noble. It was hard not to blink in amazement.
He is serious? Mordieu! Who knows from where manna will fall!

I put the purse away inside the pocket-bag of my trunk-hose, where thieves would not cut the strings.

All seemed plain enough in my mind. This Englishman and his fellow conspirators hold no hostage by which to blackmail me. They have given me more time than the few hours that Madame de Medici did. There is no constraint on me but physical threat. This Robert Fludd is, besides, as mad as a boar-hog in the springtide. Is he really fool enough to let me walk out alive, now?

“A spy must pay coin for intelligence, and you had none. I understand that.” Fludd’s eyes showed clear and intense under the spring sky. “I have calculated the day on which I will see you again; we need not arrange it.”

This stinks like three-day-old fish.

I let my gaze travel around the group of Englishmen. They stared at me with varying degrees of hope, expectation, and suspicion—although less suspicion than I would have displayed in their place.

“You are too trusting, Messire Fludd. I might take this money and vanish.”

“You might. You will not.”

I like this flummery less and less
. I pulled the purse out of my pocket and tossed it back to him. “I wouldn’t put it past you to be an agent provocateur, Monsieur Fludd, setting up this assassination to take all the genuine conspirators in your net.”

No man among them flinched.

“I will not be bait and be arrested with your money on me,” I concluded.

Fludd nodded thoughtfully. “Naturally you will not believe without proof. I have been at some pains to devise a proof that you will believe. I aim to convince you that I have calculated—precisely—the events of the future.”

Fludd began to fumble at his breast, undoing his long gown. It fell open. I saw him to be wearing an Englishman’s usual knee-length, voluminous trunk-hose, and a doublet of matching pattern, which made him not as poverty-stricken as I had been assuming. Fludd looked to be of a thin build, and of average height, which made his body appear slight. He had the hands and calf-muscles of a man who does not work for his living.

He struggled out of his gown, giving it to the small man he had called Warner. That done, he held his hand out to the dark-bearded younger man, who instantly drew his English broadsword. It was plain in construction; no guardrings on the hilt. I could not prevent myself reflexively stiffening at the presence of a drawn blade.

Fludd took the broadsword, his hand sliding easily under the knuckle-bow and closing around the grip.

One of the mathematicians—the man in his late middle years: Hariot?—frowned. Both servants of the Earl of Northumberland got very similar expressions.

The woman Lanier and the remaining two scholars gazed at us with expectant smiles.

The difference between them is that Hariot, and this Luke and John, know what they’re looking at. They see, as I do—by the way Fludd holds a sword, he’s a man averagely good in a knock-about at a London School of Defence. But even in a Paris salon, he would be outclassed. When it comes to a duellist of the top class….

Robert Fludd looked up at me.

“I’m no tall man of my hands, Monsieur Rochefort. You can tell that. But I’ll give you your German rapier, and you may try to fight your way past me. If you win through, no man will stop you leaving.”

I
’ve heard
that
before,” I murmured—but not too loudly, in case he should think better of giving me a sword.

Doubtless he thinks himself well-lessoned in one of the local salons. He may even be something of a local champion, some clumsiness put on for effect. And he has his men here. Which will make no difference, I reflected. Look at him. And I am Rochefort.

If he cannot fight, there will be some trick in this. Pistols, likely. But I will not wait to discover it.

Fludd gestured. The three mathematicians moved back, away from the gate. I opened my mouth to comment, and the two younger men lifted the bar out of its sockets, and pulled the gates ajar. The woman, her arms folded across her bodice, gave me a look I could not interpret, and stepped slowly to stand with the man Hariot, the hems of her gown and petticoats catching up and springing loose from the overgrown grasses.

“You need to know that I foretell everything.” Doctor Fludd spoke as an actor does, to me and to his small audience. The sun beat down from above, the heat of May paradoxically warmer in this
England
than I had found it in
France
, and I was grateful for my hat-brim sheltering my eyes: a man does not wish to be dazzled with a sword in his hand. I smelled the grass, the dew drying on it, and heard the sound of bees.

There is too much of “everything” for any one man to foretell it.

Strike through Fludd, kill the dark man John if needed, out of the gate and away,
I resolved, and stood very meekly while Aemilia Lanier took my rapier and dagger and harness from Master Hues and brought it to me. These being gentlemen, they would suppose me unwilling to attack a woman. And since I perceived no advantage in it, I did not.

The cut leather belt I mended by the temporary expedient of knotting it, since it was thin and long enough. The suspensor-strap needed considerable adjustment. No man was within five yards of me. Every part of my body tensed, alert for when whatever the trick was would happen—but I put my belt and hanger on, and drew the Saxony rapier, all without interruption.

The feeling of the solid hilt within my hand was immeasurable comfort.

Not out through the gate.
I revised my decision. Since I cannot, from here, see what’s on the far side of it, and it is too inviting. Over the wall, there to the side, where they will not expect it….

“I foresee everything,” Robert Fludd repeated, his intense eyes fixed on me. “You don’t know that, monsieur, or what a burden it is. Monsieur, tell me, what good does it do me to know that, half a millennium hence, in the same place where you took ship from France, the Normandy beach will run red with so many thousands more men’s blood?”

I did not openly flinch.
Normandy
.
Has he spoken to the ship’s captain of the
Willibrod
? This nonsense of the future aside, this man is far too well-informed for my comfort….

Fludd’s gaze didn’t waver. “Thus you see, I
know
what terrible years will come if King James stays on the throne, what English civil war…and what a disaster the rabble of Parliament will be—to England, and to the world. I know that the only hope we have is that James’s son Henry must begin to govern early.”

Sardonically, I put in, “Guided by such mentors as Doctor Robert Fludd?”

He flinched. That surprised me.

“Every man will say that, I suppose.” His chin came up with determination. “If the late Queen of England had listened to Doctor Dee, monsieur, we would not now be in these terrible times. There was only one John Dee. There’s only one of me.”

“There will shortly be one less than that,” I murmured, and without warning thrust straight in with a long forward pace, skewering his heart—

He was not there.

He moved to one side as I moved, not particularly gracefully. My counter-cut batted his heavy blade away by instinct. Simultaneous with my failure came the thought—
there’s my chance, gone; I missed it
—and I went seamlessly and smoothly back through guard and into a two-handed cut to slice his skull-bones apart.

At the same time, I let my field of vision take in his minions: who would draw, who would aim a pistol, which way I should dodge, who I should attack and overpower by storm—

No man moved. No woman neither.

Robert Fludd’s blade licked up and took mine, deflecting it just past his ear.

A lucky parry, I reflected grimly. Every man is entitled to the gods on his side once.

Across the unkempt garden, my gaze met that of Hariot. He had a tough-bitten traveller’s look to him, and had cocked his pistol—but seemed content to rest it and watch.

I might bet my well-being on the throw of hazard: Messire Hariot’s skill at pistol with mine at hurdling the tall wall. Or disarm Fludd. Use him as a hostage, rather than killing him—no: they’ll kill me if I do. He may be elf-struck, but I see loyal men here.

It disgraces me to put me in a position where I must butcher an incompetent!

Biting down on my temper, I lifted my blade again, engaged his wavering sword, twisted for a fast disarm that would wrench his wrist and remove the weapon—

He pulled the blade straight back towards himself, out of the way, barely avoiding the pommel hitting him in the stomach, in the tabs of his embroidered brown doublet. He slipped out of the disarm.

I bared my teeth in a grin. Very well, monsieur—that is
all
your luck for today.

I attacked without warning, a rapid flurry of thrusts: threatened heart, throat, eye, two more feints, and whip the blade out of his hand—

My point thunked into the ricasso of his blade.

He lifted his broadsword just in time to send the point of my rapier skidding off to one side.

My feet moved without my thinking: back a step into the camomile grass. In the warm spring scent, I stared at Robert Fludd.
There is something wrong here.
My body, if not my wit, screamed it at me.

“I never learned defence.” His tone sounded genuinely apologetic. “Although, when I was in
Italy
, I did sometimes go to see the masters play for prizes.”

“You studied defence in
Italy
?”

“No, monsieur. I have never studied to fight in general.”

“You have not? But no. You handle a sword too well for that. Merely—not well
enough
.” I made a cut at his arm, feinted, drove in over his blade—and my point skidded off his pommel as he just barely managed to interpose the shaped steel.

He should not have got there.
Something is wrong
.

That realisation crystallised decision. I burst into attack, all skill subsumed into that unconscious and total state of reaction; the hand and the eye controlling the duel, not the mind. The Saxony rapier, every facet of weight and balance familiar to me from long use, moved seamlessly, too quick for conscious thought. Men who live as duellists are apt to have sharp reflexes; I am no exception.

The blade skidded, thumped in my hand. My cut glanced off Fludd’s knuckle-bow as he held his sword, at the precise right moment, to his side.

My point scratched his blade, six inches from the hilt.

My final cut deflected up as he put his sword in the way of it—blocking with the very tip of the cross-hilt, where the steel is no more than the width of a fingernail-clipping.

I could have sworn he moved his blade too slowly to get there.
He has every lucky chance of fortune, every one in a million parry that a swordsman ever sees, every narrowest possible escape and turning of the blade
—

Deliberately, I stepped forward and lashed out without science. Coldly, with a two-handed grip; flailing like a peasant thrashing corn: hack, hack, hack.

The Saxony rapier’s inch-wide blade did not touch Fludd. He heaved his English broadsword up, not to directly block the cuts and thrusts, since he had evidently not the strength, but to deflect each harmlessly away.

The sun lay hot on the grass, pennants gleamed over the Southwark roofs, spring sun shone. I had the time to think,
This must be what it’s like to be an ordinary swordsman…

But unskilled men do not duel in this manner. No man handles a weapon like this! Whatever my mind might think of the matter, every reflex of my body, every shift of muscle, every reaction, knows his movements to be wrong. Timing is everything in a duel, and his timing…

Not off by virtue of being slow,
the realisation was forced on me. His timing is off because he is moving
first.

Always moving to counter a heartbeat
before
I strike home.

Fludd’s point jabbed lightly into my upper arm, passing my guard as if he knew to the breadth of a hair where my sword would be.

That he should touch
me,
Rochefort—!

Anger and panic bubbled in my veins. I confess the panic freely. He chose that—
chose
not to kill.

Ferocity rose up in me; I forced it down, and sliced his blade out and away, as he moved his steel back.

That left me momentarily forward, my weight distributed wrongly. I couldn’t shift back; my legs felt as if I stood in quicksand. It is a dozen years since I have been put so off-balance in a duel.

Fludd stepped in quickly, reaching for my hilt. For a moment I felt his gloved hand on mine, on the wire-bound grip. Caught wrong-footed, I put all my strength and quickness into yanking my blade up and back—and made a slicing shallow cut up his hand, as I wrenched free of his grip.

He swore, wrung his fingers, and took my sword with his other hand.

I felt the grip slide out of my hand, twisted in the exact wrong way for me to hold it, or even catch my fingers in the guardrings—and he stepped back, lifting both rapiers away together.

My chest heaved, breath and blood pounding together. I stared. My empty hands shook.

“Pardon me if I don’t continue longer,” Fludd said, panting. He looked down at his hand; his expression rueful. “I have the knowledge, but not the strength. Similarly with the death of King James. I can
know
anything; I cannot
do
everything.”

I said nothing, only staring at him.

“I didn’t study how to fight.” Robert Fludd’s breath hissed in his throat. “I cast my calculations, many times, over many years, and studied
this
fight.”

The meaning sunk through to me as I breathed heavily and stared at my sword in his hand. If a man could calculate what guards and thrusts and shrewd cuts another man will make in a particular fight—why, then, he might rehearse to counter them how he pleased. As many times as he pleases. A man with no skill at swordplay, a man who handles a sword as if it is a walking stick cut fresh out of a hedge, might defeat the greatest master, armed with foreknowledge of how that master will fight.

“Ridiculous!” My voice failed me. I nodded at the stain on his glove, where his cut hand bled.

“Ask any man of the theatre—one may rehearse a hundred times, but still….” Fludd looked, for the first time, sad. “Still, extra blood must be spilled, before success.”

I have no idea how long I stared at him: this man who has both injured and defeated me. Fludd held out my sword to me, hilt forward.

I took it, and for all the ache in me to see the blade curve brightly in the air and scatter his blood across the grass, I did not do it.

“We have one chance only.” Fludd’s breath rasped. His face had gone white, and the skin under his eyes a blackish-green. “One only. I don’t think only of today. Half a millennium, or a little more, or a little less…and a comet will appear in the sky, foretelling the extinguishing of us all. We’ll be wiped out by the hand of God, and justly so, the world then being ruled by warlords, despots, and tyrants. I’ve spent many years with these calculations, Monsieur Rochefort. I’ve only one way to avoid that disaster—to put Prince Henry on the throne, create a college of Hermetic advisors to him while I’m at his side, keep the line of Stuart kings
always
on the throne, and build up a society of peace and industry. Then we may work to spare ourselves the comet. Truly, monsieur, I don’t like it any more than you do that we have to begin by murdering James Stuart. But if we don’t, his son Charles will become king in less than twenty years, and then endless civil wars begin.”

The woman Lanier spoke, her voice apologetic. “I don’t like to call it ‘murder.’ Doctor Fludd, it is a righteous killing on behalf of the country. Like Jael killing Sisera with a tent-peg.”

I thought I caught a note of discontent in Aemilia Lanier’s tone. Jael is female, if I remember my Old Testament. I saw her companions did not like her putting herself forward. Fludd need not call on outside murderers: he would have at least one volunteer. And so….

“Why me, monsieur?” I said, as levelly as I could to a man who has kicked me in the balls. That his sword-hand might move in advance of mine, I put firmly out of my mind.

All three older men in this “conspiracy of mathematicians” made to speak at one time. Robert Fludd held up his hand for silence. He finished wiping his forehead with a clean-looking kerchief.