Mary Gentle (2 page)

I
t is not every man who sets out to kill the King of France and begins by beating his own servant.

“Messire Valentin!” Gabriel Santon protested, staring up at me from the floor as if Fate and Chance together had both kicked him in the stomach, rather than I.

I can see I will have to do better than this.

I strode across the bare boards to the window, feeling the chill of the wooden floor through my hose. If I had more resolution, I would have waited until my boots were on and kicked him then.

Spring of the year 1610: the shutters, open, let in the smoke of every man’s breakfast cooking-fire, obscuring the Paris roofs with the common early morning haze. For all that, I could still see the shadow of my watcher down under the overhang of the house across the street, where he (or another of the Queen’s men) had been all the sleepless night.

“Shave me,” I ordered curtly, and turned away from the cool May air, back to the fugginess of the room. The scent of horse-dung followed me, and the sound of raucous cockerels proclaiming dawn. I set myself down on the room’s one bare bench, deliberately turning my back on Gabriel.

I have no way to leave these lodgings without being observed, front entrance and rear,
I thought—as I had been thinking for the past five hours, since the moment when Queen Marie de Medici’s men smirked and left me on my own doorstep.
So, what is to be done?

Gabriel’s large fist shoved a jack of ale into my hands, and then he stepped behind me, and I heard the clatter of the basin as he filled it from the kettle of heated water brought up from the communal kitchens. I could have taken the risk of sending him out for food—

—but they will think I am sending him out with a warning. And they will put a dagger in his kidneys before he gets to the bottom of the street.

His tread was heavy on the floorboards, as befits an old soldier grown fat in my service. Gabriel was skinnier fifteen years ago in the wars of the Low Countries, when he discovered a fool of a young ensign in search of a noble death. I think he knocked me down a time or two, in the course of persuading me that scandal dies sooner than a man, and that contempt can be outlived. I barely remember; I was cow-kissing drunk at the time. Certainly drunk enough to provide an excuse for forgetting that my corporal had lessoned me much as he might one of his eighteen-year-old farm-boy troopers—and thereby kept me alive.

The ale was cool, and tasted smoky. Gabriel’s disgruntled voice sounded in my ear.

“Head back, messire. Chin up.”

I knew him well enough to know that it hadn’t worked yet; that he would not leave me for a curse and one kick. His tone plainly said
Messire was out drinking last night, Messire lost money playing at hazard with dice, and guess who he takes his foul temper out on? Poor bloody Gabriel. As usual.

The hair-splittingly sharp blade of the razor followed the soap over my chin. I sat perfectly still, as a man tends to when he has a knife at his throat. Every morning for fifteen years, Gabriel Santon might have slit the big artery on the left of my windpipe, and I have never known his hand shake. Nor, now I think about it, at any of the things he has seen in those past years, and mine is a business to shake the nerves of most.

The scrape of blade over stubble and the warming air of the room, as this fourteenth day of May dawned, set my own nerves on edge. I listed it off in my mind. I must get rid of Gabriel, because no man associated with me now is safe. I must
act
as if I am following the Queen Marie de Medici’s orders, or her men will kill me, and I will have no way to get a warning out of what she plans.

And that means I must seem, convincingly to her men who watch me, to be arranging the murder of her husband, Henri, fourth of that name, otherwise Henri of Navarre, now King of France.

The towel wiped over my face, leaving only the moustache and small point of beard that it is my custom to wear. I felt Gabriel taking the weight of my hair in his hands, searching out such few parasites as haunt lodgings like these. I am vain enough to keep my hair clean, and to wear it long in the fashion of the court, since there is, at forty, not a strand of grey in it—and a man must be vain about what he can.

“Are you going to the Arsenal today?” Gabriel said idly, walking around in front of me with my cuffs and ruff in his hand. “Or is Monsieur the Duc at the Bastille now?”

I struck hard, knocking the linen out of his hands, and following it with a backhand blow across his face.

“What business of yours is it where the Duc de Sully is, little man!”

Gabriel began to stoop, protesting that he meant no harm, and simultaneously grumbling under his breath. I stood up. For a moment apprehension caught my heartbeat and the pit of my stomach:
Suppose I cannot save Gabriel? Suppose I cannot save the Duc?

That I was afraid—I, Rochefort—made me angry.

I had not been afraid twelve hours ago, following an anonymous message into the back alleys of the Les Halles district. That was a usual occurrence, given what I deal with, and the men who met me sensibly did not attempt to relieve me of my weapons. I came armed into the evening-dim tap-room of the tavern, bending to get under the door lintel, glanced at the man supposedly in charge of this meeting—and recognised, by the expensive cloak and her way of tapping her feet as she sat on the joint-stool, the Florentine woman, inefficiently disguised as a royal waiting-woman.

I was tempted to say, “Good evening, your Majesty.” King Henri’s wife of ten years, Marie de Medici, might well be full of her own self-importance today, after having finally been crowned Queen. She had the coming war in Jülich-Cleves to thank for it; the King planning to be out of the country and so leaving her that authority.

I supposed that after a decade of marriage to her husband without the title of Queen, she might celebrate this by harassing the agents of her enemies—and therefore had sent a message to me. The Duc my master is not the only man at court who is her enemy, but certainly the most powerful; men do not name the King without naming his friend Sully in the same breath.

Dusk, and a drinking house in the district of Les Halles, is notoriously not a time and place to come without a sword, or a half-dozen armed men for preference. If it surprised me to see Queen Marie playing Haroun al Rachid and sneaking unknown among her subjects, it did not surprise me that the dingy, taper-stinking room had ten of her faction’s courtiers with swords and pistols at the doorways and windows. But the first sentence of the mask-wearing courtier who was evidently her mouthpiece made me snort a laugh out loud.

“You must commit a murder for us, monsieur,” he said.

This is beyond reason
. I began, “Madame—”

“Not ‘Madame.’” She spoke in a whisper, without raising the overhanging cloth of her hood, so that evidently I was supposed not to recognise her. “These are the orders of my masters; I am only a poor serving woman who brings them to you.”

I have heard better lines in a play, and spoken much less stiltedly.

“A murder?” Allowing myself the unexpected pleasure of honesty to royalty, I remarked, “In the last fifteen years, madame, I have rarely come across such a ramshackle conspiracy.
I
am to murder a man? And the Duc be blamed for it, I suppose?”

A signal from her sent the mouthpiece and her armed men away to the room’s doors, just far enough not to overhear. She had not invited me to sit, so I folded my arms and gazed down at her—I commonly find myself the tallest man in the room, and this woman seemed tiny in front of me.

The plump shape of her lip moved under the drawn-down edge of her hood. “Be quiet and listen. You are Rochefort, not
de
Rochefort. You are not a noble. You are a duellist and known murderer. You have no power of your own; all derives from being Sully’s chief agent. You have made so many enemies in the service of the Duc that if he falls, it is doubtful you would get out of this city alive. Who else have you but him?”

The dimness of the room was a blessing; I was not sure I controlled my anger closely enough to keep it from my face.

Lightly, as I decided which way I would make my exit, I said, “Still less chance that you can bribe or threaten me into doing anything against his interests.”

Her apparent silliness—which might be protective in a court of men—gave way to shrewdness. “No, and it is not Sully whom you will damage. It is Henri of Navarre. You must have Henri killed.”

Stupidly taken aback, I said, “Henri of Navarre? Henri Quatre? The
King?
”

She gave me no time to adjust my thoughts. The hands that held the edges of her cloak together now moved, ticking off points on her fingers. “You are Sully’s spy. It is your business to keep him secure. Because he is closest to the King, it is your business also to know who threatens Henri. We do not try to bribe you—you do not live high, keep an expensive mistress, have family, known bastards, or gambling debts. You are not of the nobility. All you have is your position of power, and we will take that away from you if you don’t do as we order.”

I spoke in ironic amazement. “And I am to kill a king? Who is the Duc’s friend and protector?
That
will be a way to get myself valued in his service!”

There is nothing here I need take seriously, I concluded. Although I should warn M. le Duc that
Queen
Marie is, in her first fit of excitement, something of a loose cannon…perhaps listening to agent provocateurs of the Spanish, the Huguenots, the Jesuits. And that he should now take seriously any rumour that she wants her husband dead.

In her creaky player’s whisper, Marie de Medici said, “You
must
know of conspiracies to assassinate the King—”

“There are always conspiracies against King Henri,” I said, giving myself the pleasure of interrupting the Queen of France, since she came disguised and could therefore hardly protest. “I believe the total stands at sixty-three attempts at assassination, over the years. Or is it sixty-five?”

“And there are some current. One of which must succeed. Tomorrow, Rochefort. It must be tomorrow.”

It was true I knew of two, perhaps three, ripe conspiracies—that was not unusual. Henri contrived to make enemies of most of Europe at one time or another, if only by rescuing France from two generations of civil war and building her into a nation of great power.

“Regrettably, madame,” I said, “no man gives me orders but the Duc de Sully. It is my job to see these threats come to nothing.”

Her temper flared in a sharp whisper. “You will see why you must do as I say! Gaston!”

The Queen raised her hand and signaled. One of the black oak doors opened, and two more men dragged in another man between them.

Maignan!
I thought, shocked—I did not give myself away by speaking aloud.

The bullet-headed man was dressed in a rumpled night-shirt, his head bare. He hung between the two courtiers, his feet dragging across the paved floor, rucking up filthy rushes as they dragged him in. At her gesture, one of the men seized Maignan’s fleshy ear and pulled his head up. Even in this appalling light, a line of white was visible between his almost-shut eyelids.

“He was taken from inside the Arsenal,” the woman said. “Drugged; removed from his room; brought here.”

I am one man against ten; all armed, most with pistol as well as sword. Maignan cannot walk, never mind run….

Maignan’s heavy lids flickered. Either drugs or strong drink had slackened his face. And this is the man who is in charge of security inside the Duc’s household, as I am outside.

The man who held Maignan’s left arm pulled out his dagger, yanked it across Maignan’s throat, and dropped him.

I was moving before his blade left the scabbard, but plainly it was expected that I should do so. With no necessity for an order, the other men present hauled out swords, cocked pistols. I was at the centre of a ring of edged steel, every point within a yard of my face.

I am not a fool; not against ten men armed with rapiers and firearms. Furious, I slammed to a halt, knocking against the long table. Tapers overturned and began to stink, burning the rushes. The scent of slow-match drifted on the filthy air, catching in the back of my throat with the odour of blood. When I could see again—one of the men lit a candle too expensive to be purchased in this inn—the stone floor and rubbish in front of me was flooded black, and Maignan dead or dying, his artery cut through.

“Sweet Jesu!”
Shock stripped me momentarily of control: I sounded ragged with outrage. “I’ll have even
you
arrested; the Duc will back me!”

“The Duc will not matter by sunset tomorrow.”

One of the other men reached down and grabbed Maignan by his ankle, dragging him across the stone flags towards the door. The body left a sodden trail. I saw, in the dim light, that Maignan wore soft silk slippers on his feet, such as a man does not wear in the street.

The woman’s voice came fussy, and foolish, and entirely certain. “This is to demonstrate. We have successfully planted a spy in the Duc’s household. It can as easily be Sully who lies bleeding and dead. You must do what we say, Rochefort. Who else have you but him, between you and your enemies?”

I stared, blank-faced as shock makes me; determined to give nothing away.
Once I am out of this room I will turn Sully’s household up top and bottom and execute the Medici spy
.