Mary Gentle (24 page)

Great to small, indeed. I managed to keep a level expression. Arnaud, one of us, Sully’s men; Maignan’s friend; no more than very minor nobility.
The Duc has treated him more as a son than a servant!

If I were in Paris again, and free to be the man I was before, Arnaud would find himself called out and killed, robbed of his bright new future with Madame the Queen Regent. But my life is no longer as simple as being my master’s servant.

Cecil’s misshapen shoulders shrugged. “Rosny was King Henry’s right hand. Ruling with his King, as a minister rightly may. Now he is only a hand from which they wish to pry the late King’s money. I think his business at court is likely done with, unless he can catch support soon, or attach himself to Queen Regent Mary and her favourites. I am sorry, Master Rochefort.”

Anyone less suited to play at the smooth court game of favourites than M. de Sully, I couldn’t imagine. By his demure and cynical look, Mr Secretary Cecil was of the same opinion.

“France should be grateful that the transfer of power is likely to be accomplished so smoothly,” the Englishman added. “When a great monarch dies, it is a time of uncertainty and fear. Favourites and noblemen think of rebellion. Even your Chancellor Villeroi is rumoured to have kept King Henri’s seal, that should have been broken on his death, and used it to authenticate some regulations in favour of M. Concini. It takes a steady hand to guide the next monarch to the throne.”

As this Mr Secretary Cecil put James on the throne after Elizabeth Tudor’s death,
I thought, steeling myself to remain expressionless.

“Of course,” the tiny man added, “matters are more difficult, and revolt more likely, when there is a regency. And your young King is nine years of age. You and your countrymen must worry greatly, Master Rochefort.”

And I perceive that Mr Secretary Cecil is well aware of the vinegar that is false sympathy.
I bit at the inside of my lip. When great men play at unbending, it is always a mistake to reply in the same vein. I did not imagine Mr Secretary taking kindly to my reaction, should I protest his gloating over what he must see as his own success and M. de Sully’s failure.

He was not, of course, interested what effect his words might have on one M. Rochefort, but I formed a convenient channel by which he might send them, second-hand, to M. de Sully.

“Now permit me to ask you questions of my own.” Cecil leaned forward. “Tell me what you witnessed of King Henry’s death.”

I felt as if the wind had been knocked from me, even though I would have wagered much on being asked this very question.
He will have had eyewitness reports about me, and gossip
. His small black eyes looked at me from among wrinkles, all the skin an unhealthy colour, but his gaze very shrewd.

If a man speaks the truth, there is that in his voice which another, much-experienced man, may sometimes hear.
A judicious mixture of the truth with an absence of some facts is all I may risk here
. I dare not substitute a lie for an omission. Milord Cecil has been in his post for far too long for that.

“True, I was present, milord. It’s my business to watch such men, as you will be aware.” I met his eye steadily. “François Ravaillac is—was—a man from Angoulême, who had been a school-teacher and a monk, and was let go from the monastery in which he tried to take orders, because he suffered from visions.”

“Go on.”

“On that day…the King’s coach was delayed in the rue de la Ferronnerie. My attention was taken briefly when two men I knew of the royal guard intercepted me. You must know the rest, milord.”

He said nothing, only making a neat gesture that I should continue.

“I saw Ravaillac standing on the wheel of the King’s coach. I saw the knife go into Henri’s body.” Whatever I could not control in my tone would, I thought, be put down to the presumed horror of the regicide. I looked up, suddenly, as if I had been lost in my thoughts, but surprised no expression on Cecil’s lugubrious features.

The Englishman nodded. “They say the Duke of Epernon was behind Ravaillac, and gave him a sign to make the second blow, the first being slight.”

“I saw no such sign.”

Mr Secretary Cecil seemed thoughtful. “You did not tell me why you’re not in France. Why Rosny sent you to England. Why he has not recalled you.”

“M. de Sully—” I tried to make it sound more an affirmation than a correction. “—did not send me here. It’s as you suspect, milord.
You
may believe in his innocence, but not all men do. I myself am suspected of involvement in the assassination. I cannot endanger my lord the Duc—once a man is put to the question, he’ll confess any words that are put into his mouth, and I don’t doubt the assassins of King Henri wish his first minister dead too!”

“But you, Master Rochefort, surely, you must know who the assassins are—the associates of Master Ravaillac? You had been following him, you said.”

“He had his circle of friends in Angoulême, but they are nothing, milord.” I shrugged. “I interviewed the monks; they found no worse in him but a little religious madness. Ravaillac had made one attempt beforehand on the King’s life, last December. He hung about the gates of the palace with a knife, waiting for the King’s coach, but the guards easily drove him off. Being a harmless madman, I had thought him the least likely of all the plots against King Henri to succeed.”

That,
I could speak with absolute conviction.

The difficulty was in keeping both bitterness and irony out of my voice.

“Milord, it has been more than fourteen days since the King was murdered. I am cut off from Paris. I neither know what has happened since, nor whether I will endanger M. de Sully if I return now.”

Cecil looked down at the papers on his lap. The wind ruffled their edges. Further down the barge, I glimpsed Saburo seated back on his knees in some painful-looking fashion, speaking to a secretary who scribbled away at the writing-desk resting on his lap. The sound of hammers suddenly pierced the day: silver stabs of sound echoing across the water, bouncing distantly back from the waterside houses. Evidently this test-voyage of the royal barge necessitated on-board repairs.

The English minister lifted his hand without looking. Almost immediately, a foreman in a leather apron bustled his men away to a different part of the barge.

“Clearly you are a witness,” Cecil said mildly. “Even if Master Ravaillac is no longer alive to corroborate what you say. Now. If I were to ship Monsieur Herault back to France under armed guard?”

“That was always the danger of seeing you, milord.”

“You have taken no precautions?”

I allowed my asperity to colour my tone. “What precautions may a man take against milord Cecil, who may do as he pleases in this kingdom?”

Quickly, he returned, “I am a tyrant, you would say?”

That I had him interested in the exchange argued well. I now contrived to look something at a loss, which is an advantage for any tall man when dealing with a small man, to make the latter think he has the advantage.

“Milord Secretary, it would not be the act of a tyrant, but of a judge, if you suppose me a criminal. I am not, but I have nothing except my word for proof.”

The sun, uncomfortably bright in my face as it rose higher, made me narrow my eyes.

“Here in London, my name was bound to come to Mr Secretary’s attention. Milord, you will think that perhaps Madame the Queen and the Parliament have a right to my presence; you would have me returned to France without an interview. Therefore, until I can safely return home, I appeal to you in this way, in the hope that I may have done such a service for you as I have done for M. de Sully prior to this.”

I remember keen-witted Mr Secretary Cecil as politically astute for an Englishman, and liable loyally to follow his King’s policy where France is concerned. But since France and Spain dance about in English policy, and no man may say who is the superior from one week to the next, I had thought I might offer the man, rather than the politician, a sweetmeat.

“The services of M. de Rosny’s agent,” he said.

Your rival’s agent
. I kept my expression severe. Who must now come to you, hat in hand, for your generosity…. Is Cecil-the-man immune to this? He was by no means immune to such rivalry six years ago.

This being the last throw upon which I had put my all, calculating it through sleepless hours after M. Saburo’s message, I held myself in an attitude which I hoped showed only attention and not desperation.

The first minister’s gaze moved back to where Saburo sat on the deck with one of the secretaries, the secretary’s pen flying across paper and dipping rapidly in his inkwell to keep up with the Nihonese man’s speech. I saw Saburo pause and sniff at a delicate glass goblet. Monsieur the Ambassador has been offered refreshment, where Monsieur the Spy has not.

Cecil said, “The Ambassador speaks nothing of you before you fought bandits on a beach. May one assume your departure from France was contested? And may one also assume, monsieur, that your removal from France of the de facto Easterner Ambassador, and the young man with you, had more to do with the removal of witnesses than with generosity?”

Cecil will have had men observing where Saburo returns to sleep. They have not yet identified the
Hic Mulier
for what she is.
I did not allow myself even a thought of relief, it being my conviction that Cecil would be aware of it, and read other causes into it.

“Both suppositions are true, milord,” I said frankly. “Neither the young man nor Saburo will die easy, both being able with the sword. And it seemed ungrateful to abandon them to interrogation, such as they would have found in my home country when it was known they had seen me leave.”

The term
ungrateful
got me a swift glance from his dark eyes. I calculated it time to season half-truth with full truth.

“A man may be blamed for things he has not done,” I said quietly. “That is all I can say to you, milord. And you should in no wise associate M. Saburo or M. Dariole with me in respect of that. M. Saburo is the last remaining man alive from his shipwreck. And M. Dariole is…merely one of the sons of sword and hazard, with whom your lordship will be familiar from the English court, I dare say.”

In the silence, I heard the creak of oars, the lap of water against the sides of the barge, and the constant background chatter from workmen that M. de Sully would never have countenanced in his own presence.

“Tell me more of this ‘R.F.,’ if you please, Master Rochefort.” From Cecil’s mouth, it was a statement and not a request. “How does he differ from fools such as Fawkes and Parsons?”

The thought that M. de Sully might yet live and be free put such a relief through me, short-lived though it could prove to be, that I smiled at the English Secretary.

“You will desire me to complete the names that are missing from my report, milord,” I said. “Although, I would assume that you know already of many conspiracies in the court, and possibly this physician, who appears in my report as ‘R.F.,’ is already not strange to you.”

He gave me no reaction; I had not expected one. I gathered my thoughts for a moment.

“I have made as many enquiries as I might, these last two days. ‘R.F.’ is one Robert Fludd, a physician, with a house two streets from your St Paul’s Cathedral; apparently now respectable. Gossip says there was in the past some unknown scandal, and he was not admitted to the Royal College of Physicians until last year, although he had been practising as a doctor and an astrologer before.”

I looked up at the English minister. “Gossip does not say he owns a second house, in Southwark, but he does. Broadly, this Fludd is an astrologer, he likes not the government of England at present, he would have another king, and so desires to kill James Stuart. Of the conspirators who met him there, the initials ‘H1,’ ‘H2,’ and ‘W’ refer to the mathematicians, M. Hariot, M. Hues, and M. Warner. I have observed them at the Tower: all often speak to, and often visit, ‘E.N.’—Henry Percy Earl of Northumberland, the supposed source of this conspiracy. They are his mathematicians, and are everywhere accompanied by two…gentlemen…known to be of the Earl’s household in the Tower, whose names I have only as Luke and John.”

“Very devout,” Cecil observed dryly.

Sunlight rippled off the river water. A breeze brought coolness.

“There are two initials yet in my report: ‘P’ and ‘H.’ Monsieur the Earl of Northumberland might cause a great scandal,” I said, “if he repeats what this Fludd says—that your King’s son, Prince Henry Stuart, is deep in the plot to kill his father.”

Without a pause, Cecil said, “I doubt the Prince has even heard of this Robert Fludd.”

Ah. You’ve heard something: not as much as you could wish. Good
. Now we know where we are.

“I doubt that also, milord.” A slight inclination of Cecil’s head seemed encouraging. I continued with what forty-eight hours of diligent investigation had found me. “But…it
does
seem that Monsieur the Prince visits the Tower often to speak with M. de Ralegh. Anyone who wished to throw mud, and suggest the Prince also sees Monsieur the Earl of Northumberland there, will find it easy to make that mud stick. A word from one of your Prince’s trusted counsellors—to avoid the Tower until you’ve put an end to this conspiracy—will avoid even the possibility of scandal.”