Mary Gentle (41 page)

Taking a moment to compose myself, I set down the bundle I carried under the edge of the square pavilion’s canvas. Sweeping aside the tent-flap and entering, I found the two youngest boy-actors giggling and playing dice in the centre of the tent.

“Back to Monsieur Alleyne, if you please.” My look sent them quickly out.

Mlle Dariole’s voice broke the silence. “If that’s you, Rochefort, you can fuck off.”

“You know it is I, mademoiselle.” The sun through the bleached canvas walls cast a pearl glow over all the interior. Dariole, in the far corner, curled among bolsters and linen and a sprawl of opened printed pamphlets, looked over her shoulder at me. Her eyes were cold in the filtered light.

“I
said,
fuck off.”

“I heard you. I am choosing to ignore you.”

Dariole gave a snort. It seemed uncomplicated contempt. A man who knows her less well than I would not hear the uncertainty in her tone, I thought, and then halted, startled at the realisation.

For an object of perverse obsession, whom otherwise I do not like, I know her entirely too well.

The temperature inside seemed higher, as if the canvas reflected heat as well as light onto us. The young woman had her garters and stockings off, bare feet white in the light. A pale linen doublet lay open to her cambric shirt, unbuttoned halfway up her breast. She leaned on her elbow, looking away from me, and pretended to read.

To attempt to sit, and to afterwards rise again, made awkward by the savage pain in my leg, I thought must prove embarrassing. I leaned on my stick, instead, and took off my hat.
M. Rochefort stands uncovered before Mlle Dariole,
I thought. At another time, I would have cynically smiled.

“Robert Fludd chose to hand me a beating,” I began, “when I first encountered him. You know this. It appears to be a principle of his.”

My voice fell flat in the hot air. I persevered.

“If that
is
his way, I would expect him to attempt the exact same with you; to physically intimidate you on your first meeting with him—”

“I haven’t met him yet.” Her tone cut in, coldly dismissive. “Only his men. Luke and John. But I don’t care about them. He’s responsible.”

She didn’t look at me now. The general rubbish of a players’ tent obscured her from my view as she curled up further. With all my weight on the ebony stick, I eased myself into movement again, picking my way between pallets, chests, cot-beds, spilled goblets, and abandoned hats and doublets, approaching her more closely.

“Mademoiselle….” I must pause, I found, which allowed me to lookdown and gain my breath. Bending my right knee inflamed my wound, which several hours had swollen and made hot. A sudden jar as I started off again and caught my foot against some man’s abandoned boot made me swear, violently but quietly.

“You see I may not kneel to you,” I said when I recovered my composure, approaching to within a yard of her pallet. “I must make my apologies standing.”

Dariole did not look up. “I haven’t asked for an apology. You think you can apologise?”

I shrugged, making an attempt to lighten the atmosphere. “I have little enough practise, I grant you. In my profession, it’s not usual.”

“Your ‘profession’ is
spy
and
killer,
let’s not forget!”

She gave me her back. I found myself watching the crown of her head, and her hair that had grown out long enough to touch her neck. The diffuse light made it gleam.

Standing over her, I could see that as well as being burrowed into bolsters, she had one bolster clutched to her belly with her free hand. It made my eyes sting with a desire to weep; I could not have told any man why.

“I blame myself,” I said.

Dariole stiffened. Her head came up.

Abruptly, she pushed herself upright, spilling pamphlets, sitting and clutching the bolster to her with white hands. “
I
blame you, too! Or hadn’t you
noticed?
”

I bit back a sharp reply. To deal with her hostility—yes, that is easy. Easier than to closely examine her hurt, or grief.

In all truth, I would have felt more at ease kneeling before her. To be standing over her has nothing of submission in it. That, perhaps, is as well.

I persisted. “You have not thought things through, mademoiselle. Yes, I could have lied to Robert Fludd. I could have claimed you were of no value at all as a hostage for my behaviour. And if I had….”

I shrugged again, and found it hurt my leg; my body pulling against the great muscle of the thigh.

“If I
had
convinced Fludd of that, then—you would be dead, mademoiselle.”

Her white, pinched face glared up at me from her pallet.

“He would still have taken you,” I finished. “And then he would have killed you.”

She shrugged. “
So?
It’s still your fault for being obsessed in the first place.”

“Oh, I grant you that much.” I set my ebony stick’s ferrule down between the carpets flooring the pavilion, digging it into the flattened dry grass. “The only way for your rape—or murder—not to have happened is if I had not had those desires in the first place.”

Her eyes met mine. With some difficulty, I held her gaze.

“And—Mademoiselle, if I had
not
felt this obsession…then,
I
would have killed you. In Normandy.”

“Yeah?” Her voice spoke all contempt, and all anger. She glanced down as if she saw the bolster for the first time, and pushed it disgustedly away from her. Kicking the pamphlets away to give her a clear space, she got stiffly to her feet. She must still lift her chin to glare up at me.

“
You
would’ve killed me, would you, Rochefort? You and which other dozen?”

In her bleached linen doublet and her brown Venetian breeches, she might have been some high-status servant. No blade marked her as a gentleman. I found myself watching the swell of her hips, under the gathered cloth, and the curve of a breast under her shirt.

Dear God, no!
Cold dread substituted for arousal in my mind. This is the last thing she requires to see. Obsession, desire; call it what you will.
Perversion
.

I wiped strings of hair off my forehead, becoming aware that I sweated, not just from the heat, but from a slight wound-fever.

Dariole lifted her shoulder; her movement more stiff than usual. “Either way, Normandy or London…it’s
your
fault, Rochefort.”

“Don’t make any mistake.” I gazed down at her. “I’m here to apologise. To take all blame. But I will say this—you came with me from Paris. You, also, were a part of what we did. You enjoyed it, mademoiselle.”

“Go to hell!”

I shook my head.
If this were Paris; if things were as they were before
…. In both guilt and exasperation, I said, “I warn you, mademoiselle—if things were different, I’d do what I am severely tempted to do. Which is, to carry you off from here in a sack!”

She deliberately looked me in the eye.

“Yes. But someday, you’d have to open the sack.”

At another time, she would have been taunting me. Now she spoke with a mixture of hatred and apprehensiveness that made me ache. I rubbed my free hand over my eyes.

“Listen to me, mademoiselle. I have not the slightest intention of killing Robert Fludd’s King.”

I dropped my hand from my face, giving me a clear view of her. I wished nothing more, I realised, than to put my arm comfortingly about her. Impulsively, with the stick’s help, I began to move forward.

Her body tensed. As a duellist’s does when a sword is drawn. Every line of her shoulders spoke vigilance, suspicion, hatred.

She said, “Fludd’s going to come here. That, or someone will who knows where he is. Or I’ll get him here
somehow
. Understand me. I’m going to kill Robert Fludd.”

I eased back, making pretence to lean more heavily on my stick. As I did so, her muscle tension eased.

She does not realise she is reacting so
.

Ah, but it is not unexpected.

I looked down at my hands for a moment, clasped on top of my stick, and then back at Dariole. “How?”

Her brows gained a furrow of skin between them. “How?”

“Pardon me, mademoiselle.
How
will you kill Doctor Fludd? You have no weapon with which to kill him. You broke it.”

Dariole’s mouth opened fractionally; then pressed into a thin, hard line. “If I
wanted
a sword, there’s swordsmiths in Wells. Hell, there are bladesmiths
here,
with Alleyne’s men; I’ve seen them. You can buy a rapier anywhere. If I wanted a rapier I wouldn’t have broken it!”

Certainty only came to me with the moment.
Yes, this is the right thing to do
.

I turned about, limping back to the pavilion entrance. She made a noise from behind me—possibly suppressed anger; perhaps surprise at my leaving. At the tent-flap, I supported myself on my stick and leaned down.

Managing to pull in the blanket-wrapped bundle I had laid under the edge of the tent, I straightened up, holding it.

It was not what she expected; so much was evident in the tension of her body. As like as not—despite my injury—she
did
expect me to fall on my knees before her and whimper.
If I did, it would be for my comfort only
.

“These are yours, mademoiselle, I think.” I bent over, with my other hand gripping my stick, and unrolled the length of old blanket, spilling the contents on the pallet at her feet.

Leather and steel. Belts, a hanger, sliders, buckles, and straps; scabbards with metal chapes; and glinting hilts and pommels….

She did not pause. She dropped down into a squat, hands immediately going to the rapier scabbard and the grip. She slid the sword free of the sheath, exposing the brilliance of the blade to the air.

The bright swept-hilt and wire-bound grip looked odd against her naked hand. Abruptly she lifted the blade to eye-line and squinted down it. She brought it back to her, examining the remnant of every scratch and burr on the hollow-ground steel and swept hilt.

“This is my sword.” She reached out her other hand and took the dagger, sliding it out of the scabbard and gripping the hilt. “My dagger….”

Her head came up: she stared at me.

“I carried them down from London.” Suddenly, I felt as shy as a boy. “There was nowhere in Dead Man’s Place to safely store weapons.”

Elegantly and neatly, she stood.

Her head came up, and she moved into guard. In the slice of sunlight that fell through the open tent-flap, light blazed from edged metal and left dark spots across my vision. She hefted the dagger in her left hand; brought the grip closer to her eye. “Did you clean this?”

“A good blade is worth maintaining.”

“
You
just want my sword-point at your throat—”

I interrupted. “I return you your property as weapons, and not for my…perversity, or chastisement.”

She shot me a look, and busied herself picking up scabbards and slotting the blades home. Two months ago, she would have insulted me. I found myself curiously missing her taunts.
She may call me what she likes—only so it breaks this cold in which she has wrapped herself….

In a complete intensity of concentration, she first buckled on her belt, then hooked the hanger onto one belt-fitting, and brought the suspensor-belt across her stomach to hook onto the other. She tried the set of her scabbards with a few strides about the cluttered floor, feet placed down flawlessly.

Dariole’s hand went across her body to the rapier’s grip, index finger locking into the finger-ring. The blade hissed out to point at the tent’s entrance.

Without looking at me, she said, “And you expect me to use these again? When I
know
they’re useless?”

She spoke caustically, but I read a lost look on her face.

Unwisely, perhaps, I could not resist an observation. “Certainly no man may say that you have an excess of gratitude, mademoiselle….”

Dariole swung around to face me. “What’s there to be grateful for! You got me
raped
. These are my weapons. You’re not giving them to me, Rochefort. You’re just giving them
back
. And thanks for the apology—but that’s just words.
Goddam,
you’re worse than Fludd!”

It came out close to “Furada.” I was reminded of how much she had been in the samurai’s company recently.

If I were a man to make foolish wishes, it would be a wish to be of as much use to her as Saburo has been.

I will not regret my decision,
I thought. Ignoring her anger, I spoke.

“Mademoiselle, it seems to me that when Prince Henry Stuart arrives, a man might make an effort to convince the boy he needs to summon Robert Fludd to him, here—either as advisor, if things go well, or scapegoat, if they go badly. Henry
must
come soon—”

“Rochefort!”
She rested her hands, one on each steel pommel. “What business is this of
yours?
”

Silence filled the pavilion.

“It’s my business,” I said, “if I’m staying here and attempting to save the life of James Stuart, to bring Fludd out into the open—for you to kill.”