Mary Gentle (46 page)

Her mockery was not unfriendly.

“Me,” she said, “me, he just had to know that
somebody
would do it.”

I have faced enough in the way of danger in my years as a grown man, and enough of men who are powerful, brutal, and possessed of political influence. I should sooner have faced all of them at once, now, rather than be looking down into the face of this young woman.

“To tell you the truth,” I said, “I don’t take Monsieur Fludd to be any great judge of a man’s character.”

She gazed up at me, her spine stiffening. “Oh—you think?”

In the face of that acid sarcasm, it was difficult to continue. I wondered for a moment,
Is it worth what honesty will bring me?

Something behind her surface emotion moved me to it.

“I will tell you the truth,” I said. “For all Monsieur Fludd’s apprehensions, he might have had my loyalty when I met him. For the price of a purse, or for what Milord Cecil offered—informers who will tell me what passes at home in Paris.”

She nodded, after a moment, her gaze level now.

“Fludd claims to calculate men’s actions,” I added. “With no knowledge of their thoughts while they perform them. It is true that he may have…misconstrued matters between myself and Marie de Medici, so as to think that intimidation might constrain me to do what he ordered.”

After a moment, she said, “You mean he thought you could be threatened with violence?”

Her brows went up.

“He
doesn’t
know you, does he?” Here she grinned. “Not like I do.”

“Dariole….”

I took her right hand in mine, and, as gracefully as possible under the circumstances, went down on one knee and kissed her bare fingers, as I might have done to nobility or royalty.

“His calculations make no difference.” I looked up at her. She stood no more than a few inches taller than I, even with me kneeling. “One is just as beaten. Just as raped. What matters is that his assessments are wrong—I am not intimidated; you are not…tractable.”

Soberly, and showing neither petulance nor outraged vanity, she nodded.

I want nothing more than to stand and embrace her, I realised. Hold her until I may warm her fears into dissolution.

But she will hardly welcome male embraces now.

Besides, comfort will come ridiculous from a dame of such comedy-jig grandeur as I now represent in her eyes.

“Mademoiselle….” I caught her gaze.

She smiled; that curve of one corner of her mouth that is a bare wickedness peeping out at the world.

Does she appreciate my dilemma? No, surely….

“I will eradicate Fludd’s conspiracy, root and branch,” I said quietly. “If this English Earl is more than a dupe of Fludd’s, I’ll bring him down also. Robert Fludd himself I leave to you. Unless circumstances absolutely dictate otherwise. He’s yours, Dariole.” I gazed up at her, let the words hang for a moment, and then added, “You see I am humbled. I do not protest at having my just revenge performed at second-hand. He will be just as dead.”

A tiny chuckle sputtered from her. My chest became one hollow ache.

Does she know? I wondered.

Her small, hot fingers closed tightly over my hand, and I do not believe that she realised it. Certainly, I thought, she does not realise how I treasure this trust of hers—nor how that realisation makes me, Rochefort, feel fear.

“I’m not going to tease you,” Dariole said. “We’re both afraid of Fludd, at bottom, messire. Aren’t we?”

That she should express such honesty to me, who has been her enemy, wrenched my guts. I thought, It is almost enough to make me shed the tears that properly belong with this raiment.

“The better reason for killing him,” I managed to observe in a level tone. “The dead are not impressive, I find.”

“No, indeed, messire.” A relaxation went through her expression. “I find them far less impressive than living men.”

That she had sword and dagger to her person gave her the unconscious swagger of a duellist, even here, and even now. On impulse, I shifted from my courtier’s position on one knee, down onto both my shin-bones, feeling the rock hard under the carpets and my skirts. Riding boots under petticoats are by no means comfortable. I knelt down on both knees, in the unmistakable position of submission.

“Messire?” she said.

“I am humble. Not, perhaps, for the reasons that you would wish.” I reached out to take her other hand. “Humble, nonetheless.”

Holding both her hands, I bent my head over them, reddening at the memory of the reflection in the pool—young man and grotesque older woman.

That I should be lustfully obsessed with a boy-girl so much resembling Henri III’s feline boy-courtiers: such did not surprise me. The desire that tightened around my heart, that I should comfort her, protect her:
that
surprised me. And yet it had been evident and obvious to Robert Fludd.

“Pardon me, mademoiselle,” I said.

“What for?”

“If I had confessed the true extent of this my—obsession—to you before, you might at least have known you were in some danger from my enemies.” With difficulty, I raised my head and looked her in the face. “You being of a keener mind, mademoiselle. You would have guessed. Pardon me that I didn’t speak.”

She freed one of her hands. At first I thought she pulled both her hands away: would have held them, and then realised how much of an imposition that would be—but by that time she had one hand out of my grip, and drawn back.

I realised I was tense, in anticipation of a blow across the face. I did not take my hands from her hand to protect myself.

She cupped her hand and brushed my cheek.

“Dariole.” I could say nothing further.

“Messire.” She took the warmth of her bare hand away, and absently rubbed her palm on her breeches, in case she had player’s paint on it. The unselfconsciousness of that boy’s gesture made my heart ache. Her image blurred in my sight.

“Don’t cry, messire.”

A man does not weep.

“I beg your pardon,” I got out. My voice was not steady; I, who have faced kings and their ministers. “I am as womanish as my dress.”

My heart put such a thunder of blood through my body that I had to clench myself together in control.

“Beg,” she said, with a soft grin.

“Dariole.”

“Beg.”

The straining, absurd desire that began to move my flesh, finding myself where I was, and the shamed urge to prostrate myself at her feet, she must have seen in my face. I felt my skin flame.

“I am ashamed to impose this perversion on you.” I could not look her in the face. “I am not able, honestly, to beg your pardon.”

“Don’t,” Dariole said. “
I
like it, messire. I like that I can put you on your knees and make you spend. I wish you wouldn’t call it perverse.”

Taken aback, I stared at her, I dare say with my mouth open.

“Didn’t you know?”

“You have said—merely to provoke me! I thought…Mademoiselle, I—no!”

“Why do you think I kept picking fights with you in Paris?”

I flushed. “Excuse what little vanity I have left—I took it to be for my reputation as a duellist.”

“Oh, yes. Or at any rate, you wouldn’t have been such a proud son of a bitch if you
hadn’t
had your reputation.” The corners of her mouth tweaked up. “I never wanted to kill you, messire. Except for ten minutes after you messed me up at Zaton’s.”

“I underestimated you,” I admitted. “Perhaps it’s truer to say, I underestimated the vanity of a young woman who has had her clothes spoiled in public.”

That, which would have had her prostrate me with her foot on my neck, she only giggled at, now.

“Death was too good for you, messire,” she said, gamely attempting a serious face. And then, her smile fading, she became genuinely quiet. “I didn’t want to kill you, messire. But I did want to put you at my feet, humiliated and begging me for—for anything, really. Mercy, mostly, when I thought about it. I did think about it a lot.”

The amount of affection in her gaze appalled me.

“I thought I would corrupt you,” I admitted numbly.

“If I was ‘corrupt,’ it happened before I met you! You just brought it out.”

“You should not….”

“What?” she prompted, when I could not gather my thoughts.

Should not be perverse,
I thought, but had sense enough not to say aloud.

“I beg you,” I said. “I prostrate myself, mademoiselle. I am absurd. Nevertheless, I am on my knees to you, as you wish, and I—humbly—beg you for mercy. Rochefort begs you, mademoiselle.”

Her smile was soft, and her eyes bright. My throat constricted.

“I forgive you,” she said. “That’s what you’re asking for, isn’t it, messire?”

“For what?” I blurted, like a callow youth.

She glanced over her shoulder at the cave exit, and I saw her listen to hear how much the banquet had advanced. Her expression didn’t change, unless the seriousness of it was informed a little by warmth.

“For getting me used as a hostage. And everything that happened afterwards.” Her eyes were clear. “I’m not putting blame your way, messire. Yes, you could have told me. But I should have known what he could do. I’ve been thinking. Caterina’s right. Messire, if any part of it was your fault—you’re forgiven. And I’m sorry I was unfair to you.”

I could not speak.

Outside, Ned Alleyne’s voice echoed through the caverns:

“Vices, to me! And Dame Clio! We begin in ten minutes!”

C
lio, Muse of History, strode forward through the assembled Virtues (triumphant), her hand upon the arm of James Stuart, First of England and Sixth of Scotland.

The Vices (defeated) were not present—by virtue of them being, indeed, these same hurriedly dressed Virtues in different masque-costume. Which is perhaps not so different from court life as we live it.

“Lay low the corpse of Vice confounded!” I proclaimed. Behind me, masque-engines squeaked as wooden scenery rearranged itself into a pastoral aspect.
Et in Arcadia ego,
I reflected.

Clio had all of the projection an officer in the field lends his voice when giving orders, but that seemed to me an adequate substitute for a player’s skill. Clearly, I could be heard to the back of the cavern, despite the dampening effect of the low ceiling—the young man in white satin at the head of the banqueting table stood up, on his cue.

“Behold the hope and victory of the Stuart line!” I declaimed, wondering who had written that, and if I should ever get the chance to remonstrate with Madame Lanier about matters of poetic diction.

The players representing Virtues went forward to the edge of the shallow brooklet flowing across the cavern. The heat of many torches made their gowns shimmer. Temperance—the best and youngest speaker, after the sick-abed young man Clio, and so most like a maiden—spoke his lines, calling Henry to cross the wooden masque-bridge and join his father.

Squinting to see past the drunken courtiers at the long table in this bad light, I caught sight of “King James’s Demon” standing in the cave-entrance. Saburo nodded, unemphatically; a man might have taken it for the samurai easing a crick from his broad neck.

Cecil’s men in position, and the men of Henry’s household guard taken by those of James.
The agreed signal. No noise had come to me here, but with the racket of sackbuts and other musicians, I doubted it could have disturbed any feaster. Including young Henry Stuart.

The young man stepped boldly over the bridge (which creaked), lantern-light reflecting from his brushed-back auburn hair. Temperance and Justice took his hands. He wore clothes not unlike a masque-costume in splendour: ivory ruff decorated with silver lace, stockings of white silk, shoes with white ribbon roses. All the colours of virtue, as humbly suggested by Edward Alleyne.

I heard, in my mind, as clearly as if Dariole spoke to me, “
At least the Prince isn’t wearing a skirt….
”

I turned my eyes from where she stood with the other pages. No need to draw attention to her, now that—with Henry’s appearance on stage—she would be moving to stand with M. Saburo.

James’s arm quivered under my hand as the Virtues led Henry into a dance that must end with him facing us.

End with death. Assassination.

The King of England and Scotland had taken no suggestion about costume except mine. Under his oyster-silk doublet and hose, his stout figure was covered by a shirt of mail; his ruff concealed a high-necked gorget. His vast trunk-hose were so stuffed with bran that I thought I would defy any man to put a sword into them, never mind Henry’s dagger.

“You will not let him come near my face,” James muttered. I tightened my grip on his arm.

“Your Majesty need not be—” I revised my vocabulary away from my master the Duke’s bluntness, “Need not be concerned.”

Need not be terrified.

If any man was wetting his drawers as this ludicrous masque drew to its conclusion, to the courtiers’ applause, it was James of England and Scotland. M. de Sully once called him “the wisest fool in Christendom,” in acknowledgement of his devious mind; no man ever called him a soldier.

“Steady, monsieur,” I said absently under my breath, as I might have to some ensign new to battle. Henry circled us with the Virtues: moons about the sun, satellites of the King’s glory.
Didn’t you say you need this proof your son would betray you?
I mentally urged James to bravery.
Prince, make your move soon….

Prince Henry Stuart danced with the players, under a ceiling blackened by lanterns and flaring torches. They trod the steps of a masque-dance constructed simply enough for English royalty to follow. Courtiers edged forward, crowding now at the streamlet’s edge.

Certain men, by twos and threes, drifted towards the torches, ready to dowse them on my order. My word to Hariot and Henry an hour ago had been, “As much darkness as possible; then I may put in the servant in the Prince’s costume unseen. When you re-light the lanterns, I will stab him in my anger at his terrible crime.”

And he swallowed the bait,
I thought bleakly, seeing Henry’s face as he passed me again, handing off Justice to Courage. He had a pallor that might have been fear or determination.

The turn in my dance brought me to face the audience again. I glimpsed, beyond the raucous banqueting table, Mlle Dariole, restlessly speaking to Saburo. No sign of Robert Fludd yet, despite “King” Henry’s royal summons.

Surely he
must
arrive, to calm his puppet’s fears? Or if his murder fails, will we not see Doctor Robert Fludd again?

At least I have Saburo and Spofforth ready with lights and muskets, I thought, scanning the table again. The dagger in my farthingale skirts was not the reassurance it might have been.

I realised Thomas Hariot was no longer present at table.

A cold fear went through my bowels.

With absolute certainty, I thought,
We have been betrayed
.

The feeling of a conspiracy going wrong is unmistakable, and I have learned not to ignore it. I owe my life in other such circumstances to prompt action.

“Your Majesty.” I gripped James’s arm firmly. “In a moment I shall ask you to run. Towards that cave, there—you see? To our right-hand side? When I command ‘run,’ run, and stop for no man, sire!”

With my other hand I caught the cord that held the dagger and pulled it up. The hilts caught on the edge of my farthingale. I ripped them loose, hearing silk-thread tear. James goggled up at me, his lips shining with blubber.

“Man, you said we’d stand here! That we had no cause to move!”

“Circumstances alter cases!” The young Prince, in his dance, was revolving out to the bridge for the last time. Prudence and Justice were about to lead him back through the column of dancers who even now began to line up, singing paeans.

James’s fish-eyes opened wide, startled. “I will go nowhere. It’s you who are the traitor, man! I see it now! Help! Help, ho! To your King!”

He yanked his arm—and, to his evident surprise, did not get it out of my grip. Seeing his guards begin to run forward, I got the dagger securely into my other hand, and said, straining for reason, “I’m saving you, sire, not threatening you!”

The fat man froze.

Prince Henry’s courtiers overturned the torches, throwing them into the stream and dashing them out on the rock. Men yelled orders, courtiers at table jumped to their feet, a rush of flame went up delicate draperies, a woman screamed.

Justice and Prudence revolved to stand in front of us, their wide costumes screening Henry off from the audience. Desperately, I thought, Why do
I
have to get players whose devotion to their Art outweighs the natural desire to scream and run!

Henry’s glance went over me without acknowledgement, and his hand went into his unbuttoned doublet.

I smiled grimly as the majority of the lights sputtered and died, darkness flooded the cave, and screams resounded. Grabbing James with both hands, I swung his heavy body about, so that he stood behind me, my body between he and his son.
If I cannot disarm a sixteen-year-old puppy of his dagger—!

“Henry, child!” James got himself out of my grip as I made to defend him, and slipped past me, directly into the boy’s path.

Prince Henry shoved his dagger forward in a brutally hard stroke.

The point jammed into James’s belly.

The English King grunted, looking down at himself.

I cracked the pommel of my dagger down on Prince Henry Stuart’s knuckles. His dagger went instantly, lost in darkness. He wrung his hand, stared at me;
really
looked at this player beside his father—

I punched him.

Unlike the young Prince, I have no compunction about striking a man in the face, whether with fist or blade. Why not attack the most vulnerable area?

Do not kill the son of the English King,
I reminded myself, in a heartbeat’s calm among the screaming confusion. My punch was not hard; I felt no bones crunch under my knuckles. I swore as Prince Henry Stuart collapsed back into the streamlet, like a coal-sack thrown into a pond.

Verity and Temperance backed away, screaming like the girls they were dressed to resemble. All this end of the cavern filled up with black figures, fleeing or fighting in darkness. Prudence shrieked in an adolescent boy’s cracking voice:

“
He killed the King!
The King’s
dead!
”

“The King lives!” I bellowed back louder. Monsieur Saburo, Monsieur Captain Spofforth, you are on the verge of being late—

James stood, hands to his belly, staring with sweating face and wide eyes. Roughly, I pulled him to one side, groping down at the belly of his doublet. I took my hand away and found no blood.
Yes! Stout mail: he will be only bruised
.

“Run, your Majesty.” I did my best to haul him bodily across the rocky floor towards the players’ caves. He went down on his knees, legs not moving, and I caught my heel on my skirt-hem and swore.

“You were right, sire,” I tried to encourage him. “Your son could not stab you in the face.”

He collapsed limply at my feet with a banshee-howl.

“Not perhaps the best thought,” I reflected aloud. The Prince wants his father dead badly enough to slit open his belly: not a comforting thing to think on.

Noise came from the main entrance. I lifted my head and saw, over men’s heads, a flicker of torch-light—musket barrels with the light on them. Saburo, and men with him.

“Almost prompt on their cue!” I took my stand over James, dagger in hand. “Saburo! To me! Captain!”

The troop of Cecil’s men fanned out. I saw two of them hauling a man towards the cave-exit; recognised the tiny, hunched figure of the Secretary of State. The flaring shadows and new yellow light of armed men’s torches showed me the banqueting table overturned, one man screaming as fire leaped up his short cloak, Alleyne peering goggle-eyed from the floor, Mlle Dariole splashing across the streamlet, ignoring the courtiers that Cecil’s troopers roughly manhandled past her. Rapier and dagger in her hands, a wide grin on her face.

“Look to the King!” I stepped back, sheathing my dagger, as the samurai came up to me with Dariole, and both of them faced outwards as I squatted to examine James Stuart. Bearing only a dagger, and in skirts, I am not the most effective king’s bodyguard.

Dariole looked over her shoulder, all swagger, grinning widely enough for her teeth to gleam in the intermittent torch-light. “How
about
that! We won!”

“The King lives.” I stood up from the crouching man, not injured except in his heart.

I could not be severe with Dariole. I put my heels together, under my farthingale, and made her a small bow. “Doubtless you think you played some crucial role in this success?”

“Of course I did. You know you’d never manage without me!”

The sound of men being hurried out under arrest began to diminish. The noise of players shrieking at Alleyne grew louder. A moment or two, when Spofforth’s men should be at my side, and we might move James with safety out of the cavern.

Dariole’s attitude was inexpressibly careless: all of a young man’s disregard for the realities of fortune eloquent in how she stood. I saw that her brow shone in the lights nonetheless. If I were to feel her there, should I feel cold sweat?

Her eyes were wide and clear in torch-light. I thought I saw a flush making two high spots on the bones of her cheeks.

“Messire,” she said quietly, “I’m going to kill Fludd…but now I don’t even know where to start looking. I don’t have so much experience as you. Is your offer still open, to help me find him?”

That she should ask for my help!

All of it rushed through my mind in a second. That with Robert Fludd dead, my reason for being in England will vanish—and so, also, will vanish Mlle Dariole’s reason for having any more to do with M. Rochefort.

Yet it may take time to find Doctor Fludd—

Why?
I interrogated myself. Why seek out opportunities for this young woman’s company, now that I have the perfect excuse to give her the go-by? Take my perverse desires and remove them from being any danger to her. Go to the Low Countries, or Italy, or any land from which a man may observe France. Business with M. de Sully becomes urgent. Tell Dariole she needs must seek Fludd by herself; vengeance is hers by right.

“Messire?”

Whatever I say—if I hesitate a moment more—I shall see the growing trust in her face turn into anger. She will have every right.

It will…hurt me, to see that change.

It will hurt her, I think, to be in my company; I have already called out of her cruelty, and perverse desire.