Mary Gentle (71 page)

Her brows went up. She gave him a look of such sardonic irony that I was not surprised to see him flush.

His hand still holding her fingertips, Fludd blurted out, “I’m forsworn in everything, I know, but I am a physician!”

The creaking of the planks sounded loud in the silent cabin.

She did not move. I made a signal to Fludd that he should proceed.

He glanced at Dariole. “I’ll need paper, and the master’s navigation charts, so that I may see where we lie in relationship to the constellations. I may need to buy herbs at the next port, if they have them not in the ship’s galley. There will be local substitutes for those I can’t get.”

Dariole lifted a shoulder—her right—and dropped it again, with the air of a Paris duellist showing how little he cared for the cast of a die.

“Do what you want. But I’ll tell you this, if you need telling. It doesn’t change anything between us. Not a thing. Don’t ever believe you can apologise to me.”

It is a beginning,
I thought.

Whatever I do—and for very different reasons—I cannot afford to lose either of them.

The
Theodora
strove against the waters: I made Dariole swim every night in the warm seas, when we hove-to, watching her scarred flesh under the clear swell, and keeping a loaded pistol by me in case of sharks.

“Caterina was correct,” I remarked, as she climbed back up the side of the carrack, rope finally gripped in both sun-browned hands. “You heal like a young dog.”

She swam in shirt and drawers, her hair sleeked wetly back. Some of the crew, the men of south-east Asia, at least, I thought might know her for female. The Portuguese did not. She carried a knife and a grin always, as if she desired to kill a man—any man—and the
Theodora
’s crew avoided her not out of cowardice, but out of the same fear a man feels in the company of the insane.

She stretched out her arm in the sun, in sarcastic display. A mass of lumpy tissue clumped below her elbow, on upper-and underside of her arm; turning from red to pink around the great scar that vertically cleaved her flesh. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

“You have tendons, still,” I remarked.

“I know. It won’t ever be what it was.” She looked at it as if it only rationally fascinated her; jumped to the warm deck, and padded off, leaving dark, drying footprints on the oak.

Some things are apparent to the meanest intelligence, when a man is willing to look at what’s under his nose.

I am not done yet. She is broken in more than her flesh: I must find some way to heal her.

I made my way to where Robert Fludd stood at the stern rail, Gabriel beside him—Gabriel with the smile that plainly says,
He won’t drown while he’s with me. Until you want him to.

I can at least trust Gabriel not to be precipitate.

“What else can you do for Dariole?” I demanded.

Robert Fludd shook his head in the manner of physicians. “I can do nothing now but let Nature heal her.”

“Nature is rarely kind,” I observed, and let my height provide a more subtle threat than putting my hand to my sword.

Robert Fludd’s thin mouth twisted. He raked me with his gaze, and sighed, as when a master meets a stupid pupil. “And yet—these things are not so terrible, when you consider what vast amounts of misery and disaster happen to the great mass of mankind, every day.”

Bitter self-mockery sounded in his tone.

If this is an end loose and difficult to tie, the more need of my attention.

“One thing, at least, I can conceive of, that you might do,” I said. “Will you tell me you were lying, and have spent no time thinking of how you might apologise to her? Atone?”

The marks of journeying were on Fludd, his blond hair lightened by grey at the temples. He had chopped his hair short and shaved his beard down to the minimal before Nihon; all things to confuse those who might recognise him, if by chance they arrived where he was.

Has “chance” haunted you, monsieur?

Now he went clean-shaven. He could not disguise his pale eyes, or the lineaments of his jaw and forehead: I would have known him under the weather-darkening of his skin if I saw him one in a thousand men. Let him slip away at some port and I will still find him.

“Yes. I have thought,” Fludd said quietly. He looked me in the eye. “You see how she is. I think she will kill me if I try again to offer her an apology.”

A nod from me had Gabriel’s arm locked into his, so that the scrawny man had no chance of removing himself.

“We will see if we can settle for a little less than that,” I observed.

Need him as I might do, I still cherished the expression on his face. I need not
like
this man.

“Gabriel, lead Fludd to ‘Monsieur’ Dariole’s cabin. I am to warn the captain that this physician’s latest treatment of ‘his’ arm is liable to cause pain—and that should the captain hear any man crying out, he should ignore it.”

Fludd looked sweatily white. Gabriel gave me a complicitous grin. I sought out the
Theodora
’s master and gave my message.

I found the first mate’s cabin crowded already when I returned, with the presence of Dariole, Gabriel, and Fludd. The noon’s damp heat sent condensation rolling down the wood of the hull. I ducked my head away from the beams again, looking at Dariole where she stood by the casement.

“He is yours, mademoiselle,” I said quietly.

She looked up, startled. “Mine?”

“You did not die of the rape,” I said bluntly. “Therefore, he should not die of your revenge. That is all I stipulate—because I need him alive. For the rest, settle it as you need to. Before we move on.”

“When was it
your
business to settle
my
affairs?” she demanded, her voice rasping.

Robert Fludd moved forward, two steps in the tiny cabin, to stand on the sun-spotted planks directly in front of Mlle Dariole. In the bright light from the partly open doorway, he seemed to grow hot from his ruff to his hat.

“Mistress Dariole,” he said, his voice croaking.

Dariole stared.

He reached up and removed his hat, and—awkwardly, almost over-balancing—knelt down on the deck in front of Dariole.

I shot her a look. She seemed too taken up in his presence to acknowledge anything belonging to night-games.

He said, “I apologise. I will atone.”

She spoke almost over his voice. “What are you going to offer me? I want to know. What…
what
do you think you could do, to make up for…?”

“You were violated.” Fludd brought the word out with real courage, considering how close she was to him. Stress made his face look strained. “Because of my actions. Or lack of them. I know that you are of good family. I made calculations, Mistress Dariole. You were a virgin, even after your marriage, and now your maidenhead is taken by a man not your husband. Your family will disown you for having lain with a man unlawfully.”

An ugly red blotched her cheeks. “So?”

His thin face peered at her, his expression resolute.

“The papist marriage you made in France cannot be annulled—any examination would show you no longer virgin. However, your husband, Philippe, will not interfere if you remain outside France. Come back to London. I will give you back your honour. It’s all I can do to atone. Allow me—allow me to offer you my family name. I will marry you.”

Surprise stunned me.

I cannot grab her dagger-hand in time to stop her killing him; have not room enough to draw, myself, in his defence—

Dariole turned about—and opened the window, letting in warm air, and the sound of the slop of waves along the sides of the ship. Her head came back: she breathed deeply in.

Without looking round, she echoed, “‘Marry’…”

“I know it is not what you want.” Fludd spoke surprisingly gently, where he knelt. “A woman has only her good name, and I offer you mine. What else can I give you?”

I caught sight of Gabriel Santon, crammed up against the doors of the closed box-bed, his mouth a round
O
of amazement. I realised there must be little difference between he and I.

“Marry,” Dariole repeated.

“In name only!” Robert Fludd sounded momentarily flustered. He gave her a look of despair. “Bruno’s Formulae tell me a man’s action, not his mind. Still less a woman’s mind. I am no better than the next man when it comes to dealing with the outliers in a group. I see what people will do, but I am unskilled at telling why they will do it.”

Dariole turned about. Her gaze crossed mine, so intensely that it took my breath away.

She looked down at the astrologer-doctor.

By her face, I judged that she had no words for how deep was the misunderstanding between them.

I said, “I require him to be able to work, mademoiselle.”

Other than the by-now bone-deep reflex of shifting with the
Santa Theodora,
Dariole did not move. I heard orders shouted outside: some or other of the sails on the ship’s three masts needing adjustment. Sunlight from the casement began to move across the deck, illuminating patches of ill-shaved white stubble on Robert Fludd’s cheek. I glanced at Gabriel.

The wide-shouldered man shifted, automatically, to block any exit from the cabin. He rumbled, “You can do a lot to a man without killing him.”

I spoke, over Fludd’s head, to Dariole. “Choose. Leave him alive, but choose. What will you do with him?”

Dariole stared down at the kneeling man.

She made a gesture that started tentatively, and ended with authority. “Hold him up.”

I have experience moving the recalcitrant bodies of men. I easily got my hand to Robert Fludd’s wrist and elbow, lifted them up behind his back, and brought his thin body sharply up onto his feet.

He cried out.

She drew back her empty hand and slapped him across the face.

Blood spattered my sleeve as his lip split under the impact.

I rode back with it, holding him in that grip that, if he attempted to wrench himself out of it, would dislocate the big joint of his shoulder. Bloody spray filled the dim brown-gold air as Fludd tried to speak. He seemed barely to know I held him: all his attention focused on Dariole.

“‘Marry.’ ‘Apologise,’” Dariole echoed. “Atone.”

The words sent a pang through me from chest to belly.

I would not stand where Fludd stands now.
That would mean I should have injured her beyond the bearing of it. It puts me in mind of Nagasaki and how all liking, all affection, was gone from her voice.

If this were a game, I might play it. But off the stage, and in cold reality…it is unbearable.

Dariole took her dagger out of its scabbard.

The light caught it: a glimmer of silver and blue in the steel. She touched her thumb to the edge, and took it away. A thin red line showed on her skin. Her eyes moved, looking at Fludd. She did not raise her head. She stared at him from under her lashes.

Disturbed insects buzzed out through the cabin doorway. The musty smell of too much human inhabitancy made me wish to stop my nose. But what we do here will not be seen, and so the concealment, I suppose, is worth much revulsion.

She is not a child, I thought. If she desires, truly, to kill him, can I force myself to be fast enough to prevent it? Even with what hangs on this?

Fludd gasped, in my grip, and managed to speak. “Forgive me!”

Dariole looked back at her knife. “Oh, now, that’s just silly.”

Robert Fludd flung himself into a paroxysm.

Almost, he took me by surprise. Shorter than I, and thinner, he was still no weak man; he thrashed, fuelled by the panic men have when they at last truly believe that they can be hurt.

I shifted my grip, hooking one leg over his and scissoring him close under my ankle. I caught hold of his ruff, so that in straining he could only choke himself, and dragged his wrist further up his back, drawing his elbow and shoulder taut.

That allowed me, crammed up against the ceiling beams as I was, to look down over Robert Fludd’s shoulder at Dariole.

She, far too calmly, reached out to the front of his trunk-hose.

“I’m sorry!” Fludd bawled, loud as a bull calf.

I was not sorry I had no hand to gag him, nor did I call on Gabriel.
Dariole deserves to hear this
. Even if, by the disgust on her face, she is used to duelists who are far too willing to die rather than beg….

She opened his hose, and slit open the front of his drawers with her dagger.

“Please!” Fludd wept. “I’m sorry! I swear! I’m sorry!”

His voice pitched high with terror. I went hot with shame for him.

She reached into his clothes and scooped out his cod, flesh a pathetic white against the grey cloth of his trunk-hose. She put the sharp edge of her dagger into the root of his prick, among the sparse hair.

Gabriel, by the door, rumbled, “Jesu!” in both admiration and disgust.

Fludd’s body jerked in my arms: straining and choking.