Mary Gentle (73 page)
Authors: A Sundial in a Grave-1610
“‘Prodigious,’ ‘rare,’ and ‘strange,’” I said. “These are also words.”
Dariole shook her head, not even smiling at
strange
. “Messire, a madman or a beggar would have done just as good. Upset his plans. You know that?”
It was beyond me not to touch her hands, where she clasped them palm-to-palm. A second passed before she drew them back.
“And you know what else?” She looked at the Virgin’s pallid lips. “I managed to spoil his calculations, but that’s not the end of it. I still have to be this person I am. The one he hurt. The one that—isn’t like other women.”
Quite involuntarily, I muttered, “Thank God!” under my breath.
Dariole looked at me.
Things are not done with, put aside, I thought. This is only the beginning.
“Why do you want Fludd alive?” she asked.
I could not repress either a smile or affection at her directness.
“One reason is this. If a man were to lay a bet, it would be that Robert Fludd did not make his way out to the Japans without first calculating by what ship he could safely arrive—and also, by which ship he could safely return, if Nihon became an ill place for him.”
After a moment Dariole dipped her head in what I took to be assent.
I rose to my feet, genuflecting towards Our Lady. The wooden geta Dariole wore clattered on the stone, walking from the side-chapel.
“Yes,” she said. “Travel by ship…terrifies me, frankly, messire! Given how much luck we must’ve got through by now….”
She makes such admissions as if they harm her self-worth not at all.
I said, “If I weren’t sick for home,
I
might let that terror persuade me to live the rest of my life in Hind. However. Monsieur Robert Fludd can tell us which ships safely withstand storms, are not wrecked on reefs or lee-shores, and are not subject to attack and murder by pirates.”
“He’ll lie!” Dariole exclaimed.
“He might.” I saw Dariole give an excited nod, and inclined my head to her. “But not if they are the same ships on which
he
is travelling with us.”
The steel sunlight, battering from above, made her squint her eyes into slits. She took out of her obi the folded parasol that she kept by her rapier, and moved her hands to construct its shelter.
“Why can’t I kill him?” The oval of shade released her to open her eyes again, and gaze up at me. “Because you want him to do mathematics for you?”
“Not merely for me,” I said. “But you’re correct, mademoiselle. I do desire that. And…it occurs to me now that I may have been assuming too much. There is an immediate question we must ask of Robert Fludd.”
I found him back at the lodgings, with Gabriel Santon and the baggage from the
Santa Theodora,
and news of two or three other vessels due to leave Goa for more westerly ports.
I put a foot up on one of our boxes, and stared down at the English doctor, where he sat on the bare boards of the floor. “You can say which is the better ship.”
His gaze fell. “Yes. I confess it; I can.”
“You can say somewhat else, too.” I made no move to prevent Gabriel Santon or Mlle Dariole hearing what I said. “It may take you longer, but we will be lucky to be home inside a year. I’ll keep you supplied with pen and paper, Monsieur Fludd, and you can work on your calculations for me.”
His eyes seemed brimming with clear grey light when he lifted his head. Between Saburo’s death and the terror he felt for Mademoiselle Dariole, I thought all deception might have been shocked out of hiM.
“That year has
passed,
when things might have been changed. I…. What is it you wish me to calculate?”
“Two things. Prince Henry Stuart, for one,” I said, the hours of contemplation as we sailed from Nihon bringing me the words easily. “Whether or not we’ll arrive back to find Monsieur King James dead by his son’s hand, and my treaty with France lost. That’s the first thing. The second—”
Robert Fludd looked at me silently.
“Your ‘ill-omened comet,’” I said at last. “I want to know if any of these events have changed it. To know if the destruction you believe in has been averted, or—not.”
We sailed on many vessels.
If I no longer had dread of the taaîfung visiting me with as quick a journey to the grave as that great gentleman Tanaka Saburo had, I began to feel an equal dread of how long we had been gone from European shores, and of what might have happened in our absence at home.
I did not, curiously, think of Henri IV’s court as it had been before I left: Henri in his late middle years, surrounded by wife and mistresses, legitimate sons and tribe of bastards, and still with the energy to plan, tirelessly, for a European war. The memory in my mind was of Henri of Navarre and the Duc de Sully—then plain de Rosny—at Arques and Ivry: younger men, in the bloodshed of battle. Sully had been wounded.
But not so gravely as I have wounded him, years after, failing to prevent King Henri’s death
.
And what does Marie de Medici do in France, now? Is Sully alive?
The Dutch ship that we travelled on carried presents from the de facto King of the Japans to Prince Maurice of Nassau, at The Hague. The “retired” Shogun Ieyass’s gifts included an armour, enamelled and braided in the Nihonese fashion, complete from helm to greaves. Examining it by the captain’s permission, I saw at last what Tanaka Saburo would have brought to King James.
It was very poor, I thought at first, compared to the gold-chased steel plate of an English armour; being only so many tiny pieces of metalwork tied together by Nihonese rope-work.
But if the box-like body-armour and hanging square tassets did not impress me, I found myself contemplating the fine mail rings sewn to the cloth of the arm-defences, and their shaped and double-curved steel splints of the forearm; so strong, and yet so supple that a duellist using the rapiers of Europe might easily have worn such, to avoid a thrust or tendon-slash, and yet found no limitation on his own movement.
“Wasted on James Stuart,” Dariole observed, finding me entranced. I could not but agree. She rubbed at her own arm, all unawares, as she left the cabin.
We found a ship that Robert Fludd promised would arrive home the following Spring.
I must have come to have confidence in these “Bruno’s Formulae” of Fludd and Sister Caterina. His assurance sustained me that Summer, and through the Autumn and Winter months; through every tedious sea-mile of the journey—and on every occasion during doldrums, sickness, and tempests, when mere terror would have been welcome, as I was otherwise completely certain we were about to die.
A day came that the sun—the last in the sign of Taurus, in the new year of 1612—rose over what looked to me to be an infinite brilliance of sea, but that the first mate told me contained the Isles of Scilly, at the mouth of the Channel.
“Well?” I demanded of Robert Fludd.
Dariole and Gabriel convened themselves in the ship’s waist with me, standing between hull-cover and rail, Robert Fludd between them. His pale eyes shone in his sun-darkened face.
“These are rough calculations, only. Given the time.” He shrugged, self-deprecating rather than stubborn. “I don’t want you to think otherwise, Master Rochefort.”
“And?”
“And Prince Henry Stuart is unlikely—yet—to have killed his father. Although there is more I must say of the boy, and soon.” He looked down at a blotted sheet of paper in his hand. “And, as I discovered by chance, while using Bruno’s Formulae on Henry, Sir Robert Cecil is likely absent from London this month. You may have either the King or his Secretary, it seems.”
Fludd was aware enough of the Medici treaty to know I would seek out both those men, as soon as I might. I nodded. “And the other matter?”
I knew before he spoke.
Fludd looked down at his brown hands, where every alien variety of ink that I might buy him ingrained itself in his fingers.
“No.” He spoke as if it were possible any of the three of us did not guess. “Nothing done has changed it. The comet still strikes.”
I nodded, and looked towards the ship’s stern.
“I thought it might be so. Gabriel, ask the captain what closest English port we may divert to—I have business, now, in the West Country.”
45
B
ristol being a large port, it took me no more than an hour to find two French ships also docked there and ascertain my essential news.
The Duc de Sully: alive.
Queen Regent Marie de Medici: not dead.
Well, a man cannot have everything,
I mused.
“What else?” Dariole demanded, when I entered the dockside tavern in which I had left her.
Being barely inside the door, I took a moment to order ale, greet Gabriel, and seat myself on one of the wooden settles by the hearth.
“What else? Rumours that the Duc is no longer part of the Regency government. Which may be true, or else not; that, I think, we shall not discover in
An odd word for it.
Home,
I thought, leaning back and drinking my ale. Even if it’s
Outside the leaded glass windows, a busy port and river bustled. Beyond them, hills shone green, going down blue into the distance where there might be a hint of mountains. I could have sat and watched all day. The rear door of the tavern stood open, gulls quarrelling over the cobbles for scraps, and the wind brought the scent of Western cooking.
Dariole banged her tankard down. “Bristol’s not up to much, is it? Even if it
has
taken us nearly two years to finally get here.”
I needs must smile at her, as she nodded thanks to Gabriel for another ale from the jug.
He sat down with us, and took a pull at his mug. “What day is it, Raoul?”
“May, now? About the twenty-first?” I put down my leather jack. “Fludd has succeeded in his calculation?”
Gabriel, who sat beside me now as if he were a gentleman or I a servant—and I did not feel inclined to reprimand him for it—muttered something into his mug in a disgusted tone that nonetheless sounded like agreement. His love for Fludd’s “black mathematics” had not grown.
Dariole shot a look up at the ceiling, beyond which Robert Fludd stayed under lock and key in our chamber.
Gabriel made a vague gesture towards the east. “Seems your Lord de Cecil’s closer than we thought. He’s been down in these parts. Bath. Taking Roman spring waters.”
I cocked a brow at that. Milord Cecil had not necessarily struck me as a ladies’ man, and iron-water is notoriously one of the cures for pox.
“Is he still there?”
“On his way back to Hatfield, north of London. But Fludd says we’ll come up with him the day after tomorrow; his coach will be travelling slower than men on horseback.”
“Do we want to?” Dariole absently rubbed at her left forearm with her other hand, which she did much, now. I supposed it still to pain her. On the odd occasions when I saw her without her shirt, the great rope of a scar had diminished to near white. She had not, yet, shown a full use of her arm.
“Seeing Mr Secretary soon would be advantageous, one would think,” I mused.
Gabriel grunted. “Wouldn’t trust that little weasel Fludd if I had his cod in my fist!”
A smile moved one corner of Dariole’s lips. I did not catch her eye. Some things—some things that make my body shrink to consider them—are far better left as metaphor.
“No matter of trust arises,” I said. “We have swords, we have pistols; we have, also, over-suspicious minds. For my part, if we may ride to London, rather than go on ships again, and my feet are on firm ground, I rejoice in it.”
I rejoiced further when we rode out a few hours later, on newly purchased horseflesh, having taken the opportunity of being in a city to sell M. Fludd’s physician’s instruments for a good price. I could not help wondering what had become of my Andalusian jennet in France these two years, and if I would ever trace his route of sale. The bay stone horse sold to me had few bad habits and good conformation, but if he had a spark of intelligence I had as yet failed to find it.
We rode south and west out of Bristol, towards flat lands, and the green hills that shrouded caves. Gabriel, as ever, was no further than a yard from Fludd; a cudgel at his belt. Mlle Dariole rode ahead. After a while, her voice floated back in less than harmonious song.
Three parts of a year and I have not touched you.
She had accepted the comfort of an embrace, in her nightmares, but nothing more. I am not a boy: I have patience. Since we left the Japans, I had not forced my presence on her. I feel as if some Venetian glassblower had cast a bubble about her, and I dare not shatter it, in case she broke, too.
Perhaps she is healing.
Gabriel came up boot-to-boot with me, as his and Fludd’s mounts caught up. “You had some tale about you and the King of England singing to the peasants around here, Raoul?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Damn good job you didn’t have
her
sing as well!”
The dignity of a gentleman does not admit of outbursts of mirth. I coughed.
We did not ride so far as Wookey, dismounting when the walls of the gorge at Cheddar rose up to either side, and lighting lamps to guide us into the caves there. The silence, broken only by water dripping, brought those other caverns to mind. No one had been here since we: a few discarded and broken pieces of horseman’s equipment reassured me on that. The silence had taken every echo of the voices of Spofforth and his men.
I found Suor Caterina’s papers where we had left them, bundled in a dry cave.
The paper felt damp and gritty to the touch, but I saw it to be legible, for all the eighteen months and more it had lain here.
“Gabriel…”
“I know: that’s why we’ve got a pack-horse with us.” He glanced across to Mlle Dariole’s lamp-lit face. “You want to help me pack these up?”
She didn’t speak, but nodded. I thought her eyes too bright for the smoke from the lanterns to account for.
When last we were here, both Saburo and Caterina were alive
.
At Bath, we had confirmed news of the Earl of Salisbury’s entourage on its way to Hatfield House by way of the London road.
James and Marie de Medici might be the best of all powerful monarchs to have as Fludd’s patrons, not being prone to conquering wars—but they do not think in terms of five hundred years. They are not—and nor, I freely confess, am I—the statesman that Mr Secretary is.
Cecil is a man I most urgently need to see.
England in May: every tree had leaf, every hedgerow a bird; the pigs of peasant farmers lay by the side of the road, suckling litters of tiny squealing piglets. I thought myself like to be drunk on the clear, sun-warmed air. When we halted by a river for the horses to drink, I reminded myself to watch the doctor. Fludd sat morosely astride his pale animal, whose good ambling pace did not redeem its bad habit of nipping at a man’s legs. Robert Fludd merely eyed it, dourly, and moved his foot.
“Where are we to catch up Milord Cecil?” I asked him, drawing the bay stone horse out of the river-grass into which he desired to wander, and mounting up again.
The scrawny man pointed. A mile or so ahead, roofs were very faintly visible, mostly hidden by trees. In France, it would have been the house of some great estate.
“We’re close by Marlborough,” Fludd said quietly. “That is St Margaret’s Priory; there you will find him.”
Something in this is a trick,
I thought, and touched a spur delicately to the bay, bringing him around on the deeply rutted but dusty road. “Ride ahead, where I can see you.”
Fludd shook his head; not in disagreement, I saw, but in negation. “You have no need to distrust me. Nor she. Everything is—past.”
“She changed your religion for you, monsieur. One day you might resent that. If I thought you would ever be in a position to harm her, then—despite all else—you would be in a grave in Nihon.” I let that lie for a moment, to see if he would pick it up. “If there was a man in France I could trust to keep you in custody, we wouldn’t now be in England. As it is, if you’re to live, Cecil will make your best gaoler.”
I rode on behind him, while Dariole and Gabriel chattered in front, and considered how I might best bring about my desired circumstances if this truly was Milord Robert Cecil here.
A servant or lay brother ran up as we walked the horses in off the road, into the courtyard of the great priory; blathering that every room was full, he must regretfully refuse us hospitality. Had it been an inn, I would have sought to bribe him for extra space. That might not be wise with even a heretic religious.
“Why so full?” I demanded.
“My Lord the Earl of Salisbury has taken every room, staying no man knows how long!”
“Take word and my name to the Earl.” I interrupted the lay brother as he opened his mouth to object. “He will wish to receive Monsieur de Herault, I promise you. Delay, and he will whip you as if you were his servant.”
A delay was no unpleasant experience, in the sun and the shade beneath the English oaks, but I thought it not a good sign.
Are we forgot? Has Mr Secretary changed his allegiance?
“Monsieur de Herault?” a tenor voice said.
I rounded, to find a plump man in the religious clothing of the English heresy standing under the trees. I thought him pale, for an Englishman, they being usually ruddier in countenance. His eyes were red about the rims.
“My name is Bowles,” he said. “I am the Earl’s chaplain. My lord is almost beyond earthly business. He has been ill some months; he is at last dying.”
The skull-face of the hunchbacked man shone like a marble memento mori, seen between the curtains of his tester bed.
I am familiar enough with the signs of death from illness, as well as violence.
Not beyond one or two days more,
I thought, shocked; hiding it behind a respectful bow.
If that.
In the great refectory of the priory, where Robert Fludd had stood with Gabriel’s bulk to one side of him, and Dariole straddling the bench on the other, I had accused him frankly. “You knew this!”
“If I had told you, it would have got us here no sooner. I…did not desire to bring disappointment. I knew we could arrive in time.”
There might be no more charitable accommodation at the priory; that did not mean that every brother, servant, local man, and traveler had not flocked here, drawn by rumour, waiting for a great man to die. They ate and drank in the refectory. I gained a handful of stories in as many minutes. When the chaplain, Bowles, returned to show me to the great chamber in the hospice, I had no clear idea whether or not Robert Cecil was in any position to speak of a treaty signed close on two years past.
I left Gabriel and Mlle Dariole in charge of Robert Fludd, or thought I did. As I followed Bowles, rapid footsteps sounded behind me, and Dariole dropped into a walk at my side.
I said nothing.
The pale gothic room in which the Earl lay was dark, despite the sun outside, the physicians having closed the shutters. It took my eyes moments to adjust. I saw him, between the bed’s drawn curtains.
The death’s-head’s eyes snapped open.
“Messire Rochefort?” a thin, whispery voice out of the gloom said. “But wonderful! It has been one of the unanswered questions in my mind, that I have never known what has become of you.”
I crossed to stand by to his bed-side, Dariole a silent shadow beside me. Even in the gloom I could see her face whitening.
Lost in the bedding, Robert Cecil’s tiny, hunched frame could have been a child’s body. As a man does, when meeting another after several years, I reckoned up in an instant all the changes between then and now, and was aware that he did the same.
“Time has dealt easily with you, Monsieur Rochefort.” Cecil’s drawn face moved into a sardonic expression. “Not so with me. I have a tomb made at Hatfield. At the top lies Secretary of State Cecil in his robes, and underneath—a skeleton in his winding cloth. Before, I modelled for the one; now, I might model for the latter.”
The lack of more light kept me from seeing the full extent of his illness, but enough was visible. The flesh of his body had melted down like wax. His skin was the same stained-dirt colour of tapers. The eyes in his head, great and dark and luminous, were all that remained recognisable of the Cecil I had known two years before.
Seeking a moment’s reflection in pleasantries, before I broached the main matter, I introduced Mlle Dariole.
“The hic mulier.” Cecil’s smile exposed teeth as long and yellow as an old sheep’s. “Mademoiselle, you are welcome. You will not know this, Monsieur Rochefort—mademoiselle was once pleased to ask a favour of me.”
He’s rambling,
I thought.
I caught Dariole’s embarrassed shift from one foot to the other.
“She did, milord?” I murmured.
“Mademoiselle de la Roncière asked me for your life,” the Earl said, with a wheezing laugh. “I would have given it to her, so prettily she begged, even had I intended to take it.”
