Mary Gentle (74 page)

I bowed a respectful acknowledgement. That she must have seen Cecil before she was allowed into the cell at the Tower, I knew. That she had assumed Master Secretary genuinely about to execute me….
No, that I did not know
.

Her cheeks and ears showed rosy even in the darkened room.

Robert Cecil caught my gaze, and smiled. A politician gives up the manipulations of men only when he is dead.

“You will have heard that Rosny—M. de Sully—is alive.” He spoke with a hoarse quietness. “Although no longer on the Council of Ministers.”

To have it spoken as truth jolted me. Without that protection from the Queen Regent’s malice—

Cecil continued, “He and I fell from power in the same month of the same year…Albeit, I still have influence with my monarch.”

“She removed him?”

“There are too many for it to be the Queen Regent, alone. France has changed, Master Rochefort. You have been gone many months. A year, is it now?” He suddenly looked confused.

“A little more than that.” A sudden pang went through me, which, in another man, I would have called pity. “Milord—do I take it the treaty stands?”

“It will, I think, if you have Fludd, and take him to his Majesty James. You have Fludd.”

He spoke with confidence enough to flatter me.

“I have brought Doctor Fludd to you, milord,” I said politely. “He is downstairs, in the care of my man. I had hoped to entrust him to you as a prisoner in the Tower. But….”

His eyes glazed as if he lost concentration while I spoke, and I thought him so deep into illness that he could not listen.

As I mislaid the words I would say next, his dark eyes snapped to me, and one long, elegant finger rose and pointed. “Bring him to me.”

Before I could speak, Dariole nodded, and darted out of the room on silent feet. The young do not like death-beds, I have noticed. Although we who are in age more close have more reason, perhaps, to be fearful.

“The Queen Regent has brought a number of new ministers onto the council, all of her choosing, and none of M. de Sully’s liking.” Cecil seemed to have no energy for declining to give ‘M. de Rosny’ his title. He smiled wearily. “It was a long, drawn-out battle, but she mostly withheld her hand from it, that I grant her. Nonetheless, M. de Sully went into retirement last year, while you were absent. Some say he may still be an influence behind the scenes, but I find no trace of it.”

I looked at this English Secretary of State, about to lay all titles down in perpetuity. “And Fludd’s return?”

“You are barely in time, Master Rochefort.”

His gaze changed as he got the gibe out; I saw in his expression the knowledge that it applied even more to he, himself.

“I am sorry,” I said, and bowed.

“I’m weary.” The small man smiled, unexpectedly. “My work isn’t done, Master Rochefort, that’s all I regret.”

I realised I was attempting not to inhale the odours of the sick room. A man’s body as it decays is one thing, the purges and leeching of the physicians quite another. Cecil’s body will not have been strong to begin with, small and frail as it is.
Any man may see you have worn yourself out in the service of governing a country.

I did not speak it: it being known to both of us. I bowed again, with respect.

“Madame the Queen Regent is a woman of steel purpose, under her softness,” Cecil observed quietly. “I take her to be running fast out of patience. If his Majesty King James now reminds her of the treaty, and she sees Master Fludd and the benefits of his knowledge, I believe she may refrain from more harm to M. Sully. It’s true he is a man of too much integrity to make himself the focus for Huguenot dissent, and revolt against the Queen—but she does not credit that. I fear she may execute him, as a dangerous man, or let him spend thirty years in the Bastille.”

“If I go to Paris—”

He interrupted me as casually as great men interrupt their inferiors. “She would have you stabbed on the spot, or strung up at Montfaucon without a heartbeat’s thought! Master Rochefort, must I remind you, it needs no second trial to have you hanged? Madame the Queen Regent bears you a considerable grudge.”

“I am complimented, milord.”

By his expression, he considered that right and proper—
and
considered it also below Marie de Medici’s dignity to concern herself over a servant. In a different mood, I might have laughed.

“His Majesty King James will confer with her by way of the Ambassador in Paris.” Cecil made a signal with his hand, as if the matter were done with.

The sound of footsteps came outside the door.

“Well, Master Fludd.” Cecil’s voice creaked. “I have had enough of your profession proclaiming over me. You can give me a more accurate diagnosis. When is it that I die?”

Fludd gave him an apologetic glance. “I can only calculate what is likely, my lord.”

“I
know
what is likely.” Cecil stared at the younger man for a long moment. “What day?”

“Tomorrow, my lord.”

He took it without a flinch. “Are you willing to serve King James?”

“Yes, my lord. I swear.”

For a long moment, Cecil stared through the gloom at him. “Whether I were dying or not, you would in any case need another gaoler, in case I fell further from power.” He turned his head towards me. “There is always jealousy at court, Master Rochefort; you know this. I give you a gaoler who will not fall—put Doctor Fludd under the control of his Majesty.”

I startled. “King James?”

Dariole said quietly, “He’s the other man who knows about Fludd’s mathematics.”

Dariole’s shoulder pushed into my side—and I realised she did not know that she was doing it; that she unconsciously backed away from the tester bed with the dying man in it.

I put my hands on her shoulders, to steady her. It was a minute or so before she moved.

How may I broach, to this dying man, the necessary uses of Robert Fludd?

The word of a powerful man, after his death, has no power.

As if he came with painful effort to a decision, Cecil nodded to himself. “I have put the Earl of Northumberland back into the Tower; he will never set foot outside of it—at least until his Majesty dies: after that, I cannot guarantee. Master Fludd, it is my order that you stay in London. I had purchased a house in Cripplegate, ready should you return. It is my order, also, that you go no further than the boundaries of that London parish, as long as you live. His Majesty will uphold me in this. You may practise your art of medicine, but you shall chiefly be advisor to the King, holding yourself and your mathematics always at his command. Do you understand me?”

There might have been no man else in the room but Fludd and he.

The physician-astrologer said, “It will take much time out of my days, and I may be observed…I wrote books at Oxford, milord. I was sent down for them. I might publish those manuscripts sequentially, now, pretending to be writing them, as a concealment for servants and others, as to how I spend my time. I will serve King James as you desire.”

“What is your reason? Fear?”

Robert Fludd looked at him. “Atonement.”

“Yes. That, I understand.” The dying man leaned back against the bolsters.

I caught a creak from the door, as he did so, and saw Dariole there, half-in and half-out. While Cecil exchanged another word with Fludd, I beckoned her to me.

Dariole shook her head. I crossed to the door.

“I’ll be down with Gabriel, messire.”

“Will you not say farewell to a brave man?”

“I don’t like sickness. It’s different in a duel.” She looked at me. In the dim light, I saw her make an expression which I did not understand. “All
right
.”

“And this is true?” Cecil said, as she and I re-approached the bed.

Robert Fludd bowed his head. “I need more time for my calculations of the formulae, milord.”

“Ah, yes. Time. You will see.” Cecil made a small gesture that took in the sick-bed and himself. “I am not over-well supplied with time. Tell me what you have to your hand to date, Master Doctor.”

Fludd bowed, his hands in the sleeves of his robes. He might have been any physician, about to lick the finger dipped in his patient’s urine-flask. His eyes caught the faint light from the window, and I could see their blueness from where I stood. Clean-shaven as he was, he somehow gave the impression of having nothing to hide.
And perhaps he finally does not.

“There are two most likely lives for Prince Henry Stuart, now,” Robert Fludd began, with something of his old professorial air. “Henry may die young. That future is unlikely in comparison to this one: that he will succeed his father, soon, on the thrones of England and Scotland.”

An expression of pain distorted Cecil’s face. Had he not been ill, I knew his self-control meant we would not have witnessed it. “And he is a good king, Henry?”

Fludd’s head moved in a twitch; I realised he had been about to shake it and stopped himself.

“Sir,” Cecil demanded.

“He will be a—valiant king.” Fludd knelt down, suddenly, and raised his eyes to the man in the great bed. “I admit it: this is my fault. I thought I would be there to mentor him! Henry desires to be the man the French King Henri would have been: a crusader, conquering all of Europe. Prince Henry Stuart desires to do this for the Protestant or Puritan cause. My lord, the Catholic houses of Spain and Austria are strong, but there is Daneland, and Sweden, and the United Provinces, and the Germanies…. I wish I might not tell you, my lord, how long the wars will last. This century will not see the end of theM. ”

He does not mention his comet either, I noted.
That will be too far off for Cecil to care about
. But England, now and for the next nine decades….

Cecil’s corncrake voice rasped, “So long?”

“Religion is not subject to reason. When a war spreads out to take in every country out to the borders of the Turkish lands, and atrocities are done on all sides, then it becomes a matter of one generation revenging the deaths of its fathers on another. Blood and memory, my lord. That can continue endlessly.”

Slowly, Cecil nodded. “But you cannot be sure of this? It may be averted?”

“I can further study the papers of Suor Caterina, now.” Fludd bowed his head. “My lord, I am certain war comes. So also was she. Our best hope is that it is still possible to shorten it—by years, or, if fortunate, by tens of years. But, now that he will brook no guidance—now that the murderous qualities have been brought out in him—this is where it begins, my lord. With Prince Henry, and his Protestant crusade.”

Fludd glanced back at me.

“The Huguenots in France will revolt and join him; there will be civil war.”

He did not say, nor did he need to, how Sully’s fortunes might go, dogged Huguenot as M. the Duc has always been.

“How can we tell for sure what
will
be?” Cecil demanded.

“Only by hindsight.” At an impatient signal from the bed, Fludd climbed back up onto his feet. “And then it is too late…. My lord, you begin to see why I was forced into the things I did! We cannot know everything. At the same time, we cannot deny that we know
something
. We must act. Or refrain from acting, and bear the responsibility for that, also.”

Feeling Dariole’s shoulder against my arm, and how she shivered, I put my arm casually about her. I looked somewhat warily at Robert Fludd, finding myself in agreement with him. “Ultimately one must make the decision to trust and act, or not trust and act otherwise.”

“And what would you do?” Cecil demanded waspishly.

Before I could make any reply, he snapped his pale, elegant fingers.

“There—I will leave it in your hands.”

I blinked. “Monsieur!”

“You will not bring grief to James by speaking of his son to him.” Cecil’s voice sounded ragged, his face paled in the shuttered darkness of the room, but he had every bit of his old authority. “Do you understand me, Fludd, Rochefort? The Prince has grieved his father enough. What you will do, is to calculate until you know and see clear whether this is the future to be. And if it is, and there is no escape from it, then, Master Rochefort, you will act as I desire you to—you will take the Prince’s life.”

His hard gaze met mine.

“I am weary of being an assassin,” I grated. “One king would have been enough, and the attempt on James is the nearest I will ever come to another.”

“Granted it should not be you.” Cecil waved dismissively at Robert Fludd. “It should be this man. He enticed the Prince to conspiracy, or found it in the boy’s soul and brought it out. If there was justice, it would be he who would take blood on his hands and kill Henry Stuart. But he is incompetent in that respect, Master Rochefort, and so again it needs must be you who clears up the mess.”

There was almost a glint of humour in Robert Cecil’s eye. Returning honesty for honesty, I said, “You think I am one who will hold fast to a promise to a dying man after he’s dead?”

“I think you are a man who would desire to hold fast to all his promises.”

The supposition of honesty, I find, can hurt far more than the supposition of villainy.