Mary Gentle (77 page)
Authors: A Sundial in a Grave-1610
The warm scent of broiled meat mixed with that of soot washed down the chimney by the rain. The coals on the fire-stand sputtered in the silence. I sighed, and shook my head.
“I have been deciding, these last days…at least in the matter of Prince Henry. After that—” I shrugged.
Dariole, her dark eyes hooded, watched me in the rain-light of the kitchen. “How would you do this? How would you start? How would you
pay
for it?”
Fear, exasperation, and tension exploded through me; I threw up my hands, leaning back on the bench, the hard edge of the kitchen table cutting into my spine.
“Mademoiselle, I have
no
idea! I’m as yet no further than knowing it
should
be done. Who knows: perhaps James’s next spy-master will be a man of as great a mind as Robert Cecil—or Viscount Carr will transmute himself into a statesman! And then we may leave this matter entirely, and go back to our lives!”
Gabriel gave a basso profundo chuckle, which I took to be a response to my exasperation. I glared at him.
Mlle Dariole leaned over the bench, and made a long arm across the table, snaring the wine jug and crockery drinking-bowls.
Pouring the wine, she said, “Maybe we don’t have to think of it now. Not until Prince Henry—”
She stopped and looked at me.
“With all
this
—Henry; Fludd; what you’ve been talking about, watchmen—you’re going
away?
Going
where?
”
I reached for one of the wine-bowls, and drank for courage. “I am going to France, to speak to M. de Sully.”
Dariole exploded. “You’re Badlam-crazy!”
“‘Bedlam,’” I corrected.
“I don’t care!”
“She’s right,” Gabriel Santon observed with a sigh. “I ought to pack.”
“You stay here. You keep your eye on Robert Fludd. And your fist if he needs it. I have his mathematical assurance of my return.”
Dariole snorted. “You’re trusting your life to
Fludd’s
prediction?”
“Well, I am to trust other men’s deaths to it.”
I rose to my feet. If I could have turned my back on her, I would; it would have made words easier to say. She let me clasp her wrist. I felt the heat of her skin under my fingers, so soft, even through my gloves; and the muscle beneath hard and strong.
“The present debt outweighs the future.”
I reached out and took her left hand, moving the lace cuff and her doublet sleeve until the end of her scar was just visible.
I said, “‘A man must be loyal to his lord.’ I find myself in agreement with Tanaka Saburo—if I do not plan to end the same way that he did. Mademoiselle, first, I
must
do this. Wait for me to return. I will be done within two or three weeks.”
“You’ll be
dead
within two or three weeks.” Her mouth set. “I don’t care about mathematics! The Medici bitch won’t have forgotten! If you set foot in France, she’ll have you killed.”
I braced myself for a long quarrel. “No, mademoiselle. I go, and I go alone. I…have a truth that must be told.”
She lifted her chin, with that stubbornness with which I am so familiar. “Why?
Why
must it?”
What did I say of Henri’s assassination, that May two years past?
It will fail, because I have arranged it so.
I smiled privately and satirically.
“Hubris on my part, mademoiselle. That is why.”
Dariole scowled at me.
“There is the man to whom I owe my life,” I said. “Even if, by now, he will have regretted saving me, and desire another gallows-tree. I take every shred of responsibility for Henri’s death. It was I who brought Ravaillac to the rue de la Ferronnerie; it was I who did not guard him well enough, so that he could put home his knife into the body of Henri of Navarre. That I admit to, and I will submit to justice—but
I am no traitor
. And Sully must know that. He
must
be told!”
Gabriel stood up, also; wiping his hands down the front of his breeches. “Raoul, you think he’ll absolve you for King Henri’s death?”
I smiled, shaking my head. “Henri was his friend and master from the ’80s on; Sully
knew
Henri from not long after St Bartholomew’s Day. They fought together, governed together…no, the Duc will not absolve me. Rather the reverse.”
He grunted. “Why go, then!”
“Because I must tell him the truth. Before I do anything else.”
There is no justice in politics; that is hardly news to me—still, it sickens me that Marie de Medici flourishes, she who killed her husband and will now never answer for it. Marie de Medici: who will be Queen now, until Louis is allowed to come of age.
If I were a blade of a different temper, I would make my way back to France and see if it is as easy to kill a Queen by design as it is to kill a King by accident.
Gabriel shrugged his heavy shoulders, smelling of sweat and Cripplegate. “You were lucky to get out of it last time, Raoul. You messed up!”
Dariole interrupted him, glaring at me. “Robert Fludd gets to stay here on a pension, and
you
get to go back to Paris and be hanged?” Her palm and fingers curved comfortingly around her dagger’s pommel. “Caterina was right. Where’s the justice in
that!
”
I managed a smile, although her outrage touched me. “Mademoiselle, I would say you are very young, to ask that question. Were it not that I am inclined to ask it myself, of late. But I shall not be hanged; I trust Fludd’s predictions that far.”
The young woman lifted her head, closing her eyes. Cripplegate, in the Summer’s warm rain: the water at least laid the dust that commonly blew into the kitchen. Outside the open door and beyond the courtyard, two dogs, wet and yelping, ran in squabbling circles down the cobbled street, and vanished into the distance.
Watching Dariole’s face, I said, “You may console yourself with this, at least. Doctor Fludd will never have friends. Likely, he will not marry. His servants will be his unacknowledged gaolers. This is his life, for as long as he lives it. Because he knows the secrets of kings.”
Dariole opened her eyes and looked up at me.
Without any apparent acknowledgement of Gabriel’s presence, she said, “Is that what it’s like for you?”
Flustered, I could only echo, “Me, mademoiselle?”
Gabriel watched Dariole, a deep crease across his forehead.
She said, “Alone. Is that going to be
your
life?”
I saw the crevasse that opened up before my feet.
Smiling, I reached down and flicked her cheek with my gloved finger. “Doctor Fludd is confined to a house, and under observation. A man may find companionship in cities, when that is not so. If I have not the companions of Zaton’s, or the girls of Les Halles, be assured, I will find others, elsewhere.”
Dariole turned her back on me and stalked out into the warm rain.
I watched her lean back against the soaked courtyard wall and look up at the beam-and-plaster frontage of the house, under its grey veil of new lime-wash. Every line of her body shouted hurt.
Gabriel, at my shoulder, advised, “Leave her.”
I can do nothing else: it is for the best. I trust Fludd’s mathematics.
Else it would be irresponsible of me to go.
47
S
ully has retired to a château on the Loire.
I picked up word both from Cecil’s men, and one of my old contacts in the court of the Archduke and Archduchess in the Netherlands, and reflected that at least I should not face entering Paris while the Queen Regent was there. Sully had gone in January last year, they said, when he retired from the royal council.
They spoke also of how unwillingly he had gone.
History has its ironies—I re-entered
Condé and the Princess Charlotte, it turned out, had left again for
I reflected on it as I made a covert and sidelong way south and west, across country towards the river Loire. Charlotte’s family had set the sixteen-year-old girl on to the ageing King—he was then near sixty—in the hope of favours. Henri had acted from the first moment like a man completely besotted. My master the Duke had thought it unamusing, and a political danger.
At the time, I had been blackly amused by the spectacle of an old man making a fool of himself over a teenage girl.
I am not within twenty years of Henri’s age!
I protested in my mind, with present chagrin, as my sway-backed and broken-winded mount trudged through the rain.
I am nowhere near such a spectacle as that old goat, besotted over a mere cock-tease!
The Prince Condé, married off to Charlotte to give Henri an excuse to lie with her without scandal, had taken his husbandly duties entirely too seriously, and fled with his beautiful wife when he was twenty-two.
I am hardly twenty-two, either,
I thought.
If the question could have been asked without my being killed the moment I set foot in the Queen Regent’s court—and without getting my face slapped, and myself into a duel—I should like to have ask Charlotte de Montmorency: how did she find her marriage now? Now that she has attained the greater age of eighteen, going on nineteen?
After two years, do the caresses of her husband, and the other young gallants she entertained in the
Dear God, but I am pitiful!
It would do me good to have Mlle Dariole present to kick my arse.
Ah, but that’s the problem.
The weather both suited my mood and seemed to be what I deserved. Rain dripped from my hat onto the cloak I had bundled about me, and the mud from the gelding’s hooves plastered my boots to the thigh.
Even worrying at the subject of Dariole brought pictures into my mind. Naked and dressing herself on the ship from Goa, the roll of the vessel making her stagger like a drunken man. I shifted uncomfortably in the saddle.
A young man might have inspired her to a quicker healing. She might, by now, have been desirous of a lover’s touch.
I know Mlle Dariole will not miss M. Rochefort over-much, although she might now think so. How can she help but be disgusted, in a year or two, by an old besotted fool slobbering over her? A young man like Condé will appear—and if she cannot marry, still, she will be a glorious mistress….
The rain began to clear a half-hour later. I found myself in no more buoyant frame of mind.
I betrayed M. de Sully,
I thought grimly. No matter how inadvertently. There is nothing I can do, now, but make my confession to him, so that he knows that one man at least was
not
disloyal to him. That what happened was disastrous, but it was not done by any traitor’s hand.
Even so, I have caused the death of his best and oldest friend. If not for Fludd’s mathematical assurances, it would neither surprise nor disappoint me if he had me hanged from the justice-tree on his own estate.
I turned the nag’s head to ride parallel with the Loire, on the north bank. Soon, the road widened. A few other travelers passed: monks, a group of noblemen riding back from the hunt, two women, a small child playing happily in the mud left after the rain. Houses began to appear here and there, and a small town at the end of a Loire bridge, which I would ride around in case any man should ask questions.
The country is quiet,
I marvelled. No war with Jülich-Cleves. All men do not travel in groups, with firearms. I occupied myself for a few miles in turning over in my mind the news and rumours I had heard. Henri’s “Grand Design,” whatever conquests he intended by it, had died with his death. Is it conceivable that in terms of peace, the Medici is a better ruler?
It was almost an hour before the sky cleared totally, and I saw the red-tiled roofs of the château of Villebon over the trees ahead.
How can I leave her, to perform this act of stupidity?
How can I not?
I touched a spur to the nag’s flanks and he ambled at a slightly faster pace.
My master the Duke is retired from the council, he is no longer
surintendant de finances
and first minister of France. He is still a lord with the high, low, and middle justice. This is not Suor Caterina’s revolution of the people. This is a land where a man may be hanged out of hand: as much property as a beast is.
The sun warmed my near-dry cloak.
My stomach churned, seeing Villebon come closer.
It would not take much to have me turn about,
I thought, as I rode into the small town that attached itself to the château. It was remarkably crowded, and it took me some time to persuade my nag through the streets.
I rode directly to the gates of the château, which stood open in the sun. The marks of many hooves indicated that a large party had passed out, some two hours ago; Monsieur de Sully might not be back for some time, I concluded.
Although it is always possible that it is not the Duc who has ridden out
.
“You!” a voice bellowed, close enough that, if the gelding had been a spirited horse, I should have found myself dumped on my arse in the mud. As it was, the beast shuffled sideways a few steps, and I reined him in and looked down.
The guards were not faces I knew.
The young man in fashionable doublet, I knew well.
At least one of his secretaries stayed with him,
I thought. “Monsieur Andre.”
He called out urgently, a dozen men with muskets flocking to him from the gate-house. I sat my mount, watching. He snarled, “You can’t get away!”
“Would I be here if I wanted to?”
Speaking more mildly than I felt—M. Andre has been always a pompous and humourless young man, but he has at least shown himself loyal—I held up my hands to demonstrate myself unarmed, and got down from the saddle.
“I’m ready,” I said. “You may take me to him.”
Andre scowled, confused. He shot a glance across the courtyard, towards the château’s main door. Slowly, I unbuckled my sword-belt, and held both sword and dagger out to the boy.
“Search him!” Andre ordered the men shrilly; and to me: “I hope he sticks you in the pillory before he hangs you. Offal and flints, Rochefort, and I hope you lose an eye to it!”
A shame
you
were not the Queen Regent’s spy and murderer, I reflected, while two of the musketeers took me by the arms and shoulders, and a third searched me.
Even more mildly, I remarked, “The late King never failed to call his enemies ‘monsieur,’ no matter how vile he thought them. It’s a shame younger men don’t follow his example.”
The younger man bristled. I resolved to give up baiting him.
I am here for the Duc, not him.
The young man, Andre, took hold of the shoulder of my doublet, reaching up to do it. I thought he would not have, had his musketeers not been holding my arms behind my back.
The anger in his face was so pure, I all but looked aside in shame.
“We executed one traitor, a year or more past,” he got out, “when the
Goddams
thought fit to warn us M. Gost had sold himself to the Medici. He was only a spy. You—I hope you hang as he did, but may it take you an hour to choke!”
I should not have thought of Daniel Gost, I confess—but, on reflection, the Duc’s kitchens are not so pleasant that a man working in them cannot be tempted by a bribe. Gost had been in the household longer than I. I felt a certain sense of anti-climax. But then again….
Did Daniel sweat when he knew Maignan was dead, by reason of him?
Did he have nightmares, and half welcome the rope when they brought it?
Men scurried about at Andre’s command. The musketeers, being ordered to hold me on the spot, did exactly that. I looked about me. Villebon was not a place I had visited often—when I have seen my master the Duke at his homes, it has more commonly been Sully-on-Loire and Rosny. I imagined I would see him, here, in much the same kind of chamber as there, or at the Arsenal. Some small, dark panelled room, with Sully seated behind a desk piled high with papers in perfect order.
And wide oaken floorboards, I thought, upon which I may drop down on my knees and beg his pardon.
A man cannot apologise for this.
I suppose I may, like Doctor Fludd, at least make explanation.
At the same moment that I raised my eyes to the white walls and peaked red-tiled roofs of Villebon, wondering where in the building I might find that room with Sully, words suddenly burst out loudly behind me.
Andre turned about, staring. I heard a disturbance at the edge of the town. Cheering? Or some other sound?
A number of horsemen burst out of the town at the gallop, a grey horse leading.
The Duc,
I thought, suddenly all ice. The stallion’s hooves threw up yellow mud; landed so hard that I could feel them jar the ground. They echoed from the walls of the courtyard as Maximilien de Bethune rode up, slid down from the saddle, and threw his reins behind him with the assurance of a man who knows there will always be a servant there to catch them. He strode towards us as his mount danced backwards in the grip of the groom, and the other riders and mounts milled around at the gate.
His beard has gone white,
I thought, as he came close upon me. Under the velvet bonnet, his hair showed iron grey. He did not, despite that, look the handful of years over fifty that he must be—he strode still like the man who rode with Henri at Arques and Ivry; the gown that he wore over his sober doublet and trunk-hose flying out in the wind, his riding whip cracking at the side of his boot.
“Monsiegneur Duc.” I did not attempt to move out of the grip of the musketeers who held me. Behind Sully, other men were dismounting, and a few women in noble dress. I could only stare down at the man as he came closer: Henri’s confidant, the Medici’s enemy, retired governor of France. His round Gascon features were pale and set.
He stopped in front of me. I began again, “Monsiegneur—”
He raised the horse-whip still in his hand and lashed me across the face.
It caught me too fast, too much by surprise, for even a duelist’s reflexes to avoid more than the very worst of it. The lash caught me from forehead to cheek, over one eye, in one knife-thin stroke. I yelled.
“Let him go!” he bellowed.
The soldiers stepped rapidly back.
His face glowed with recognition and hatred. He raised the whip again and struck, leather and cord catching me horizontally across my cheeks. I tasted sweet iron; spat a mouthful of blood.
“Monsieur Duke!” I yelled, desperate. He sliced two more blows down on my head, where I had not even had the chance to remove my hat; the second one cut my scalp so that blood ran.
I stumbled down on one knee, arms up to protect my face. The Duc de Sully’s whip lashed me full in the ribs, slicing doublet and shirt as if they were nothing.
“Monsiegneur!” I shouted. “Listen! Listen to me!”
“Bastard traitor.”
Sully’s voice was unrecognisable. I dared not look up. Blood ran down my face. Something was wrong with my vision; the flagstones blurred, spattered with blood. I saw his boots beside me. A hand grabbed my hair.
For all he was fifteen years my senior, and a head shorter, he threw me forward bodily.
I did not resist. Bleakly, inside the pain, a small thought surfaced:
I deserve all he can do to me.
I fell down on my hands and knees, and yelled again as the whip caught me across the small of the back.
Shouts came from beyond the two of us; people watched; I could not have said who. Nobles; commoners. Some cheering, some alarmed.
I huddled my head down between my arms.
The whip is made to get commands through the thick skin of a horse. Human skin is different. With the bare protection of doublet and breeches, I rolled on the ground, and the whip caught me again and again, slicing cloth to rags. It lashed open my calf, my thigh, my wrist; the sharp excruciation curling about my ribs and leaving a bloody weal from nipple to throat.
