Mary Gentle

by A Sundial in a Grave-1610

  Did I hear….

  Her gown and bodice were wool of a middle-class blue; she had black hair under her coif, with grey at the temples, and an Irish mist complexion. I stared into her eyes, expecting blue there also, but they were dark brown. I switched my dagger to my left hand; moved my right hand across my body to my sword-hilt.

  “Who is it you want?” I answered, as if stupidly bemused; meantime scanning the men around us alertly.

  “My name is Aemilia Lanier. You are Valentin-Raoul Rochefort.” Her low voice spoke passable Parisian French. “Don’t be concerned, monsieur, I do not come from Queen Regent Marie.”

  I stepped sideways, swung around as much as I could—and a wooden cudgel took me on the point of my shoulder, numbing my right arm down to the fingertips, and my hand dropped away from my sword still in its scabbard.

  In the same moment, a second cudgel tapped me on the skull, behind the ear; and another man took hold of my dagger and fumbled it out of my grip.

  “It worked!” a man’s voice exclaimed at my side, in what sounded like wonder. “A tall man of his hands, but look at him now!”

  I did not lose consciousness but my legs went limp as string. Two or three men gripped me, under the arms and around the torso, and the woman in blue—“Lanier?” I don’t know that name—nodded in sharp satisfaction, and moved away. I stumbled, three-quarters into unconsciousness, in their hands, my feet hitting the cobbles as she led us off from the playhouse and into the narrow streets of Bankside.

  I am much used to being the man of violence, existing outside of the world where violence does not customarily happen. These two men who supported me now, one arm thrown over each of their shoulders as if I were a drunkard, and the three others who crowded close, did not look like fellow ruffians and duellists—but like shop-keepers, I thought dazedly. English shop-keepers. And the woman? Might more credibly make a shop-keeper’s wife than a presentable whore! What is this?

  The swipe under my ear had been shrewdly given. I choked back a desire to vomit, which commonly comes with head-injuries.

  Ill luck, I thought, dizzy. And luck is what it is: these are not professional robbers and thieves!

  I have under the crown of my hat what the English call a secret: a steel frame, made to fit inside, which reinforces the crown and serves almost the function of a helmet. It was doubtless invented by a man who had been coshed on top of the head once too often. It does not help, of course, when one is hit on the flesh below the brim.

  I stumbled more than was perhaps necessary, waiting my chance to break free. It may seem odd that I was not more concerned or surprised. The advantage of a large frame is that, so long as face and hands and the cod goes unhurt, a man may take a considerable beating and be none the worse for it. I know I can absorb damage.

  However, a man, once made prisoner, may be dealt with in a way he does not like. I swayed one way, stumbled the other, watching for a likely moment to crack these men’s heads together and free myself. They have been foolish enough to leave me my sword; I can draw, recover my dagger in a moment, and then—for all they have English rapiers and broadswords at their belts—I do not think I shall face much I cannot deal with.

  But the woman knows me by name.

  I let my head hang, taking in the sight of this further street through which they hustled me—only in a few places does Southwark have more than a single street, running beside the Thames-river: south of that it is immediate open country and farmland.

  Will Mlle Dariole and M. Saburo think to wait where we last saw each other?

  I missed a step on the mud ruts, independent of any desire to cozen my captors. Why is my first thought of them? Of her?

  We left the sight of open country; came to a more busy street that ran crosswise, north–south.

  One younger man glanced up, as if at some landmark—and punched me with surprising strength below the joining of the ribs.

  I strained to get in air. It is a profoundly terrifying sensation: to desire to breathe, and not to be able. My vision faded out. I do not know how much further we went. I felt my legs dragging; finally could just realise the sensation of earth under the balls of my feet.

  They dropped me.

  Onto grass, I felt through my gloves. Wet grass, from the night’s rain, not yet dried. It smelled of the viridian strength of Spring. Down on my hands and knees….

  I began to see again. No man moved to stop me as I lurched back up onto my feet. They had drawn back, I saw as I gazed stupidly around.

  Hedges enclosed a plot of ground filled with grass: some of it overgrown, some trimmed close. A man faced me, his hands resting on what I thought might be a marble tombstone, and then saw was a sundial. The gnomon was dark with verdigris.

  The man lifted his gaze from the gnomon at exactly the same moment that I looked into his face. Fair-haired. He might be a hand of years younger than I—in his middle thirties—for all he wore an old man’s scholar’s gown.

  “François Ravaillac is dead.” His voice sounded resonant for a scholarly looking man. His beard was close-cut, English fashion. His blue eyes fixed on me.

  “You are Monsieur Valentin Raoul Rochefort, although that is not all of your name, and you are the man who killed the King of France and got clear away.”

  I stared.

  “I will not be refused in what I ask of you,” he said, removing his naked hands from the stained marble sundial.

  He looked me in the face with a smile.

  “I am Robert Fludd. You are Valentin Rochefort. You have already successfully assassinated one king—and now, I desire that you should arrange the murder of another.”

  Rochefort, Memoirs

  11

  R availlac is dead?” I repeated stupidly.

  I had better have said: Who is this man Ravaillac? but given what this Robert Fludd appeared to know of me, I thought it not worth the gambit. I could wish to have sounded less stunned, however.

  “Ah—I should say, he will die, in three days. On the twenty-seventh, by your calendar; the seventeenth, as we would number it here. He will die without a single word of confession. No man will ever know who gave him the opportunity to kill King Henri.”

  What had been a moment of overwhelming relief curdled to disgust. To be taken in by a prophesier and astrologer, such as haunt the courts….

  “And this you saw in the stars, doubtless?” I said, taking the opportunity to establish in my mind every man’s position around me. “Calculated by the ephemerides? Or did you see it in Doctor Dee’s black mirror?”

  The man smiled. It did nothing for him; he was a little scrawny in his face, and his teeth were not good. “Indeed, I saw it in the stars. I cast the horoscopes of the Unborn. The unborn future.”

  To my surprise, I heard a rumble of agreement from the group.

  Aemilia Lanier spoke up. “We found him exactly where you said, Doctor Fludd.”

  Besides the woman Lanier, there were three men in their middle years, who might have been shop-keepers, school-masters, or clerics of the English heresy. And besides that, a pair of men in their twenties—one of whom, a dark-complected man, seemed the only one at home with his old-fashioned broadsword. And who had been, I thought, the man who struck me. Even he nodded agreement with the man Fludd.

  Fludd said, “I foresee much, Monsieur de Cossé Brissac.”

  So. Not an astrologer. A spy.

  “That is not my name,” I said.

  Nor is it, since my father disowned me these twenty years past. He had his reasons; I do not quarrel with them.

  “‘Rochefort,’ if you prefer.” His eyes fixed on me. Most of the bulk of his body was his gown. He might put on girth when he came to later middle age, but for now, he was a skinny scholar, reminding me of peasant priests who roam the countryside preaching heresy, and come to the stake in due course.

  I nodded at the woman in the darned blue gown. “‘Doctor’ Fludd, she said. Doctor of what?”

  “I am a physician. A doc
tor of medicine.” He smiled, apparently openly. “And, as you surmise, an astrologer—of a particular kind. I calculate the conditional probabilities of an event coming to pass. And here you are.”

  Conspiracies against kings are two a penny; every corner has its traitors and malcontents, and they often utilise astrologers or black magicians.

  For my part, I care nothing for the health of the Scottish King of England one way or the other. But a man who can speak the names “Ravaillac” and “de Cossé Brissac” to my face—this is a dangerous man to me. No matter how he has managed this, I should be rid of him.

  I realised that I began to feel what I suppose to be the common superiority of a man of violence among the sheep. It is a thing I guard against. Because my days are passed among interrogation, ambush, murder, and other rough pursuits, does not mean I may not come across a man equally as tough-minded in any sphere of society. I kept my eyes on the man Fludd, in case he should be such a one.

  “I’m not here to be robbed,” I acknowledged, with a nod around me. “What do you want?”

  Evidently this was too self-composed for his taste. Fludd nodded.

  All five of the men came forward, surrounding me; I felt myself taken by the elbows. A light blow hit my kidneys. A razor grated on the mail links in the lining of my doublet. I had the suddenly light sensation of sword-belt and suspensor-strap falling away from waist and hip.

  “These are Master Hariot, Master Hues, and Master Warner; mathematicians to his Grace the Earl of Northumberland, all three.” The man Fludd spoke civilly enough, walking up to me. “And my lord Northumberland’s servants John—” A nod towards the darker of the two men. “—and Luke.”

  Northumberland? He’s in prison, still, surely!

  I managed not to blurt out my surprise.

  Even the common people of England know the dubious reputation of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, called “the Wizard Earl.” I have reason myself to remember him before his imprisonment in the Tower, my master Sully having made a conduit of information out of him when we were last here, in ’03—opening the conduit by having me take him a stupendous “present” of gold late one night, after which Northumberland sent his voluble secretary back with me, and the Duc and I interviewed him to some purpose.

  I concealed any knowledge from my expression. The Earl of Northumberland had been notorious, along with Sir Walter de Ralegh, and a few other men, such as Griffin Markham. They had been regarded by the Duc de Sully as the most factious men at the English court. And, moreover, regarded so by reason of conspiring for their own interests, not being bribed by Spain or the Low Countries. All these lords repaid Sully’s judgement a twelvemonth later by being arrested in a conspiracy to kill their King, and although James eventually executed none of them, they would be in no position now to begin fresh conspiracies.

  Conspiracy likes to associate itself mendaciously with the great, I thought. But still….

  This man Fludd knows my name and my business with Ravaillac: How? What else does he know? Can I discover from whom he has had it? This may be a chance. He may let something slip.

  A wrench at my arms and shoulders took me lurching down—the dark-bearded man “John,” I noted, suppressing my natural temper and not resisting him. Give the older men no reason to take the sword and dagger away from here, out of my reach.

  I permitted the two younger men behind me to force my arms behind my back and pin me down on my knees. It is better on some occasions to appear cowed. I stand four inches over six foot; such height can be both imposing and threatening, and they were thus helping me to conceal it.

  Metal glinted in the sun. Two of the older men indeed held pistols. Dog-locks, rather than the more effective wheel-locks—however, mail in my doublet lining will not save me if one elderly mathematician decides to blow my kidneys out through my belly.

  I saw, under pretext of gazing around in stupefaction, that this was some riverside house’s garden. The walls might give me easy escape, being only six or eight feet high. The house was shuttered tightly for so bright a day—if it was inhabited. Best assume the house doors locked.

  The man Fludd trod across the tight camomile turf, into the longer grass, and stood gazing at me, his hands folded together in front of his black robe. Fludd wore boots; they were visible under the hem of the gown. He shifted his weight. I braced. Dignity, self-worth, pride: these are all things a man needs in interrogations. They are, therefore, things which an interrogator must attempt to strip off.

  Fludd kicked, hard, where I knelt—kicked my right knee outwards, and shifted his weight again to kick my left knee similarly, so that I knelt, legs splayed wide, thigh muscles straining. All my balance went: only the men behind grabbing my arms held me upright.

  With neither pleasure nor distaste in his expression, and before I could close my legs, Fludd kicked me between my spread knees. The toe of his boot squashed my testicles.

  For a searing time, there was nothing but pain.

  I found myself, when I could take stock, laying on my side in the long grass, curled up, hands clamped to my crotch. A hot cannon-ball of pain rested in my belly. I moved, and pain shot as high as my chest. I vomited a trickle of bile, gasping, not knowing if I were more overwhelmed with pain or rage.

  “Now you are tame, as I knew you would be.” The sun-darkened Fludd bent over me, his face obliterated by shadow. He spoke again, too quietly to be heard by any other man. “You will remember this, but not for the pain.”

  He straightened up and added more loudly, “This was the first time we might make your acquaintance, Monsieur Rochefort. Sir Robert’s men could have taken you at St Katharine’s Stairs, and you were not alone in More Gate. Now you’ve come to Southwark, and me.”

  There was muttering among the men which pain caused me not to follow. Lanier caught my eye as I glanced up, and I felt myself heating, unre-minded until now that a woman witnessed my subjugation.

  It took me all my concentration to roll up onto knees and elbows, and to gain, eventually, my feet. I could notice nothing more. I sweated, looked around for my hat, and no man present stopped me when with difficulty I picked it up, and rubbed the marks of dew from the crown. All stepped back as if I were a bear tied to a stake for baiting.

  Through the ebb of pain, I thought: The garden doors are closed with a beam through iron sockets, but the wall is not so high that it might not be rapidly climbed—

  By a man whose balls are not presently burning holes in his belly.

  “Sir Robert” will be Robert Cecil. I remember no “Doctor Fludd” from when I was here with Sully. But six years is long enough to come from nowhere and set up a network of intelligencers and spies. He knows somewhat of me; what will he do with it? He cannot think I will kill James I and VI! This is absurd!

  The urge to discover the truth fought in me with the urge to take my rapier from the mathematician who held it, pistols or no. Pain is apt to make a man rash in his behaviour. Sweat rolled down my face. I folded my arms, and stared down at Doctor Robert Fludd.

  “I have nothing to hide from you, Monsieur Rochefort.” Fludd shrugged in a way that convinced me he had spent some time out of England, perhaps in Italy. “I’ll tell you what it is that I do. As Oresme said, by astrology we may discover plagues, mortalities, famine, flood, great wars. He goes on to add, ‘but only in the most general terms. We cannot know in what country, in what month, through what persons, or under what conditions, such things will happen.’”

  He finished his evident quote, smiling.

  “But that’s what I know, monsieur. What country, what day, which person, what exact conditions. As Bruno the Nolan said, all worlds exist in the mind of God, because everything which is perfect must already be conceived of by God and therefore must exist. Our Fallen world is imperfect, but it can be aligned closer with the Ideal by the manipulation of events, so that things which are unlikely in our mortal sphere—because of our human nature—can be brought into being.”

 
I gave him a jaundiced look. “Monsieur Nostradamus had better patter, as I recall.”

  “This is a stupid man,” Aemilia Lanier’s higher voice proclaimed over the indrawn breaths of the men. “He doesn’t understand what you’re saying, Doctor. He’s just a murderer: you know how unintelligent such men are!”

  Fludd looked up at me again. He stood half a head shorter than I. His expression seemed mild.

  “Not ‘just’ a murderer, I hope, or we shall have been wasting our time. But certainly a murderer, and the man who set Monsieur Ravaillac on to kill his king. Going under the name of ‘Belliard.’”

  My stomach, that had been hot with pain, went suddenly cold as January. I have been under surveillance and I have not known it—but how? He is no Frenchman. If he is the Medici’s agent here, how has information come to him about when and where I would land in London, when I could not know that myself?

  I kept silent. The worst of all possible things has happened: very well. If a man does not speak, there is nothing they can make of it. Except make you fearful about how they will shake your tongue loose.

  I have been party to too many interrogations. I smiled ironically, sweating, my balls continuing to throb. This is perhaps wild justice.

  “Come with me,” Fludd said.

  Cecil, I thought. The true news of the assassination may easily have come to London as long as a week ago. This Fludd may in fact be Cecil’s man. No. He is too much of an alchemist-charlatan!

  He took my arm. I was shocked by his grip—by the closeness he would dare to a man he had just harmed. He drew me into a walk, at which I found myself less pained, but took care to stumble.

  “You’re naturally sceptical.” Fludd didn’t sound aggrieved. “I think Mistress Lanier is in error to call you stupid, but of some things you are ignorant.”

  We went a few paces towards the sundial and its marble flagstones, and the short camomile turf surrounding it. The sweet grass bruised under my boots. Gulls cried over the river, past the bottom brick wall of the garden.

  “I’m ignorant of how to cozen the gullible out of their money by scribbling lines on a star-chart,” I said dryly. “So much is true, indeed.”