Mary Gentle

by A Sundial in a Grave-1610

A curved length of steel flashed into the air, bright as polished jewellery.

  The second figure knuckled eyes that, now I came close, I saw were grit-filled and swollen with sleep. She held an oversize doublet wrapped about her against the morning’s chill, her fingers barely protruding a knuckle’s end from the sleeves.

  She—they—most certainly are in a cemetery….

  Having, judging by the straw in the lean-to, spent the night here in a shed, among the sexton’s or grave-keeper’s gear.

  Tanaka Saburo returned his curved sword to its sheath, and spoke to Dariole in the tone of a man explaining something. “Roshifua. Rosh’-fu’-desu.”

  Dariole closed her mouth from the yawn that distorted it and lifted her gaze. A smile tugged up one side of her mouth, and that curved lip was as familiar to me as my own appearance in a mirror.

  “Messire Rochefort,” she said, and suddenly frowned. “Hey, what happened to your face?”

  I could scarcely get my voice. I managed finally to speak, startled to find myself sounding normal, even urbane. “Another plot to kill a king.”

  “A king—another?”

  Since we spoke French, Saburo only looked bewildered.

  “The English King James.” I inclined my head to her in a short bow, and made the same gesture to M. Saburo, switching to English speech:

  “I apologise for my absence. I was being approached by English plotters, to help them kill their King.”

  Dariole scruffled her hand through hair that was spiked up by sleep, finishing by yawning jaw-crackingly wide for a second time, and looked at me with something like bewilderment. “Kill the English King James? What is it with you and assassinations, messire? Occupational hazard?”

  I should never have spoken the truth so freely, in my first excess of enthusiasm at seeing them. Paradoxically, it was all I could do not to smile. I contented myself with a grave nod, unaccountably cheered. “Precisely, mademoiselle. Conspiracies are my occupation. Having assassinated King Henri of France, I am evidently much sought after!”

  “Merde!” she exclaimed.

  I stepped back by instinct in the same second.

  Tanaka Saburo’s hand fell on the long, curved, braid-bound hilt of his sword; he brought the blade out of its scabbard, gleaming round and up into a cut—

  Dariole, as if she were armoured, stepped straight between us. “Not his lord!”

  “Mademoiselle!” In that heartbeat I saw she had her sword, belt, and dagger clutched in her free hand; the rapier, now in the broken scabbard, keeping it straightened by virtue of being there. She held all up in a clutch, as if in defence.

  The curved sword stopped, held motionless above Saburo’s head.

  “His King isn’t his lord! Sully’s his lord! The Duc. On the boat? Remember? I told you?”

  “Eh?” The samurai grunted. Every line of his body spoke swiftness. Taken so thoroughly by surprise, I thought, I cannot draw before he cuts; I cannot draw before he kills her, is he mad—?

  “We talked about this. On the ship?” Dariole dropped her makeshift defence to her side and looked at Saburo, her expression both fearless and gloriously patient. “King Henri wasn’t Messire Rochefort’s lord. So it’s not like he killed his lord. It’s like…like when you and your lord went over to the Eastern Army? Against your ruler? And Ieyas’ won?”

  In one sliding curve of hand and opposite thumb, Saburo returned the sword to its thick scabbard. “Hai!”

  His eyes hooded. I realised that, had he been a European, I would have taken him at this moment to be embarrassed. Between my startlement, and the diminishing speed of my heartbeat, I found no word to break the moment’s silence that fell.

  I had not even time to draw sword, I realised. After the beach, I should know better—

  Saburo made a grunting noise in his throat and bowed his head curtly. “Sorry. Thought, dishonour. Cannot have ronin who dishonours me. I sorry apologise.”

  I bowed, as one does at Fontainebleau or the Louvre. “Monsieur, I accept.”

  Self-evidently, while I had been spending my time on the Willibrod in cogitation, Mlle Dariole had found some way to tap the taciturn man’s speech. I wondered, suddenly, what else they might have spoken of.

  Dariole swung about and began to put on her weapons. Her cold-whitened fingers busy, she lifted her chin and met my gaze. “Well? This conspiracy? I guess they tried persuading you the hard way?”

  Every man and his dog knows my business: why not you! Touching my face and nose, that still throbbed, I inclined my head in agreement. For all he stood scowling, and for all her importunate questions, I confess it a relief to me to know these two lunatics yet lived.

  Speaking more unguardedly than even I expected, I said, “It appears I am a failure in one respect, mademoiselle. I cannot plainly and unequivocally run away, without being turned back….”

  “Oh, so that’s what you’ve been doing.” Dariole grinned up at me. “So—what are you going to do now, messire?”

  The answer came to me with the moment.

  “I believe I shall do the obvious thing,” I said, “and immediately betraym. Fludd’s entire conspiracy to the English government.”

  Rochefort, Memoirs

  14

  M ademoiselle—Monsieur Dariole.” I corrected myself appropriately to her dress. “You are…less noticeable…than either M. Saburo or myself. Will it please you to take my purse and find appropriate lodgings? Since I doubt you wish for another night in this cold churchyard.”

  She finished strapping on her belt, hanger, and rapier. “You’ve got money? And you propose to trust me with it? Messire, are you sure you haven’t been sleeping in moonlight!”

  “I’ve been sleeping among too many fleas even for Southwark, mademoiselle, and seek to change my lodging.” Because who knows but Fludd may, or may soon, have knowledge of it? “But if you’re not willing….”

  She showed me her teeth. “Oh, I’m willing to have your money!”

  I made a show of reluctantly removing my purse from my belt and handing it to her. It contained no more than a quarter of what Robert Fludd had given me. The rest I had equally distributed among my boot-linings, the bombast of my doublet, and between the silk and leather of gloves bought new for the purpose.

  “Tell me a place here that you will know,” I said, “so we may meet again when you’re done.”

  Dariole shrugged; a movement that both conveyed her emotions and settled her sword-belt about her waist. She thrust the purse into the breast of her—rather, my—crimson doublet, that wrapped around over-large on her.

  “One of the Ordinaries up by the bull-fighting place. I’m starved. I’ll find you!”

  She took off, showing her heels to myself and the man of Nihon as she splattered dew from the grass all across the churchyard. Saburo made a rumbling sound, which I could not decipher. His odd black eyes darted from her, back to me.

  “Rochefort-san.” Saburo mangled my right name, as he did two times out of every four. Roshifua, Rosh’-fu’. “Conspiracy. Betrayal. You, I, must talk, ronin. Is not so…easy…as you make it sound, to Darioru-sama.”

  “Not at all so easy,” I agreed. “And I would sooner be off the streets before I speak to you of it. Come.”

  We—or rather, I—ate from the common dish, in the Ordinary closest to the Bull-baiting pit. As with all English cooking, I was given cause to wonder if they had merely stewed up the remains of the defeated animals.

  “Matters are urgent for me now, Rosh’-fu’-san. I can’t rest until I have spoken with the Emperor-King James.” Saburo’s pronunciation of the English King’s name was at least recognisable, now. I could have wished that different. Very well that he speaks as would-be ambassador. Does he have the sense not to mention conspiracy while we are elbow-to-elbow with other diners?

  Saburo declared abruptly, “I swear! I’ll neither eat, nor sleep, not bathe, until I have prostrated myself and made the apologies of the Shogun Hidetada to this King.”


  I looked up from the food, a little startled. “I wouldn’t make rash vows if I were you, monsieur. If the last time I was here was anything to go by, gaining audience with the King can take some time. He may not even be in London. The court may be at Newmarket, or Hatfield.”

  Saburo’s face was not readable. “Then I will eat and sleep, since I must reach the Emperor alive.”

  He picked among the remnants of the common dish disconsolately, and, finding nothing apparently to his satisfaction, fell to eating bread.

  “I will not bathe,” he announced. “That is my vow. I will stink like a gaijin.”

  He might make whatever strange foreign vows he liked, but I was unwilling to allow certain inaccuracies to pass.

  Ignoring the glances of Englishmen sat about the table, I said stiffly but quietly, “You will find a Frenchman does not stink. As to these English, yes. They do. But they are barbarous.”

  “You men and women of Franz eat meat.” Saburo shrugged broad shoulders. “You stink like a graveyard of dead animals.”

  Possibly I still resented his over-keen drawing of his blade in the churchyard, at any rate, I dropped my hand to my dagger pommel. “I do not stink!”

  “You do. Darioru-sama, too.” He shredded bread between his fingers, and inhaled the odour off his skin. “It offends a civilised nose. In my land, we only take meat medicinally. Some broth when we are sick. When I first meet gaijin, I think all of you must be sick all the time, to need such amounts of beef.”

  Some man further down the long table laughed. I thought what Saburo said ridiculous enough that I might loose my dagger without loss of honour. I took the chance to seem offended with the local company, and move the samurai and myself to a table furthest from the others, and the hearth. I had the pot-boy bring us ale. From the little I could hear of other men’s conversation over the noise in the crowded room, I judged it safe for us to speak.

  “And you do not ever wash!” Tanaka Saburo eyed his pitch-lined leather jack much as a court lady looks at a louse. “Rosh’-fu’-san, I wish to be done here. This city is filthy. I cannot bear the stinks of it. It makes me ill.”

  “London turns my stomach more than somewhat,” I concurred, as I eased myself down on the bench beside the samurai, hitching forward the scabbard of my sword beside my hip. In a more salubrious establishment, I would have taken my Saxony rapier off, and hung it by the hanger’s hook on the back of the door. I misdoubt I will see it again if I do that here. “If Paris is no better, well, every man prefers his own stink. Now, M. Saburo—”

  “You are my ronin.” Suddenly he broke into a broad smile. “My shinobi, ne?”

  “Your what?”

  “Shinobi-no-mono—assassin-in-secret!” As I would have objected, he became instantly serious again. “But, Rosh’-fu’, you are now hired to kill the man I am sent to see!”

  “I am not hired,” I said grimly, “and I have not the slightest intention of concerning myself with this conspiracy of fools: you may be assured of that! King James’s Secretary can have the knowledge of Fludd and his fellow assassins that I have, and put a stop to them.”

  Saburo grunted, it seemed thoughtfully. “Hidetada sends me to see this king. Not a land…a land made into age of battles. Wars for succession.”

  I thought of the sea, to the south, and what might lie across it, in France.

  “In any way,” Saburo added. “If you do have to do this, Roshifu’-san, my advice is, be careful only to mutilate. Do not kill king. Blind him, or other kind of maiming, and send him to a monastery or shrine. That way, if his son a fool, you can bring first king back to throne.”

  I took a drink of ale, thin and bitty as it was—the English living up to their character.

  “I don’t believe they have monasteries in this heathen land,” I said, regaining my composure. “Nor can I imagine any conspirators leaving their quarry alive for your reasons. I would suppose things to be different in Nihon.”

  He nodded. “Never know what man is like until he is Emperor or Shogun. As well to have…alternative.”

  It might be possible to send Marie de Medici to a convent outside France, I suddenly thought, if the Council of the Regency found themselves unwilling to execute a queen. For my part, her exile would please me, if not as much as her death.

  “I am, in any case, having no part in Fludd’s conspiracy.” I repeated it, in case Saburo might not have understood me fully. “I have—other business in London.”

  I felt the common unpleasant tension that comes of not knowing whether you may trust a stranger, no matter that you think you have known him long enough to judge. It is the bugbear of the spy. At these moments I have often wished that I had some way to see inside the heart of a man. Or at least, to see his future actions.

  If I could do what this fellow Fludd pretends….

  “You must first do what you swore—you are my ronin!” Saburo glowered at me, not drinking of the sour ale. “Or I think, no namban is honourable!”

  Of his various terms for Europeans, this one he spat with venom enough that I knew he meant it for an insult. I judged him too mature a man to be sounding like a boy-duelist in his first fight, but evidently something touched him deeply. And although I might harbour some curiosity about his style of fighting, and how I might exploit what I take to be flaws within it…this is not the morning to begin a quarrel for the sake of it.

  “You hired me as a guide,” I said mildly. “Is that not what ‘ronin’ is—a guide? I’m willing to help you to court. I merely have other matters that I must deal with first.” I added, with some humour, “And, I remind you, you haven’t yet paid me!”

  Saburo’s eyes were both dark and brilliant in the low-ceilinged room. He spoke, and I was startled at the severity of his tone.

  “I hired you on credit, as is usual! You are a bad ronin, Roshifua-san. If I didn’t think of you as mad gaijin, and a ronin who will turn good, my way into Anghrazi court now would be to betray your name to as high an official as I find, as a murderer from Franz.”

  Mordieu! I thought grimly. I both under-and over-estimate you, my friend.

  If I can stop seeing you as less than, or more than, a man, my judgement may return to me.

  He added, “You are not loyal!”

  I confess I all but outed with my rapier, and demonstrated once for all that I might take off a man’s head with it as easily as he with his Eastern sabre.

  “I am loyal: I am Sully’s man!” I spat.

  The irony of that—the murderer of Sully’s King protests his loyalty to Sully’s person—took the anger out of me even as I heard myself speak. Deflating, I held up an empty hand, palm forward.

  “Let us not quarrel, messire.”

  Saburo’s deep brows came down. “I am he who serves! Samurai! You, also. You are servant.”

  Incredulity almost made me speechless. “I am no servant!”

  “You serve your lord. I serve mine. You are ronin to me, samurai I have hired. You do my concerns first!”

  “That was not clear to me, in Normandy.” I drank again, looking down at him. “It is not so surprising we should fail to understand each other, monsieur. I am…willing to keep to the bargain I thought I made, if that contents you?”

  He has little enough choice if he wants an ally in England. But it is my habit not to make an enemy where I can make an ally, unless it is advantageous.

  Saburo held my gaze, looking up as if it were a challenge. “You swore oath of trust, Roshifua-san.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I merely agreed—”

  He touched the silk braid on the odd, curved hilt of his cattan-blade.

  “The sword is the breath of the samurai. Breath—no. Soul. I explaining to Darioru-sama on ship. You swore on soul for the trust between us, ronin and master. I swore on sword.”

  “Did you?” Despite myself, I was blackly amused. “But then I would have had to swear on something, Monsieur Saburo. And I have nothing. I have been a disgraced gentleman too long t
o expect any man to accept my word.”

  Any man but one. And he is in France; perhaps in Paris, perhaps gone to the provinces. Perhaps dead and in need of revenging.

  “My sword is not my soul,” I finished sardonically. “The age of chivalry is long over, here.”

  He heaved his shoulders, and after a long moment made a sound between a grunt and a resigned sigh.

  “Roshifu’-san. You do what you say you will. I see this from Franz on. If you not swearing in Franz, still, you gave me your say.”

  “Word,” I corrected the Nihonese man, startled and concealing it. “I gave you my word.”

  I supposed that, true, he may have gained an uncharacteristic impression of Valentin Raoul Rochefort in Normandy and on the journey since.

  Saburo glared at me. “You give me your say. Your word. You are my ronin, bring me to here—I owe you half-horse!”

  Unexpectedly, a laugh spluttered its way out of my belly. I sat back on the bench. “‘Half-horse!’”

  If he had not had that strange-eyed and round face, I might have been able to confirm, to my own satisfaction, my suspicion that he also was amused.

  “Well, then!” I shrugged. “Yes. I gave you my word, one supposes, even if I did not know for what.”

  A pleasant melancholy touched me for a moment, before turning sour. When I was a boy, I made a great fuss of giving my word; I would have died before going back on it, once given. Indeed, I fought several quite unnecessary duels on that account. The melancholy turned bitter as I thought how simple such things were, then, and how regrettable it is that the life of an intelligencer shows them for the sham they are. I am Sully’s man: I will betray M. Saburo without a second thought if it becomes necessary.

  “It appears we have both failed our lords,” I said softly. “No matter how inadvertently. And both work to redress that state of affairs.”

  Tanaka Saburo nodded. “Hai. But this man who kills king is not so important as I go to English court.”

  “Let me be frank with you, messire samurai.” I glanced between him and the room, alert for listeners. “You will then understand why this…astrologer…conjuror…Fludd and his plot can be a petty, foolish matter, and yet still a danger, perhaps to all of us. Firstly, because he knows both your name, and that of Mademoiselle de la Roncière—”