Mary Gentle

by A Sundial in a Grave-1610

  I could think of no way to appeal to a modesty that does not exist between older man and younger man. If she is distressed….

  “‘When brave the Muse of History stood,’ I think you’ll find, messire.” Dariole grinned at being able to correct me.

  One moment it is as if nothing has happened to her. The next….

  Ned Alleyne wiped sweat from his red face, glaring at Dariole. “If you know this part, Master Page, perhaps we need not trouble Monsieur Rochefort?”

  Her features assumed a look of innocent reasonableness. “I don’t know it all, Monsieur Alleyne, and my English isn’t so good. I wouldn’t like to have to go on stage, in a role I don’t know, speaking lines I haven’t rehearsed….”

  There was a deadpan look of devilment under her innocence; I wondered Alleyne did not see it. The player-manager grunted acceptance and turned away. Over his shoulder, I saw the young woman’s eyes glow, almost with warmth. Swiftly, she put her hand up to her mouth. Not quickly enough—I saw the smile that she couldn’t prevent her mouth shaping.

  The King, I thought grimly, while I strove to remember Clio’s next line, and the two tailors built the Muse of History’s costume with much reference to my body. I am in this role to protect a man I need to keep alive. There is no shame in it.

  Measurements done, I was permitted to don my boots and garter my hose—which felt odd enough without breeches. Two words into the next couplet, I found myself suddenly swathed in linen. The tailor and his assistant pulled at it, settling about my body what I saw to be, as my head emerged, a woman’s chemise.

  The tailor smiled up at me, fussing about settling the fine linen straight on my shoulders, and getting my arms into the sleeves. “Lift your arm, monsieur.”

  I did, and found it taken between his two hands to bend. With the flexing of muscle, I heard the seam split.

  He shook his head, smile becoming strained. “We’ll adjust it. Now….”

  He pulled the draw-cords at each wrist. The gathered neck hung wide open, halfway down my chest. Ned Alleyne leaned in and—without a word of apology—pinched the flesh of my upper chest.

  “Don’t make the bodice with too much showing,” he said. “Even with padding, there won’t be much there. And there’s some need for shaving.”

  By the door, Dariole made a choked sound. I did not turn my head to look at her.

  “Shaving?” I got out.

  “Yes, monsieur, we’ll take this off.” He flicked my shoulders and pectoral muscles, where dark hair begins to cover my torso. “I regret, also, your moustache and beard—”

  “No!”

  I swore, violently. Behind me, Dariole choked again.

  “But, Clio, a lady—cannot have a beard!” Alleyne also choked, but because I had my hand in his ruff. “Rochefort!”

  “I apologise.” With an effort, I unclenched my fist, and loosed him. “I merely had not thought of the matter. Since I hardly expected to be playing a stage-part.”

  I suppose I thought—if I thought—that player’s paint would hide all. Plainly not. I have not been smooth-cheeked since I was a boy of Mlle Dariole’s age.

  Keeping my back turned to her did not assist me; I could feel her amusement as clearly as if it were radiating from her, like a hearth’s heat.

  Alleyne rolled his shoulders, settling doublet and ruff back into their proper places. The tailor took off my chemise, altered it with a swift rip of cloth and half a dozen stitches, and threw it again over my head. It smelled of perfumes layered on, one over the other. I discovered I was standing the more fiercely upright, as if there must be no aspect of the lounging catamite in my pose.

  The great muscles in my thigh still twinged as I did so. The first few nights, I had sought brandy to aid me to sleep, quieting the nagging pain. Wounds to the flesh heal: I am expert as a physician in knowing how long before I might put trust in the limb again. I do not heal as fast as I used; for all that, I am healed for all that matters.

  The tailor tied the strings at my wrists, and pulled the drawstring at the neck of the chemise, tying it off when the fine gathered fabric barely covered my nipples. He flicked at my hair, where the long coils caught under the cloth.

  “What about this, Master Alleyne?”

  The player-manager reached out and weighed a handful. “We’ll crop it close, for Clio’s wig.”

  I closed my hand around his wrist.

  In theory I could snap it as a twig snaps. But this is Alleyne, whom we need for the masque in forty minutes…. In practise, it seemed I mightonly arrest his hand that held the thick coil of hair, and give him a look that held all my absolute refusal.

  Alleyne’s eyes widened. He said rapidly, “Or we can dress your hair, and add a hairpiece! Yes…that and the jewels we used for Sophonisba…It will look very well. Very well!”

  The tailor, back at his table, stopped sewing. I caught his eye, and Alleyne’s white face in the corner of my vision. It may not be so evident to them, I thought, that I will not break a man’s hand over a matter of my vanity.

  I loosed Alleyne, and gave him a sharp nod. It was beyond me to consent to hairpieces and jewels aloud. Fortunately, this did not seem to be needed.

  He continued to rehearse me, and I responded automatically. Movement made me miss a line: I began again. Dariole crossed the cave, walked down to look at the pool and pinnacles, and walked slowly back. Once in the centre of the candles, she sat herself down on a rock-shelf, one ankle up under the opposite buttock, and both hands down in support.

  I permitted myself to meet her eye. It was that or blush, most unfortunately, at being observed by her, and in that way look even more ridiculous.

  Half in my mind was the conceit that, if I could withstand her, stage-fright would have no terror for me.

  True, I am on stage as a bodyguard. But I must still give Madame Clio’s words, aloud. On stage, in a part you do not know, in a role you have not rehearsed….

  Bitch! I thought, meeting her gaze.

  In my forty years, I have done any number of things which do not become a gentleman. I wondered where I would find anything in memory to compete with this: standing dressed in women’s under-garments, under the gaze of Mlle Dariole.

  She looked up, and spoke without a quaver in her voice. “This Dame History—she’s a large woman?”

  Alleyne glared. “I won’t warn you again!”

  She held her palms up in surrender. “No, Monsieur Alleyne.”

  That contrite look should not fool any man. Least of all a player!

  I was about to riposte when the tailor returned with another garment and began feeding my arms through the straps. Only as the garment hung from my arms, and he went behind me to tug it onto my body, did I recognise it for a corset, or, as the English call it, a pair-of-bodies.

  He got the straps over each of my shoulders, loosened their ties to the main garment, and began to whip the cord that would pull the side-seam closed through the eyelet-holes.

  In the face of this indignity, I was almost immune to whatever should come after. I dared not meet the eye of Mlle Dariole. The tailor laced up the corset, coming around to tug the chemise under it downwards, so that it was merely a frilled edge along the top.

  Women wear their pair-of-bodies a little clip-fitting, to act as a restraint on their bosoms. Until now, I had thought my acquaintance with them would be confined to removing them from willing partners. I felt the garment tugged more tightly about me, as the tailor returned to the side-seam, swearing oaths under his breath as he caught his fingers under the cord. The pair-of-bodies squeezed me tightly.

  I looked down. My enclosed pectoral muscles bulged up over the tight bodice, giving an impression—if a man were in dim light and at five yards’ distance!—of a woman’s breasts.

  I heard something slide, and a weight hit the carpet. I looked towards the noise. The boy-girl sat on the cavern floor, her arms wrapped tightly about her ribs, and her face pink. It relieved me only a very little to see her incapab
le of speech.

  I stood, my gaze taking in only the limestone of the walls, while the tailor and Alleyne put on me a farthingale, a number of petticoats, and the under-skirt, skirt, stomacher, and bodice that made up the Muse of History’s masque costume.

  “You should sit, while Matthew attempts your hair.” Alleyne set a joint-stool on the carpet.

  Meekly, and after considerable difficulty with the frame of the farthingale, I sat. What seemed endless fathoms of black silk hung from my waist. My only consolation was that I could not see myself.

  With my natural hair wound into a hairpiece, I was fitted with a gold net for the bun of braids, jewels for my ears, and a wire-supported ruff of spider-web gold lace. It felt odd and appalling to have a weight of hair piled above my temples. The fine cloth that served for modesty’s sake to cover the hair was threaded through with gold beads, crude up close, but doubtless effective at the distance an audience would be. I thought I must stand all of six feet and ten inches tall.

  Conscious of the ludicrous spectacle I must make, I allowed Matthew also to shave me, and the dresser to persuade me to stand, and pin the folds of my farthingale skirt so that they draped to the floor. The boots did not show under the farthingale—there being no woman within fifty miles of a like size of foot, I was permitted to keep my own footwear.

  A hysterical voice summoned Ned to another one of the caves. I realised, We’re close on the hour. Alleyne darted out, then stuck his head back around the rock and bellowed for the tailor and apprentices. In the silence left by their departing footsteps, I found myself tensing, waiting for the sound of Mlle Dariole’s voice.

  “Come here.” Her voice sounded from further down the cave. With difficulty, I turned around, kicking my skirts and petticoats out as I walked. I felt myself growing hot about the face, knowing that the young woman must comment.

  She stood facing away from me, looking down into the black, perfectly reflective surface of the pool. A drip of water plopped from the limestone pinnacle to the surface, ruffling it. I walked up to the edge, where stone rose up to form a natural rim, and looked down.

  Yellow light blossomed to my side. She held up a pair of candlesticks—usefully, as a page might do. She intends for me to see myself. I did not dare meet her eye.

  Masque-paint felt sticky on my skin. I barely recognised my own face. White skin, lamp-black eyes, and paint that shaped cheek and lip to something neither masculine nor feminine….

  Haec vir, I thought. And lo! there’s hic mulier beside me.

  The noise of voices outside in the main banquet-cavern was somewhat muffled by the intervening passages. I opened my mouth to speak, and could find nothing to say that would not make me sound, as well as look, ridiculous.

  I deliberately put myself into the frame of mind in which one enters a duel, or a battle in war. Her presence could not then disturb me so much. I glimpsed the Vices, outside in the passage, being checked a final time for costume, shoes, and identifying icons. Past them, I knew King James and Prince Henry and their courtiers banqueted. And soon I must go out and keep a man alive in the presence of his impious and patricidal son….

  Who may have the throne, for all I care! If it weren’t for Doctor Fludd.

  Dariole held up the candlestick. “It’s only for an hour more….” Demurely, she added, “You look very beautiful, messire.”

  I braced to roar at her. She forestalled me. “Did you manage to stay armed?”

  “One might as well wear a table!” I exclaimed, discharging some of my frustration. I reached into the heavy silken folds of my skirts, below the “table” of the farthingale. A cord hung from my belt, decorated with pearls—the tears that History sheds, or perhaps brings. Picking up a dagger from one of the chests, I fastened the scabbard to the end of the cord, making it both hidden and available.

  “Better than nothing, I guess.” Dariole shrugged philosophically. She grinned, and nodded back at the joint-stool. “I didn’t like to say, messire, but ladies don’t sit with their legs wide apart. Or if they do, they’re not ladies….”

  “That will hardly matter on stage,” I said stiffly.

  “And you should walk from your hips. You’ll look more of a woman if you do that.”

  I bit back a curse. “Mademoiselle, the wrong one of the two of us is about to go on stage.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. You’re far prettier than I am. Even if you are a bit of an Amazon….”

  I recognised the smile that curved up the corner of her mouth. I have barely seen it since she came here.

  Paradoxically, I found my heart lifting.

  “I doubt a more curious reflection has ever been seen in this water, mademoiselle.”

  The black pool below showed us in perfection, side by side. A young page, some sixteen or seventeen years of age, eyes wide, mobile mouth for once still. And beside him—in jewelled bodice and great farthingale, and with a great framing ruff behind my head, like England’s Gloriana—stood Clio, Muse of History.

  Reflexively, I passed my hand above my shaven chin and upper lip. Clio’s face was adequately bare. I felt exposed. Clio’s features were also, I thought as I looked down, too large and too craggy for a woman.

  Above them, what seemed an improbably complex nest of braids was contained by a net of gold and margery-pearls; the false braids making my head ache where they were pinned in to my own hair. The hairpiece held a tiara of fake gems, mostly pearls, and they sprayed up on wires, giving me a radiant halo.

  “Conceivably the only halo I shall ever have,” I remarked.

  “Very pretty!” In the water, Dariole’s grin reflected against the blackness. Startled, I saw it had as much wistfulness as malice about it. Does she envy a woman her role? I thought, starkly amazed.

  “I wish I could show you to our court like this,” she observed. “King Louis’s court, I guess it is now.”

  “The Medici’s court.” I tried not to scowl, for the sake of the face-paint, and wondered suddenly how many emotionless beauties of Henri’s court had seemed that way for that very reason. How small a thing, to have such an effect.

  “I’d like them to see you at Zaton’s! Arnaud. Andre. Maignan. Sully.” She stopped her rapid-fire recitation. In another tone entirely, she said, “Sorry, messire.”

  When I had control of my voice, I said, “That, I believe, is the second apology I have had from Mademoiselle Dariole. The shock may do me harm.”

  She smiled. I did not look at her, but at her image. Two white faces, reflected in black water. It appeared that she came barely higher than my breastbone.

  I turned away from the pool to look at her profile.

  How have I not seen before, that she is beautiful?

  Admitted, it is not a beauty that yet shows without careful examination, but she has the most infallible mark of it: eyes set widely apart. Eyes almost sea-dark in the cavern’s candle-light as she watched me.

  “Accidents will happen, mademoiselle.” My voice sounded rough, to me. “If I can persuade you to nothing else—as: you should now leave Wookey until this is done and over with—can I persuade you not to enter the caves? Wait outside; guide Captain Spofforth.”

  “Saburo-san can do that.” She spoke carelessly, but there was nothing careless in the way she looked at me. “Why so anxious to keep me out of danger, messire? Feeling guilty again?”

  I startled myself by exclaiming, “You got yourself into this by your own stupidity!”

  I took a breath.

  “That, and a desire to hand me my arse on a plate, as the English saying is. If you had not been so anxious to humiliate me, you would not be in this country—”

  “You started it.” Her oval eyelids lifted, showing me her dark eyes. “The quarrel. You started it. Otherwise I wouldn’t have come looking for you that morning.”

  Outrage left me speechless.

  “Mademoiselle,” I managed at last, “was it not you who decided that M. Rochefort was a duellist who deserved defeat at the hands of a
younger—man?”

  “If you mean I saw a great lean streak of a man who needed taking down a peg or two….”

  “It is not my fault you are in England,” I emphasised. It is difficult for a man to tower commandingly in a dress. I settled for holding her gaze.

  After a moment, I looked away.

  “So much is true,” I said. “That much is your own fault. The…reason that you have, to kill M. Fludd…that is my fault.”

  She reached out and stroked the black silk ruffles at the rim of my farthingale. Her fingers were bare, gloves clasped in her other hand. She felt at the fabric, mercer-like—and as if she had never seen or thought of women’s clothes before. As if she reassessed skirts, bodice, petticoats….

  She raised her eyes, gazing up at me: the ruff that sat supported on my shoulders, and the braided hair that I saw reflected in the pool.

  “You won’t fight easily in that, messire.”

  “No. I doubt any woman could.” The last remark, intended as self-deprecation to put her at her ease, I suddenly wished I had not said. What happened to her, happened when she was in gear easily mistaken for women’s clothes.

  Her eyes glinted. She reached into the folds of silk hanging down from the farthingale’s supporter, and I made no move to prevent her. She took the dagger and bared it, the blade slipping into her hand like a living thing. With an odd smile, she stretched out her arm to threaten my midriff.

  “A little higher,” I said helpfully. “The bodice feels as if it is made of steel. You may usefully stab me in the crotch, if you can find it through these petticoats, or the thigh again. My throat is at your disposal.”

  I gestured towards the area of exposed, fresh-shaven skin between my nipples and the hollow of flesh above my collar-bone. It felt ridiculously exposed, even without a female duelist pointing a dagger at it.

  She smiled, as I hoped and intended.

  She stepped forward, well within my reach if I should have desired to attack her, and lifted the dagger. I did not respond. She laid the point of the blade between the pushed-up flesh bulging over the top of my bodice.

  Never having been possessed of a cleavage before, I do not know if women are particularly sensitive to temperature in that area. I had all I could do not to squeak.