Mary Gentle

by A Sundial in a Grave-1610

  And he swallowed the bait, I thought bleakly, seeing Henry’s face as he passed me again, handing off Justice to Courage. He had a pallor that might have been fear or determination.

  The turn in my dance brought me to face the audience again. I glimpsed, beyond the raucous banqueting table, Mlle Dariole, restlessly speaking to Saburo. No sign of Robert Fludd yet, despite “King” Henry’s royal summons.

  Surely he must arrive, to calm his puppet’s fears? Or if his murder fails, will we not see Doctor Robert Fludd again?

  At least I have Saburo and Spofforth ready with lights and muskets, I thought, scanning the table again. The dagger in my farthingale skirts was not the reassurance it might have been.

  I realised Thomas Hariot was no longer present at table.

  A cold fear went through my bowels.

  With absolute certainty, I thought, We have been betrayed.

  The feeling of a conspiracy going wrong is unmistakable, and I have learned not to ignore it. I owe my life in other such circumstances to prompt action.

  “Your Majesty.” I gripped James’s arm firmly. “In a moment I shall ask you to run. Towards that cave, there—you see? To our right-hand side? When I command ‘run,’ run, and stop for no man, sire!”

  With my other hand I caught the cord that held the dagger and pulled it up. The hilts caught on the edge of my farthingale. I ripped them loose, hearing silk-thread tear. James goggled up at me, his lips shining with blubber.

  “Man, you said we’d stand here! That we had no cause to move!”

  “Circumstances alter cases!” The young Prince, in his dance, was revolving out to the bridge for the last time. Prudence and Justice were about to lead him back through the column of dancers who even now began to line up, singing paeans.

  James’s fish-eyes opened wide, startled. “I will go nowhere. It’s you who are the traitor, man! I see it now! Help! Help, ho! To your King!”

  He yanked his arm—and, to his evident surprise, did not get it out of my grip. Seeing his guards begin to run forward, I got the dagger securely into my other hand, and said, straining for reason, “I’m saving you, sire, not threatening you!”

  The fat man froze.

  Prince Henry’s courtiers overturned the torches, throwing them into the stream and dashing them out on the rock. Men yelled orders, courtiers at table jumped to their feet, a rush of flame went up delicate draperies, a woman screamed.

  Justice and Prudence revolved to stand in front of us, their wide costumes screening Henry off from the audience. Desperately, I thought, Why do I have to get players whose devotion to their Art outweighs the natural desire to scream and run!

  Henry’s glance went over me without acknowledgement, and his hand went into his unbuttoned doublet.

  I smiled grimly as the majority of the lights sputtered and died, darkness flooded the cave, and screams resounded. Grabbing James with both hands, I swung his heavy body about, so that he stood behind me, my body between he and his son. If I cannot disarm a sixteen-year-old puppy of his dagger—!

  “Henry, child!” James got himself out of my grip as I made to defend him, and slipped past me, directly into the boy’s path.

  Prince Henry shoved his dagger forward in a brutally hard stroke.

  The point jammed into James’s belly.

  The English King grunted, looking down at himself.

  I cracked the pommel of my dagger down on Prince Henry Stuart’s knuckles. His dagger went instantly, lost in darkness. He wrung his hand, stared at me; really looked at this player beside his father—

  I punched him.

  Unlike the young Prince, I have no compunction about striking a man in the face, whether with fist or blade. Why not attack the most vulnerable area?

  Do not kill the son of the English King, I reminded myself, in a heartbeat’s calm among the screaming confusion. My punch was not hard; I felt no bones crunch under my knuckles. I swore as Prince Henry Stuart collapsed back into the streamlet, like a coal-sack thrown into a pond.

  Verity and Temperance backed away, screaming like the girls they were dressed to resemble. All this end of the cavern filled up with black figures, fleeing or fighting in darkness. Prudence shrieked in an adolescent boy’s cracking voice:

  “He killed the King! The King’s dead!”

  “The King lives!” I bellowed back louder. Monsieur Saburo, Monsieur Captain Spofforth, you are on the verge of being late—

  James stood, hands to his belly, staring with sweating face and wide eyes. Roughly, I pulled him to one side, groping down at the belly of his doublet. I took my hand away and found no blood. Yes! Stout mail: he will be only bruised.

  “Run, your Majesty.” I did my best to haul him bodily across the rocky floor towards the players’ caves. He went down on his knees, legs not moving, and I caught my heel on my skirt-hem and swore.

  “You were right, sire,” I tried to encourage him. “Your son could not stab you in the face.”

  He collapsed limply at my feet with a banshee-howl.

  “Not perhaps the best thought,” I reflected aloud. The Prince wants his father dead badly enough to slit open his belly: not a comforting thing to think on.

  Noise came from the main entrance. I lifted my head and saw, over men’s heads, a flicker of torch-light—musket barrels with the light on them. Saburo, and men with him.

  “Almost prompt on their cue!” I took my stand over James, dagger in hand. “Saburo! To me! Captain!”

  The troop of Cecil’s men fanned out. I saw two of them hauling a man towards the cave-exit; recognised the tiny, hunched figure of the Secretary of State. The flaring shadows and new yellow light of armed men’s torches showed me the banqueting table overturned, one man screaming as fire leaped up his short cloak, Alleyne peering goggle-eyed from the floor, Mlle Dariole splashing across the streamlet, ignoring the courtiers that Cecil’s troopers roughly manhandled past her. Rapier and dagger in her hands, a wide grin on her face.

  “Look to the King!” I stepped back, sheathing my dagger, as the samurai came up to me with Dariole, and both of them faced outwards as I squatted to examine James Stuart. Bearing only a dagger, and in skirts, I am not the most effective king’s bodyguard.

  Dariole looked over her shoulder, all swagger, grinning widely enough for her teeth to gleam in the intermittent torch-light. “How about that! We won!”

  “The King lives.” I stood up from the crouching man, not injured except in his heart.

  I could not be severe with Dariole. I put my heels together, under my farthingale, and made her a small bow. “Doubtless you think you played some crucial role in this success?”

  “Of course I did. You know you’d never manage without me!”

  The sound of men being hurried out under arrest began to diminish. The noise of players shrieking at Alleyne grew louder. A moment or two, when Spofforth’s men should be at my side, and we might move James with safety out of the cavern.

  Dariole’s attitude was inexpressibly careless: all of a young man’s disregard for the realities of fortune eloquent in how she stood. I saw that her brow shone in the lights nonetheless. If I were to feel her there, should I feel cold sweat?

  Her eyes were wide and clear in torch-light. I thought I saw a flush making two high spots on the bones of her cheeks.

  “Messire,” she said quietly, “I’m going to kill Fludd…but now I don’t even know where to start looking. I don’t have so much experience as you. Is your offer still open, to help me find him?”

  That she should ask for my help!

  All of it rushed through my mind in a second. That with Robert Fludd dead, my reason for being in England will vanish—and so, also, will vanish Mlle Dariole’s reason for having any more to do with M. Rochefort.

  Yet it may take time to find Doctor Fludd—

  Why? I interrogated myself. Why seek out opportunities for this young woman’s company, now that I have the perfect excuse to give her the go-by? Take my perverse desires and
remove them from being any danger to her. Go to the Low Countries, or Italy, or any land from which a man may observe France. Business with M. de Sully becomes urgent. Tell Dariole she needs must seek Fludd by herself; vengeance is hers by right.

  “Messire?”

  Whatever I say—if I hesitate a moment more—I shall see the growing trust in her face turn into anger. She will have every right.

  It will…hurt me, to see that change.

  It will hurt her, I think, to be in my company; I have already called out of her cruelty, and perverse desire.

  If I had been another man, I might have said that I felt fear.

  A jet of flame seared across my vision.

  Simultaneously, a musket-shot slammed painful noise into my ears, crashing every other sound into obliteration.

  I dived, hitting James Stuart as he rose, and crashed down on the Englishman among the sound of farthingale willow-wood supports snapping.

  With my body covering much of his, and tangled in my skirts, I looked up. One of Spofforth’s troopers has fired his piece by accident; I’ll cut off his cod for it!

  The stink of burning match pierced my nostrils, too strong for the number of muskets Cecil’s men bore.

  Muskets fired.

  Flame spurted sideways out of the touch-holes, and red cones of fire blasted from the weapon’s muzzles. Twenty, in a ragged volley. Chips of stone shattered and fell on me from the cave ceiling, and I reached up and hauled Mlle Dariole down on her arse.

  “What?” She snarled between outrage and disbelief.

  “Stay down!”

  “HENRY! King Henry! God for Harry Nine!”

  Deafened, I heard deep male voices bellow. More men ran, silhouetted at the cavern entrance. Men armed with muskets.

  “They won’t shoot low until they have their ‘King’!” I shouted in Dariole’s ear, and simultaneously found Saburo beside me, the samurai heaving at James Stuart by his other arm. The Scotsman spluttered and swore.

  Flame blasted in a ragged line from the entrance to the cavern. Too soon for the first troop to have re-loaded—they have more men than I thought: forty or more—

  The cavern ceiling exploded in a fusillade of musket balls, rubble raining down.

  All their men re-loading from half-volleys: our throw of the dice is, will we move before one or other troop is ready?

  “This way!” I shouted.

  I got up on my knees, hauling the vast tangle of my skirts up around me; grabbed the King, dragging him forward, bodily, with Saburo; and fell into the only shelter the torch-light presented us—the overturned long banqueting table of ancient oak, brought in in sections and reconstructed in this cave.

  Splinters flew. The heavy, iron-hard wood shuddered. I heard a stranger’s voice bellow, “Shoot high!” and glanced back in my tracks.

  Prince Henry lay with his body half in the streamlet, hair flowing in the water.

  “Hold the King!”

  Saburo and Dariole both gripped onto James Stuart; she with her hands in the lace of his ruff. Her wide, bemused eyes followed me; I had not time to explain. Henry will be a hostage, if we have him.

  I glimpsed movement behind me, and swung about on my knees as a figure hurdled the fallen table.

  If I had possessed a musket, I should have shot Captain Spofforth dead on the spot.

  Twenty or so of Cecil’s men came with him, falling into cover, loading their muskets. Spofforth swore vilely, hat gone and sword bloodied. Crouching rapidly down, he stared back over the edge of the wood. Too dark to see if bodies clumped toward the exit, where the first half-volley fired. One man’s screams ripped the air apart.

  I demanded, “Who is it?”

  Spofforth gave a wry, rasping chuckle. “The young Prince’s men.”

  “His household guard? Not under arrest?”

  “No, those men are held. These are soldiers, wearing the Prince’s colours.”

  I hit my fist into the wood, bruising my knuckles. “Merde!”

  If Cecil can conceal a company of troopers outside Wookey, for this day—why, then, so can Henry Stuart.

  Henry Stuart, with the precognitive advice of Robert Fludd.

  I crawled back around on hands and knees. “I’ll get the Prince—”

  I stopped.

  Two bodies made dark lumps on the “stage” floor of the cavern, black liquid snaking out from under them. One of the players crowded himself back behind a bulge in the rock, at the rear wall, apparently not willing to run for the entrance to the dressing-room caves. No man else stood at the rear of the cave.

  Except Dariole, ankle-deep in the streamlet, both hands gripping Prince Henry under his arms, and her body straining to drag him across the rock. Her scabbard caught against the stone as she bent, straightened, dug in her heels, hauled.

  The stage torches show her up, I thought, cold and contained. Likely they will not shoot her, if they realise that is Henry Stuart there. If not—

  I stood up from behind the overturned table, slung my heavy skirts over my arm, and ran out, hunched over, to the stream-bed.

  The Prince, half-recovered, staggered up onto his feet, wrestling with the young woman.

  Only let her draw her sword, and he’s a dead man!

  In the same second that I reached them, he broke her grip and staggered back. A man moving behind him raised a pistol. The black hole of the muzzle lined up with my chest.

  Pistols are uncertain at close range. Nonetheless, I took Mlle Dariole by her upper arms and threw her bodily across the cave, aware that she skidded across the rock when she hit it, into the shelter of the overturned solid table.

  “I had him!” her voice bawled.

  A loud bang deafened me, drowning her outrage. The pistol shot spanged off the rock floor a foot to my right-hand side, leaving a smear of lead that gleamed in the torch-light.

  The officer grabbed the stumbling young man. He raised his voice. “The Prince! The King! King Henry’s here!”

  He yanked the Stuart princeling away as if Henry Stuart weighed nothing, leveling his second pistol at me. Two more men ran up. Wildly loosed pistol-balls put hemispherical holes into the limestone.

  Giving up on Prince Henry, I hurled myself towards the table’s shelter.

  “Son-of-a-bitch!” Dariole’s face shone white and wet in the wildly moving torch-light. She breathed fast, now, and shallow. Her bare hands were grazed and bleeding where she had hit the rock.

  The count in my head ran steadily on: nineteen, twenty, twenty-one—

  Shafts of fire shot from touch-holes. In the light of the cones of muzzle-fire, that blasted forward a full yard, I glimpsed men inside the cavern’s entrance. The multiple crash of musket fire stabbed my ears. On the battle-field, the noise of a full musket volley is shattering. In this enclosed space, it not only deafened my attackers, but put a blinding cloud of powder-smoke between us. As the full musket volley crashed out, dirt and loose rock and fractured pinnacles showered down from the cave-roof.

  Forty or so musket-balls hit the banqueting table—separated from us by three inches of age-hardened oak.

  One musket-ball clipped the table-edge, spraying splinters that tugged at my hairpiece. Pearls spilled and bounced on the sand.

  “God and His Saints damn to hellfire the lot of them!” Spofforth exclaimed precisely.

  “Have you a spare pistol? And the samurai is a good man with one, also.” I took a wheel-lock pistol as it was thrust into my hand, and set about loading it as quickly as I might. “How many down? What’s your strength?”

  “Twelve or fifteen men down.” Spofforth’s face showed powder-blackened as the light caught it. “Twenty standing. You said nothing of enemy soldiers!”

  “Regrettably, I was myself unaware, until now.”

  A glance at King James, propped up by M. Saburo’s free arm as he held his pistol up, told me the situation there. Tears ran down James Stuart’s slack face.

  Spofforth shouted the last drill command: “Give fire!�
��

  The line of his men’s muskets behind the table jetted fire and smoke. Before that cleared, the count-down in my mind hit twenty. The enemy volley crashed out. Each man of us flinched at the same instant, like a flock of hunted birds, hunching down from the rock-splinters.

  Musket-fire slammed into the table. Heavy as it was, it jerked. A man screamed, struck by one ball that burst a weak place; the men around him cursed and beat at splinters in their hands and faces.

  I leaned forward, deeper into the table’s shelter.

  Under the noise of men shouting frantically, and the wounded squalling for their mothers, and the next count running down in my mind, I said gently, “Dariole?”

  She sat with her back to the wood, among linen and broken crockery, her hands shaking. One yet-unextinguished stage-torch made her face clear to me. Her skin showed waxen, as I had never seen it in any duel, not even on the Normandy shore.

  Shock. A battle in war is not the same as duelling, and this is her first.

  Her voice almost inaudible, she whispered, “I think I wet my drawers.”

  Carefully, I stretched out a hand to her where she sat, shivering, on the limestone. I gave her a wry smile. “Then you’ve joined an old and honourable fraternity. I suggest you do not enquire too closely into the condition of Captain Spofforth’s linen, experienced soldier that he is—no, and not Monsieur Saburo, neither. I suspect his ‘way of the samurai’ to be the exact same way that a European pisses down his leg….”

  The soft nonsense works, as it usually does. I saw so many young men in this condition in the Low Countries, in their first assaults. The shock of war overcomes many determined prides.

  “I did the same, myself, mademoiselle, the first time I heard guns at war—which caused me some embarrassment: they were our guns.”

  She gave a tiny, involuntary splutter. She looked still as if she might vomit, but the blankness had gone from her gaze.

  “You may guess at how old I was, mademoiselle….”

  “Fifteen? Sixteen?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  She laughed out loud, taking my hand and letting me pull her out from the deeper part of the table’s shelter.