“I think you’re wrong.” Her tone remained even. “Don’t make a mistake about that: I think you’re wrong. I need Fludd dead. That doesn’t mean I can’t…I understand, you and Sully. I see that.”
The look in her eyes was very close to sympathy. I found my mouth open, and closed it. The emotion that coursed through me, I managed to identify. Shame. “Mademoiselle, I apologise—I had thought you would…act rather differently.”
Her shoulder lifted. “We still have a problem, messire.”
A voice bellowed from the stern.
“Hai! Rosh’-fu’!”
I turned to see Tanaka Saburo out on deck, outside the cabin. He strode towards us, across the ship’s mid-parts, and bowed to me and to Mlle Dariole.
“King got news of Lon-donnu!”
London, I made out, still thrown into confusion. Dariole shot me a look of what I would have sworn to be rueful amusement.
“The King-Emperor has spoke with the vessel-master.” Saburo nodded at our port side. I saw the small boat being rowed back towards the merchant brig.
Saburo walked forward, between Dariole and myself, his hands clasped on the cloth belt that wrapped him several times around, his bare feet flat and sure on the shifting deck.
“I tell him, if it was in my country, his enemies would wipe out his clan, down to the last child at mother’s tit. King-Emperor has wife and other son, and daughters. Good thing is, Furada has no sons, he can’t take the throne for his clan.”
Solving M. Saburo’s mind is a problem for philosophers! I thought. “I don’t believe Fludd has a clan, as such. Northumberland has a brood, like all these English earls, but I suppose him Fludd’s fool, rather than the other way about.”
“Maybe.” Saburo seemed dismissive. “Furada think so too, maybe.”
I considered that, and the power of some noblemen, even out of favour and in prison. I should not necessarily underestimate this Northumberland….
The shifting wind put a faint spray into my face. The merchant ship tacked away. At the same time that I watched it, I was conscious of Dariole, not a yard from me: her warmth, the scent of her unperfumed body—as unperfumed as a man, but delicate, and with a power to rouse me stiff as the ship’s mast if I considered it closely.
The deck tilted and a man stumbled across the ship’s waist and plummeted past me; slamming into the rail all but hard enough to fly over it.
Startled, I recognised the bulk of his Majesty James Stuart. Grabbing him about the chest, I arrested his progress.
“Rochefort, man!” he protested, his agitation such that I could hardly understand his speech.
“Sire?”
James Stuart jammed his ungainly body between me and the ship’s rail. He stuttered unintelligible thick Scots. M. Saburo shrugged as I caught his eye, showing me how adept he was becoming with European gestures, but otherwise being of no assistance.
The water became choppier as we sailed towards the land. I stood ready to grasp the belt James wore, or his doublet collar, in case he should plummet overboard. “Sire?” I repeated.
Shadows of the sails passed over us, and the sun came over our other hand as we tacked in towards the estuary of the Thames-river.
The Scotsman spoke fiercely. “They tell us, all ships are leaving London!”
He prodded my chest with his thick forefinger, at which I winced, being still not recovered from the sun’s scorching.
“And they themselves the last to go, now the wind allows it! There’s not a man in the City with whom they may do business—all warehouses closed, all shops shut up, and the citizenry fled to the country!”
James snatched in a breath. I caught at his sleeve as the ship heeled, preferring lèse majesté to a drowned Stuart King. Better if I had interrogated the merchant ship’s captain—but I do not have the authority of a king of England.
“Why do they do this?” I demanded.
“Plague.” James Stuart spoke the word shortly. “Yon man tells us, since the twelfth of this month, the pestilence has broken out, hotter than in years! The Lord Mayor has gone. The burgesses. Even the physicians won’t stay to collect their fees! There’ll be barely a man left to witness our son’s false coronation but the poor of the suburbs and out-parishes!”
I squinted against cold spray. “Henry’s not yet crowned?”
James waved a dismissive, dirt-ingrained hand, as if I were a pupil concerned over a trivial question. “We are God’s anointed King. If our son chooses to flout that today or tomorrow, what is that to us?” He overrode me as I would have spoken: “Did you not hear? Plague! The whole city’s hot with it! Our worthy citizens are gone!”
A glance showed me Saburo impassive—it being unclear how much he understands of James’s broad Scots—and Mlle Dariole turned in my direction, her eyes slitted against the sun, her expression therefore unreadable.
Confusedly seeking diplomacy, I murmured, “Sire, the fewer crowds, the less likelihood of contagion—”
“Do you think I am afraid?” The royal plural slipped in his evident rage. “I, who was Moray’s hostage when he was Regent of Scotland?”
“Sire—”
“I was nothing but a football when I was a boy—the prize for any of the Lairds could grab me! I am used to danger.” James’s voice came thick with outrage. “Do you hear me? See you, they slew a man at my mother’s feet when I was seven months in her womb, and her skirts greasy with his blood where he clutched at her to save him. My father, my father was blown sky-high by a powder conspiracy in Kirk O’Fields, and my mother blamed for it. My mother was slain, executed by the great whore Elizabeth—”
“An unfortunate family, sire,” I observed.
Stated with all the urbanity I had at my command, now I’d collected myself, it had the gratifying effect of stopping James Stuart in his tracks. Mlle Dariole stifled a noise.
I added, “If not dread of the plague—sire, what is it that your Majesty wishes to tell us?”
A grey line broke the surface of the ocean. The ungainly middle-aged man pointed his finger at the wide, winding Thames estuary. “There lies our rebellious son. I’m told, now, he’s spread lies that we are dead—that in the caves in Somerset, the waters rose, and our body was drowned and swept away.” He shivered, cold eyes meeting mine. “Our son knows, witches once tried to drown us, when I and my Anne were aboard ship for England. This lie is the more hurtful, therefore.”
True, I thought I saw more hurt in him than fear. Gently, I said, “He must say something of your death, sire, or else how can he justify men crowning him King?”
James nodded. He assumed something of a pedagogic air, which I knew to be of some security to him.
“Aye. This Robert Fludd who ensnares him is another Doctor Dee, in command of witchcraft, and plague, too. He desires our son crowned, so he can lead the wicked boy his own way. But, think, man! We are James, King of England and Scotland—but who is to witness it? Who is to see that we’re yet living? All men of note, all nobles, knights, baronets, burgesses—all of them, gone. Who may we summon, to say we’re returned alive to London?”
I saw Saburo scowl, and Dariole open her mouth to interrupt King James. I lightly trod over her foot with mine, and she shot me a glare; something that I found curiously reassuring.
The King said, “The citizens have locked themselves in their houses, if they’re too poor to run. We cannot go to the country. Yon man from the ship told me that knights of the shires, with purses full of silver, are being beaten away from town gates with staves and pikes, if they come from London—and are left to starve in ditches.”
His wide, padded shoulders slumped. In the silence, the sails snapped in the wind. The ungainly man glared at me—for reason only, I think, that I was present, and not because he sought an answer from me.
“No man can observe us. No man will be here to witness our return! Our son will have himself crowned, flee abroad from the London plague, and pause only to have us quietly murdered as he goes! Captai
n Arnott must bring us about. If we land in London, I am a dead man.”
“Sire.” Reflexively, I made him a bow, thinking furiously as I spoke. “Don’t order the ship away from London. Keep us on course. I believe I have an answer—not without danger, but with a chance of success.”
Saburo grunted. “There is revolt. Rebellion. How else can not be danger, if so?”
James glared at me. “Well, de Rochefort? In what danger do you propose to put your King?”
I refrained from pointing out that he was not my King. Although, if he is to be my ally, with Marie de Medici, Death of the good God! then for a while he is my King, one supposes.
The thought of kings put me in mind of Caterina; her admonitions on that subject—and, by a natural progression, brought me to what she might consider the correct form of words for my solution to this problem.
“The common man,” I said. “You need to be recognised outside the court, sire. So no man may secretly do you harm…. You can’t call out the city’s Mayor; I would suppose Paul’s Cross closed, and all public meetings forbidden, as is common at time of plague outbreak?”
He nodded impatiently. “So the ship’s master says.”
“You need to get men out of their houses to see your return. But if the sickness is hot enough, they’ll even stay away from churches, at the end.”
I held up my hand, forestalling his interruption. Thinking of London, plague or no, put me in mind of the remainder of Fludd’s plan, and Aemilia Lanier; from this to a conclusion was the thought of a moment.
“I can tell you, sire, where you will find men gathered together in large numbers. There are only two such places. One is your Westminster Abbey, where Prince Henry will be crowned—and there, sire, yes: you stand a fair chance of being quietly murdered. The other…that, alone, will be open…the other is The Rose Theatre.”
Dariole’s hand slammed down on the sun-dried wood of the ship’s rail, her eyes flashing darkly. “Yes!”
James Stuart stared at me. “In Southwark?”
Despite the thought of the death that is invisible, I made myself shrug. “Sire, it’s true there’s danger of plague. Your people commonly face that every day of their lives. Your Majesty, what other choice is open to you? The Rose, by Robert Fludd’s command, will not be closed as other theatres are—The Rose will be open and playing The Viper and Her Brood. That’s intended to calm the citizenry and reconcile them to King Henry the Ninth. Go there. Show yourself! Sire, the audience may be poor men, but there’ll be thousands of them—and they’ll know King James Stuart, alive and well.”
Dariole hit one fist into the other. “Yes! Your Majesty, you can stand up on stage and you’ve got everybody there, and they’ll tell everybody else—Alleyne told me, Robert Fludd calls it ‘the theatre of the world’! You can show them you’re alive. You can denounce Prince Henry!”
“‘Prince Henry’s evil counsellors,’” I corrected, before James Stuart vented the temper I saw on his face. “God He knows, the Houses of Valois and Bearn have had enough to do in forgiving their errant sons; this last I am at least practised in. Denounce the Prince’s evil counsellors, who have led an innocent boy astray by informing him his father is dead….”
“And the King goes to Whitehall and they fall into each other’s arms and there you are!” Dariole said enthusiastically.
I reached to put a hand on her shoulder, restraining her excitement—and she was in a second rigid from head to heels, at the hint of physical coercion.
James Stuart gave me a single, slight inclination of the head, looking at me keenly.
“That latter part of ourself and our son will not be so simple. But for the first part…very well, Master Rochefort. Yes. The Rose Theatre. In this, we will entrust ourselves to you.”
Part 4
The Viper and Her Brood
(fragments, by AEmilia Lanier[?], c. 1610[?])
Translator’s Note
Although the manager Philip Henslowe’s diary does note performances of a play titled The Viper and Her Brood, it is unlikely that what we have here are survivals of that version of the play. Certainly in 1610 the Lord Chamberlain would not have authorised the content shown here for public performance.
If this rough draft is one of the “parts of plays” that AEmilia Lanier is recorded as having to hand by Valentin Raoul Rochefort, then it seems the very antithesis of her later devout poetry in “Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum.” Although one should bear in mind the supposed influence of Dr Robert Fludd.
I can find no historical reference to a “Vittoria,” but one “Manfreda Visconti” was rumoured to be the basis of the “Female Pope” Tarot card, and as the Guglielmites’ Papess, was burnt at the stake in 1300.
[ LORD HIPPOLYTO , the malcontent, enters with a LORD new to the court, before the processional entrance of the DUCHESS of Milan, VITTORIA VISCONTI .]
HIPPOLYTO
Our Duchess?
They say she did engender with her brother, Whence came that brood of vipers ’bout her heels.
Covens of hags and witches might prove kinder!
LORD
Why, what’s thy grief? How have they injured thee?
HIPPOLYTO
In me, sir, you behold a ruined man,
Who once had lands and honour and a name, And now have but my sword. Hippolyto
Is my unhappy self. Here comes the court.
[Enter DUCHESS VITTORIA , DAUGHTERS , and COURTIERS , in procession over the stage.]
HIPPOLYTO
I’ll name ’em over to you;
Mark well the vipers, ere you set your foot Within the reach of their empoisoned fangs!
First is Vittoria, noble Prince, and whore, The Duchess of our state—O mark her well!
You shall not see a fouler sight than this White viper who entwines us in her coils.
Like to the bright corruption on a corpse, Or mist that hides the treacherous stinking marsh, Her fairest face hides but a rotten heart.
[…]
(Here this page ends; the remaining pages do not appear to follow directly on, but pick up the play’s action at a later scene.)
[The DUCHESS VITTORIA determines to act a pretence of her own death, with a sleeping potion, to uncover treachery in the court of Milan.]
[…]
[ HIPPOLYTO the malcontent arrives outside a secret Cavern, which shall be represented by the stage’s curtained alcove used for the Mouth of Hades in the play of Dr Faustus. He is accompanied by a band of four MURDERERS .]
HIPPOLYTO
I’ve killed the man who would have met her here.
Our treacherous Duchess! He would sell her death, But counterfeit, so she should only sleep.
Antonio, hide you here behind this rock, And Lopez with you. Theodoro, there.
Lastly, my trusted Lieutenant Onorio,
Stand you beside me here, at the cave’s mouth; When word is given, shoot, and be you true!
Your shot must take the man against his heart—I’ll mark it for you, here upon the rock.
I had a vision, bidding me thus strike.
That first man dead, the rest are nothing worth.
Remember, all, that our hands shall be clean—The Gods of Heaven themselves must hate this Prince, Thus giving me the dream to strike her guards.
No man of us shall shed the woman’s blood, And yet, I dreamed, Vittoria shall die.
You have instructions, each one knows his man, And each the blow the vision bid me plan.
[At the back of the stage, the curtains of the Mouth of Hades are drawn aside, so disclosing DUCHESS VITTORIA and her CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD , and three trusted men. HIPPOLYTO and the MURDERERS crouch down in hiding.]
DUCHESS: [After they have waited somewhat.]
I grow suspicious—we are yet alone,
Though here the merchant gave his word to be.
Come, gentlemen, I like me not the place; ’Tis best we leave.
FIRST GUARD
Perhaps some snare
&nb
sp; Awaits you, madam, as we leave this cave?
CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD
I and my men will guard you on the way.
DUCHESS VITTORIA
We have no fear of common thieves outside!
CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD
Yet, Madame, let me tell you of my dream!—Last night I slept, and knew the state in peril; Vittoria Visconti’s name I saw
Engravéd on a tomb, and, newly cut,
“By Murder’s hand to fall” carved in the rock.
DUCHESS VITTORIA
I pity thee, for such a fearsome dream!
I do decry such visions—yet, I think,
Mary Gentle Page 52