Mary Gentle

by A Sundial in a Grave-1610

  “Monsieur Saburo has succeeded greatly for your Majesty,” I said, bowing to the King. “I see only the problem of those men. Would that we did have more men like M. Saburo—and more cattan-blades.”

  Saburo blinked in the candle-light. “Sword is the soul of the samurai. You others, take teppo!”

  Mademoiselle Dariole snickered; a sound to which I would have objected, had not the King made a similar one.

  And James knows the Nihonese word for “guns”: now there is a matter for thought . And a shame I could not overhear any of their trade discussions….

  Dariole made a French page’s insolent bow. The smile that spread over her face made me apprehensive even before she spoke. “I know how it can be done. We go, disguised! So we can scout the ground with Cecil, see if he’s loyal or not.”

  And find Fludd?

  I blinked. “You…continue to deserve your reputation for unlikely suggestions.”

  James Stuart harrumphed over his fat fingers. “If Master Secretary Cecil truly believes us dead, then he will in any case seem disloyal, Henry being his only King.”

  James got up, shifting himself from his chair, and beckoning Mlle Dariole to him. He began to limp up and down the boards, his fat arm about her shoulders, whispering in her ear.

  James’s wee favourite Robert Carr is like to poison Mlle Dariole if we ever restore these English to normality! I stifled a snort. My humour faded, seeing from the set of her shoulders that she found his embrace uncomfortable—a fact of which he appeared entirely unaware.

  Briefly, I considered informing James Stuart that his latest boy-favourite had that within his breeches which would not, if common rumour was correct, please the King in the slightest. A consideration of Dariole’s immediate reaction was enough to make me reject the idea. She would still act so as to put me on my belly to her, in front of the First and Sixth James.

  Besides, there’s no harm in him, I reflected. And she will welcome no interruption from me; not with Fludd still a point of contention between us.

  The Stuart King stopped abruptly, and lifted his hand from Dariole’s shoulder. “How could it be done, so we are not exposed and murdered? We would risk much in entering the city. How shall we be unobserved?”

  “As Messire Saburo’s guards. Your Majesty, you’d have all of us with you.”

  She is not…she is suggesting that James Stuart disguise himself in the same dress as M. Saburo. Dear God.

  “You,” I remarked, “have been watching too many plays!”

  “Perhaps plays bring us good fortune?” James Stuart gave it the tone of a question, but I knew it very well for a friendly rebuke.

  Bowing allowed me to hide my face from him long enough to expunge the emotion I felt. He’s gone mad! Stage a play of the disguised duke, that goes to oversee his erring counsellor? It seems to me that, between his performance in Somerset, and his acting at The Rose, James Stuart is a sight too favourably inclined towards any suggestion that includes play-acting. Does he not realise the swords and pistols will be real?

  Well, but so’s the loss of his throne, without some action on his part.

  It made me smile, that he should be so daring—and then be sober, thinking how he found his courage in the rebellion of his son.

  Dariole made a bow to the King that was a mere flick of her head. The candle-light shone gold from the curl-ends of her hair. Her expression showed at one and the same time cool and excited.

  “You need to observe Milord Cecil, your Majesty. And how else can we get you in the same room with him, to judge him?”

  I noted that James Stuart gave no order to the Lieutenant of the Tower to perform some sensible action, such as throwing young Dariole head-first into the moat.

  James observed, “It will take more than Master Alleyne’s doublet to disguise us.”

  “Messire Saburo’s got a lot of samurai clothing.” In an explanatory aside that seemed to encompass all the foreign man’s eccentricities, Dariole added, “He likes to wash it. Every day…If you’d wear that, your Majesty, everybody would look at the costume, not the man. All of us could go as attendants on the Ambassador, sire.”

  I saw a gleam in James’s eye that I would rather not have seen.

  “You’re canny with that cattan-blade of yours, Master Ambassador?”

  “Hai.”

  If I read M. Saburo’s monosyllable aright, it translated as Only because you are a king, and my King needs you, do you live after offering such an insult! James Stuart merely beamed at him—and at me.

  “Monsieur de Rochefort, don’t look so long-faced! Mark this well—we have our life, still, by reason of Signora Caterina, and by reason of the choices of Master Dariole. You and he and M. Saburo have swords skilled enough to defend our person. Let us venture on this chase. We will take pleasure in seeing with our own eyes if Master Secretar’ condemns himself out of his own mouth. ‘King’ Henry’s room, forsooth! Master Saburo—show us these garments of yours.”

  Saburo as messenger going back and forth again to Whitehall-palace took up most of the long, light evening. We will do nothing until morning, it seems.

  There had been occasions to visit the yeomen warders’ barracks, and to meet with the Trained Bands; I was, by the time I finished for the evening, more than ready to sit out in the open, by one of their fires, to get their temper, and check rumour as a spy must. I drank more than was prudent.

  “It all depends on Cecil….”

  Dariole dropped down onto the earth beside me, not too close to the fire.

  The fire itself was more for cooking than warmth; she gave the cooking woman a look that gained her a griddle-cake and her ear pinched. Chewing, she added, “I think, if anyone knows where Fludd is, that man does.”

  When did it become natural to her to do this?

  At some time in the last few weeks, I realised, the grass seeming to slowly spin under me. It has begun to seem natural to her to seek me out. And merely to sit and talk, not to attempt to kill me.

  “If we can see Cecil, we’ll see Henry—and then, I think we’re home and dry,” she added energetically.

  I shifted my rapier scabbard to a more comfortable position. “When one says that, matters are invariably about to go catastrophically wrong.”

  She curled her lip at me. It became a delightful smile, that showed the merest hint of her white teeth. The just-visible gap back in her jaw made me ache for her pitifulness.

  And it may be we will both die before any of this matter of kings and mathematicians is resolved….

  Moved by impatience, desire, and stupidity—and with my tongue loosened by the drink I had, perhaps for this purpose, over-indulged in—I leaned over on the grass and spoke quietly.

  “Mademoiselle…I desire to lie with you tonight. Will you consent to share a bed with me?”

  An instant of stillness froze her body—instantaneously gone; but I am a duelist, used to having men’s reactions by their bodies speak clearly to me.

  “Dariole….” I put my head in my hands. “Dear God! Before you say anything—I’m sorry!”

  Her shoulder, where it touched mine, had tensed as if her body was about to move. I felt it fractionally relax.

  Lifting my head again to look at her, I said, “Forgive me. I know I shouldn’t ask. There are so many reasons…. Forgive me. I was overcome, I am drunk—”

  She gave me a look that stopped me speaking.

  “Aside from anything else,” Dariole said, her tone clipped, “I am not a substitute for your Aemilia Lanier, now she’s run off somewhere!”

  Blinking, owl-like, I demanded, “What?”

  “Yes, she puts plays on, yes, she’s beautiful—I suppose.” Dariole glared fiercely at me. “Yes, she’s experienced and intelligent and speaks six languages and walks on water, for all I know. And she fucks you like a Dutch courtesan. Well, go find yourself an English whore instead! I’m not in the queue here!”

  I gawped, both stunned and lost for words. Were I less off my gu
ard and drunk, I would have realised how quickly gossip must travel within a players’ company, and how comradely she was with them. That still does not help me to a realisation of Dariole’s resentment.

  My mind descended into panic.

  I don’t want her to think I am enamoured of Lanier!

  Better that she thinks it. If she believes I have another woman….

  But how may I let her think I’ve offered her such an insult as to be my choice only because Lanier is missing?

  If I don’t speak, she’ll assume….

  Dariole sat beside me, head down, staring at the grass that men’s boots had already begun to wear away. Over the camouflaging noise of loud conversations around us, she said, “Why did you say you were sorry? What are you sorry for?”

  Without premeditation, I spoke the truth. “For being so stupid as to ask you to lie with me when you were raped not long ago, and raped here.”

  Her head came up. The pupils of her eyes were dilated enough that all appeared black to me. I ached.

  She said, “You don’t want me, messire.”

  Reaching out, I grabbed her hand.

  The one time she should not have let me have her hand, and she did.

  I pushed it into my crotch. Through silk and linen, my male member stood up hard against my belly.

  “What’s that?” I said roughly. “Except desire—”

  She shrank away.

  It was nothing like any movement I had seen her make before. Her whole body tensed and pulled back from mine, her fingers splayed out rigid.

  “Oh God!” I let go of her hand.

  In remorse, and in full view of any man who might watch us under the darkening sky, I scrambled around onto my hands and knees, and sat back. “I’m sorry! Dariole—forgive me—”

  The earth did not turn; the grass did not shift under my knees; I was not so drunk. Had I been, my rebellious pride would not have been standing up as it did. I felt a disorientation, nonetheless, reached out, and found myself grabbing at her boot-tops, where she sat with her knees up and her arms clasped about her shins.

  I let go as if they were forge-hot metal. “I don’t mean to beg in play, either!”

  It took more courage than I had imagined to look at her.

  Her face in the darkening evening showed white and unresponsive. I did not look around me.

  “I know you must want nothing now to do with any man. Dariole—I am sorry!”

  She put her hand out and touched my temple, one of her fingers sliding down my hair.

  Mlle Dariole is well-known to me: how she carries, bears, and cultivates grudges for injury. And for such an injury as this!

  I did not know, before, what your forgiveness for it would be like.

  Unbearable.

  The pads of her fingers moved to my cheek. She rubbed them under my eyes. “You’re wet, messire.”

  What brought me to outright despair was not that I all but wept, so much as the smile in her voice—tremulous, a little shaky; but for all that, there. For that, I might well feel one hot tear ooze out from under my eyelid.

  “I am any kind of fool,” I said harshly. “I should have had the sense to beg pardon of you long before now. Then perhaps I would not treat you so badly. Ah, mademoiselle! How is it that you can forgive me?”

  “Because you asked me to.”

  The shock of it reverberated through me.

  She stopped, evidently considering it.

  “You do not hate me,” I said foolishly.

  The smallest curve appeared at the corner of her mouth. Her fingers moved to my hair, and she wrapped them in a long curl; tugged.

  “Sometimes, messire, you’re very slow….”

  “Don’t.” I sat back, away from her, shaking the fog out of my head. “There is this place between us; there is Fludd. Because I am too callow to understand you…I am not safe for you! Haven’t I just proved that? Dariole, I want what a boy half my age wants: I want you. I am not safe in your presence.”

  The too easy acceptance went out of her expression. I could have done more weeping than one tear, but how would I look then? And she has besides had too much of a drunken man’s slobberings for one night.

  “I should have more sense than to get drunk, mademoiselle.” I made an effort to sound suitably contrite. “I apologise. Forget you’ve heard anything tonight. I am old enough to see such a situation does not arise again.”

  “God damn you, Rochefort!” Dariole stood, a look on her face that I couldn’t interpret. “Who gave you the right to decide—”

  She swung about and strode off. To all appearances, fury choked her.

  Caught between shock, arousal, and a massive desire to get drunk, it was not until she was completely lost among the tents and crowds that I thought I should have stopped her going.

  A quarter-hour by the Tower’s clocks: and I walked down to that part of the fortress where there is a river-gate they call Traitor’s Gate. The wind came cold off the water, cooling my cheeks. The lapping of the water echoed under the masonry arch. The peak of Summer, still: the last light not gone by nine, and a man not cold enough even for a cloak. Of those men of the Trained Bands that slept tonight, most would sleep in the open air.

  Why do I desire her—and desire to protect her?

  Something crystallises and a man cannot go back. What was only a possibility, unlikely as the stars interfering in human Fate, becomes a fact. And all is changed.

  I looked down at my just visible reflection in the black water. Valentin Raoul Rochefort. Who was Valentin Raoul St Cyprian Anne-Marie de Cossé Brissac. And who is a fool.

  Is it that I am arrogant enough to think I can take advantage of a young woman’s obvious crush, to fornicate with her?

  You should be a friend, an uncle, a father, I thought. Much as M. Saburo is to her. A mentor, a teacher. What in God’s name must she think of you? And when you go so far as to force her to touch….

  I swung around and leaned my back against the chill stones of the wall. A colder sickness invaded my belly. It would not take much to make me puke.

  Two yeomen warders passed on their guard, acknowledging me with respect. I bowed silently and moved off, walking between vast high stone walls and towers that have doubtless, in their sixteen centuries, seen more embarrassing incidents than a drunken middle-aged man forcing a young woman’s hand onto his prick.

  Although I cannot, for the moment, imagine what.

  “I’ll go to her and apologise.” I spoke to the night air; abruptly laughed. “Man to man….”

  The cold air rendered me sober enough that I had no excuse. I know what I will do, if I am in her presence. I will fall at her feet, and grovel. Or else I will kiss her; try to prove to her that one man is not like another; that the one who abused her is an animal, and I am a man….

  And she will have nothing but fear of me. I see it in her face.

  I considered how gladly I would have had M. Dariole afraid of me in Paris, three months past, and laughed loud enough that the ravens startled in their roosts.

  “I will write to her,” I told them.

  I had little enough sleep that night, spending my time in my quarters, endlessly scribbling on sheets of paper, and then burning each one in the hearth.

  I have not been known as a man at a loss for words, when they are needed. The education of a gentleman beat into me the rudiments of letters, oratory, spiritual confession.

  About two of the clock, I found myself writing sonnets in strict measure—a disreputable spy and dishonoured gentleman thinking he can write Petrarch to a sixteen-year-old girl!—and had the bare amount of sense necessary to conclude that I was not in my right mind. I burned my poetry. It was very bad.

  I can put nothing to paper, I thought, gazing out of the black window. Yet I want to have explained myself to her before we meet again, likely in public. So far, I am no further forward in any effort than “Mademoiselle, I apologise.” After that, my letters descend into convoluted gibberish.
r />   An hour before dawn, I fell asleep with my head on my desk. Neither the clocks, nor the boy I had paid to bring me shaving water, woke me.

  I stirred at last with a pulled muscle in my neck, and the sun putting the shadows of the lattice windows over the papers in front of me.

  There were no linen samurai garments laid out on my bed; I stayed in my own clothes, disreputable as they now appeared. With no more ceremony than dousing my head in a bucket of water, I struggled rapidly into cloak and hat, half-ran to the stables as I buckled on my rapier, and—a hundred yards beyond the Tower gate, unshaven, and with my eyes speared by the brilliance of the dawn sun—caught up with the escort of the Nihonese Ambassador.

  Rochefort, Memoirs

  36

  T he stables had given me a bay with more desire to roll on the grass of Tower-hill than anything else; I brought him up into the Nihonese Ambassador’s train and edged my way through to the centre of the mass as we entered the city.

  Men crowded the open streets behind us, and a number followed for a dozen yards—men from the Guilds, men merely curious; a few of Henry’s supporters making noises of discontent at the samurai, “King James’s Demon.” I noted several other Ambassadors as we rode up the highway, and my heart contracted as I vainly looked for the Ambassador of France.

  Dariole gave me a glare. She wore samurai head-gear—which turned out to be a cloth covering, part of which wrapped across the bottom of the face, with all covered to cheekbones, and from brows up. It would be a clever man who could recognise her in that and samurai linen robes.

  Saburo rode at the head of our small train, with yeomen warders loaned to his Majesty by Sir William Waad. Behind Saburo rode a man in the samurai’s own outlandish dress, of very much the same conformation as him: heavy in the body, broad across the shoulders.

  A man would not know the King in what M. Saburo called kimono and hakama, and with his face covered; so much appeared certain. I could not help but smile.