Mary Gentle

by A Sundial in a Grave-1610

  Before I could speak, James Stuart stepped out from behind Saburo’s chair, tugging irritably at the cloth around his face.

  Robert Cecil glanced back in irritation. “Master Saburo, your man—”

  James wrenched the last of his linen head-gear away, tutted, and dropped it on the floor. He put his fingers through his ruffled beard, and stepped forward to face Robert Cecil.

  Cecil stared, speechless.

  For a long moment they stared at each other: the middle-aged Scotsman in outlandish Nihonese kosode and hakama, his counsellor in sober black doublet and trunk-hose.

  If I had gone so far as to imagine this—if I’d thought we should come so far without arrest—I took it for granted that Cecil, if he were loyal, would be all stiff formality; would sink to his knee, perhaps, in obeisance to James.

  The little man burst into tears, stepped forward, and threw his arms about the broad body of his King.

  This King James, careful of his dignity, scrupulous about the respect paid to kings who are gods on Earth—this James Stuart looked down, and put his arms clumsily about Cecil’s twisted shoulders.

  Cecil wept fit to wrench a grown man’s heart out of his body.

  “Robbie,” James said gently, “Robbie, stop your greetin’.”

  Rochefort, Memoirs

  37

  T he guards in Henry’s new livery, summoned in, looked the one at the other, and then trepidatiously back at Mr Secretary Cecil and James Stuart. James gave a deep chuckle.

  Robert Cecil, somewhat recovered, snapped his fingers at the guards. “Send to the council, Northumberland, and Ralegh! Bid them come to the Tower. And bring the Prince with you. Take care in how you warn him—his father the King is alive and returned to us, and Prince Henry must come to him now, so that they may both ride in triumph to Whitehall.”

  Both of the guards knelt, instantly. King James benevolently waved to them to rise. “Hasten and bring him. We are as glad to see our son as he will be to greet us!”

  Saburo’s eye caught mine across the room. I fancied the samurai’s appreciation vastly advanced, given the amusement I glimpsed.

  By the time we reached the street outside, noise rose, and rumour evidently spread. Men ran up, crowding close around the King’s horse. I saw that part of James’s desire to retreat to the Tower—as well as the political necessity of having the Prince jump to his command—was to get out of this overwhelming mass of his own subjects.

  Cecil rode at the King’s side. I thought: James will send him back from the Tower to make arrests, as soon as they have the royal seal from Henry. My lord of Northumberland for the Tower and the block, at a guess. But Fludd—where is Fludd!

  Ahead, I saw Dariole’s back stiff as she rode her loaned mount, and felt a constriction in my chest.

  I tapped spurs to the bay’s flank, and came up with her as she reached to take off her linen cap and muffler, and shake out her short hair with her hand. To see a young man with rapier and dagger and in the strange garments of the samurai was a bemusing sight.

  She snapped, “Nothing moves you, does it?”

  I wondered, startled, what expression she had caught on my face. Before I could speak, she went on:

  “I might have known you’d be cynical! But then, you wouldn’t know loyalty if it bit your arse, Messire Rochefort, would you?”

  The hurt was unexpectedly great. I made her a small bow from my saddle, not inclined to contention. “Doubtless you’re correct, mademoiselle.”

  “No,” She glared, correcting herself. “You know the use of loyalty. Ravaillac could tell us that, couldn’t he? If he was alive to do it.”

  That not only bit deep, it was unwise (albeit she spoke in French) to have it said where any man might overhear.

  I perceive now that she will quarrel until she has the relief of a duel.

  I am a grown man. Even if she were a man, she would still be a boy. It is up to me not to be goaded.

  And I must search out Robert Fludd.

  As the plague-thinned streets became all but impassable with those not wealthy enough to flee the pestilence, I let myself drop back from riding beside Mlle Dariole.

  I kept a similar distance from her over the next few days—which, since they encompassed the joyous return of King James to his capital (and the rapid removal of portraits of King Henry IX hung from a number of citizens’ windows), as well as the court’s removal for fear of plague downriver to Greenwich, did not prove difficult to do.

  Greenwich itself I found very familiar: that collection of palace rooms and administrative offices that straggles down the Thames-river, east of Black-heath, and the magnificent red-brick frontage that seems to spring directly from the water’s edge. I’d spent much time at Greenwich-palace in ’03, M. de Sully having one audience there with King James. To be here now, and to spend most of my time working for James Stuart and Mr Secretary Cecil, I found ironic.

  It at least kept my mind occupied.

  London—and, one supposes, England—beheld its dead monarch return, and, after one of those unspoken public decisions which a man may never predict, put up its pikes and muskets and settled down into peace again, with no sign remaining that there might have chanced a civil revolt or war. Northumberland and Ralegh’s presence back in the Tower may have had somewhat to do with that.

  James and Cecil permitted me the practise of my profession—investigating every ship, post-horse inn, or toll-gate on the routes that might have been taken by a fleeing Doctor Robert Fludd. To no result. I knew Cecil’s network of intelligencers scoured London and the suburbs. Frustration gave me the impetus to wear out mounts searching from Richmond to Tilbury, Barnet to the borders of Kent; riding from first light until sunset for the next six days. No man I spoke to had seen him.

  On my departure from Greenwich the next morning, the samurai, panting, caught up with me as I crossed a courtyard towards the stables.

  “We have him!” Saburo said. “Furada!”

  Conceivably I misunderstand him, I thought, stumbling to a halt. Staring at the samurai, I demanded, “Fludd? You have Robert Fludd?”

  “Hai.” Saburo grunted and jerked his head in a single short bow. “Rosh’fu’, Darioru-sama will hear of it soon. We should get there first, or he die.”

  Resting my hand down on the wire-bound grip of the Saxony rapier, I felt my fingers seemingly numb. “Where? Is he alive? What’s happened?”

  “He’s alive. You’ll see, Rosh’-fu’-san; you come!”

  The dry mud outside Greenwich-palace’s stables kicked up in yellow sprays from the bay’s hooves; I spurred my mount after Saburo, west, out of Greenwich to the heath. I swore, constantly, under my breath; a torrent of French that I hoped the samurai was not near enough to me to comprehend.

  Coming to houses again, off the heathland, I recognised the street of the Bedlam beggar and the Abraham Men.

  Saburo’s style on horseback, awkward as it was, nonetheless kept him ahead of me. Catching him up—and thinking him no bad rider, in fact, now I saw him not to be wearing spurs—I seized his rein, pulling us up in a skirl of dust.

  “Where are we going!”

  Saburo pointed further west. He might mean Long-Southwark; London-bridge. But, before that….

  “His house?”

  The samurai nodded. “Hai, Rosh’-fu’. Prince Henri-sama, he sent messenger to Seso-sama that Furada will be there today.”

  Astonishment made me stare at him. “The Prince betrayed Fludd to Cecil?”

  On reflection, I found myself uncertain which startled me more: that Henry might desire to betray his fellow-conspirator, or that he might be able to do it.

  Saburo wheeled his stone horse about, moving into a walk in the Southwark street. “It’s as the yamabushi said. Katarii-na.”

  I rode boot by boot with him. The Italian woman’s name, I could just make out. At the rest of it, I shook my head.

  “She is priest, mountain-warrior—yamabushi. Katarii-na, priest of the caves. She
say, we arrive at time when Fludd cannot catch up his foretelling.” Saburo mimicked the notation of columns of figures on a page. “Not enough time for him to count.”

  How long did it take Monsieur Fludd to mathematically calculate all these things? How long would it take him to calculate them again, now that Time has run so far astray from his predictions?

  He will never find out.

  “If you’re right, Monsieur Saburo, and they have him—all his counting is done!”

  Armed men in Cecil’s livery became visible before we reached the house by Battle-bridge. As I dismounted, I saw more of them down on the riverfront, occupying the yard and warehouses. The great oak gates to the gardens stood open. The long grass had been trodden down—more men come to loot the place in the last day or so, I would suppose—but the sundial had been set back on its plinth.

  Dariole’s chestnut mount was not there; the guards, though grim-faced, did not appear to have fought recently.

  “She’s not here yet.”

  “Hai.” Saburo grunted. He moved to rumble questions at Cecil’s musket-men.

  I dismounted, and led my horse into the brick-walled garden, finding the sundial convenient to hitch him. The line of the sun’s shadow let me know it was not quite twelve midday. Me umbra regit vos lumen.

  I shook my head. No, we are both of us ruled by the shadow, Fludd and I. Look what we do.

  The samurai came through with two of the officers. I led the way into the ransacked house by the scullery door. The rooms beyond smelled of ashes and urine.

  Six more musket-men occupied the upstairs room in which they held Robert Fludd. I could not for a moment spot him. The soldiers rose to their feet—raggedly; if I were their officer, I would have disciplined them—and I saw a man seated on a joint-stool by the unlit hearth.

  “Did you expect to get away unrecognised?” I said.

  Robert Fludd looked up. His bare head was now something between blond and white, shaven close, and I saw he had taken a razor to his beard. He did not look so different clean-shaven as a man might expect.

  I leaned up against the fireplace, whose plastering was of a style popular in England a hundred years past. “Is that your disguise?”

  He said nothing. He wore a countryman’s coat, not a doublet, tied with points at four or five places down the front rather than buttoned, and his breeches were shapeless russet cloth; his shoes wooden clogs. Had it succeeded as a disguise, he would have seemed any farm-labourer come in from Kent or Surrey, and heading back there. Now, I thought he looked merely uncomfortable.

  “Where is the King?” Fludd said thinly.

  “Deciding to put you in the Tower, I imagine.”

  “No.” Fludd scowled, impatiently. “The King. Where is Henry?”

  I raised a brow at that. A trooper laughed.

  “Ain’t no bloody King Henry,” one of the other soldiers said.

  Another man muttered, “I say there will be, in a few years, after his old Dad forgives him.”

  The laughter in the room had a sound of cynicism, but was not entirely unkind. I thought, I wonder if James knows his people understand that Henry is, no matter what, his eldest son?

  It is an enviable loyalty.

  What James may say to Doctor Fludd is neither here nor there, I thought. It’s the interrogation by Sir Robert Cecil that I doubt Fludd should be envied. And then the use we will put him to.

  It would be pleasant to inform Fludd just who had betrayed him. I denied myself that. Moving to the window that overlooked the street, I gazed down. A handful of Southwark’s inhabitants gathered under the overhang of the buildings opposite. I saw no sign of Dariole.

  Good—it is not a confrontation I desire.

  Noise took my attention. I opened the window further, and leaned out, to see a coach with Cecil’s arms clattering and rumbling down the street.

  “Why are you here?” Robert Fludd’s voice demanded, behind me.

  “You mean to say that you don’t already know?”

  I turned about. He sat, white from brow to chin.

  That much satisfaction I might allow myself.

  With another glance out at the road, I said musingly, “I came to save a life—but I believe, if this is my Lord Salisbury, that I am not required.”

  The Doctor-Astrologer’s face fell into lines of confusion. Petty though it may be, I savoured how Robert Fludd looked, at a loss.

  “No all-foretold duel now, Monsieur Doctor?” I enquired. “No predicted assassination?”

  Fludd gave me a look so full of misery that a kinder-hearted man might have felt he had done ill.

  I am not that man.

  “Does one come to rely on mathematical predictions?” I theorised. “Is it strange, not to know the future?”

  Fludd’s hands, in his lap, clenched into fists. “I want to see the King!”

  The stubbornness in his voice will fade, I made my guess, as he comes to believe what is plain to any man: that he has failed in his conspiracy.

  Let him have sight of the living James Stuart. That will bring him up short against the real world.

  With a shout from the coachman, Cecil’s coach drew up outside. Outriders began to dismount.

  “She not come,” Saburo said, walking up beside me.

  “No. We should witness him taken into custody.” I looked down at Saburo. “It…would be a kindness, I think, if she heard it from one of us, rather than from a stranger. We should search her out.”

  The samurai nodded. “I hope, Rosh’-fu’, it’s you who find her.”

  Bitter humour moved me to remark, “Strangely, monsieur, I was just thinking the same of you.”

  It’s one thing to accept you will not kill the man who abused you when he is nowhere to be found. Quite another when you may see him any day of the week, when you know where he is, and how close you are.

  Robert Fludd vanished as the soldiers crowded around, binding his hands; officers shouting orders. The Secretary of State entered the room, a small, still centre of the confusion. Hoping to make my way out unnoticed, I went towards the door.

  A glance and a signal from his black-gloved hand robbed me of the chance.

  “Go ahead of me.” I put my hand on Saburo’s shoulder. “Be kind as you give her this news.”

  I made my way through Fludd’s ruined house to Robert Cecil’s side. “Milord?”

  He gave me an amiable nod, steering me aside into a corner of the panelled room, where we could not easily be overheard. “Master Rochefort, this is convenient—I need you now at Greenwich-palace. With this turn of events, I must let you know: King James accepts your treaty in principle. We should begin to work out who shall come from France to draw up the details, who sign the treaty, and where a conference might best be held. Come with me now to the King.”

  Torn, I thought: I desire to search out Mlle Dariole, and inform her what has happened. But I need to put my hand to the work of the treaty.

  How much time may I have before matters in France become crucial?

  I will regret it, perhaps; but Saburo must find her.

  I bowed to Cecil, following him out to his coach.

  The next ten hours, I spent in company with James, Cecil, and one or two of their most trusted advisors and messengers. Men with whose type I am familiar, from employing them myself: anonymous men in ruffs and beards, dressed no better than a moderately well-off English gentleman might, who will pass unnoticed on a ship to Calais or Le Havre, and the road to Rouen and Paris.

  As evening darkened, about nine of the clock, I sought Mlle Dariole both at the Tower, and at Dead Man’s Place (where our lodgings were, unsurprisingly, still free to be hired). Not finding her, and it being late to cross the heath to Greenwich, I slept there the night. The following day—and the next—I so far gave way to cowardice as not to seek her out. And all the nights long I heard the bear-hounds whine and groan.

  Ten days after, a trusted negotiator arrived from France.

  There had been ta
lk between Cecil and myself as to who might be sent to London; the agents’ messages proving ambiguous.

  “Chancellor Villeroi,” I guessed. “Or perhaps President of the Council Jeannin. In all honesty, monsieur, I pray she sends anybody but Concino Concini!”

  At the mention of the Medici’s Florentine favourite, Robert Cecil approached the nearest I had ever seen the small, dry man come to sneering.

  The existence of Doctor Fludd being a matter of some secrecy, James Stuart did not put him in the Tower. While the King occupied Greenwich, he left Fludd in the house at Southwark, as soon as the doors might be repaired, and the windows set up with bars, to make it a creditable prison. What the citizens of Southwark gossiped of, no man would listen to; they being (in the opinion of those men who counted) nothing but a suburb of whores and ruffians.

  Sir Robert Cecil, not a man to waste effort, decreed that this house, also, should be the place of the conference with the French negotiator, Doctor Fludd being thus on hand for interrogation if necessary.

  Before leaving Greenwich for Southwark, I did make it my business to speak with M. Saburo, as to the matter of Mlle Dariole, and whether he had been able to reach her in time to give her a friend’s knowledge of Fludd’s capture. He nodded, with a grunt less permeable to translation than usual.

  “Where is she now?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “You want, I’ll come to Southwark, keep her from the house.”

  “Conceivably, that’s wise.” It put him at hand, also, should the French negotiator desire another witness’s account of what transpired in Somerset.

  I did not see, nor speak to, Mlle Dariole; it could not but be painful to both of us.

  The better part of the morning passed in waiting. I took the opportunity to instruct M. Saburo in the principles of a game at hazard, having dice about me, and we gambled for theoretical amounts—by the time the guards called my name, I think I had won the better part of the rice harvest of two provinces. Saburo gave an amused grunt, and I left him fingering the spotted bones.

  Chance, I reflected, as I followed the guard up the dark stairway to the first floor rooms of Fludd’s house.