Mary Gentle

by A Sundial in a Grave-1610

  Had Robert Fludd known, the first time he brought me here, that one day I should help to stand in judgement over him in this same place….

  Evidently he considered it too unlikely to bother to calculate . That, too, is a reflection on a man’s powers of judgement.

  The man in King James’s livery took me past the most heavily barred room, where Robert Fludd was kept. Two musket-men nonetheless stood outside his door. Ushered through into the front room, I made my bow to James Stuart, and to Mr Secretary—discommoded a little by the sun from the leaded windows shining into my eyes. Not until I straightened up did I see Marie de Medici’s trusted negotiator from France.

  The Queen Regent Marie de Medici sat at the King’s right hand, in a carved chair as splendid as that occupied by James.

  I stared.

  She wore no jewels, and was in plain clothing—one supposes, for disguise only as some great lady—but the skirts and petticoats and stomacher were made so well, with such fine stitching, that self-evidently such garments could not be worn by anyone except the nobility. Or royalty.

  Marie de Medici put back the edge of the pearl-pink satin hood that framed her face.

  “Monsieur Rochefort,” she remarked. Her summer-blue eyes lifted, looking at me. They, with her golden hair and her plump face, gave her an appearance both cherubic and less than intelligent.

  As if I am ever likely to be fooled by that!

  At my side, there is steel polished to a high finish, the edge so sharp it will cut a man’s hair if you but drop it across the blade. And still she holds me as if at the point of a deadlier blade.

  Cecil stroked at his small pointed beard, glancing up from the papers on the table in front of him. “Monsieur de Rochefort will inform you of Doctor Fludd’s activities, your Majesty. You will find he confirms what else has been said here.”

  The Queen Regent inclined her head with every appearance of graciousness. Her gaze held mine.

  You are not de Rochefort, I remember her saying, in that filthy tavern where Maignan was murdered at her order. She did not pick Cecil up on his usage. She merely watched me as if she would have smiled, were it not a smile to give too much away to an onlooker.

  “Of course, your Majesties; Mr Secretary,” I consented smoothly.

  What is the use of outright accusation?

  I thought, furiously, while I put my hands behind my back and stood, at ease, recounting what had passed between Robert Fludd and myself these last three months. Can I accuse her and be heard? Ravaillac’s dead. Dying without a word of “Monsieur Belliard,” who helped him to Henri IV’s death. There is only I, one man’s word. The word of a spy.

  And, much as I may have gained reputation at the Stuart court, the last thing Mr Secretary or James desires to hear is that a fellow monarch is an outright assassin of her husband.

  Sully.

  I watched Marie de Medici’s soft face as I moved to the events of Somerset, briefly recounting how Doctor Fludd had been out-manoeuvered only by the presence of another of Giordano Bruno’s students. Do you still have your hand about the neck of M. le Duc? Cecil’s reports show him yet on the Council of Ministers, but….

  Concluding, I found myself unsure whether or not Marie de Medici believed Suor Caterina dead. But she did believe herself offered a chance at M. le physician Fludd’s knowledge: so much I saw in her expression.

  “We are grateful to our friend….” Here, she smiled at me with gracious condescension—not naming me, either with the de or without. “For serving us so well. France and England shall enter on a new era of peace, with the assistance of this philosophe M. de Fludd.”

  Or, if they enter a war, be sure to win it . I am not in the least ignorant that Robert Fludd might prove a two-edged sword. I risk all on my assessment of their characters: that these two, womanish man, and womanish woman, truly do not desire their countries embroiled in war. James must remember Scotland; the Medici the late wars in France….

  It occurred to me, as I stood at the foot of the long table, gazing up at James Stuart at the head of it, and Marie de Medici at his right hand, that it might have been better for all concerned had I brought Mlle Dariole to this house a fortnight past, and let her and her sword rid the world of Robert Fludd. But still, a man cannot be sure there are no others of Fludd’s and Caterina’s like yet alive. And there is M. le Duc….

  Marie de Medici indicated the papers before Mr Secretary Cecil with a shapely finger. “We have still some details to discuss. Messires, may we speak with our subject Rochefort? A private room, perhaps…?”

  The softness of her tone might deceive some; I doubted that included the King and Cecil. James Stuart, reacting with appropriate flowery compliment, nonetheless agreed.

  Marie de Medici rose to her feet and paced delicately into a small chamber off this main room—one that, I saw as we entered, must have been Fludd’s study. The desk, somewhat scarred by fire, stood under a wall from which the panelling had been ripped off.

  The Queen Regent seated herself on a joint-stool, leaving me standing. I clasped my hands behind my back and gazed down at her. Behind us, the door stood open; the King of England and Scotland vacating the room, jovially calling Mr Secretary to follow him for refreshments. An open door may sometimes be the only assurance of a lack of eavesdroppers.

  I stood looking down at her, from my greater height; keeping my expression without emotion.

  Maignan’s throat has been opened because of you, I reflected; and in Normandy, twelve men died—no better in their souls than they should be, perhaps, but living men nonetheless, and deserving at least of a little pity in their deaths. So much is common to my profession. But M. de Sully….

  “Do you think you’ve checkmated me?” she said, still in her soft voice.

  “Monsieur the Duc de Sully is a minister whom any monarch of Europe might envy.” I held her gaze. “You were wise, your Majesty, to keep him in your employment.”

  Her pink lips pursed for a moment.

  “The late King, your husband, knew M. de Sully to be direct, abrasive, and honest to a fault,” I added. “He knew how to make use of his talents, and bear with his lack of court manners. Your Majesty, a wise monarch would continue to use his judgement to her advantage.”

  The odours of Southwark leaked into this little room, and the sounds of the clock striking from the parish church. I saw anxiousness in her eyes, and surmised it to do with Summer heat, and the fear of pestilence. The court would have left Paris by now, for cooler places.

  Her voice changed from softness as she spoke. “Is this your picture of Monsieur de Sully? It’s not close to the life.”

  “Your Majesty—”

  “This probity? This honesty? When only now, he has come begging and crawling to Monsieur Concini, to save his position at court?”

  My hands dropped to my sides. I tried not to display the shock that went through me.

  “Begging?” I found myself too incredulous to give her a queen’s respect. “To Concini? To that Florentine son of a bitch? For what—No! M. de Sully would not ever do that!”

  She lifted her eyebrows, giving the appearance of shock at my lack of respect. It would have been more convincing had she managed to hold back her smile. “But yes, monsieur. It is a week or two now, that this came to pass—M. de Sully begging for Monsieur Concini’s friendship and favour. So quickly your master abandons my husband after his death….”

  I glanced away in the hope she would not read my face. Beyond the casement, the dusty air of Summer settled over Southwark’s tiled roofs and brick chimneys, and the square towers of churches.

  “I cannot call a Queen a liar.” I looked back at her. We are private, and she desires already to murder me. “But I will call you one. M. de Sully would never go to your fat little Italian adventurer, unless it was to spit in his face!”

  Marie de Medici smiled. She touched a finger to her full lower lip, thoughtfully, glancing up at me. “We see M. de Sully’s black dog still bites. Muzzl
e yourself, monsieur, and listen to me. I grant you, it was at the insistence of his family and household. We have had experience of that ourselves, when it is feared someone may be cut off from all political influence.”

  Her voice held all the joy she took in taunting me. She is a woman, frail, in need of protection, and here she has M. Rochefort before her, and he may not use the violence his greater strength and stature gives him.

  She enjoys this, I reflected, and schooled myself to endure.

  If I can do nothing else, I can say to her face what, to a man, would be cause of swords drawn. “This is both foolish and untrue. You lie.”

  I am reduced to a woman’s weapons—words.

  She played with her fingers’ ends. “We’re told the Duc had word of some conspiracy between Villeroi, Epernon, Concini, the Papal Nuncio Ubaldini; to run our government between them…. The usual plots: an alliance to be made with the Pope and Spain, a bride out of the house of Austria for my son Louis, the Grand Design of my husband quite abandoned….”

  “All the less reason for M. de Sully to go to Concini!”

  The Queen Regent smoothed down her skirts, the smile still on her lips. “It seems M. de Sully’s family believed nothing of this conspiracy. He spoke of the matter to his wife, his son, his friends.” She looked up at me from under golden lashes. “They could only think it all a lie. And decide that their husband, father, friend, cospetto! should seek to ally himself with Monsieur Concini—Monsieur Concini being my closest friend and favourite.”

  She shook her head, with a smile.

  “Sully was at last persuaded. ‘I will do it, since you force me to it,’ he told his family, and friends, ‘but this concession will procure you no advantage, and will bring great trouble, loss, and even disgrace on me, and I am going to give you a specimen of it this moment’….”

  Her voice, soft in the empty rooms of Robert Fludd’s house, brought M. de Sully’s true voice to me with such clarity that I must cough and clear my throat before I could speak.

  “This he said at his home? Madame, were I still at the Arsenal, you would have found the details of that conversation less easy to come by!”

  She fluttered her fingers, and gazed up into my eyes. “You have not been so successful in ridding yourself of my agents as you might wish, Messire Rochefort.”

  The threat was plain and unadorned. Failure tasted bitter in my mouth.

  She continued, “I was informed of it before an hour passed—that Monseigneur the Duc was sending word by one Arnaud, to Monsieur Concini. His message was that he, Sully, owed Concini no resentment for holding the same place with myself as he had held with my late husband…and he offered Monsieur Concini his friendship.” She paused. “I’m told, also, it was some while before M. Arnaud returned to the Duc—and that he was reluctant to repeat the reply.”

  “So I imagine,” I said, as dryly as I might. “Well, Madame, you will tell me, I think. What did the Florentine have the insolence to say?”

  “M. Arnaud gave M. Concini’s answer very precisely,” the Queen said. “That Monsieur the Duc de Sully need not think to rule France in my day as he had in my husband’s. And that neither he—Concini—nor his allies, needed the friendship of any man, since it was not in any man’s power to deprive him of my love and favour.”

  Her eyes flashed up to mine. “Nor is it.”

  If any man truly said that, I would not care to be in the same room with my master the Duke when it was repeated. I wondered how Arnaud fared. M. de Sully’s temper is even, but all the worse for that when finally it gives way.

  I drew myself up, so that I might look down at her, and feel less like a school-boy before his dominie. “Madame, to the point. What you tell me is—if this is in any way the truth—that you need have no fear of M. de Sully: he is a man whose influence is broken. Therefore, you need not hesitate to sign the treaty with his Majesty King James, since it matters not to you whether the Duc de Sully is left alive or dead.”

  That M. de Sully might indeed be so close to being out of office, and thus unprotected, I did not for the moment contemplate. Time enough to think of that later.

  I concentrated on keeping my gaze steadily on the Medici, to see if she would respond with any unwise words to her authority being thus challenged.

  “I wonder.” She sounded thoughtful. “How long King James’s gratitude will last. How certain he is that such a clause must be included in this treaty, if I say that I desire to sign only if it’s removed? I wonder, Monsieur Rochefort. Because I weary of M. de Sully, his harangues, his grip on money that should be mine, and his forever-lasting long face for Henri’s death! And I tell you now that, given all men have traitorous inclinations, I have every intention of discovering his. And, on my return to France, having him most speedily hanged.”

  At the end of a day spent in less than public negotiation—Mr Secretary’s one secretary dazed as he took down what notes Cecil told him were permitted—the meeting broke up in deadlock and royal bonhomie. James Stuart invited Marie de Medici to the Queen’s house at Greenwich, and to talk again tomorrow; he and she and a company of musket-men rode over Black-heath, and I dropped back until I rode knee by knee with M. Saburo.

  “There was a question of mine you did not answer,” I said.

  “Hai.”

  “Which would be, one supposes, because you have been asked not to? Has Dariole told you where she may be found?”

  The broad man gave a shrug, nodding ahead at Greenwich-palace, nestled down among green trees with the water beyond it. “There, some room. It’s a big palace, Rosh’-fu’-san.”

  “And she won’t see me if she doesn’t desire to?”

  “She wants Furada dead.”

  And on that intractable rock, the ship continues to strike . I wondered, as we approached the red-brick gate towers of the palace entrance, how much it might be worth bribing servants to give me Dariole’s location. Although finding her now would not be so difficult. But as to how a man might break through that cold and righteous anger….

  James Stuart’s outriders milled about, ahead.

  Approaching the palace gate, I saw more mounts crowding the road and the grass. They did not seem constrained to move off by the guards or musket-men; I heard voices raised in temper.

  Spurring my bay impatiently ahead of James, Cecil, and the cloaked Queen, I ventured to see what a Frenchman might do in the way of clearing space for an English King. A deep voice has the benefit that it will carry. “Make way! Make way for his Majesty!”

  Men on foot crowded the gate, I saw, now I came to the front of our milling crowd. Courtiers, gentlemen, servants. The mass opened enough for me to see men standing in the gateway, guards facing them—evidently the newcomers had been demanding entrance.

  I swung down from the bay, to remonstrate, and became conscious of the jagged noise coming from the English crowd. For a moment, I had no idea why.

  A stone or clot of earth soared over the hats and ruffs of the crowd, plummeting to earth at the feet of the half-dozen or so newcomers. Abruptly, I looked at their clothing with the eyes of an Englishman rather than a Frenchman.

  Jesuit priests.

  I glanced back at the Medici, where she sat her gelding, lace-trimmed hood drawn up over her gold hair, and the King and Secretary of State beside her. If she has been stupid enough to bring her private priests and confessors….

  A glint as she looked at me made every instinct picked up in fifteen years of life as Sully’s agent shriek: I am in personal danger.

  Before I could make myself scarce in the crowds, Cecil dismounted from his horse with the aid of his guard and walked up. One of the men behind the group in cassocks I recognised to be the Spanish Ambassador. Evidently we are supposed to think that it is by he that they enter this country, which otherwise is forbidden to them. The older-looking of the Jesuits pointed his finger at me.

  “That is he!” The priest’s dark gaze picked me out. “That is Messire Valentin Rochefort, who subor
ned the killing of Henri of France!”

  As smoothly as if he had prepared for the moment—for all I know, he might have—Robert Cecil said, “How can you be sure this is your man? This is not an accusation to make lightly! How improbable is it that you will find the assassin of the French King in England?”

  That last was a warning over the priest’s head at the Spanish Ambassador. It said, very clearly, I know you’ve come here to make trouble: forget it!

  For once, you have the wrong target, I thought, keeping my back to the Queen Regent. The Spanish Ambassador may be an immediate cause of these priests, but I’d hazard everything I own it’s at Marie de Medici’s bidding. Why?

  Spite. Yes. But—I am the last defence between her and Sully.

  A little hoarsely, I appealed to Cecil. “Milord, you know I didn’t do this.”

  “I know it very well. Very well, Monsieur de Rochefort.” Cecil’s glance flicked back past me for a bare second, towards James Stuart, as if to remind himself that the man was alive and well, and there in all his fat, awkward bodily presence. “This is some trumped-up matter out of Spain.”

  The Jesuit stiffened his spine. The little group of his companions—two more priests, the Spanish Ambassador, their servants—drew together, as if at the hostility of the crowd flocking from the palace courtyard to the gate.

  “Even if it were,” the priest said harshly, “that man Rochefort is still a murderer. We have brought the proof of it.”

  He beckoned, without looking behind him. The younger of the Jesuits priests turned, and pulled a man forward.

  I stared; I think that my mouth dropped open.

  Gabriel Santon met my gaze.

  The elder Jesuit said, “This man was that Valentin Rochefort’s servant, until a month or two ago. He has proof that Valentin Rochefort is a murderer.”

  Gabriel was thinner in the face than when I had last seen him, but he did not limp, not stand awkwardly, and his hands and eyes were whole.

  For all the sun of the last months, his skin was white. Prison pallor.