Mary Gentle

by A Sundial in a Grave-1610

  “Gabriel,” I said.

  He glared; fear, anger, and contempt all in the one glance. In French, he said to the Jesuit, “Yes, Father, this is the man.” And in a soldier’s accented English, said to Cecil, “Milord, this is him.”

  The Father sounded smug. “His servant knows him.”

  Robert Cecil did not respond to Santon in the least. Addressing the priest, he inquired, I think rhetorically, “Why should I heed the words of servants?”

  Gabriel Santon looked to the priest as if for approval, and then pointed at me.

  “Strip off his doublet,” he said roughly, in French, which I saw the crowd did not understand. “Cut his shirt open, on his shoulder.”

  “Gabriel!” I could do nothing but stand in place.

  I don’t know why I should feel such surprise at betrayal—except that I have noticed men always are, when it comes to those closest to them. And why should I be different?

  In this case it is not even a betrayal. I cast him off, I beat him, I am responsible for his time in the Chatelet. Not by intention—I intended only his freedom from blame—but no matter: it was still I that did those things.

  Gabriel Santon moved forward. “Let me, sieurs.”

  His voice, hoarse as it was, brought back to me everything that seemed my real life—life as it had been three months ago: Paris, duelling, Monsieur le Duc; and Gabriel looking after my food, my clothes, my bodily wants. Gabriel Santon, who now stared at me with cold hatred. And called me neither sieur nor Raoul, as he has done since the United Provinces.

  I stood unresisting as he walked up to me and pulled loose the points that bound sleeve to doublet. I looked over his head at Cecil.

  “Will he find ought, monsieur?” Cecil asked.

  Behind him, the King frowned. I dared not look at Marie de Medici—I dared not look for Mlle Dariole.

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  Gabriel’s lumpy face had no marks on it, the signs of my beating long healed. He would resent his time in the Chatelet more than those injuries, I guessed. He breathed hard, taking the shoulder and arm of my shirt in each of his fists.

  “This was not necessary,” I said, looking down at him.

  For answer, he ripped the cloth. The sound of it tearing was loud in the silence immediately about us. Robert Cecil and the Jesuit priest together looked where I had expected they would, being men of experience as they were.

  The brand was old, the scar white against white skin, but still plain enough to be seen.

  Unnecessarily, the triumphant Jesuit said, “He need not be tried. He has been branded with the fleur-de-lis for a capital crime; now he has been taken up for a second offence. Put the rope around his neck. He can be hanged, legally, within the hour.”

  Gabriel Santon’s expression held nothing but vicious satisfaction. I wondered what it had been like, these months in the Chatelet.

  I did not dare look among the Englishmen still running up from inside Greenwich-palace, for fear I should see Mademoiselle de Montargis de la Roncière—a young daughter of the nobility, who has not known herself in concert with a convicted murderer. I merely waited for Cecil and the King.

  James Stuart spurred his horse forward, his face darkening. “‘Criminal’ is he? That is French law, not the law of England!”

  The Jesuits made to protest, in concert.

  Cecil’s voice cut across them.

  “Whatever he is, sirs—murderer or criminal or branded man—as his Majesty says, our English law is competent to deal with such. Sergeant-at-arms! Arrest this man!”

  Rochefort, Memoirs

  38

  I sat down in the straw flooring the Tower’s dungeon and laughed, long and cynically. And when I was done, I laughed again, the absurdity of it making me splutter and wipe my mouth.

  Old sins come home to roost. Well and again: twenty years is long enough for any man’s sins!

  “The Queen Regent,” I said aloud, and that stopped me.

  Doubtless this is Marie de Medici’s hand at work. Seeking a sacked servant who will betray what a man can hide from every man but his body-servant. Who else but she is so close to the Society of Jesus, with Father Suffren her confessor? And who else still desires M. Rochefort quickly dead and no questions asked? She uses more subtle means than assassins, now.

  I am taken out of the game.

  It is no game—less so than even I have thought, if M. de Sully has lowered himself to negotiate with Concini.

  No man came in answer to my calling.

  This cell must be higher above ground than the dungeons, the walls not being dank or dark. Light came in from a high window, where bars showed set into flint masonry a good arm-span thick. Bars, likewise, had been set into the door, in a small iron hatchway; light from the cresset in the stairwell outside shone behind them, wavering in the draught.

  A man may be bewildered by the speed of his downfall. I had had better sense than to try bribing the yeoman warders, since I cherished the small unspoken hope that I might have better help than that—that, after the sun set, I might perhaps find some anonymous hand thrusting the key under the door. And since the Tower stands so close to the ships at St Katharine’s Stairs….

  Perhaps, I thought. If they do not put me to the question, some time during today.

  I do not think I have the fortitude of Monsieur Ravaillac.

  That quiet man, whom I had assumed would break in the first minutes of questioning, and thus save himself an infinite amount of pain.

  It might be both just and ironic if I were tortured, I thought. And if it unmanned me, where it did not him.

  That cynical voice in my mind, long present, now tended to assume the tones of Mlle Dariole. I could hear vividly what she would say—You would not be the half so sanguine about it, if you thought it would happen!

  The English yeoman who had shut the door of my cell had spoken back through the bars to me. “Do you know how we kill your sort, here?”

  He was a broad, scarred man, much my own age, smiling with all the vindictiveness of a man convinced himself a custodian of morality.

  “We drag you through the streets tied to a hurdle, so the crowd can have a go at you. They like that. Then, what’s left, we haul it up on a table, and we pull out your guts and your heart. Oh—between the two, we hang you up, and cut you down again, but that just chokes you. You’ll be wide awake for pulling out your entrails. I’ve seen men live like that above a quarter of an hour.”

  “We pull a man apart between four horses,” I said coolly. “It makes the better entertainment.”

  His footsteps departed down the spiral stairs, together with a grunt that might have been revulsion.

  Forgive me, Messire Ravaillac.

  The hours of the evening passed, marked by the sound of clocks striking. I could hear them faint on the wind from the east, that blew stronger than before. The Jesuit fathers must have come in by some other vessel at the same time as Marie de Medici, the wind standing good for arrivals from the continent.

  No man spoke to me; no gaoler rattled the door. It became apparent that no message or messenger had been sent from Greenwich.

  The torch-flame in the cresset died, the hours of the night inched past. I did not sleep. I did not think. I sat with my back to the wall, until light again crept across the floor, turning the browns and blacks of wet straw to gold.

  Rats tumbled in the sun-warmed straw, made bold by my stillness. I observed for some time a large, white-bellied rodent—presumably a father—seeming to instruct three young rat-pups in stealing food-scraps from the last prisoner’s abandoned bowl. Their bright, black eyes did not fill me with revulsion. That they could look back at me and yet not flee argued some tenuous contract of trust between us.

  How tenuous is trust? And how stands the gratitude of princes?

  The rats’ grey-furred bodies removed so fast that it seemed each vanished into the air.

  I stood up as the door creaked.

  Doubtless I have Saburo wo
rking on the outside for me; perhaps even Milord Secretary—

  No torch-light shone in through the grill from the dark stairs. The door opened, and a thin figure rounded it, closing it behind her. The lock clicked.

  The morning sun fell on Mlle Dariole.

  I should not have done it: I sprang up and strode across the cell, and threw my arms around her.

  She walked between my arms as I did so: put her own arms around my back, as far as she might reach, and pressed her body against mine from knee to breast. I was instantly as hard and upright as a boy.

  “Pardon me, mademoiselle.” I reached between us to shift myself in my breeches; then put both my hands on her shoulders. I kissed the crown of her head, that came up to my collar-bone; let go of her, grabbed her to me again, and pushed her thin body up against mine, resting my lips down against her hair.

  She held me hard enough that it would have stopped a smaller man breathing.

  I let go of her with one arm, tipped up her chin, and forced my mouth down on hers. Urgency constrained me, and the hot and sweet smell and taste of her. I felt her belly and breasts through her doublet and hose, and her fingers pushing through my hair. I pushed my tongue into her mouth.

  She froze, every inch of her body.

  Her hands came up and pushed me in the chest, hard enough—unprepared as I was—to send me back half a step. I stared, mouth open, cold in every place where her warm body had been touching me.

  “Oh, dear God!” I turned and hit my fist into the masonry of the wall. A cell, a cell in London’s Tower; and here she has been forced, perhaps this very cell—!

  My knuckles hurt and bled. She caught at me, as I sank down. She could not support my greater weight: we ended with her bent over, and myself kneeling on the straw at her feet.

  I pulled her down to face me, staring at this young woman, this boy, crouching in front of me.

  “I will not do that again,” I said. “Not ever.”

  She was not beautiful when she cried. Her eyelids swelled, and her nose reddened. “Not even if I ask you, messire?”

  That brought a laugh that was a sob, and the beginnings of a curse; all mixed together.

  I took her hands, very lightly. “Dariole—was it Cecil or the King got you in here?”

  She sniffed the atmosphere of the cell with a wounded air, looking up at me from under tear-clumped lashes. “You don’t think I managed it on my own?”

  “I know the yeomen warders. You would not be allowed, without leave of some authority. But, if you wish, I will put my head at your boots and beg pardon of you, for guessing that.”

  The smile that I had been trying to call out of her curved up one corner of her mouth. She sat herself down in the straw and stretched her legs out to me.

  “They need cleaning.” She wiggled the toe of one boot. “You could lick them clean, while you’re at my feet.”

  “I perceive that you, also, need cleaning, mademoiselle—or at least, that the seat of your breeches needs dusting.”

  She put her fingers over her mouth, muffling a giggle.

  “I’ve got a message,” she said, before I could speak. Heart-breakingly, she closed her eyes like a child reciting, to call it to her mind.

  She opened them again, dark and swimming with water. “Sir Robert Cecil says, he doesn’t for one minute believe you guilty of any ill in England, and he is besides grateful to you, as is his Majesty.”

  She dropped out of what was evidently a memorisation of Cecil’s formal speech.

  “He says he’ll keep you here until he’s dealt with the Jesuits and the Queen. He says this is safer for you.”

  “I surmised that he might think so,” I said, trying to ignore the cold sweat of relief between my shoulder-blades. Her gaze was too warm; I knew it. I could not find the resolution in myself to send her away now that her message was told.

  We have matters of Robert Fludd to discuss . But—I cannot, in any case, dismiss her from here. Not now.

  I leaned back against the cold stone wall. Mlle Dariole clambered her way crab-wise across the straw, dropping down to sit beside me, hip against hip.

  I could not help it: I lifted my arm and beckoned her under it.

  She sat hard up against my ribs, my arm about her shoulder, all her warm solidity tucked against the side of me. I recovered myself enough to say, “I should not do this, mademoiselle.”

  “Why not? Because of that?” She nodded in the direction of my lap.

  It was of no use to attempt to hide the evidence of my desire, tenting the cloth as it was. I said, “That, and many other reasons.”

  A shudder went through her, barely perceptible, except to a man who held her as closely to his side as I did. It occurred to me that, where I found straw and the stone wall behind me comforting, she might have quite different associations.

  In part to distract her, I said, “I will need you to return to Mr Secretary Cecil. Warn him. This, I think, is only the Medici’s careful desire to have me dead—but I do not rule out, still, that it may be something of Robert Fludd’s devising. It is unlikely, but James Stuart may still be in danger of being killed.”

  She shrugged, under my arm, and looked up. “Saburo-san told him that, already. So did I. His Majesty’s more worried about the plague…. And Master Cecil’s convinced he’s got enough guards round the King to stop an army, even if Fludd wasn’t locked up.”

  Frustrated, I shook my head. I realised that I was squeezing her forearm, where I held her. I forced myself to stop. Her heart beat against my side.

  “Messire, why did they brand you?”

  I looked down into her face. “I warned you that I was not a good man.”

  “I don’t need telling that.” Laughter receded from her voice like the tide. “I know what you are. I have to be careful not to feel proud—like having a savage dog that’s at everybody’s throat but yours?” She shook her head, not looking up at me. “That doesn’t mean you’re not a killer.”

  I felt breathless. “I am glad that you do not—romanticise—me. Mademoiselle, that I love you should be no concern of yours. That is my business.”

  We looked at each other. She said nothing.

  That is the first time I have said it, even to myself.

  With difficulty, I said, “For you…there will be a boy, soon, who will be eighteen or twenty; close to you in your age. He will be of a good family, of honourable reputation. He will love you, Dariole. As he should.”

  I broke off, meeting her gaze. With an effort, I forced myself to honesty.

  “If we were married, mademoiselle, you would meet this young man just the same. The difference is that you would take him as your lover, instead of as your husband. I think it would be best—I would prefer—that you wait and marry him, rather than cuckold me. Even if you were so foolish as to accept me.”

  Her body tensed. She looked away.

  Her hand moved, and I caught it before she could put it in my lap.

  “No! Dariole, I want nothing more than to take you here, now, in this straw. And because we are…where we are, you want to prove that you can. That they did not destroy you. Perhaps you even have some affection for me. But, Dariole, listen!” I held her fast in my arm. “Give yourself time to heal. Meet your boy, your gentleman!” I took a breath. “He won’t be driven mad, as you do me!”

  She said coolly, “He won’t marry me, either.”

  Her cold, clear voice was a shock. I loosed my arm from her shoulders. She leaned forward, resting her arms on her knees, rubbing her wrist where I had grabbed her.

  Without turning to look at me, she said, “This hypothetical nobleman’s son, this paragon…he won’t marry me. To begin with, I’m not a virgin.”

  “You need not tell him,” I said foolishly.

  “Why would I marry him if I couldn’t?” She moved, knelt facing me, her eyes dark with anger. “And where’s the man who’d marry me after he knows I’m no virgin? You want to talk about dreams? You’re dreaming, messire! Thin
king I can take off my breeches and be some young nobleman’s bride, and be taken home to his family!”

  “I—that is—” I realised that I stuttered, and stopped.

  “I can kill men,” she said. “Don’t you know that, messire? It doesn’t give me cold sweats, or bad dreams; not so much. I’m a man in that. Is that what this boy is going to look for in a bride?”

  I ached to pull down her breeches and sheath myself in her flesh; to give her pleasure enough to make her weep and smile together. Any boy should be proud to wed you!

  I got out words.

  “I had thought that, when we finally parted…I had assumed you would meet a young man to marry you, take care of you….”

  She gave me a look.

  I am not stupid when it comes to the signals that a woman sends to a man. There have been the wives of complaisant courtiers, of absentee noblemen and soldiers; there have been courtesans. I am not a monk. She glared at me, so evidently not wanting to hear about this hypothetical nobleman’s son.

  There is one way only to redeem myself in her eyes: that is to push her down where she is and make love to her on this cold cell floor. But this is not the right place. And, in all honesty, I am not the right man.

  “In the future, you would be sorry to have indulged in a—momentary attraction, mademoiselle.”

  Wiping a hand across my face, I recovered something of my composure. She looked at me, wordless.

  “You will marry,” I said, “and if not to a young man who can love you as you deserve, then at least to one who will love you as much as he can. Mademoiselle, believe me—”

  “He won’t marry me!” she interrupted.

  “Dariole—”

  “You won’t, either.” Effortlessly, she stood. She looked down at me, a strange expression on her face. “He won’t. You won’t. You can’t. I’m already married. Why do you think I ran away from home at fourteen?”

  “Tell me it all!” I demanded.

  She put her hands behind her back, more of a boy than ever, and shook her head. They had made her leave her weapons in the guardroom; I should otherwise had made shift to have her at sword’s point, given the recalcitrant mule’s look on her face.