Mary Gentle

by A Sundial in a Grave-1610

  I got to my feet, which at least enabled me to over-top her, and approach a feeling of moral superiority.

  “Mademoiselle—at the moment I face the Queen Regent of France, the Society of Jesus, and Robert Fludd who may still foresee my every future action: how can I be sure? Given that, do you think I will be outfaced by you?”

  I expected tears, or anger, at being bullied.

  She put her hands over her mouth and spluttered in what appeared to be profound amusement.

  “Mademoiselle!”

  She sobered. “I’ll tell you. If you tell me why you’ve got that.”

  “That,” by her indication, was the ancient white scar on my shoulder, now covered by my sleeve again.

  “That is not something for you, mademoiselle.”

  I thought she might butt heads with me. Almost certainly, she will seek to strike a bargain: her secret for mine.

  Married! I thought. When I was fighting her, when I thought her a young man, she was…married.

  It was not clear to me why I felt the fact so disturbing; I nonetheless did.

  “It’s my cousin, Philippe.” Dariole spoke openly, and glanced around, choosing herself a sun-warmed part of the straw, and proceeded to sit down.

  Cricking her neck back to look up at me, she added, “Not my favourite cousin, Sebastien—he’s older, and I like him almost as much as I like my brothers. Philippe’s always been a liar.”

  “That is no recommendation in a husband, mademoiselle.”

  Dariole’s laugh was everything I had hoped.

  Quietly, I knelt down by her, so she should at least not have to stare up so far at me. She lifted her hand and smoothed an amount of hair back out of my eyes, as if she had no idea how my flesh leapt at her touch.

  “Sebastien’s like you, he likes young men—although he does prefer them to have cocks,” she added. “Philippe…used to cry a lot. We used to fight when we were little, and he bawled like a bull-calf. I think my aunt wanted me as his husband, and him as my wife! I could have grown up to be matriarch of that family….”

  “Married at fourteen?” I queried. Not so unusual.

  “Mama’s dead, and Papa listens to my aunt.” She lifted her shoulder. “Philippe never did anything to me. Not even a consummation. I ran away before he woke up. I found out later, my brothers discovered where I went, and protected me. So I came to Paris. My brothers don’t have any influence there.”

  Brutally, I said, “I thought perhaps you had been raped before, by a father, or an uncle, or a priest, or one of these brothers you mention. That you should run off from the protection of your home and father, merely because you wished to….”

  All the laughter left her face. “Are you going to tell me it’s my fault? That I got raped because I…”

  “No,” I said soberly. “I made you a hostage, for Fludd to use. Rape was not your fault. But you must surely have expected it, at some point?”

  She sat still, utterly still, while a man might count to ten—

  Dariole put her hands over her face and howled with laughter.

  “Dariole….” At a loss, I protested, “I have no idea—”

  “No—I don’t—suppose you do!”

  She flopped on her back on the straw, arms flung wide, the sun patching her with gold. Her eyes gazed up at me, too much filled with affection. “I don’t know anyone else who would say things the way you do, messire!”

  Bemused, I said nothing. Since she seemed to have put aside her pain, however briefly, I did not wish further to remind her of it.

  “That,” she said, pointing at my shoulder. “I want to know, messire. Was it Sully who had you branded?”

  “Sully? No, although he comes into the story. Mademoiselle, if you insist, I will tell you part of it. But not all. Only all that I can tell you.”

  She rolled over onto her side in the straw, supporting her head on her hand and gazing at me. Her doublet and trunk-hose I saw now to be brown silk, covered over with a darker brown embroidery, and her ruff had Brussels lace on it. James Stuart must already be offering garments to his new favourite. And of course she will let him dress her.

  Only so long as she doesn’t let him undress her….

  The sun on her dazzled me. She did not in the least seem to mind that she had straw on her doublet and in her bright hair.

  I stood, beginning to pace the cell. “I will tell you, at least, how M. de Sully comes into this matter of my brand. And if the story is neither edifying nor entertaining—you have only yourself to blame, for asking, mademoiselle.”

  “Once upon a time,” I began, “there was a boy, much as I have been speaking of: rich, spoilt, well-dressed. In age, eighteen or nineteen, say. And the son of a rich and noble father. Or, at any rate, a father well enough aware of his advantages in life that, when he was in command of Paris, he sold the city to King Henri of Navarre, back in ’94. This later resulted in him becoming a Marshal of France.

  “That event came about some years after he had driven the young man out of his life, as being no son of his. The young man—myself—at eighteen or nineteen had been convicted of murdering another young man, and so branded.

  “So, this young man of whom I speak, older and in his middle twenties, around this time came home from the wars in the Low Countries, and, as many homeless soldiers did, he turned to banditry to survive.

  “Banditry is all the worse parts of war: no roof, no shelter against the weather, every man’s hand against you to hang you, and a life where you make your living by killing other, innocent, men. I was not yet old enough to know that the last was the worst part of what I did. I was blind to all except the comradeship of my band of men, and of the revenge I was having on my fellow-countrymen because I was no longer the son of a noble.

  “Not long afterwards, I and most of my men were taken in an ambush. We were imprisoned, to be sent to the provincial capital and tried, and thereafter hanged. I, now a not-so-young man, was examined (since I had been shot in the breast), and the maid who was daughter to the prison governor liked the look of me, I being handsome, although not as handsome as I had been before suffering harsh life out of doors in the Low Countries.

  “The maid took the shirt off the unconscious young man, and found him a branded criminal. If this were a romance, her love for the young criminal would have moved her to conceal the fact, and my love for her (assuming I woke to see and love her) would have redeemed me from my life of crime.

  “This being no romance, the daughter of the prison governor went immediately to her father with the story, and her father decided that they might usefully spare the provincial capital the cost of a trial, and that I should be hanged immediately.

  “I woke to this news as they dragged me out of my cell—a cell very like this one, mademoiselle—and put me before the gallows in the prison yard.

  “I might have died, legally executed there and then, but for the fact that this chanced to be just before dinner. The governor decided that he (and his wife, and his daughters, of which he had several besides the one who tended me) might as well wait until after they had dined to have the entertainment of seeing the young man hang.

  “Don’t mistake me, mademoiselle. If the murder for which I had originally been branded was a foolish young man’s act, the life I had lived after the war was evil. I had killed more than one innocent man who desired only to defend his property and goods. I was not a young man who particularly deserved to live.

  “It was ironic, therefore, that a great nobleman should be passing on his way to St Germain, and broke his journey to dine with the prison governor. He saw the young man in the yard. The nobleman turned to the prison governor, and begged a favour of him—as if a man as powerful as he had ever any need to beg! He asked to see the young criminal privately for a while.

  “I was returned to my cell. After what seemed a long time, the great nobleman came in, and sent away the guards, and spoke to me, stating that he thought he recognised the elder son of the Marshal de
Brissac.

  “Eventually I admitted that this was so. The nobleman asked if it were true that I had been a bandit; I admitted this, also. I admitted, freely, my poverty, and my life after my father disowned me.

  “Then I threw myself on my belly, and clasped the great man’s shoes, and wept to have my life spared.

  “If you think this was endearing, mademoiselle, re-consider the matter. I was a pitiful, revolting thing. You would have turned your head away in embarrassment.

  I had, besides, no justice on my side. I was a murderer, more than once over.

  “‘I see,’ the noble gentleman said, ‘that you are a man used to killing, and not particular in how you do it.’

  “At this, I protested, although it was by then the truth.

  “‘I have need of such a man,’ the great nobleman said. ‘You appear very different to when you were de Brissac’s son; it is likely no other man now will recognise you, which is to the good. I have need of a man who will aid me by not being too particular in what he does to achieve the necessities of France. And for guarantee of loyalty,’ he said, indicating the fleur-de-lis burned into my shoulder, ‘I have that. Since I can, at any time I wish, have you instantly hanged, with no questions asked.’

  “At this, I embraced the great man’s knees, and blubbered my thanks; and that great gentleman—who was not fond of undignified displays of emotion—told me to clean myself up and be ready to be about the Duc’s business….”

  “You tell it very well.” There was a half-smile on Mlle Dariole’s face as she looked up at me. “Is it true?”

  “Every word,” I said. “Except that I must take the prison governor’s daughter on trust; I never saw her. Maignan told me of her, later in our acquaintance. He may have exaggerated.”

  Now Dariole did smile.

  “Did you really beg Sully? Did you grovel like that?”

  “Oh, yes. I implored him very painfully….” I stooped, and seated myself beside her in the straw. “The embarrassing thing, mademoiselle, is that I believe I had no need.”

  “No need?”

  “He wanted a private murderer, to be sent against the King’s enemies. I believe he had taken the decision that I should live before he entered the cell.”

  She snuffled a laugh into her fingers, and looked up at me with warm eyes. “I’d like to have seen it.”

  “Yes, I dare say you would!”

  “Messire Rochefort at his master’s feet….” She made pretence of examining me very closely. “Are you blushing again?”

  “Not in the least!”

  She sat back; I had difficulty in not reaching out and locking her in my arms.

  “Did you think he would execute you? After that, I mean.”

  I shrugged. “I was a disgraced gentleman, by law forbidden to wear the sword I carried; I was branded: I could be legally executed without necessity of a trial. It was not a matter often mentioned between us, unless he lost his temper, which he did but rarely.”

  Dariole nodded to herself, as if that confirmed something she thought, but she did not say what it was. After a moment, she said, a little surprisingly to me, “You can always tell a story against yourself, messire….”

  “All men of my age have their war-stories, mademoiselle. Mine are less glorious than you would perhaps hope.”

  I found myself watching her face for boredom, impatience, lack of understanding; all those reactions with which the young greet the recitations of the old. Nothing showed in her face but physical tiredness and subversive mockery.

  “‘Sully’s black dog,’” she said, with only a glimmer of malice in it. “Oh, just think, messire, you had the lily-flower on you and I never knew! What I could have done to you…!”

  The opening cell door interrupted her laughter.

  I scrambled to my feet, straw dropping from me. Mlle Dariole only knelt up, a hand automatically and uselessly empty at her hip.

  “Milord the Earl of Salisbury wishes your presence,” the gaoler announced. He dropped the halberd he held into guard position. “Not you. Him. Master Dariole.”

  Rochefort, Memoirs

  39

  I could not keep still: I walked the length of the cell and back, pacing impatiently. The last expression of her face stayed with me. A twist of the mouth, that spoke volumes of perplexity:

  ‘I’ll be back as soon as it’s safe.’

  “Which would appear not to be soon….” I stopped pacing to listen to the clocks from the riverside and Southwark striking the hour.

  Mid-day.

  A silent warder thrust in meat and drink. I ate, barely noticing that I did so.

  Medici? Fludd? Who?

  Is Sully dead?

  A patch of sunlight at last began to creep down the eastern wall of my cell. Three hours by the clock, coming to late afternoon. I stood lost so deep in thought that the noise of the cell door opening made no impact on my attention.

  A small, slight figure stood in the doorway. For a second I thought it Dariole returned.

  I realised it too short and misshapen to be her.

  “Messire Rochefort.” Robert Cecil signalled for the warder to close the door. I heard the lock not catch. If I had been even a quarter-hour the more impatient, I think I should have gone out of the cell in a rush, and if that meant bowling over the English Secretary of State in the process….

  “What is happening, messire?” I demanded.

  The small man squinted up at the barred window, and then of a sudden looked down at me. Something in his manner I found troubling.

  “I have broken bad news to men,” I said steadily. “What is it you have to tell me?”

  Cecil clasped his hands on the top of his ebony stick. The depth of shadow in this cell hid his expression in part; I guessed that to be why he had come here, instead of having me brought to him. That, and that we are about to speak of secret matters.

  “One of my agents has been sick abed,” Cecil said quietly. “Quite by chance—and you will know how important we count chance, now—he saw Robert Fludd, free, and at St Katharine’s Stairs. Doctor Fludd was boarding a ship.”

  “Free?” That Fludd should be gone from the Southwark house stunned me. “A ship? How long ago? Where is the ship bound?”

  Cecil glanced up, a hint of ruefulness on his long face. “It sailed on the morning tide, Master Rochefort. Chance has not favoured us in how soon it brought my man’s word to me. The ship, however, we know—it was the Santa Juana, upon which the Jesuit fathers entered England. I suspect their captain only too happy to be paid and hired to leave.”

  “Sailing for Spain or Portugal.” I hazarded; hooking my thumbs into my belt to stop myself reaching for the rapier and dagger that had been taken from me. “Monsieur, we—”

  “Portugal. Lisbon.” His dark eyes reflected the light from the western window. He shifted one hand to the small of his back, absently massaging those muscles which, when locked in tension, give a man pain.

  There is more to this, and more to his awkwardness than physical distress, I thought.

  “How do we know Portugal?” I said quietly. “What else is it that you know, milord?”

  “Two men were seen boarding the Santa Juana.” Robert Cecil scratched in the straw with the ferrule of his stick, and shot a swift glance at me. “Do you know, monsieur, who was the other?”

  I shook my head. “Some man of the Queen Regent’s? Milord, I don’t know.”

  He believed me, so much was clear. He continued to fidget with the ebony cane at the straw of the cell. I clenched my fists, behind my back; put every effort I had into waiting. He is deciding whether or not he will tell me.

  “It was Master Tanaka Saburo,” Cecil said.

  I stared.

  “With Fludd?” I truly thought I had misheard. “Saburo, on board a ship with Robert Fludd?”

  “There is little chance of such a peculiar description being inaccurate, I think.”

  “But—” I shook my head.

  “A gua
rd on the house was found dead, while I was about my business at Greenwich, and Madame de Medici was visiting her Majesty Queen Anne. No man else at the house noted anything, until they found the dead man, but Doctor Fludd appears to have walked from his prison.”

  For a second, I could almost have believed in Fludd’s necromancy.

  The samurai, I thought.

  Shinobi-no-mono. Saburo called me that, once. “Assassin-in-secret.”

  And I was fool enough to let my pride at being called a foul name get in the way of asking him what manner of men, among his people, might have such skills. Samurai themselves, perhaps.

  “Is it known why Saburo has done this?”

  “No man knows. No.” Cecil held up his elegant, long white fingers. “Tanaka Saburo left no message. He spoke to no man. I…am inclined to suspect that Master Saburo in fact spoke to Doctor Fludd on his first ambassadorial visit to Prince Henry, at Whitehall.”

  Into the silence, I managed to say, “This is why Lisbon. Vessels sail from Portugal to the Japans. Fludd is going—Saburo is taking—”

  “Taking him, yes, monsieur. Home. I had hoped you had knowledge.” Cecil’s black eyes glinted. “I am willing to put you to the question.”

  Absently, I nodded. I suppose that, if anything, convinced him. Such a depth of ignorance is not impossible to counterfeit, but it is difficult. I continued to stare down at the small Englishman.

  “M. Saburo spoke to Fludd….” I turned the idea about in my mind, still stunned. “While Saburo was bringing King James back to the throne—why? If Fludd had chosen to murder M. Saburo, I could understand it. But speaking to him, negotiating with him…what, dear God!”

  “To find that out, I would question you, and any other man Master Saburo has been acquainted with.”

  Something was in his voice despite the obvious warning. I took a step towards him. In the dim late afternoon light, I must have loomed. The small man did not flinch. It came to me in the quality of his look. A man’s mind flies to a conclusion, when he is closely involved.

  I said, “Mademoiselle Dariole. This is why you demanded her attendance on you—to put her to the question—why?”