Mary Gentle

by A Sundial in a Grave-1610

“You spoke to Fludd?” I could not tell whether I felt more incredulous or appalled.

  “He was the only one who could answer my question. Messire, if you plan to work with the man, I have to admit he’s alive and there….”

  An amount of pain went through me as I shifted on the truckle bed, moving to swing my legs over and sit on the edge of it, but less than I had felt on previous days. She moved rapidly forward, hands out, and as I stood, I found myself with my hands in hers for balance.

  “Did everybody excepting me ask Suor Caterina questions! What did you ask her?”

  “I asked her who was going to be the most powerful man in France, for the next twenty or thirty years.”

  I could only stare.

  “And why would you ask her that?” I managed at last.

  She gave a shrug, and looked down at her toes. “I don’t know. I just…I thought, then, Monsieur de Sully might be in trouble. Or, it was something you’d find useful to know. Or…I don’t know.”

  Dariole lifted her head and looked at me.

  “I suppose I just wanted to do something nice for you, messire.”

  “Two years past. When I had just got you raped.” I think I groaned aloud. “Mademoiselle…”

  “I didn’t know why.” She shrugged; I felt it through her hands where her fingers held mine. “I didn’t know then, what it means when you just want to…do something, for someone.”

  “Dear God, but you are young!”

  “I know now.” She looked injured. “Caterina said this man will rule Louis and France. I was trying to find you a patron, messire!”

  Mlle Dariole has dumbfounded me before, but rarely as thoroughly as at that moment.

  She added, “He’s going to exile the Queen Regent in the end. I think it’s because you tell him she murdered her husband. And look, messire, then he has to keep you alive, as a witness. He can protect you. Because he needs you. He just doesn’t know that yet.”

  Leave aside the practical details—that this unknown man might find it far easier and less dangerous merely to sell me to Marie de Medici—there are other dangers.

  Gazing down into Dariole’s face, I realised it not so wise, neither, to be standing en chemise (or at any rate, in a peasant’s voluminous night-gown) before her.

  “Go out, while I dress,” I said. “I will—consider it. But, mademoiselle, I tell you now: I think this is lunacy!”

  The danger of it pressed on me more and more the closer we came to Paris. As little as I desired my capture, I desired hers less.

  I did not shave myself again, even when my skin could have born the touch of a blade; I let a thicker servant’s beard grow in. Dariole bought a plain doublet and trunk hose in servant’s blue, and I added a patch over my bandaged eye. Apart from that old rock, my height, it seemed likely this voyage might not immediately founder on some man recognising Valentin Raoul Rochefort.

  The lengthy journey by river enabled me to get some of my strength and flexibility back. For the last few days on the barge, I practised the movements of sword-work on the deck. I might conceivably kill some attacker, I decided, if a man would consent to fight while hearing my yelps of pain and not die laughing.

  Mlle de Montargis de la Roncière—as she gave her name at the Porte St Victor—walked with her ivory skirts held prettily up, and wooden patterns to keep her silk shoes out of the dirt on the cobble-stones. As we entered Paris, she shot me a wickedly flirtatious smile from behind her fan.

  “You’ll smile like that when they hang me,” I remarked morosely. I found it something of an effort to maintain the tone, since standing taller than Mlle Dariole put me at best advantage to study her finer points displayed in women’s clothing—the first time I have actually seen her so, I thought.

  She grinned. “They’ll never catch you. Who’s going to look at a mere groom, and see The Spaniard?”

  “If you hope to embarrass me, mademoiselle, consider that I have engaged in many habits of disguise in my profession, some far less dignified than this.”

  “Really? You have to tell me about those!”

  I turned my head, further than usual because of my eye-patch, and gave her a look. “Be careful, mademoiselle.”

  “Messire, you wouldn’t say that if I had my sword on!”

  “No, indeed. I am not a fool. I take my advantages where they occur.”

  She snickered, and quite deliberately dipped her chin and looked up at me from under her lashes. Had there been fewer people on the streets, I might have thought it worth taking up the challenge. As it was, I had a hard enough struggle not to glance about me all the time.

  What I did see moved me, foolish as that may be. The familiar buildings, the smells of Paris about me again, the black mud underfoot, the crowds in the streets whose nature and composition I know….

  And Mlle Dariole, very precise in her ivory satin stomacher, walking a pace ahead of me. At her shoulder, as a groom properly should be, I lowered my voice and spoke with gravity. “Consider that I implore you, most humbly, mademoiselle, to tell me, now—what have you in your hell-cat’s mind!”

  Mademoiselle Dariole stifled a spluttering giggle. She looked at me with an expression of teasing delight. “Can’t you guess? I plan to put you on your knees.”

  “I’m sure that will entertain the mob. Where will you have me do this? Here, perhaps?”

  Her smile, that might conceivably have belonged to a court lady, gave way to her brat’s grin. “You don’t bite so easily now. Very disappointing.”

  “My profound apologies, mademoiselle.”

  “My profound arse!”

  “You know your own arse best, doubtless,” I remarked, and had the satisfaction of reducing her to speechlessness. “Why am I to be on my knees, mademoiselle?”

  “To make confession.”

  I lifted a brow. “That may take some time.”

  “Not everything, messire! Just the interesting bit.”

  “I confess my vanity pricked by that….”

  We came to the gates of the Luxembourg Gardens, I saw. The pleasant expanses of clear gravel around the fountains were scuffed in places by the heels of courtiers and ladies. Other men—as unnoticed as myself—wielded rakes, smoothing areas back into neatness. Mlle Dariole seemed to have a goal in mind, by the way that she walked without hesitation past the fountains and towards the pleached alleys.

  “Why am I to make confession?” I demanded.

  “Because Sister Caterina’s name that she gave me belongs to a priest.”

  I looked at her as I am sure groom never looked at his mistress. She gave me her teasing look, which was no less arousing in women’s clothes than in breeches.

  “This is why you thought us safe—you plan to have me tell him under the seal of the confessional?”

  Dariole nodded.

  It startled me. But it is not beyond the bounds of possibility, I thought, considering it.

  Dariole added quickly, “He’ll be in the government in two years, in the Summer of ’14. Maybe the Autumn. Caterina wasn’t sure. He’s in exile now, really, but I knew he’d be in Paris for a short time this month.”

  The ivory skirts of her farthingale rustled as she walked, her hands modestly clasped in front of her. I could not reckon myself used to the faintly pink-flushed expanse of bare skin between her ruff and her stomacher, that was usually covered by her doublet.

  She glanced back up at me. For all the affection in her expression, what she said was practical in the extreme.

  “He’s going to be Secretary of State in the Medici’s council. He’s a bishop now, but Caterina said he never wanted to be. He’s twenty-seven, and he was made a bishop six years ago. Don’t you think that’s impressive?”

  “Possibly. Depending on how rich his family is, mademoiselle.”

  “Cynic!” She grinned. “I didn’t ask. His name is Monsieur Armand-Jean du Plessis; he’s Bishop of Luçon.”

  Movement caught my gaze, later than it would have done had I both eyes to
my vision. A man in a bishop’s robes paced slowly down the pleached alley towards us. As I watched, he gestured away a pair of attendant priests, and continued what appeared to be a pleasant walk, the sun through the lime leaves speckling his pale, long-nosed face.

  I said, “You take him to be a priest who abides by the seal of the confessional?”

  Dariole put her hand up and fidgeted with her hairpiece. I felt inclined to say that she, too, has been too long in the company of spies and players.

  “Isn’t it worth taking the chance? I’ll go anywhere with you, messire, but I’d like to be able to come home sometimes, too.”

  That she should say that, and so casually, made me hurt.

  As the younger man approached, I saw him to be a man with lustrous eyes, rich dark hair and small beard, and wearing copious lace in his bishop’s robes. His hands were long and elegant, his fingers particularly white.

  There is a look in the eyes of men who habitually exercise power. For all Dariole claimed him to be out of favour, he had that look.

  She flicked up the fan she held, looked at him over it for a moment, and took a step or two to close with him as he was about to pass.

  “Your Grace, please, may I ask a favour of you?”

  “Mademoiselle, I regret I can spare you little time.” His voice, although resonant, was dry for such a young man.

  Dariole glanced subtly about her, alert for who should watch us. We might have been any group of idlers in the garden, pausing for conversation. There was naught for me to do, I saw; I confined myself to resembling a groom at his mistress’s beck and call while she spoke to the Bishop of Luçon.

  Looking back at Armand-Jean du Plessis, she said, “I desire you to hear my servant’s confession, my lord.”

  His arched brows arched further. “There are many churches in Paris—”

  “You should hear Messire Valentin Raoul Rochefort’s confession.” Dariole folded her fan down and looked at him plainly. “And better here than in a church.”

  I saw something alert wake up in the back of his gaze as he looked at me for a second time.

  He said, dryly, “I of course stand ready to discharge the duties of a priest.”

  If I put my trust in Fludd, in Caterina, in their mathematical art, then I admit the possibility that this quiet young man will become what Dariole claims.

  If I do not speak—perhaps he will not be.

  How much of this inevitability is fixed, how much dependent on choice and accident? I have only to be silent. Mlle Dariole will fly into a rage that will leave bruises, I doubt not, but this young bishop will go back to his windswept coast at Luçon, and will he ever come to Paris again? Ever begin to be a man of influence?

  Doubtless I flatter myself, I thought, without letting my amusement show.

  There is more than one chance in a man’s life. If the ambition breathes in him as Caterina says it does, I have only the ability to open or close this one door.

  He regarded me with a gaze that took some of its peculiarly unnerving quality from the fact that he did not blink.

  If I am wrong, he will tell the Medici, and she will throw me—and perhaps Mlle Dariole—into the Bastille to rot.

  Glancing at Dariole, I saw her not unaware of that.

  What I tell this man of King Henri’s death will give him a hold in potentia over Madame the Queen Regent, and an interest in keeping M. Rochefort alive. Whether he can bargain this knowledge into what Dariole speaks of: a place of influence beside the Medici and her son who will eventually oust her…who of us can say, when the future does not as yet exist?

  We make it, omission by omission, act by act.

  “It would be best,” I said, “if I made confession to your Grace.”

  The Bishop of Luçon adjusted his robes, revealing that he wore the stole. He lifted it and kissed it. “Monsieur, if you please.”

  He pointed at the gravel.

  The pleached alley concealed us, if temporarily. To be back in my profession, after so long, made my blood warm in my veins. I concealed a smile, and sank down on both knees on the path.

  If my confession contains tacit silences, so much is only to be expected of a man acquainted both with the late Elena Zorzi and the present Robert Fludd.

  “Bless me, father, for I have sinned….”

  Rochefort, Memoirs

  49

  T he Bishop of Luçon regarded me with alertness in his gaze as I rose to my feet. “And you, M. Rochefort? What payment do you desire for this? You are to be employed in your old capacity of spy, perhaps? For a new employer?”

  Dariole made no pretence now of not listening. She gave me the very slightest lift of her shoulder and ruff. Your call, messire.

  I am ashamed to confess it: I felt tears prick behind my eyes. Where she gives her loyalties, her heart, she gives with the same reckless wholeheartedness as when she throws herself into a fight.

  She might like it, I thought, amused. Rochefort and Dariole, agents of this devious politician-bishop.

  “No, my lord,” I said. “Not precisely.”

  Du Plessis appeared sceptical—albeit, not in the matter of which I had informed him. I thought him likely to have his own methods of ascertaining the quality of my intelligence—why else should an out-of-favour cleric haunt Paris?

  He said, “You do this out of charity, do you?”

  I told him a partial truth. “I do it in the first instance to make certain that Mademoiselle and I survive to do anything else.”

  No smile crept onto those pallid young features. I thought, He will be a bad enemy and an uncertain friend, because no man will ever be allowed to know what he is thinking….

  “I am not ungrateful, monsignor.” I bowed my head respectfully. “I hope I shall always be in a position to oblige you. Likewise Mademoiselle. But the Bishop will not wish to be associated with any breath of scandal, such as might come from connection with that M. Rochefort who betrayed M. de Sully.”

  Du Plessis looked me up and down. “I believe we understand each other.”

  “It is my desire, also, to come home to France from time to time,” I added. No need to mention that I shall be engaged in another venture. “A man does not like to be forever exiled from his country. For that reason, I have put myself at your disposal now.”

  Thoughtfully, he nodded, put away his stole, and gathered the skirts of his purple robe about himself.

  “We shall doubtless be in contact with each other again, Monsieur Rochefort. I trust you will take care of your health.”

  “Good fortune to you, monsignor.”

  Something about him seemed more the soldier than the priest, I thought, as he turned about and strode off. He had the expression of a man considering deep decisions.

  Dariole stood beside me as I straightened up from my bow. We watched the diminishing figure as he moved away down the pleached alley, the shifting of the lime leaves casting on him random sunlight and shade.

  Dariole’s gaze continued to follow the man, I saw her profile only. Perfectly composed, she said, “Doctors, messire. And then I think we ought to get out of town.”

  Before Mlle Dariole could urge me towards the physicians of Paris, I unbandaged my eye to clean it, and found my vision blurring, but with colour and shape all present.

  “I am for allowing Nature her turn,” I said.

  One might judge Mlle Dariole’s depth of attachment, I thought, by how unmercifully she nagged me. I submitted myself to the expense of consultations, while feeling the need of leaving Paris with all due urgency.

  The money spent to see five different physicians bought me five different opinions.

  Each morning that I uncovered my eye brought me more sight. If tears ran down my cheek at the brightness of the sun—and from the poking fingers of inspecting doctors—still, and gradually, I gained focus and depth.

  “No,” I remarked, as we left an expensive house in which the physician’s advice revolved around a poultice containing dead mice. “Made
moiselle, no more of this! I did not come so far to hand myself over to Marie de Medici, who would happily cure all my ills. We are leaving Paris. Today.”

  She was far from content, until I took up a bated foil in the courtyard at the back of our lodgings, and set myself to touch every button on her doublet as I numbered it.

  At about the ninth or tenth hit, she threw down her own weapon, and I had the great pleasure of seeing her completely torn between weeping for joy and swearing like a Swiss soldier.

  “If there remains any fault, time will cure it,” I observed. “I am assured, if I may take rapier in hand and beat you, that I am not so poor a swordsman.”

  She wiped her flushed face, the heat rebounding off the high Baroque stone buildings that surrounded the courtyard. “Was that a compliment, messire?”

  “Possibly,” I assured her, with all due gravity, and felt my heart warm at her grin.

  She picked up her foil, automatically running a kerchief over it to clean it, and looked up as she came up to me. “Messire—”

  “Wait,” I said.

  The sun dreamed down on us, raising the scents of dust from the flagstones. A cat jumped down from a capped well and padded silently off. Dariole’s eyes seemed full of light as she looked questioningly up at me.

  That this might be the extent of my will, I had not known until now.

  I saw it before me as clearly as her face.

  “You will do one thing for me now, mademoiselle,” I said gently. “You will go home.”

  Her face, that had been alive with excitement, darkened so that I thought a shadow had gone across the sun.

  “How can you tell me to—” She broke off.

  I shrugged, keeping every shadow of pain off my face, and managed to smile at her. I touched the button of her doublet, an inch under her chin. “Go home, back to Montargis; make your peace. You’ll come back to London and pick a quarrel with me for your revenge, I doubt not. But indulge me in this. Go back once, before you propose to leave it for ever. Be Mademoiselle Arcadie, one more time; say farewell to your father and brothers. Let them know you are well.”

  I puzzled her, I could see it.

  I made no more protestations about how unsuited she and I might be to each other. Merely, I ask her to pay a visit to her family home.