Mary Gentle (43 page)

“It seems to me there is too much paradox in this,” I said grimly, tapping the papers on the scrubbed table. “Fludd speaks as if there is no room for error; given what I’ve experienced, why should I not believe him?”

Caterina extended a finger, pointing. “Her.”

Mlle Dariole, raising a brow, put the heel of her boot up on the bench, and clasped her arms around her bent knee.
Boy!
I thought.

“What
about
Mademoiselle Dariole, Sister?”

The Italian woman put her hands on the paper in front of her. “I wish I could make you comprehend this. Not all of Maestro Bruno’s students could, and they were of the academies of Europe—”

“—and not a pair of thugs,” Mlle Dariole completed. She didn’t look at me as she said it; I thought she had no idea that she had, for the first time, linked she and I as two of the same kind—no matter how inaccurately.

“We’re not going to understand
this
.” Dariole pointed at the calculations. “What
about
me, signora?”

“This is the conditional number of events that must happen for you to be rescued from imprisonment,” Caterina said. “And this—Ostrega!—
this
is how much must happen before you might rescue yourself! You found the Signore samurai yourself, did you not, in the Tower?”

“I found Arbella Stuart,” Dariole said flatly.

“Ah, yes? Ah…here.
That
is a tiny possibility; no more than a blink in the eye of God! And for the rest—infinitesimal! Dependent on your saving of Signore Tanaka, and putting him in your debt. And dependent also on your own strength. Here….”

Caterina tracked a finger down another set of calculations.

“…you die from infection from your injuries. Here, you are struck with a melancholy afterwards, either for months or, here, until you commit the sin of taking your own life.
Here,
you make decision that, since Maestro Fludd has enough power to have you taken and hurt, he is the man you should assist, and you work on his plans
with
him—his sword, as Valentin here is the sword of the Duc de Sully.”

I flushed at that; fortunately, neither woman glanced in my direction.

“
Work
for him?”

“There are men of violence who make worship of power.” Caterina prodded the table with her finger, seeking words. “Who go in awe of any man more violent than they are. You could have made yourself Roberto’s servant, merciful heavens! And if that was not likely, signorina, consider this. The chance that you would ever free yourself was less than one hundredth of that chance. And I know very well the London Master will have dismissed the first. I don’t think he has even considered this second!”

Dariole looked bemused.

Slowly, I deciphered the old woman’s excited speech. “You’re of the opinion—what? That he didn’t know? Foresaw that she
wouldn’t
escape?”

“
Cielo!
Not
wouldn’t
.
Couldn’t,
Valentin! He thinks she
couldn’t
become free. He has calculated on her being in this Tower. And now she is free!”

“So?” I frowned.

“So,” she echoed. “A thing has happened that we have barely bothered to calculate, I and the London Master! Something…something Roberto will not have been expecting.”

Dariole shot a sideways glance at me, and made a shaky but credible attempt at arrogance. “Can’t think why not.
I
expected to escape.”

It was not the audaciousness of her lie, but the audacious act of boasting that made my throat choke up. Before, it would have been genuine; now, I saw it an attempt to bolster her courage.

“Saburo was your assistant in that escape,” I reminded her mildly, and had the satisfaction of seeing her scowl in a thoroughly self-absorbed and familiar fashion. It made me ache now to see these traces of the brat she had been.
Better this than the broken sword.

“How does this matter?” I asked Caterina. “Of itself, I mean, not in its significance to Mademoiselle, here.”

“But, Valentin!” Caterina reached out and took Dariole’s hand. “Who knows what will happen now? Where one thing so uncertain has become reality, then all else must be recalculated to take account of it—and unless he has already done that, in past years, he now can’t. There isn’t time!”

She gestured at the boy-girl.

“Valentin, who knows what else she can do! She could throw out all his plans—if we knew how to act.”

Silence filled the cottage. Even as I perceived where her logic must lead us, I found myself making a sour face. Dariole caught my eye. As if she could not prevent it, a smile moved her lips.

“We should do….” I sought a harmless way to phrase it, “…what is un likely, it would seem.”

I met Caterina’s gaze. She beamed. “But yes! And who is it that we hope Roberto can’t expect, for all his calculations? Who can direct you to unlikely acts? She!”

“That’s—absurd.” I glared at her. “If you think I’ll put the execution of this design into the hands of a seventeen-year-old woman in breeches!”

“Sixteen,” Dariole stuttered.

“Sixteen?”
I offered myself as a target for her wit, in the hopes that it might prevent her falling from laughter to pain. And then, cold truth dawning on me, I could not prevent myself saying, “Sixteen—you are
now
sixteen? And when I met you, in Zaton’s…mademoiselle, I beg you: tell me you were not, then, fifteen? Please!”

The smile she had on her face when she looked up at me, under her lashes, was no grin, but a woman’s smile. “Oh yes, messire. Fifteen. Just.”

“Sweet Body of God and the bones of His Saints!”

Dariole leaned forward, wheezing, and slid off the bench onto the floor. She sat with her arms tight about her ribs, her face turning pink as she breathlessly whooped.

“You see?” I appealed to Caterina. “It’s absurd!”

“Yes
. Valentin!” Caterina reached and grasped my arm. The nun’s fingers attempted to bite into the muscle of my forearm, through my doublet, and made no progress. “Stupid man! Don’t you understand? When you come to decisions, let
her
decide. What better could you do, that the London Master won’t expect? Otherwise you are at the mercy of a man who has thought out each one of your decisions for ten years before they present themselves to you!”

Slowly, breathlessly, Dariole straightened up. I held her gaze, wondering what went on now behind the darkness of her bright eyes.

In the French of the gutters, she remarked, “Couldn’t I just make you shit, now, to get me to make decisions for you?”

The sudden coldness in my belly, and the heat in my cod that accompanied it, were, I think, known to her; or at least supposed with perfect accuracy.
She knows me far too well,
I thought grimly.

I pictured myself, for a brief and unsafe time, on my knees before the young woman, beseeching her co-operation.

“I won’t make a game of it.” Dariole changed back to English. “It’s too important, messire. I want Fludd. I don’t want to be running around doing things that someone has foretold for ten years! If I do things that are as unlikely as possible, then I think we might,
might
just stand a chance.”

I did not like to admit the rightness of her course.

“Caterina, I am a man of experience and wit; I have been trusted by the first minister of France—only I can be trusted safely to do this. I
may
go so far as to ask her advice, but…do you think I will put my plans into the hands of a woman, who,” I finished, with honesty that I had not expected, “who bears me a well-deserved grudge?”

Caterina didn’t speak. She turned towards Mlle Dariole. One of her silver eyebrows cocked, questioningly.

“He didn’t tell me I was in danger of being taken hostage.” Dariole sounded, not bitter, but sulky, and much younger than her years. I could not help staring at her.

Caterina snorted. “And this you could not guess, without being told? Misericordioso! Are you a fool, girl?”

To my astonishment, a blotched red colour spread across the face of Mlle Dariole, where she sat on the floor. “He never said anything.”

The Italian woman threw up her hands, and made an exclamation of impatience.

“You
knew!
” she accused Dariole. Her finger stabbed out. “He left France because of his Monsieur Sully. He can be forced that way, you know this! I have
that
here!”

She thumped her finger onto a sheet of paper.

“You have had him,
so!
around your little finger. And tell me you cannot guess you were an Achilles heel? Pah!”

I had not seen the young woman blush so completely before; it fascinated me.

Better to watch how the pink flush crept up to the very tips of her ears, than to think what the Italian woman said, and apply it to my own case.

Slowly, the boy-girl got up, and slid back onto the wooden bench.

“Messire Rochefort feels guilty.” Dariole traced the grain of the table with her finger. “He has done ever since he found out I was a woman. He was going to
shoot
me, signora, before he found out. After that….”

Her shoulder lifted in a shrug that was not dissimilar to Caterina’s; I supposed that she must have picked it up from the Concinis and the Queen’s other Italian favourites. Something about her seemed so isolated that I most desperately wanted to make some consoling remark.

I have not the slightest idea what to say.

Sounding not particularly satisfied, Suor Caterina observed, “You knew. For whatever reason. Was it not up to you to take precautions? Do you not wear that as if you have a right to it?”

She pointed at the rapier at the young woman’s hip.

Dariole’s lips pressed together. The red flush, that had not left her neck and cheeks, darkened. She shot me a look, rapidly blinking.

“All right.” She straightened up where she sat. “Messire, I’m sorry; it wasn’t your fault I didn’t think.”

I could say nothing. She had all the gallantness of a boy or young man, caught out in a falsehood and making handsome apology for it.

But all the same,
I wondered,
just how far is Caterina manipulating her, for her own purposes?

Am I forgiven? Or has Mlle Dariole merely been backed into a corner?

“Signora.” Dariole spoke quickly, as if to cover up the pause. “You worked this out ahead of time, right? So tell me. I want to know where Robert Fludd is, now. I want to know where I can find him.”

Caterina looked at me, as if for support. “I’m sorry. I cannot foretell. He uses Bruno’s mathematics too much and too often for me to predict anything certain of him.”

The frustration on Dariole’s face would have been comic, had it not hurt me as it did.

“You can’t tell me
anything
about him?” She stood up, gazing down at the woman. “Where he is? Whether I can find him or not? Whether I kill him?”

“Merciful heavens, what a girl! So bloodthirsty.”

Dariole moved away from the bench, standing and staring into the grey ashes of the cottage’s hearth. She spoke, continuing to stare down. “Lady Arbella…gota physician in to heal me. I hated it. I hated being prodded and poked, up inside, even if it was behind a sheet so I couldn’t see the man—”

“Dariole—” I broke in, but she ignored me, turning her head to gaze at Caterina.

“So don’t tell me I won’t find Fludd.
I’ll find him
.”

Caterina climbed to her feet. She rested her hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. “
Bene!
You have all the questions. And I, none of the answers. Let us see what we can do. Such fire should not go unrewarded.”

A knock sounded on the door-frame of the cottage. Swiftly, I looked up. The trooper Thomas blocked the light, looking in, and I could not see his expression.

“What is it?”

“Message from Captain Spofforth, Mon-soo.”

“And?”

“Scout came back in from Wells,” the soldier said. “The Captain told me to tell you: he reports Prince Henry and his entourage are about five miles from Wookey now, heading into the camp there.”

T
he scent of lathered horse haunted the air, together with the smell of the blacksmith’s tent, where a giant of a yeoman had set up an anvil to mend and shoe. The smell of his burning coals drifted across the grass, with the smell of horse-hoof also burning where the hot shoes went on.

Fortunately, I was not missed, or not in any way that might draw suspicion to me. I seated myself on an oak chest, not far from the Prince’s pavilion. It would take some time before the first formal ceremonies were over and done with. Too many local dignitaries wanted to be introduced to their Prince—and having to ride in from Wells and the surrounding estates didn’t prevent them.

The town of tents about Wookey grew considerably with Henry’s arrival: great royal pavilions in his colours, and a court-full of brave younger sons of the nobility, all tagging on to the Prince’s faction.

My attention snagged on one white beard as the man passed me.

Hariot.

Here as the deputy of Fludd,
I thought, watching the weather-worn, middle-aged man walk away. Evidently the Doctor-Astrologer does plan to keep his promise, and not approach the vicinity until all’s done and James dead.

I sat for some considerable time, soothed by the cool of the evening, setting in order in my mind what plans I might utilise to ensure Fludd’s arrival.

It is her right to kill him, one supposes. But—I wish it were mine.

Summoned in, I uncovered and stood waiting. Prince Henry’s tent had a great deal of black-and gold-chased armour leaning about in it, among padded joint-stools, cushions, hawk-furniture, and weapon-racks. The armour I thought somewhat out of date, by at least a generation. His swords—all three, hooked up on one of the pillars of the pavilion—were variations on English and Italian styles.

“Have you read Master Silver?” the amber-haired young man asked, entering from the curtained-off section of the pavilion and finding me examining the weapons. “Silver swears an Englishman with a plain broadsword is the equivalent of any three other men with bird-spit Italian rapiers.”

I would have bet money that, in this Master Silver’s book, the “three men” were French—or Spanish, according to his political sympathies.

“Very much of the wielding of
any
blade is luck, my Prince,” I observed. Even at sixteen, I thought he might take my hint—especially a blade aimed at your royal father!—but no flicker of expression made me suppose he did.

Now I saw him close, Prince Henry Stuart had little enough of his father in his face. He was handsome, very white in his skin, and with a dark foxy colour to his hair. I thought him well-knit and of good frame for a sixteen-year-old; athletic, outspoken; I saw at once why he was so popular with his father’s subjects.

“My Prince,” I said, with a look at Hariot as the older man slipped into the tent. “Can it be that Doctor Fludd has not fully informed you what is to happen here? This is not a kidnap, nor an abduction, that is planned—”

Henry Stuart interrupted me with the ease of a young man who does not know that “rude” or “unmannerly” can be applied to him; broke in so straightforwardly that it was almost charming, except for what he said.

“My father is to be disposed of,” he said, his clear eyes meeting mine. “Deposed, killed, murdered; whatever plain word you like for it, Monsieur de Rochefort. You have the players ready for their parts in the masque?”

Although he spoke pleasantly, it was evident the only acceptable answer would be
yes
.

“‘The Engineer of Shadows’ is learned, all bar a few lines here and there. I’m told by Madame Lanier that rehearsal for
The Viper and Her Brood
goes forward in London, but there is some likelihood of the playhouses being closed by reason of plague.”

I put my hands behind my back and stared down at Prince Henry. You do not see such flinty young men often; the last I remember was the youngest of the Valois brothers, Anjou. He, also, could be charming—and murder while he charmed. This is where Dariole’s Master Webster gains his wild ideas of the Italian courts, I thought. No further from his home than Whitehall. England has a line of vipers to rival France, at last.

I added, deferentially, “The masque-engines still require some repair. We will have them complete within a few days.”

“I wish to begin my rehearsal.” The young man took a cup of wine from Hariot without look or acknowledgement. “I will be perfect with my part, upon the day.”

Something about this boy makes my skin desire to creep off my flesh, I reflected. I moved the conversation to the sticking point.

“Do we know, my Prince, when his Majesty is liable to come here?”

Henry Stuart nodded earnestly. I had a brief but pleasurable image of the boy-Prince in irons, under Captain Spofforth’s arrest. Henry might have enough courtiers with him to sink a galleon, but courtiers are not always professional soldiers, and that is a difference that tells.

“My father will be here soon,” Prince Henry said. “A week, perhaps two. I have told him there is excellent hunting of the hart to be had in these Mendip Hills. Certainly I will have him here before the second week of July.”

“And Doctor Fludd?” I met his gaze with subservient concern, so near as I could manage it. “Would it not be best for you to summon him here, sire, in case his mathematical advice is necessary?”

“Doctor Fludd is not a man of action.” Prince Henry seemed to stand up a little straighter as he said it; I guessed the armour on display here not purely for my benefit. “This is, besides, my kingdom, Rochefort, and I neither have nor need any other man’s hand in taking my own.”

“Suppose the King, your father, fails to arrive? Doctor Fludd will be needed to calculate the next—” I kept my expression severe, “—auspicious day.”

“I will contrive my own.”

It chilled me that there was no note of adolescent pettiness in the Prince’s voice. He regarded me with cold eyes.

“Send me one of my player-company’s men,” he added, turning away, “so I may begin to learn my speeches.”

There being nothing else I might do, I bowed and took my leave of him.

Outside the tent, I glanced about. Mlle Dariole looked at me from where she sat watching the smith shoe one of Henry’s stallions. I shook my head.

She said nothing—indeed, she fell into company with the younger men of Prince Henry’s players, where they sat at hazard, and began to throw dice with them—but I guessed her to be thinking as furiously as I.

It being more difficult for me to contact Spofforth and his men in person, now that Prince Henry’s courtiers swarmed worse than the summer flies over the horse-lines, I took advantage of Saburo’s visibility as “King James’s Demon” (as the court called him), and often made him my messenger. Few men will suspect so conspicuous a figure of secrecy, for the very reason that he
is
conspicuous. I had no concern about that—although I had much when, on several occasions, Messire Saburo also reported Dariole present again at the Gorge, and in Caterina’s company.

What does she ask?
I could not help but wonder. Women go to fortunetellers to ask about their husbands, their lovers, their children—but Mlle Dariole is as likely to enquire how her death is linked with King James Stuart…

She would answer none of my questions, but, if I judged her frustration aright, Suor Caterina was likewise answering none of hers.

As if even the calendar conspired with the Stuart Prince, King James arrived in Somerset on the fourteenth of July. As Kings are greater than Princes, so a man waits longer to see the one than the other. James Stuart arrived in the morning, and I did not see him until noon. I sweated clean though my shirt in the scalding sun.

“Monsieur de Rochefort?”

At that unusual
de,
I looked up. A gentleman-usher bowed to me. “The King will see you now.”

Entering the royal pavilion, which, like King Henri’s, had carpets covering the spread straw, I made my bow to James Stuart. Saburo’s
ka
buto helmet, sitting in splendour at the foot of the throne, indicated the Nihonese Ambassador to have been received before me, which I could not begrudge. Ned Alleyne and his players stood already present. The fat, fair, red-bearded Englishman seemed to be in some kind of panic, but I could not question him, being led forward to the dais to kiss hands.

I bowed with as much flourish and finesse as I judged the King might expect from a Frenchman. “Your Majesty.”

King James, First of England and Sixth of Scotland, sat in a carved armed chair. He looked dyspeptic. “Monsieur de Rochefort.”

He had picked up the undeserved
de,
also, but I did not see attempting to correct him.

The King wasted little time in small talk. “It seems this masque is over before it’s begun?”

I shot a glance at Alleyne and did a rapid head-count of the other players. Eight. Eight, and it should be nine. If we are missing one, who—ah.

“Master Alleyne will tell ye the problem,” James grunted. He had evidently had a good noon meal; I could smell the wine on his breath where I stood.

Alleyne cast his hands up like the player-manager he was. “We have lost our Clio!”

The Muse of History had the masque’s central role (apart from James as “Brutus, King of Troy”), and a considerable number of lines—
interminable,
I had thought, rehearsing him over the last month and more.
It will be impossible to run the masque without someone in that role
.

“Clio is ‘lost,’” I inquired, “or merely mislaid? Your Majesty, ‘Clio’ is a youth of the age when young men begin to wine and wench—”

“More likely wine than a wench,” the monarch of England and Scotland interrupted. “Master Alleyne here has reports that his meal this day has left him spewing continuously, and with a bad case of the flux, also.”

The word
poison
remained unspoken, but I would have bet a gold louis on it being in James Stuart’s mind. Poison is always in the mind of kings.

“I cannot think of a man here who does not desire to present an entertainment to your majesty,” I said smoothly.

And of those not here—Fludd, Cecil, Northumberland, Lanier—truly, they all also desperately desire ‘The Engineer of Shadows’ to go forward!

“It is not unusual for a man to eat that which eventually sickens him,” I added. “The question is, will he be well enough to play his part tonight? If it’s a mere matter of an hour or two—”

“He will not.” The English player-manager shook his head. “Not within the time allotted. The Prince’s physician examined him. He can’t!”

Dear good God!
I thought, keeping every emotion off my face. Is Fludd’s great and universal plan to be circumvented by so small and random a thing as an unforeseen case of the belly-gripes?

James leaned his elbow on the arm of his great carved chair. His features fell into a petulant scowl. “Master Alleyne, you must get some other member of your company to play the Muse of History.”

A vast babble broke out from the players and Alleyne, which would not have happened at Whitehall-palace. From Henri of Navarre’s fondness for the chase, I was familiar with the liberties that attend kings upon it.

“
How
can another boy rehearse it?” Alleyne protested, quietening the rest. “We have all parts played by actors, most of whom change their costumes and play two; some three. Seven Virtues and seven Vices and there are nine of us! Who am I to remove and school in a thousand new lines between now and the masque this evening!”

James harrumphed. I would have done the same, had opportunity presented. When M. de Sully had business with actors, for his theatre in the Arsenal, I had always made it my business to be absent. And truly, I thought, I have been wise in that!

I caught Alleyne by the arm, so that he should stop waving his hands in the air. “Monsieur, all your cast have sat about this past month and listened to ‘Clio’ drone out ‘her’ lines! It’s not as if his part were difficult.”

“
You
do it if you think it’s so easy!” Alleyne snarled.

I smiled darkly. “I rather think ‘Clio’ is not a woman of my advanced age, monsieur, despite History being among the oldest of the Arts!”

King James Stuart passed a remark in Greek at that, laughing loudly enough that he slobbered, and must stop to wipe his mouth. His sweat wafted on the air.

“We will find you another Clio, your Majesty,” I said, firmly reassuring, because in the presence of kings one is. In truth, Alleyne was right, but that was not a thing to tell James I and VI.

If Fludd should be close at hand, I thought, may I use this accident to lure him in closer?

“But!” Alleyne protested.

Over his protestations, I said, “Your Majesty’s players will not disappoint. Do I assume they have been showing your Majesty your own part in the masque?”

Not that James would play it, now, but it rarely fails to distract a king (or many lesser men) to be asked to talk about themselves. It is true that matters in the court of Henri IV were conducted with unusual bluntness, compared to the other courts of Europe. Experience there had nonetheless schooled me in the attributes most useful to a courtier—an appearance of honesty, coupled with shameless flattery. James did not appear immune.