Mary Gentle (60 page)

I made my way through Fludd’s ruined house to Robert Cecil’s side. “Milord?”

He gave me an amiable nod, steering me aside into a corner of the panelled room, where we could not easily be overheard. “Master Rochefort, this is convenient—I need you now at Greenwich-palace. With this turn of events, I must let you know: King James accepts your treaty in principle. We should begin to work out who shall come from France to draw up the details, who sign the treaty, and where a conference might best be held. Come with me now to the King.”

Torn, I thought: I desire to search out Mlle Dariole, and inform her what has happened. But I need to put my hand to the work of the treaty.

How much time may I have before matters in France become crucial?

I will regret it, perhaps; but Saburo must find her.

I bowed to Cecil, following him out to his coach.

The next ten hours, I spent in company with James, Cecil, and one or two of their most trusted advisors and messengers. Men with whose type I am familiar, from employing them myself: anonymous men in ruffs and beards, dressed no better than a moderately well-off English gentleman might, who will pass unnoticed on a ship to Calais or Le Havre, and the road to Rouen and Paris.

As evening darkened, about nine of the clock, I sought Mlle Dariole both at the Tower, and at Dead Man’s Place (where our lodgings were, unsurprisingly, still free to be hired). Not finding her, and it being late to cross the heath to Greenwich, I slept there the night. The following day—and the next—I so far gave way to cowardice as not to seek her out. And all the nights long I heard the bear-hounds whine and groan.

Ten days after, a trusted negotiator arrived from France.

There had been talk between Cecil and myself as to who might be sent to London; the agents’ messages proving ambiguous.

“Chancellor Villeroi,” I guessed. “Or perhaps President of the Council Jeannin. In all honesty, monsieur, I pray she sends anybody but Concino Concini!”

At the mention of the Medici’s Florentine favourite, Robert Cecil approached the nearest I had ever seen the small, dry man come to sneering.

The existence of Doctor Fludd being a matter of some secrecy, James Stuart did not put him in the Tower. While the King occupied Greenwich, he left Fludd in the house at Southwark, as soon as the doors might be repaired, and the windows set up with bars, to make it a creditable prison. What the citizens of Southwark gossiped of, no man would listen to; they being (in the opinion of those men who counted) nothing but a suburb of whores and ruffians.

Sir Robert Cecil, not a man to waste effort, decreed that this house, also, should be the place of the conference with the French negotiator, Doctor Fludd being thus on hand for interrogation if necessary.

Before leaving Greenwich for Southwark, I did make it my business to speak with M. Saburo, as to the matter of Mlle Dariole, and whether he had been able to reach her in time to give her a friend’s knowledge of Fludd’s capture. He nodded, with a grunt less permeable to translation than usual.

“Where is she now?” I asked.

He shrugged. “You want, I’ll come to Southwark, keep her from the house.”

“Conceivably, that’s wise.” It put him at hand, also, should the French negotiator desire another witness’s account of what transpired in Somerset.

I did not see, nor speak to, Mlle Dariole; it could not but be painful to both of us.

The better part of the morning passed in waiting. I took the opportunity to instruct M. Saburo in the principles of a game at hazard, having dice about me, and we gambled for theoretical amounts—by the time the guards called my name, I think I had won the better part of the rice harvest of two provinces. Saburo gave an amused grunt, and I left him fingering the spotted bones.

Chance,
I reflected, as I followed the guard up the dark stairway to the first floor rooms of Fludd’s house.

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. Muzzle 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.”