Mary Gentle (22 page)
Authors: A Sundial in a Grave-1610
“Should kill him!” the samurai interrupted.
“I attempted it,” I said dryly, ignoring the pang in my belly at the memory of Fludd with a sword. “Whether he has occult knowledge or not, I—
I!
—found him impossible to kill with the sword.”
In the shadow of my cloak’s hood, Saburo raised the hairy black brows that dominated his face, looking interested. “He is kami?”
“‘Kami’?”
“Spirit. Ghost. Cannot kill kami.”
“Ah. No. There will be some way to make a ghost of him,” I said. I pushed aside the unease that thoughts of Fludd brought, and beckoned the pot-boy to me again, ordering ale; good wine being mythical in this uncivilised country. The leather jack refilled, I turned back to Saburo.
“Whatever his knowledge, I will not be interrupted in what I do by this pox-doctor Fludd. My lord remains in danger. My letters may have been lost, or never arrived. Or not trusted—he may think
I
took Maignan out of the house, and am responsible for his murder! He has no proof there is an assassin still in his household, waiting for the signal to kill him. There are reasons why it may not be long before the signal is given. I intend to prevent that, and to bring down his enemy.”
“Killing lord’s enemy is a good thing.” Saburo nodded sharply. “Run away is dishonourable, even from kami.”
In younger days I would have taken exception to that. With the scratches and bruises of the Abraham Men still stinging my face, I did not feel inclined to contest the matter.
I said dryly, “I ‘ran away’ because, however he knows it, this physician Fludd knows far more than he should. And I need to give such information as I have into my master’s hands before it’s too late to make use of it, and to keep him alive so that he may use it.”
Saburo investigated one of the jacks of ale and tasted it with his finger. “Ah? Stay in London?”
“That’s the question. Monsieur Saburo, I can progress no further without accurate information of what passes at home—in ‘Franz.’ I’m cut off from my other agents, but here I know more men in places of power than in other countries. Even if it is unwise to confront them directly.”
“Hai!” He attempted to drink, it seemed to me, without touching the leather jack itself. Seeing me look askance, he lifted his broad shoulders. “Dead animal cup!”
Leather,
I realised, after a bewildered moment. “Yes. One supposes. After a fashion….”
He wiped his wet mouth. The noise of conversation rose and fell in the middle part of the room. Benches scraped on flagstones. A waft of new cooking-smells came out through the hatchway as the cook opened it.
“Now come to business. Men in power here. You want
me,
go to these people.” The samurai’s voice dropped, becoming deeper and more quiet. “Ever since Franz-place, I have thought that Fate wants us together. I’ll help what you want me to do, here. Condition is, I must see English Emperor. You must…rescue me if I’m imprisoned. Or bring me way to make seppuku if I can’t escape before executed.”
I remembered the term; he had used it prostrate on the beach in Normandy. Now I thought I understood it. “You want to
kill
yourself?”
He cocked his head sideways, evidently searching his memory for words. “My time is…borrowed. I was dead as soon as the ship sinked. I have only to beg pardon of the Emperor-King here for failure, and return to report home. When I’m lucky, Shogun Hidetada will allow me to kill self.”
“These moods that come with failure…” I shrugged, taking a drink myself, and gesturing expansively. “They’re common to all men, but they pass, messire, they pass! And then we must do somewhat, must act.”
He grunted, I thought, aggressively. “Death’s not an honour, for gaijin?”
I shrugged. “Death in battle is for gentlemen too stupid to survive it. And honourable death in a duel is for those too unskilled to win the fight.”
After a moment, he said, “What, Rochefort-san?”
“Nothing. A thought.”
For those too unskilled. Or facing a man who appears to know every motion of their skill.
I looked down at the man next to me, swaddled in foreign linen and good Spanish wool. A “charlatan astrologer” might make all the political predictions he pleases and impress no man. But the memory of Fludd’s timing: my sword lifted out of my hand….
“Twice now Fludd has fought me. Once himself. Once his hirelings. And…those did, indeed, end exactly as he foretold.”
“Sword-kami?” Saburo grunted. “Tengu?”
“Tengu?”
Saburo waved his hand. “No matter. I am ally. You too. As ally, what must we do?”
In a tone pitched not to carry beyond him, I said, “It is not wise to show my face overtly, to Cecil or any man else at the English court. Someone may remember me from my last visit here. Queen Regent Marie
must
be still searching for me, in
must
have me dead.”
Saburo inclined his head, with that grunt that can mean
yes, no,
or
perhaps,
in different contexts.
I went on, “Out of my experience, I can provide you with the knowledge of who to approach as Ambassador at the English court; who to bribe—”
“Bribery?”
I gave him a sardonic look. “Does a man approach nobles in your court without presents?”
“Ah. Gift-giving. Is politeness.”
I nodded. “We shall need some of the politeness left in Robert Fludd’s purse, to get you to a position to gain audience with the King. It is no easy thing, since, unlike Sully when he came here, you have no diplomatic papers, but it can be done. You, in return, need do nothing for me but carry a letter to the minister that you will have to see, Sir Robert Cecil.”
“Robuta Seso? Seso-sama?”
“Cecil!”
“What I say. Spy-Seso?”
It was beyond me not to smile. “Yes. Spy-Cecil. I will detail all I know of Master Fludd’s conspiracy, and Mr Secretary Cecil may do what he likes with both conspiracy and Fludd. I hope, also, out of that, to gain the answers to some questions that I will write to him, if he will give them verbally to you.”
“And my head? Chopped off?” Saburo’s blunt-fingered hand made a motion that told me he had, at the very least, seen the stroke used before in his life.
“Unlikely.” I put my jack down and looked into it, the better to observe the Nihonese man without appearing to. “But there could be some danger, true.”
He might expect imprisonment and torture if it were known he kept company with an assassin.
But I do not think I am known, yet.
I said, “If you have half the wits I think you have, you’ll have no difficulty mimicking the ignorant foreigner delivering a letter, the language of which he cannot even read!”
Saburo gave me a look which I found incomprehensible, and I could not tell whether he doubted me, or if he were demonstrating his ability to look suitably ignorant.
“If I carry a letter, I will know what is in it.” His voice rumbled, flatly, with an emotion I could not fathom. “I am alone here, Roshifu’. Suppose
you
are in Edo. I give you a letter for a minister of Shogun Ieyas’. I tell you it is about conspiracy. I do not tell you other thing! Whether Ieyas’ or his minister think you involved, or whether I write them to execute you! Now you tell me of this namban doctor. I tell you, you write letter, and leave without sealing. I will take. And I will think.”
I caught the glance that he shot me, his weathered face set. “Well…I cannot blame you for that, I suppose. It is information you would, perhaps, be safer not knowing.”
“I’m not
tell
anyone I know!”
Whatever reaction I expected, it was not that he should slap his thigh, under the thin linen robes he wore, and guffaw loudly enough to stop all conversation in the Ordinary for a moment. Heads turned towards us, and I had reason to be glad I had insisted on his wearing my cloak, hood up.
“You have but one ally in this land,” I said, somewhat acidly. “Do not get him arrested!”
Saburo leaned back, his hands on his belly. “
Two
allies, Rochefort-san. You. The lady-sama.” He paused. “You make her go away before you tell me this things.”
“Dariole?” I complied with his turn of the subject, taking it to be a way of giving himself time to think whether or not he would agree to go to Cecil. “I consider that she is in danger enough, in the company of…who she is with. Add to that, this Fludd, his ‘conspiracy’…. Better to let her roamaround Bankside playing hazard, than hazard a worse thing.”
“Darioru not help fight?”
I wondered if he truly saw her as female. Irritated, I said, “She is a woman, after all, Messire Saburo, and a very young one. The last thing I need is an impulsive boy charging into the mess, albeit he’s a girl. Messire, if I write the letter and give it to you unsealed, to be sealed after in your presence, will you agree to carry it to court?”
Saburo, it seemed to me, must feel remarkably isolated in England; his fellows dead, and any Englishman who saw him plain likely to take him for a freak, or a fool after the fashion of the Spanish King’s dwarfs. In this country he would meet no Jesuit priests familiar with Nihon. That might account for his scowl. I considered how I might move matters so that they pleased us both better.
“I am in no good bargaining position,” I began, with a faint smile. “Even a captain of
hashagar,
who is not a spy, can likely predict one thing—I will be much better positioned if I have you as friend, rather than enemy! I have every reason to feel gratitude for your joining in the fight in France. You have every reason to be grateful for having your life saved. If we trust each other no more than sensible men do, we can still act as allies, at this moment. Therefore, I am in any case likely to help you enter the English court, no matter if you refuse my request.”
“I take your letter.”
If he had possessed European features, I might have read them for his motives: whether or not he gladly seized on this way I had given him of consenting without loss to his pride.
He glanced up.
A slight figure banged the opposite bench, the trestle table, and slammed down onto the seat beside the samurai.
Mlle Dariole looked both dusty and foot-sore, which I guessed to be from searching every Ordinary from Falcon Steps to London-bridge. This establishment, although close to the Bear Garden, I had chosen because it was neither conspicuous, nor much frequented by Londoners visiting the stews.
“Be easy,” I said, cheerful. “You might not have found us at all….”
She fetched me a glare that ought to have melted both the glass panes and the leading out of the windows, and put her boots up on the table. “Suits me just fine!”
The dust of the street covered her riding boots. If I had been moved towards irritation by her clamour, I was as suddenly moved to smile, with the realisation that, of all three of us—duellist, captain of infantry, and spy—no one of us would sit with our backs facing the door.
Like three crows on a fence!
Dariole wiped her forehead, swiped Saburo’s all-but-untouched jack of ale, and said wetly, “Found lodgings. Took me less time than finding you! What are you two so serious about?”
The Nihonese man gave a grunt, whose nature I could not interpret. He pointed a stubby finger at me. Before I could fetch him a kick under the table—little though that might have done to dissuade him from spilling my secrets—he spoke.
“I am telling Roshifu’-san. He is bad man. He is not doing his honour-duty. His honour-duty demands he commit seppuku, immediately, as he is a danger to his lord!”
Saburo pointed at my rapier.
“With that. Or a dagger, like woman. Kill yourself, Roshifu’. Is the best thing to decide to do.”
“‘Kill myself!’” I could restrain neither eyebrows nor voice from shooting up.
Dariole whooped.
Saburo, for all I could tell, spoke in complete seriousness. “You’re a danger to your sworn lord. If
you’re
dead, who can prove the chain between you, he, and murder? None! That is what I say. Kill yourself, honourably. Now as possible!”
“‘As soon as possible,’” I corrected him automatically. I could not tell: it had superbly distracted Mlle Dariole’s question, and yet he seemed utterly sincere.
I shook my head. “That solution is a
little
more drastic than I will contemplate, monsieur! And besides, while it might serve to exonerate M. Sully, it will hardly help reinstate him if he is still in the Bastille….”
Before Dariole could interrupt me, I added, to her, “Take us to these lodgings. We can do to be private.”
That took us out of the Ordinary, at the sign of the Silver Martlet, and into the stuffy mid-day streets. Thrusting through the crowds after her brought me at last down a side-street, and to a three-storey house in much the same style as the one in More Gate, if older and in much less good repair. It occurred to me, as I followed Saburo and Mlle Dariole up the dark stairs inside the house, that for three of us conversing in a language which was native to none of us, we managed competently enough. Especially since Portuguese was now better avoided completely; too many of the monoglot English being prone to take it as Spanish, and hang us as spies or traitors.
