Mary Gentle (27 page)

If she teases a man’s prick—well, it was I who invited her to this dance.

It is hardly her fault if she brings this to the—conclusion I no longer desire. Or do not desire here, or not in this way!

I felt cold with embarrassment at my absurd, straining body.

“Messire,” she said quietly.

A look passed from her to me.

I realised, slowly, that this was no part of the game. Or was, perhaps, only no part of her parading of her skills for her theatre friends. I could not read her. Genuine embarrassment made me deflate.

“Dariole…”

“Oh, get out of here!” She pulled back her blade from my throat.

Every finger of my hands quivered as if the duel had been real.

My knees shook; the sheer effort of getting up off the floor made me stagger, and half-fall again. I made to go for my Saxony rapier, where I had left my live weapons.

“No. Leave those.
I’ll
take care of them. Just to remind you, messire.”

I got to my feet, grabbed my boots, and stumbled, bent over, out of the salon.

I took no notice of the raucous jeers and calls of the players behind me. That I was without weapons, and in stocking-feet in the streets, for the moment I did not even notice.

How could I have done such a thing!

To act out such a vile fantasy, and in public; how could I embarrass myself in such a manner!

Relief that I had not further embarrassed myself—that at least I did not stand here in wet, sticky linen—brought me to shame. I stood with the dusty earth beneath my stockinged feet, the warm wind blowing all the smells of Southwark to me. My heart hammered, and my faced burned; a thousand gold louis could not have moved me to turn around and go back into the School of Defence.

But I should.

The knowledge came to me with a feeling as of waking from deep sleep, or a trance. My head cleared. I rubbed my hand over my face, bringing it away wet with sweat.

I should return. I owe her a true apology—
more
than an apology. It was I who encouraged her to that, back there; to every word, every act.

My own voice still sounded in my mind.
Mademoiselle, please.

My knees and my balls both ache, I thought, and for the same perverse reason. I wish to fall down before her.

I am a thing beyond contempt.

It was perhaps an hour later, with the sun past one of the clock, that Dariole came back to the lodging house in Dead Man’s Place.

I got up from where I had been sitting, waiting for her, on a horse block. She stopped in the middle of the deserted street, lifting her chin as I came up to her.

She had my sword and dagger in their scabbards, with my hanger and belt, all clasped together in her left hand. Without a word, she held them out to me.

I said, “Why?”

She lifted one shoulder. “If I made you beg for them, you’d only enjoy it.”

“Dariole!”

“I’m right, though, aren’t I? Disgrace makes you stand.”

Is it so simple as that?
I wondered helplessly, gazing down at her.
You
…

She narrowed her eyes against the sun. There was dust on her clothes and hair, the fine golden dust of London after a day or two without rain. She had contrived an angle for her velvet cap, on the back of her head, that framed her young man’s face in a style that shouted
Frenchman!
to any English courtier—and conceivably to any Southwark sturdy beggar of Fludd’s.

She persevered. “Aren’t I right?”

I took my weapons, and busied myself hooking on the hanger and suspensor strap.

“I do not know how to speak to you, mademoiselle.”

I did not look at her while I made my confession.

“I am ashamed. Truly ashamed. Not as—as you have just seen me.”

“No?” She regarded me with too much equanimity for my comfort.

“I should never have brought you into any of this!” I held up a hand to stop her protest. “I know, you came on some half-witted whim of your own…. But for the part of the responsibility which is mine—Mademoiselle Dariole, I am sorry for that.”

It might have been the light that kept her eyes slitted, or puzzled suspicion. “Are you
apologising?
”

Her tone moved me, momentarily, to a painful smile. “Why—yes, mademoiselle. I would suppose that this amounts to an apology.”

“You’re not well.” She folded her arms, the one over the other, and I saw that she already had wine-stains on the elbows of her doublet. With an odd tone to her voice, she said, “Messire Rochefort
has
to be sick, if he’s apologising to me. I don’t remember—did I hit you on the head, back at the salon?”

Confusion and embarrassment made me uncomfortable; I was by turns as hot and as cold as when she had been humiliating me before the English actors. Strangely, despite that, something in her half-teasing query made me almost desire to smile.

“If you did, mademoiselle, I do not remember—but perhaps that, itself, is the proof.”

She put a hand over her mouth and snuffled a giggle; the sound of a much younger girl taken by surprise by laughter. Something in my chest ached. A moment of silence fell between us.

“Do you know,” I said, and began again, sweating with embarrassment. “Mademoiselle, do you know what it is that we have been doing, between us?”

Her shoulder came up in a lithe shrug. “You spend when someone shames you.
That’s
obvious enough.”

I suppose my face must have been enough of a spectacle to make her smile.

“The whores in Les Halles were informative,” I remarked, somewhat dryly. “I suppose you will say that is where you gained your information?”

“I don’t think I would need to ask them, messire.”

Her matter-of-factness disabled me in what I would have said, more than any amount of feminine outrage and weeping could.

“I never intended to—abuse you,” I managed.

With Ivry all too plain in my mind, I looked down at her, and she gazed contemplatively back. I could have been seeing her for the first time. Her face was incomprehensible and distant to me—the more so, perhaps, for the close, perverse scene we had enacted between us.

I have seen the fat boy at Zaton’s, the effeminate page, the unfeminine woman, all by turns, and it has never occurred to me to ask, what kind of young woman does as she does? Dresses as a man, abandons her family….

Put her in with a hundred duellists and she will kill ninety and nine of them. This is why she does what she does. And why, dear God, is such talent—such superlative talent—wasted on a woman?

A woman who I truly do not know.

I found it difficult to look at her. “I do apologise, mademoiselle. Circumstances have brought about a situation between us that—that
I
should not have allowed to develop. There will be no more of it.”

She looked at me gravely. Her face was neither man nor woman, or perhaps was both.

She’s young,
I thought, regarding her. And she acts on impulse: I know that, if I know nothing else. She will not have looked deeply into this. She is too eccentric in herself, to know how dangerous a man’s compulsions may be. In particular, when they are disgraceful.

She has never shown enough disgust.

“Because I am…what I evidently am,” I said, “there is no need for you to become entangled in it.”

The word is not
entangled
. It is
corrupted
.

I am the elder, it is my part to be responsible.

I do not know if I can heal the damage I must have done her, merely by abstinence—
but I must try
.

She looked up, her expression calm and stubborn. “You didn’t inflict anything on me, messire. I found you out. Remember Zaton’s?”

I have never been less pleased with that womanish tendency to blush that I inherit from my mother.

I said, “You could have found out nothing, if it were not there to be discovered.”

There was no feeling of arousal in my flesh, but I had the strongest possible desire to kneel down and beg her pardon.

Prompt on my thought, as if she read my face, she said brightly, “Could I make you beg now? Right here, in the street? Down on your knees and kissing my boots?”

I glanced away, at the small shadows cast by the noon sun, and the traffic of men and beasts up at the junction of the Bankside road, and took out my kerchief, to wipe off my forehead. She watched me with eyes that were bright, but seemed, most unbelievably, to be holding no malice.

I kept my voice steady and severe by an effort. “I would not beg you, mademoiselle—I would implore you. And in the next minute spoil my breeches. I am not to be trusted.”

I looked down at the woman with clear vision—as I have never done, not from Zaton’s onward. Looked with the normal, fallible judgement that a man employs. She is part fool, part impetuous boy, part warm-hearted girl, and I am nothing,
nothing!
that she should have anything to do with.

She said, “Messire, do
I
disgust
you?
”

What moved me to honesty, unless it was shock, I don’t know. I said, “Yes. A little.”

“Because I dress in men’s clothes.”

“Because…” I felt my face heating still more. “Because
you
should be disgusted. Horrified! Where is a woman’s modesty, mademoiselle? Why are you like this!”

Her hand touched her sword-hilt, fingers resting on the rings of the guard more as if she sought reassurance than made any threat. “I’m not disgusted. I like it. You deserve it. I’m happy as I am, messire.”

I could do nothing but shake my head.
How deep are the emotions of a sixteen-year-old boy, never mind a flighty young woman?

“There need be no more discussion of this,” I said quietly, to reassure her. “You will not be—troubled again. I am sorry that I must continue to speak with you of other matters. They are becoming crucial.”

A second’s froideur, that I did not comprehend, was succeeded by a shrug, so quickly that I did not truly know if I had registered a genuine hesitation on her part.

“Robert Fludd,” she said, giving the English name the French
R
. “Don’t look so surprised, messire. Messire Saburo asked me to read your letter to him—your letter to Robert Cecil.”

“Saburo asked you
what?
”

“The samurai doesn’t read English well.” She grinned. “I do.”

With my head full of whirling thoughts, I could barely collect myself enough to realise that, yes, dear good God, the samurai might well think that a sensible course of action….

With an innocent cheerfulness that wrenched at me, Dariole demanded, “So what’s happened now?”

I paused. I had barely stopped to consider what I would say when she asked me questions.

Any fool will have known she would ask.

“Any fool except this one, apparently,” I said aloud, and bowed slightly, at her stare of confusion. “Mademoiselle Dariole. Very well, we are as much embroiled in England as we were in France, and, on the whole, I think I prefer the danger of you well-informed to the danger of you ill-informed….”

I glanced around. Many a man in Paris has thought himself safe in the street, or in his lodgings, when another is listening at the door. “As to where we can be safe in speaking of it—”

“I know!”

She grinned, like a boy, and lifted her hand to point over the tiled and thatched roofs. A flag-pole flew a standard, I saw, perhaps two streets over.

The common advertisement for a playhouse.

W
hat?”
I heard myself sounding ridiculously bewildered.

Dariole laughed. “We’ll go to the playhouse! I promised I’d look in at The Rose and see what they were putting on. Messire—think!
Whatever
we say when we’re sitting in a playhouse, anyone who hears it will just think we’re talking about another play we’ve seen! They have plays about killing kings all the time!”

I looked down, out of my stunned confusion, and inclined my head in as respectful a bow as I had ever given her. “That is—appropriately bizarre. You had better fetch M. Saburo, if he has returned. How long until your friends begin their play?”

She lifted her chin, squinting briefly at the position of the sun. “Hour, hour and a half, depending on how big a crowd they get in….”

“I will meet with you both at The Rose.”

I thought she might have spoken again, but she did not. She reached up to settle her velvet bonnet more securely, nodded once, and took to her heels, heading for the Thames-side at a run.

Boy!
I thought as I watched her go.

Boy, girl, woman: before whom I have been helpless, aroused, ashamed….

Honour should take me out of England now.
Anywhere out of her company, before I harm her more than I have done. But there is Fludd. Cecil. Sully.

I walked for some time unaware of my surroundings. Coming to myself, I found I stood in the grounds of the cathedral of Southwark.

Playing Protestant is no hardship, if I am prepared; if I know what sect it is, and whether I must or must not dip holy water from the font, or genuflect towards the altar. But there will be no Chapel of Our Lady here….

I contented myself with entering, and giving pennies to light a candle, placing it as close as I could come to the altar for their rood-screen. The place seemed as busy with private business as is the great church of Paul across the river; groups of men standing talking in clusters at the base of the great white stone pillars. I could not kneel. I only stood, for a very long time, with my head bowed; the cold of the gravestones beneath my feet striking up into my body.

It is twenty years since I have made confession, or desired to.

In my profession, that is just as well.

I opened my eyes and gazed up at the light falling brilliant through the coloured glass.

It means, also, that there can be no absolution.

I inclined my head to the altar, replaced my hat, and began to walk back towards the cathedral entrance.

If that is so, then I will do without Monseigneur God, and myself do now what must be done.

It took me no great time to walk to The Rose theatre, it being not far from The Globe—but smaller, and much shabbier. No play had yet begun, I found as I strode up, looking over the hats of the men crowded round the entrance. Dariole was not easily spotted, being no different to any of the dozens of young gallants come over from the court and city. I soon picked out M. Saburo, in my cloak that began to seem unseasonable in this hot May weather.

He grunted, seeing me, and pointed at the open doors of the thatched building. “Noh play, ne?”

Before I could reply, Dariole exclaimed, “You have plays too?”

“Hai, Darioru-sama.”

Immediately she began chattering to him. Somewhat dourly, I paid for us to enter. If I had not been so thoughtful in myself, I might have been amazed at the hollow wooden circle that we entered—the ground sloping down until it was a man’s height deep in front of the edge of the stage, and all around, wooden scaffolding holding up three storeys of galleries.

“Up.” I pointed, and left the cloaked samurai and Mlle Dariole to push through the crowds in my wake, discussing the finer points of acting in France, England, and Nihon.

The galleries had a rail in front, and a wooden bar to sit on, but comfort was not my object—crammed into the end of one first-floor gallery, all the way around next to the side of the stage, the only places that men might be close enough to hear us were if seated to my left, or directly behind us. Anything to cut down on the number of potential eavesdroppers.

Let Fludd predict
this!
I thought grimly, indicating to M. Saburo that he should pass me and sit closest to the wall, where he would not be conspicuous. I didn’t realise I’d spoken aloud until the boy-girl gave me the most aggravating of grins, slipping in to sit between the samurai and myself.

I made play with shifting my hanger forward and hilt up, so that I could sit more easily. The young woman hung over the gallery-rail and whistled, until a slut came to sell her a handful of hazelnuts, which Mademoiselle de Montargis de la Roncière set about cracking with her teeth.

The rumble of conversation began to rise to full-throated clamour. She spat nut-shells into her palm. “See? I told you!”

Behind me, four or five gallants spoke in ringing tones of something they called “Cheapside comedies.” To my left, men apparently debated the efficacy of bull’s blood or pig’s blood for the bladders which the actors burst at their “deaths.”

“You were right, mademoiselle.”

She shot me a look as if she would have spoken. Unexpectedly, I did not find her silence comfortable.

Out on the stage, a few actors battled gamely with a prologue. Men and women flooded into the pit, calling to their friends, shrieking with laughter, and the level of noise did not drop. I didn’t expect it to, this being barbarous England, where a play is merely a sensational entertainment. Saburo leaned forward on the rail, staring at the stage jutting out from this back wall, and the painted pillars that held up a stage-ceiling figured with the constellations. Aries and his fellows looked in grave need of new gilding. I made a sign for Saburo’s attention.

“Myself, I have had enough of astrological constellations, no matter where they may be represented.” I spoke quietly enough that we should not attract attention, but not in the whisper that would make us seem covert. “It appears we are all drawn into this. We should therefore—although perhaps against my better judgement—confer.”

Dariole carefully placed a hazelnut shell on the side of her index finger, and flicked it with her thumb, hitting the high crown of a hat three yards out into the pit. “So—what’s wrong with just plain killing the King, here, in London?”

Incredulity moved me to crisp speech. “This isn’t my court; I have no spies nor informers of my own; there was a major conspiracy against his life five years ago, for which all who were involved are either in the Tower or met the headsman’s axe; and now I am observed by M. Cecil!”

I closed one hand over the wooden rail in front of me, until the support creaked. “I have met this King. He’s cowardly as a woman, he wears steel next to his skin, he sleeps in a different palace room each night, and he wets his breeches if a man brings a naked sword into his presence!”

I became conscious that I was beginning to be loud, and wave my other hand. Her grin stopped me.

“It is ridiculous,” I protested. “England had attempts on Great Eliza’s life, all failed.”

“The one on King Henri succeeded.” Her eyes glinted, as if she knew how deep a dart she planted. If I had had time, I would have wondered at her sudden malice.

“Even this King, unpopular as he is, the English do not allow to be killed. There has not been a succession by assassination in living memory.” Paying her in kind, I added, “
You
should know that, mademoiselle; there was a Markham involved in such an attempt, not many years ago.”

“‘Monsieur,’ not ‘mademoiselle.’” Her clearly defined brows came down. “Not Cousin Guillaume?”

“One Griffin Markham, I believe. Is he kin to you?”

“Cousin Guillaume has brothers.” She shrugged, adding nothing more, and looked thoughtful.

Perhaps she does have some concept of family shame, I reflected.
That would be…ironic.

Saburo leaned forward and spoke past her, to me. “I still owe you
giri,
for my life. Perhaps I will soon have a chance to help you, Rosh’-fu’-san. Let me take the head of this Ro-bu-ta Fu-ra-da.”

I blinked, then smiled regretfully. “I think that would put you out of favour with Mr Secretary, and obstruct your mission to the King.”

He grunted; I thought in disgust. Or in gratitude at being released from the obligation.
Who can tell?

Out on the stage, the main part of the play swung into action. Two more actors came out and told us it was night, and cold, and they were on a castle battlement. Since they evidently could not afford the scenery-flats one sees in Paris, it was necessary to thus inform us. A white-faced man appeared close above us, on the balcony at the back of the stage, and the two actors gave us to understand he was a ghost.

“So what are you going to tell Fl—
him?
” Dariole demanded, swivelling about on the seating-rail. “He’s going to expect you to tell him how to assassinate the King—oh, don’t
worry
; half the plays on in Southwark now have king-killing in them!
Historical
kings, of course. The English Lord Chamberlain won’t allow anything else.”

The actors’ voices echoed around the walls, as in an amphitheatre. On stage, a royal progress was degenerating into a family quarrel. I paid no attention. I only stared at the young woman.

“What?” She shifted uncomfortably.
“What!”

“You will pardon me, mademoiselle. Thank you. I believe…you have given me an idea.”

My gaze turned towards the stage, but I saw nothing. I sat furiously turning over my thoughts in my mind, dimly aware of Mlle Dariole being first importunate, and then sinking back into a sulk, the hazelnuts she had being cracked with particular vigour.

Time passed; I was unaware of it. I roused when the fat actor playing the hero struck a rapier through the arras that hid the opening at the centre back of the stage. A pause, then a body fell through the curtains, landing flat, face-down. The blood-bladder hidden in his clothes made an unfortunately-audible squelch, blood squirting out to either side of him.

“English!” I muttered, in disgust.

Saburo burst into deep, loud, roaring laughter. “Kabuki!”

In the silent theatre, the sound of him banging his hands down on the gallery rail echoed. The samurai’s body shook with mirth.

A split second later, the rest of the audience began to laugh, the pit particularly raucous.

“Oh well.” Dariole, beside me, shrugged. “They did steal it off another theatre—maybe it’ll work better as a comedy….”

I thought the actors not so sanguine as she. The fat actor tried desperately to hold together the next scene with a “woman”; a boy younger than Dariole, in a matronly skirt and bodice, a modest ruff hiding his Adam’s apple.

I put my elbows on my knees, and my chin on my fists.

As a way to satisfy the complaints of Mr Secretary Cecil
…
I
could not be faulted for such a rejection…
am I inspired, or mad?

I came to myself to realise I might not be the only pattern of madness present: on stage, the boy in a dress performed an interminable scene of supposed insanity.

M. Saburo leaned past the woman in breeches and spoke civilly to me. “What will you do? This conspiracy. Will you do what minister wants?”

Slowly, I sat up. “He’s my only access to news from France. That I
must
have, if I’m to do anything against the Queen Regent, and preserve Monseigneur de Sully. For the moment, then, it appears Mr Secretary has the matter his own way. Therefore, our Monsieur Astrologer Fludd must have his plan to assassinate the King…I’ll
give
him a plan.”

“You will?” Dariole sounded doubtful.

“You said it to me, Monsieur Dariole. Half the plays in London have king-killing as a theme. Well….”

For all the awkwardness between us, I could not help smiling at her expression.

I pointed out at the stage. “From where could it be better to steal a plot to kill a king?”

I spent the next few afternoons in the theatres of Bankside and the City—in most of which, it appeared, Mademoiselle Dariole already had the entrée. Fludd did not contact me immediately, for which I was grateful.
I need the time.

Dariole did nothing other than what a foreign boy with a fat purse might do: that is, find herself welcomed into every crooked game of cards and dice that players play off-stage. She won as much as she lost.

It annoyed me to note that, where I might not comment on her conduct in the slightest, these players might tease her as they pleased. As the second half of this English May grew hotter, and she acquired herself another wide-brimmed and high-crowned man’s hat to stop her nose pinking and peeling, the pock-marked actor remarked, “You are as careful of your complexion as a little girl, monsieur!” and had nothing for his pains but a rude gesture. I knew very well that, despite what had passed between us, had I said it, she would have drawn sword on me.

At the thought that I must then have begged her pardon, I grew warm in the crotch. I abandoned her company for the rest of the day.

I acted in all as if I were no man, who might be capable of desiring her. I was not prone to more of those waking dreams of submission. The ales of Southwark, while detestable in flavour, have at least the quality of making a man sleep without dreams.