Mary Gentle (49 page)

Her doublet was wet from chest to belly. Her dagger dripped as she gestured with it. “Ask Saburo-san. He’s the one counting heads.”

“You should know better than to grapple,” I could not help saying. “You are better keeping a man at a distance with your blade.”

“Tell me about it!”

She stood up, a fierceness about her movements. No more than five men. This is an affray the size of a duel, I realised.
And not a skirmish of war.
Dear good God, it has given back her confidence….

“Is the King alive?”

“He’s in the bushes. Saburo-san! Seso!” Her intense whisper sounded loud. I signalled her to silence. The samurai walked out into the moonlight, his swords unsheathed and black.

“Have we five dead men?” I pressed him.

“Hai!”

He pointed at the flat area of rocks beyond, in the brighter moonlight. More clearly than a man might wish to see them, five decapitated heads stood on the trunks of their necks. One had bled severely from the ear: my own adversary.

Dariole rejoined us, her arm entwined with that of James Stuart. She stood on his right side, her unencumbered hand carrying her bloodied blade. “I don’t hear anyone else. If there were more men than horses, the rest have gone.”

“Perhaps this is all. Plainly Fludd took cognisance of the fact that we
might
come this way, no matter how unlikely…and relied on rehearsing his men in our probable actions.” I walked across the open ground, back to the entrance to the caves.

Caterina was so small, in the moonlight, that I all but fell over her before I properly saw her.

The features of her face were untouched, although spidered over with black blood. The side and back of her head were missing. Stripping off my glove, I felt her cooling skin.

Dariole’s voice came sad and bleak from behind me. “I got her killed, messire. Didn’t I?
I
said we should leave.”

“She knew, mademoiselle.” I stood up, aware that I spoke over-harshly, but not able to stop myself. “Think. Fludd did not predict
this
. If he had, he would not have wasted the key pistol-shot on an old woman who could be easily subdued. She calculated this beforehand.”

I faced around, looking at Dariole and the samurai and the King, splashed with moonlight and darkness.

“She pushed past me,” I said. “Else I should have been first out. The pistol was meant for me. The second man for you, I think, sire. But the pistol for me. She took it in my stead, knowing we could then win free. All of us.”

Dariole knelt below me in the darkness. I saw her fingers stroke Caterina’s eyelids down, holding them until they stayed closed.

Dariole’s own eyes caught the moon’s light and glinted, as she looked up. “Messire, if Fludd calculated what could happen here—that you’d be first out, and he could shoot you and then kill the King—what happens
now?
Now that we know Caterina’s changed it?”

I
f I had a gold louis for every time I have ridden through the countryside at night with my plans in confusion, I should be as rich as any man in
France
.

Dariole rode behind me, beside the King. Saburo touched his heels to one of the late troopers’ horses, riding with all the skill of a sack of corn, and brought his fortunately co-operative beast up with us. I had attached the spare mount on a long rein to my saddle, and thanked the good God for the new moon, which made riding at least possible.

In an ideal world, as Plato speaks of, a band of men with a plan once made would then ride direct to their destination, carry out that plan, and succeed or fail. In my experience, once such a plan is made, men complain of all its details, repeat arguments endlessly, alter their minds, change their tactics, and in general sow more confusion amongst themselves than ever the enemy can.

“I’m going to find Robert Fludd!” The moon did not let me make out her face clearly, but Dariole’s voice came stubborn and set. “I don’t
care
—I’m going back there to kill him. He
has
to be somewhere around. He’ll want to know he’s won!”

And then,
I reflected,
commonly such bands do not contain a woman, nor a foreigner, nor a reigning king.

“Fludd may be anywhere in the near country,” I snapped, “or in London, or Muscovy! I forbid it!”

To myself, I sounded appallingly like some elderly husband or father. I held my breath, hoping that to her it might seem the rebuke of a captain of a very small force, faced with the loss of one of his number.

“When you’re taken,” I added, “you’ll give away the rest of us. Trust me. You
will
betray us.”

“What can they do to me now?”

Her voice held a sulky martyrdom, that both pained me and made me desire to shake her.

“To make you talk? Oh, that will be easy, mademoiselle. Let us suppose that I stick my thumb into your eye, as if it were a grape, and pop it out onto your cheek. What will you
not
tell me, to keep your other eye? To prevent your total blindness?”

Nothing came out of the silence but the noise of horses’ hooves, muffled, and the soft ring of a bridle. Which would be enough to betray our presence in open ground, but not within these deep lanes.

I did not intend to frighten you, mademoiselle,
I thought. And then: No—I intended to give you the fright one puts into impulsive junior officers, to stop them from being killed on their first campaign.

In French, I added, “Be grateful I think as a soldier. If I were to think as the spy that I am, I might decide this intention makes you an impulsive danger, too liable to betray
me
to capture and torture—and I would put this pistol to your head and blow out your brains, as happened to Suor Caterina. I could be two miles hence before any man investigated the shot. And it would, besides, give us another remount.”

A soft snort came out of the moonlight.

“Mademoiselle?”

“Another remount?” Her voice sounded rich. What she controlled, I realised, was dark laughter. “You’re a pragmatic man, messire.”

I had been sure she would be offended.
Once again, she surprises me
.

“I
am
a pragmatic man,” I said. “Time passes. We should be further on the Bristol road. You will
not
return to Wookey, even if you think Robert Fludd may be there.”

Her mount moved up, so that she rode boot to boot with me. She shot me a glance that, even in the new moon’s light, I could see was from beneath her lashes. “I guess I couldn’t find him now, in that chaos, even if he
is
there. Shit. You’re right, messire.”

I put my hand to my chest—startled to touch bare skin rather than a doublet—and made her a bow, as well as I might from my saddle; smiling at her puzzled look.

“You admit me in the right? Mademoiselle, a man of my age cannot bear such shocks!”

She neither went into a sulk, as I half-expected, nor gave me that blank look that had not been present until after her abduction. In the moonlight, the corners of her mouth seemed to move.

“You’re like hazard, Rochefort—even unlucky dice have to come up winners at
some
point.”

“You do me too much favour….”

“I know. I always have, messire. It’s very remiss of me.”

Her words, coupled with the demure tone in which she said them, made it my turn to splutter a laugh, somewhat over-loud for the night silence.

Her voice and expression, so much as I could judge in the moonlight, changed. “He doesn’t know he’s lost. If he has. Suppose he did know about Caterina? Then all of this could still be his plan.”

“Perhaps.” I could not deny it. I re-loaded the pistols we had taken from dead men; doing it by touch as much as by the moon’s uncertain light.

“Sister Caterina thought I made his plan ‘unlikely.’ And then, what she did…I can’t
believe
she did that!” Dariole leaned forward in her saddle, speaking quietly and intensely. “You know what, messire? If I was Fludd? No matter
how
unlikely I thought anything was—I’d have my extra calculations done, just in case. And a back-up plan for if I failed.”

“Consider, he’s far from failing.” I put each pistol in its saddle holster. “Fludd is alive. The Prince is alive. And James is supposed dead—you heard them bawling like stuck cats. If he fails to return to the capital…then all Fludd’s failed in is killing James Stuart here.”

She caught my emphasis on the last word, and shot a glance back in the darkness, where the King’s horse padded behind mine.

The samurai rode up on my other side.

“Furada may capture a man of Captain—” Saburo’s rendition of
Spofforth
was completely indecipherable, had I not known who he meant. “Under torture, he will tell that we go north.”

I nodded. “Bristol is the obvious road. Therefore…I intend to cross over that road, when we come to it.”

Saburo gave me a questioning look.

“We will ride west,” I said, “a mile or so, into the wetlands. Then we’ll ride up parallel to the Bristol road. If it takes us longer by the Levels, still, we shall not be so easily found when it becomes light.”

Saburo gave a grunt, which I interpreted as agreement. “How is the King-Emperor?”

I glanced back.
If one man must be continually led, that is yet more delay.
I could see nothing of him, under these trees.

The branches creaked above us, up the lane’s banks. Out of the mass of sounds came a man’s voice. James Stuart spoke for the first time in an hour.

“We will go to London.”

His cold tones sounded another man to the frightened fool of the masque.

That he should be moved by these events not to cowardice, but to new courage, surprised and cheered me. “Good, sire! The sooner you’re back in the capital, the better.”

James’s voice came out of the dark. “We shall deal with this Earl of Northumberland and his lackey Fludd. We shall deal with our ungrateful, unfilial…I will not call him ‘son.’ They shall all stay in the Tower. For just so long as it takes to set up the executioner’s block.”

Saburo gave a grunt that, I thought, signalled both approval, and relief at a recognisable Nihonese custom among gaijin.

The Somerset Levels made a maze of lanes, dikes, small square fields, standing pools, hedges, and paths, with the odd farmhouse and hamlet among them. If I had not spent some of my time this last month riding the countryside, I should not have risked it.

A new moon’s light is deceptive when it comes to travel. We rode, continually, slower than I desired to. Despite that, before moon-set, I had to confess myself lost.

As the east yellowed and the birds’ song grew to full chorus, we made a deliberate stop. What rations there were in the troopers’ bags, at their saddles, I gave orders we should eat. Mlle Dariole, rummaging further, found a man’s spare hose and breeches, and without speech went into rushes to wash in the mere, and swaggered back wearing a pair of cherry-red Dutch slops more than a little too large for her.

The swagger I guessed to be preventive, in case M. Rochefort should twit her about her reactions to being under fire, that should make such a change of clothing necessary. I found no desire in myself to give her embarrassment.

Which is strange,
I reflected, as I checked the tack on my stolen horse. Three months ago I would have made a Bartholomew Fair exhibit of her. Is this pity? A mere sympathy, for her suffering?

“Rosh’-fu’!” Saburo pointed.

I looked.

A horseman stood skylined on the Mendip hills, against the eastern light.

Quite deliberately skylined,
I thought, picking out a second, third, and fourth rider. To panic the quarry, so that they run, and expose themselves to pursuit.

I shielded my hands with my eyes, looking at the foot of the Mendips, and the dark green slopes we had left behind us.

It was difficult, but I made them out. Twenty or more horsemen, spaced not far apart, spreading west in a cordon, moving out from the Bristol road.

Rain poured heavily down out of a bruise-coloured sky.

Three of our mounts we had to abandon within the hour, completely broken-down as they became, wrenching themselves through the mud of the marshes. The King’s mount and the King’s spare mount (as the last two became) foundered before morning was well advanced.

We continued on foot, tense with the knowledge of Prince Henry’s riders behind us.
Foot-pace will not allow the outdistancing of mounted pursuers. And they will surely have hounds with them…

“I must have words with Monsieur Fludd about his troopers’ purchase of inadequate horseflesh,” I said—I confess, with the goal of moving Mlle Dariole to amusement.

I saw her flick a humourless glance at me and look away, as we fought through reeds and underbrush. The sight of pursuing horsemen silenced her; she had walked, without a word, an hour and more now.

Why?
I thought. And then:
Yes—before this, she thought she need not fear being taken prisoner.
She will not be done with that fear in a few weeks, or a month.

I elbowed my way forward and out, emerging to find us in another hedge-sheltered lane. Not very sheltered, in truth. My wet skirts slid and clung to my boots as I walked, yards of silk sodden and weighty with water.

What I had never before appreciated about wearing women’s clothes is how often one treads on the front hem. I would suppose this to be why women have that neat posture, each hand catching up the cloth, lifting their skirts as they walk. Not so that they seem poised, delicate, ladylike. Simply so that they don’t fall flat on their arses.

The hems of my petticoats ripped, several times, as I stepped on them. They were draggled enough in rain and mud that I supposed no man would notice. If they looked lower, and saw that this “woman” was, beneath her skirts, wearing men’s boots…

“I suppose,” I observed absently, “that the better part of my life has been devoted to making myself ridiculous.”

A small snuffling laugh startled out of Dariole, where she walked beside me.

I turned my head to gaze down at her. A gruff chuckle from behind let me know that James Stuart was within earshot, plodding beside the samurai.

The rain fell cold on my face where I had been shaved. I felt bare, without beard and moustaches. Lowering my voice, I added, directly to Dariole, “Is it necessary to state that I feel myself to be absurd?”

Her mouth moved, as if she were pulled out of her fear against her desire. Half-willingly, she smiled. “No, messire. Not necessary at all.”

I glanced down. “I wonder if I might claim, in the circumstances, that I wear boots because they’re superior to women’s fragile footwear? Or am I so self-evidently a man?”

Dariole blinked against the rain and, to my joy, gave me a look that was very much the young duelist. I read her mind as plainly as if she spoke it. At something over six foot tall, and for all M. Rochefort is laced into a pair of bodies, not the most garish stomacher in the world is going to make M. Rochefort look as if he has women’s breasts…

“You would think, mademoiselle, in a world where there are so few mirrors, and so few of them full-length, that I would be spared the idea of exactly what a spectacle I must make? Not so. I see it in your eyes.”

The summer rain darkened her doublet and Dutch slops; water running down from her short, stringy hair into her eyes, making her blink. Her boots sucked out of the mud as she walked, splashing back down.

She reached out, plainly needing to brace herself to do it, and clumsily grabbed at my arm. “I’m not scared enough that I have to take it out on you, messire. Believe it or not. You’re safe.”

She gripped hard, once, and released me.

I felt an ache in my throat. Humiliation can go deep: she has not yet forgotten the banqueting cave. And yet
she
attempts to comfort
me
.

She is afraid, I thought. I know no cure for it, with young men, but to throw them at their fear. I know no cure at all for young women.