Mary Gentle (54 page)

He prodded my chest with his thick forefinger, at which I winced, being still not recovered from the sun’s scorching.

“And they themselves the last to go, now the wind allows it! There’s not a man in the City with whom they may do business—all warehouses closed, all shops shut up, and the citizenry fled to the country!”

James snatched in a breath. I caught at his sleeve as the ship heeled, preferring lèse majesté to a drowned Stuart King. Better if
I
had interrogated the merchant ship’s captain—but I do not have the authority of a king of England.

“
Why
do they do this?” I demanded.

“Plague.” James Stuart spoke the word shortly. “Yon man tells us, since the twelfth of this month, the pestilence has broken out, hotter than in years! The Lord Mayor has gone. The burgesses. Even the physicians won’t stay to collect their fees! There’ll be barely a man left to witness our son’s false coronation but the poor of the suburbs and out-parishes!”

I squinted against cold spray. “Henry’s not yet crowned?”

James waved a dismissive, dirt-ingrained hand, as if I were a pupil concerned over a trivial question. “
We
are God’s anointed King. If our son chooses to flout that today or tomorrow, what is that to us?” He overrode me as I would have spoken: “Did you not hear? Plague! The whole city’s hot with it! Our worthy citizens are gone!”

A glance showed me Saburo impassive—it being unclear how much he understands of James’s broad Scots—and Mlle Dariole turned in my direction, her eyes slitted against the sun, her expression therefore unreadable.

Confusedly seeking diplomacy, I murmured, “Sire, the fewer crowds, the less likelihood of contagion—”

“Do you think I am afraid?” The royal plural slipped in his evident rage. “I, who was Moray’s
hostage
when he was Regent of Scotland?”

“Sire—”

“I was nothing but a football when I was a boy—the prize for any of the Lairds could grab me! I am used to
danger
.” James’s voice came thick with outrage. “Do you hear me? See you, they slew a man at my mother’s feet when I was seven months in her womb, and her skirts greasy with his blood where he clutched at her to save him. My father, my father was blown sky-high by a powder conspiracy in Kirk O’Fields, and my mother blamed for it. My mother was slain, executed by the great whore Elizabeth—”

“An unfortunate family, sire,” I observed.

Stated with all the urbanity I had at my command, now I’d collected myself, it had the gratifying effect of stopping James Stuart in his tracks. Mlle Dariole stifled a noise.

I added, “If not dread of the plague—sire,
what
is it that your Majesty wishes to tell us?”

A grey line broke the surface of the ocean. The ungainly middle-aged man pointed his finger at the wide, winding Thames estuary. “There lies our rebellious son. I’m told, now, he’s spread lies that we are dead—that in the caves in Somerset, the waters rose, and our body was drowned and swept away.” He shivered, cold eyes meeting mine. “Our son knows, witches once tried to drown us, when I and my Anne were aboard ship for England. This lie is the more hurtful, therefore.”

True, I thought I saw more hurt in him than fear. Gently, I said, “He must say something of your death, sire, or else how can he justify men crowning him King?”

James nodded. He assumed something of a pedagogic air, which I knew to be of some security to him.

“Aye. This Robert Fludd who ensnares him is another Doctor Dee, in command of witchcraft, and plague, too. He desires our son crowned, so he can lead the wicked boy his own way. But,
think,
man! We are James, King of England and Scotland—but who is to witness it? Who is to
see
that we’re yet living? All men of note, all nobles, knights, baronets, burgesses—all of them, gone. Who may we summon, to say we’re returned alive to London?”

I saw Saburo scowl, and Dariole open her mouth to interrupt King James. I lightly trod over her foot with mine, and she shot me a glare; something that I found curiously reassuring.

The King said, “The citizens have locked themselves in their houses, if they’re too poor to run. We cannot go to the country. Yon man from the ship told me that knights of the shires, with purses full of silver, are being beaten away from town gates with staves and pikes, if they come from London—and are left to starve in ditches.”

His wide, padded shoulders slumped. In the silence, the sails snapped in the wind. The ungainly man glared at me—for reason only, I think, that I was present, and not because he sought an answer from me.

“No man can observe us. No man will be here to witness our return! Our son will have himself crowned, flee abroad from the London plague, and pause only to have us quietly murdered as he goes! Captain Arnott must bring us about. If we land in London, I am a dead man.”

“Sire.” Reflexively, I made him a bow, thinking furiously as I spoke. “Don’t order the ship away from London. Keep us on course. I believe I have an answer—not without danger, but with a chance of success.”

Saburo grunted. “There is revolt. Rebellion. How else can not be danger, if so?”

James glared at me. “
Well,
de Rochefort? In what danger do you propose to put your King?”

I refrained from pointing out that he was not my King. Although, if he is to be my ally, with Marie de Medici, Death of the good God! then for a while he
is
my King, one supposes.

The thought of kings put me in mind of Caterina; her admonitions on that subject—and, by a natural progression, brought me to what she might consider the correct form of words for my solution to this problem.

“The common man,” I said. “You need to be recognised
outside
the court, sire. So no man may secretly do you harm…. You can’t call out the city’s Mayor; I would suppose Paul’s Cross closed, and all public meetings forbidden, as is common at time of plague outbreak?”

He nodded impatiently. “So the ship’s master says.”

“You need to get men out of their houses to see your return. But if the sickness is hot enough, they’ll even stay away from churches, at the end.”

I held up my hand, forestalling his interruption. Thinking of London, plague or no, put me in mind of the remainder of Fludd’s plan, and Aemilia Lanier; from this to a conclusion was the thought of a moment.

“I can tell you, sire, where you
will
find men gathered together in large numbers. There are only two such places. One is your Westminster Abbey, where Prince Henry will be crowned—and there, sire, yes: you stand a fair chance of being quietly murdered. The other…that, alone, will be open…the other is The Rose Theatre.”

Dariole’s hand slammed down on the sun-dried wood of the ship’s rail, her eyes flashing darkly. “Yes!”

James Stuart stared at me. “In
Southwark?
”

Despite the thought of the death that is invisible, I made myself shrug. “Sire, it’s true there’s danger of plague. Your people commonly face that every day of their lives. Your Majesty, what other choice is open to you? The Rose, by Robert Fludd’s command, will not be closed as other theatres are—The Rose will be open and playing
The Viper and Her Brood.
That’s intended to calm the citizenry and reconcile them to King Henry the Ninth. Go there. Show yourself! Sire, the audience may be poor men, but there’ll be thousands of them—and they’ll know King James Stuart, alive and well.”

Dariole hit one fist into the other. “
Yes!
Your Majesty, you can stand up on stage and you’ve got everybody there, and they’ll tell everybody else—Alleyne told me, Robert Fludd calls it ‘the theatre of the world’! You can show them you’re alive. You can denounce Prince Henry!”

“‘Prince Henry’s evil counsellors,’” I corrected, before James Stuart vented the temper I saw on his face. “God He knows, the Houses of Valois and Bearn have had enough to do in forgiving their errant sons; this last I am at least practised in. Denounce the Prince’s evil counsellors, who have led an innocent boy astray by informing him his father is dead….”

“And the King goes to Whitehall and they fall into each other’s arms and there you are!” Dariole said enthusiastically.

I reached to put a hand on her shoulder, restraining her excitement—and she was in a second rigid from head to heels, at the hint of physical coercion.

James Stuart gave me a single, slight inclination of the head, looking at me keenly.

“That latter part of ourself and our son will not be so simple. But for the first part…very well, Master Rochefort. Yes. The Rose Theatre. In this, we will entrust ourselves to you.”