Mary Gentle (55 page)

I
stepped out of the Southwark doorway, grabbed Aemilia Lanier by her upper arm, and spun her out of the street that led towards The Rose, so that her back came up hard against plaster wall and beams.

“
Help
—Monsieur!”

I put my hand over her mouth. “This is Bankside, Madame Lanier. If you cry out that I rob or assault you, all you’ll get is an offer from those who would help me do it!”

Her eyes narrowed, not in fear now. Her breath was hot through the thin leather of my glove, moist against my palm. She wore red velvet: a more expensive farthingale and stomacher than when I last saw her. The rumours I’d bought, drinking in the inns close by the theatres, identified her still as Fludd’s protégé in running The Rose.

I removed my hand so that she might speak.

“Monsieur Rochefort,” she said bitterly. “I
told
Master Fludd you’d escape from Wookey Hole.”

“Are you a fortuneteller too, then?” I emulated a courtier’s politeness, but kept my hand tight about her upper arm. She scowled up at me.

“Why would I need to be? You’re a devious big man, Monsieur Rochefort; you look after your own skin. Of course you’d get free and not be killed.”

Her certainty charmed me, even if I found it ironic in the potential presence of London’s silent, invisible assassin.

“Where’s Fludd?” I demanded.

I have enough experience with the interrogation of men, and women, that when she muttered, “I don’t know; Whitehall, perhaps,” I was all but certain she spoke the truth.

Memories of how I acquired such certainty made me, for the first time in many years, regretful.

I loosed her arm, and stood looking down at her. “Will he come to
The Viper and Her Brood
?”

“Why would he?” She sounded doubly sour. “He’s busy crowning young Henry. My play is like
Richard II
—the deposition of a king played for my lord of Essex and his rebellion, these many years past. Either it’ll succeed, or it won’t. Either way, I dare say Master Fludd allows a woman can succeed at it unsupervised.”

“Crowning Henry when?”

She looked at me curiously. “Today. As Master Fludd predicted.”

I glanced up at the sun.
Too late to prevent it
. Mend it afterwards, perhaps; but not stop it, given there are doubtless Henry’s armed men packed into Westminster Abbey….

The woman stirred uncomfortably in my grip. The linen that peeked from under Aemilia’s bodice was fine, and worked with a black stitch. The imprisoned curve of her breast moved my flesh. Momentarily angry at such implicit disloyalty—
And yet how can it be, if nothing’s said between two people?
—I demanded: “Aemilia, do you have the Italian disease?”

Much taken aback: shock went over her face. She scowled, furiously angry. “I do not! And
here,
we call it ‘the French disease.’ Are you about to tell me that
you
have it, and so I must seek out a quack for treatment?”

The irony made me smile.

“No, you’re safe.” Something about the woman moved me.
I have not treated her well,
I thought.

It is hardly her fault that, at a time when I needed Mlle Dariole and would not admit it, Madame Lanier was not she.

“I apologise for the suggestion,” I said.

Her expression changed from suspicion to a painful honesty. “A woman may not do as she pleases without question.” She sighed. “What is it, now that you’re here in London, monsieur?”

Finding no way to make a more profound apology, I settled for practical assistance.

“First, to warn you. Fludd’s failed,” I said. “Coronation or not, there’ll be no King Henry the Ninth. The First James is alive, and about to take back his throne.”

Her eyes widened. I held her arm, now gently, seeking to reassure her.

“Madame, I would avoid you hanging for your part in the conspiracy, if I may. I’d guess the Star Chamber judges won’t like what they read in
Viper
. I can help you get away with exile, or perhaps with the whole part you played being forgotten, if you assist James Stuart now.”

For all her poise, I saw the fear under the surface. It is justified. Ordinary men and women, caught in the affairs of kings, do not always fare well.

“You wouldn’t hold out the bait if there was nothing for me to do.” Her eyes, seeking mine, were anxious. “What is it?”

I let go of her. I had bruised her collar-bone, I saw; her delicate flesh showed the darkening within moments. I touched her again with the knuckle of my glove.

“I’m sorry; I didn’t intend to hurt you.”

Her eyes were bright with welling tears, in an instant. She gave me a dazzling smile.

“No. I imagine you didn’t. Pardon my vanity, monsieur. I’m used to being the one wooed and sought after. It doesn’t come easy to realise I’m past the age where that will happen.”

I took her hand and bent over it, and put a kiss on her soft fingers. She wore no glove. She smelled of roses. She had a callus on the first joint of the middle finger: that infallible mark of a scribe.

“You will never pass that age,” I said. “In my case, I can only claim traditional precedent—another was there before you.”

“Before?” A spark of amusement showed in her expression. “Oh, monsieur. Not the—woman—you brought with you from
France
?”

“I didn’t bring her!”

“There is the true exasperation.” Her amusement became a forgiving smile. “I need not worry about revenge, I see. Monsieur…James is alive? Truly?”

“Alive. I have been with him every step of the way since Wookey.”

She looked back over her shoulder, towards the Thames-river. North of the river, where the court would be going now towards Westminster Abbey. I beheld in her face a long farewell.

“What would you have me do?”

“I need your skill in writing, Madame Aemilia. Poetry, if you wish—but closer to a play-speech. They tell me your Great Eliza once addressed her people in Tilbury field, down the river. That is what I need. A speech for a King returning to his subjects.”

The wind cracked the flag overhead. The afternoon had turned a little over-cast; the direct July sun muted.

“A perfect day for outdoor play-going,” Aemilia Lanier remarked.

I glanced down at her, speaking with a little bad temper I could not restrain. “Perfect—leaving aside the pestilence.”

She smiled. “Scandal outweighs plague, monsieur, and rumour’s started.” Her expression became wistful. “Shall we begin? I’ve told Master Alleyne what’s to happen.”

I nodded, having guessed so much from the fair-haired man’s spluttering. He and his fellow Vices-and-Virtues looked torn between vanishing into Southwark’s alleys, and begging their King’s pardon for their unknowing part in the masque—the latter tactic proving the most successful with James.

James stood among them, beside the samurai. Saburo had one hand down on his cattan-blade’s hilt. I couldn’t blame him: who wouldn’t be a royal bodyguard, given the opportunity? Especially if it helps diplomacy and trade. The captain of
hashagar
is not stupid; I found myself cheered at his success.

Edward Alleyne advanced to bow and scrape to his king. I stepped out of the way, and found myself beside a smaller figure leaning up against the playhouse wall, her arms folded, as much a picture of melancholy as any engraving in a book of Characters.

Perhaps not Melancholy?
I wondered, catching Mlle Dariole’s gaze in some embarrassment. It would be easier if she berated and chastised me….

“Are you concerned about the outcome of this?” I nodded towards James Stuart. “He’s—a hopeful cause, I think.”

She shrugged. “Now you’ve got that whore Lanier writing his lines?”

“You don’t like Madame Lanier?”

The young woman shrugged again. “I don’t like her plays.”

That there was every contrast between them was easy to observe—Arcadie de Montargis de la Roncière not yet seventeen, Aemilia Lanier past five-and-forty; the older woman a sensuous woman, the younger midway between a woman and a boy.

With all the advantage on Dariole’s side, I confess it puzzled me as to why she would dislike the woman so.

“She speaks Latin and
Greek
.” The young woman’s tone sounded so comically bitter that I must restrain myself with difficulty from smiling.

“I don’t even
recognise
Greek,” Dariole added.

“Perhaps learning is a characteristic of Englishwomen: Saburo tells me his Lady Arbella has six languages that she can speak—I seem to recall Elizabeth the Queen was the same.”

Dariole muttered something, but even with my keen hearing I could not distinguish the sense of it. “I beg your pardon, mademoiselle?”

A sudden great smile broke out on her face, so bright that I both blinked, and found myself smiling through the sheer contagion of it.

“Yes. You do,” she remarked cheerfully. “There’s always that….”

I could not be angry with her, I discovered. “Am I allowed to know to what it is you refer, mademoiselle, or am I supposed to languish in ignorance?”

“Ignorance, messire.” She grinned, in her old fashion. “Why change what you’re good at?”

Many words were on my lips. I took a breath—and Aemilia Lanier, walking up, beckoned to me. “Rochefort! The King wants you. You’re to help him make ready, he says.”

Aemilia turned away; Dariole shifted herself off the wall. Without looking at me, she walked out across the stage, and jumped down into the empty pit. Her figure diminished, making her way towards one of the as yet unopened doors.

I heard, from outside, the noise of a gathering crowd begin to rise loud into the odorous air.

In the small room arranged for James Stuart, I found the King being dressed—not in an actor’s costume. In a better doublet and hose than the much-abused oyster-coloured satin.

It’s Alleyne’s!
I recognised, realising where I had seen the forest-green velvet English doublet and trunk hose before. Who would have thought the player-manager and the King are all but exact in height and build?

I pushed all other concerns aside, hustled out the dressers, fell to my knees, and set about tying Monsieur the King’s points myself. “There’s a crowd three streets back, outside, sire—I think you’ll have your audience.”

James stroked his newly trimmed beard, striving for an appearance of confidence. It’s difficult to hide anything from a body-servant. I saw the subtle quivering of his hand.

“Do you think we’re a fool, man?” James Stuart growled. “In the court…there, those flatterers and sucking parasites would applaud if we but broke wind in their faces! These are a different cattle.”

From outside came the sound of raised voices: the playhouse doors being swung open, and the crowd flooding in.

“Don’t
you
smile, Frenchman. We have a mind to put you on stage as our introduction, as Mistress Clio!”

There was no vinegar in his jest. I finished tying his points, and bowed my head to him. “It’s true, any man would seem a very Richard Burbage, following me!”

James barked a laugh.

“Here is where you take your kingdom back, sire.” I belted on a sword and dagger for him—a borrowed English broadsword—overcoming his awkwardness at this uncourtly wear for a king; and rose to my feet. “And begin your justice on Northumberland and Robert Fludd.”

“Ay,” James Stuart commented dryly. “If I’m not booed off a common stage by subjects who waft their stinking breath at me. It’s possible God may protect His King from the plague by His divine power and mercy—but He’s never yet quietened these English into showing sufficient respect for their monarch.”

“Pardon me, sire, it’s not respect you require, now, but awe—and interest.”
As in any other performance,
some part of my mind cynically reflected. I moved to the alcove at the centre-back of the stage, and pulled the curtain aside an inch, glancing out at the rank upon rank of filled galleries, and the men crammed shoulder to shoulder in the pit.

The King stood up from his joint-stool, and gave Edward Alleyne a civil nod. “We’re sorry to prevent a performance you’ve rehearsed. Perhaps you may show us
The Viper and Her Brood
in court, when we are on our throne again.”

Alleyne bowed, and I heard the players behind him chatter with sudden enthusiasm. I bit my lip, having caught some of Lanier’s early rehearsals. Not for me to anticipate James’s reaction to a play about a great Queen….

“Now,” James Stuart said, “we shall take our place on this stage. Master Rochefort, you and Master Saburo shall accompany us. Stand away!”

The King of
England
and
Scotland
’s knees may well shake,
I thought, following him out onto the square platform of the stage, the astrological constellations a painted rainbow above our heads. Another audience like the Somerset Levels, jeering him off the stage, must be in his mind as an expectation, even with the arrogance of a king to counteract it.