Mary Gentle (6 page)

The boy shifted, his buttocks grinding my pelvic bones into the cold flagstones. His teeth were bared in an amazed smile of pleasure. He said, “And this is what I should have done at Zaton’s, in front of everybody.”

My flesh leaped in his hand. I could feel my skin heat from my throat to my forehead. I could feel, too, droplets of sweat running back into my hair.

That is the end of Rochefort,
I thought with a stunned calm.
If I was not forced to leave the city before, I would have to go now.

And not because this brat might—
will
—tell other men what he has seen. Because I cannot live in a place that has seen me react so to disgrace.

I confess that all I could find to say, to choke out, was, “
Let me go!
”

It was an error, as I would have seen if I had not been so completely at a loss. It sounded not a threat, but a plea. I felt an increase in that sensation as if my muscles were melting and turning to water. And my rebellious flesh swelled; I could do nothing to prevent it, even though he still had his hand wrapped about the shaft.

His weight shifted on me, and he looked down past his shoulder at my face. His expression was something between Henri III’s feline courtiers, and a child when it torments some frog or spider. His cheeks were flushed in pleasure at my complete downfall, and I was so far beside myself that I could have wept.

He lifted his head and yelled, “
Help! In the stable! Fire! Help!
”

His youth’s voice cracked with the vehemence of it. Horror flooded me, that he did mean to call in witnesses under any pretext, and chose the one that would get most passers-by here the soonest. The knife-tip drew dull pain from my eye-socket. I realised I was straining against the sharp edge, and that it broke the skin; warm blood tickling my nose and cheek as it ran down.

Heartbeats ticked by. Nothing broke the echoing silence.

“Call all you like,” I said hoarsely. “No man is going to come! Dariole—Messire Dariole….”

That attempt at civility, that sounded as servile as any groveling courtier, sent heat into my face again. I could not help but meet the boy’s eyes. There was a glaze about his expression, as I have seen on a man’s face when he goes into a woman, and I slammed shut the doors of my mind: I would
not
consider it.

Urgency was all that was left.
It is not for me alone that I have to go
. Without thought for the consequences of such honesty, I said, “Henri is dead. The King, murdered, in the rue de la Ferronnerie.
I must leave Paris
.”

The dazed, daydreaming expression on Dariole’s face froze. His eyes became alert. He opened his hand, freeing my flesh. “Is that why no one’s answering?”

“Yes.”

“But you?”

“I’m leaving the city.” The breath was raw in my throat, but I had myself under control. Another few heartbeats and I might have him lulled, engaged in conversation, and then I could attack and kill.

His weight shifted.

All in a second, he slid his left hand into the grip of his discarded rapier, picking it up by the asymmetric hilt; and rocked back from his knees up onto his toes in a squat.

The flat of the dagger ceased to press against my eye; flashes in my field of vision ceased. In the same moment he brought the tip of it up under my scrotum and sagging, half-full cock.

“Up on your feet,” he said, close enough that I could smell the faint perfume on his court doublet.

Shock makes a man’s muscles shake, do what he may to prevent it. I reached out and grabbed the wooden cart-shaft, with hands numb from lack of blood; knocked a stack of baskets over and sent turnips scattering across the floor; lurched up and got my feet under me, and stood up, swaying.

Through all the jerking, swaying movement, he rose in complete balance onto his feet. His dagger point never left my stones, and never cut me, though we were all but in each other’s arms. I remembered the dull pain in my throat in Zaton’s, when he held me with the merest fraction of his sword piercing the skin; I had to admire the control of his blade, at the same time that I could have killed him for it.

So much shame, fury, fear, and anger rushed through my body that for a moment I had no sense of hearing or sight. I stood, shoulders back, staring out over his head. I did not look down at where I hung out of my breeches. If I saw that taut flesh as well as felt it, swollen and trembling on the brink, I foresaw myself undergoing such a humiliation that I could not wipe out with his death—that I could not, myself, live with.

Conversationally, he said, “You know I could make you kneel to me, don’t you?”

I spoke roughly over him, as if I could cut off the words and not be affected by hearing them. “I will make you a deal, Messire Dariole; one of my horses for your life. Stand aside and I won’t kill you before I leave.”

The corner of his mouth pulled up again, in a smile that made fire and ice go through me. The cold iron of his dagger hefted my sac. He said, “You can’t kill me.
I
can kill you. Or I can make you beg for your prick—that would be fun, wouldn’t it? I wonder if I can make you spend?”

I do not know what seemed the greater hurt in my own mind, then: to be castrated, or to be made to unwillingly spill my seed in front of him.

What was the greatest humiliation was that we stood close enough to touch. His chest heaved with his rapid breathing, and I all but felt it. I could have attacked him, barehanded, and downed him. The dagger might cut me, or it might (more dangerously) pierce the great artery in the leg. Either way, I still stood a reasonable chance of survival.

But you will not do it,
I apostrophised myself, as I held the boy’s gaze. I felt weak at the knees and the belly. If I had cared to admit it, I might have confessed that I had lost my nerve for attacking this young man—that the appalling response of my body had thrown me into such confusion that I only wanted to run; I would not fight.

I would not think of the assassination, of Gabriel, of the Medici, or the Duke. At the thought of being put on my knees to this boy, my skin shivered like a horse’s flanks.

“I must leave,” I repeated, and I had the greatest success of my life; I kept all pleading out of my tone. “These are matters of state. I will—take this up with you later. You may be sure of it.”

The young man’s gaze lifted. For a second, he looked as dreamy-eyed as before; then his features sharpened, as he evidently concentrated.

“The King’s
dead?
You saw it? You were there?”

I inclined my head. It is difficult to be dignified with one’s body shaking from tension, and with unfastened breeches, but I did what I could.

“Why are
you
going?”

“Sully.”

It was the simplest answer—it was even the truth—although he would take it to mean I had the Duc’s orders.

Slowly, he shook his head.

“I think I believe you. That Henri’s dead, I mean. You look…but then you wouldn’t
leave
. The Duc would need you. Unless he’s involved. Or you are. And he’s the King’s friend.”

“Messire Dariole—”

He stepped back, still with the knife pointed at me, and cocked his head to one side, the sunlight illuminating the dirt-smear of a moustache on his boy’s upper lip. I could see the moment when his wit leaped.

“You know who did it, don’t you? And—you haven’t told
Sully?
Sully’s dog hasn’t…and you’re
leaving?
”

He glanced briefly towards my horses; the duelist’s snap of the head, that barely loses sight of the opponent for a fraction of a heartbeat. His eyes slitted in the light as he looked up at me.

“Why wouldn’t you tell Sully? Because he wouldn’t like the answer? Oh, name of the good God! You did it. Didn’t you? If the King
is
dead…you did it.”

On any other day I might have killed him there, while he was dazed by his conclusions, or said something to make him believe it merest unfounded speculation. As it was, I was in such confusion that I only protested hoarsely, “I didn’t kill Henri!”

“No? But you really do have something to do with it…and you’re Rochefort:
Sully’s servant,
Rochefort….”

As in a nightmare, I saw the young man nipping at his under-lip, his dark eyes on me, and an expression of unusual gravity.
Who would have thought M. “Dariole” could think at all, never mind so quickly?

He grinned maliciously.

“People are going to ask questions. Of you. Of anyone
connected
with you. Oh, I see. I see why you weren’t going to kill me, messire. You’d be happy for the King’s interrogators to do it.”

I suppose I glared at him. “The King’s dead,
boy!
Do you think I have nothing better to think of than you?”

He laughed; an effeminate sound that grated on my ears. Gesturing with his free hand, he said, “Harness up both of them, Messire Rochefort.”

I stared at the dun jennet, the roan, and back at Dariole.
“What?”

M. Dariole gave me a sunny look, but he did not take his dagger out of immediate danger to my prick and balls.

“It’s easy enough to find if the King’s dead or if that’s just you lying. The first man I meet on the street will tell me that. And if you’re lying, then I kill you right there.”

Dust sifted down golden in the air, still not settled from our undignified scuffle. Completely at a loss now, I repeated, “
Both
horses?”

“You’re leaving Paris.” Dariole shrugged with one shoulder; the one that did not support his dagger. “You don’t want hot irons and the strappado, and being slung into some airless cell in the Chatelet for ten years. And I tell you what, Messire Rochefort—nor do I.”

I opened my mouth to protest. He suddenly laughed, looking as elated as only a very young man can.

“You killed Henri, or you know who did. You wouldn’t be leaving town if you weren’t deep in it. And now
I’ve
been connected with you—a hundred people might have seen me coming into these stables! Looks like finding you this morning wasn’t the stroke of luck I thought….”

For one of the few times in my life, I could only stare. His grin widened. He touched the cold point of his dagger to my flesh again; then withdrew it.

“You put that away, messire. And saddle up. Hurry! We’re going to ride out into the streets and I’m going to see if you’re right; if there
has
been an assassination. And if there has, and you’re leaving Paris—I’m coming with you.”

H
is dagger had nicked the corner of my eye-socket. A tear of blood ran down my face. I wiped it away as I urged the Andalusian jennet out of the stable yard.

Through the Porte St Honoré, west, and circle around north of Paris,
I thought briskly. Ride up through Normandy and take ship for
England
. I may write at every stop and every provincial town, and send messengers in person back to the Duc, warning him of the traitor in our house.

The boy straddled my very recognisable roan stallion, just at the distance which meant I could not draw and cut him down without giving advance warning. He had recovered from somewhere in the barn a short, fashionable cloak, and a wide-brimmed, tall-crowned hat. Now he sat bright-eyed in my second-best saddle, the picture of some nobleman’s young son.

The stallion tested his control and he contained it effortlessly. He grinned. “I can shout out that you’re responsible. It wouldn’t even need to be true. They’d string you up off a beam like
that
.”

Hooves struck sparks from the cobbles in front of me even as he snapped his fingers. A dozen armed men pelted past waving drawn swords and loaded pistols. Not thugs or guards. The fathers and sons of noble families.
Henri’s death has shattered lives; all in a second, like a hammer dropped from a height onto glass.

“It’d be good to see Messire Rochefort hanged. They say hanged men spend. That might cure that lump in your breeches!”

I slammed my mind shut on the events of the last half-hour.

Riding as if no such thing had ever happened—
could
ever have happened—I forced a way through the crowded Paris streets to the Pont Neuf.

Royal guards lined it.

I swung the Andalusian’s head around, the stink of the Seine in my nostrils more pungent than leather and sweating horse. Men were jammed shoulder-to-shoulder with our mounts. It would be impossible to force my horse though. Already people swayed and tottered as the press pushed them, without volition of their own. I looked back over a sea of hats and coifs. Equally difficult now to make a way east.

“So. Where are we going?”

I ignored the boy, torn for a moment between knowing I
must
leave, and desiring to know what was happening at this moment in the Arsenal, where I should be.
The Duc: is he still there? Already in prison? Gone to the palace? Taken refuge elsewhere? Ridden out south for the home estates of Maximilien de Bethune, Baron Rosny, Duc de Sully?

I know that in three months the Arsenal has sent three thousand pikes, muskets, and corselets east for the war; not to mention the hundred cannon. The cupboard is bare. But—all the same, I do not think the mob will have hanged him
just
yet. The King’s widow, though….

“Messire Rochefort!” Dariole gave me the grin of a young man who has walked out of his lodgings with no more than the clothes on his back and the sword at his side, and I felt momentarily old. “Are we leaving Paris or
what?
And how?”

His tone was provocative; on another day I would have drawn without a second thought. Today—today, I could abandon my spare horse and tack without a second thought, if that was the sacrifice that abandoning M. Dariole demanded.

But I must not!
I realised.

If I could safely leave him as a distraction for any man suspicious of me, then I would do just that—Messire “Dariolet,” duelist, young nobleman, gambler, is just the sort of foolish young man who might plausibly have become involved in a conspiracy to kill his King. It would be pleasant to think of Dariole put to the question and tortured.

But that is precisely the reason why I must not do it. He can connect M. Rochefort, the King’s death, and M. de Sully. So he must not stay in Paris to be interrogated—and he must not live.

There are many quiet roads north and west of Paris, in which a young man might most regrettably be ambushed by bandits and left for dead
.

Barrels of wine stood out on street corners here, ready for the Queen’s celebrations tomorrow. Half of them had been broken into. I forced my horse between drunken, brawling men, aware of Dariole following behind me.

Momentarily sheltered in a corner between two houses, I took the opportunity to wrench out my wax tablets from my purse and scribble on them with the stylus. I clapped the wooden covers to.

“Here!” I thrust two livres and the tables at an older apprentice, where he stood up on an oak windowsill, peering over the heads of the crowd. “The Duc de Sully, at the Arsenal; now! He will give you twice this when you deliver.”

He stared at me with bewildered, hesitant eyes. There was no time for more now: the press gave way again, and I spurred through the shouting crowds towards the Porte St Honoré.

The noise of shrieks and shouts beat back from the masonry walls, arches, and towers. Visible over men’s heads, tall pikes jutted: Savoyards and Swiss mercenaries brought into the city for the upcoming war guarding the gate.

The iron portcullis was still raised up.

I saw the jagged spikes where it hung, under the top of the pointed stone arch. And civilians, arguing with the guards—but being passed through.
No one has shut the city. Yet
.

Dariole nodded ahead, at men in slop-breeches and cuirasses, with heavy muskets leaning back on their shoulders, marching into the space in front of the Porte. “Think you’ll get past the gate? Want to put money on it?”

I am Sully’s agent on the trail of the King’s assassins. Travelling incognito, because, if the King can be murdered, these assassins are evidently dangerous men. What could be less suspicious—for an hour or so more?

Dariole chuckled too loudly for my liking in a crowd full of mourning. “If any spy’s thought about where he can run to, I’ll bet
you
have!”

Recovering myself, and to lull his suspicions with familiar animosity, I snapped, “I am no common ‘spy!’ I am the agent of my patron the Duc.”

“Bark, dog!”

If anything was lacking to stir genuine animosity in me towards him, it was this: that I have, indeed, considered what way a man might leave
France
at need. Catholic Imperial Spain to the west; fanatical German Protestants to the east…. No wonder so many exiles from court end in the Low Countries, either at the court of the Archdukes (if of Spanish sympathies) or in the United Provinces. My desire for that backwater,
England
, sprang from a requirement to avoid the obvious in that respect.

I swivelled around in my saddle and urged the dun jennet on a pace with a touch of my heel, passing under the heavy masonry of the Porte St Honoré, hailing the guards.

The roan gave one nuzzle at Dariole’s knee; then responded to his casual caress by walking on beside me in perfect dignity and obedience. Dariole rode with careless expertise, one of those boys trained to the saddle from birth.

Something in his expression troubled me.

It does not happen in war or an affray, but sometimes, between two men fighting a single duel, there comes the creation of something between them—as there is where men dance, or play music together; a certain complicity of action.

In a fight, it more usually ends in death than it does in a dance. Still, it is the same sense of partnership, though the two do not work together for the same end.

I shuddered, quite involuntarily, and did not know whether I managed to conceal it.

I know what it is about M. “Dariolet.”

He is amused by what has happened between us. And triumphant.

But he shows nowhere near enough disgust.

They account it forty-eight miles from Paris to Rouen by the Seine river-boats. By road it is the better part of a day and a half’s journey—even when roads are not crammed with men walking, palfreys, asses, wagons, and a multitude of riders. Then half as much again to the port of Le Havre.

I wondered briefly if I might take a river-boat to Rouen, and at least get out of the county of France and into the Duchy of Normandy; passage would be three or four sous for a man, but then there are the horses…

The boats were full.

They were taking no more passengers for any price—but in any case, following the river’s great loops, it would take us until evening to get as far as St Germain. And boats are difficult to abandon quickly.

I took the shorter, cross-country route, becoming uncertain also about the wisdom of St Germain, with that being one of the King’s palaces. In the event I passed the bridge there as quickly as possible, and broke the journey some miles on at Poissy.

“They say the Duc has barricaded himself in the Bastille!” Lassels exclaimed, as soon as he saw me. “Is it true?”

Lassels, being one of the tax intendent’s junior clerks, and therefore one of Sully’s employees, was a man I had often used in the capacity of a spy. He came and seated me, anxiously, by the window of the hôtel at Poissy; pouring out wine, and rushing about to provide me with a very basic meal of butter and milk, walnut and eggs. I dare say I looked dust-covered enough to justify his concern.

“When did you have the news?” I demanded.

“An hour since; the sergeant at arms told M. the Intendent while he was putting up a proclamation in the square.”

Evidently, men riding out post from Paris would outdistance me. Not having a remount, I did not dare push the Andalusian to his limits.

Looking out of the hôtel’s window at the square, I saw the reason why I had no remount. M. Dariole, hand resting on his rapier hilt and the feather of his hat cocked up, reading the proclamation among the locals in the town square. He had ridden the eighteen miles with his reins in his left hand, his right arm across his lap close to his hilt, and at precisely a yard outside the distance where combat may start without warning.

“You will have better information than I,” I added, to Lassels, and lied out of habit: “I am on my way to Paris now. In the Bastille, you say? It’s defensible.”

“But yes. They say the Duc walks up and down, weeping for Great Henri. All the other great courtiers have been rushing to the palace, to offer their services to Queen Marie.” Lassels, like the Duc himself, came of an old Huguenot family; he sounded a little green, and I could guess why. Preferment would be thin on the ground for Protestants in a Medici court. Lassels added, “He will not come out unless he knows himself safe. Will he be safe, messire?”

“We may hope,” I said, feeling as grim as I sounded.

The late afternoon sun shone on Poissy; on the small white stones paving the main road that led through the square, going arrow-straight to the north-west. Even here, the roads were full. All kinds and conditions of men: lawyers, farmers, soldiers, servants; walking or riding; all anxious to take the news out to the provinces. Light flickered through the poplars that walled the road beyond the town gate. Light shone through the clouds of dust going up from men’s feet.
Great Henri is dead
. It will take a week to spread the news from one end of the country to the other.

And there will be men riding post to the Lowlands, to
Spain
, to the Pope; men in the pay of other spy-masters, who will need to calculate how this event shatters the buildup of power in Europe. What will happen to
France
now?

I re-sharpened the quill that Lassels had brought me, and dipped it in the ink, finishing the third copy of my enciphered letter to the Duc my master. Each copy detailed, as well as I could deduce it, the circumstances under which Maignan could have been kidnapped, and therefore the most likely men in the household amongst whom he should look for the traitor.

I cannot hope for acknowledgement of receipt. And to be certain, I must send more messages than a traitor can intercept.

“The governor,” Lassels added anxiously. “M. the Intendent says the governor is closing all the town gates and calling out the local troops, in case we’re invaded by the Spanish. Do you think there’ll be a Spanish invasion, M. Rochefort?”

I gave him, absently, something that sounded convincing. “There are too many French guns and men near the Spanish Netherlands border for that to happen; they can as well defend us as go to Jülich and Cleves.”

“Yes. Yes, thank God!”

“You may open M. the Intendent’s purse, while I’m about it,” I said with a grimace at Lassels. “I am down to my last few pistoles, and I cannot help the Duc with that alone.”

Lassels flushed. “But, messire, I can’t. He’s taken the
taille
money with him. He and the governor and the mayor are all together at the governor’s house; they’re planning to put down a revolt by the local Protestants—”

“Is there an uprising in Poissy, then?”

“No!” Lassels sounded frustrated. He was a small, thin man; he did not wear a sword; still, there was a light on his face at the thought of a Protestant rebellion. It vanished. “The dear good God—if the Huguenots are blamed for Henri’s death now, it could be another Bartholomew’s Day!”

Strange, the potency of that memory in men’s minds. I was born about the time that the Valois King Charles IX stood back and let his Catholic subjects slaughter Coligny and almost all the Protestant citizens of Paris, and even
I
sometimes feel that I lived through it.