The Flower Reader (28 page)

“Monsieur Laurentin,” I said, surprised. “What are you doing here? Where is Monsieur de Chastelard being held?”

“You,” he said. “At first I thought it might be the queen, come in secret, but you are not tall enough. Pierre.” He spoke into the hole again. “It is Madame Rinette Leslie, come to gloat over your fall.”

“Tell her to go away.” The poet’s voice was muffled.

“That is not true,” I said. I stepped up closer to the hole beside the door. Wat and Jennet stayed close behind me, with their eyes on Laurentin. “Monsieur Chastelard, you told me on the stair—you told me you knew who murdered my husband.”

There was no answer. Blaise Laurentin leaned back against the wall and looked at me, his eyes like burned holes in his face, his expression unreadable. I turned away from him and leaned closer to the hole in the thick stone wall.

“Tell me the name,” I said. “I will take the casket to your master; I swear it. Just tell me who your master is, and who killed Alexander.”

Again there was no answer.

Blaise Laurentin had gone very still. After a moment he shifted his position, then again leaned close to the hole. “So you told her?” he said. “Tell her everything, then, Pierre. Tell her the name. I would like to hear it as well.”

Silence.

“Monsieur de Chastelard,” I said desperately. “You described the dagger correctly. Was it you who killed my husband?”

More silence.

“It could not have been Pierre,” Laurentin said. “He and I—we were together all afternoon and all night. We were at Holyrood until morning. Is that not true, Pierre?”

“It is true,” the poet said. His voice was very hoarse and soft. “I was with Blaise all night. I did not kill your husband.”

“Then tell me who did. Give me some evidence, some proof. I will see the murderer hanged and give the casket to your master.”

“Tell us, Pierre,” Laurentin said. His voice was soft and singsong, as if he and Chastelard were speaking memorized parts in a play they knew and I did not. “Or was it all a lie, the business about knowing young Gordon’s murderer, to get Madame Rinette to give you the casket?”

“Yes. It was all a lie.”

And he would say no more, no matter how much I begged.

I was not sure what I believed. He knew about the falcon’s head on the dagger; he could not know that unless he himself were the killer, or unless the true killer had shown off the blade and confessed to the crime. He had taken enormous risks to capture me and force me to give up the casket, and he was about to pay the price of those risks with his life. Why was he now claiming it did not matter anymore, and that everything he had said was a lie?

“Do you know who his master is?” I said to Blaise Laurentin. We had stepped a little way away from the hole in the wall, so Chastelard could not hear us. Laurentin’s eyes were red-rimmed, almost as if they had been bleeding. He looked at me in such a way that Wat and
Jennet moved closer, their daggers close at hand. I put my own hand on the dagger at my belt.

“Of course I know.”

“There is a story being told that he is connected to Coligny and the Huguenots.”

Laurentin shrugged and said nothing.

“If that is true,” I said, “then you must be the queen’s man. Queen Catherine de Médicis.”

He bowed to me slightly, although he still said nothing. Did that mean yes or no?

“So you are enemies, you and Chastelard. And yet you were with him all through the night, the night the queen of Scots came home? You are here now to be with him?”

“Our employers are enemies.” His voice was without emotion; I could tell it was not because he did not feel emotion, but because he did not wish to show it. “We are not.”

“Did he tell you? I do not care who has the casket in the end. I only want to know who killed my husband, and to see the murderer hang.”

“He did not tell me,” Blaise Laurentin said. His strange bleached eyes were direct. Bryony, I thought. The devil’s turnip. Do not trust him.

He said, “You say he described the dagger correctly. Is this it?”

He took the dagger from his own belt and offered it to me, hilt first. It was plain steel with no jewels or ornamentation, the sort of ordinary blade one could buy at half a dozen shops in Edinburgh’s High Street.

“No,” I said. “That is not it.”

He put the dagger away. “Then neither he nor I is the man you are looking for,” he said. “I only wish I could give you what you want and take the casket home to Queen Catherine. She would reward me richly. I would be willing to share the reward, if gold interests you.”

“No,” I said. “Gold does not interest me.”

The next day Chastelard had his head struck off at the Mercat
Cross. They said he refused prayers from both the Catholic priest and the Protestant minister, and went to his death bravely, reading aloud from Pierre de Ronsard’s “Hymn to Death.”

When it is my time, Goddess, I beg you,

Do not leave me to linger long in sickness,

Tormented in my bed. No, if I must die,

Allow me to encounter you suddenly

Either for the honor of God,

Or in the service of my prince.

I was not there; I could not bear to witness another execution. The queen was not there, either, and this time Moray did not try to force her. Chastelard turned to face the house where we were staying, they said, and died with the queen’s name on his lips. But then, they said so many things. Most of them were lies.

It was the lies, though, that people remembered.

I
was out of favor and Nico was high in favor at court, and because of it we might have been living in different worlds. Once we were back at Holyrood I waited for him to approach me, because I had never yet told him about the dagger pattern I now remembered, or the fact that Chastelard had known what the dagger looked like. I wanted his ideas, his knowledge of the world. But he did not come. I wondered whether he had become the queen’s lover in truth, and was with her day and night. Finally I sent Jennet with a message. She returned to tell me the Earl of Moray in his enmity had set spies to watch me, and Nico was avoiding me to avoid any instance of publicly sinking me deeper than ever into the queen’s displeasure.

Courts. They glitter when you are outside. Inside, they can be ugly things.

“He says you must dress in my clothes,” Jennet said, “and go out to the bakeshop just as I do every Wednesday. He will ride out the night before, with a packet of letters for a French ship in the harbor at Leith. On his way back he will go secretly to the back door of the
bakeshop. It will work, Rinette. Finella the baker and I are friends, and I’ll speak a wee word in her ear.”

“Does he think it is really necessary? All this disguising and sneaking around?”

“Unless you want Moray telling the queen you’re Master de Clerac’s lover, or even worse, that you’re plotting some devilment with him, yes, it seems to be. For your sake and for his, too.”

So we did it all, just as he suggested, and on the following Wednesday I found myself sitting in the tiny, yeast-smelling kitchen of Finella MacBain’s bakeshop dressed in Jennet’s cap and apron. I felt ridiculous. When Nico de Clerac slipped in through the back door, dressed in dark blue silk and velvet-soft leather, with a sapphire clasp on his cap and kohl around his eyes, I felt more ridiculous still.

“Rinette,” he said.

I wanted to stare at him coldly. I wanted to fling hot words at him for his neglect. I wanted to jump to my feet and throw myself into his arms. Oh, I surprised myself with the contradictory things I wanted to do.

I think he read some of it in my face, because he said, “Forgive me. Please believe me when I say I have been trying to protect you.”

“Protect me from what? The queen’s jealousy?”

“I am not her lover, if that is what you mean.” There was a wry deepening at one corner of his mouth. “But for the moment I am her close adviser, and yes, she desires all of my attentions. I have vowed to support her, and it is a vow I cannot break.”

“A vow?” I said. It surprised me, and yet it did not surprise me. Had he told me about the vow before? When? Where? Why could I not remember? “Do you mean a religious vow? I thought you ran away from the abbey, Nico, before you actually became a monk.”

He hesitated. I could see him considering a light answer, considering it and rejecting it. Slowly he said, “Not a religious vow. It was a promise in blood, over true relics of Saint Louis, for a secular purpose.”

I was more and more bewildered. “To whom? What blood? What did you promise?”

“I cannot tell you any more, Rinette. I am telling you about the vow itself because it binds me to support the queen and remain in her favor, even when…even when I do not agree with her or do not want to support her.”

“That is why you have arranged this elaborate masquerade, then. Because the queen is angry with me, and will be angry with you if you see me. Not because Moray is watching you.”

“It is perfectly true that Moray is watching me,” he said. “He would happily use you to damage my credence with the queen.”

“You are all like children.” Much as I disliked and distrusted the court, I felt resentful at being outside the charmed circle of favorites. “Vows and plots and favors and disguises. A smart smacking would do you all good.”

He smiled. I held my mouth stiff at first, and then gave in and smiled back at him.

“Dangerous children,” he said. “I have missed you,
ma mie
.”

“I have missed you, too. I understand you are walking a very narrow path with the queen. It is just that there are things I have to tell you. Things I have learned.”

He sat down on the bench beside me. “Tell me,” he said. “Start with Chastelard.”

“For it to make sense, I have to start with the dreams.”

“Very well. The dreams, then.”

“When I was sick,” I said, “I dreamed it. Over and over, I think. The night Alexander was killed.”

He put his hand over mine, where it lay on the rough trestle table. “I am sorry,” he said. “You should not—”

“No,” I said. “It was good. It helped me remember things—things that were in my mind all along, but that I had forgotten.”

I saw the spark of interest in his eyes. He did not take his hand away. “What things?”

“The bell,” I said. “I remembered the bell, but I did not
understand what it was. Now I do—it was the bell for the third watch. Anyone who can account for himself at the time of the third watch that night cannot be the murderer.”

“You asked Moray about the time, in the queen’s supper room—that is one of the reasons he is so determined to have revenge on you. I wondered why.”

“The other thing is the dagger. Of course I saw it, but it happened so fast, and afterward…afterward Màiri came. When I dreamed it, it was as if it were happening very slowly, and so I could look at it carefully and remember what I saw.”

“You saw the jewel broken free.”

“Not only that. I saw the design. It was unusual, Nico, and it would be easy to identify even without the ruby. A golden falcon with ruby eyes and outspread wings. The assassin had his hand around the hilt, but the falcon’s head was clearly visible, and the design of the wings was engraved on the two halves of the guard.”

He was staring at me as if I had said something astonishing.

“I did see it,” I said. “It was not magic, the dream, just a way of remembering—”

“Can you draw it?”

I was taken aback. “I suppose I can. We can ask Mistress Finella if she has paper and ink.”

She did not, of course. She did have a stack of clean towels, however, and I spread one out flat on the table. With a piece of charcoal from the fireplace I tried to sketch the dagger as I remembered it. The lines smudged together and I could not make them represent what I had seen.

“I can see it so clearly.” I pushed the towel away, angry with myself and my clumsy fingers. “None of this looks right.”

“Let me try. I was trained to do lettering and illumination at Mont-Saint-Michel.”

He spread out a clean towel and lightly drew in the outline of a plain dagger. I was surprised at his skill.

“Now. Here, at the top of the hilt. Tell me exactly what the falcon’s head looked like.”

I told him. He sketched very lightly, and only when I was satisfied did he draw over the lines and shade in the hollows. The falcon’s head sprang to life before my eyes. He drew the two wings on the guard more confidently, adding some of the details before I even described them.

“You know the design,” I said. “Nico, have you seen a dagger like this before?”

He put the charcoal down and sat back, wiping his fingers with a clean towel. “Yes,” he said. “I have. Rinette, this tells me a great deal more about the assassin.”

I was mystified. “What?”

“Have you heard of the
Escadron Volant
—the Flying Squadron of Queen Catherine de Médicis?”

“Only in gossip. It is a group of beautiful women, is it not? Spies and seductresses who serve the Médicis queen?”

“It is that, yes, but there is more. There is said to be another arm of the
Escadron
, very secret, very dangerous: assassins. They also serve the queen as she requires them, but lately they have become more independent—an
Escadron Volant
assassin can sometimes be hired if a person has sufficient gold.”