Mary Gentle (37 page)

Saburo’s mouth spread in a wide grin.

“I might go. I’m called kami. At court. ‘King James’s Demon.’ Rosh’-fu’, I make friends with the great ladies of the court. Maybe I get one to take me inside Tower some time soon?”

“If Fludd’s men know me by sight, they know you.” I shrugged. “And you have no more good reason to pay sight-seeing visits than I, monsieur.”

Saburo grunted, frustrated. “
Not
good.”

That left three days. I took the first of them to question actors behind-scenes at Edward Alleyne’s—or rather, Robert Fludd’s—Rose Theatre. Albeit I thought any man likely to know of Dariole’s location would be a man under Fludd’s control, and so of no use to me. One cannot ignore such chores.

The red-headed and red-faced actor Alleyne, out of retirement, as it seemed, and enticed by further fame into this lunatic’s plan, spoke much of the last monarch’s reign. I bought ale and listened to interminable stories of triumphal appearances, stars cheated of their roles by other actors, and the occasional devil on-stage in Master Marlowe’s
Faust
. His fellow actors were no more informative. Only from Aemilia Lanier did I get a frosty comment about Mlle Dariole.

“She brought it upon herself.” Lanier, sitting at the side of the stage with a writing desk on her lap, did not look at me, but pointed with the tip of her quill.

I picked out a young man on the stage, discussing something with Ned Alleyne in a hearty manner. A young man who was, I saw, no more a young man than Mlle Dariole.

“As with Mistress Mary Frith,” Lanier remarked. “‘Captain’ Moll Cut-purse. They had Moll in her shift at Paul’s Cross, proclaiming penitence for dressing in man’s clothes. It seems to me, monsieur, that your Mistress Dariole would not be so repentant.”

The emphasis on
mistress
was slight enough that I might urbanely ignore it.

Mary Frith proved not to have heard anything of a French boy-girl at all. She went as far as to take her pipe from her mouth, blow out a coil of foul smoke, and wish me luck in finding her. But, I thought, with a touch of pique at having her own territory intruded upon.

The following day we began to search anew. I applied again in passing to Whitehall. Mr Secretary Cecil, it seemed, had also the business of his daughter due to be married in the third week of June. With the King preparing to leave court, Cecil busy, and the aldermen, burgesses, Mayor, and all men with money waiting to leave the summer city to the plague and the poor immediately that James went, court business was frantic.

I left, to observe, from a safe distance, the new Prince of Wales pay visits to the Tower. Henry Stuart kept company with Sir Walter de Ralegh, to the admiration of the younger set and the distaste of older courtiers. It galled me that this English prince might enter there, and I—I could walk on Bankside and watch the Tower downriver, the ancient stones burning under the sun, but I dared not go inside. Recklessness moved me to a hundred plans. Caution told me that, since another’s life might depend on them, they were none of them performable.

If she is even there. If she lives, they may have moved her to Wookey—or any other house in England!

I made it my business, in the next two days, and with the help of M. Saburo as lookout, to break into both of Robert Fludd’s houses; the one in Knight-Rider-by-Paul’s, and the one near Tooley Street. I left no trace of my passing in either.

“Find what?” Saburo demanded, when I dropped over the wall from the warehouse, and fell into step beside him as we walked back towards Long-Southwark.

“Find nothing. As before.” Impatience had not prevented me studying all the thirty books Fludd kept in his Southwark house, but the marginal notes—mostly in figures—looked mathematical, not cipher as I was used to. My eyes ached with the strain of his vanishingly small handwriting. There had been nothing to show if Mlle Dariole had ever been brought to either of the houses.

Saburo sniffed the air loudly. I had chosen the hour of four in the afternoon for my burglary, it seeming inherently less suspicious. There were Ordinaries serving meat and drink on London-bridge. The samurai made an expression of disgust, as if what he smelled roasting did not please him.

“Your vow should have been not to
eat
until you see James,” I said, taking my mind from my difficulties with gentle raillery. “That would have been easier, monsieur. Death of God! but I’ll be damned if I’ve seen you eat anything but bread and peasant root-crops.”

Saburo pointed at St Mary Overy church, close by London-bridge. “Better than being cannibal, in temples!”

“Cannibal?”

“Was told again, at court, this day. Your Great Kami changes to flesh. Then you
eat
him. Barbarians!”

Even with a sidelong glance at his sloe-eyes, I could not tell if the stocky man were teasing or solemn. Either way, I thought, I would allow some other hapless priest of James’s court to set him right about transubstantiation. I laughed, caught off-guard—and the constant calculation returned, pushing itself into my mind again:

Now it is the ninth of the month; she has been missing…in all: fifteen days.

If she still lives. If no man cracked her over the skull that day, and dropped her body into the river.

From time to time, I would unfold the paper that the parish priest had passed to me, and read over Fludd’s handwriting.
“She has been hurt….”
the crease all but obliterated the word
hurt
. I know, from experience, that it is not so easy to subdue a man if you are unwilling to kill or injure him in the process. I did not think Northumberland’s men Luke and John had the look of expert professional thief-takers.

Fifteen days. Time enough to have recovered from a moderate beating; time enough to die of a high chest-thrust with a rapier.

I found myself walking with my left hand down on my hanger, fingers curled under my scabbard, as if I steadied the blade ready to draw.
No duel with bated weapons could satisfy this impatience.

“I’m for Whitehall,” I said shortly. “I judge this the earliest we may get audience.”

Saburo moved towards the steps at the side of the bridge, lifting up a hand and signalling imperiously for a water-boat. “We’re go to Seso-sama?”

I nodded. “You are about to discover why ‘gentlemen-in-waiting’ are called so….”

Saburo spoke no words while we were rowed, painfully slowly, against the tide, up the curve of the river. Not until we reached the palace did any man of us speak, and then it was the water-boatman.

“Pardon me, master.” The man, who I had caught staring at me on our journey, shipped his oars, and fumbled in his leather jerkin. “If you’re a Master Rochefort…”

“—You will have a letter for me,” I completed, sharply, before he could. I took the boatman’s folded, wax-sealed missive, and stepped ashore after giving him a shilling.

“Furada say?” Saburo demanded.

“‘You have not leisure to wait: you must be on the Somerset road by dawn.’” I crumpled the paper, and thrust it in my purse. “I believe, monsieur, that Doctor-Astrologer Fludd begins to annoy me….”

We entered Whitehall-palace. In one large courtyard, I by fortune found a great crowd of petitioners, secretaries, and hangers-on. That moved me to think we should not waste our time waiting. By the time that a movement went through the press of people, some time later, I managed by dint of my greater height to look over their heads and see Mr Secretary Cecil—on his way to or from absence at Hatfield—passing by.

I caught his eye; he spoke in the ear of one of his gentlemen-in-waiting; Saburo and I were brought inside as discreetly as ever M. le Duc’s secretaries managed at the Arsenal.

There, we waited again.

Late Wednesday, with the light going and waxen candles being lit in their hundreds, Whitehall-palace seemed all a medieval maze of corridors, rooms, halls, and staircases. This by no means helped me keep my bearings when Mr Secretary finally appeared, and beckoned myself and M. Saburo to walk besides him and talk.

I have known nobles at home who prefer to transact their business this way, as if holding a casual conversation between here and there. I did not suppose Cecil to be casual about anything very much.

Removing my hat, I said, “I apologise for seeking you urgently, milord. Doctor Fludd has had another message delivered. He sends to say he desires me in Somerset as soon as I may travel there.”

Cecil seemed unmoved. I supposed him to have agents about the court who would tell him that the water-boatman we hired had been observed delivering a message.

“Then you must go—although I wish I might have brought you first to speak with King James…. You have scouted the ground?” Cecil enquired, looking up at me, and I dare say putting a crick in his neck.

“Yes, milord. There are caverns enough to hide a troop of your armed men, some eight miles north of this Wookey. They may be brought south immediately before need of them arises. For Wookey Hole cave itself, there are two exits, and if you wish to control the numbers of men who will come in and out of the caves, you may easily brick up some of the passages. The first large cavern might have been made by God’s hand for feasting and masqueing.”

“Master Robert Fludd will be pleased with you,” Cecil observed. Before I could respond, he continued. “You think this plan should go forward, Master Rochefort?”

I shrugged elegantly as I walked. I am not fond of being invited to commit myself. “If you want to test the loyalty of your Prince to his father: yes. If you desire to find evidence condemning the Lord Northumberland: yes.”

“The King’s safety can be assured?”

“Not made completely sure.” I gazed down at the small man, not able to resist giving my professional opinion. “You speak of letting a dagger in through your measures for security. But, you will know who the assassin will be, and you will have armed gentlemen and troopers present. However, milord, one might say that
any
risk to a king is too great.”

He gave me a sardonic look.

I stood back, so that the English Secretary of State might precede me through an elaborate door—Saburo mirroring me—and let one stride bring me up with Cecil again.

I took a breath. “Milord, here is something you may not yet know. The reason Monsieur Dariole is missing is that he has been kidnapped. The conspirators are now attempting to control my actions by threatening to kill him. Among my other reasons for coming here, milord, I wish also to seek your help in finding him and preserving his life.”

Mr Secretary Cecil gazed up at me, gravely. “His life? I had understood the young man to be a young woman. Or does this come as news, Master Rochefort?”

I sighed, aware of Saburo’s silent amusement. “No, milord.”

Cecil’s worn spaniel-face briefly showed lines of cruelty, or perhaps only determination. “I did not imagine so.”

“She is not my whore, milord.”

We passed through a small antechamber, where Cecil waved his hand irritably at the few other courtiers present. They bowed and left, to a man.

“Will you tell me she is your…younger sister, perhaps? Or your natural daughter?”

I reminded myself that Robert Cecil is not only English Secretary of State, but a head and a half shorter than myself; that it would be something less than honourable to knock him head over heels down the chambers of Whitehall.

“Neither daughter nor sister, milord.” I kept my voice even. “She is an associate, a witness in affairs of my own back in Paris, and…a responsibility of mine.”

It irked me to walk, respectfully bare-headed, beside King James’s cynical dwarf, and have some conception of how amused he must be, even if he showed nothing of it.

“Pardon me, milord.” I bit back any sign of temper. “I come back from Somerset, I find Fludd gone, his house shut up, and Dariole taken, and now myself instructed by letter—”

“And you come here? To me?”

“Fludd knows we’ve met, milord. He won’t expect me to break off relations.” I silently prayed, as a man prays over unlikely dice or cards, that this should be true.
Or Dariole is dead
.

Cecil exchanged a word with the guard on an inner door, and returned to our conversation, a thoughtful frown on his long face.

“The house was shut up the day after you left London, Master Rochefort. It is not suspicious in itself. The plague grows hot. We shall have a bad summer. Many householders flee into the country, away from infection.”

“Has Fludd, milord?” If he should have a third house, in the provinces….

“Doctor Robert Fludd has, so far as I can tell, vanished.” Cecil’s expression was something between quizzical and high on his dignity.
Vanished from my spies and informers,
he meant. No man enjoys admitting that.

I threw chance dice. “Has he gone overseas? And Mademoiselle Dariole?”

“Conceivably. But no man has been found who saw them take a ship.” Mr Secretary put his thin arms about himself, pacing down the corridor. He nodded absently to M. Saburo as the guards looked queryingly at him.

“A slippery man, this Fludd,” Cecil said. “I distrust him. However, if he continues to send word to you by letter, we shall soon have him tracked.”

“A letter may be a great displayer of a man’s location.” I kept my expression from cynicism with an effort. “However,” I echoed him, “Mademoiselle Dariole is dead if I am seen to be watched.”