Mary Gentle (62 page)

She gave me a look.

I am not stupid when it comes to the signals that a woman sends to a man. There have been the wives of complaisant courtiers, of absentee noblemen and soldiers; there have been courtesans. I am not a monk. She glared at me, so evidently not wanting to hear about this hypothetical nobleman’s son.

There is one way only to redeem myself in her eyes: that is to push her down where she is and make love to her on this cold cell floor. But this is not the right place. And, in all honesty, I am not the right man.

“In the future, you would be sorry to have indulged in a—momentary attraction, mademoiselle.”

Wiping a hand across my face, I recovered something of my composure. She looked at me, wordless.

“You will marry,” I said, “and if not to a young man who can love you as you deserve, then at least to one who will love you as much as he can. Mademoiselle, believe me—”

“He won’t marry me!”
she interrupted.

“Dariole—”

“You won’t, either.” Effortlessly, she stood. She looked down at me, a strange expression on her face. “He won’t. You won’t. You
can’t
. I’m already married. Why do you think I ran away from home at fourteen?”

“Tell me it all!” I demanded.

She put her hands behind her back, more of a boy than ever, and shook her head. They had made her leave her weapons in the guardroom; I should otherwise had made shift to have her at sword’s point, given the recalcitrant mule’s look on her face.

I got to my feet, which at least enabled me to over-top her, and approach a feeling of moral superiority.

“Mademoiselle—at the moment I face the Queen Regent of France, the Society of Jesus, and Robert Fludd who may
still
foresee my every future action: how can I be sure? Given that, do you think I will be outfaced by
you?
”

I expected tears, or anger, at being bullied.

She put her hands over her mouth and spluttered in what appeared to be profound amusement.

“Mademoiselle!”

She sobered. “I’ll tell you. If you tell me why you’ve got that.”

“That,” by her indication, was the ancient white scar on my shoulder, now covered by my sleeve again.

“That is not something for you, mademoiselle.”

I thought she might butt heads with me. Almost certainly, she will seek to strike a bargain: her secret for mine.

Married!
I thought. When I was fighting her, when I thought her a young man, she was…married.

It was not clear to me why I felt the fact so disturbing; I nonetheless did.

“It’s my cousin, Philippe.” Dariole spoke openly, and glanced around, choosing herself a sun-warmed part of the straw, and proceeded to sit down.

Cricking her neck back to look up at me, she added, “Not my favourite cousin, Sebastien—he’s older, and I like
him
almost as much as I like my brothers. Philippe’s always been a liar.”

“That is no recommendation in a husband, mademoiselle.”

Dariole’s laugh was everything I had hoped.

Quietly, I knelt down by her, so she should at least not have to stare up so far at me. She lifted her hand and smoothed an amount of hair back out of my eyes, as if she had no idea how my flesh leapt at her touch.

“Sebastien’s like you, he likes young men—although he does prefer them to have cocks,” she added. “Philippe…used to cry a lot. We used to fight when we were little, and he bawled like a bull-calf. I think my aunt wanted me as his husband, and him as my wife! I could have grown up to be matriarch of that family….”

“Married at fourteen?” I queried. Not
so
unusual.

“Mama’s dead, and Papa listens to my aunt.” She lifted her shoulder. “Philippe never did anything to me. Not even a consummation. I ran away before he woke up. I found out later, my brothers discovered where I went, and protected me. So I came to Paris. My brothers don’t have any influence there.”

Brutally, I said, “I thought perhaps you had been raped before, by a father, or an uncle, or a priest, or one of these brothers you mention. That you should run off from the protection of your home and father, merely because you
wished
to….”

All the laughter left her face. “Are you going to tell me it’s my fault? That I got raped
because
I…”

“No,” I said soberly. “I made you a hostage, for Fludd to use. Rape was not your fault. But you must surely have expected it, at some point?”

She sat still, utterly still, while a man might count to ten—

Dariole put her hands over her face and howled with laughter.

“Dariole….” At a loss, I protested, “I have no idea—”

“No—I don’t—suppose you do!”

She flopped on her back on the straw, arms flung wide, the sun patching her with gold. Her eyes gazed up at me, too much filled with affection. “I don’t know anyone else who would say things the way you do, messire!”

Bemused, I said nothing. Since she seemed to have put aside her pain, however briefly, I did not wish further to remind her of it.

“
That,
” she said, pointing at my shoulder. “I want to know, messire. Was it Sully who had you branded?”

“Sully? No, although he comes into the story. Mademoiselle, if you insist, I will tell you part of it. But not all. Only all that I
can
tell you.”

She rolled over onto her side in the straw, supporting her head on her hand and gazing at me. Her doublet and trunk-hose I saw now to be brown silk, covered over with a darker brown embroidery, and her ruff had Brussels lace on it. James Stuart must already be offering garments to his new favourite.
And of course she will let him dress her
.

Only so long as she doesn’t let him
un
dress her….

The sun on her dazzled me. She did not in the least seem to mind that she had straw on her doublet and in her bright hair.

I stood, beginning to pace the cell. “I will tell you, at least, how M. de Sully comes into this matter of my brand. And if the story is neither edifying nor entertaining—you have only yourself to blame, for asking, mademoiselle.”

“Once upon a time,” I began, “there was a boy, much as I have been speaking of: rich, spoilt, well-dressed. In age, eighteen or nineteen, say. And the son of a rich and noble father. Or, at any rate, a father well enough aware of his advantages in life that, when he was in command of Paris, he sold the city to King Henri of Navarre, back in ’94. This later resulted in him becoming a Marshal of France.

“That event came about some years after he had driven the young man out of his life, as being no son of his. The young man—myself—at eighteen or nineteen had been convicted of murdering another young man, and so branded.

“So, this young man of whom I speak, older and in his middle twenties, around this time came home from the wars in the Low Countries, and, as many homeless soldiers did, he turned to banditry to survive.

“Banditry is all the worse parts of war: no roof, no shelter against the weather, every man’s hand against you to hang you, and a life where you make your living by killing other, innocent, men. I was not yet old enough to know that the last was the worst part of what I did. I was blind to all except the comradeship of my band of men, and of the revenge I was having on my fellow-countrymen because I was no longer the son of a noble.

“Not long afterwards, I and most of my men were taken in an ambush. We were imprisoned, to be sent to the provincial capital and tried, and thereafter hanged. I, now a not-so-young man, was examined (since I had been shot in the breast), and the maid who was daughter to the prison governor liked the look of me, I being handsome, although not as handsome as I had been before suffering harsh life out of doors in the Low Countries.

“The maid took the shirt off the unconscious young man, and found him a branded criminal. If this were a romance, her love for the young criminal would have moved her to conceal the fact, and my love for her (assuming I woke to see and love her) would have redeemed me from my life of crime.

“This being no romance, the daughter of the prison governor went immediately to her father with the story, and her father decided that they might usefully spare the provincial capital the cost of a trial, and that I should be hanged immediately.

“I woke to this news as they dragged me out of my cell—a cell very like this one, mademoiselle—and put me before the gallows in the prison yard.

“I might have died, legally executed there and then, but for the fact that this chanced to be just before dinner. The governor decided that he (and his wife, and his daughters, of which he had several besides the one who tended me) might as well wait until after they had dined to have the entertainment of seeing the young man hang.

“Don’t mistake me, mademoiselle. If the murder for which I had originally been branded was a foolish young man’s act, the life I had lived after the war was evil. I had killed more than one innocent man who desired only to defend his property and goods. I was not a young man who particularly deserved to live.

“It was ironic, therefore, that a great nobleman should be passing on his way to St Germain, and broke his journey to dine with the prison governor. He saw the young man in the yard. The nobleman turned to the prison governor, and begged a favour of him—as if a man as powerful as he had ever any need to beg! He asked to see the young criminal privately for a while.

“I was returned to my cell. After what seemed a long time, the great nobleman came in, and sent away the guards, and spoke to me, stating that he thought he recognised the elder son of the Marshal de Brissac.

“Eventually I admitted that this was so. The nobleman asked if it were true that I had been a bandit; I admitted this, also. I admitted, freely, my poverty, and my life after my father disowned me.

“Then I threw myself on my belly, and clasped the great man’s shoes, and wept to have my life spared.

“If you think this was endearing, mademoiselle, re-consider the matter. I was a pitiful, revolting thing. You would have turned your head away in embarrassment.

I had, besides, no justice on my side. I was a murderer, more than once over.

“‘I see,’ the noble gentleman said, ‘that you are a man used to killing, and not particular in how you do it.’

“At this, I protested, although it was by then the truth.

“‘I have need of such a man,’ the great nobleman said. ‘You appear very different to when you were de Brissac’s son; it is likely no other man now will recognise you, which is to the good. I have need of a man who will aid me by not being too particular in what he does to achieve the necessities of France. And for guarantee of loyalty,’ he said, indicating the fleur-de-lis burned into my shoulder, ‘I have that. Since I can, at any time I wish, have you instantly hanged, with no questions asked.’

“At this, I embraced the great man’s knees, and blubbered my thanks; and that great gentleman—who was not fond of undignified displays of emotion—told me to clean myself up and be ready to be about the Duc’s business….”

“You tell it very well.” There was a half-smile on Mlle Dariole’s face as she looked up at me. “Is it true?”

“Every word,” I said. “Except that I must take the prison governor’s daughter on trust; I never saw her. Maignan told me of her, later in our acquaintance. He may have exaggerated.”

Now Dariole did smile.

“Did you
really
beg Sully? Did you grovel like that?”

“Oh, yes. I implored him very painfully….” I stooped, and seated myself beside her in the straw. “The embarrassing thing, mademoiselle, is that I believe I had no need.”

“No
need?
”

“He wanted a private murderer, to be sent against the King’s enemies. I believe he had taken the decision that I should live before he entered the cell.”

She snuffled a laugh into her fingers, and looked up at me with warm eyes. “I’d like to have seen it.”

“Yes, I dare say
you
would!”

“Messire Rochefort at his master’s feet….” She made pretence of examining me very closely. “Are you blushing again?”

“Not in the least!”

She sat back; I had difficulty in not reaching out and locking her in my arms.

“Did you think he
would
execute you? After that, I mean.”

I shrugged. “I was a disgraced gentleman, by law forbidden to wear the sword I carried; I was branded: I could be legally executed without necessity of a trial. It was not a matter often mentioned between us, unless he lost his temper, which he did but rarely.”

Dariole nodded to herself, as if that confirmed something she thought, but she did not say what it was. After a moment, she said, a little surprisingly to me, “You can always tell a story against yourself, messire….”

“All men of my age have their war-stories, mademoiselle. Mine are less glorious than you would perhaps hope.”

I found myself watching her face for boredom, impatience, lack of understanding; all those reactions with which the young greet the recitations of the old. Nothing showed in her face but physical tiredness and subversive mockery.