Mary Gentle (70 page)

Dariole’s body shuddered against mine. Pain and shock, yes; but most of it grief. Tears sheeted down her face in silence.

Saburo’s eyes shifted; I thought that he took in the dark blue of the waters, and the winds in the pines of the promontory. His gaze met mine.

“I understand, now, why I didn’t die when my lord Kobayakawa Hideaki did. I was left behind, to perform this one great task. Now I can die peacefully, and hope always to find a Nihon in which to be re-incarnated. Perhaps with Lord Hideaki’s spirit. One must be loyal to one’s lord, Rosh’-fu’.”

“I know.”

His tone altered, becoming harsh and practical. “I don’t want Furada dead here. Will just confuse matters. Take him away with you. Darioru, kill him when you’re far from Nihon. Go! Take him!”

The urgency in his tone got her up onto her feet. Swaying, and hunched over her bleeding arm, but up. She bobbed her head, as if the bow of the samurai had become automatic to her. Her voice bewildered, she said, “Good-bye, Saburo.”

The young woman hobbled across to the
hashagar
. I heard Saburo say something quietly to his officer. At the officer’s signal, the soldiers gathered around Dariole and Robert Fludd, shielding her from seeing the dying man beside me.

“Rosh’-fu’, you have good blade.” Saburo seized my wrist. “You know what duty of a second is?”

“I know enough to know I’m not worthy.” I took a deep breath. “And I know my blade isn’t sharp enough. If you desire this, give me yours.”

A smile broke out over his face, and he for one moment looked young, carefree, joyous.

“Better and better. Samurai beheaded by gaijin with own sword! Lord Tokugawa Hidetada
shit
.”

He held his hand out from his side.

I picked up his cattan-blade, heavy and beautiful in its balance and brightness. I saw him scent the grass and pines; listen to the voices, the wind, the waves.

His hand cut sharply down through the air.

B
lue sky and blue sea set together disorient the world.

I wondered, on the deck of the
Santa Theodora,
whether the sea rose far above my head, or the sky continued down under the ship. A week out of Chikuzen province and I stood watching the wet, blue backs of dolphins shining as they leaped, and could not tell whether or not they danced in the sky.

By the end of this first week, I accepted M. Saburo’s word for what he had done—accepted that this ship was not a trap.

Because I have seen him die for his belief.

Translucent and blue, the waters made it always worthwhile the crew dropping a line or two overboard while they sailed, pulling up brightly coloured fish which Gabriel, if not I, took much pleasure in eating. On occasion, through air-clear water, I saw rocks the colour of rubies and sulphur growing up towards the surface.

Messire Saburo had confidence enough to give his life because of what Caterina said will happen in three or four hundred years—so far away as to be unthinkable!

Leaning on the ship’s rail, looking down into the unpredictable water, I reflected on Robert Fludd and his calculations. Which are the same as Suor Caterina’s, in their origin.

Fludd, also, predicts the future of the world; half a millennium from today….

I have a decision to make.

Dariole stayed shut in the tiny cabin I had bribed the first mate into vacating for her; a wooden box barely bigger than the Earl of Salisbury’s coach on land. She said she slept. Certainly she spent her time curled in the box-bed built into the side of the hull. She pulled the doors closed; I could not tell how she stood the humidity and the dark.

More than one decision.

Steady winds moved us west. Salt stiffened hair and clothes. Damp heat made European ruffs (no matter how much starch put into them) droop and lose shape. The officers of the Portuguese ship continued to dress as if due at some diplomatic embassy; I kept to the clothing of the Japans, grateful in that it played a further part in isolating us.

Robert Fludd I did not shackle nor bind. Where might he go, in the infinite wastes of sea?

Prompt on that thought, I made certain that either Gabriel or I should be watching over him. There is always one escape for any man. And perhaps more than one, when a man truly sees what the future will be.

“You will pardon me my suspicions,” I remarked to Fludd, where he lay in the corner below-decks that stored our meagre belongings. “I had thought you defeated before, in London, and…well. You see the result of that.”

He did not move. Dim light showed me his shattered expression. His gaunt face seemed ten years older than it had on Hako Promontory. He had not spoken two words together since he saw Tanaka Saburo’s severed head on the once-white sand.

Ten years of mathematical work, all put at nought….

I watched the skies of the South China Sea and prayed to avoid the yellow-bruise clouds that presage storm. The Portuguese officers spoke of tuffoon, the non-European crew-members of taaîfung: a great wind of Heaven sudden and swift enough to leave not even oak-wood fragments on the surface if it should pass over the
Santa Theodora
; death coming for us as precipitously as ever it had been invited by Saburo.

Dariole did not speak.

Gabriel Santon, joining me in the middle parts of the ship on our fifteenth day from Nihon, said bluntly, “What do we do now, Raoul? Take this tame monkey back to the English King, like you said? You don’t think we’d get a better price in Paris—Rome, maybe?”

His sideways glance allowed me to know how much more there was to his question than the surface of it.

I said, “Fludd has predicted correctly. Where he didn’t, it was because of Caterina—and she did. You and I have no way to know about the far future.”

Gabriel grunted.

“But,” I said, “a man might extrapolate from the one to the other. Say that, because what is predicted close at hand is true, then—well, then, Saburo was no fool to die as he did for something afar off.”

Gabriel grunted again. “It’s not like we can do anything about it, Raoul. We’ll be lucky to get to Goa without being drowned like rats in a sewer.”

My first impulse, I realised with surprise, was to go and beat out of M. Fludd how safe our journey might be.

If I have come so far as to trust his knowledge—

“Leave me to think,” I said to Gabriel, and he walked away with a satisfied nod.

Knowledge is power, often. A spy knows that. Who better?

But knowledge is a killing matter, too, and a spy also knows that.

I cast my gaze up, looking at the cloth-slung masts where they diminished up into the infinite sky. So far, clear weather. But if a man could know what the ship would meet on the voyage….

“Would he not have an accountability?” I said softly, to hear the words spoken making the reality come home to me. “A responsibility, to his fellow passengers, to warn them of storms—or smooth the waters, if that was in his power?”

I am not, of late years, accustomed to think in these ways. I wished I might speak again with Tanaka Saburo. We could profitably discuss together that word of his, giri, and how he describes duty as “burden.”

He and I: both in the same position. And he has made his choice.

I closed my hands over the salt-drained wood of the ship’s rail, gazing at the horizon.

Since I woke in Paris and set out to kill King Henri, I have been at the beck and call of other men. No matter whether I have played my hand well or badly, the pack of cards has not been mine.

I have the knowledge of Doctor Robert Fludd’s skill, and the possession of the man himself. This card that I may play on the Duc de Sully’s behalf. And then, also…I do not know how I will do this, yet—but it is plain to me that I cannot turn my back and pretend I must leave the greater matter in the hands of kings and princes.

Kings, princes, ducs, comets.

Who else knows, and has the power to act, now, except I?

I shoved Robert Fludd brusquely across the deck of the
Santa Theodora,
and into the cabin ahead of me, ducking my head to avoid the beams.

If I am to do anything, I must first make sure that all the loose ends are tied.

Where she lay on her back in the box-bed, Dariole startled up onto her elbow—onto her right arm—with a muffled exclamation.

“Mademoiselle. This is a doctor.”

Dariole stared at me, incredulous. “You think you should bring
that
anywhere near me?”

Robert Fludd snatched in his breath and spoke thinly. “You need not have trust in me. I’m certain Master Rochefort will kill me if you don’t heal, whether that stems from sabotage of your wound or mere Nature.”

Slowly, Dariole sat up. Her wounded left arm fell naturally into her lap, as if she were learning to cradle it there. “Whose idea was this?”

I gave her a nod of acknowledgement.

“And you think I’m going to let him near any wound of mine!”

Robert Fludd frowned. “I swore the physician’s oath.”

“Does that have anything in it about having women raped?” Dariole kept her eyes on me, although she spoke to him. “Or kicking men in the stones, if it comes to that?”

Fludd’s face coloured. I should as soon not have been reminded myself. He gazed at her for a long moment, glanced at me, and then stared down fixedly at the knots in the oak planks of the deck.

The rhythmic creak of the ship filled the silence.

“You’re right.” Fludd broke the quiet. “I chose to ignore my oath. All the remorse in the world won’t change what happened to you, Mistress Dariole.”

Dariole’s voice was cold. “That’s right.”

She rested back tailor-fashion in the box-bed, shifting with the movement of the vessel, her spine against the hull. She looked at the English physician, finally, acknowledging his presence. “Why
are
you here?”

He shrugged and spoke with what I thought was honesty.

“I prayed, when I began this, that I was right. That even if I was damned by what I had to do, that I could save the others. But—the Unborn are not here, are they, Mistress Dariole? One day they’ll be as much flesh as you are. One day we, and all this, will be dust in a grave. But this is this day, and you are alive—and hurt. Of all I’ve done, I regret your suffering the most.”

Dariole looked flatly disbelieving. “Why me?”

I saw him pull back his shoulders, straightening up in rigid pride. “Because you had no part in this except suffering. I pity you, Mistress Dariole, as blameless—”

Dariole laughed.

I winced at the depth of cynicism in the sound of it.

Not enough light fell from the unshuttered glass casements of the cabin into the enclosed bed to make her expression clear. Dariole leaned forward, her face becoming more than an unfocused blob. She stared levelly at me.

“Messire, what happened in London wasn’t my fault. Maybe. I’ll give you that. But nobody made me kill Saburo.”

She jerked herself clumsily forward to the wooden edge of the bed, the arm evidently paining her. She stabbed a finger at Robert Fludd.

“
You
didn’t make me the person who’d go straight through Saburo to get to you. That was me. All me.”

“Saburo desired it,” I said shortly.

Dariole shifted her gaze from Fludd, looking up. “He was my friend!”

“And now you have arrived at the time in life when you have killed not only enemies and casual attackers, but also a friend. What did you think it would mean, mademoiselle, when you took up the sword? Did you think revenge would be unmitigated good?”

Her eyes closed for a moment. Her face shone tired and white in the gloom. I wished I had cut my tongue out rather than spoken so to her. “Dariole, understand it or not: Messire Saburo desired to die. You gave him what he wanted.”

Tears showed in her eyes as she opened them again; glimmering in the tenebrous light. She rubbed the heel of her hand against her eye-socket.

“I know…. You’re right, messire.” Dariole shook her head: defiant. “I didn’t want to murder him, and I could hate him for that—Saburo, I mean. And I don’t want to. Because
I
did it. Not him.”

There was nothing else I might do other than put my hand out and touch her cheek.

She did not pull back. Her skin felt warm and damp with sleep-sweat. And also somewhat of a fever about her, I judged.

Determined, resting my hand heavily down on the shoulder of the silent physician, I said, “You will let this man treat you, mademoiselle. None of Saburo’s people would countenance seppuku by neglect.”

Dariole’s shoulders hunched. She looked smaller, more alone, seated in the enclosed bed. “But—
Fludd?
”

“There’s no European doctor within a thousand miles that we may use. And besides, mademoiselle, he is here and he is alive—and I intend to have it continue so.”

Fludd bit at his thin lip, absent in thought, for all that Dariole looked at him with apprehensiveness in her face, and quiet murder.

She said, “You do, do you?”

I did not react to her challenge, signalling to Fludd.

He said, “Show me your wound.”

At that hint of the authority of the physician, she reached up, single handed, and pulled undone the tie on her shitage-undershirt.

Knowing what would be the response if I offered help, I contained myself in patience, shifting with the movement of the ship. When she attempted to shuck kimono and shitage down in one I did move forward to the box-bed, loosening her obi, and easing both sleeves together down her left arm. Better I do it than he.

The crumpled cloth falling into her lap, although still held in place by her obi, did not conceal the pale curve of her shoulder and the swell of the top of her left breast. Seeing her naked flesh, I thought,
I wish I could desire you as I do when half-waking from sleep at night.

For once, my gaze was not fixed there. She ripped the dressing off her forearm. Yards of cotton, wet with yellow fluid. I could only stare. Angry scar, swollen flesh: everything from the elbow down misshapen, red, white, weeping.
She is nowhere near as healed as she has pretended!

I managed not to look away. “Can you move your hand?”

The merest twitch of movement in her fingers accompanied the satirical look she gave me. “I thought he was the doctor?”

Robert Fludd reached out. I let my hand stay on my dagger hilt. She permitted him to take the fingers of her cold, unused hand, and lift up her arm, flexing it at the elbow. He pushed very gently against the black-edged crevasse in her flesh, that ran from below her elbow, halfway to her wrist.

I saw fear in her gaze, but I doubted it was of Fludd. Of being crippled from this her seventeenth year onwards, perhaps. She watched him with a keen and absolute hate, that grew over the minutes that he examined her.

Fludd rested her arm down in her lap with surprising gentleness. “Fetch me a bucket of water, from over the side of the ship. I need to wash out the wound. Mistress Dariole, I warn you: this will hurt you.”