Mary Gentle Read Free Page A

must seem, convincingly to her men who watch me, to be arranging the murder of her husband, Henri, fourth of that name, otherwise Henri of Navarre, now King of France.
    The towel wiped over my face, leaving only the moustache and small point of beard that it is my custom to wear. I felt Gabriel taking the weight of my hair in his hands, searching out such few parasites as haunt lodgings like these. I am vain enough to keep my hair clean, and to wear it long in the fashion of the court, since there is, at forty, not a strand of grey in it—and a man must be vain about what he can.
    “Are you going to the Arsenal today?” Gabriel said idly, walking around in front of me with my cuffs and ruff in his hand. “Or is Monsieur the Duc at the Bastille now?”
    I struck hard, knocking the linen out of his hands, and following it with a backhand blow across his face.
    “What business of yours is it where the Duc de Sully is, little man!”
    Gabriel began to stoop, protesting that he meant no harm, and simultaneously grumbling under his breath. I stood up. For a moment apprehension caught my heartbeat and the pit of my stomach: Suppose I cannot save Gabriel? Suppose I cannot save the Duc?
    That I was afraid—I, Rochefort—made me angry.
    I had not been afraid twelve hours ago, following an anonymous message into the back alleys of the Les Halles district. That was a usual occurrence, given what I deal with, and the men who met me sensibly did not attempt to relieve me of my weapons. I came armed into the evening-dim tap-room of the tavern, bending to get under the door lintel, glanced at the man supposedly in charge of this meeting—and recognised, by the expensive cloak and her way of tapping her feet as she sat on the joint-stool, the Florentine woman, inefficiently disguised as a royal waiting-woman.
    I was tempted to say, “Good evening, your Majesty.” King Henri’s wife of ten years, Marie de Medici, might well be full of her own self-importance today, after having finally been crowned Queen. She had the coming war in Jülich-Cleves to thank for it; the King planning to be out of the country and so leaving her that authority.
    I supposed that after a decade of marriage to her husband without the title of Queen, she might celebrate this by harassing the agents of her enemies—and therefore had sent a message to me. The Duc my master is not the only man at court who is her enemy, but certainly the most powerful; men do not name the King without naming his friend Sully in the same breath.
    Dusk, and a drinking house in the district of Les Halles, is notoriously not a time and place to come without a sword, or a half-dozen armed men for preference. If it surprised me to see Queen Marie playing Haroun al Rachid and sneaking unknown among her subjects, it did not surprise me that the dingy, taper-stinking room had ten of her faction’s courtiers with swords and pistols at the doorways and windows. But the first sentence of the mask-wearing courtier who was evidently her mouthpiece made me snort a laugh out loud.
    “You must commit a murder for us, monsieur,” he said.
    This is beyond reason . I began, “Madame—”
    “Not ‘Madame.’” She spoke in a whisper, without raising the overhanging cloth of her hood, so that evidently I was supposed not to recognise her. “These are the orders of my masters; I am only a poor serving woman who brings them to you.”
    I have heard better lines in a play, and spoken much less stiltedly.
    “A murder?” Allowing myself the unexpected pleasure of honesty to royalty, I remarked, “In the last fifteen years, madame, I have rarely come across such a ramshackle conspiracy. I am to murder a man? And the Duc be blamed for it, I suppose?”
    A signal from her sent the mouthpiece and her armed men away to the room’s doors, just far enough not to overhear. She had not invited me to sit, so I folded my arms and gazed down at her—I commonly find myself the tallest man in the room,