The Flower Reader (49 page)

I tried to pull the dagger out of the table. I could not get hold of it properly. “What are you going to do?”

“I am going to find Laurentin, and kill him myself.”

It was only after he was gone that I remembered his promise to tell me something. Something I would not wish to hear. Something important.

“I
will be present when the provost questions Monsieur Laurentin,” the queen said. “It is a member of my own household, my Marianette, of whom he makes his accusations.”

“All the more reason for you not to be present, sister.” The Earl of Moray had slipped precipitously out of favor with the rise of Lord Darnley and the revelation of Nico’s parentage. Once again the wheel of fortune had turned; the queen did not need a bastard half brother when she had a tall, shining, fair-haired cavalier and a Guise half cousin to advise her.

“You have no official standing at the provost’s examination,” Moray persisted. “Your presence at this chirurgeon’s house could be construed as pressure to exonerate Mistress Rinette, should she be innocent or guilty.”

“I have no intention of going as myself.” The queen pirouetted around the room, showing off her perfect legs in watchet-green stockings, with paned trunk-hose, a matching green velvet doublet, and a soft russet-colored leather jerkin. With her hair pinned up under a jaunty feathered cap she made the most beautiful youth
imaginable. “I shall be Harry’s friend from France. Say you so, my love?”

“So I say.” Lord Darnley grinned at Moray, triumphant as a spoiled six-year-old. “And I must certainly be there—you can imagine how surprised I was when I learned Monsieur Laurentin had dragged himself to my very own doorstep, bleeding like a stuck boar, claiming Mistress Rinette attacked him all unprovoked.”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I can imagine how surprised you were.”

I was waiting by the door, plainly dressed in black camlet with narrow white ruffles at my throat and wrists. My head was covered by a linen headdress like a nun’s, with a sheer white veil, and my hands were bandaged. Mary Seton had done her best to trim the ruined remains of my hair; even so, without a head covering I looked like a shorn prisoner facing the sword.

“
Alors
, Marianette, we are all surprised!” The queen laughed, determined to make an adventure out of it all. “Monsieur Laurentin has it backward, no? It was he who attacked you, and it will do him no good to claim special friendship with Harry. Will it,
mon cher
?”

“Of course not,” Darnley said. “We met by chance in a wineshop or two, no more.”

“There, you see? And Monsieur Castelnau has disavowed any connection with him as a French agent, so he will not escape by that means. We shall sort this out with the provost, Marianette, and then proceed with your divorce. Although if Rannoch Hamilton is captured, the hangman will make you a widow quite quickly enough.”

“It cannot be too quickly for me, madame.”

“Indeed,” she said. “Nico,
mon cousin
, where are you? And Signor Davy? We shall make a very fine coterie of young gentlemen to meet the provost at the chirurgeon’s house. Marianette, go ahead, if you please. Brother, send two royal men-at-arms to accompany her. You yourself may attend or not, as you please.”

Moray’s expression was black as thunder. “I do not please,” he said.

B
LAISE
L
AURENTIN WAS STRETCHED PICTURESQUELY
on a bed set up in the front room of Master Robert Hendersoun’s house in the High Street. Master Robert, a chirurgeon in the occasional employ of the town council of Edinburgh, was best known for raising a dead woman from the grave, wherein she had lain for two days after having supposedly been strangled. After that, saving the life of Blaise Laurentin had surely been little more than child’s play.

The provost, Sir Archibald Douglas of Kilspindie, arrived attended by two bailies. He looked around at the crowd. The queen smiled winningly—she knew, of course, that he recognized her, but because of her costume he did not dare acknowledge her as queen. I could tell she liked the feeling, as if she were wearing a cloak of invisibility from an old
conte-de-fée
and because of it could do anything she liked.

Sir Archibald seated himself on a three-legged stool at the writing table provided. His bailies put out paper and ink and sand, and a pen for him to write his notes. When all was arranged to his satisfaction, he turned to the man lying on the bed.

“You are Master Blaise Laurentin?” he said. He spoke the French name with a pronounced Scots accent.

“I am,” Laurentin said. He was pale and there was a sheen of sweat on his face. His unshaven cheeks were grizzled with silver. His eyes were not quite focused; had the chirurgeon given him poppy syrup or nightshade for pain?

“Master Robert,” Sir Archibald said to the chirurgeon. “Would you detail this man’s wounds, if you please?”

“He has been stabbed three times,” Robert Hendersoun said. “Once, from the hip down to the groin, once again in the shoulder and upper chest, and once again in the side. The wounds could not be self-inflicted. The two things that saved his life are, first, that the attacker did not seem to have the strength to drive the weapon to its fullest depth, and, second, that the wounds were not so placed as to be fatal.”

“And what do you deduce from this?”

“That the attacker was a small man, or even a woman, and one without knowledge of how to kill with a knife.”

Blaise Laurentin smiled like a wounded badger. “Just as I have said. It was Madame Marina Leslie who attacked me, with no provocation.”

The provost turned to me. “What say you, mistress? Do you deny this charge?”

I stepped forward. “I do not deny it,” I said. “However, I wish to present a charge of my own. Monsieur Laurentin abducted me, with a clear intent to do me harm. I had no weapon, which I certainly would have had if I had intended harm to Monsieur Laurentin. Instead I managed to take hold of his own dagger, and stabbed him only to defend myself.”

The queen whispered in Darnley’s ear. He turned his head, stole a quick kiss on her lips—she pretended it was a great surprise—and whispered something to her in return.

The provost said, “Is this true, Master Laurentin? Did Mistress Rinette stab you with your own dagger?”

“She took it from me by trickery,” Laurentin said. His voice was slightly slurred but perfectly understandable. “It is a blade with a particular meaning for me, and I desire her to return it.”

I took another step forward and said, “And is this the dagger you say I took from you by trickery, Monsieur Laurentin?”

With the unbandaged tips of my fingers I reached in the embroidered pouch at my waist, drew out the dagger, and laid it carefully on the provost’s table. The feathered curves of outspread wings engraved on the guard shone gold in the morning light. In the falcon’s head there was only one jeweled red eye.

Excited, the queen bounced up and down on the balls of her neatly booted feet. I did not take my eyes off Blaise Laurentin. Was he weakened enough, drugged enough, to admit the truth?

The provost frowned. “Is that your dagger, Monsieur Laurentin?” he demanded sharply.

“Yes,” Laurentin said. He looked dizzy and sick and off his guard. “It is mine. Give it to me.”

The queen squealed with delight. Everyone turned to look at her.

“I think not,” I said. “You will notice, Sir Archibald, that one of the falcon’s ruby eyes is missing.”

“I see,” the provost said.

I reached up and pulled the chain of my silver locket over my head. Slowly, again using only the tips of my fingers, I opened the locket to display the small faceted ruby inside.

“I took this ruby from the terrible wound that killed my husband, Alexander Gordon of Glenlithie. You will see his blood is still upon it. Monsieur Nicolas de Clerac will stand witness to my discovery.”

“I so witness,” said Nico.

“You kept the dagger hidden,” I said to Blaise Laurentin. “You knew I had the ruby—you were hiding in the abbey at Holyrood when I found it, were you not? Monsieur de Clerac found your footprints in the dust.”

Blaise Laurentin said nothing. His eyes were fixed upon the dagger.

“You knew the missing ruby would identify your dagger as the weapon used to kill Alexander Gordon. So you concealed it, until you received another commission from the
Escadron Volant
and were required by the
Escadron
’s ritual practice to use it again.”

The room was so silent I could hear Laurentin’s labored breathing.

“You told Monsieur de Chastelard you killed my husband. He was a brother in the
Escadron Volant
, was he not? That is how he knew what the dagger looked like, and who had killed Alexander.”

All of a sudden everyone in the room began to talk at once.

Sir Archibald pounded his fist on his table. “Silence!” he cried. “Mistress Rinette, the murder of your husband is a wholly different matter, and to pursue it you will be required to bring a separate charge against Master Laurentin. In the meantime—”

“You cannot charge me, even if I did slit the Gordon boy’s throat.” Blaise Laurentin’s eyes had steadied and his whole expression had sharpened; he was realizing his mistake. He looked straight at the queen. No more cloak of invisibility for her.

“I am in the employ of Queen Catherine de Médicis,” Laurentin went on. “She will insist upon my safe return.”

“But you confess to this murder?” the queen said. “Marianette’s husband?”

“It was three years ago and more,” he said. “And it was a small thing—Alexander Gordon was a nobody,
un insignifiant
, who jumped himself up into matters he did not understand.”

“A small thing,” I said. I did not speak loudly, but every other sound in the room stopped. If I could have killed him with my voice alone I would have done it.
“Un insignifiant
.
”

“And Richard Wetheral?” It was Nico’s voice, silky and dangerous. “Was he also an insignificant one? Am I…” He reached up and pulled his own collar open, displaying the scar on his throat, up under his left ear. “Am I
un insignifiant
as well?”

“You are a murderer, Monsieur Laurentin,” the queen cried. “A murderer twice over, and you attempted to kill my cousin Monsieur de Clerac, all here on Scottish soil.”

Laurentin’s face had flushed, with fear or fury or outrage. His eyes looked like two ancient sun-bleached stones. He said, “If you attempt to charge or detain me in the matter of these deaths, Madame
la reine
, I will make public such secrets that you—”

A pistol shot exploded.

Blaise Laurentin’s face disappeared in a fusillade of blood and bone and brain. His body toppled over backward, off the pallet on the far side.

The queen screamed.

“You’ll play no man false again, Frenchman.” The figure of the man in the doorway was like a flat cutout in black paper, featureless with the light behind him. He threw the spent pistol aside and drew his sword.

The provost’s bailies were immobile with shock. The whole room might have been a painting, unmoving—the provost at his table, his pen in his hand, his mouth open; David Riccio and Lord Darnley on either side of the queen, short and tall, neither one with so much as a hand on the hilt of his blade. I stared at the spot where Blaise Laurentin’s face had been. Rannoch Hamilton’s sword—and yes, it was Rannoch Hamilton; he had taken a step into the room and the light had changed and he was recognizable now, however much his face might be contorted with hatred—his sword was the only thing moving. It was sweeping toward me, and it would lop off my head with a single blow. Nothing else moved. Nothing—

Another blade rang against Rannoch Hamilton’s blade. The angle was wrong and it did not stop the thrust entirely, but it deflected it. The room leaped into motion again, I stumbled back unhurt, and Nico de Clerac and Rannoch Hamilton faced off against each other in the center of the room, sword to sword.

“I’ve killed one Frenchman,” my husband said between his teeth. “I’ll gladly kill another. Stand aside.”

“You fool,” Nico said. He sounded as if he were making light conversation after supper. “The queen is in the room. Stand down.”