Free Mary Gentle by A Sundial in a Grave-161

the Arsenal, where I should be. The Duc: is he still there? Already in prison? Gone to the palace? Taken refuge elsewhere? Ridden out south for the home estates of Maximilien de Bethune, Baron Rosny, Duc de Sully?
    I know that in three months the Arsenal has sent three thousand pikes, muskets, and corselets east for the war; not to mention the hundred cannon. The cupboard is bare. But—all the same, I do not think the mob will have hanged him just yet. The King’s widow, though….
    “Messire Rochefort!” Dariole gave me the grin of a young man who has walked out of his lodgings with no more than the clothes on his back and the sword at his side, and I felt momentarily old. “Are we leaving Paris or what? And how?”
    His tone was provocative; on another day I would have drawn without a second thought. Today—today, I could abandon my spare horse and tack without a second thought, if that was the sacrifice that abandoning M. Dariole demanded.
    But I must not! I realised.
    If I could safely leave him as a distraction for any man suspicious of me, then I would do just that—Messire “Dariolet,” duelist, young nobleman, gambler, is just the sort of foolish young man who might plausibly have become involved in a conspiracy to kill his King. It would be pleasant to think of Dariole put to the question and tortured.
    But that is precisely the reason why I must not do it. He can connect M. Rochefort, the King’s death, and M. de Sully. So he must not stay in Paris to be interrogated—and he must not live.
    There are many quiet roads north and west of Paris, in which a young man might most regrettably be ambushed by bandits and left for dead .
    Barrels of wine stood out on street corners here, ready for the Queen’s celebrations tomorrow. Half of them had been broken into. I forced my horse between drunken, brawling men, aware of Dariole following behind me.
    Momentarily sheltered in a corner between two houses, I took the opportunity to wrench out my wax tablets from my purse and scribble on them with the stylus. I clapped the wooden covers to.
    “Here!” I thrust two livres and the tables at an older apprentice, where he stood up on an oak windowsill, peering over the heads of the crowd. “The Duc de Sully, at the Arsenal; now! He will give you twice this when you deliver.”
    He stared at me with bewildered, hesitant eyes. There was no time for more now: the press gave way again, and I spurred through the shouting crowds towards the Porte St Honoré.
    The noise of shrieks and shouts beat back from the masonry walls, arches, and towers. Visible over men’s heads, tall pikes jutted: Savoyards and Swiss mercenaries brought into the city for the upcoming war guarding the gate.
    The iron portcullis was still raised up.
    I saw the jagged spikes where it hung, under the top of the pointed stone arch. And civilians, arguing with the guards—but being passed through. No one has shut the city. Yet .
    Dariole nodded ahead, at men in slop-breeches and cuirasses, with heavy muskets leaning back on their shoulders, marching into the space in front of the Porte. “Think you’ll get past the gate? Want to put money on it?”
    I am Sully’s agent on the trail of the King’s assassins. Travelling incognito, because, if the King can be murdered, these assassins are evidently dangerous men. What could be less suspicious—for an hour or so more?
    Dariole chuckled too loudly for my liking in a crowd full of mourning. “If any spy’s thought about where he can run to, I’ll bet you have!”
    Recovering myself, and to lull his suspicions with familiar animosity, I snapped, “I am no common ‘spy!’ I am the agent of my patron the Duc.”
    “Bark, dog!”
    If anything was lacking to stir genuine animosity in me towards him, it was this: that I have, indeed, considered what way a man might leave
France
at need. Catholic Imperial Spain to the west; fanatical German Protestants to the east…. No wonder so many exiles from court