Mary Gentle Read Online Free PDF

beyond the stuck wagons.
    Of Henri’s two coachmen, one shoved his way into the crowd, bitterly complaining and waving his hands at the cart-drivers; the other bent over to re-tie his garter. It was a bottle-green strip of silk, none too clean; I remember it to this day.
    The horsemen-outriders will suffice to take Ravaillac, I thought, looking to see where they rode behind the King’s carriage.
    One of them caught my eye.
    There are times when it is no advantage to be the tallest man in the room or the street. The rider on the bay, one of d’Epernon’s men whom I knew slightly from Zaton’s, pushed himself through the crowds and pulled up beside me, his mount’s hooves sounding both hollow and solid on the spilled grain, muck, and litter of the street.
    “M. Rochefort!” De Vernyes gazed down. “Did M. the Duke send you out to meet his Majesty? Can you help shift these peasants? ”
    I am used to controlling my expression. I thought my face showed nothing of the shock that coursed through me at being addressed in front of M. Ravaillac by my own name—and at being told that it was my master the King desired to visit.
    “Don’t look like that.” The rider leaned on his saddle and grinned at me. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. Unless Sully has had his hand in the till. No, it was a joke, Messire Spaniard; don’t draw! Help me get this damn coach on the way to the Arsenal again.”
    I realised abruptly that François Ravaillac was not beside me: that was why d’Epernon’s man did not react to his presence.
    Where the hell is the man! I swore, while making some anodyne remark; and Montbazon screamed like a girl.
    Movement took my eye.
    Ravaillac stood on the risen wheel of the coach.
    His hand went up, arched down; went up again—and a fine, perfect arc of droplets went through the air. Droplets of blood. They have to be, I thought, dazed. Dear good God: he has actually hit the King!
    Ravaillac’s fist around the handle of the knife punched down twice more; d’Epernon threw himself across the King’s body; Ravaillac stood down off the coach’s rear wheel, hands at his sides, as if all his energy had drained out of him.
    I had a second to look at d’Epernon, and think that this corpulent middle-aged gentleman who is my master’s enemy had courage, even if he had begun his court career as one of Henri III’s catamites.
    François Ravaillac looked across at me from between Epernon and Laverdin, and said in a calm questioning tone, “M. Belliard?”
    He should have failed! my mind protested as I stared at the body in the coach, as La Force threw a cloak over Henri’s face. How could something this casual succeed?
    I felt as winded as a man thrown from a horse. Henri’s men were supposed to take Ravaillac before he got anywhere near the King. If they were inefficient, I would be standing next to François Ravaillac, and I would kill the man myself.
    Under the coach, the filthy street gleamed with liquid that pattered down and ran between the cobbles and into the kennel. Blood rushing in a slaughterhouse stream.
    That is not a casual injury. I stared. If Ravaillac were killed in the attack, one could bluff. Or if the crowd battered him to death. But he’s taken; he will be interrogated; he will break. I can be proved to have been in his company .
    And the King was on his way to see Sully: Dear God! What more could the Queen ask for? Henri assassinated on his way to ask the Duc about supposed accusations of financial malfeasance!
    Squealing and screeching like the swine of Gehenna, young weaners fled every which way through the crowds, forcing men back, spooking horses. In the same moment, d’Epernon screamed at the coachman to turn the cart and ride for the palace and the doctors, Laverdin took tighter hold of François Ravaillac, and I turned and shoved my way brutally out of the packed street, into the gateway of the Cimetière des Innocents.
    Marie de Medici is at the Louvre!
    There with the