by Leda Swann
“Then go back to where you’ve come from and leave us be.”
A general murmur of assent greeted these words.
“I cannot go back. My betrothed wife is ill and I must bring her the medicines that will save her. I must go on.”
The crowd shuffled its feet uneasily, not knowing what to make of his claim. Then a man from the back spoke up. “There ain’t no medicines made by man that can save one who has the plague. It’s a curse sent from God to punish the wicked.”
“His wife deserves to die.”
“And he along with her.”
He did not like the turn the mutterings were taking, or the angry looks that were being directed his way. He set his spurs to his horse, intending to break his way through the crowd by sheer force.
His horse was too weary from the days of traveling to respond quickly. Before the pair of them could get through the mob, the villagers were upon him.
He saw the pitchfork being swung in his direction, but he could not escape it. A sensation of fire burst into his side as the outermost tine tore through his flesh. His horse screamed in pain, his powerful hooves lashing out at their attackers.
Many hands reached out to pull him out of his saddle. He hit the ground with a thud on his newly injured side. The world in front of him faded to gray and then went black, and he knew nothing more.
Six months later:
Sophie Delamanse rode slowly through the busy streets, taking in each new wonder with the wide open eyes of a stranger to the city. The street vendors calling their wares, the swaggering young bullies parading their strength, the merchants going about their business, all the hurly-burly of the most important city in all of France – she marveled at the cacophony of sights and sounds and smells that was Paris.
The crowds at once disturbed and elated her. She had lived alone in the deserted manor house in the Camargue all winter until she had become accustomed to the fearsome silence of solitude. In Paris, she need never be alone again.
A woman of the street called out to her from a dirty alley. She blushed and turned her head away before suddenly thinking better of her shyness and returning the woman’s saucy greeting with a polite tip of her plumed hat. She was a man now – the reincarnation of her brother, Gerard, who lay still in his shallow grave in the marshy swamps of the Camargue. She must remember her new self in all her dealings and bring honor to her brother’s name and to all her family. She would remember her love for her brother and her hatred for all those who had wronged them both, and they would make her strong.
During the long, cold months of winter she had brooded constantly on her brother’s death. Her guilt and despair had nigh destroyed her until she turned her pain and her guilt outwards and focussed her loathing on the enemy she could hate without destroying herself in the process - Count Lamotte.
For the first few weeks after her recovery she had waited for him to appear. He had promised her brother that he would care for her. Where, then, was he when she had most need of him?
Had he come to her then and saved her from the horror of spending the winter alone in a house of death, she would have welcomed him with open arms. She would nigh have welcomed the Devil himself, if he had come to rescue her.
Lamotte was her betrothed, she told herself over and over again as she huddled in front of the tiny fire she kept in the kitchen grate, eating her meager rations and trying to stop her teeth from chattering with cold. Surely when he heard of her plight, he would ride to her rescue. Gerard had had faith in him. She did not want to believe that the Count was so afeared of the plague that he would break a solemn oath to her brother.
The weeks passed by at a snail’s pace, until snow covered the ground, making travel impossible and utterly destroying her hope that he might come to her. She grew stronger in her solitude, but gradually she also grew more and more embittered against the man who might have saved her from this solitude but had not.
Lamotte had not come to claim her. As the snows of winter started to melt she had to face the miserable truth – that like a sniveling coward he had stayed away to save his own skin, leaving his comrade-in-arms and his betrothed wife to die a miserable death.
Were he ever to renew his suit, she would treat him with the derision he deserved as a false friend and a traitor to loyalty and honor. Lamotte: coward, traitor and false friend. How she wished to make him suffer as her family had suffered. How she hated him for being alive when all she loved were dead.
Lamotte. The very name sounded evil on her tongue. She could never wed him. She would sooner murder him and cut open his heart and throw it to the wolves.
Spring arrived at last, and with it the knowledge that another such winter would drive her mad. With spring came the news that Jean-Luc was dead, along with his father and much of their household. She had no grieving left in her, but she said a rosary for their souls so that they may rest in peace the sooner.
A handful of villagers had survived the plague. The most trustworthy of the survivors she made her steward, while she put into action the plan she had dreamed up at her lonely fireside. As Sophie, she had nothing left to live for – she would become a ward of Louis XIV and sign her destiny over to the whim of the King. She determined to remain Sophie no longer – instead, she would become her brother.
As Gerard, she would take control of her life. As Gerard, she would win the honor that should have been his. As Gerard she would live and as Gerard she would die.
Well she knew that she was a weaker, paler version of the proud Musketeer who had left Paris seven months ago to attend the betrothal and wedding of his twin sister. That would easily be explained away by the weeks of illness she had suffered and the months of recuperation she had had to undergo before she, in the guise of her brother, had recovered sufficiently to be deemed fit for active service once more.
She only hoped that those who had known Gerard intimately would not be able to detect the slight softening of her features and the unusual smoothness of her chin, untouched by any razor. With her hair cut short to curl around the nape of her neck, and wearing Gerard’s breeches and boots, she was an exact copy of her twin. She would defy even her mother to tell them apart from more than ten feet away.
Neither would she be discovered a woman by lack of skill in the martial arts. She had spent her last few months wisely – practicing with Gerard’s sword until her arm ached with weariness and riding Seafoam until it seemed as though she and the horse shared one body and one will. She could ride now as well as her brother ever had. Her skill with the sword was as yet still rudimentary, but she would work on that.
Even if her future companions noticed the changes in her face or her bearing, she doubted they would ever guess at the truth - it was too preposterous to be believed. As far as the world knew, Sophie Delamanse was dead of the plague, and Gerard, after a lucky escape from the disease that had killed his entire family, was on his way back belatedly to rejoin his regiment.
Her brother had boarded with a widow in a respectable lodging house near the barracks. Sophie paid a street lad a couple of sous to guide her there. The boy led her through dark alleys and dirty streets, stopping in front of a shabby tenement with a ragged sign proclaiming rooms to let within.
The widow looked sideways at Sophie when she rapped at the door, travel sore and weary from her days on the road. “So, you’ve come back then.” She bared her gums in a attempt at a smile. “I heard you was dead but I guess I heard wrong. You’re in luck. I’ve got a room free if you want to take it. The gentleman who was in there hanged hisself the other week. Still, I don’t ‘spose you’ll worry about that, having just come from the parts where there’s the plague and all.”
The room was in the garret, up four flights of stairs. The heat up at the top of the house was stifling, the open wooden shutters did nothing to move the air, and there was barely enough room for the small bed and a dresser that were the room’s sole furnishings.
Tired and longing for a rest as she was, Sophie
looked at the pokey accommodation with distaste. “How much?”
The withered old crone named an exorbitant fee – nearly the whole of the recompense Sophie would receive from her duties as a Musketeer.
Sophie shook her head in disbelief. “For such a small room? With barely a window?”
“I’ll be charging you a mite extra coz you’ve come from the Camargue,” the old woman said, her beady eyes fixed relentlessly on Sophie’s face. “It’s not everyone who’ll take in those as have had the sickness. The other boarders don’t like it. It’s bad for business.”
The old woman had a point, Sophie was forced to concede. She might find it difficult to find another place to stay. But still she hesitated. Paying so much for her board would mean draining badly needed funds away from the family estate. She was reluctant to do that, but both she and Seafoam were close to collapse and needed to rest.
At her silence, the old woman relented slightly in her greed, fearful of losing a paying customer. “Ach, seeing as you’re an old friend, I’ll let you have it for a bit less.” She named a sum that Sophie could live with. “Payment in advance though,” she said, as she stuck out her skinny claw.
Sophie tipped a couple of livres into the outstretched hand. “Bring me some hot water and food.” She added a couple of sous. “And have your boy take my horse to the stables.” The old woman tucked the coins away in the pocket of her apron with a feral look in her eye. Sophie doubted her poor boy would see any of the coins for himself.
When the landlady had shuffled away again, Sophie sat down on her bed, the thin straw rustling beneath her. She was in Paris. She had found herself lodgings – meager though they were. She was going to be a Musketeer. No one had questioned her sex – as far as the world was concerned, she was a man. Maybe, just maybe, she would succeed in her mad scheme.
Her confidence had evaporated into heat and worry by the time the landlady returned carrying a small basin of barely lukewarm water for her to wash away the grime of travel, and a bowl of thin, watery-looking gruel.
She shut the door, pushed the dresser against it to be sure she was free from interruption, and washed as well as she could in the rapidly-cooling water. How could she ever pull off her masquerade when she was so obviously a woman? Would it not be evident by the way she walked and talked – even by the way she wore her clothes? She would be exposed in front of all of Gerard’s companions, and shame him for ever.
The gruel was edible, but little more than that. In her hunger, she wolfed it down anyway. The hard winter had robbed her of most of her reserves of body fat. She hoped the food at the barracks would be more appetizing than her landlady’s meager mush or she would grow thinner than ever. She had to build up her strength or she would easily be discovered.
The night was warm and the city air that crept in through the open casement window was heavy and putrid. She tossed and turned throughout the night, disturbed by the cloying heat and unfamiliar noises and smells of the city that surrounded her, dreaming of discovery and shame.
In the early hours of the morning she was wakened by the calls of the street-sellers peddling their wares. With a groan she rose, wrapped her breasts in a thick layer of linen strips, and covered them with her shirt, tucked into her leather breeches. The wrappings felt doubly uncomfortable and constricting in the thick, moist heat of the city but she was woman enough that she had to bind her breasts tightly to hide them. She would not allow her womanhood to be discovered through such an elementary mistake.
The barracks were close by the lodging house - in the very center of the heat and noise and dirt of the city. By the time she arrived there on foot, the perspiration was dripping down her neck and soaking into her clothes.
Men in the uniform of the King’s Guard hustled hither and thither, all seemingly engaged on errands of supreme importance. Sophie stood confused in the midst of the commotion, feeling lost and out of place, not knowing which way to turn.
She felt tears prick the back of her eyelids. Gerard would have known what to do and where to go.
Gerard was no longer there to help her. She was on her own. With all the resolution she could muster, she squared her shoulders and began to stride off in a random direction, hoping that she looked more purposeful and in control than she felt.
She was arrested in mid-step by the shout of a fellow Musketeer. “Gerard? Gerard, is that really you?”
Sophie stopped dead in her tracks and instinctively turned away from the voice. A critical part of her plan had been to avoid all Gerard’s old friends as much as possible, to lessen the chance of discovery. “What do you want?” She pitched her voice as low as she could, making it sound curt with impatience.
The Musketeer stopped short. “Gerard?” His voice was puzzled and hurt. “Where are you off to in such a confounded hurry? Have you no time to greet your friend?”
Sophie took in his appearance out of the corner of her eye. He was taller than average, certainly far taller than she was, and broader in the shoulders than most men. Despite his bulk, he wore the flared jacket of his uniform with an unstudied grace that she couldn’t help but envy, though he walked with a slight limp and noticeably favored one side above the other. His hair was a rich wheaten gold that curled around his shoulders and his thigh-high boots were gleaming with polish. She wondered which one of Gerard’s friends or acquaintances he was, but short of exposing herself by asking him, she had no way of knowing.
Whoever he was, he was well worth the looking at, did she ever have the liberty to look. She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped the toe of her boot on the ground. “I’m looking for the Captain. Have you seen him?”
The Musketeer gestured to the group of buildings on the far side of the courtyard. “Last I saw of him, he was giving the Captain of the foot soldiers an earful.”
Without another word, Sophie strode off in the direction he indicated and the Musketeer fell into step beside her. “I was sorry to hear about your loss. I grieved that I could be of no help to you.”
Sophie grunted. Even after all those months of solitude as she recovered her strength and taught herself how to fight, her loss rubbed raw against her spirit. She did not trust herself to speak of it.
“I knew how close you were to your sister, and how much you loved her.”
Her heart swelled with an anguished pride to hear herself so spoken of and to know that Gerard had confided his brotherly love to his comrade-in-arms. She had to clear her throat several times before she could speak. “We were twins. We had seldom been apart from each other. We were two, and now I am one. I feel as though a part of me is gone.”
“I, too, mourned her death. I was more than half in love with her already from the reports you had made of her. I had hoped to be your brother by now…”
Lamotte. Of course, such a handsome fellow had to be Lamotte – the author of her ruin. She stopped dead, and faced her enemy for the first time. “No matter,” she interrupted, stopping him in his tracks. “Sophie is dead and buried, and nothing can bring her back.”
Lamotte stood still, gazing at her with an earnest puzzlement. “You are not the man you used to be.” His voice was tinged with a sober melancholy. “The sickness has changed you in both mind and body.”
“I am the man I always was.” She shrugged her shoulders and began to walk away, the memory of her solitary winter in a house of death making her shudder. Lamotte had promised her brother he would take care of her, but he had broken his vow. How she hated him for that. “I had no time for cowards and scoundrels a year ago, just as I have no time for them now. Good day.”
The words had barely left her mouth when she felt a sudden prick in her belly.
The Count, moving quickly despite his limp, pressed the point of his sword uncomfortably hard against the leather of her jerkin. “No man, not even you, Gerard, calls me a coward. Draw your sword.”
So this was it, Sophie thought, as she moved back a step and drew her sword. Had she been cooler and more detached, sh
e would not have provoked him so readily. In the heat of the moment she had been overcome with her hatred of all that he stood for – the death of her brother and her loss of faith in humanity. Forgetting that she was now a man and her words would be construed as a deadly insult, she had given in to the temptation to taunt him.
Now they would fight. She had no illusions about her skill with the sword. She had done her best to learn on her own, but she was direly in need of an expert teacher. Unless she was lucky or he was a worse than usual swordsman, she would most likely die.
She had no fear of dying by his hand, only of dying without honor.
She focussed all her concentration on the sword in her fist. She would acquit herself well in this fight and avenge her family if she could. If she were unsuccessful, at least she would die in peace, knowing that she had done her best.
Gerard, this is for you, she screamed in her heart as she made the first lunge, which he deflected with a quick flick of his wrist.
He feinted and then lunged back at her. She knew that trick. Her brother had taught it to her when they were both still children. She twisted her body to one side, and the force of his blow cleaved only the empty air.
Backwards and forwards they went, now attacking, now defending, the clash of their swords drawing a crowd of the curious around them. Sophie was breathing hard and her sword arm was starting to tire. Lamotte, though his limp was more pronounced than ever and his face pinched with pain, had barely broken into a sweat.
She attacked once again. He parried her thrust, bowed awkwardly to the onlookers and was upright again, his sword at the ready, before Sophie could react.
The audience guffawed with laughter. He was ridiculing her lack of skill in front of their comrades.
“Are you ready to eat your words yet, boy?”
His mocking words made Sophie redouble her effort. He was baiting her, toying with her, as a cat played with a mouse. “Never.”