by Leda Swann
He stripped his own wet gear off him as fast as he could with fingers he could scarcely feel. If anything, he was colder with them off.
Sophie was shivering in her blanket. He clasped her in his cold arms and threw his own blanket over the pair of them. “We’ll warm up faster this way.”
The ship climbed another swell and nose-dived over the side, making the bottom drop out of his stomach. He almost wished he was back in the water again as he retched salt water and bile on to the floor of the cabin at his feet. At least in the water he would be able to die in peace and with his dignity intact.
Sophie nudged him over to the side where a narrow bunk was set into the wall. “Lie down. You might feel better.”
They lay together on a narrow bunk in the cabin as the boat pitched and tossed its way over the channel. If anything, this cabin smelled worse than that of the other boat – of rotten fish and sweat and misery.
He had nothing left in his stomach to throw up but bile, but he could not stop his heaving.
His body began to tingle all over as if it were being pierced with a thousand pins. At least he was no longer numb with cold. He could feel his feet again, and the tips of his fingers.
Through the long hours of the passage, Sophie stayed glued to his side, warming his body with hers and keeping the blankets tucked around their bodies as he dozed and retched all the way to England.
Their clothes were drying stiff with salt by the time they set anchor off the coast of England and the owner of the boat came to rouse them. “We’re but a few hundred yards off the south coast. I daren’t go any further in daylight. The excise men know me a little too well for me to poke my nose in to shore any closer.”
Sophie shook some salt crystals from her damp jacket and pulled it over her shoulders. “You saved our lives. We are very grateful to you.”
He chuckled. “Ye paid me well enough to save your skins, so I reckon we’re even. Now, do you want to swim the last wee bit, or would you be wanting to buy me dinghy to row yourselves there.”
He never wanted to swim anywhere in his life again. He took a couple of gold pistoles out from the bag concealed next to his skin. “One gold pistole for your boat. Two if one of your men will row us to shore.”
A crafty look came into the fisherman’s eyes. “Can I keep the dinghy then, and row it back again?”
“You may do with it as you will. We shall have no further need of it.”
“Tom,” the fisherman called to one of the younger of the crew. “Row our passengers to shore and look sharp about it, me lad.”
Two more gold pistoles seemed little enough when set against Sophie’s life – not to mention his own as well. He poured a handful of pistoles on to his hand and gave them to the fisherman, who accepted them with delighted surprise. “The gold I gave you before was a fee. This is a reward that I give you out of gratitude. We owe you our lives.”
“Its been a pleasure doing business with you, Monsieur,” the fisherman said with a toothless grin. He doffed his cap deferentially as they climbed into the little dinghy and were rowed to shore.
Sophie wanted to scream with delight when they came across the first sign of life on the desolate coast of England they had landed upon. The stolid farmer at work in his field looked askance at their bare feet covered only with the tattered remnants of their stockings and their ruined finery, but when she explained in her halting English that they needed food and rest and new clothes, and were prepared to pay for them with good French gold, his face brightened considerably. He led them off over the fields to a farmhouse and left them with his wife, a bustling woman whose kitchen smelled of good broth and onions.
At the sight of the gold coin they offered her, she disappeared for a moment, returning with a selection of clean woolen undergarments and rough woolen clothes like those she and her husband wore.
Sophie pounced on the homespun dress with glee. The farmer’s wife gave her a bucket of cold water, with a bit of hot from the kettle thrown in, and she sluiced herself down out the back of the house, removing all the dried salt from her body. Wrapped in the clean woolen clothes, coarse and scratchy though they were, she felt reborn.
“To the King in the morning,” she said as they lay on a pallet in front of the kitchen fire that evening, toasting their whole bodies with warmth. She had never before appreciated a fire so well. Tossing and turning in the boat, huddling up to Lamotte for the scrap of warmth his body had afforded her, she had felt as if she would never be warm again. With the embers of the well-banked fire at one side of her, and Lamotte at the other holding her in his arms, she was baking in warmth. “And then our task is done.”
Lamotte plucked at the coarse woolen undergarments she was wearing for warmth and laughed. “We cannot go to the King as we are. The most lowly of his footmen would have us thrown out on the street as beggars and rogues. We will have to have some fresh clothes made first so we can appear in style.”
She did not like the thought of yet more delay. “Must we spend the time? We look like very sober farmers in this gear, honest and respectable. Surely he will listen to us.”
“Clothes maketh the man. If we look like farmers we will be treated as farmers. If we look like soldiers, we shall be treated that way, too.”
She was silent for a while, thinking of the truth in his words. When she was dressed as a Musketeer, Lamotte treated her as a Musketeer. Let her but once put on a dress, and her husband had treated her as a woman. He was not alone on this. Kings and their courts were notoriously prone to judge on appearances. “And if I look like a fine French lady?”
“Then you will be treated royally, as a fine French lady ought to be.”
She could not argue with this. She knew the truth of it only too well. “New clothes then, the best we can afford. We shall go to the court of the English King in style – as ambassadors, not as petitioners.”
“And when we have seen the King – what then?”
She did not know. She had purposely put off thinking about it until she was out of danger. She shrugged her shoulders and was silent.
“The King of France wanted to kill Gerard Delamanse. Gerard is now dead – he drowned in the sea between France and England. I think it would be wise for him to remain there.”
She had feared this, but had not wanted to accept it. She did not know what else she could do. “I can no longer be Gerard, then? I can no longer be a Musketeer?”
“You chose to give up your service to the King in favor of saving an innocent woman whom the King had declared a traitor. From that moment on, you ceased to be a Musketeer.”
She could not regret her decision. “I had to follow the path of honor.”
“If Gerard comes back to life again, I doubt not but that the King will have him killed. Sooner or later, you will not be able to escape your fate.”
She did not doubt that, either. The King of France was quite ruthless enough to have her murdered for the sake of revenge.
“It seems to me that you face a choice – death as Gerard or life as Sophie.”
She knew he spoke the truth, but she could not accept it. She would not accept it. She lay in silence in front of the fire, feeling the warmth seep into her bones.
There had to be another way. There just had to be. Somehow or other, she would find it.
Lamotte raised Sophie’s hand to his lips and kissed it. “I promised you new shoes if you married me. See how well I have kept my promise.”
She looked down at her feet, distaste wrinkling her nose. “You promised me new boots. These are high-heeled silk slippers. They do not count.”
“They are the same color as your eyes.”
“God forbid that I should ever have to fight in them. I would lose my balance and go sprawling head over heels.”
“Even sprawled out on the floor, you would be the most beautiful woman in the room.”
She pulled her hand away, feeling unaccountably vexed with his foolishness. “There’s no need to play the courtie
r with me. Save your meaningless flattery for when we have reached the side of the English King.”
“Even if King Louis has sent men to reach the ear of the English King first, he will be bound to listen to you. He is supposed to have an eye for a pretty face.”
She scowled. She wished he would not call her pretty in that mocking tone of voice. It made her feel like less of a woman than ever. “I do not care what he thinks of my looks. He may think me an old hag, for all I care. While I am in England, I am still a soldier on a mission, not a decoration.”
He patted her hand. “I know that, my dear wife, but King Charles of England does not.”
Dressed as they were in silks and satins, and bearing a message for the English King from his sister in France, they had little trouble securing an immediate audience.
King Charles of England beamed genially at Sophie as they were ushered into his presence. “A message from my dear sister, Henrietta?” he asked. “I’m sure that such a beautiful messenger can only carry a joyous message. Come, come, let me know what it is. I am all ears.”
Sophie looked nervously around her at the courtiers all crowding close around the King. She could not announce the imprisonment of the King’s sister to the whole English court. “Henrietta told me that it was for your ears alone,” she prevaricated.
The smile on the King’s face faded slightly. “She did? Come now, I am sure that everyone here will be as delighted as I am to hear her news.”
Sophie shuffled her feet. “May I not tell you in private the news from your sister, Sire?” she begged in her halting English. “I do not feel easy speaking before so many people.”
He chucked her under the chin. “Ah, I do believe our young French friend is shy of crowds. You do not need to be, my sweet. Your accent is quite charming.
“Come, Rochester and Saville, let us to our closet where we can hear the minx’s news in as much solitude as she could wish for. Some woman’s news it may be, that Henrietta would not have all the world know just yet.”
The King and his two chosen attendants led the way into a narrow room off the Great Hall. Sophie and Lamotte followed close behind.
“So, what is your news then?” the King asked, his face now devoid of any smile. “I trust I will find it worth the interruption.”
She did not mince her words now they were apart from the crowd. As soon as the door to the chamber was shut behind them, she spoke up loud and clear. “Your sister Henrietta, the Duchesse of Orleans has been imprisoned in the Bastille. Her husband, Philippe of Orleans, cannot free her. He sent me to ask you for your help.”
Chapter 10
One of the English lords took a step forward. “Is this some kind of a sick jest?”
Lamotte stepped forward in his turn, his face taut with rage. “My wife speaks true.”
The King tapped his fingernails against the arm of his chair. “You know this for a fact?”
“I arrested her myself on the orders of the French King and took her to the Bastille.”
“You? A woman?” The King looked incredulous and one of the English lords laughed out loud.
“I may be a woman, but I am also a Musketeer in the King’s Guard.”
“You are jesting.”
Sophie had been prepared for such an eventuality. She reached in her pocket for the small dagger she had placed there, withdrew it in a fluid movement and flung it with a sudden flick of her wrist. The dagger flew through the air, knocking off the curled wig of the doubting lord and pinning it to the wall behind him. There was a collective intake of breath from all present. The doubting lord’s face grew gray and he looked as if he were about to be sick. “I do not jest.”
She had been prepared for anger, but the King gave a snort of laughter instead. “I see not. Saville, retrieve your wig. The sight of your bald pate will give me palpitations.”
Saville pulled the blade out of his wig and placed his hairpiece firmly back on his head. He tested the sharpness of the dagger and tossed it back at Sophie with rather more force than he needed to. She grabbed it by the handle as it somersaulted through the air and tucked it back into her pocket again.
“She is even better with a bow and arrow.”
The King raised his eyebrows at Lamotte’s comment.
“Only passable with a sword as yet, though she is proving an apt student. She has more agility than most, she just needs to work on her strength more. And her concentration – she may lose sight of the end goal in the immediate press of the battle.”
The King looked long and hard at him before turning his attention back to Sophie. “So, what of my sister?”
“Monsieur, Philippe of Orleans, found her missing and suspected her arrest. His brother, King Louis, claimed she had run off with her lover, the Comte de Guiche.”
The King nodded. “I had heard rumors that little Hetty had found a man to console her. I can hardly blame her for indulging in what I so enjoy myself, especially with the husband she has. Pah – he is only half a man.”
“Monsieur did not believe that she would run off without telling him. They are fond of each other, though not in the usual manner of married couples, I do believe.”
Rochester chortled. “You’re in England now. You’ve no need to be so damned tactful. Philippe of Orleans is well-known as a buggerer of young boys.”
“Monsieur asked me to come to you. He knew you would help her if you could.”
“Why did he come to you? Because you were a woman and would take pity on his wife?”
Sophie thought of Monsieur’s hand on her knee and felt the tips of her ears burning. “Somehow or another he found out that I had arrested her and so he sought me out. He does not know that I am a woman.”
Rochester burst out laughing at her confusion and even Saville broke into a grin. “I can see how Monsieur would find it difficult to resist you in your guise as a Musketeer. You would make a very pretty boy. How mortified he would be, though, were he ever to find out he was trying to seduce a woman.”
The King ignored his councilor. “So why did you agree to come?”
Her sense of honor and her sense of pity, she supposed, and because she could not bear to see another woman hurt for protecting the man she loved. “He asked me to save her on my honor as a soldier. I accepted the mission because I am a woman.”
Rochester turned to Lamotte. “You are the husband of this delightful Amazon?”
Lamotte bowed. “I have that honor.”
“You came along to guard her on the way?”
“Not at all. King Louis was not happy when his spies discovered her mission. He sent me to stop her by any means possible.” He took Sophie’s hand in his and squeezed it to give her reassurance. “He would have me murder her. Little did he guess that he had asked me to kill my own wife.”
“I take it that my French brother does not know you are a woman, either?”
Sophie shook her head. “Few know the truth of my sex. My husband here, and two of my sisters-in-arms.”
“You are not the only woman Musketeer in my French brother’s army?”
“There are three that I know of and maybe more.”
King Charles of England gave a great guffaw of laughter. “My French brother is guarded by women and he does not even know of it? The jest is too good to be believed.”
Sophie bowed her head. “What answer shall I carry back to Monsieur?”
The King lost his mirth all of a sudden. “Tell him that you have faithfully delivered your message. Poor, poor Hetty. I wish I had not agreed to the match. I will have to get her out of there by some means or another.”
Saville scratched his chin. “We can hardly declare war on our neighbor. France is too powerful, and the Scots would be sure to harass our northern border were we to go to war over the channel.”
“The Dutch might well join us,” Rochester suggested. “They have no love for our Catholic neighbors.”
Saville shook his head. “After the latest hostilities I would think not.
Their trading interests are diametrically opposed to ours. They would watch us batter ourselves to death against France and raise no finger to help us. Their intent would be only to take command of the trade routes when we are soundly beaten. Spain, maybe, would be interested in a war against France, for reasons of their own. That might not be the wisest course for us to take - an even stronger Spain would skew the balance of power too much in the continent. A later war against Spain would take the combined effort of all her neighbors…”
King Charles silenced them both with a wave of his bejeweled fingers. “There will be no war.”
Rochester made a noise of protest. “You cannot ignore the insult to a daughter of England.”
Even the phlegmatic Saville seemed disturbed. “The King of France has offered an insult to your own sister, to the sister of the King of England. He cannot be allowed to do so with impunity.”
The King rubbed the end of his nose. “I do not know yet of Henrietta’s imprisonment. My French brother has not informed me of the fact, so no insult can be taken over the matter. Even were I to go to war, Henrietta would long be dead ere the English army could reach Paris. No, that is not the answer - I do not need to go to war.”
Sophie gasped. Had her journey been all for nothing then? “So you will leave Madame Henrietta to languish in the Bastille?”
King Charles drew his brows together at her incautious words. “I will do no such thing. She is my sister and I will protect her. As King Louis has seen fit to imprison her by stealth, I shall see fit to rescue her by stealth.”
“You will bring her back to England?”
“I should never have agreed to the match with Philippe of Orleans. He is no husband at all for any woman – let alone a woman such as my sister. Let her but set foot back on good English soil, and I will get the Pope to annul her marriage to that buggering French fool. Then I shall find a good English husband for her, let my brother in France storm as he will.”
“She is in the Bastille. It is impregnable.”
“No fortress is impregnable for those who wish to escape and have skilled enough friends on the outside to help them. She has the will to escape, no doubt. All I need to do is send her the skill.”