On My Lady's Honor (Secrets of the Musketeers Book 1)

by Leda Swann

  The Bastille loomed out of the night in front of them, gloomy and forbidding. Its walls were so high they reached almost to the clouds. Sophie shuddered as she looked at it. She could not imagine rescuing someone from this place of death and horror. It was indeed impregnable.

  Hugh was unaffected by her fears. He simply stood there and looked at it for some minutes without speaking, his chin on his hands as if deep in thought.

  Finally Sophie could stand it no longer. “Well?” she demanded in a whisper. “What do you think? Can you get her out?”

  His teeth gleamed white in the darkness. “Have faith, Madame. I have never failed yet.”

  “So, what will you do? How will you rescue her?”

  “Go to my chamber in the house of the delightful Widow Poussin, eat my supper, and sleep and think.”

  King Louis kneeled before her in the filth of the dungeon and took her hand in his. “Henrietta, I beg of you to stop this foolishness. Just one word from you and I can release you from this hellhole. Just one word and you will be a princess again, living in all the luxury that the might and wealth of France can acquire for you.”

  So, now he was trying to blame her for her imprisonment. Naturally, since he was the King, his actions had to be infallible, and all the blame had to lie with her. She had no patience for him or his deluded, self-seeking arguments. She would rather be left alone in the dark than listen to his nonsense any longer. “You could release me any time you pleased, if you had a mind to.”

  He got up from his uncomfortable perch on the floor and paced up and down her narrow cell. “Say you will be my mistress, the idol of my heart, and I will release you gladly.”

  She eyed the guard standing over by the door with interest. He was new to his post, younger than the others she had seen before, with a look of youthful fervor rather than the stolid cynicism of the older guards. He seemed to look on her with an eye of pity.

  She hated to think what she looked like after a fortnight in the Bastille with little food and no water for washing. She felt gaunt and thin already and her velvet dress, once so grand and gay, now hung on her weakened frame in dirty folds. She felt the grime of the prison cell in every pore of her body. What wouldn’t she give just to wash her hands, even just her fingertips, in a bowl of clean, sweetly-scented water?

  She did not even have a comb to brush her hair. She had always been so proud of her hair. Unlike other women, she had never had to spend hours with heated tongs and curling papers to give her coiffure a fashionable look. Her hair had always hung naturally in perfect corkscrew curls around her white neck. She had tried to comb it through with her fingers for the first few days she had been imprisoned, but the effort had made so little difference she had given it up. Her once prized hair now lay in matted tangles over her shoulders. Even if she were ever to get out of prison, it would never be the same again.

  With a little bit of luck, maybe she could turn her bedraggled state to her advantage. The young guard seemed to be her best chance yet of escaping this putrid dungeon.

  She waited for the King to leave with more impatience than usual. As self-absorbed as was his wont, he did not notice her distraction. He trod up and down her tiny cell, blathering on at her until she thought she would scream. “I have been waiting for many weeks for you to give up this foolishness. I am running out of patience, Henrietta.”

  “What do I care for your lack of patience?” she spat at him, suddenly sick unto death of the torment of his presence. “I care naught for you, you foolish old lecher. You disgust me. Even if I did not love the Comte de Guiche with all my heart, I would never take you to my bed.”

  The King stopped his ranting and looked at her as if seeing her face for the first time. “Beware the words you speak to your King. I am slow to anger, but when roused my ire is terrible to behold.”

  She laughed in his face. “What else can you do to me? You have torn me out of the arms of my lover, locked me up away from the sunlight and the air, and starved me half to death. What more can you do to me save take my life? Even death would be preferable to a life wasting away in this cell. Do your worst. I care not.”

  “That is your last word?”

  She spat at his feet. “That is my last word. I will die rather than become your lover.”

  The King shook his head as if he were truly saddened by her words. “I am sorry for it, Henrietta. I have ever loved you dearly and would have made you mistress of the world. If I cannot have you, then no one else shall either.” With these words he left and the guard with him, shooting home the bolts on the other side of the door behind him. One pair of feet clumped loudly down the stone corridor.

  Henrietta stood close to the door and sighed loudly. She would work on the youthful guard without delay. She feared her time was running out. “Ah me. How much is wrong with the world when a poor young woman is imprisoned in a freezing dungeon and fed on bread and water only for refusing to give in to the base desires of her King.”

  The sound of a faint cough came from the other side of the door – a mute signal that the guard had heard and understood her complaint though he dared not answer her.

  Henrietta put her arms around herself and hugged her tattered velvet dress close to her body with a smile. With any luck, her guard would have the religious fervor of the very young and have been disturbed by the corruption of the King. She only hoped that her first sally in her fight for her life had fallen on fertile ground.

  Ricard Lamotte bowed low before the King. “Gerard Delamanse is dead, Sire.” It was no lie he told. A stretching of the truth, mayhap, and an omission of certain rather pertinent facts, but not exactly a lie.

  “Where did you catch up with him? In France or England?”

  “He never reached England. He died in France.”

  The King drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “You are sure of this?”

  He thought of Sophie’s grief for her brother. Yes, he was sure that Gerard was dead. “As sure as I am of my own life, your Majesty.”

  The King nodded and fell silent. “You are a good soldier, Lamotte, and a loyal one.”

  Lamotte felt his insides cramp with guilt. He was a good soldier, and loyal to his sense of right, but these did not always coincide with the desires of his King. “Yes, Sire.”

  The King toyed with a heavy gold ring on his finger. “Would you also like to be a rich one?”

  “You have been royally munificent to my family already,” he murmured, feeling as though he were skirting a patch of quicksand that stood ready to swallow him whole if he made a false step.

  The King brushed his answer aside with a wave of one puffy hand, weighed down with rings laden with precious stones on every finger. “Pah, a county in Burgundy is nothing. No one lives there but farmers and villeins, rooting together like pigs in the stinking mud. Would you not rather have a post at court? A rich post that would keep you always at my side, in Paris?”

  Bleuch. He would rather hang himself from the rafters than become a sycophant at court, fawning over the King’s very word, and maneuvering others aside for the honor of wiping the royal arse or emptying the royal chamber pot of the royal shit. “I am already in your service as a member of your Guard, and ready to obey your every order. Command me as you will.” And I will obey you if it does not go against my conscience, he added to himself.

  The King tapped one finger up and down on the arm of the chair and cleared his throat several times.

  Lamoote waited, a sick feeling starting to grow in the pit of his stomach. Whatever task the King had for him, it was important enough for the King to offer him a coveted position in court. That in itself spoke eloquently of its seriousness.

  The King’s hesitation in giving voice to the task made him suspicious that the bribe might well be needed – that the task was onerous and unpleasant in the extreme.

  “I have heard some disturbing news.” The King’s voice was heavy when he finally opened his mouth to speak. “There is an Englishman come
to Paris.”

  He hoped against hope that the King was not referring to Hugh of Coventry. Surely Englishmen must come to Paris all the time. “Sire?”

  “A particular Englishman, a known spy in the pay of my English cousin, Charles II.”

  Things were not looking good for Hugh. He felt his bowels cramp with fear for his beautiful, fierce wife. He had left her in Hugh’s care while he answered the summons from his King. How he wanted to rush off and take her into a place of safety where the King and his minions could not touch her.

  He mastered his discomfort as best he could, hoping it did not show on his face. He could not give the game away – he had too much to lose.

  “I suspect that he may have been sent to rescue a particular prisoner in the Bastille, one traitor to France.” He stopped and looked directly in Lamotte’s face. “I would not have this traitor escape.”

  The King was definitely talking about Hugh and his quest to rescue Henrietta. He needed to warn Hugh right away that his presence in Paris had been noted and the purpose of his visit guessed at. More to the point, he needed to make sure that Sophie was kept well away from Hugh from now on and did not share in the danger to him by association. Hugh had been sent by the King of England to rescue his sister. He and Sophie had played their part and should now retire before they were further compromised. “You would have me find and kill the Englishman?”

  The King shook his head. “That would be worth little. My English cousin would simply send another spy, and then another, and another. Eventually, one of them might be successful, and the traitor would walk free. I cannot allow this to happen.”

  He could breathe easier now he knew that Hugh, and Sophie with him, was in no immediate danger. His legs still trembled with the desire to race to his Sophie’s side and protect her from whatever force the King could muster against her. By God, once he had her in his arms he would never let her go again. “You will allow the Englishman to walk free?”

  “Pah. What do I care for one English spy? Once the traitor is dead, there will be no more need for spies.”

  A thought lit up in his brain. Mayhap this could be the way into the Bastille they had been looking for. The sooner that Hugh had performed his rescue, the easier it would be for him to be sent packing where he could no longer endanger them both by his presence. “If it please you, Sire, to give me the order for the execution of this traitor, I will have it carried to the Governor of the Bastille at once and see that the order is carried out immediately. Then you need fear no English spies.” He liked the plan. Once he was inside the Bastille, instead of carrying out an execution, he would plan to stage a rescue.

  The King heaved a sigh. “If only it were that simple.”

  Lamotte stood silently. Far be it from him outwardly to question to motives of his King. Inside, his mind was turning over every possibility.

  “I cannot sign an order for the execution of the traitor. There are reasons of State that forbid it.”

  Knowing the identity of the traitor as he did, he could guess only too well what those reasons of State were. What then did he intend to do? Let her go free? Exile her away from France? Leave her in her dungeon in the Bastille until she died of jail fever or was rescued by a sympathizer? “Yes, Sire.”

  “The traitor is none other than the English princess, Madame Henrietta. I cannot allow her to live and to spread her treasons but I cannot try her and execute her as she deserves. Her brother, Charles of England, would be incensed against me and would league with the Dutch or the Spaniards against me. France would be drawn into a war over the fate of a traitor. I cannot risk such a state of affairs. I need her to die quietly and quickly, with no order and no publicity.”

  He would never have believed it possible of the King of France if he had not heard those words with his own ears. The King had sent rascals after Sophie to have her killed. Now he wanted Henrietta murdered on the sly, killed off quickly and quietly with no trial and no chance of defending herself from the accusations made against her. Was nothing sacred to him? Was there no depths to which he would not stoop?

  “You are a soldier. You must know a thousand ways to kill someone without leaving a trace.”

  Lamotte half closed his eyes to hide the disgust that he could feel burning in his face. He was a soldier, not an assassin. He would not turn murderer for any man in Christendom, or out of it.

  “Kill the traitor in such a way that no one knows she has been murdered and I shall make you an Earl. You have my solemn word on this.”

  What worth was the word of a King who sought to dishonor and then to murder his own brother’s wife? He would more likely find himself imprisoned deep in an oubliette, where all knowledge of the crimes of the King would languish away into obscurity along with his soul.

  He could no longer serve his King with honor. With a snap that felt as though his heart was breaking within his breast, he unbuckled his sword and knelt down before the King. “Your Majesty,” he said, as he laid the sword in its scabbard at the feet of the King. “I hereby relinquish my commission. As of this moment, I am no longer a Musketeer in the King’s Guard.”

  The King’s beady eyes bulged out of his head with disappointed rage. “What do you mean by this?”

  He stood up and saluted smartly, feeling as though he were free once more. “I cannot carry out this task you have demanded of me. Were I to do so, I would not be able to live with my conscience. I must therefore quit your service.”

  The King half-rose in his chair, his fingers gripping the armrests so tightly that his knuckles had gone white. “You, too, Count Lamotte? You would turn traitor to your King?”

  He would probably be punished for it, but he could not hold his tongue. “No, Sire. I am as loyal as ever I was, when my King is worth serving. It is you who have turned traitor to your own good name.”

  He snapped his heels together and left without another word, the noise of the King’s sputters of rage burning in his ears. He had burned his bridges behind him. He knew the King’s implacable temperament well enough to know that he would never be forgiven for as long as the King as alive. Never again would he be admitted at court. Never again would he hold a post as a Musketeer, or any other position of importance.

  Whatever the consequences, he could not regret a single word he had spoken. The King of France had shamed himself that day and he had born witness to it.

  He found Hugh and Sophie sitting together, poring over their maps and diagrams. The sight of their heads bent in mutual comradeship and cooperation over the papers bothered him more than he cared to admit. He had not forgotten – or forgiven - Hugh’s invitation to his wife. The damned Englishman should learn to keep his hands away from other men’s wives. He would teach him the lesson himself, did Hugh make the slightest move on his wife again.

  His mood was not improved when he saw the third person in the room – the woman dressed as a youth who had so taunted him at the inn. She sketched him a mocking bow. “Your servant, Monsieur le Comte. I did not expect to meet you again so soon.”

  He leaned on his elbow against the wall, crowding her into a corner with the largeness of his presence. “If I had not found out your secret, Madame Assassin,” he muttered in her ear, “you would not be alive by now.”

  She gave him a feral smile. “You are twice my size and strength, and full of brave and boastful words, Monsieur Musketeer, but you will never win a single round against me. Honesty has no defense against trickery, at which I am an expert. You were lucky that Sophie begged me to save you. I was nigh to slitting your throat too, merely for the company you were keeping.”

  “That company was none of my choosing. They would have died by my hand if you and my dear wife had not gotten to them before I could.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Out done by a woman? Twice? Shame upon you, Monsieur Musketeer.”

  She was too quick and slippery for him for sure. He turned away, swallowing his rage with some difficulty. He would not demean himself by trading ins
ults with a mere woman, for all that she had the viciousness and dexterity of a venomous snake. Sophie, his Amazonian Sophie, was a positive haven of softness and sweetness compared with her sisters-in-arms. “If you would rescue the sister of your King,” he barked at Hugh, “you had best hurry before it is too late.”

  Hugh ignored the interruption. “Once you are inside…” he said to Sophie.

  “Once you are inside,” he corrected the arrogant Englishman, his fingers itching to teach the pup a lesson in manners that he would not soon forget. “My wife will not be going anywhere with you. As I said, you had best hurry, or once you are inside, all you will find will be the Duchesse’s corpse.”

  Sophie at least took heed of him. She looked up, her eyes wide and shining with excitement and determination. “Have you news from the King?”

  “Yes - what news from your lord and master, Monsieur Musketeer?” chimed in the venomous snake.

  He took off his hat and tossed it on the ground. “I am no longer a Musketeer in the King’s employ. He asked me to kill the English princess: garrotte her or poison her or anything that could make it look like it had been an accident. He wants her dead without seeming to be responsible for her death. Even now he may have found some one else to do his dirty work for him. As you sit her talking, she could already be dead.”

  “We cannot afford to wait. We must go straight away.”

  Hugh finally dragged his eyes away from Sophie. “I have not made arrangements yet for the princess’s carriage out of Paris. Getting her out of the Bastille is the easy part. Getting her out of France will require more time.”

  The snake shrugged one shoulder. “We have no more time if she is to be rescued.”

  Lamotte shot her an evil look. “As if you care aught for her.”

  “True - I care more for the good French gold I have been promised for her rescue. Why else would I risk my skin on a fool’s errand?”

  Sophie shushed her with one hand and talked urgently to Hugh. “Miriame and I will go into the Bastille alone on the plan you have made for us. We have no need of you. While we are inside, you make all the arrangements you can.”