“We got away,” said de Portau as they crossed the Seine and started toward the southern gates. “I never thought it would really happen. The risk was enormous,” he said as if revealing a tremendous secret. “We got away.”
“I hope we have,” said Olivia, unable to shake the sense that they were observed. She rose in the stirrups and looked behind them again, then pulled her cloak more tightly around her. “It’s cold for this time of year.”
“Just as well. The horses will last longer,” said de Portau, his hands gathering in the reins. “How do we get through the gate? Are they alerted, do you think? Do they know yet that the Cardinal and the Queen have fled Paris? Have the nobles suborned them yet? Will that seal work?”
“If I make them think that I am a Vatican page, it will. Not even the Parlementaires and nobles want to anger the Pope.” She took her gloves from one of her pockets and pulled them on, then cast another backward glance. “There is someone there; I would swear it on my mother’s grave.”
“You’re fanciful, Olivia,” said de Portau, daring to use her name for the first time. “If we had been followed, we would know it. Who would bother now that we are almost out of the city?”
“We are not almost out of the city, we are approaching a gate, and we may not be permitted to leave. Then it will not matter how far we came, if they do not allow us to pass.” She settled herself in the saddle again, and set the mare into a slow trot, thinking that if they could increase the distance between them and their pursuers, they would stand a better chance of being allowed to leave.
The Seine was leaden in the wan moonlight; shadows of buildings fell like immense voids along the bank; as Olivia and de Portau left the quai and turned toward the ancient church of Saint Medard, the long shadows engulfed them, so that they were darker places within the dark.
At the Orleans Gate a single Watchman looked at the Cardinal’s seal, gave a laconic glance to the two dark-clad travelers and waved them on, holding up his bottle of wine in an ironic toast. “You tell the Pope that his puppy has had his tail bobbed,” he called after them, chortling at his own drunken wit.
“That was lucky,” admitted de Portau as they continued along the river.
“The news must not have meant much to him. Give the Watch another day and they will be dragons,” said Olivia, her mind casting back to many bitter experiences. When she had wanted to leave Cordova, it was not permitted; when she had wanted to leave Tyre, it was not permitted; when she had wanted to leave Krakow, it was not permitted. This time she had got out before the doors closed too tightly. “And we are still in France,” she said aloud, looking apprehensively over her shoulder again.
“What matter? We are ahead of most of them. If we make good time and have fresh horses, we will be out of the kingdom before the Ducs realize they have the upper hand.” He patted the bay on the neck. “Not a bad horse.”
“Thank you,” said Olivia, her attention on the road, not on the compliment. “I try to raise good horses.”
“So Charles has told me,” said de Portau, relaxing visibly now that the walls of Paris were behind them. “Where do we remount? Is it far?”
“I have horses stabled both in Savigny-sur-Orge and Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois. We can choose which is best when we are nearer.” She pulled the mare into a walk once more. “It won’t do to push them too hard now. We may need their speed later.” She looked toward the east. “Four hours to sunrise, wouldn’t you say?” Her face showed almost no emotion, but the feeling of urgency was pressing her more insistently.
“Yes; four hours. We got away in good time.” De Portau rubbed the stubble on his cheeks above his beard. “I can ride until two hours after sunset, and by that time we will be a goodly way on our journey. I’m a soldier, but I’m not a stripling anymore—I am all of thirty-five, getting on for a soldier. I need sleep two nights out of three. So, after sunset, if there is a place we can be safe, I will have to have rest then or be no use to you.” He coughed delicately. “You will be tired then, too, Olivia.”
“Very likely,” she responded, not wanting to tell him that she had had little need for sleep for almost sixteen hundred years. “By then we may be beyond Fontainebleau.”
“That might be a problem, Fontainebleau,” said de Portau carefully. “It has been one of the nobles’ strongholds. They might be there still. It is hard to know.” He sighed. “I wish, while we were remembering the grain for the horses, we had also remembered a leg of chicken for us as well.”
Olivia hesitated before she answered. “There will be food if you want it when we change horses. I thought it was more important for the horses to be fed than for us.” She hitched her thumb in the direction of the sack of grain tied to his saddle. “We’d better continue to carry that with us. For the horses.”
“As you wish,” said de Portau, sounding cast down, but with a glint in his small eyes. “I’d hate to see you on campaign, Madame, and that’s the truth. I wouldn’t wonder if you couldn’t put all our generals to shame.”
“Why do you say that?” Olivia asked, and then motioned him to silence. Her eyes were intent, inward directed. “There are horsemen behind us.”
“There are always horsemen on this road,” said de Portau, attempting to disguise the sudden cold fear that gripped him.
“They are moving quickly,” said Olivia. “A goodly number; seven, perhaps eight.” She looked back in alarm, as if she expected to see them. “They’re a way distant yet.”
“They might have nothing to do with us,” said de Portau without conviction. “They might be carrying word to Fontainebleau or … somewhere else.”
“Would you care to make a wager?” said Olivia as she touched the mare’s sides with her heels. Obediently the mouse-colored horse began again to trot, the sound of her hooves on the road lending a steady beat to their progress.
De Portau put his mount to the trot as well. “Is this fast enough?” he asked, permitting his apprehension to show for the first time. “A trot is well enough, and they can keep it up longer than a canter, but if we are being chased—”
“No, it isn’t fast enough,” she admitted, and nudged the mare into a canter. “But you’re right; I don’t know how long she can keep this up.” She moved in the saddle for better balance. “And I don’t know what the road is like ahead.” Her words came in spurts as the force of the canter rocked her.
“Neither do I,” said de Portau, urging his horse to keep pace with hers. “Who is it behind us?”
“I don’t know, but I would wager that they’re from the nobles or the Parlementaires—I don’t think the Cardinal sent them. He has no reason to come after us, and the others have every reason in the world.” She put all her attention to the road, watching for anything that might injure or slow her mare. Most of the roads in France were in poor repair, for most of the taxes levied had gone to pay for wars, not building roads. Ordinarily Olivia would not plunge along this road in the dark, but with those unknown riders at her back, she dared not do otherwise, no matter how imprudent.
A little farther along the road, Olivia and de Portau passed through a sleeping hamlet. Dogs woke, barking, at their passage, then fell silent, only to bark again a short while later.
“There, you see?” Olivia said to de Portau. “We are not the only ones abroad tonight.” She could feel her horse begin to flag, the pace getting to her. “Pull in to a trot,” she called to de Portau.
“Is it safe?” he shouted to her.
“It’s not safe to keep going as we have.” She was as breathless as her horse. “We need to get them a little water, too. Not the river. At the next village, find a well.”
“What about the men behind us?” de Portau demanded as he brought his bay up beside Olivia’s mare. “They are still chasing us? Can you tell?” It was as far as he would go to believing that she had the ability to sense the presence of their hunters.
“On horses just like ours. If they push their mounts too hard they will kill them; they can�
�t catch us on dead horses,” said Olivia curtly. “We might find a place to hide, as well.”
“Won’t they be expecting us to do that?” de Portau asked. “And won’t they look for places we might hide?”
“Not at that pace,” said Olivia. “They do not have time to search at the canter. But if they slow down, then they will be searching for us, you may be sure of it.” She could feel her mare’s deep breaths and pounding heart through the flaps of her saddle. The horse needed time to recover her wind and to gather her strength once more. Olivia touched the handle of one of the two pistols she carried. “If they get too close, we will have to discourage them.”
“I have the duck’sfoot,” de Portau reminded her. Now that they were not rushing as fast, he was aware of how cold he was, and of the steady ache in his shoulders. He straightened his spine against the hurt, blanking it out of his mind as if he were in battle and ready for the foe. That pain was a sign of being tired, he reminded himself, nothing more than that. Simple fatigue, and unexceptional in a man who had been up since sunrise. He reminded himself that he had given his word he would ride until the two hours after sundown, and that was a long time away. He blinked his eyes hard twice, and settled in to the steady trot of the bay. “If we must, we can see if we can get behind them, become the hunters.” The last was garbled by a yawn he could not stifle.
“You’re tired,” said Olivia in a tone that invited no contradiction.
“A little,” he admitted. “I will come about after dawn; it is the dark, it makes me sleepy.” His quick smile was abashed, as if he had been caught doing something very naughty. “When we stop, I will splash some cold water on my face; that will wake me, and I will be fine.”
Olivia kept her thought to herself, but she began to worry about how long he would be able to last. There was no reason, she thought, for him to be embarrassed by his exhaustion, but it was clear to her that he was embarrassed. She held her mare to the trot and scanned the distance, searching for the signs of another hamlet: fenced fields, windmills, a cluster of small buildings, that would be enough for her to be sure.
“What are you looking at?” said de Portau, having cast a glance backward. “I still do not see anyone, or hear them.”
“That’s to the good. They might have slowed for the sake of their horses.” At last she caught sight of a group of small houses flanking the road some distance ahead. “Another little town. We will look for water there,” she said, knowing it would be more than a quarter of an hour before they reached the place. The mare would trot that far, she knew, but she might not want to trot farther. “Water, and a couple handfuls of grain for them both. That should help revive them.” She patted the mare’s neck and pretended she did not feel the uneven rhythm of her stride that warned of some harm to the horse.
“How much farther to Savigny-sur-Orge?” de Portau asked.
“Another hour, perhaps,” said Olivia, not quite sure of where they were. “Not much more than that.”
“The bay should hold up that far.” He cracked out a single laugh. “What if they reach us before then, could they do that?”
“We will have to fight, if they are after us and reach us,” said Olivia, certain now that the mare was starting to favor her on-side front foot. It was the one thing she had gambled on, that the horses would last all the way to the remount place. And now it appeared that this mare was going lame. Another time when she was not being pursued, she would have dismounted and led the mare, taking all the time that was needed to reach the remount location. It distressed her to have to use this mare so, but she realized that most of those she knew would not hesitate to ride a horse to death if that were necessary.
“You are troubled, Madame,” said de Portau, his manner solicitous. “Are you tired, too?”
“Of many things,” she said, and made herself listen again. “They are distant yet, but it will not continue so, not with this mare no longer truly sound.”
“What do you mean?” de Portau asked sharply, turning her way so abruptly that his horse almost swung in front of Olivia’s.
“She is going lame. I won’t be able to push her much farther.” Now that she had admitted it, she was not as worried as she had been.
“But she will go far enough,” said de Portau, the tone of his voice urging her to give him the reassuring answer he demanded. “She can reach Savigny-sur-Orge, can’t she?”
“I doubt it,” said Olivia, hating herself for speaking the words aloud. “She cannot last much longer. She’s beginning to breathe hard, and see how she nods,” she added, pointing out that telltale drop of the mare’s head when she stepped on her painful leg. “There. It is getting worse.”
“Hell and damnation and perdition!” de Portau burst out, then immediately hushed his voice. “Sorry, Madame. I did not mean to do that. But it is more than flesh can bear to see this happen when we have got away so handily.”
“Yes,” she agreed, once again looking ahead. She squinted at the dark as if that would bring the things she wanted to see into sharp relief. Then she stared again. “I think I may see something,” she said cautiously.
“What?” de Portau asked, unable to pierce the darkness. “What do you see?”
“It is an old building of some sort, an inn or a chapel or hostel for the sick,” she said, realizing it was a six-sided stone building so ancient that most of the roof was gone. “It isn’t the protection I would want, but it is better than what we have now, and the mare can rest awhile.”
“And we can eliminate those who follow us,” said de Portau at his most decisive.
“There are seven or eight of them,” Olivia reminded him.
He did his best to snap his gloved fingers. “Nothing to it. Seven or eight against one Musqueteer, it’s hardly fair to those seven or eight. I was in the First Company with Charles, the Grand Musqueteers,” said de Portau with pride. “They’re the best of the lot.”
“But there are seven or eight men behind us, and for all I know, they have been Musqueteers, too,” said Olivia, taking care as they neared the strange old building, in case it turned out to be inhabited. “The ducksfoot has nine barrels, and I have two pistols, that means we may only have one shot misfire.”
“I’ll aim for the horses,” said de Portau.
Olivia winced as she heard that, but knew it was the most sensible thing he could do. “But that does not stop the men.”
“It does if the horse falls on him,” said de Portau, beginning to enjoy himself. “We’ll conceal the horses and give them grain, so that they will be less tempted to whinny, and that way we can pay attention to the road instead of these beasts. A pity we haven’t time enough to make a better ambush,” he went on, warming to the prospect. “Still, they won’t be expecting us to waylay them, will they?”
“We could simply let them pass and ride on after them,” said Olivia in forlorn hope, wanting no more of fighting; but she was not convinced herself that this was a good notion.
“And when they find we have not reached the remount place, they can wait in ambush for us? No thank you, Madame. I would rather be the one setting the trap instead of them.”
They had almost reached the six-sided building, and Olivia saw that it was one of the old Plague hostels, for travelers who were victims of the Black Plague, almost three hundred years before. She looked at the age-darkened stones and felt a touch of pity for the miserable people who had died there.
“It isn’t as good as many places,” said de Portau as they rode up to it. “But it is much better than most.” He dismounted, his groan as he lowered himself to the ground revealing how demanding the ride was for him.
Olivia kicked her feet out of the stirrups and slipped down from the saddle lightly so that she would not injure the mare. “I will take them behind the building and give them nosebags,” she said, pleased that the grain sacks de Portau carried would serve that purpose.
“And I will see what I can.” He started off toward the road, drawing his sword as h
e went. It would have been better, he thought, if they were a bit nearer dawn, so that he could see what he was doing. But then, the men pursuing them would see as well, so he decided it might be best dark after all. He noticed that the road curved beyond the six-sided building and he considered that as he walked back to where Olivia was hobbling the horses now that their nosebags were tied on.
“What do you think?” Olivia asked.
“We hide behind here and challenge them. If they attack, we kill the horses and fight them as best we can. If they are our friends, and can prove with more than words that they are our friends, then we ride with them as far as we can.”
“All right,” said Olivia, taking her pistols from her belt and setting about charging them.
“You’re adept at that, Olivia,” said de Portau as he checked the duck’sfoot. “It’s not often a man meets a lady who can charge a pistol and ride a horse as you do.”
Olivia’s response was wry. “I trust that is a compliment.”
“Oh, certainly.” He held his sword with his left hand, hefting it to be sure he could handle it and the wide, unwieldy pistol at the same time. Only then did he hear the distant sound of hoofbeats.
“They’re coming,” said Olivia, raising her head as the sound grew louder.
“At the trot. You are right. They are hunting.” De Portau swept her a short bow. “Be ready, Madame. We will only have one chance, I think, to hit them. After that, they will have the advantage.” He set his pistol aside in order to bless himself and whisper a brief prayer. “Well, God will defend His true servants, won’t He?” he asked, and before Olivia could answer, he strolled around the six-sided building.
The riders approached fast, and halted in disorder as de Portau stepped onto the road and bellowed at them to stop. “Who are you, and why do you follow us!”
A Candle For d'Artagnan Page 56