A feat of strength and courage that had to have been witnessed to be believed. A deed that had brought the most cynical of French mercenaries into line behind their young English captain.
Veron sensed the same intensity of purpose about the man again tonight as they pushed through the gathering crowd.
‘An old friend in need of help,’ the captain explained as they jogged through the maze of London streets. After the anticlimax earlier in the day when far from meeting the resistance they had expected, the people of London welcomed the arrival of Prince William and his foreign army with cheers and blessings, the prospect of action brought a welcome frisson of excitement for Veron.
The swaying lanterns and rag-torches of the crowds gave life to the elegance of Pall Mall as he shadowed the dark-haired figure of the captain through to the riotous heart of the mob.
‘Down with popery! Out with all Catholic traitors!’ A crack of stone against stone echoed across the Mall. A man’s bellowing protest answered with a volley of brickbats and the sound of breaking glass. The mob surged forwards then, breaking the gates from their hinges, swarming over a stone balustrade on to the frontage of an imposing house.
Veron stayed with Captain Fuller as he vaulted the balustrade; shoulder to shoulder with him they began to thrust the nearest rioters aside, gradually clearing a way through to the grand door. With one last bound up the portico steps, the captain swung round to face the howling mob. Raising his musket to his shoulder, he fired a warning shot into the air.
Veron pulled his catch and did the same.
The two reports sliced through the din. A semicircle of space opened up in front of them. Stunned silence spread outwards like a wave. The captain first reloaded his gun then stared back at the angry faces.
‘In the name of His Highness, William Prince of Orange‒’ he commanded.
A lone voice answered uneasily; ‘God Bless the liberators!’
An oasis of uncertainty. Veron scanned the faces in the crowd as he too reloaded. One false move, he knew, and the seething hostility would be turned on them ... liberators or not. In that moment a thick-set man carrying an axe muscled his way forward from the rest. He threw one arm out, signalling that the two soldiers should step aside to allow him access to the doors.
With a mocking grimace he wheedled; ‘Turn a blind eye, captain....’ He turned to the tittering crowd for support.
Staring straight past him, Captain Fuller ordered: ‘Go home to your hearths and your beds, before anyone is hurt.’
‘Is that a threat, brave captain?’ sneered the self-appointed spokesman. ‘If anyone is to be hurt here, it will be those who stand in our way. Yes‒?’
The mob roared in approval.
‘You are‒?’ demanded the captain.
‘Solomon Petrie, coachbuilder and Londoner – born and bred. My city. My right. Stand aside, captain, or be damned!’ The big man lunged towards the portico steps. ‘To hell with all papist parasites!’
The crowd surged up behind him. Captain Fuller fired another shot into the air. Veron moved as if to intercept Petrie’s advance but in one move the captain put himself between them and rammed the musket muzzle hard against the Londoner’s leather jerkin – aiming for his heart. Petrie stumbled back. With an expression of leering contempt, he raised his hands.
‘Listen to me!’ roared the captain, glaring at the ringleader while addressing the rest. ‘My name is Fuller, Captain Fuller. My duty is to restore the peace. I have no intention of failing in my duty.’
‘Made it easy for you lot though, didn’t we?’ called a woman over Petrie’s shoulder.
‘Conquering heroes....’ sniped a red-headed man, ‘not a bloody shot fired in anger, but you’d shoot us, eh? Stand aside, Captain Fuller, try going home yourself!’
The chorus went up; ‘Stand aside!’
‘This is our due,’ Petrie smiled complacently, ‘put the gun down soldier-boy.’
‘Do you intend to raze all of London?’ Fuller asked.
‘What do you care?’ railed Petrie. ‘Popery has no place in London – not now, not ever. We’ll show the bastards!’
‘Enough!’ bellowed the captain.
‘Then stop us!’ taunted Petrie.
Tossing his gun to Veron, the captain deflected a roundhouse punch with his left forearm. The mob fell back several paces giving the two men space. With a growl Petrie charged. The captain sidestepped. Catching a floundering arm, he wrenched it smartly up behind his opponent’s shoulder-blade. Petrie howled. The captain grabbed a fistful of hair and wrenched the bulky figure to his knees. Voices of authority imposed themselves then. A thread of red coats shouldered its way through to the front of the crush. In the face of the militia, the mob faltered then began to fragment.
Captain Fuller fixed his gaze on the wide-eyed face of a boy in the crowd. ‘Go home,’ he told him, giving Petrie a shove, ‘such men should not serve as your example.’
‘We had no quarrel with you, Captain Cloghead‒’ spat a drunken woman. She hurled a rag torch over the shoulder of a militiaman as he frogmarched her back through towards the gateway. Veron stamped out the flame.
Under the command of a mounted officer, the militia forced the rabble back towards the Mall. Veron brought up the rear, tackling anyone who broke through the line. In the Mall a passing coach was set upon. Squabbles began, voices vied for supremacy. Until at last the marshalled clatter of hooves signalled the arrival of reinforcement troops. Horsemen galloped through the barrage of weapons and flaming torches. A gang of youths bolted first, and before the first sword was wielded, the street was clear.
Approaching the portico steps, the mounted militia officer saluted Captain Fuller who still had Petrie captive.
‘Sergeant Lucas at your service, sir.’ He dismounted and pulled a set of hand irons from his saddlebag.
‘Captain Fuller, Fifth Regiment Foot,’ he declared, handing over the prisoner.
‘You’re a brave man, Captain Fuller ... to risk your neck for bricks and mortar.’ This voice came from behind him in the doorway. Turning he saw a man in his late forties; hurriedly dressed – his shirt partially buttoned, boots unbuckled. His short grey hair was more used to a wig than the light of day. His arms hung by his sides, a pistol in each hand.
The face, though tired was unmistakable; the features last seen in a torture chamber in the French fortress of Vincennes. The diplomat employer who had taken a young apothecary to France to tend his pregnant wife – who after the apothecary’s false arrest had fought his case against La Reynie, the Paris chief of police.
Captain Fuller mounted the steps towards him.
‘Glad to be of service, Lord Herries.’
Listening to Cassy’s heavy breathing, it came to Kate that she must return to St Giles’ graveyard to search for her daughter. The knowing pressed itself upon her – she would find Anna there. Leaving her ailing friend to rest, she slipped away into the dark lane. Neither the watch, nor the militia challenged her as she stumbled and ran towards St Giles ... just another darting figure in a night of upheaval.
There was moonlight enough for her to find her marker, the stone angel. Somewhere in the undergrowth beyond it, she knew she would find the low headstone bearing the inscription:
Ignotus
Ex Aquis
Anno Domini 1658
the unknown body dragged from the river, the unknown soul who had become known to her as the mother of François’ natural father ... the mother murdered by her own son. For the second time that night Kate crawled on her hands and knees under the snagging branches of the tree. And this time her reaching fingers found what they had come for – a damp sleeve.
Kate’s relief expressed itself as an involuntary and exhausted sob, but relief was short-lived. At the first touch of Anna’s rocking body there came a ferocious growl ... a scrambling, a flash of silver-white fur and bared fangs. Without any warning, Kate was bowled into the open, on to her back, her neck pinned under the raking claws of the wolf. The great bea
st dropped its head, so close that its whiskers stung her cheek; close enough to smell its rank breath.
And somehow, though her body was rigid with fear, she sensed the otherness of the snarling creature; understood that it was the embodiment of a malevolence not of the world. That it was drawing strength from her terror. And it wanted her child.
‘I know you‒’ she choked defiantly. ‘I won’t let you have her.’ The claws dug deeper into her flesh. Pressure was building in her head; her vision swam in and out of focus. Starved of breath she gripped the forelegs but her failing strength was no match for the powerful muscles.
Ah Kate, I will have my due ... why fight me?
‘No – I will never give her up!’
The wolf arched its neck and head back then; opened its jaws and howled, a harrowing sound that vibrated throughout her body. And with a last downwards thrust at Kate’s throat it bounded away into the night.
The Ambassador
If Major Winthrop was impressed, the company could not believe their good fortune. In the space of a night they had stepped up from canvas on a sodden heath to the grandeur of a residence in Pall Mall.
Captain Fuller had friends in high places – a one-time ambassador to France, no less. Do I know you, Captain Fuller? Lord Herries had asked and Lieutenant Veron delighted in the telling of it; how the captain had spoken of a mutual acquaintance, a man he had met on his travels by the name of François Jeakes – how, as if by magic, the name had clinched the matter. Not only that, but the captain was somehow able to convince his superiors that a company billeted with a Catholic household in the heart of London would be a valuable deterrent against further unrest.
By noon of their second day in London, Fuller’s twenty-three men and their five female followers had decamped and drum-marched off the heath to their new billet. Lord Herries helped the captain supervise the settling in. The house was empty – all but one of the servants gone with his wife, Lady Eugenie, and their five-year-old son Philip to the safety of her cousin Pierron’s house in Paris. The servant’s attic rooms, the nursery, the rooms above the stable, all found their use now. Supplies of food, candles and fuel were ordered in. The women led by Captain Fuller’s woman, Margot, were given the run of the laundry and the kitchen. Fires were built, meat set to roast. By dusk the house was ablaze with light and with life. Lord Herries’ command of French dialect together with the barrel of French wine he had the men bring up from the cellar, soon overcame any awkwardness the soldiers felt at finding themselves thrust into such polite surroundings.
The men toasted their host, and their captain. Josef, the company musician, struck up a lively tune on his flute and the captain – his voice raw but rich – led them into the words of a ballad they all knew.
‘I shall sleep safer tonight,’ sighed Lord Herries as he conducted Margot upstairs to a first floor room, the house still ringing with laughter and carousing. The captain and his woman were the last to be allocated a room.
Margot stared at the back of his blue silk waistcoat. ‘For you safety, monsieur, for us comfort.’ Disarmed by his easy manners, her colour rose. Her limited observation of French noblemen had taught her that there were two ways of dealing with them; subservience, or a kind of reflected indifference. Lord Charles Herries provoked neither.
Caught in the splay of the oil lamp he was holding, she followed him as he turned left on to the landing. Opening a door he ushered her in before setting down the lamp on a dresser. The ceiling was high, the windows deep. Gauzy curtains veiled the bed. A writing bureau stood by one window, an ornate cheval mirror by another.
A room grown cold with waiting. The fireplace was swept, kindling laid ready and a stack of firewood stacked neatly by the grate. Margot took a wisp of kindling to the lamp, and shielded the flame back to the hearth.
‘My wife’s room,’ he said, untying curtains and shutting out the night.
Margot was blowing life into the flames, her legs folded under her, her plaited hair hanging over her left shoulder. She sat back on her heels and looked about her. A lady’s bedroom, of course. She saw the personal items on the dresser; the comb, a fan, an elegant bottle – for perfume perhaps. There were clothes folded on a wardrobe shelf.
‘But your wife, monsieur,’ she queried, ‘a lady’s personal place‒’
Herries waved dismissively. ‘Eugenie would not object, mademoiselle. Without Captain Fuller our home would have fallen to the looters by now. It is enough to know that he is al‒’ He stopped himself.
‘Alive?’ Margot prompted, rising to her feet. ‘I know only a little of François’ past, Lord Herries ... but I know that you knew him before. I know that he speaks of you with great admiration.’
Herries studied her for a moment. There had been another woman, he recalled, French too; the fiancée who had visited Eugenie in Paris ... Morin, that was the name ... she had gone there with François’ mother Kate in the weeks after Vincennes. After the stinking hell of that day in the torture chamber. After the prison authorities had reported François Jeakes dead – executed within the confines of the fortress. Executed and buried in the unmarked grave of a convicted murderer.
Louise Morin – that had been the name. Pretty, Eugenie had told him later, unwilling as Kate herself to believe François dead ... out of the blue ... executed for murder.
Eugenie had taken it upon herself to write the letter. She had faced the mother’s unbelief – tried to bring her to accept the grief – there, with their infant son beside her. The son François had done so much to deliver safely into the world. A life for a life it had seemed then. Theirs the burden of guilt.
This one was good-looking too, he thought. Tall and slender; intelligent eyes, determined chin. The women accepted her authority, the men kept a respectful distance. The captain’s woman.
He lowered his voice, ‘Do the men know his true name?’
Margot shook her head. ‘I make Frank into François, that is all they know.’
A knock at the door made them look up.
‘Lord Herries gives us his wife’s room, François.’ Margot declared, rising to meet him.
For a moment François stared about him. It was in this room that he had attended Lady Eugenie as assistant to his step-father, the apothecary John Jeakes. And later during her pregnancy in his dying father’s stead. He could see Lady Eugenie now – sitting in front of the long mirror – dressed in blue. She had been shaken by a fall from a sedan chair: the injured Madonna. It was the night John Jeakes died. The end of a life he had once known.
Herries tipped his head. ‘I’ll rejoin the others ... give you time to settle in.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘I’m in the blue room on the opposite side of the stairs. Perhaps we could talk later, Captain Fuller.’
When they were alone, Margot watched François in the flickering firelight. The room absorbed him. For several moments he stood, his head skewed – upper body tilted forward slightly – as if he were hearing voices she could not.
‘There are ghosts here for you?’ she murmured.
He snapped out of his trance then, his thoughts shielded once more by an easy smile.
‘Qu’est-ce?’ she quizzed. He kissed her neck, turning her towards the mirror so that she could see her own reflection. Over her shoulder he grinned roguishly at her and the petulant frown on her own face softened.
‘Blue would suit you,’ he said.
François stood in front of the portrait; a life-size study of Lady Eugenie cradling infant Philip within the billows of an apricot gown. It was past midnight, the house drowsy and darker than the street outside. A day’s grace. Tomorrow would see an early start – clearing the wreckage of the Spanish Embassy and escort duty.
The artist had given Lady Eugenie an air of doting contemplation, he observed, and a fragility which did not match his memories of her.
Charles Herries was peering out into the night through a chink in the curtains, holding a smoking pipe clear of the heavy fabric. He turned back into the
room, puffing pensively.
‘How much does Margot know about Paris?’ he enquired.
François studied his host. The mutilated body of the French seamstress, Jeanine Pascal, still lay between them. The interrogation room flashed back at him; the relief that had washed over the seventeen-year-old him as Lord Herries walked in; a familiar face amid the storm of accusation – an interpreter, someone on terms with Police Chief, La Reynie. But Lord Herries’ face had been pinched, his voice quizzical; Do you understand why you are under arrest, François? Preposterous, naturally. Then he had been fighting for his life; Jeanine, a wretch used, as he had been used, by the police informant, Vincent Martel.
‘Margot is my present,’ he answered, ‘with luck, my future. The past I can spare her.’
Herries moved alongside him. He considered the portrait of his wife for a minute then his gaze returned to François. Eugenie had fallen for the youth with his long dark hair and knowing brown eyes. Though she denied it he had known; accepted the attraction for what it was, notional rather than actual, a man in the making ... in whose making he had once thought to have some influence.
François’ ordeal in France had left its mark on his face; had wrung the youth out of the man. The youthful looks were still there, he had noticed, in smiling moments with Margot, or downstairs singing with the men. But at other times – now for instance – a gravity settled upon him. The brown eyes stared unflinchingly from under the dark brows; the weathered skin of forehead and cheek settled into unfamiliar lines. A man’s face, made handsome by the imprint of struggle and the effort to survive.
‘We never doubted your innocence,’ he said. The body of Jeanine Pascal needed to be swept aside.
‘I am indebted to you both.’
‘If I had had my way, François, you would have been a practising physician by now.’ He gave a short, burdened laugh. François echoed the sound, then his face broadened into a smile.
‘Instead of which I was executed.’
Herries shook his head as if to rid himself of the thought. ‘Things got out afterwards ... unofficial, of course ... rumours that you had escaped. Your mother was dogged. She was certain that you were alive.’ He laughed in admiration. ‘I am told she caused quite a stir at the French court. You know that she was present when Martel died.’
The Sorcerer (The Witch Trilogy Book 3) Page 3