Marrying the Musketeer (32 page)

Pierre had not the energy to rage at the Duc’s foolishness.
 
“It would seem so.”
 
His voice sounded flat and hopeless even to his own ears.

The snuffling of the horses breath and the clip clop of their iron-shod hooves on the cobbles as they stirred restlessly in the cold air were the only sounds that broke the stillness of the night.
 
Pierre hugged his greatcoat closer to his body to protect himself from the biting wind.
 
His nose felt as though it had turned into an icicle.

“I am sorry that I misjudged him so badly,”
 
William said at last.
 
He squared his shoulders as if to face up to the truth in every way.
 
The desolation on his face was heart-breaking to see.
 
“We cannot even trust him not to betray us.
 
If the King hears aught of our plot, we are in grave danger.
 
The Duc will doubtless tell his brother everything in order to save his own sorry skin and we shall have to pay the price for all.
 
It is all over.
 
All over.
 
We shall have to leave France this very night and never return.”

Pierre hunched his shoulders inside his greatcoat, feeling the sudden urge to put his arm around the lad’s shoulders to comfort him.
 
He sounded as tired and defeated as a girl.
 
He stopped himself at the last moment.
 
Men did not comfort each other that way.

He supposed it was all over for him as well.
 
He would have to leave the Musketeers, even leave France.
 
His homeland was not safe for him any longer.
 
He was surprised to feel no sorrow at the necessity.
 
Ever since Lyons, he had abhorred life as a Musketeer and was not sorry to be forced into a change.
 
“What shall you do now?”

The young lad passed his hand over his eyes in a gesture of utter weariness and defeat.
 
“I will ride to the coast after Jean-Paul and warn him of the failure of our plot.
 
It was my fault he was caught up in the whole plot at all.
 
If I ride fast, I shall get there soon after he does himself and he will not even compromise himself by asking about a ship.
 
At any rate, I will be able to warn him so that he can escape.
 
I cannot leave him to be picked up by the King’s men.
 
The horses are fresh and ready to go.
 
I may as well leave tonight as we had planned.”

“And after Brest?
 
What then?”

He shrugged.
 
“I must go back to Paris for a time at least.
 
I have unfinished business there.”

Did the boy not understand the danger they were both in?
 
“The King never forgives a traitor.
 
You run the risk of being arrested if you return.”

William put his foot in the stirrup of one of the mounts, a fine black mare, and vaulted on to her back.
 
“I know the danger I am in, but I have made a vow and I will keep my word, though it cost me my life.”
 
He moved with a new sense of purpose as if his path had suddenly been made clear to him.

Pierre unlooped his horse’s reins from the post and swung himself on to its back.
 
He had nowhere in particular that he wanted to go now that Paris and soon all of France was forbidden him.
 
He may as well ride with Courtney’s cousin while he might, and see if he could persuade the youngster into helping him search for his cousin.
 
“I will ride with you to Brest.
 
Two of us riding together will be safer than one rider alone.”

William shrugged as he dug his heels into his horse’s side and started off at a fast trot along the road.
 
“Suit yourself.”

Pierre shook his reins and nudged his horse into a slow canter to catch up with his friend.
 
Though the half moon was out and there were few clouds in the sky to hide its face, the night was too black to go any faster.
 
He was a little disappointed in William’s grudging acceptance of his company.
 
He had grown to like the lad well, not the least because he reminded him so much of Courtney.
 
If his beloved had had a brother, he would be just like William.
 

William had never been overly friendly towards him.
 
The lad had tolerated his company well enough and had even sought him out at times.
 
Still, more often than he liked, he had turned all of a sudden and seen a scowl as black as the devil’s heart on the lad’s face as he looked at him.
 
Each time William had wiped the scowl off his face quick enough, but it left him with an uneasy feeling in his stomach that never quite left him.
 

The lad had told him at the beginning that his cousin had been ruined by a Frenchman.
 
He hoped William had not put two and two together and come up with the truth – that the rascally Frenchman who had taken advantage of a sweet, innocent young woman was none other than Pierre himself.
 
He had no wish to confess the truth and lay his soul bare before such a stripling.
 
He would not blacken Courtney’s name further by openly acknowledging what had best stay hidden.
 
The lad was too young to understand the torment he had been through.
 
He did not wish to alienate the lad when it was possible he still might let slip some clues as to his cousin’s present whereabouts.

William was leading the spare mount on a long, loose rein.
 
Pierre cantered up on the other side.
 
“What will you do with the horse?”

“She comes from around here,” William said.
 
“When we get close enough, I’ll set her free and she’ll make her own way back to her stable.
 
Suzanne will look after her until I can return.”

Ah, so young William had a sweetheart living on the outskirts of Paris, did he?
 
No wonder the lad had disappeared without fail whenever he was off duty.
 
“Suzanne?”

William scowled, dug his heels into his horse to pull in front once more, and did not answer.

Pierre had little time to ponder over the identity of Wililam’s sweetheart.
 
When he turned his head to see how far they had left Paris behind him, a flicker of movement caught his eye.
 
There were lights behind him – a cluster of lights moving up behind them.
 
By the way they were moving he would guess they were men on horseback carrying torches – and moving rapidly.

He could not fool himself that their presence on this very road was a coincidence.
 
Only three people, Jean-Paul ,the Duc, and his masked friend, had known they would be on this road tonight.
 
One of those three had given them away.
 
On the whole, it thought it was unlikely to have been Jean-Paul.
 
His bet would be with the masked man, if not the Duc himself.
 
It was just the sort of evil trick that the brother of a monarch might play – to lead them into treachery for his sake, only to betray them in the end.

“William, behind us!” he called into the wind.

William turned his head and looked behind him.
 
The sound of his violent cursing carried back on the wind to Pierre.
 
It seemed that William was no more enamoured of the spineless bastard of the Duc than he was.

Pierre dug his heels into his horse’s flanks to increase his pace.
 
“Let the spare horse go free.
 
We will have to outrun them.
 
We have no other choice.”

William swore violently again.
 
“They have lights and we do not.
 
We cannot go as fast as they can.
 
If we push our mounts too hard, one of them at least is bound to stumble and fall or will break a leg on a pothole and then we are doomed.
 
We will have to take shelter where we can and hope they pass us by.”

Pierre shook his head.
 
He had had enough of hiding and sneaking and stabbing his enemy in the back while their head was turned.
 
He was a soldier and a Musketeer.
 
It was time he stood out in the open and fought like one.
 
“I will not cower in a hedge like a coward while they race past us to Brest to arrest the last of our company.
 
By God, I will stand and fight them like a Frenchman and a Musketeer.
 
At least if I die, I will die with honor, my sword in my hand.”

At his words, William slowed his horse to a trot.
 
“So, we stop here and fight?”

The young lad had pluck to face almost certain death with such aplomb.
 
The two of them had little hope against the dozen or so guards who were on their tail.
 
Still, he would do his best to even up the score.
 
“Not here.
 
This open terrain affords us no protection at all.
 
They’ll be able to surround us and come at us from every side.
 
We’ll keep going until we find a place that favors our lack of numbers.”

They went on in silence, each with his own thoughts.
 
Pierre kept his eye out on the lay of the land, searching for anything that would favor them.
 
He discarded each possibility one after another.
 
Slowly but steadily their pursuers crept nearer and nearer.

They were approaching a wooded area where the path wound uphill in narrow curves through an area of undergrowth so dense that any horse would have difficulty fighting its way through.
 
This offered them the best protection he had seen so far.
 
Besides, their pursuers were so close upon them that they could not flee much further.
 
“Through to the crest of the hill,” he called to William.
 
“We shall make our stand there.”

They reached the crest of the small hill and wheeled their mounts around.
 
The pair of them together blocked the path so that no one could pass.

Their horses were glad of the moment’s rest as they stood side by side in the path, their heaving flanks wet with sweat and the warm breath from their nostrils steaming in the cold of the night air.

They did not have to wait long.
 
The sound of hoof beats grew steadily louder, the lights in the distance grew larger and brighter, and before long Pierre could even smell the acrid smoke of the burning pitch from the torches they carried.
 

All at once their pursuers, flaming torches brandished high above their heads, raced around a corner of the path and were upon them.

There were ten of them at least, maybe even a dozen, flaming torches carried in one hand and heads bent low over their horses’ necks as they urged their mounts on.
 
The foremost riders saw the path in front of them blocked and yelled a warning to those riding behind them as they pulled up on the reins with all their might.
 
The horses screamed with rage and pain, and several of them reared up into the air, their wicked-looking hooves beating wildly at nothing.

“They are the ones we are seeking,” a shout came from one of the foremost riders, as he fought to control his rearing mount.
 
“Get them – alive or dead, I care not, so long as neither of them escape to take ship at Brest.”

Charent, Georges Charent.
 
Now he knew why the man in black in the Duc’s apartments had looked strangely familiar to him, though his face was covered in a mask, and why he had been so sure he knew the man’s voice.
 
It was George Charent, yellow-bellied, bastard son of a two-sou street whore that he was, who had betrayed them.
 
Charent, his old comrade-in-arms and the man he had hated ever since they were together in Lyons.

Beside him he heard William growl with fury as their pursuers retreated around the corner of the path and readied themselves for the attack.
 
“Take down whoever you like,” the lad said to him in a low voice reeking with menace, “but that one is mine.
 
I have a debt to him that I must needs repay.
 
I shall die happy knowing that I have sent his black soul shrieking into Hell before me.”

Pierre would not let any young whippersnapper deprive him of his last act of vengeance.
 
If God still smiled on him, he would still strike a blow for his beloved Courtney and for his own lost honor before he died.
 
“You will have to wait your turn in line for the chance to kill him.
 
I have an old score to settle with him myself.”