On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (44 page)

So, that was the way the wind blew, Sophie thought as she reached wearily for her dagger.
 
Their quest was over, they had failed in their mission, and they had been betrayed at the last.
 
She was tired to the bottom of her soul, but there was no help for it.
 
They would have to fight their way out once more and hope that they could win through one last time.

Lamotte was on the Widow before she had taken more then a couple of steps.
 
“Where are my friends?” he said, his dagger at her neck.

The Widow stood stock still, her face white and shaking.
 
“Don’t kill me, Monsieur,” she gabbled, spittle forming at the corners of her mouth in her agitation to get the words out fast enough and avoid the blade of his knife.
 
“Don’t kill me and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

He took the edge of the knife away from her throat so she would calm down enough to answer him.
 
“I’m listening.”

“They’re upstairs, just like I told you.
 
Both of them.”
 
Removed from immediate danger, her voice had regained its truculence.

He gave Sophie an exasperated look and pressed the knife back against the hag’s neck.
 
“Who is up there with them?”

She shivered.
 
“I don’t know who they are, honest to God I don’t.
 
I’ve never seen them afore in all me life.”

“Try a little harder.”
 
His voice held a silky menace.
 
“You can do better than that.”
 

Sophie turned away.
 
She did not like to see the poor old woman bullied, even though she had blithely tried to send them to their deaths.
 
Only the thought of Miriame and Hugh in danger prevented her from putting a stop to the interrogation.
 
A few moments of fear might enable them to save two lives.

The old woman’s shoulders slumped – her resistance finally broken.
 
“Guards.
 
Sent by the King.”

“How many?”

“Five.”

“Who are they after?”

“They wanted the English spy – and anyone who helped him.”

“How did they know where to come?”

She gave a convulsive swallow and was silent.

He pressed a little harder with his knife so the blade just nicked her skin.

“Me,” the hag shrieked at the feel of the knife.
 
“I told them to come here.”

“Ah, I thought as much.”

“Word on the street was that the King would pay royally for news of an English spy.
 
I’m a poor old woman, Monsieur,” she whined, “with nobody to take care of me in my old age.
 
I have to look after myself because no one else will.
 
I needed the money, and he was only an Englishman.
 
They paid me two whole pistoles in gold to know where he was hiding.”

“Two pistoles for betraying a man’s life?”
 
Having gotten what he needed from her, Lamotte took his knife away with a shrug.
 
She was no danger to him any more.
 
“You were robbed.
 
The King would have paid two thousand for such news.”

“Two thousand?”
 
The old woman’s voice was laced with abject misery.
 
She didn’t even seem to notice that the knife had gone from her neck.
 
“He would have paid me two thousand gold pistoles?”
 
She held her hands out beseechingly.
 
“Tell me that you are mocking me.
 
Tell me that you are making fun of a poor old woman with one foot in her grave.
 
He would have paid me two thousand pistoles?”

“Or more.”

They left the hag in the doorway wringing her hands with a look of despair on her face.
 
“Two thousand pistoles or more?” she was repeating over to herself in accents of deepest grief.
 
“How could I throw away such riches?”

Up the stairs they ran as quietly as they could, the soles of their boots making a muffled thwack on the wooden stairs.

The door to Sophie’s old chamber was shut, with only the soft shuffle of anxious feet and the noise of breathing to give away the presence of the soldiers inside.

Sophie drew her sword, hefting it lightly in her hand.
 
Lamotte looked at her and she nodded.

With a rush, they burst in at the door.

Hugh was tied to a chair in a corner, his hands behind his back.
 
Five guards surrounded him, weapons in their hands.

The sudden attack took them by surprise.
 
Two of them were disarmed and wounded in the first charge before they knew what was happening, and lay groaning on the floor, but the other three had time enough to collect their wits before Sophie and Lamotte were on them.

“Where is Miriame?” Sophie called to Hugh, as she fought off one of her attackers with desperate sword strokes.

Hugh shrugged his shoulders.
 
“I haven’t seen her.”

There was a crash from up above them, and through the skylight in the roof jumped Miriame, her face aglow with the light of battle.
 
“Was somebody looking for me?”

All five combatants stopped for a second to stare at the apparition.
 
A second was all she needed to leap to Hugh and cut his bonds with a slash of her dagger.
 
He jumped to his feet, a knife magically appearing in his hand.

The odds were now tipped the other way, in favor of the conspirators.
 
There were four of them against three guards, and they were fighting for their lives.

With a frightened squeal, the guard nearest the door jumped through and ran off down the stairs, his boots clattering noisily as he ran.
 
The remaining two guards looked at the fierce faces in front of them, and threw down their weapons.
 
“We surrender.”

Miriame looked disappointed at the cessation of hostilities.
 
“Can I kill them?”

The guards looked pale.
 
The younger of them started to tremble and opened his mouth to beg for mercy.
 
The older guard jabbed him sharply in the stomach with his elbow, and the younger one shut his mouth again, a look of abject misery on his face.

Sophie shook her head.
 
“No more killing.”

Miriame grumbled in her sleeve and glared at the prisoners, but she put her sword back in its scabbard.

Tie ‘em up,” Lamotte ordered Hugh.
 
“I’ve no wish to see them dead, but they can stay here until we are well out of their reach.”

Hugh gathered up the loose pieces of rope that had recently been on his wrists and tied their hands behind their backs and their ankles together.
 
He rubbed his wrists together with a grimace as he did so.
 
“I’ll tie them as tightly as they tied me, the whoremongering French bastards,” he said, as he pulled the knots tight.
 
“I hope to God they won’t be able to lift a sword for three days together once they win free again.”

The two wounded guards lay on the floor still, groaning, one of them with a nasty cut to his thigh which was bleeding all over the floor.
 
Sophie did not like to leave them there untended.
 
She bent down over the badly-wounded guard and hastily tied up his wound so that it no longer bled.
 
He mumbled his thanks.
 
“I will send a leech to you anon,” she said.
 
“You will live.”

Half an hour later, they reined in their horses and came to a stop outside the gates of Paris.
 
The countryside stretched before them – an open land.

“Where to now?” Sophie asked.
 
Where indeed could she go?
 
Paris was no longer safe for her.
 
She had nowhere to go but to the Camargue, to live among the ghosts of her family.
 
Reluctantly she turned to face the south – to admit her defeat and desolation.
 
She had failed in her quest.
 
Her brother’s name would die an undeserved death, and she would live a woman again.

Hugh sniffed the breeze from the west.
 
“If I close my eyes, I can almost imagine that I can smell the sea.
 
I am to England by the shortest way to tell the King the sad news of his sister.
 
You may all come with me, if you have a mind to.
 
France may be too hot to hold you now, but King Charles will welcome you in England for your efforts to save the princess.”

Settle in England and serve the English King instead of King of France?
 
Sophie shot a sideways glance at Lamotte, who was frowning slightly.
 
She did not think she could bear to leave beautiful France for a cold, remote island kingdom.
 
Besides, she could not leave Lamotte behind without the hope ever of seeing him again.
 
She loved him too well for that.
 

Miriame turned her horse around to face back the way she had come.
 
“I am French through and through - England is not the place for me.
 
I am back to Paris.”

Her friend was brave as well as foolish.
 
“You are not scared of the King?
 
That he will put you under sentence of death?”

“I’ve been under sentence of death for as long as I can remember – for picking pockets mostly.
 
I’m not going to let a little thing like that stop me from being a Musketeer.
 
Besides, the King does not know my name, and his guards barely caught the merest glimpse of my face.
 
I shall be perfectly safe.
 
And you, Sophie?
 
What shall you do?”

She looked at her husband in misery.
 
How could she bear to leave him now that the time had come for them to part?
 
“I do not know.”

Lamotte shook his reins and his mare flicked her ears in acknowledgement.
 
“I have nothing left to hold me in Paris.
 
I have resigned my commission and angered the King so that he will never forgive or forget.”

“To England then?” suggested Hugh.

He shook his head.
 
“I have long wanted to show my new wife my estates in Burgundy.
 
It would be a good time to visit, I feel.
 
The peaches in the orchard will be nicely ripe.
 
Besides, the Duke of Burgundy is an honorable man, and I wager he will not say nay to a couple of King’s guards joining his household.
 
Will you come with me, Sophie, and serve the Duke?
 
Come with me as my companion?
 
And as the wife of my heart.”

He was offering her the third way when she had least expected it.
 
He was offering her life – the life that she wanted to live.
 
“You would stay married to a soldier then?”

“I would stay married to you, Sophie, whether you be a soldier or no.
 
I love you.”

Sophie looked into his eyes and saw what she had never hoped or expected to see - the love he carried for her in his heart.
 
A love that mirrored her own.
 
“I love you too, Ricard Lamotte, husband of my heart.
 
Yes, I will come with you to Burgundy, be your wife and serve the Duke, with all my heart.”

THE END