Gosford's Daughter (42 page)

Rob was looking dubious as he surveyed the scene in
front of them. At least a hundred men were lolling about on what
had once been a flourishing summer garden. Beyond them, another
sort of garden grew, a maze of canopied tents, displaying pennons
of various colors and design, none of which meant anything to Rob
or Sorcha. Napier, however, pointed to a dark blue tent that bore
no mark of any sort. “There—where the pious pair of ministers
confer—I suspect we’ll find one or the other of our Henris.”

Gazing past the soldiers, whose dicing and drinking
was in no way disturbed by the newcomers’ arrival, Sorcha saw two
somberly garbed men who would have been more at home in Uncle
Donald’s entry hall than on a battlefield outside Paris. “They look
like Protestant divines to me,” Sorcha declared as three young
soldiers called out a bold, lascivious invitation. Napier glared at
them, but Sorcha merely made an unmistakable gesture of disdain.
“Boors,” she muttered, then waited for Napier’s reply.

“
You forget, King Henri has acquired
a great number of Huguenot advisers to placate those who criticized
him for being under the Jesuits’ thumbs. Come,” he said, urging his
horse to circumvent a cask-laden cart, “I’ll wager fifty crowns
those devout divines can tell us where the King is
quartered.”

“
But will they?” queried Rob, still
unconvinced that they would ever reach their
destination.

Napier’s answer, if any, was drowned out by the
cacophony of men hauling a huge contraption up to the lowest part
of the wall. A fire-throwing machine, Sorcha guessed, and wondered
what it must be like to live under the constant threat of
invasion.

Threading their way among the now-dense gathering of
soldiers, the trio drew up in front of the blue tent. Napier
addressed the two men in courteous French, aware that they regarded
him with grave suspicion. Sorcha discerned from their terse, yet
polite, response that neither was willing to offer much helpful
information. She and Rob exchanged desolate glances, but Napier
wasn’t giving up so easily.

Indeed, the ministers’ reluctance only fortified his
own determination. At last, he got down from his mount and took
three swift strides to where Sorcha and Rob waited. “I think King
Henri is in that tent,” Napier said, purposely making his Scots
accent thicker than usual. “Otherwise, they would not be so
evasive.” He shielded his face with his hand. “Sorcha, could you
faint?”

For just an instant, Sorcha stared at him in
puzzlement. Between the searing sun and lack of food and drink, it
occurred to Sorcha that she could almost accommodate Napier without
chicanery. Napier had turned back to the ministers and was making a
little bow. He was thanking them graciously when Sorcha caught
Rob’s eye and tumbled as carefully as possible from the saddle.
Alertly, Rob reached out to stop her fall though he almost twisted
an ankle in his stirrup. Napier cried out in alarm, then rushed to
Sorcha’s inert form which rested half against Rob and half on the
dusty ground.

“
My Lord!” Napier exclaimed,
ignoring the tongue which Sorcha stuck out at him. “My sweet bride
has fainted. For the sake of the babe in her womb, give us
shelter!”

The divines seemed to freeze in place, but Napier had
already scooped Sorcha up in his arms, while Rob brushed dirt from
his laymen’s riding garb. Only the bull-like surge of Napier making
for the tent’s entrance could have dislodged the clergymen. Even as
they protested volubly, Napier parted them from each other and
charged into the tent.

Though the canopy protected the tent’s inhabitants
from the direct rays of the sun, the atmosphere inside was fetid
and oppressive. There was a mingling of other smells, too, of rose
water and wine and roasted meat. Sorcha peered through the masses
of heavy hair that concealed her face; her entire body gave a jerk
in Napier’s arms.

A small, thin man with a large nose and vacant eyes
was seated in an elaborately carved red-cushioned armchair on a
makeshift dais. His lack of substance made him seem young, though
the lines in his pale face gave a more accurate count of his years.
His startled reaction to the interlopers was reminiscent of King
Jamie, yet more languorous and exaggerated. Fleetingly, Sorcha
recalled an Italian conjurer she had once seen in the High Street
of Edinburgh. If this was King Henri of France, he had inherited
more Medici than Valois blood.

Sorcha’s impression took only seconds; it was the two
people flanking King Henri who startled her. To the king’s left
stood a nun, her entire body enveloped in the white and black habit
of the Dominicans; even her face was hidden by the squarish black
coif. Yet Sorcha knew at once who the woman was and had to suppress
a startled exclamation.

But Rob’s self-control wasn’t as rigid as Sorcha’s.
An astonished oath escaped his lips as he recognized Brother
Jacques standing to the right of the King. While the others in
attendance gaped at Napier, Sorcha, and Rob with stunned curiosity,
only the triumvirate of King, monk, and nun seemed real.

King Henri was looking vaguely at no one and yet at
everyone. “Who intrudes?” he inquired in high, fluting tones. “By
Saint Louis, are we to have no rest before our supper?”

As Rob moved toward Brother Jacques, the young monk
wheeled around and cried out in a hoarse, terrifying voice, “You’ll
have eternal rest now, wicked King of Demons!” The long blade
flashed from under Brother Jacques’s robes. He fell across the
king’s seated form so swiftly that not one of the French attendants
could intervene. It was Rob who hauled Brother Jacques away, the
white robes splattered with blood, the knife still dripping in his
hand.

Napier dropped Sorcha, somehow managing not to let
her get bruised. She landed on her side, scrambling among the
booted feet for a clear view of the mayhem that was unfolding not
more than two yards away. Rob, now joined by Napier and two effete
Frenchmen, was grappling with Brother Jacques. The other royal
attendants, perhaps a half dozen in all, were clustered around the
King, whose piercing moans seemed to make the sides of the tent
inhale and exhale with a death gasp of their own.

To her rear, Sorcha sensed rather than felt other
people pushing into the tent. The two divines and a clutch of
soldiers joined in subduing Brother Jacques. The tent had become so
crowded, so tumultuous, that Sorcha feared being trampled. She was
making a mighty effort to get to her feet when she espied the
black-and-white nun’s habit flying past her. Sorcha reached out
with one hand, lunging for the ankles. In a flurry of skirts and
veils, the other woman crashed to the floor, her face almost level
with Sorcha’s. The coif was askew, and somehow a smear of blood had
stained the white wimple under her chin. Fumbling at the heavy
garments, Sorcha tried to get a firm grasp on her adversary.
“Athene,” Sorcha rasped, “you are as guilty as Brother Jacques! You
will not escape!”

But Athene had already rolled away from Sorcha,
pulling herself to her feet by gripping a silken cord that dangled
from the top of the tent. Her feet kicked out, striking Sorcha in
the temple. Momentarily stunned, she didn’t see Gavin Napier
looming over her, his fists clenched. “Gavin!” Sorcha cried, as she
shook away the sudden daze, “it’s Athene!”

Despite the uproar that still raged within the tent,
Napier’s breathing was quite audible to Sorcha. She was now on her
knees, her gaze traveling swiftly from Napier to Athene, who still
clutched the silken rope in her hands. Though Napier’s voice was a
low, harsh rumble, it seemed to ring out over the wounded King’s
cries and his courtiers’ lamentations.

“
Oh, no,” intoned Napier, the words
making Sorcha’s head spin, “this is not Athene! This is
Marie-Louise, my faithless bride!”

Napier all but stumbled over Sorcha’s kneeling form
to reach out to the woman whose azure eyes blazed contempt and
fury. “Pig!” shrieked Marie-Louise, who, with the added height of
the coif, stood almost as tall as Napier. “Touch me and your whore
dies!”

Sorcha's gaze was drawn to a foreshortened hackbut
that had been hidden in the folds of Marie-Louise’s habit. Napier
didn’t back off, but Sorcha knew instinctively that he would go no
further. Then there was a ripping sound and a rush of air as the
tent collapsed upon them. Napier was pushed to the ground under the
weight of at least two soldiers who fell on top of him, but he
managed to shield Sorcha with his body. In less than a minute
Sorcha, Napier, and Rob had extricated themselves from the copious
hangings of the tent and stood staring into a sea of incredulous,
grizzled faces. Waving aside the soldier’s gruff questions, Napier
pushed his way through, with Sorcha and Rob trailing behind. But
even as they reached the outer edge of the circle, there was no
sign of Marie-Louise. She had vanished, as if by magic.

The students who usually milled about the walls of
Saint-Germain-des-Prés had begun to scatter as soon as word of the
attempt on the King’s life filtered through the precincts of the
University of Paris. Even as Sorcha, Napier, and Rob galloped
within the shadow of the abbey’s ancient walls, the usually
bustling faubourg was all but deserted. The adjacent Merovingian
abbey had already stood for two centuries before the founding of
the university over three hundred years earlier. Generation after
generation of young scholars had disported and disputed on the Prés
aux Clercs outside the Porte de Bussy gate into the city.

The August sun had finally disappeared behind the
steep towers of the abbey walls when the trio reined up in the
abbey courtyard. It took almost a quarter of an hour to locate
Rosmairi and Armand d’Ailly in the common room, drinking sparkling
Vouvray and sitting side by side on a settee in front of an empty
fireplace. It appeared that they were the only two people in the
vicinity of Paris who had not heard about Brother Jacques and the
King. It also appeared that they were too immersed in themselves to
care much about either monk or monarch.

“
A pity,” Rosmairi murmured without
much interest, the golden lashes dipping against her cheeks as she
let d’Ailly take her hand. “Why must men hate when they could love
instead?” She cast a demure sidelong glance at d’Ailly, who beamed
his approbation.

“
Because hate is sometimes easier
than love,” Napier snapped, and made both Rosmairi and d’Ailly
jump. “Particularly when it’s fueled by a wicked woman.”

D’Ailly, however, wasn’t put off by Napier’s
bitterness. He squared his shoulders and assumed an air of dignity.
To Napier, he offered the merest inclination of his head; it was
Rob whom he formally addressed. “Since I am unable to speak with
Mistress Fraser’s parents, I must ask you to favor me in their
stead. I wish very much to marry your sister. She has,” he
continued, again smiling fondly down at Rosmairi, “done me the
greatest of honors by consenting to be my wife.”

Sorcha didn’t know whether to burst into tears of
frustration or shake both Rosmairi and d’Ailly until their teeth
rattled. How dare fate be so monstrously cruel? This was to have
been the day that she and Gavin Napier announced their love to all
the world. Instead, it was her sister and d’Ailly whose eyes shone
with the ecstasy of mutual adoration. As for Sorcha, her whole life
had been ripped into shreds inside King Henri’s encampment. Henri
might die; no doubt so would Brother Jacques. But when Gavin Napier
learned that the wife he thought to be dead still lived, something
inside Sorcha had died, too.

It wasn’t fair to let her own misfortune ruin her
sister’s happiness. Still, Sorcha was unable to greet Rosmairi’s
betrothal with enthusiasm. “You scarcely know each other,” she
blurted, interrupting Rob’s studied response of qualified
approval.

“
Our hearts have known each other
forever,” d’Ailly replied with a little shrug. “Nothing else
matters.”

“
You’ve reflected on your vocation,
I assume,” Rob said in sober tones.

Rosmairi’s pink cheeks flushed more deeply. “I
reflected upon it for a year, as you know well. I don’t believe I’m
intended for the cloistered life.” She darted Rob a defiant look,
then turned to d’Ailly. “Fear not, we will bide our time until
we’re home in Scotland and have the blessing of my parents.”

Both Sorcha and Rob expelled audible sighs of relief.
“That’s wise,” Sorcha asserted; then, noting the resentment in
Rosmairi’s eyes and the hurt on d’Ailly’s face, she rushed to
embrace her sister. “Oh, God’s teeth, Ros, I didn’t mean to offend
either of you! It just seems so … so sudden!” Sorcha felt
Rosmairi tremble slightly in her arms. “I like Armand,” Sorcha
whispered into her sister’s ear. “At least what I know of him.”

Rosmairi hugged Sorcha in return; then the two young
women broke apart, though Sorcha’s hands remained on Rosmairi’s
shoulders. “I certainly like him better than George Gordon,” she
said aloud and was joined in laughter by Rob. D’Ailly, however,
looked mystified, and Sorcha realized that Napier wasn’t looking at
any of them. He had moved off to the end of the huge open
fireplace, leaning against the intricately carved mantelpiece,
glowering down at the worn hearthstone. It was Rob, rather than
Sorcha, who went to him.

“
This has been a momentous day in
more ways than one,” Rob began tentatively. “Shall we pour wine all
around and drink a toast to the happy couple?”

If Sorcha had been devastated by the events of the
past hour, Gavin Napier had been all but destroyed. The hunter’s
eyes shot past Rob to Rosmairi and d’Ailly, boring in on the
Frenchman with an intensity that surprised Sorcha. “Who are you?”
Napier demanded, leaning across Rob to speak directly to the young
Sieur.