Mademoiselle At Arms (22 page)

‘Do not have me know anything,’ interrupted Melusine crossly,
and digging into her habit, produced the fateful dagger that had cut Gerald’s
hand. ‘To the contrary, I will have you to know something. You will do as I
say, or—’

‘Hoy!’ called Trodger from down the hall. ‘You put that thing
away now, missie. We don’t want no trouble, do we?’

At sight of him, everything went out of Melusine’s head but
the thought of Jack Kimble. She started forward.

‘Jacques? You have done it? He is alive?’

‘Oh, he’s alive, all right,’ confirmed the sergeant, putting
the petrified Pottiswick—stockstill and staring in horror at the dagger—firmly
out of his way and taking his place before Melusine. ‘Sleeping like a baby, he
is. He’ll do.’

Melusine sank against the wall of the corridor, closing her
eyes. ‘
Merci, dieu
.’

‘Now then, missie,’ began the sergeant severely, ‘just you
hand over that dagger. Nice goings on. Ladies with weapon’s on ’em.’ He took
the thing from Melusine’s listless grasp and went on, ‘Now then, what’s all
this here argy-bargy with Pottiswick?’

Melusine opened her eyes and straightened up. She had hardly
noticed the loss of her dagger, so strong had been the waves of relief that
attacked her on hearing that Jack had returned from death’s door. But this was
important.

‘
Bon
. You will make him get his daughter, if you
please. She is called Madame Ibstock, you understand.’

‘Is she now? And what would you be wanting of her, may I ask?’

‘Because she knows something that may make this fool
understand that I am the mistress of—’ She broke off. There was no sense in
creating further difficulties for herself by arguing with the sergeant over her
identity. An admirable alternative presented itself and she sighed, spreading
her hands. ‘You see, it is that I am a female, and you all are men. It is not
at all
comme il faut
.’

Trodger frowned, and chewed his lip. ‘Something in that,
missie. But I’m thinking as how I’d best report to the major over this here
shooting.’

‘Yes, do so,’ rejoined Melusine enthusiastically. ‘
En
effet
, it is for this that I was enquiring of this man if he has pen and
paper. I will write to your major, and you will send the letter very quickly. Also,
you must send someone to fetch my horse—at least, it is not mine but I have
borrowed it to come here—because it will be dark very soon and—’

‘Woof! Hold it, hold it,’ begged the sergeant. ‘One thing at
a time, missie.’ He turned to the lodgekeeper behind him, whose shocked fear
had given place to a direful frown. ‘Here you, Pottiswick. Get pen and paper
for the missie. Then go and fetch this daughter of yourn. Don’t stand gawping,
man. And you’d better have her fetch in some food for the missie, an’ all. Get
on, do.’

He gave the gaping Pottiswick a shove, passing him on to his
junior, who was waiting patiently by the kitchen door. The militiaman at once
thrust the old man between the shoulder blades, pushing him into the kitchen.

Melusine soon found herself seated at a table, with a dirty
piece of paper in front of her, and a badly mended pen between her fingers. The
ink, contained in a grimy bottle unearthed in the outhouse, was old, and made
blotches as soon as it touched the paper. But it would serve.

Mon cher major
, Melusine began. And
then scratched it out and wrote instead, “Gérard”. She sat in deep thought for
a moment or two, and then nodding briskly, dipped the pen in the ink again and
began to write.

“Jacques is wounded and we are arrested by this imbecile of a
sergeant. The
soi-disant
Valade escapes and takes my proof, which I have
broken on his head. Hurry to me, I entreat you. Never did I need a rescue so
much. It is at the lodge that we stay. I pray you, Gérard, do not fail me.
Á
bientot
—Melusine.”

To her relief, Trodger sent one of his men posthaste to London with this missive, while the other went to fetch the horse, having been given
precise directions on how to negotiate the passage so that he might find it at
the other end. The old man Pottiswick, still grumbling, much to Melusine’s
disgust, had gone on his errand to his daughter’s house some two miles distant.
And the sergeant, having carried out all Melusine’s instructions as if they had
come out of his own head, went up to check on his patient, apparently at last
convinced that his prisoner would not attempt to run away.

Nothing could have been farther from Melusine’s mind. She had
come to the end of her resources. It had been a trying day. She was tired,
hungry—and thus somewhat impatient for the food Mrs Ibstock might bring—and
downcast.

She sat in a chair in the parlour and regarded the darkening
sky through the small casement window. It seemed to her at this moment that
there was nothing left for her to do. Gosse, if he had any sense, would
immediately seek out the Remenham lawyers. Once he had managed to stake his
claim, she would have all to do to prove her identity and win it back. If only
monsieur
le baron
had said nothing, or perhaps instead accepted the couple as the
Valades and agreed to help them. Not that there had ever been any hope of that.
She had told Emile. She had warned him.

Her mind wandered back to that fateful day. Was it a week ago?
No, perhaps more. Time was moving so fast, she could no longer count the days
since Gosse had come to her with his preposterous suggestion at the
Coq d’Or
,
where they were staying and where he had robbed her and left her and Martha to
their fate.

‘Mademoiselle,’ he had greeted her, entering the little
private parlour where, Martha being at prayer in their room, she sat alone,
reading over and over the letter Mother Abbess had given her and revolving
plans in her head.

She had looked up from her seat at the small round table in
the centre of the parlour which, together with the wooden armchairs beside the
small fireplace, and a sideboard next the single casement, was all the
furniture the place afforded. Melusine, used to the stark surroundings of the
convent at Blaye, had no complaint to make. Her desires were not for riches. Only
identity, and a chance to be someone other than a nun.

Not so Gosse. But at this point he was still subservient,
still outwardly humble, in spite of the blackhearted villainy that was even
then burgeoning in his breast.

‘Mademoiselle, there is a way to win to freedom and
prosperity.’

To be sure there was a way. For freedom at least. Why did he
imagine she was making this journey to England? She feigned interest.

‘But what way, Emile?’

‘Your family, mademoiselle, the family of your father.’

‘You mean
monsieur le baron
, the General Charvill, my
grandfather?’

Melusine laid aside on the table the letter she had been
studying and turned so that the frame of her nun’s wimple no longer obscured
her view.

‘
Pardon
, mademoiselle, but perhaps your father went to
England, after all, and—’

‘My father went to Italy,’ interrupted Melusine, her heart
tightening with the familiar sensation of loss. ‘Never would he have gone to England. And if you mean that he may have reconciled himself with his own father, you
waste your breath.’

‘That was not what I had in mind.’

‘
Eh bien
, what then?’

Emile sidled closer. ‘To what do you go, mademoiselle? The
life of a nun in a convent, in a country where nuns are unwelcome. Where even
to be a Catholic, they say, is to be looked upon with scorn and disgust.’

Melusine shrugged. She had no intention whatsoever of
spending her life in a convent, but that was not his affair.

‘It is the life I know.’

‘But you must want more. You should have more.’

‘I am going to England,’ Melusine stated flatly, ‘because
there is no safety at the convent at Blaye. And for that I am connected with
the Valades, after what you have told us has happened to them, the Mother
Abbess will not consent that I remain in France.
Voilà tout
.’

The Mother Abbess—and indeed all the nuns, some of higher
birth more fearful than others—were aghast at the horrors that had befallen the
family Valade. Gosse had come to Blaye, so he had said, feeling it his duty as
the vicomte’s erstwhile secretary to deliver the fateful tidings, bringing with
him one of the servant girls, Yolande, who had also escaped the fury of the mob.
Her evident terror and distress reinforced the tale he told.

He had drawn a horrid picture of the fate that awaited
mademoiselle when once the populace discovered her relationship to the Valade
family. Too close, he reasoned, for safety. He had offered to escort the young
lady to England where she might seek refuge with her relations there, and
proposed that the maid Yolande might serve Miss Charvill.

The Mother Abbess, while thankful, could not be brought to
consent to allow the girl out of her charge alone with unknown servants, and
Martha was delegated to accompany her erstwhile nurseling to the homeland she
had thought never to see again.

‘You do not want to be a nun,’ he said now, and Melusine
noted with a prick at her senses the irritation in his tone.

She had not felt comfortable in his presence from the first,
and with Leonardo’s precepts in mind, was loath to trust him. She did not
therefore reveal to him that he had guaged her with accuracy. She fluttered her
eyelashes, and adopted the soulful tone that served her well at times.

‘It is what my father intended. I must obey.’

To her astonishment, Gosse’s servile attitude vanished
abruptly. Grasping one of chairs about the little table, he drew it forward and
sat astride it, in a fashion as insolent as it was unexpected.

‘You wish a life of obedience? So be it, Mademoiselle
Charvill.’

Melusine’s instant annoyance must have shown in her face.

‘Do not look at me so,’ he snapped. ‘I may have been only a
secretary, but times are changing. I am not of the
canaille
, but a
bourgeois
.
There is no future for me here. I wish to rise in the world, mademoiselle, and
you are going to help me.’

Amazed, Melusine stared at him. Caution forced her to speak
calmly.

‘I fear you mistake, Emile. I have said that I am but a nun
now.’

‘You need not be a nun,’ he said, leaning towards her. ‘You
have the means to take up your rightful place.’

Melusine’s eyes narrowed and she drew back. He could not know
about the Remenham connection, could he? No one knew but her father and Martha.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You have papers of identity, for the Mother Abbess told me
so.’

Melusine frowned, placing her hand on the letter lying on the
table. Then she cursed herself for his eyes went to the letter and came back to
her face.

‘And so?’ she asked.

‘And so also have I.’ He reached into an inner pocket of his
coat and brought out a packet of papers. Out of these he selected a faded
parchment and restored the rest to safety. He then unfolded his choice and held
it before her face. ‘This, as you see, is an identity for your cousin, André
Valade. I do not choose the vicomte, for that would be foolish. His heir is
dead, yes, and his name and title available to me. But it would be too risky. The
vicomte must be well known to those high-born who have gone to England. Besides,
I do not want a price on my head.’

Melusine was beginning to fill with dread and a burgeoning of
anger as the meaning behind his words began to penetrate. But she veiled her
feelings.

‘I do not understand you.’

‘Listen. I can be a gentleman. I have been around them for
long enough. Who is to say that I am not André Valade, an obscure relation of
the late vicomte.’

Melusine remembered a thin man of sour aspect, living—like
her father and his wife Suzanne—off the vicomte’s bounty. He must be more or
less of an age with this man. Rage flooded her at his intent, but she
controlled it.

‘You will take the place of André?’

‘Exactly so. And you, Mademoiselle Melusine, will support
this claim.’

‘From a convent? Even if I wished to do it, I could not.’

Emile reached out both hands and grasped her shoulders. ‘But
you will not be in a convent. You will be with me. You will be—my wife.’

For a moment Melusine stared at him as she took in the full
horror of his scheme. Then fury claimed her and she could no longer pretend. Wrenching
his hands from her shoulders, she thrust them away and leapt up from the chair.

‘Your
wife
?’

‘My wife,’ he repeated, rising also, his smile mocking her. ‘Is
it such a terrible prospect? I will take care of you—as long as you obey me. I
will make your grandfather extend to you his protection, and his support.’

‘It is money you mean, no?’ Melusine asked with scorn. ‘You
are mad, if you think he will give you a sou. You do not know him. And you
think I would marry you?’