On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (37 page)

He made his way with shaking legs to the cabin below, his wet stockinged feet slipping on the deck.
 
Sophie was there before him, stripping off her clothes with fumbling fingers and dropping them where she stood.
 
Her arms were covered with goose bumps and she was shivering.

He stripped his own wet gear off him as fast as he could with fingers he could scarcely feel.
 
If anything, he was colder with them off.

Sophie was shivering in her blanket.
 
He clasped her in his cold arms and threw his own blanket over the pair of them.
 
“We’ll warm up faster this way.”

The ship climbed another swell and nose-dived over the side, making the bottom drop out of his stomach.
 
He almost wished he was back in the water again as he retched salt water and bile on to the floor of the cabin at his feet.
 
At least in the water he would be able to die in peace and with his dignity intact.

Sophie nudged him over to the side where a narrow bunk was set into the wall.
 
“Lie down.
 
You might feel better.”

They lay together on a narrow bunk in the cabin as the boat pitched and tossed its way over the channel.
 
If anything, this cabin smelled worse than that of the other boat – of rotten fish and sweat and misery.

He had nothing left in his stomach to throw up but bile, but he could not stop his heaving.

His body began to tingle all over as if it were being pierced with a thousand pins.
 
At least he was no longer numb with cold.
 
He could feel his feet again, and the tips of his fingers.

Through the long hours of the passage, Sophie stayed glued to his side, warming his body with hers and keeping the blankets tucked around their bodies as he dozed and retched all the way to England.

Their clothes were drying stiff with salt by the time they set anchor off the coast of England and the owner of the boat came to rouse them.
 
“We’re but a few hundred yards off the south coast.
 
I daren’t go any further in daylight.
 
The excise men know me a little too well for me to poke my nose in to shore any closer.”

Sophie shook some salt crystals from her damp jacket and pulled it over her shoulders.
 
“You saved our lives.
 
We are very grateful to you.”

He chuckled.
 
“Ye paid me well enough to save your skins, so I reckon we’re even.
 
Now, do you want to swim the last wee bit, or would you be wanting to buy me dinghy to row yourselves there.”

He never wanted to swim anywhere in his life again.
 
He took a couple of gold pistoles out from the bag concealed next to his skin.
 
“One gold pistole for your boat.
 
Two if one of your men will row us to shore.”

A crafty look came into the fisherman’s eyes.
 
“Can I keep the dinghy then, and row it back again?”

“You may do with it as you will.
 
We shall have no further need of it.”

“Tom,” the fisherman called to one of the younger of the crew.
 
“Row our passengers to shore and look sharp about it, me lad.”

Two more gold pistoles seemed little enough when set against Sophie’s life – not to mention his own as well.
 
He poured a handful of pistoles on to his hand and gave them to the fisherman, who accepted them with delighted surprise.
 
“The gold I gave you before was a fee.
 
This is a reward that I give you out of gratitude.
 
We owe you our lives.”

“Its been a pleasure doing business with you, Monsieur,” the fisherman said with a toothless grin.
 
He doffed his cap deferentially as they climbed into the little dinghy and were rowed to shore.

Sophie wanted to scream with delight when they came across the first sign of life on the desolate coast of England they had landed upon.
 
The stolid farmer at work in his field looked askance at their bare feet covered only with the tattered remnants of their stockings and their ruined finery, but when she explained in her halting English that they needed food and rest and new clothes, and were prepared to pay for them with good French gold, his face brightened considerably.
 
He led them off over the fields to a farmhouse and left them with his wife, a bustling woman whose kitchen smelled of good broth and onions.
 

At the sight of the gold coin they offered her, she disappeared for a moment, returning with a selection of clean woolen undergarments and rough woolen clothes like those she and her husband wore.

Sophie pounced on the homespun dress with glee.
 
The farmer’s wife gave her a bucket of cold water, with a bit of hot from the kettle thrown in, and she sluiced herself down out the back of the house, removing all the dried salt from her body.
 
Wrapped in the clean woolen clothes, coarse and scratchy though they were, she felt reborn.

“To the King in the morning,” she said as they lay on a pallet in front of the kitchen fire that evening, toasting their whole bodies with warmth.
 
She had never before appreciated a fire so well.
 
Tossing and turning in the boat, huddling up to Lamotte for the scrap of warmth his body had afforded her, she had felt as if she would never be warm again.
 
With the embers of the well-banked fire at one side of her, and Lamotte at the other holding her in his arms, she was baking in warmth.
 
“And then our task is done.”

Lamotte plucked at the coarse woolen undergarments she was wearing for warmth and laughed.
 
“We cannot go to the King as we are.
 
The most lowly of his footmen would have us thrown out on the street as beggars and rogues.
 
We will have to have some fresh clothes made first so we can appear in style.”

She did not like the thought of yet more delay.
 
“Must we spend the time?
 
We look like very sober farmers in this gear, honest and respectable.
 
Surely he will listen to us.”

“Clothes maketh the man.
 
If we look like farmers we will be treated as farmers.
 
If we look like soldiers, we shall be treated that way, too.”

She was silent for a while, thinking of the truth in his words.
 
When she was dressed as a Musketeer, Lamotte treated her as a Musketeer.
 
Let her but once put on a dress, and her husband had treated her as a woman.
 
He was not alone on this.
 
Kings and their courts were notoriously prone to judge on appearances.
 
“And if I look like a fine French lady?”

“Then you will be treated royally, as a fine French lady ought to be.”

She could not argue with this.
 
She knew the truth of it only too well.
 
“New clothes then, the best we can afford.
 
We shall go to the court of the English King in style – as ambassadors, not as petitioners.”

“And when we have seen the King – what then?”

She did not know.
 
She had purposely put off thinking about it until she was out of danger.
 
She shrugged her shoulders and was silent.

“The King of France wanted to kill Gerard Delamanse.
 
Gerard is now dead – he drowned in the sea between France and England.
 
I think it would be wise for him to remain there.”

She had feared this, but had not wanted to accept it.
 
She did not know what else she could do.
 
“I can no longer be Gerard, then?
 
I can no longer be a Musketeer?”

“You chose to give up your service to the King in favor of saving an innocent woman whom the King had declared a traitor.
 
From that moment on, you ceased to be a Musketeer.”

She could not regret her decision.
 
“I had to follow the path of honor.”

“If Gerard comes back to life again, I doubt not but that the King will have him killed.
 
Sooner or later, you will not be able to escape your fate.”

She did not doubt that, either.
 
The King of France was quite ruthless enough to have her murdered for the sake of revenge.

“It seems to me that you face a choice – death as Gerard or life as Sophie.”

She knew he spoke the truth, but she could not accept it.
 
She would not accept it.
 
She lay in silence in front of the fire, feeling the warmth seep into her bones.
 

There had to be another way.
 
There just had to be.
 
Somehow or other, she would find it.

Lamotte raised Sophie’s hand to his lips and kissed it.
 
“I promised you new shoes if you married me.
 
See how well I have kept my promise.”

She looked down at her feet, distaste wrinkling her nose.
 
“You promised me new boots.
 
These are high-heeled silk slippers.
 
They do not count.”

“They are the same color as your eyes.”

“God forbid that I should ever have to fight in them.
 
I would lose my balance and go sprawling head over heels.”

“Even sprawled out on the floor, you would be the most beautiful woman in the room.”

She pulled her hand away, feeling unaccountably vexed with his foolishness.
 
“There’s no need to play the courtier with me.
 
Save your meaningless flattery for when we have reached the side of the English King.”

“Even if King Louis has sent men to reach the ear of the English King first, he will be bound to listen to you.
 
He is supposed to have an eye for a pretty face.”

She scowled.
 
She wished he would not call her pretty in that mocking tone of voice.
 
It made her feel like less of a woman than ever.
 
“I do not care what he thinks of my looks.
 
He may think me an old hag, for all I care.
 
While I am in England, I am still a soldier on a mission, not a decoration.”

He patted her hand.
 
“I know that, my dear wife, but King Charles of England does not.”

Dressed as they were in silks and satins, and bearing a message for the English King from his sister in France, they had little trouble securing an immediate audience.

King Charles of England beamed genially at Sophie as they were ushered into his presence.
 
“A message from my dear sister, Henrietta?” he asked.
 
“I’m sure that such a beautiful messenger can only carry a joyous message.
 
Come, come, let me know what it is.
 
I am all ears.”

Sophie looked nervously around her at the courtiers all crowding close around the King.
 
She could not announce the imprisonment of the King’s sister to the whole English court.
 
“Henrietta told me that it was for your ears alone,” she prevaricated.

The smile on the King’s face faded slightly.
 
“She did?
 
Come now, I am sure that everyone here will be as delighted as I am to hear her news.”

Sophie shuffled her feet.
 
“May I not tell you in private the news from your sister, Sire?” she begged in her halting English.
 
“I do not feel easy speaking before so many people.”

He chucked her under the chin.
 
“Ah, I do believe our young French friend is shy of crowds.
 
You do not need to be, my sweet.
 
Your accent is quite charming.

“Come, Rochester and Saville, let us to our closet where we can hear the minx’s news in as much solitude as she could wish for.
 
Some woman’s news it may be, that Henrietta would not have all the world know just yet.”

The King and his two chosen attendants led the way into a narrow room off the Great Hall.
 
Sophie and Lamotte followed close behind.

“So, what is your news then?” the King asked, his face now devoid of any smile.
 
“I trust I will find it worth the interruption.”