Prisoner of the Flames (Leisure Historical Romance) (25 page)

“Where have you gone?” she panicked, groping the air in mad circles. “What do you do?”

“Shhh!” he said, collecting the ropes. “I bind your jailer as you were bound,” he said. “Should he come ‘round now, he will alert the others.”

“They will kill you, I say…these ‘holy men’—I know it,” she moaned.

Having tied the senseless priest securely, he reached her again in two great strides, and seized her close in comforting arms, torn between longing and the desperation of the moment.

“Not if you do as I say,” he murmured, finding her lips again. They were hot and dry, and he laid a hand against her face, searching the glazed, sightless eyes that so desperately sought him in their blindness.

“You are still burning with fever,” he said. “Come, the vendors wait. They will see you safely away, but we must hurry.”

Leading her, he darted from the cellar and began his
winding way upward toward the chapel as best he remembered.

“The vendors?” she cried. “No!”

“Shhh, be still!” he snapped. “They wait in the chapel above. If we are not too late, they will see you safely out of this tomb.” For that is what it seemed to him in its dank, inhospitable emptiness.

“But what of you?” she sobbed. “How will you escape?”

“Nevermind about that now,” he said. “I will. That is all you need know, and I will join you just as quickly as I can. It is all arranged.”

“I do not even know what it is, this place,” she said, low-voiced. “Where are we—where?”

“Notre Dame Cathedral,” he told her.

Groaning, she sagged against him. “Mon
Dieu!”
she murmured. “You will never escape from here. It is impossible.”

“It was impossible that I gain entrance,” he said. “I have done that, haven’t I? I will escape as well.”

She was limp in his arm, as though all the life in her had been siphoned off suddenly, and when they reached the chapel arch, he had to leave her leaning against the wall, while he crept close enough to observe the situation. The vendors had begun to make their reluctant departure, for they dared wait no longer if they would avoid suspicion. The priests were nowhere in sight then, and without a second thought, the young laird grabbed Violette and thrust her toward the anxious gathering.

“No!” she cried. “No, I won’t leave you!”

He shook her. “You will be still,” he gritted out. “You will make no sound, or all these will die with you. They are a hundred strong!” He lowered his lips to her own again in a scorching kiss. Then, gathering her up in his arms, he laid her in the coffin. “Not one sound,” he warned, and darted back into the shadows as they lowered the coffin lid and bore her away.

The embalmer hung back. “Come away with us, please,” he begged. “You cannot escape alone from this place. It is madness—suicide!”

“No,” said Robert. “I cannot come with you. The guards will surely have been warned of my disfigurement, and without this habit and cowl…my face…it is impossible. If I attempt it, you will all die—Violette and myself as well. Take her to safety. I will wait long enough for you to return to the vendors’ quarter if I can. Then I will attempt escape. If I succeed, I will join you. Look after her!” he charged them, and moved back into the murky shadows of the passageway. For, had he lingered there another moment as he was, still atremble from Violette’s passionate embrace, he would have let the man persuade him.

The worst still lay before him, and he focused upon that as he flattened himself against the cold stone wall in the darkness, wracking his brain for a viable plan of escape from the fortified cathedral. This could not be managed from any of the portals. They were too well guarded. Escape by any means in broad daylight was indeed suicidal, but he dared not wait until nightfall. Someone was certain to miss the priest he’d tethered in the wine cellar long before then, and the vendors’ successful escape would gain them nothing once that occurred. They were no fools. They would certainly connect the coincidences.

The ideal would be to affect a hasty escape, collect Violette, and be away from the city before the priest was missed. But footfalls quickly put an end to hopes of that, and he watched with sinking heart as two robed figures passed by his shadowy alcove.

Without a sound, he drew his sword and set out in the opposite direction, back into the west chapel. Moving with caution, he approached the vaulted apse in the clerestory, where a narrow stained glass window had caught his attention earlier. That recess seemed as good a place as any to
hide for the moment. Any second now, the priests would come running with their liberated brother from the wine cellar. The niche was nicely shadowed, and the window was noteworthy as a possible means of escape. He’d nearly reached it when the cardinal’s voice arrested him, booming through the echo-infested chapel with all the subtlety of a thunder roll.

“Stand where you are, heretic!” he commanded.

Robert spun, his sword extended toward the formidable figure of Charles de Guise, emerging from the chapel arch opposite. But he had no chance to reply, for just then the priests from below came running, their outcries—riding the echoes—resounding in advance of their appearance.

“Fetch the guards!” the cardinal shouted, and they skittered off toward the nave with robes spread wide.

Robert’s hand plunged into his boot, and his steady fingers closed around the pouch of sulfur ash he’d hidden there in case of capture.

“I knew the girl would flush you out, young zealot,” the cardinal triumphed, strolling confidently closer.

“And, did you know, when you abducted her so cleverly, that her fever was plague, Your Eminence?” Robert queried. The cardinal stopped in his tracks, a tremor in his cold eyes, and the laird burst into laughter.

“You lie!” the cardinal spat, his whole body delivering the words.

“Do I?” Robert said, triumphant. “She burns with it still. You were safe until you brought her into the city. It spreads like wildfire. When your cohorts come down with it you will know how well I lie.”

Footfalls from the passageway beyond sent Robert’s blood surging through his veins. His sharp eyes caught the glint of a nearby crosier standing tall in its bracket. He edged closer to it.

“You cannot escape,” the cardinal bellowed, as a troop of
soldiers poured into the chapel. “It is over, my fine Scottish traitor. It is finished!”

“Forgive me,” Robert contradicted, “but I do not think so.” Tearing open the pouch, he threw down the sulfur ash. A mild explosion fraught with bilious green clouds of spark-clad fog momentarily blotted the cardinal from view. Taking good advantage, Robert snatched up the crosier. Lowering it broadside to the window at his back, he plunged it through in a shower of brightly colored glass that spilled out over the manicured grounds below, then leapt through the twisted lead after it.

The window was a jot higher up than he’d calculated. Though he landed for the most part on his feet, his breath caught at the shock. His knees gave way beneath his weight, and it was a moment before he caught his balance and scrambled toward the not too distant bank of the Seine.

Arrows rained down all around him. When he turned to gauge their trajectory he was overwhelmed by the architecture, the gargoyles high atop the bell tower, the jamb figures, the capitals and column figures that seemed to wind along the buttressed Royal Portal of the west façade. In awe of what he had escaped from, he hesitated. It was only a brief hitch in the long-legged stride carrying him swiftly out of range, but it was enough. One of the missiles struck his good shoulder and drove him into the water. He was a strong swimmer, and the current was mild, but negotiating the Seine in a weighty woolen monk’s robe with an arrow in his shoulder quickly sapped his strength. More arrows pierced the water, and he held his breath, ducked beneath, and swam along the shore of the isle without breaking the surface until he’d nearly put himself in the shadow of Pont Neuf before he gulped air again.

The arrows had ceased flying. De Guise and his men had surely seen him struck. Could they think him dead? That had been the plan. Praying that it had worked, he ducked
beneath the water again and followed the bridge to a grove that hemmed the unkempt shore of the mainland. Slithering out of the water, he dove in among the yews, unseen to assess and tend his wound.

M
ichel seigneur de Montaigne had nearly reached Limoges
when a crossroads presented itself, and he reined in to deliberate his direction. But there was no real choice. That was as far south as his conscience would allow him to travel, and he wheeled the horse around, spurring the gray gelding back the way he’d come, sorry now, that he’d sent the rest of his entourage—provisions cart and all—on ahead. He must return to Paris. Why he’d ever let Doctor Nostradamus persuade him to leave, he couldn’t imagine.

The good doctor was probably right in his cryptic warning, he had no doubt of that, but being a man of principle, Michel could not justify sacrificing another man’s life for his own safety. In his view, that is what it would amount to were he to turn his back on the Scottish laird, whom he’d agreed to sponsor, at the first whiff of danger—even if that danger came at the merciless hands of the Guises. He liked and admired Robert of Paxton, his heart went out to him in his hopeless quest, and even though he knew that in no way could he be held responsible for the coil the laird found himself tangled in, that it all had begun in his kitchen garden kept him from being absolved. If the headstrong Scot was still alive, he saw it as his duty to help him.

It was several days before he reached the city, though he drove the horse beneath him relentlessly. Stopping first at the château, he learned of the strange monk who had come with Violette, seeking him. He lingered there only long enough to collect a hooded mantle, which he put on over his gown for anonymity, and give Alain and the other servants
stern instructions to pretend they’d never seen him. He set out at dusk for Nostradamus’s lodgings in the city. To his dismay, he found the healer’s rooms there were shut up tight—abandoned. When he inquired of the other residents in the lane, they told him the good doctor had closed down his city residence and returned to Salon indefinitely.

It was too late now to trouble the vendors, and he didn’t want to return to the château unless he had to. Perhaps he’d find the duke and the girl at the ruins. Now that he knew they were traveling together, it seemed a logical choice. It was worth a try, and he rode there under cover of darkness, for there was no moon, only to find the gutted remains of the wounded castle, still stinking of burnt timbers and debris in the cool night air.

How had so much occurred in his short absence from the city? In mere days, Nostradamus had gone south, the ruins had been burned out, and the Scot had disappeared with Violette without a trace. Now where was he to go? He dared not return to the château—that would be the first place the cardinal’s men would seek him. He wasn’t prepared to sleep in the open, either. After much deliberation, he decided to return to the city and take a room at the Inn of St. Michael. It was a bold move, for he was certainly well known in Paris, but he was not a patron of the inn. Praying that he could hide there in plain sight until dawn, he made his way back to the city, wishing he’d never left it.

Robert bided his time deep in the grove until dark. His pain was excruciating. He’d broken the arrow off, but it was driven too deeply into his right shoulder to pull it out, and he couldn’t push it through without help. His robe was fouled with blood, though much had washed away in the Seine. Still, it would be noticeable. Somehow, he had to reach the vendors’ quarter, find out where they had taken Violette, and retrieve his traveling sack with the spare robe
and his helmet. He waited as long as he dared, and then, hugging the façades along the lane, he crept through the shadows and knocked once at number twelve. But it wasn’t Madeline who threw the door open to him. It was Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France.

“Come in, my lord,” he said. “We have been expecting you.”

Three Huguenot soldiers emerged from the shadows, seized him, and handed him over the threshold into the kitchen, where Madeline sat sobbing with her head in her hands. Winded, and weak from blood loss, the laird staggered as they hauled him close to the admiral, who threw back his cowl and took a step back from him, scrutinizing his face in the firelight.

“These good people have done no wrong,” Robert defended. “They meant only to help me right a terrible injustice.”

The admiral smiled coldly. “Take ease,” he said. “These ‘good people’ are in no danger from me. I am not Charles de Guise. My business is with you, Robert of Paxton. You were so busy minding the cardinal’s movements you were oblivious of ours. I find that unimpressive for a warrior—even a Scottish warrior.”

“Battles are not quite so deviously fought in Scotland,” Robert muttered, for the wound was throbbing. His head was reeling, but he dared not lose consciousness until he’d learned what had become of Violette.

“Evidently,” the admiral pronounced, tongue-in-cheek. “You have been wounded, and from the look of it, you’ve lost much blood. That needs tending. We shall see to it, and then we shall talk, you and I. You have much to answer for. But not here.”

“What have you done with Violette?” Robert asked, almost afraid of the answer. He couldn’t see past the triumph in the admiral’s cold eyes, and he repeated his question over
and over, as they dragged him back out into the shadows of the dark lane, bound him, and loaded him in a cart that had been hidden in the mews.

“In due time, my lord,” the admiral assured him. “Don’t fly in the face of fortune. You have very…influential friends. But for that, I would have cut you down long since. However, let me warn you: you are quite alone with me here now, and there is only so much condescension I am prepared to suffer on the whim of a mere twelve-year-old puppet—king or no. Now, if you had his mother’s favor, it might be quite a different matter altogether. But you do not. I doubt she even knows that you exist. So, hold your peace! And thank your Catholic idols that you’ve found me in an amiable humor. Such moods come rarely to me of late. If you would have it continue, I advise while we travel that you prepare a brilliant defense. Much depends upon it.”