He was a high-strung fellow and spoiled, and now he was beginning to understand that he wasn’t going to get what he wanted. He was completely enraged at being thwarted and picked up the smallest of the Pelican cases. He lashed out with, it bashing it against the side of J.J.’s face. Of course J.J. couldn’t see it coming and was unable to protect himself.
Phoebe looked at the other cases. The man was bringing explosives to a monastery? Please. He’d been watching too many movies. The Prince was not as smart as the thought he was. That was a common problem with people who were surrounded by sycophants.
Chapter 25.
“Take me to the book,” the Prince demanded.
Oh yeah, like that was gonna work, Phoebe thought. J.J. made no response, which was no surprise to anyone except the inbred idiot in charge.
The Prince reached inside his jacket and brandished a wicked looking knife. It was obviously very old and had a long thin blade. “He has a knife,” Phoebe warned.
“Actually it’s a rondel,” he said in his most urbane curatorial style. “For our non-French speakers, that word can also refer to 14th century French lyrical poetry, but in this case it’s a particular kind of dagger, one with a hand guard and pommel that are round, although bladed hand weapons with octagonal or spherical parts are sometimes referred to as rondels as well.”
Phoebe yawned ostentatiously.
“This specimen has been in my family for over 600 hundred years. It was retrieved from the body of one of my ancestors on Friday, October 25, 1415, St Crispin’s Day. He was one of the French noblemen who died at the battle of Agincourt. Did you have anybody there from your family?” he asked J.J. “Surely you did.”
J.J. didn’t respond.
“This weapon is similar to the one used 350 years later to stab Murat during the Revolution. And now here we are, another 250 years along. So you must admit the design has held up remarkably well.
“As an interesting etymological side-note, these foot long blades with their six to eight inch handles were a very practical medieval solution for finding one’s self short-handed in a fight, thus illuminating the origin of yet another colorful English idiom.”
The guy was crazy and also boring, Phoebe thought. That was a unique combination. He yammered on and on.
“The thin double-edge blade was originally designed so it would go right through chain mail, or a joint in plate armor. One could also stab through the gap under the arm, or shove it through a helmet visor into an eye, for example.” He winced when he said that. “Was that in poor taste? Is it a faux pas for me to mention eye injuries?”
“It’s okay,” J.J. said, “I’ve accustomed myself to the occasional innocent figure of speech or slip of the tongue.”
“Tell me what I want to know,” the Prince said.
“That’s never going to happen,” J.J. replied, emphatically. Then he spouted some rapid-fire French in a tone that was not possible in English. The Prince’s face reddened and he drew back with the Pelican case again and swept it in a wide arc into the side of J.J.’s head.
Again, J.J. was unable to see the blow coming and took the full brunt of it. This time he fell back, unconscious. The Prince stood over him and stomped and kicked J.J.’s inert body mercilessly until he’d expended the worst of his frustration.
Then he turned toward Phoebe. She could tell by his red face and eyes narrowed to little slits that he was going to hurt her and then kill her. She marveled at how she’d been charmed by his looks and manners when she’d first met him. She’d admired his pretty pale blue eyes surrounded by thick black lashes. So much for superficial charm.
She intended to do her best against him, but she was trapped, tied up, and alone against four men. If only she had a broom or a mop handle, she lamented. That would even things up quite nicely. She had a cane, but it wasn’t within reach.
She looked up at the Prince and said in the singsong speech of her people. “You might hurt me. You might even kill me. But I’m gonna mess you up real bad before you do.”
He laughed, and tilted his head, studying at her, swinging the red case in his left hand and twirling the knife in his right. But she noticed he stood well back from her this time.
In that moment Phoebe remembered the strange conversation she’d had with the Boss about a week earlier, shortly before she’d left to start the mission. He’d promised her that if she ever needed his help, he’d give it.
She hadn’t understood what he meant, and still didn’t, but for lack of any alternative, she called out, “Boss?”
Nothing happened.
Then, she shouted, “Boss, help me, please!”
Her nonsensical sounding outburst caused all four men to look at her and then around themselves in the darkness. They were trying to figure out who she was speaking to. Then BAM!! It was just like something in a comic book. The four men were lifted off their feet and sent flying backwards toward the stone walls of the tunnel.
They hit hard. After the brutal impact they fell to the ground, limp, and sprawled there inert. The Prince no longer had hold of his knife.
Phoebe crawled over to where it lay and used it to cut herself loose. Then she patted down the closest thug. She went through his pockets one at a time, skipping nothing. She found car keys and a bundle of plastic zip ties in two sizes and pocketed them. She removed a gun from an ankle holster and pocketed that, too.
She bound the man’s wrists behind him and then his ankles, using two zip ties in each place, just to be sure. She systematically patted down and tied up the second, and then the third man, as well. And finally, the Prince. Him she triple hog-tied by binding his wrists and ankles and then tying his wrists to his ankles behind his back, arching his thin body backwards like a bow.
She wanted to kick and stomp the crap out of him like he’d done to J.J., but that just wasn’t her style. She was on her knees beside the Prince when she pulled the last tie as tight as she possibly could. She’d used a fourteen zip ties in all and now she was done.
She threw her hands up in the air like a cowboy in a calf roping event at the rodeo. It was the gesture they used to show they were done immobilizing an animal. The only difference was she shouted, “Voila!”
She crawled over to J.J., and cut him loose. She spoke to him and patted his face gently, but got no response. He was still breathing, so he wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t conscious, either. She checked his pulse. His heartbeat was strong and steady. That was reassuring. The man was tough.
She inventoried what she’d taken off the bad guys. She had two sets of car keys, three automatic pistols, the Prince’s billfold, and his antique knife.
She sat next to J.J. and scooted around so her back was resting against the tunnel wall. She got her injured leg in as comfortable a position as possible and used her scarf to wipe the blood off her friend’s face. When she’d cleaned off the worst of it, she bent down and kissed him.
His reached up and gripped her wrist with one hand, startling her. She froze, hovering a couple of inches above his face. “Sorry my dear, still a frog and not a prince,” he muttered in a hoarse, slurred voice.
“Thank God!” she blurted, meaning simultaneously that he was conscious, talking, and not a Prince.
“What did I miss?” he asked, touching his face and head carefully with his other hand and wincing each time his fingers landed.
“Uhhh. I think … the Boss just helped us.”
“Where is the Prince, and the others?”
“Close by, but no longer a problem,” Phoebe said, recovering herself. “That jackass hit you a second time with a hard-sided case and put you out. He kept talkin crazy and I sorta freaked out and screamed for the Boss to help us. Then all of sudden they all went airborne and bounced off the wall. I tied ‘em up.”
J.J. squeezed her wrist in thanks, but didn’t make any comment or seem surprised. He pushed against the ground as if to sit up, then groaned and lay back down. “I don’t think I can get up.”
“Just
stay where you are, honey,” Phoebe said, “and try to rest for a minute.” She crawled around and collected the three Pelican cases and placed them near where J.J. lay. She popped open the heavy duty plastic latches and looked inside. She couldn’t identify any of it for sure, but the big ones contained what looked like explosives. The little one held what looked like detonating devices.
She looked around some more and retrieved her cane. “We have one cane between us,” she said. “Think that’ll be enough?”
“No,” he said, smiling.
She crawled back to him and lay down beside him with her head touching his shoulder. “Let’s just hang out here for a while ‘til we get ourselves sorted out.”
“Good plan,” he murmured.
“Will anyone be comin’ this way?” she said, as she felt for his hand and grasped it.
“Eventually, yes.”
They lay like that, side by side in the darkness, holding hands, in companionable silence. After a while Phoebe asked J.J. how his head felt. She wanted to test how well his brain was working, but since he was blind she couldn’t do the usual trick of asking how many fingers she was holding up. She explained the problem.
To set her mind at ease he quoted from Ecclesiastes 1, the King James Version.
“Vanity of vanities; all is vanity. … I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem.
And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.
I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.
And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”
Gosh there was a lot packed into that. Phoebe thought about the last lines. Wisdom, madness, and folly—the grief that came with wisdom—and the sorrow with knowledge. That pretty much covered the last couple of hours. They waited together without speaking for a long time, each lost in their own thoughts.
Chapter 26.
It was inevitable that the bad guys would rouse eventually. The professional henchpersons had the sense to keep their mouths shut. Not so the Prince, which wasn’t much of a surprise. As soon as he came around he started spewing bile and threats.
“You’re lucky my ankle hurts or I’d come over there and shut you up.”
He switched to complaining and threatening in French.
“You have trouble with self-regulation, don’t you?” Phoebe said, from where she lay. “Spoiled people always do. You do realize that’s the source of evil in the world—an inability to control your lower impulses?”
The Prince continued his rant, which was probably lurid, but as long as he kept it in a language Phoebe didn’t understand, he was relatively safe. His treasured possessions did not enjoy this same protection.
“Hey,” Phoebe called to him. When he turned to look her way she held up his knife so he could see it. She propped it against the wall on her side of the tunnel at a forty-five degree angle and then used his red Pelican case to smash it, breaking the blade in half.
She was sorry as soon as she did it. He looked like a child whose favorite toy had been broken. Then she realized that was exactly what she was seeing—a child with a broken toy. And she’d been the one who’d broken it. She was no better than he was. “Sorry,” she mumbled, meaning it.
He was quiet for a while, but then started back up.
“Last warning,” J.J. said. “Be quiet.”
“What are you going to do, play blind man’s bluff? You can’t even find me to hit me.”
“You aren’t that hard to find. And I think you’ll discover that what I lack in accuracy I make up for with force.”
That shut him up.
Phoebe spent the next few minutes thinking about pretenders, people from famous bloodlines, and the savage power struggles they’d embroiled innocent people in for thousands of years. Spoiled, volatile people whose petty selfish grievances and ill-tempered outbursts dragged entire nations into war, resulting in countless deaths, pain and anguish, poverty, starvation, and ruin.
It was still going on. Everywhere. And everyone suffered.
“What makes a person bad?” Phoebe asked.
“In tough circumstances, we’re all capable of most anything,” J.J. said. “People who don’t know that are lucky they’ve never gotten into a really bad situation. Of course, some people have better parents than others, and some have better friends.”
Phoebe raised her head and looked at the Prince. He lay on his side with his eyes closed, in the slight backbend she tied him into. He was handsome, even now. She glanced up at J.J.s scarred and bruised face. “How can people be so beautiful on the outside and yet so messed up on the inside?’
“I don’t know. It’s another of life’s mysteries.”
Phoebe sighed. “If there are any mercies in being blind, maybe that’s one of them. You can’t be fooled by a pretty face.”
“Maybe the differences between appearances and reality are there to teach us discernment.”
“What about you?”
“I’ve had to learn do it from voices. The sound of a voice tells far more than the words being used. But don’t feel bad. I’m not sorry I’m blind. It’s helped me understand powerlessness. I learned early in life that I wasn’t in control of most things. That made it clear that the thing I was in control of was how I responded to life. Most people get stuck trying to maintain control.”
She leaned her face against his. He could feel the tears running down her face.
* * *
Sister Émilie was the first to come by. She cried out when she saw them, bruised and bloodied, lying there together, and then again when she saw the four men Phoebe had tied up. She went for help and very quickly returned with half a dozen people, including a doctor.
They brought litters to carry Phoebe and J.J., but he refused his, saying he could walk out under his own power.
Brother Matthieu picked up J.J.’s sunglasses, cleaned them, and handed them to him. He put them on.
“There are some people on the way to … clear the rest of this,” Matthieu said, waving a hand in the general direction of the four men. The Prince was still talking, but no one was listening.
* * *
The battered couple was transported to the nearest hospital where they were examined and patched up as well as possible. J.J. had some broken bones that had to be dealt with and was told he had to stay overnight for observation on account of his head injury. Phoebe insisted on staying with him.
When he objected, she said, “Hey, you’ve got two beds in here. You can only sleep in one at a time. The hospital is my milieu remember? Think of it as a cost-saving measure. The Intensive Care Unit here is probably cheaper than that ritzy hotel at the Abbey. I bet I could get a little nip and tuck and still get out cheaper than I would at that place.”
He laughed and agreed to share his room for the night.
* * *
The next day they transferred to L’Hôtel at the Abbey and had three delicious meals a day sent up to their suite from the Michelin one-star restaurant downstairs.
When it came time to check out they were stunned to find out that their bill was paid. Apparently the Abbey was extremely grateful for their efforts. If this kept happening, Phoebe realized, it would end up being cheaper to travel the world first class than to stay at home in White Oak.
As she and J.J. walked across the lobby toward the exit, Phoebe whispered, “If I’d known it was going
to be free, I’d have ordered more food! I should’ve gotten us a meal to go.”
J.J. laughed. People in the lobby stopped and stared at them as they walked past. “What’s going on? J.J. whispered. “What’s all that murmuring?”
“We make a striking couple.”
He tilted his head, not quite understanding her.
“Black eyes, split lips, cuts, bruises. Your arm in a cast. I’m on crutches and my leg is in a splint to the knee. Not a good marketing strategy for the two of us to be seen coming out of a former leper colony that’s trying to transform itself into a fancy hotel. I’d say some reservations might be about to be cancelled. The newcomers are wondering if we’ve had a trashy fight with each other, or if the place is downright dangerous!”
J.J. reached out to hug her. It was too late by the time he realized his mistake. “Ouch” he said, attracting even more attention.
* * *
Phoebe decided they should make at least a superficial tour of the Abbey on their way out. She wanted to pay her respects to Eleanor of Aquitaine.
They stood next to the tombs and Phoebe gazed at the life-size effigies and described them to J.J.
Eleanor, one of the richest and most powerful women in the world, had commissioned the recumbent statues. She’d outlived her family, so she got to have the last word on the design. She could have had anything she wanted, and she’d chosen to depict herself reading in bed, between two kings, forever.
It was perfect.
Phoebe couldn’t stop thinking of the Queen as Katherine Hepburn, though. But maybe that suited her.
“Aileanor,” said a young guide, who saw them standing there. Then he pointed to the man lying beside her and said, “Henri Court-manteau,” meaning Henry of the Short Cape. That was Henry II of England. The guide pointed to a third recumbent figure and said, “Richard Coeur de Leon,” thus rounding out most of the cast of The Lion in Winter.
The young man was explaining something about Richard in a heroic mishmash of languages and dramatic pantomime when J.J. intervened politely and translated. King Richard had died of a crossbow injury and pieces of him were strewn all over everywhere, his heart was at Rouen, his brain and entrails were in an Abbey at Chattoux. The leftovers had been sent to Fontevraud to be buried at the foot of his father.
Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 03 - The School for Psychics Page 15
