by Leda Swann
As soon as they were alone, Miriame leaned back in her chair and put her booted feet up on the rough-hewn table. “No good news for me then, I take it?”
Courtney shook her head. “Thank the Lord I found you before you hired us a ship. The place is crawling with King’s spies. He knew all about the rebellion from the beginning, it would seem. He even knew we were to take ship at Brest. You would have walked right into the trap they were laying for you.”
Miriame looked a little taken aback at her narrow escape. “I had not thought that danger was so near. I owe you for saving me.”
“So, what now? We have burned our bridges most thoroughly as far as the King is concerned. He will never trust us more. Shall you go and join the service of the Duke of Burgundy like Sophie and Lamotte, or are you for an honorable retirement in cottage in Provence or a villa in Naples?”
Miriame held up her ale with a look of satisfaction. “No retirement for me. My life is as safe as ever a thief’s can be. Thanks to your timely coming, no one can implicate me in the Duc’s schemes. I shall continue on as a Musketeer while my luck holds out.”
Courtney clutched her wooden goblet with tightly-clenched knuckles. “I cannot put away my sword or leave Paris yet. I have one more task to do before I retire from my life as a Musketeer.”
“You cannot go back to Paris. You would be in great danger.”
“I know that, but my father is in greater danger than I am.”
Miriame looked at her with interest. “Your father? What of him?”
“My father is in the Bastille on charges trumped up by the King of France. I have sworn to rescue him or to die in the attempt.”
“You became a Musketeer to avenge your father?”
“In part. I also became a Musketeer to avenge myself.”
“Against whom?”
She could hardly bear to say the name of her dead lover without weeping. “Against Pierre de Tournay, God rot his soul. His body is beyond all help now.”
“De Tournay?” Miriame asked in surprise. “What has he done to turn you against him so bitterly? I always thought him an honorable man. Foolish, maybe, to join in the rebellion against the king for nothing more than a dislike to his King, but honorable none the less.”
“He betrayed my father and had him taken to the Bastille. He betrayed me. He betrayed his own son.”
Miriame nodded as if she finally saw the hurt that had been urging her along for so long. “You have a son?”
Courtney nodded. Her secret was out at last, but she could feel no shame in it. She loved her son and she had avenged herself on her son’s father.
“Pierre de Tournay’s son?”
Courtney glared at her. “He is my son, not his father’s. De Tournay may have begat him, but my boy has never known his father. He is my son and mine alone.”
“What of De Tournay? Does he know of this?”
Courtney turned her back on her friend and wiped away the tears from her eyes. She did not want Miriame to see her weakness or suspect how much she still felt for her false lover. “Pierre is dead.”
“You killed him?” Miriame was matter-of-fact as always, thinking nothing of dispatching her enemies before they could dispatch her.
Yes, she had killed him. Her mind knew the necessity of his death even as her heart and body cried out for his loss. “I plotted his death and now he is dead. I am as guilty as the man who wielded the sword that separated his body from his soul. I should feel no regret in my heart for his passing – his death has avenged my honor.”
“You loved him once, I gather?”
“With all my heart and more of my soul than I should have given him.”
“You love him still?”
Now that he was dead, she could admit to what had plagued her in secret for many weeks. She had never stopped loving her beautiful Pierre de Tournay. Not for a second. Even when she had most hated him and been most bitter against him, she had loved him. Even when she had led him to his death to avenge her honor and the honor of her father, she had loved him. As long as she lived, she would love him. “I do.”
There was a short silence broken at last by Miriame. “So, back to Paris, then, for you and I at any rate? With the two of us together, we should have your father free in no time.”
“You cannot help me break my father out of the Bastille. What if you are caught?”
She grinned. “Did you think I would let you have all the excitement? What happened to all for one and one for all? There is no point in you risking your life to help your father. You cannot break him out of the Bastille by yourself – you will need some help. Preferably the help of a friend who has already broken into the Bastille and got away with it once before.”
Certainly Miriame’s help would be a godsend. She had hardly thought about how she would tackle the prison break. She had no idea how to get inside and even less idea how to get out again. Short of going up to the front gate, waving her sword in the air and demanding to be let in, she had formed no plan of how to go about it. “You will help me organize the rescue?”
Miriame rubbed her hands together with enthusiasm. The excitement she felt about this new venture showed clearly on her face. “I will more than help you plan it. I will help you carry it out as well.”
Barely a week had gone by when a pair of hooded, cowled monks appeared at the gate of the Bastille. Courtney shuffled uncomfortably inside her robe. She was used to pretending to be a man, but she did not care for this particular disguise. She was about to commit a crime against the laws of the land while dressed in the robes of a man of God. Though she had little religious fervor, still her actions smacked uncomfortably of blasphemy. Besides, her robe she was wearing stank abominably. The stench made her want to gag.
The guards looked at them with little interest through the grating on the gate. One of them spat at the ground by her feet, missing her boots by a scant inch. “What do you want?” he asked in a surly voice. He evidently had little time for men of God.
Miriame cleared her throat and spat on the pavement beside her in her turn. “We’ve come to see the prisoners and to bring them the word of God in the prison of darkness they languish in.” She sounded for all the world like a feeble, old man with the phlegm on his chest.
The guards nudged each other with great hilarity. “It’s a bit damn late for that lot.”
Miriame shook her head slowly back and forth inside her cowl. “It is never too late for a sinner to confess his crimes and expiate his sins. Even these poor souls, lost in darkness, must be given the chance to see their salvation.”
“Damned do-gooders,” the surly soldier grumbled at them. “Why can’t you go away and bother the prisoners in some other prison? We have enough to see to without you damned monks bothering us.”
Miriame wagged her finger at the pair of them. “Do not take the name of the Lord in vain. The King has given our order the special right to minister unto the souls of the wretched unfortunates in the Bastille.” She held out a paper to them in a crabbed, wrinkled hand, stained patchy brown with the juice from green walnut shells. “See, I am carrying the special license that the King himself wrote out for the Abbot of my order. Read it and see.”
One of the guards took the paper, held it upside down, shook his head over it and handed it to the other. The other guard held it upside down as well and gave it a grave glance. “It all looks in order to me.”
Courtney stifled a snort of nervous laughter, turning it into a dry cough instead. Obviously neither of the guards could read, and were unwilling to admit to their ignorance in front of a couple of monks. The hours of labor they had put into making the forgery semi-believable had been quite wasted.
“I am on the Lord’s mission,” Miriame reminded them in her cracked old man’s voice. “The King has graciously smiled on our attempts to save the immortal souls of his erring subjects, though their lives are forfeit under his law. The Lord will look kindly on you for helping us to help the needy ones in your care.”
The less grumpy of the guards unlocked the gate. “Come on in, then, the pair of you,” he said begrudgingly. “We’ll have to search you for weapons before we let you go further.”
Miriame shambled in and Courtney shuffled in after her. Courtney gave another hacking cough. “If you insist,” Miriame said, holding out her empty hands. “Do not forget that I am a man of God and that my concern is with the immortal souls of your prisoners, not with their bodies. I would rather have a man suffer a thousand agonizing deaths and have his soul go to heaven, than to save a thousand lives only to have their souls captured by the devil in the end.”
The guards wrinkled their noses at the smell as the pair of them came closer. Courtney gave another theatrical cough and spat thickly on the floor at their feet.
“Ugh, I’m not touching them,” the surly guard muttered. “They’ll give me fleas, if not something worse. They stink like week old carrion in the summer.”
Miriame looked unconcerned at the insult. “My soul is pure though my body be foul. In Heaven I shall number among the angels though I am despised on the earth.”
The other guard looked equally revolted at the thought of searching them. “Come with me,” he said, hastily crossing himself to protect himself from any plagues they carried with them and waving them on behind him. He hurried down the corridors of the prison and unlocked a heavy oak door and opened it into a large chamber filled with sorry-looking specimens. “Minister to this lot,” he said with a shrug, as he shoved them inside. “God knows but that they need it as much as any others. Enjoy yourself saving the souls of thieves and robbers condemned to die. I shall fetch you tonight before I go off duty.”
Courtney felt her heart sink as the guard shut the door behind them and she heard the key turn in the lock. She and Miriame were locked in a cell in the Bastille with a thoroughly ruffian crowd until the evening came. Thank the Lord that many of them were shackled to the wall and could not easily get at them, or their safety might well be at risk.
Miriame gave a quick nod to Courtney. Courtney nodded back. Their lives depended on them keeping up their masquerade until Courtney’s father was located. They did not want to be betrayed by one of the prisoners hoping to win his freedom by giving away their secrets.
Miriame stood in the middle of the room and began to talk in her cracked, wheezy voice about the Lord. Most of the prisoners ignored her, lost in their own personal misery. A few of the bolder ones with some spirit left called out some feeble insults. A thin man with a scared, pointed face like a cornered ferret started to cry and wail that his soul was lost forever, that he repented of his sins, and that he would live a blameless life forever more if only they would save him from the gallows.
One of the others cuffed him viciously to shut him up. “Bastard child-killer,” he said, with venom in his voice. “Confess and repent all you like, but you’ll fry in Hell forever for what you’ve done. The sooner your neck is stretched the better.”
The man he had cuffed huddled back into his corner, his arms clasped around his knees, his loud laments subsiding into pathetic whimpering.
Courtney went around the room, making the sign of the cross in front of every person, searching the face of each miserable prisoner in the hopes of finding her father.
Several dozen men of all ages were crowded into the chamber. She made one pass through the room, then another, making the sign of the cross and murmuring a few pious words over each person. None of them were her father.
She had not expected to find him right away, but she was disappointed nonetheless. She was prepared to spend weeks, if not months, in here searching for him, but she did not have that long. With luck, their disguise would hold out for a sennight or more. Too much longer than that and the guards would start to get suspicious, or think of checking out their story, or even search them properly one day, despite the stench of the filthy robes they wore. If that were ever to happen, they would be lost.
Miriame was still intoning on about the wonders of God and the miracles His Son had worked in the world in the most uninspiring way possible. Courtney caught her eye and gave a slight shake of her head in the agreed on signal that none of the prisoners in the chamber were of any particular interest to them. Miriame gave an almost imperceptible shrug and continued on her lecture.
Courtney went through the prisoners again, taking her role as priest coming to succor the needy more seriously this time. While she was here in the garb of a priest, she may as well make herself useful. She saw the face of her father in each of the sad and sorry men before her. God had given her the opportunity to help them in their need. She would do what she could for them in the hopes that somehow, someone would do the same for her father in his turn.
With a sympathetic heart she listened to the confessions of those who wanted to unburden their souls to a priest before their death, and comforted as best she could those who needed comfort. She hoped that God would forgive her deception. Though she was only a fake priest, she hoped that God would accept the contrition of the prisoners for their misdeeds and acknowledge the absolution she gave them for their sins.
When Miriame’s mouth went dry, Courtney took her place, talking about God and his wonders and exhorting the prisoners to repent of their sins, while Miriame sipped small ale from the flasks they had brought with them.
The afternoon passed more quickly than Courtney had ever thought it would. Before she was even aware that several hours had passed, she heard a key turn in the lock and the guard was back at the door once more, gesturing at them to hurry up. Miriame stopped her speechifying on the instant and hurried to the door. Courtney gave a last farewell to a poor hopeless young man condemned to die for the theft of loaf of bread to feed his large-bellied wife and shuffled off after her.
They both heaved a sigh of relief when they were out in the streets of Paris once more and the gate of the Bastille was shut and locked firmly behind them. “Day the first, and little to report,” Miriame said as they ducked into the cart that a friend of hers from the streets had waiting for them in the streets outside.
Courtney was silent for a moment as they jolted along the streets, thinking of the savagery of keeping humans locked up for such small crimes. “It is inhuman to keep prisons like that. I would free all the prisoners if I could.”
Miriame raised an eyebrow. “Even the child killer?”
Courtney shuddered. She had been hard pressed even in her role of priest to have any kind words for him. She had listened to his tearful and oft repeated confession with disgust and horror. Alone of them all, he deserved to be put in a dungeon until he died. “All of them but him. He alone deserves even worse than he had received. The others are different. No justice is served by keeping them imprisoned like animals.”
“We cannot free them all. We will be doing well if we find your father and secure his freedom. Let others worry about the rest.”
“You are right, I cannot free them all. Only the King could do that, and he will not.” Courtney shuddered with her dislike of the King and his parody of justice. “Frenchmen will not suffer such injustice in silence forever. One of these days, the Bastille itself will fall – and the King with it.”
They were at the gate of the Bastille again bright and early the next morning. The same guards were posted at the door and they let the false priests in with barely a grumble. The better-tempered guard led them to a different chamber that was as full of prisoners as the last had been and left them there with the promise to return at noon again.
The morning played out again as had the first day. Courtney’s father was not among the prisoners. She heard confessions and gave hope where she could while Miriame rambled on at large about the creation. At noon, the guard fetched them at their request and locked them in with another chamber full of prisoners.
Once more Courtney’s father was not among them and once more she did what she could to relieve their suffering in the time she had to spend with them. Her spirits were tiring with this
game. Her father was nowhere to be found. All that she had seen were hopeless, despairing men who longed for the peace that comes with death. She did not know how real priests were able to spend their entire lives with such sinners, hearing of their crimes and giving them absolution from dawn to dusk. She had only been pretending for two days, and her soul was weighed down with the horror of what she had seen and heard.
The third day, the guards refused them entry. “Orders are orders,” the surly, red-faced one said when Miriame complained at length in a wheezy voice at their treatment.
“What orders are these?” Courtney asked in her own attempt at a quavering old man’s voice. “What has changed since yesterday that a couple of old monks may not come inside and succor the prisoners as best we may? Our Abbot has the permission of the King to send us here.”
The taller guard shrugged. “It would appear that the King had revoked your Abbot’s permission. No monks are to be allowed into the Bastille for the next month bar those of the order of Capuchin monks from the monastery at Saint-Ely. The Abbot is sending a pair of monks to Paris specially – Brother Francis and Brother Jacques.” He gave an uncomfortable shrug. “He always sends them when the King has a few recalcitrant prisoners he wants dealt with. They are neither of them known for their mercy. We shall have no peace for the screams as soon as Brother Jacques gets here.”
Courtney groaned inside. The Capuchins were well-known for serving the King better than they served God, and the monastery at Saint-Ely was headed by a bastard son of the royal house who was rumored to do anything that was asked of him. God help the prisoners with such priests as these ministering to them. How she hoped that her own father would not fall a victim to their evil.
Though she was a woman, she was a better priest than any Capuchin she was sure. She would lay a bet that the Capuchins were being sent to spread evil rumors rather than comfort, and to administer torture or secret poison rather than hope to the King’s particular enemies. She kept her thoughts to herself, considering it hardly politic to share such treason. “Have these monks arrived yet to help the prisoners?”
