by Leda Swann
The red-faced guard licked his lips. “Not yet. They are expected on the morrow.” It would appear that he did not dread their coming as his fellow did, but rather that he looked forward to it. When the time for action came, Courtney would remember his lack of sympathy for the prisoners in his care.
One day. They still had one day in which to find her father. She addressed herself to the tall guard, ignoring the surly, red-faced one. “Let us in for today then, for the last time. Let us comfort the prisoners before the Capuchins are set loose upon them.”
The red-faced guard shook his head, but the tall one reached for his keys. “Just one more day. That is all I can give you. Even then, if the other priests come before their time, I shall have to fetch you out again at a moment’s notice.”
They followed him down the corridor to yet another chamber. He unlocked the door and was about to leave them alone with the men inside when Courtney had a sudden thought. “Seeing as this is our last day here, let us comfort as many prisoners as we can,” she begged. “Come with us on our rounds as we hear their sins and give them absolution. That way we shall do the most good we can in the short time we have left to us.”
The guard hesitated, compassion warring with the fear of being found out.
“Just for one day,” Courtney pleaded. “The Lord will thank you for it.”
Compassion won. “I will take you to as many prisoners as I can---”
Courtney beamed under her cowl. Thanks to the tall guard, she still had a chance of finding her father.
“---but only until noon. Then you must leave. If the new priests turn up early they will have me garroted for letting you in at all.”
She did not think he was exaggerating. “God bless you, son, for your kindness.”
The guard turned to leave. “I’ll come back for you as soon as I can,” he said and he locked the door behind them.
Her father was not among this sorry lot of prisoners either. Courtney heard a few confessions with half an ear and gave a couple of absolutions. Miriame made shift to do the same.
Her mind was not on helping other prisoners today. She was well aware that her disguise had only one day left to run before she was forced to think of another plan. If only the guard would hurry and return.
She heard steps in the distance on the stone floor. She hurriedly finished giving absolution and stood up as the guard entered once more. “God go with you,” she said in a grave voice to the chamber full of prisoners as she and Miriame followed the guard out into the corridor again.
He unlocked another chamber. “Just a couple in here,” he said. “Do you want to stop here or shall we go on to a fuller chamber?”
Courtney could not answer. She was staring in hope and horror at the two men in the room.
Miriame took one look at Courtney’s face. “We’ll stop here for a time,” she said piously. “All souls are worthy of being saved. We shall not pass these poor men by in their wretchedness.”
The guard gave a grunt of assent, locked the door behind them and hurried away, his footsteps echoing along the corridor.
For a moment Courtney stood still, staring from one to the other. Her long-lost father sat still in one corner of the room, her dead lover in another, both of them in heavy iron manacles that kept them tied by their wrists to their own corner of hell.
She was seeing ghosts. She knew she was seeing ghosts. She had left Pierre for dead, fighting a company of men that outnumbered him by twenty to one. She had never considered that he might still be alive, but here he was, alive and in chains. Pierre was alive.
Miriame was equally surprised. “I had thought you were dead,” she said to him.
He shook his head. “Wounded. Not dead. Who are you that you would care?”
Courtney did not answer him. Instead, she stumbled over towards the older man chained by the wrists in the far corner. “Father,” she said softly, letting her hood fall back off her face. “You are alive.”
Her father did not move. “Go away and let me be.” His voice was aged and ancient, not like he had used to sound.
Pierre, however, started at the sound of her voice and whirled around as best he could to see her. “William?”
She need not hide any longer. She had avenged her honor. “Not William. I never have been William. I have always been Courtney.”
Her father finally raised his gray head to look at her. His eyes were dull with pain and despair, but they lightened when they saw her. “Courtney? Is that really Courtney?” He shook his head again. “You cannot be my daughter. This dungeon is playing tricks with my head and showing me what I desire to see even though it be but a mirage. I know you are not really Courtney, but you look so much like her that it gladdens my heart just to see you.”
She was weeping in earnest now. “I am Courtney, papa. I am your daughter. I have come to rescue you.”
He looked at her with incomprehension. “I am in the Bastille. Nobody escapes from the Bastille. Everyone knows that.”
Miriame drew a couple of files from under her robe. “Then you shall be the first.”
Courtney shot a glance at Pierre. He looked even more stunned than her father did. She did not know what to think herself. Pierre was still alive. Luc’s father was still alive. In prison, but alive.
She bent her head to her father’s wrists. She and Miriame set to work on his manacles, cutting through them as fast as they could.
“You are really Courtney?” her father said, as he watched them cut through the iron on his wrists. “It is really my daughter hidden away under those black robes?”
Courtney looked up and blew her father a kiss. “Yes, papa. It really is me.”
Pierre’s voice came through the room. “You were Courtney all along? Not William? William does not exist? William has never existed? It was all a lie?”
She would not look at him or her heart would melt into pity. She had not dreamed that she would ever find him again. “Yes, I was Courtney all along. William does exist and is even my cousin, but as far as I know, he has never left Holland. He does not like to travel.”
“I poured my heart out to you and you never told me who you were?” His voice was full of pain.
Put like that, it did sound rather callous of her. She kept her eyes fixed on her father’s chains as she worked at setting him free. “Evidently.”
“I spent endless weeks looking for you in Lyons, while all the while you were hiding right under my nose in Paris, masquerading as my friend?”
So that is what he had been doing during his long absence from Paris. He had been looking for her. She was glad to know of it though it was too late to make any difference to her. She did not answer him.
He would not let her alone. “You made many friends in the Musketeers. Your companion Jean-Paul Metin for one.” His voice worried at her as a dog worries a bone.
“Yes – I made many friends in the company, not all of them as false as you.”
“I suppose he is your lover?”
She gave a short laugh. “No – he is not.” She would not say any more than that and give away Miriame’s secret.
Miriame turned around and gave Pierre an amused look. “What one woman can do, so can another. Surely you did not think that Courtney was the only female Musketeer in the company?”
Pierre wiped his face awkwardly on the back of his arm, his manacles clanking. “I had not so much as guessed there was even one before. You, too?”
“Of course.” Miriame bent her head to her filing again. “We women have to stick together.”
Her father’s first manacle fell off with a clang. He stretched out his arm with a grunt of satisfaction. “Ah, it feels so good to have that off again.” The second manacle followed the first in short order.
Courtney took out the spare robe she carried under her shirt and held it out to her father. “Quick. Put this on.”
Her father seemed to have regained his wits now that the manacles were off him, and accepted that he had a chanc
e of rescue. His eyes shone now with hope rather than having the blank look of dull despair. He took the robe and threw it awkwardly around his shoulders. “I cannot walk fast,” he warned her. “They had me on the rack when they first brought me here, and my left leg has never been the same since. If it comes to a chase, you will have to leave me behind. I will slow you down too much. Promise me that you will leave me if I am slowing you down.”
Courtney felt her eyes fill with tears. She would never leave him behind. She would carry his broken body on her back rather than leave him to be tortured again. “You will not need to run, papa.”
Pierre looked at them with bemusement. “You are really going to try and rescue us from the Bastille with nothing more than a monk’s robe for protection? You are mad indeed.”
Courtney shook the hem of the robe out and clasped it around her father’s neck, pulling the hood over his head to cover his face as much as she could. “I am here to rescue my father. That is all.”
Her father put his arms around her and held her tight. “I never thought I would see you again. I will die a happy man if I can only know that you are safe from all the scoundrels that would hurt you.”
She gestured to Pierre. “Why are you in together?”
Her father groaned. “The guards knew some of my history. It amused them to put us together.”
The guard had not yet returned and all was ready for the escape. Miriame looked at Courtney. “We cannot do anything else until the guard returns. Should we file off de Tournay’s manacles and give him a chance to escape, too? We have no other spare robe, but with his hands free, he would at least have a chance.”
Courtney looked at her father, struggling manfully to contain his excitement at the thought of freedom at last. The months in prison had worn him to a shadow of his former self. His ragged clothes hung on his gaunt frame like on a scarecrow. His wrists were chafed and blistered with angry red weals and scabs where the manacles had cut into him and he limped heavily from an old injury to his leg that obviously still pained him. His face was lined with worry and pain and his hair had turned completely white.
How could she forgive the man who had done this to her father? How could she excuse him? How could she set him free now, in opposition to her vow to have justice served on him? Her father had spent a year and more in prison waiting for freedom. Pierre de Tournay, the traitor who had put him there, deserved to spend a equal time in chains. However much she had once loved him, she ought not put justice aside.
Her father gave a stiff nod. “Set him free. I bear him no more enmity. Not even a dog deserves to be kept in such conditions.”
She could not be as forgiving as her father. She looked at Pierre, the hurt of his betrayal scarring her heart anew. “You betrayed my father and left him to die in prison. You betrayed me and left me to face a harsh world alone, without a friend. You betrayed your son without even knowing him, condemning him to a life as a bastard. Why should I forgive you now?” She wanted in her heart to have him protest him love for her, hollow though his love was. Her heart was breaking at the thought of leaving him in chains, though her head was demanding that she leave him there for the sake of justice. How she wanted to find some reason for setting him free...
He looked at her with horror dawning in his eyes as he finally started to comprehend that she meant to leave him there, with no hope of rescue. “I saved your life outside Paris,” he reminded her. “You would have died at the hands of the King’s company if I had not held them off. I killed Georges Charent, too. If anyone deserved death at my hands, he did.”
She was glad that Charent was dead. She was saved the effort of hunting him down and killing him herself. “I am glad that Charent has gone to Hell where he belongs, but the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend. I have hated you for too long to forgive you now. My hatred of you is the only thing that has kept me going through the darkest days. Night after night I would dream of having your life in my power. Why should I throw it away now?”
The footsteps of the guard could be heard hurrying down the corridor towards them. They were running out of time to rescue Pierre even if they would.
Pierre gave her one last beseeching look. “Did you never love me?”
She shook her head. He should not have reminded her of that now, when the broken body of her father stood in front of her to remind her of her sins. “Once upon a time I loved you with all my heart. I gave away too much of myself to you, and I paid a bitter price for it.”
The guard unlocked the door and stepped inside. Quick as a flash, Miriame stepped out from behind him and knocked him on the head with her leaden cosh. He fell to the ground without a murmur.
Miriame fell to her knees and bent over him with a knife in her hand.
“Don’t kill him,” Courtney said quickly. “He brought us here out of pity and killing him would be an evil way to requite him. Save your knife for the other guard. He deserves it.”
Miriame looked up at her, her face offended. “You seem to think I kill innocent people just for the fun of it. I’m not going to murder him – I’m just cutting a strip off his jerkin to gag him so he cannot give us away by shouting if he wakes up inconveniently soon.” She suited her actions to her words and soon had him trussed up as tightly as a goose ready for the roasting.
She looked at Pierre. “You haven’t given us away yet. I don’t suppose I need to gag you.”
Pierre glared at her. “Don’t even think about trying.”
She shrugged. “You could hardly stop me if I chose not to take the risk of you squealing.”
He looked straight at Courtney. “I love Courtney with all my heart and I always have. I would rather have my heart cut out than betray her again.”
She felt her heart break at his words. “I loved you once, and you betrayed me in the cruelest way possible. I thought I had led you to your death, but on the whole this is a far more satisfactory revenge. You shall lie in prison until you die, knowing that I put you there.” She felt a cruel satisfaction at her words. Now he knew just how she had felt when he had abandoned her. She hoped he would learn his lesson well.
She turned to her father, pulling him along by his sleeve. The hardest part of the escape was still ahead of them. She was anxious to get out of the Bastille before they were discovered. “Come, let’s go.”
She paused at the door and turned to look at Pierre. His eyes were watching her and he looked as though his heart was breaking. “Good bye, Monsieur de Tournay. May you reap now what you have sown.”
He did not respond to her last taunt. “Fare thee well, Courtney my love. Live happy. Kiss our son for me and teach him not to hate his father.”
At these words she nearly turned back to take him with her, but the sound of footsteps echoing in a far corridor made her realize anew what little time she had to get her father to safety.
The look on his face as she turned her head away to leave was seared so deep on her memory that she knew she would never forget it for as long as she lived. It was a loving look, a look of pain, and a look of betrayal. She knew just how he felt - it was just the look she had once worn herself. She stumbled as she walked through the door. Leaving him behind was the hardest choice she had ever made. Were it not a just thing to do, she never could have done it.
Miriame locked the dungeon door behind her with the key she had taken from the unconscious prison guard and tucked the key away in her shirt. “It may came in useful again,” she said to Courtney with a grin. “Who knows how soon I will have to break someone out of here again?”
Never again, Courtney thought, as she hurried along the corridors. Only a fool would tempt fate by breaking into a well-guarded prison twice in his life. The unfortunate prisoners in the Bastille must needs remain there until the King had mercy on them, for she could not help them.
Her father could only limp along slowly. They were lucky they did not run into any guards patrolling the corridors, or they would have been lost. As it was, they arrived at the
front gate without incident.
The red-faced guard was alone at the gate when they arrived. Courtney and her father shuffled up to him while Miriame lurked behind them in the shadows, knife at the ready.
The red-faced guard looked at them suspiciously. “Where’s Stephan? Didn’t he come to let you out?”
Courtney put on a blank face. “Who?”
The red-faced guard made a gesture of impatience. “The other guard. Where is he?”
Courtney looked around her in fake confusion. “Is he not right behind us? He let us out of the chamber where we were ministering unto the prisoners and told us to go ahead and he would follow right away.”
“Damn fool of a guard to stop to take a leak and let you wander around on your own,” the red-faced guard said, taking a step into the shadows as if to go after him and tell him what a fool he was. “I’m not letting you go until he gets here.”
One more step into the shadows, and that was the last step he ever took. Miriame was on him in an instant, the silver blade of her knife flashing in the darkness. With a deft hand she slit his throat from ear to ear, stepping neatly out of the way of the blood as it spurted out of his neck.
Feeling as if she wanted to be sick, Courtney leaned over and extracted the keys from his belt.
Her fingers were wet with his blood. She wiped them on her dark robe with a shudder before turning the key in the gate and opening it wide.
Her father stepped through it as if in a daze. “I had never thought to see the outside world again,” he muttered as he limped along.
Courtney held tight to his arm to help steady him on his feet. He had been chained to the manacles in his cell for so long that he had nigh lost the use of his legs. Was this the fate in store for Pierre, she wondered? Would he, too, be beaten and tortured until he could not longer walk?
