by Leda Swann
“You are alive, and my bro---everyone else I have ever loved is dead.”
He did not understand. Had Gerard loved his sister so much that her death had warped his mind? “Everyone you love? You sent me word that your sister was sick, but that the rest of your household had been spared.”
“Sophie was the first to fall sick. She brought the plague into the household.” Gerard’s eyes were glistening with tears and his voice sounded choked. “One by one, everyone fell sick after her. One by one, everyone died. Everyone. My mother. My father. Everyone. My twin was the last to die.”
Lamotte felt his words pierce his heart. No wonder Gerard had lost his light heart and friendly spirit. “I had not known. I am sorry to hear it.”
Gerard stared at the ground, his head between his knees. He spoke quickly, as if the words were burning him. “I buried them all in a pit. I tossed the bodies in one after another until the pit was full and I covered it over with earth.” Tears were running down his face and dripping into the dirt as he spoke. “They all died. All of them. Even the person I had thought to marry.”
What could he say? Words were inadequate to express his pity for his friend or his sympathy for the horrors he had suffered. “I tried to come to help you.”
Gerard raised his head again, wiped his eyes on his sleeve and made a visible effort to regain control of himself. “Better men than you are afraid of the plague.”
“The plague did not stop me.” Lamotte crouched down beside his old friend and pulled open his shirt to reveal a jagged scar that ran from his breastbone to near his waist. The scar tissue was red and angry, the edges knitted together in a vicious welt “That did.”
Sophie felt sick to her stomach as she looked at the scar. It made the cut she had given him on his arm look like the merest scratch of a wayward bramble. His side looked as though it had been ripped open by a pack of wolves. Certainly no sword would leave such a mess. She reached out and touched the ribbed edges with a gentle fingertip. “What did that to you?”
“A pitchfork.”
She wiped her dirty sleeve across her face. She knew that men and soldiers did not cry, but she had not been able to stop the tears from coming. She had kept her pain bottled up inside her for so long that she had not been able to stop it from flooding out in a torrent when she opened the lid just the smallest bit to let a stranger get a glimpse of it. “How?”
“The roads to the Camargue were blocked and the villagers would allow none through – either in or out. They feared the spread of the plague far too much. I knew how you loved your sister, and I had medicines with me that the King’s physician swore were a guaranteed remedy against the plague.
Tears filled Sophie’s eyes anew as she thought of her brother’s death and how easily it could have been prevented, if only things had turned out differently. “You tried to bring them to me?”
“I was stopped by a mob as I approached Provence. They would not listen to my pleas to be allowed to pass through. Why was I traveling, they demanded. What was I running from? What sickness had God struck me with? They would not believe that I had come from a place of no sickness. They would not believe that any medicine made by men would be proof against the plague.
“They were mad with fear; I could not reason with them. I tried to ride past them, but there were too many of them. They grabbed hold of me and dragged me off my horse.” He gave a wry smile. “I am lucky to be alive at all. I thought I was a dead man.”
“You recovered well.” Try as she might, she could not keep the distress out of her voice. Did he know how lucky he was to have lived when so many others had died?
“A priest found me and took me in to care for me. Despite his care, the wound went bad and I was sick with the fever most of the winter. Even in my moments of lucidity, I could not rise from my bed. I tried to find a messenger who would bring the medicines to your sister, but they thought I was raving or mad or worse. At any rate, none of them would risk a journey in the middle of winter to a house with the plague. By the time I was well enough to travel, word had reached me that Sophie was long since dead and that you were on your way to rejoin the regiment.”
Sophie crouched in the dirt still, her heart aching for what she had done, wallowing in the newfound sense of her guilt. She had misjudged Lamotte and sought to murder him, when he had risked his life to save her. He would have saved Gerard, too, if he could. He had not forsaken them in their hour of need as she had thought for so many many months.
She rose unsteadily to her feet to make what belated amends she could. “I apologize for my actions when I first saw you again. I was deeply upset. I thought you had ignored my plea for your help out of fear.” She cleared her throat. The words stuck deep down in her chest until she thought she would choke on them. She had to force herself to give them voice. “I take back my words. It seems I had no cause to call you a coward.”
Lamotte bowed his head briefly. “Apology accepted.”
She sheathed her sword with a hand that trembled. “Thank you for the lesson.” She had been so used to seeing him as the enemy that she did not know how to handle this sudden change. Her thirst for revenge had given her the strength to struggle on when even her desire for honor could not have kept her on her feet. Losing the guiding force of her life all on instant made her feel suddenly lost and alone.
She had to believe him. His body could not lie. She had seen his wound with her own eyes and touched the raw edges with her fingertips. He had taken that wound for her. For Gerard. He had nearly died of it.
She had much to think about now – more than she had ever imagined possible. She wanted to be alone in her lodgings with her thoughts.
She could feel his eyes on her as she strode away. “Come back tomorrow,” he called after her.
She waved her agreement. She would be back for another lesson in the morn, though her desire to use her new-found skill against her teacher had utterly disappeared. She would learn her best so that she would bring honor to Gerard’s name.
Her brother had been right. Lamotte was no coward. He was an honorable man and he deserved her respect. He had well-nigh died trying to bring her the medicine she needed. She would not seek his death any longer.
Still, she could not afford to let him get close to her. Only by holding herself aloof from her companions could she guarantee that her secret would be kept. She would learn from Lamotte, but she must nonetheless avoid his friendship, as she avoided the friendship of all her fellow Musketeers. She would never be his companion as Gerard had been. The thought pained her even as she admitted its absolute necessity. He was an honorable man, and the best fighter she had ever seen. She would have liked to become close to him, to share his hopes and fears, to become a part of his life.
She understood now why Gerard had chosen him for her husband. She sent a silent apology up to Gerard’s soul that she had ever doubted him. Her twin had known her better than she had known herself, choosing for her with eyes unblinded by childish liking, choosing her a man she could both love and respect. Lamotte was more of a man than Jean-Luc ever would have been. He was a hawk, a fierce predator, to Jean-Luc’s good-natured robin. Lamotte’s wife, whoever she would be, would be blessed with a courageous and loyal husband.
Her life as a man gave her freedom to do as she pleased, she thought to herself, as she lay awake on her narrow bed that evening, but it cut her off from the rest of the world. She could trust no one, neither man nor woman, with her secret. She had never felt so alone or so lonely before. Even her ambition to do her family honor was cold comfort for her in the dead of night, when all the world bar her was asleep in the arms of those they loved.
Henrietta jumped into sudden wakefulness at the sound of the timid knock on her chamber door. She had retired for the night some time ago and was halfways into sleep by now. She turned over grumpily and pulled her bedclothes up to her chin. Maybe if she ignored the noise, whoever it was would go away.
Tap tap tap, a little louder this tim
e.
She sat up and drew back the curtain around her bed a fraction, resigning herself to the annoying inevitability of being thoroughly woken up. “What do you want?”
Her maid opened the chamber door a crack and peeped through. “You have a visitor, Madame Princesse,” she whispered.
Henrietta frowned at her maid. The girl, though not over bright, was not usually quite so dense. “It is the middle of the night and I was asleep. I am not in the mood to receive anyone. Tell them I am not at home.”
“But Madame…”
“No buts.” She waved her hand in the air to dismiss her maid. “Tell whoever it is to go away.”
Her maid squeaked with fright. “Please, Madame,” she gabbled, tripping over her words in her haste to get them out of her mouth. “Your visitor is the King.”
Henrietta swore under her breath – in English. In the crowded quarters of the palace in St-Germain-en-Lay one never knew who might be listening.
The maid looked at her, her frightened face silently beseeching her mistress not to make her tell her King a lie. He could have her whipped to death for less.
Henrietta sighed. She liked her little maid too well to give the King any reason to punish her. “Show him in.”
The maid’s face lost its terrified pucker and sank into its usual look of agreeable docility as she scuttled off to do her mistress’s bidding.
Henrietta patted her hair straight and tucked the bedclothes securely around her. Not for the first time she wished that her husband’s brother was not the King of France. It would not be politic to offend the King, howsoever much she might be tempted to.
At that moment, the door to her chamber opened with a flourish and King Louis XIV strode in, an ermine nightcap on his wigless head and a purple dressing gown loosely belted around his corpulent waist.
He gestured to his young page, who pulled back the curtains from around her bed.
She bent her head in a gesture of respect, shivering in the cold draft that tickled her shoulders. “Your Majesty.”
“You may call me Louis,” he said with a benevolent smile, as if he were conferring the highest honor of the land upon her. Indeed, he probably thought he was, Henrietta thought to herself with a grimace. He had always loved pomp and ceremony above all else that to voluntarily ask her to address him without his title was most likely a sign of greatest love.
A great love from the King, however, she could very well do without. “You do me too much honor, Sire.”
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it with his wet mouth. “If the whole world came to pay homage to you, sweetest Henrietta, it could not give you more honor than you deserve.”
She drew her hand away again and tucked it out of sight under the bedclothes. “I trust Monsieur, my husband, is well?” Perhaps he needed a timely reminder that she was his sister-in-law – married to his younger brother.
He sat down on the side of her bed with an air of dignified complacence. “Monsieur was perfectly well when I left him last. He was quite surrounded by a peck of adoring boys. You know how much he enjoys that.” He gazed at her greedily, his beady eyes shining with desire. “I know my brother is no fit husband for you, Henrietta.”
She forbore to remind him that he had arranged the match himself, in full knowledge of his brother’s proclivities towards those of his own sex. “I like my husband very well.”
“Then you are not being unfaithful to him with one of his friends, I suppose? Not with the Marquis de Torbay, for instance, or the Comte de Guiche?”
Henrietta felt the blood rush from her head. She and the Comte had been so careful in their liaison. They had thought they had kept it a secret from all around them. Someone must have spied them together and gone running to the king with the tale. “Did Monsieur request that you put such a question to me?” Though trembling with fear for her lover inside, her guilt made her seem haughty. “Would it not be more fitting for Monsieur to ask me himself, if he were worried about the fidelity of his wife?”
The King gave an uncomfortable harrumph. “I would not like to think that you give freely to the Comte what you refuse your King.” His words held a wealth of warning.
How many times would she have to tell him the same thing? Would he never accept her refusal? “I refuse you nothing that is lawfully mine to give you.”
“You refuse me your love, which I, your King, have many a time begged you for, though it doth humiliate me to my very soul to beg for aught.”
She could not ever give him her love, even were it hers to give. The Comte de Guiche was embedded deep in her heart, and no blusterous words from the King could drive him out again. “I owe my love to my husband.”
“Pah. You owe such a husband nothing. You refuse me your kisses, you refuse me the sight of your naked body, you refuse me the pleasure of being abed with you. Such things would cost you nothing but a little complaisance to bestow, and they would make me the happiest of men.”
She shuddered at the thought of his body atop hers, his thick, slobbering lips kissing her face, neck and breasts. She would rather die than submit to his embrace. “I cannot give you such things. I am your sister-in-law, and to be abed with you would be a mortal sin. You have no right to ask it of me.”
He drew himself up in anger at her words. “I have the divine right of a King to ask of you anything I require. When you refuse me, you refuse God’s messenger on earth. To refuse me is to commit not only treason against your ruler, but blasphemy against God himself.”
Were he not the King of France and the ruler of much of Christendom, she would call him a deluded old fool. “I love God, and I cleave to my husband as the Church teaches me to do.”
He gave an ugly laugh. “You do not ever cleave to your husband. He is far too busy cleaving to young boys to bother with you.”
How true his words were, she thought to herself with an inward smile. Had it been left up to her husband to deflower her, she would be a virgin yet. Still, Monsieur had been good to her and had protected her from those at Court who bore her and her brother, King Charles II of England, little goodwill. She loved her husband dearly as her friend, though he would never be her husband in more than name only. “My husband is what he is. I do not judge him for it.”
He edged closer to her on the bed. “I would give you wealth and honor that my brother Philippe could never match. I would dress you in silks of royal purple and shower you with sapphires and rubies.”
She did not wear half the silk dresses or jewels she possessed already. Monsieur could be generous when he pleased – particularly when he had no young boy to lavish his affections and gifts on. “The greatest honor a woman may possess is a good reputation.”
“I would make you my chief mistress. None would dare to say a word against you.”
His breath was foul and his teeth stained a dull brown from too much wine. She drew back as far as she was able. “My conscience would not be satisfied. It would not leave me to rest peacefully, knowing that I had done wrong.”
He drew back again, his back straight with anger. “You are refusing me again?”
She was silent.
“Will you be my mistress?”
“No, Sire. I cannot.”
He glowered at her. “I will have the Comte de Guiche thrown into the Bastille at sunrise.”
She decided to brazen it out. If he had proof of her liaison, no doubt the Comte would already be in the Bastille upon the rack or worse. “The Comte de Guiche is nothing to me.”
He rose from his seat on the bed, his face red with bottled rage. “I am a patient man. You have a month to reconsider your foolishness. If your only answer is still to refuse your King, I swear you will live long enough to regret your obstinacy. Not even Monsieur will be able to save you from my anger then.”
Three weeks of lessons. Three weeks of rising before dawn to practice each movement until she could run three paces at top speed, leap in the air, and spit a tiny caterpillar off the wall with unerring accuracy a
nd without so much as blunting the very tip of her blade on the stone.
Lamotte had worked her harder than a mule, and she risen to the challenge as well as she could. She had done her best and more for him. For hours each day, she watched each movement of his lithe body, mirroring him as best she could. She knew his body almost better than her own – she could see every scratch or scar on his arms and neck, even with her eyes closed.
Every day she trained with him to the point of exhaustion, and each night she dreamed about fighting him again. Day or night, sleeping or waking, he was with her. She lived only for his approbation and for the casual nod of his head that told her more eloquently than the floweriest of words that she had done well.
Her obsessive attention to his lessons had paid off. Her skill had improved to the point where she could hold her own against some of her companions. She would always be better with a bow or a knife, where skill was all and strength nothing, but she was no longer a disgrace with a sword. Even D’Artagnan had noticed the difference and had growled his appreciation of the fact that she no longer fought like a lily-livered girl.
How proud Gerard would be if he could see her now, Sophie thought to herself as she flicked her opponent’s sword out of his hand, grinning to herself at the look of shock and surprise on his face. Gerard had always believed that she could do anything if she set her mind to it. She had proven him right.
Her opponent, a likeable red-haired Tuscan called Pierre, threw up his hands in defeat. “God damn it, Gerard, but you must have been practicing like the very devil was driving you. You’ve beaten me fair and square.”
She shot a glance out of the corner of her eye towards Lamotte, as he stood in the slowly lengthening evening shadows, watching her. No doubt he would have a dozen criticisms of her style for tomorrow’s lesson, but she wouldn’t worry about that now. She had beaten Pierre in a fair fight and it felt good.
She inspected her blade carefully for nicks. Finding none, she wiped it carefully with a soft cloth impregnated with oil jut as Lamotte had taught her to do and put it away by her side. “Lamotte has been teaching me.”
