Guardsmen of the King: A Historical Adventure Novel (George Glen's Adventures Book 1)

by Richard Bergen

  In the afternoon of that day, we left a small elm forest and found ourselves immediately in front of a wide river.

  "The Somme!" said Vincent, smiling. "We've almost made it. Just a little further upstream and Péronne is ahead of us."

  We spurred our nags to a final gallop and reached the village already half an hour later. The church built on the water caught our eye. The tower was reflected in the clear waters. Vincent stared at the reflection and said knowingly, "Where the cross meets the water. We've made it, friends."

  An anxious feeling crept over me as our little troop approached the village. And although I had gradually calmed down over the last few hours, the uneasy feeling about my future was now present again in all its strength.

  The first houses appeared on our right and left and they gave an impression of peacefulness and harmony. But this image did not relax me. It was usually the seemingly simple moments that got you into the most trouble.

  Gradually, we approached the church, whose walls almost reached the waters of the Somme. It seemed to be quite an old building, constructed of rough boulders that formed robust, round arches and a high tower. The church was not very large, but it seemed to be of a permanence that could outlast even eternity.

  We stopped in its shadow and descended. Though we did not see many of the inhabitants, we instinctively felt them watching and eyeing us. At least, most of us felt it, from what I could gather from the tense expressions of the guards. One, however, seemed quite carefree. Richard grinned all over his face and said delightedly, "A beautiful place. I like this France."

  I just couldn't understand how this guy could feel so much joy in the face of our situation. After all, we had now reached the place that the letter said would be our end. I was only able to shake my head. But before I could think much about his motives, I realised that someone was waiting for us in the shadow of the church. It was a little boy who couldn't have been more than nine or ten years old. He was wearing shabby linen clothes and his dirty hair hung tangled over his shoulders. When he recognised us, he came up to us and asked, "Garde du corps?"

  "Answer him!", Tom ordered me quickly.

  "Oui," I replied to the little Frenchman.

  He nodded quickly and then declared, "Venez autour de minuit!"

  "What did he say?" asked Vincent quickly, and I noticed that he seemed rather excited.

  "He said we should get here at midnight," I answered truthfully.

  Wilbur was now grinning all over his face, looking conspiratorially at Vincent. "The devil expects his sacrifices, I thought so."

  Now Vincent couldn't help smiling either, only I didn't understand anything anymore. Try as I might, none of this made any sense to me.

  "Let's not stand around here unnecessarily!" now Tom said seriously. "Let's find somewhere to stay. I hope there is at least something like a decent inn in this lousy nest."

  There was an inn, and although the Guardsmen were already grumbling about its outward appearance, I quite liked it. The thought of not having to spend the next few hours under clear skies on hard ground really thrilled me. We entered the house through a narrow entrance and found ourselves surrounded by dim light in a musty dosshouse. "Very inviting indeed," Wilbur said quietly and then turned to me. "Listen, little one, you will now go to the innkeeper and demand a large room!"

  I looked at the innkeeper, a thin Frenchman with a haggard face and a large apron, who was cashing up at one of the tables. The guests looked like simple people who preferred to spend their scarce money here rather than feed their families with it. I knew all too well from England.

  When the owner saw me coming towards him, he turned to me and looked at me questioningly.

  "Excuse-moi," I began, "nous avons besoin d'une chambre?"

  The man eyed me closely. He obviously noticed the English accent with which I pronounced the words.

  "J'ai seulement le grenier libre," he replied.

  Very well, I thought, and replied, "Bien, on le prend."

  After the innkeeper had told me the rate, I returned to my companions.

  "What did he say?" asked Wilbur immediately.

  "He has no rooms. Only the attic of the barn is free."

  "Just as well," Vincent agreed. "We'll sleep in a hayloft then."

  "Give me some money! I have to pay the innkeeper," I demanded and almost reluctantly Tom produced a few coins from his money bag. I paid the owner and he led us out the back door of the house and across the yard to a large barn. No doubt he noticed that my companions were not the simple peasant folk they pretended to be. But he didn't seem to care. Apparently people didn't care too much about each other in this country and that was a good thing.

  The barn looked almost huge from the inside. The floor was covered with haystacks and so was the loft above. In the back, a couple of horses were neighing. Tom pointed slightly at the animals and I understood the gesture. I asked the innkeeper if we could put our horses here too and he said yes, strangely not charging extra.

  The innkeeper finally left us in the stable to return to the inn.

  "Excellent," Tom now commented. "We couldn't have asked for a better place."

  "For the meeting with the devil?", I asked.

  "You said it, George."

  Tom, meanwhile, had turned to Richard and demanded, "Get the horses!"

  Immediately my friend disappeared and when he had returned with the horses, we all went up to the attic and formed a small circle

  "Very well," Tom said. "It will soon be time. I'd say while we're waiting, let's all get some more rest."

  "Wait? For what?" asked Richard, his tone seeming naïve even to me.

  Tom grinned all over his face as he said, "To the witching hour, my friend. To the witching hour."

  Chapter 24

  Midnight.

  We had been waiting for our mysterious meeting at the Péronnes church for quite a while now. I was overly nervous and kept toying with the idea of just running away. But a glance at the Guardsmen stopped me every time. Richard, too, no longer looked so pleased about our stay in France. He seemed even more anxious than I was and kept looking around in a hurry.

  The Guardsmen alone were of remarkable calm and balance. I tried to soothe myself with the thought of it. After all, these men knew what was coming. If they showed no fear, there was probably no reason to. But these thoughts were of a purely rational nature. My wildly beating heart could not be quietened in this way.

  I cannot say with certainty how long we had held out in this place of horror before an event ended the waiting. And as fate would have it, I was the first to notice this event.

  Behind Vincent, a shadow slipped out of the night. The black-robed figure with its hood pulled deep into its face approached us with the soundlessness of a predator. I perceived a premonition of death and destruction. I had the feeling that a menacing creature from hell was hiding under that cloak, ready to pounce on us at any moment.

  The creature raised an arm and when I realised it was about to attack Vincent, I quickly shouted to him, "Watch out! Behind you!"

  With the quick reflexes of a battle-hardened man, Vincent ducked and spun around, drawing his rapier in one breathtakingly swift movement.

  The flashing steel drove through the blackness of the night and only stopped when it hovered menacingly close to the face of the gloomy stranger.

  What happened now so thoroughly defied all my expectations that I had to shake my head helplessly, as if I could thus dispel the illusion. But it was not an illusion. Vincent actually dropped his sword and stormily embraced the dark figure. He embraced her! "Josephine!" he exclaimed as he did so. "My angel, how I have longed for you."

  He pulled the hood off the person's head and I realised that she was a young woman with dark, straight hair framing an exceptionally pretty face. The woman laughed delightedly as Vincent pressed an effusive kiss to her lips.

  "I've missed you very much too," she said softly, her English underpinned by a French accent so str
ong it was barely recognisable as such.

  "You look beautiful," Vincent said, stroking her cheek gently. "So pretty."

  She smiled again and then turned to us next to her. "Come with me, all of you!" she demanded, hooking herself in Vincent's arm and leading us towards the market square.

  A thousand questions whirled through my head, to which I would have loved to have an answer. How did Vincent know this woman and who was she? What the hell did all this have to do with an appointment with the devil? So far, in any case, the incarnate had not appeared to me.

  I glanced quickly at Richard, firmly believing that the same nagging questions must be on his mind. What I saw, however, was a boy staring open-mouthed at a pretty woman. Gradually I began to doubt whether this could be the same Richard who had seemed so experienced and superior to me as a member of the Club of Wolves.

  We reached the market place and made our way as quietly as possible past the tavern to the stables. Our inn seemed almost eerie in the blackness of the night. So I thought of the dry mattress of straw that was waiting for me there and of the fact that I would finally find answers to my questions, and my fears had already disappeared.

  Once in the hay of the barn, Wilbur lit a torch and attached it to a bracket in the wall. We then formed a circle and settled down.

  "What do you have to tell us, Josefine?", Wilbur opened the conversation.

  Josefine looked around the group and I noticed that her face looked remarkably beautiful in the glow of the fire. She had large, dark eyes and full, curved lips that gave an impression of the sensuality they might be willing to give. When her eyes met Vincent's, she smiled again, looking down at him, then slowly back up again.

  "I'll tell you," she turned to Wilbur. "But first I would like to discuss something with Vincent ... in private."

  She lightly stroked Vincent's chin and he responded to the gesture with a kiss on the hand.

  Wilbur and Tom, having heard Josephine's request, withdrew to the hay. I too followed their lead and looked for another spot in the barn where the couple would be safe from my eyes. When I was out of sight, however, I noticed that someone was still missing.

  I quickly crawled through the hay back to where we had just been sitting and realised what I had feared.

  Richard was sitting in his old place, completely unaffected, and was looking spellbound at a scene that had obviously never presented itself to him before. Vincent had hastily removed Josephine's cloak and undone the buttons of her dress. Now he was about to cover the Frenchwoman's tender breasts with kisses. The two of them were so heated that they hadn't even noticed Richard's presence (or lack of it).

  "Come!", I quietly urged Richard.

  He turned reluctantly and let me lead him out of range.

  "What were you thinking?", I asked him immediately.

  "Did you see her breasts?" he immediately stammered excitedly.

  "Sure," I replied.

  "They were wonderful, weren't they?" Richard's eyes were glassy as he thought back on it.

  "You're behaving like a child," I now said angrily. "Haven't you heard that they want to be alone?"

  Now Richard looked at me crossly in return. "I suppose you have forgotten that this is all very new to me, George. I'm afraid I haven't had a French mistress to instruct me in the joys of love."

  His words kind of annoyed me, so I stood up to them. "Damn you, Richard! When Madame Isabelle seduced me, I was only twelve. I was far too immature for that sort of thing and it gave me limited pleasure."

  "Oh, I feel so sorry for you," Richard said in an ironic tone. He grinned so impudently that I felt tempted to ram my fist into his face right then and there. Only the two lovers not far away stopped me.

  "And how is it now?" he asked me seriously. "Do you feel ready for such things now?"

  I thought a bit and then replied, "Yes. Thinking back, there are some things I'd like to do again."

  "Tell me," Richard demanded eagerly, but I had no desire to tell him stories he had already heard a few times, so I replied tiredly: "I've already told you everything."

  "Not in enough detail."

  "At the moment we have completely different problems, Rich. For example, I'd like to know why we haven't met the devil yet."

  "Yeah, I'd like to know that too, actually."

  Together we crawled through the haystacks until we found the two Guardsmen who, out of courtesy and discretion, had left their busy friend alone.

  I spoke softly as I asked in a rather resolute tone, "What does all this have to do with a rendezvous with the devil, anyway?"

  Wilbur looked at me contemptuously before replying, "I don't feel like answering that."

  Tom nodded, which I took as approval. This kind of behaviour was starting to make me angry. For weeks the Guardsmen had kept everything from us and on this day of truth we were still to be kept in the dark. Not with me, I thought. In a voice suppressed with anger, I demanded: "If you don't tell us what's going on right now, I'm going to run to Vincent and interfere with the cosy get-together with his French fille de joie.

  "All right, all right," Tom relented soothingly. "If you really want to know. The letter was written in a kind of secret language, so that an unwelcome recipient would not be able to decode it. The woman Vincent is currently dealing with is an informant who has given herself the name Devil. I think, by the way, that it is quite appropriate after what Vincent has been telling us." Wilbur had to grin all over his face at these comments.

  "And we are the sacrifices," Tom finished the explanation. "That's all."

  My heart stopped for a moment. That was all. It was just some stupid secret language. Because of that idiotic choice of words by a French woman, I had been fighting my mortal fear for a whole month now. "I don't believe it," I groaned. "That's everything?"

  "Everything," Tom repeated, nodding.

  "But this woman can speak English. Why did she send the letter in French?"

  "You just said it yourself, George. She can speak English, but she does not know how to write it. Under different circumstances the letter would have been translated by one of our Guardsmen who can actually read French, but unfortunately this one has passed away - whooping cough, there's no cure for it."

  I sat down sluggishly, unable to say a single word. Instead, Richard continued the conversation. "Where do we go from here?"

  "That depends on what information our informant reveals," Tom replied factually.

  "But we still don't know what it's all about," I asked, guessing the answer before it was even given.

  "You'll find out soon enough," Wilbur said, smiling. Yes, he was having fun.

  These words ended the conversation for the moment. Reluctantly, I shook my head and looked at the floor, unable to suppress my anger. Finally Richard nudged me lightly and when I looked up I noticed that he was pointing with his hand in a certain direction. Now I realised that from our position one could easily see through two haystacks and overlook our previous position. There, in the dancing light of the torch, I saw Vincent dealing with the informant in a way that would have made a convent girl red-faced.

  He knelt right behind Josefine, whose arms were stretched out in front of her, and grasped her round buttocks while he pounded her powerfully and quickly. From time to time he grabbed her swinging breasts, which shivered with every push. His other hand had slid between her thighs from the front to play specifically with her flower bud. The Frenchwoman's face was relaxed, her eyes closed and her mouth open. Her dark hair hung wildly in her face. Vincent pounded more and more wildly. It sounded as if someone was slowly applauding each time their heated bodies met.

  "That's ...", Richard said aloud before I held my hand in front of his mouth and pulled him out of sight.

  "You better get a grip on yourself," I whispered in his ear and then withdrew my hand from his mouth.

  He looked at me in disappointment, but then realised that I was quite right and lowered his head in embarrassment.

  About fiv
e minutes later we heard a long stretched "Oui, ma chère!" which turned into strong groans. The sound of applause became faster and louder, then suddenly stopped. I guessed that the lovemaking was now over, but a quick glance in the right direction showed me that this was not quite the case. Vincent had withdrawn from Josefine and was giving himself the rest with his hand. In thick splashes, the result of the lovemaking showered over the Frenchwoman's bottom and back. Now I wished I had not seen this.

  I remembered that Lady Isabelle had once urged me to leave the love nest before the climax. The man's seed produces children, she had always said. So unless you wanted to start a family or dishonour a poor maiden, a gentleman was expected to unload outside of a lady. Vincent therefore seemed to be a gentleman and increased my respect even more when he lovingly wiped the traces of his eruption from the beauty's tender back with a rag. She rose and slowly slipped the dress over her sweat-covered body, which shone in the light of the torch. As I gazed absorbedly at the trembling breasts and the nest of curled dark hair in her crotch, I heard Richard clear his throat next to me: "Aha, so you get to look".

  Startled, I wheeled around. "I was just trying to gather information," I pressed on.

  "Obviously very exciting information," Rich sneered softly, pointing at the bulge that had inadvertently built up under the fabric of my trousers.

  Luckily it was dark and Rich couldn't see how red my face was turning. "Fine, fine. I'm no better than you," I reluctantly admitted and immediately had to grin.

  Meanwhile, Vincent had pulled his trousers back up and Josefine had also covered all her nakedness well again (to my regret) and tidied her hair.

  Shortly afterwards Wilbur and Tom stood up. They slowly made their way back to the torch site. Richard and I followed at their heels.

  In the glow of the fire we saw Vincent and Josefine. While he looked impassively towards us, Josefine arranged her hair and looked shyly at the ground.

  The Guardsmen, Richard and I sat down and looked at Josefine expectantly.