Thief of Hearts

by Leda Swann

  Chapter 10

  She wasted no time, but strode through the darkening streets as fast as she could. Her old haunts were less than pleasant places to be when night fell, especially for those foolish enough to carry anything of value on them. She didn’t want to have pulled herself out of the gutter only to be knifed in the end for the price of the fine linen shirt on her back.

  She met all Jean-Paul’s questions and his attempts at conversation with silence. Idle chatter seemed sacrilegious at such a moment as this.

  Jean-Paul soon understood that she was in no mood for talking, and walked beside her as quickly and quietly as she could wish for.

  Miriame stopped outside a ramshackle church set in a plot overgrown with weeds. She’d not been here in she didn’t know how long – the grief and guilt of Rebecca’s death was too much for her – but her feet still knew the way without being told were to go.

  In the weeks she had been absent, the church had fallen into even more disrepair than ever. It was a far cry from the beautiful stone monuments to God created by King and princes for the glory of their souls. The walls of this poor church were made of mud bricks and the roof thatched haphazardly with bundles of reeds lashed together with a thin rope.

  She pushed open the door, hoping that the wall did not cave in at her touch. It looked as though the slightest breath of wind would topple it. “Let’s see first if the priest is in.” The priest had buried Rebecca in hallowed ground, and done his best to comfort her in her sorrow at her sister’s death.

  The priest was indeed in. The rasping noise of his snores and the choking fumes of cheap Spanish wine hit them the moment they walked inside. He was lying on the muddy ground in front of the makeshift altar, his robes spread out around him in the mud and the ragged altar cloth pulled over him for a blanket, fast asleep.

  Jean-Paul gave a start of surprise and disgust at the sight. A priest lying asleep in the house of his Lord in a drunken stupor, keeping himself warm with the altar cloth? His foot itched to kick the old man into wakefulness, and into a sense of his dereliction of duty, but Miriame did not seem to feel any such desire.

  She merely shrugged and turned away again. “Father Jacques is in his usual state, I see. Drunk on communion wine. A pity. I would gladly have talked with him if I could.”

  He had been brought up to revere the cloth. Such men as this priest made a mockery of God and religion. He was a disgrace to the cloth he wore. “He’s always like this?”

  “I don’t think I’ve seen him sober above twice in my life. You can hardly wonder at it, what with the misery he has to deal with in this parish. Come, let’s go into the churchyard.”

  The fresh air outside was a blessing compared with the fetid stench inside the building. He followed Miriame past the church and into the churchyard beyond.

  A few gravestones stood here and there in the long grass. Others, cracked and weather-beaten, lay on their sides, half-hidden by the ivy that crawled over them, fastening its living tentacles on to everything in its path.

  Miriame stopped in front of a small headstone in the corner. The inscription was simple. It read only a name. “Rebecca.”

  She stood in front of the gravestone in silence, her head bowed, her lips moving as if in prayer. At last she lifted her head and looked straight into Jean-Paul’s eyes. “She was my sister.”

  He did not know what to say in the face of her grief. He felt helpless even to offer a word of comfort. “I am sorry for her death.”

  “She was my very best friend, the only friend I ever had,” she went on, as if she had not heard his pitiful attempt to comfort her. “I loved her dearly, and she loved me, too. When our mother died, there were just the two of us. She was all I had left. I promised my mother on her deathbed that I would take care of Rebecca. I promised, but I could not keep my promise. I could not protect her, even though I tried my very best. I failed. She is dead because I failed her.” A tear slid out from under her lowered eyelids and trickled down her face until she wiped it away absentmindedly with the back of her hand.

  Jean-Paul watched the meandering path of that lonely tear in fascination. He was more shocked by the sight of that tear than anything else. Miriame had faced death without flinching, but the sight of her sister’s grave had undone her composure. He reached one arm around her shoulders to comfort her, but her shoulders were as stiff as a board and did not bend into his embrace. “How did she die?”

  Her face was pale and set. “I killed a man not so long ago.”

  “So you told me. The man who knifed me in the street, I believe. You also told me that he had deserved death many times over.”

  “He did. I would kill him a thousand times, though each time were to doom me to everlasting damnation in the hottest fires of hell. He murdered my sister. I killed the man who murdered Rebecca.”

  There was no need for her to feel guilt on that score. She had done the world a service by ridding it of such vermin that would murder a defenseless girl. “He deserved no better. I would have killed him myself, if I could. I owe you my thanks.”

  She shrugged his arm off her shoulder. “I did not kill him for your sake,” she snapped at him, her eyes flashing. “I killed him because of what he did to Rebecca.”

  He had never before seen her so dangerous. In a mood like this, she could easily kill someone again. “Tell me about your sister.”

  She calmed immediately at the thought of her sister. “Rebecca loved being a girl. She was sweet and dainty and pretty, with long, black ringlets that fell down to her waist. She never got dirty playing in the streets like I did.” She smiled, her eyes soft at the memory. “I was always rushing around as bad as any boy: climbing trees to steal apples, throwing stones at the miserly landlord who came to collect our rent every Friday, stealing nuts from the market stalls. How Rebecca would scold me when I came home with a pocket full of stolen nuts. But then she’d forgive me, and help me eat them all anyway, even though I’d stolen them. She would never stay angry at me for long.”

  He stroked her hair, giving her the comfort of his touch. “You must have loved her very dearly.”

  “I did. I did.” She wiped away another tear as she looked at the gravestone in front of her. “For all the good it did her in the end.”

  He pulled her across to a low stone wall a few feet away and sat with his back against it, taking her with him and holding her in his arms. She was cold and unresponsive to his touch. “You were not to blame for her death. You told me herself that she was murdered by an evil man. That was none of your doing.”

  “When mother died, I took to wearing breeches. They were easier to run in, easier to climb walls in, easier to blend in to the crowds in. I would be the man of the house, I decided, and take good care of Rebecca.”

  He leaned his head into hers, stroking her hair as one would do to calm a child. “How old were you when your mother died?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t really remember. Twelve, maybe, or thirteen, and Rebecca was a year younger than I. Luckily I was strong and wiry and underdeveloped for my age, so I had no trouble passing for a boy.”

  His heart ached for the child she had been then, left all alone in the world after her mother’s death, save for a sister even younger than she. She had never had a proper childhood – Fate had robbed her of it too early. “You were left to look after your sister all by yourself? You had no family, no friends, you could turn to?”

  “There was no one. The landlord turfed us out on the street before our mother’s body was cold. He didn’t want a couple of pauper brats left on his hands.”

  His heart shuddered in his breast with futile rage. How he would like to take that miserly landlord and squeeze his neck until his eyes popped out of his head. To turn two young girls out onto the streets? Such an act was little short of murder. “How did you survive?”

  “We begged what we could. When we couldn’t feed ourselves by begging, we started to steal.” She turned her hands over in her lap, looking at them as if
they belonged to someone else, not to her. “My hands were nimble and quick enough from long practice, but Rebecca was no good at all. She was nearly caught a couple of times – we only just managed to get away.

  “After that, I had to forbid her from stealing, or she would get herself hanged, and me alongside her.” She shuddered, her face gray with remembered agony. “I spent so many nights huddled against her side to keep warm, frightened of the hangman, terrified that he would put the noose over Rebecca’s head and push her off the cart to dangle in the wind.”

  She had only been a child herself. He hugged her close to him, wanting to chase away her fears. “How did you manage then, when you forbade Rebecca to steal?”

  She shrugged. “When we couldn’t feed ourselves by stealing, we started to starve. That’s when Rebecca decided that she was a burden to me, that she had to earn her keep the only way she could without putting herself in danger. She decided to become a...a whore.” Her voice broke and she began to weep noiseless tears.

  He stared at the battered gray tombstone half-hidden in the long grasses. “But she was only a child.”

  “The Madams were always on the lookout for new girls for their brothels.” Her voice through her tears was bitter. “Young ones, especially if they were virgins and guaranteed to be free from disease, fetched a good price from the customers. Some of them believe they can cure the pox by fornicating with a virgin.” She snorted an angry laugh that sounded more like a curse than anything else. “If they’d kept their pricks inside their breeches to start with, they wouldn’t have the pox at all. It’s a bit damn late to start fornicating with virgins when you’re already diseased.”

  He shifted uneasily on the hard ground, remembering with a sense of guilt how he and his brother had treated the subject as a joke, laughing about which local virgin they would like to ravish if they were ever struck down with the pox themselves.

  She did not seem to notice his discomfort. “One of the Madams befriended Rebecca when I was out thieving scraps for our dinner,” she continued. “My luck had been bad for some days, and we were ravenous. I walked the streets, light-headed from hunger, hardly even knowing whether what I was seeing on front of me was real or whether my brain was playing tricks on me.

  “I was in luck that day. I managed to make off with a quarter wheel of cheese from a market stall, and then out the back of the boulangerie, I found three stale rolls. They were as hard as rock, but I knew that if we soaked them in a bit of water, we’d be able to eat them right enough. They’d fill a hole in our bellies, anyway.”

  She had been so hungry she had been glad to find some refuse to eat? His grip on her tightened. No wonder she had robbed him while he lay wounded. His death must have seemed like a miracle to her starving self.

  “I rushed back to where I had left Rebecca that morning still sleeping under the bridge that we now called our home. She wasn’t there. One of the others told me she’d gone off with Fat Louise, the Madam from the brothel on the corner. I’d told her not to go. I’d told her that I’d get enough food for the two of us, that she just needed to trust me, but she’d gone anyway.

  “I ran off after her, terrified to think of what I would find, but I was too late.” She put her head in her hands and her shoulders heaved with dry sobs. “The bastard had already gotten to her.”

  He held her in his arms as tightly as he could, forcing her to take some comfort from him. “You don’t have to tell me any more.”

  She shook her head and carried on regardless. “Rebecca had been determined, Fat Louise told me when I screamed at her until I was hoarse, but scared, too. When Fat Louise had cleaned her up a bit to get the grime of the streets off her and sent the first scumbag with money in his pockets in to deflower her, poor Rebecca had lost her nerve. The customer had not taken no for an answer. He had knifed her to stop her struggles, and then raped her while she lay dying. I came too late to save her. She died in my arms.”

  Her shoulders shook with sobs. He kept a lid on his own rage and anger to stroke her soothingly. “And the man who had killed her? Was he not taken up by the watch and delivered to justice for killing an innocent young girl?”

  She gave a bitter laugh through her tears. “Who cares aught for the life of a young whore? He walked away from her body with nothing but my hatred as payment for her death.”

  He stared at the headstone, marking where the body of young Rebecca lay, killed on the vicious whim of a stranger. “He paid the price in the end.”

  Her shaking was growing less now. “Yes. I slit his throat as easily as he slit hers. I thank God every waking moment that his blood is on my hands. I have taken a life for a life. But nothing will ever bring Rebecca back to life.”

  How could Miriame blame herself? She had been a child, nothing more. “She chose her own path in life, as you chose yours, and God saw fit to take her. You cannot blame yourself for that.”

  “No woman willingly becomes a whore. They do it out of desperation, out of despair, out of hunger and cold. If I had been a better thief, Rebecca would live yet. I failed her.”

  He grimaced as he looked down at the boots she wore. His boots. She had managed to steal the very boots from off his feet, and yet she considered herself a poor thief? “If you had been a better thief, not even the King’s jewels, though they were locked up in the palace and surrounded by armed guards, would have been safe.”

  “There’s many a day I would have traded in all the King’s jewels for a loaf of bread and a dry blanket. We were always so cold, so cold...”

  Indeed, her skin was ice-cold to the touch as she leaned into him. “Rebecca is in her grave now, and through no fault of your own. You looked after her as well as you could while she was alive, though you were both mere children. You risked your life every day to feed you both. She risked her life one time too many, and Fate took her away from you.”

  “Fate had nothing to do with her death. Andre did.” Her voice was tired, as if she no longer had the energy to carry her hatred and bitterness around with her.

  “You have avenged her death on the man who killed her. Put her behind you now, Miriame, my love, and do not grieve for her any longer. She lives with God now in Heaven. She would want you to be happy.”

  “You are right. She has gone to a better place where she will never be cold or hungry or scared again. It is time for me to say my final adieus to her.” She shook off Jean-Paul’s embrace, knelt down in front of the gravestone and kissed it reverently. “May God be with you, Rebecca, on your soul’s final journey,” she whispered, as if the stone had ears to hear her with. “Keep a watch over me still wandering here on Earth until my time comes to join you. We shall meet again in Heaven, I swear. I shall try not to miss you too much until then.”

  When she stood up again and brushed the dirt from off her knees, her face was pale and composed for all that it was wet with tears. She seemed to stand taller and straighter, too, as if a heavy burden had been finally removed from her shoulders.

  The graveyard was silent and cold in the stillness of early evening. He took her by the hand as she stood there saying her final, silent adieu. For once she did not object, even despite being dressed as a Musketeer.

  Hand in hand they walked out of the churchyard into the gathering gloom. Miriame kept a hold of his hand as if it were her lifeline. He laughed to himself to think of the sight they must present to strangers on the street – two soldiers walking hand in hand along the street, for all the world like a pair of lovers.

  He did not let go her hand for all that. Let the world think of them what it may, he loved Miriame and he would fight for her with every last drop of blood in his body.

  Only when a passerby looked at them, blinked, then spat at them as they passed, did she come to herself and snatch her hand away from his as if his touch pained her.

  “So, to Francine’s?” she said, her voice not quite yet back to its old light-hearted self. “We should deliver the letters while the Cardinal’s minions are still
recovering from last night’s jaunt.”

  He could not help but smile at the thought. “Do you think they ever will?”

  She grinned widely, her tears buried deep within her once more where no one would ever guess at them. “I will never forget the sight of their naked buttocks sticking out behind them as they stood in the stocks. If I live to one hundred, I will never see a more ridiculous sight.”

  At least a couple of villains had gotten what they deserved. “I doubt we will have any trouble from the Cardinal for some time. It’s a pity we cannot serve him as we served the men he paid to kill us both.”

  They walked along in silence for a few steps. “Maybe we cannot put him naked in the stocks,” she said, scuffing the toes of her boots against the cobbles as she walked. “But I think I can see a way in which we can make him look just as ridiculous in the eyes of the King as those poor fools looked to the folk in the marketplace.”

  If anyone could think up a way of getting even with her enemies, he would lay a wager it would be Miriame. “How?”

  She hesitated before she spoke again. “We would risk making an enemy of Francine.”

  He shrugged. “Does that matter?”

  “Not to me.”

  “Then let’s hear this plan of yours. I would sleep easier in my bed if I thought the Cardinal could be made to pay for his sins in the same manner as his men.”

  Jean-Paul swept the hat off his head and bowed low, trying to keep the trepidation he felt from showing on his face. His stomach felt as though he had a whole swarm of horseflies in it, buzzing around in their eagerness to get out. By the end of the night, the Cardinal would be his deadly enemy. He only hoped that by the end of the night, the Cardinal would no longer have the power to wreak any vengeance on him. He hid his thoughts as best he could as he straightened up again. “Your Excellency.”

  The Cardinal gazed steadily at him, not the slightest wrinkle of emotion showing on his weathered face. “What do you want with me?” His voice was as cold as the winter wind that whipped over the icy mountains and blasted the plains below.