Royal 02 - Royal Passion

by Jennifer Blake

  The distance to the shop was not far, perhaps a ten-minute walk. It had been so long since they had been out that they decided not to take the carriage. The cadre was out, as were Roderic and Rolfe, so they decided not to wait for an escort. It would be safe enough if the three of them went together, especially since it was a short excursion.

  The walk there was uneventful and pleasant in the fresh air. On their return, Mara carried the small glass vial of perfume in her reticule, and all three walked in a delicious aura of the many scents they had been encouraged to apply on their persons by way of trial. The streets were narrow and twisting, with uneven cobbles underfoot that did not make for the easiest of walking. The sun did not quite reach here, only catching the tops of the buildings. Refuse littered the doorways, windows were broken, and shutters hung askew.

  When they had left the parfumerie, there had been children running here and there, cats scratching on doorsills, and women hanging out the windows to shout across at their neighbors. They rounded a corner, and suddenly the street was empty. Somewhere a child cried and was hushed. A shutter banged shut and a bolt was slammed into place over it.

  Mara turned her head to exchange a look with Juliana. Then they both looked at Trude.

  "We had best make speed,” the blond woman said, her face grim. With one hand on the hilt of her sword, she looked around her, her cool gaze comprehensive, missing nothing.

  They walked on more quickly. Their footsteps echoed among the stone buildings, making it sound as if they were being followed. The sun dimmed as it went behind a veil of cloud. A small wind funneled between the buildings, raising gritty dust that stung their eyes.

  Ahead of them they heard the sound of voices raised in a chant or marching song. Closer they came until the song could be identified as “La Marseillaise.” Male and female, there was anger and raw exultation in the shouted words.

  "It's a mob. Quick, back the other way,” Trude said.

  But it was too late. The crowd of men and women, perhaps thirty strong, armed with clubs and other crude weapons, emerged from a cross street ahead of them. Their clothes were shapeless and faded to a dingy gray-brown, while on their heads they wore flat caps or, for the women, colorless kerchiefs. Their faces were gray, and their teeth were bad as they opened their mouths to sing. They caught sight of the two women in their telltale mourning for the dead sister of the king and what they took to be a young man with a black arm band.

  The mob surged toward them as if with a single mind. “Aristos! Oppressors of the people! After them! After them!"

  The blade of Trude's sword rasped as she drew it. She gave Mara and Juliana a shove. “Run! I'11 hold them."

  "Dear God,” Juliana breathed, “I would give my diamonds to have my épée here now."

  "You can't hold them; there're too many!” Mara shouted, grasping Trude's arm and pulling her with them. “Come on!"

  Trude was far from being a coward, but she had been taught to calculate the odds and to know the value of strategic retreat. She backed a few steps, then whirled and ran. Yelling, screaming, with the mindless instinct of hounds on a trail, the rabble pounded after them.

  The direction the three women were heading in would take them deeper into La Marais. They needed to work back toward the river and Ruthenia House. Trude pointed to an alley, and they dived into it. It was piled with refuse heaps, slimy with slops and garbage, and above them sagged lines of gray washing strung from the balconies on either side. As they ducked and twisted through the shortcut, Trude leaped to slash at the wash lines so that they dragged down into the alley behind them to impede their pursuers.

  They gained a little time, but not much. When they burst from the alley, the mob was close behind them. Juliana, clutching her skirts above her knees, sprinted toward a pâtisserie. “In here!"

  The proprietor saw them coming and tried to close the door. Trude hit it with her shoulder, flinging the man backward. They dashed through the shop, pushing over tables of cakes and pies and a display case of bonbons as they went. They pushed into the kitchen and, ignoring the screams of the fat and blowsy woman who turned from stirring a custard with her spoon dripping spots of yellow on her massive bosom, crashed through the back door into yet another alley.

  Trude, cursing with a virulence that did not seem in the least surprising under the circumstances, overturned a vat of rancid grease that stood beside the door. Farther down the alley, they joined forces to upend a barrel of pig and sheep entrails behind a boucherie. Choking from the smell, each breath a jagged ache in their chests, they ran on, but had the felicity of hearing the hoarse yells as the first of the mob out of the pastry shop went sprawling in the grease, sliding into the entrails.

  They emerged from the alley and swung back to their left. Their feet pounded on the cobbles. Juliana's hair was coming down, her skirts were lifted above her knees, and her face was pale with hectic color on her cheekbones. There was an ache in Mara's side and a red mist before her eyes. She could not keep this pace much longer. Hearing Juliana gasping beside her, she thought the other girl was in the same condition, though Trude hardly seemed winded.

  Their one hope was to gain enough time to find shelter, to hide, Mara thought. They were closer to Ruthenia House, but still some five or six blocks away. The street was wider here, lined with a better variety of shops, though every door was closed against them. Outside the establishments stood the merchandise that had been left when the shutters had been slammed and the bolts shot home. There was no place to hide, no refuge. Behind them the howls of the mob were coming closer.

  Then, ahead of her, she saw it. She laughed out loud. When the other two looked at her, she could only point with a shaking hand and redouble her speed.

  The shop with its line of men's accessories was tightly shuttered, but outside was a rack holding men's hats: derbies and stovepipes and opera hats, alpine hats, hats of silk and beaver fur and woven wool. There was a case of heavy waistcoat chains with fobs and seals to be attached. Hanging from the awning were canes: canes with gold and silver handles, canes with carved-ivory and amber handles, and canes carved from blackthorn, brilliantly polished. And in a stand were canes with knobs instead of handles, canes extra thin and limber and also extra thick: sword canes.

  Mara and Juliana fell upon the canes, twisting the knobs, throwing aside those that did not open until, with cries of triumph, they each drew a sharp and slender blade from its hard sheath.

  They spun around. “In the street,” Trude said tersely. “There's more room."

  The pack sighted its prey and bore down on them. Mara, standing shoulder to shoulder with Juliana and Trude, realized suddenly that she still had her beaded reticule on her wrist. She shook the strings down and, catching the top, flung it aside. It landed near a doorway. The door opened and a young boy of ten or eleven peered out. A voice called out sharply, but the boy darted out to pick up the reticule.

  "What's in it is yours,” Mara said, her voice ringing, “if you will carry a message to Ruthenia House. Tell them to come."

  "Tell them, A moil A moi!” Trude called.

  It was the ancient battlefield call for assistance. To me. Rally around me. Help me. The cadre would come without fail. If the boy took the message. If he was allowed inside. If the men had returned.

  In the meantime, there were only themselves.

  The rabble poured down the street toward them. Nearer they came. Nearer. Their mouths were wide open, and the tendons in their necks corded as they screamed. Their eyes glared with hatred and blood lust. In their clenched fists they brandished their crude weapons. Their rough shoes clattered like thunder on the cobblestones. Nearer. Nearer.

  "En garde," Trude said softly.

  The three blades swept up, then down, steadying. Balanced, poised, they stood ready.

  The sight that met the gaze of those in the front of the mob was so unexpected that they checked their progress. They were pressed forward by those behind them so that they skidded, stumbling a
nd staggering on the cobbles. They came within inches of those glittering, gently rotating sword points, then flung themselves back against their fellows, cursing and yelling. There was a moment of milling confusion.

  Abruptly, the mob broke, a half-dozen men charging from the crowd. They came at the women with their cudgels raised, their teeth bared. Mara had no time for the others, only for the two who were bearing down upon her. She ducked the first swiping blow and, leaning in that same crouch, thrust low at the legs of the first man. He yelped, hobbling out of reach. Mara recovered, whirled, slashing the wicked blade in her hand at the belly of the second man. He jumped back and the stick he was bringing down scraped her shoulder. Ignoring the numbness, seeing only the winking shaft of the knife he held in his other hand, she immediately reversed, slicing at his arms. He caught his wrist with a hoarse cry, dropping the knife as blood welled between his fingers. His place was taken by a woman swinging a hatchet. Mara met the harridan with whirling, incipient death in her hand. The woman screamed in rage and threw the hatchet. It tore at the thick material of Mara's skirt before clattering harmlessly to the cobblestones. A man with a poker advanced, holding it at full length like a sword. Mara parried it in the same way, knocking it aside again and again until, with a swift riposte, she circled it with her blade and plunged through the man's guard, piercing his shoulder.

  The mob was closing in, surrounding them. Trude, her eyes alight with the fire of battle, called out, “Back to back! We can hold them!"

  In a smooth movement, Mara and Juliana turned, and the three of them formed a triangle with their backs together, guarding each other from attack from the rear.

  There was another charge, and another. Again and yet again, they fought the rabble back. Two men lay dead or dying at their feet. Another had crawled to one side where he twitched and moaned, holding a hole in his neck. The attack slowed, fell away.

  The mood of the mob that crowded around them on all sides had gone past the mass ill will that had exploded into an urge to chastise three well-dressed aristocratic women, to frighten them into some respect for the precariousness of life by stripping them and applying a few blows with sticks. It was now uglier by far, murderous with the need for revenge for blood spilled, for being made to look small by mere women. In it was the same vicious hysteria that had, less than a hundred years before, caused such a mob to cut literally to pieces the Princess Lamballe, confidante of Marie Antoinette.

  "Stone them!” a woman cried. “Let's see if they can fight stones with their swords!"

  The cobbles of the street were easily prized up. Heavy cubes of stone, denser and larger than bricks, they were of a size that could be quickly piled into a strong barricade or flung by a man. If thrown with only reasonable force, they could break bones; with rage and hatred behind them, they had stood off armies and routed squadrons. They were the weapons of the proletariat.

  If the women stood where they were, they would be battered to their knees in a matter of seconds. If they tried to run, they would be chased down and mangled like hapless vixens caught by the hounds. There was only one defense.

  "Charge?” Mara asked quietly.

  "Charge,” Trude said.

  They looked at each other, the three of them, their eyes filled with rage and resolve and terror. Perspiration trickled from their hairlines due to their exertions, and their legs trembled. There was blood matting Juliana's streaming tresses, and Trude's uniform sleeve was torn away at the shoulder seam. The hems of Mara's and Juliana's skirts and Trude's trousers were soaked with grease and unspeakable filth. Their swords were bloodied, disgusting, and the muscles of their shoulders and arms so cramped they might never again move in smooth answer to the commands of their brains.

  Suddenly, they grinned and, as abruptly as released springs, leaped, screaming, into a dead run straight at the thickest group of their attackers.

  The men and women scattered, wild-eyed, scrambling, dropping their weapons and spreading out as they ran. But behind the trio came the thud of running feet, closing in, gathering for the kill. They whirled.

  The men behind them skidded to a stop, recoiling, flinging up their hands, which held the lethal lengths of swords. Their uniforms, white and unsullied, glinted platinum bright in the sunlight.

  Estes, who had Trude's blade touching between his eyes, bleated an oath.

  Luca, his gaze upon Juliana hungry and searching, shook his head in admiration.

  "A moi?" Roderic said and, after one comprehensive look at the stunned, almost angry faces of the three of them, burst out laughing.

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  16

  "They were magnificent, invincible! A trio of amazons,” Estes declared, holding forth that evening before the rest of the cadre, along with Rolfe and Angeline.

  "All for one, and one for all,” Juliana quipped.

  "So well in hand did they have the situation, they hardly needed our help at all."

  Mara, a wry smile of remembrance curving her mouth, shook her head. “I wouldn't say that."

  "Never will I forget the absolute horror of the moment that vile-smelling urchin came running up to us holding your beaded purse, Mademoiselle Mara, and shouting ‘A moi! A moi!' at the top of street-crier lungs as we rode into the courtyard. I thought my heart would stop."

  "Vile-smelling?"

  "He reeked to the rooftops of the most abominable scent."

  "Grandmère's perfume! It must have broken when I threw down the reticule. I forgot all about it."

  "How could you?” Roderic, standing behind Mara's chair, murmured.

  Trude, nearby, looked at him with stern displeasure in her light blue eyes. “With good reason."

  "Swift as the wind, we raced to the aid of Mademoiselle Mara, without stopping to ask why or how or who might be with her,” Estes went on. “Imagine our dismay to find all three ladies beleaguered, surrounded by dead men but in deadly peril. Before we could make our presence known, the ladies charged straight at the enemy. Never have I seen anything so gallant, so stirring, so—"

  "So foolhardy?” Roderic suggested.

  "What would you have us do?” his sister demanded. “Stand and be stoned? Kneel and pray? There was no other choice."

  "I would have had you remain safe within these walls."

  "So you would not have to be worried,” his sister replied with a flounce in her seat.

  "It was my fault,” Mara said. “I had no idea it would be so dangerous."

  "Nor I,” Juliana agreed.

  Trude lifted her chin. “Nor I."

  "'All for one—'” Roderic quoted softly.

  There was a moment of silence. Estes filled it. “And then when we had dismounted and joined our force to theirs to rout the crazed ones drunk on looted wine and liberty, they turned on us, these viragoes, as if they would slice out our hearts for ending their sport."

  "And you laughed,” Trude accused.

  The Italian count looked offended. “Roderic laughed. Luca and I merely joined him for politeness."

  "It was the relief that they were unharmed.” Luca, unexpectedly, joined the discussion.

  "Don't anyone believe it,” Juliana said with a sound suspiciously like a snort. “It was the bedraggled appearance we presented."

  "Bedraggled, beleaguered, and infinitely dear."

  Juliana, turning in surprise to look at the gypsy, flushed suddenly at something she saw in the depths of his dark eyes.

  Jacques and Jared looked at each other and sighed. “Why is it,” Jacques said to his brother, “that we never get to rescue the maidens in distress?"

  "You're always too busy distressing them yourselves,” Michael told them with brutal frankness.

  Roderic quelled such comments with a single opaque glance."I did not,” he said quietly,"speak in jest or to hear the clattering in my windpipe. Henceforth, no woman will leave this house without an adequate escort of at least two, preferably three, of the cadre, and even then only in a carriage. Members of the c
adre will ride out in twos only. No exceptions."

  Angeline leaned forward, a frown between her eyes. “Is this really necessary, all for a few street riots?"

  Her son turned to her, but his face did not soften. “Last night the Comédie Française closed its doors."

  The Comédie Française, the official and leading theater of Paris, closed down for nothing short of disaster. Paris had learned to keep an eye on it in the past decades of political upheaval as a reliable gauge. When the theater shut, the citizens of the city battened down the hatches and waited for the storm.

  "And I, my son?"

  The query came from Rolfe. He sat in a high-backed chair with one booted foot thrust out and his elbow resting on the chair arm, supporting his chin on one knuckle. If there was a challenge in the words he spoke, Roderic declined to rise to it.

  "You, sir, will, of course, do as best pleases you. But I would like to consider you as one of the cadre, available for escort if necessary and for any other duty."

  Mara expected an explosion. She had underestimated both the king of Ruthenia and the understanding of his son. Rolfe's question had not, apparently, been made out of concern for his dignity, but from a determination to participate in the crisis. That he was satisfied was obvious from his ironic nod.

  It was Juliana who next sought Roderic's attention."What of Mara's perfume? Even if we scrape the galleries and beg for chaperons, I'm not certain an outing to replace it has any appeal."

  "Is she sure she wants it?” Estes exclaimed in pretended disbelief.

  Roderic disregarded the count. “I'll get it for her."

  "That isn't necessary,” Mara said hastily. “I can go myself, if someone, perhaps Jared and Jacques, will bear me company."

  "I will get it."

  So steely was Roderic's voice as he repeated the words that she subsided. Let him go then! Pigheaded man. She certainly had no wish to make the excursion; the very thought of it made the muscles of her stomach clench. He could not know that, naturally. Could he?