Marrying the Musketeer (40 page)

She had hated him with such a fury that she had taught herself to fight.
 
She had hated him with such a fury that she had become a Musketeer, lived a lie, and lured him to his death in the end.

His gentle Courtney, his sweet, loving innocent, had been transformed into a woman of ice and steel.
 
He had no right to complain of the changes wrought in her – he had wrought it all himself.

He had never suspected that William was not a man at all, but his Courtney in disguise.
 
Who would ever have thought that she would have concocted and carried out such a daring plan?
 
Who would have thought that such a tender girl as she had been could be transformed into a Berserker, wild with rage and bloodlust, when a sword was once put into her hand?
 
Who would have thought that the girl he had turned into a woman, who had caressed him as gently as a butterfly and cried out with pleasure under him as he took her virginity, could leave him without a backward glance to die of torture in the Bastille for want of reaching out a hand to save him.

He doubted that he looked worth saving.
 
What had Courtney thought of her formerly proud soldier now that his face was furry with a sennight’s worth of beard and more, his hair tangled and matted, his clothes soiled with filth from the dungeon – even his own excrement?
 
He could bow his head in shame for being seen in such a state.

Courtney had not loved him for his outward show, though, and neither would she despise him for his current filth.
 
She was not so shallow or so disloyal as that.
 
She had loved him for the man she had thought he was – loyal and honest and true, a man who would love her and protect her with his life.
 
She despised him now for the man she knew him to be, for the weakness that had led him to betray her rather than risk his position as a Musketeer.
 

She was right to hate him.
 
He had no excuse for his betrayal of her.
 
He had known his actions were wrong all along, and had used the paltry excuse of duty and loyalty to his King to excuse them.
 
In his heart he had always known that duty to one’s conscience and to the laws of God were more important by far than loyalty to any man – even to the King one had vowed to serve.

Death was all he deserved.
 
He knew that.
 
Indeed, he welcomed death, now that he had nothing left to live for, now that Courtney had betrayed him as cruelly as he had betrayed her.
 
He only hoped that she would not live to regret her actions as bitterly as he had regretted his for so many, many months.

He could not hate her for leaving him to die.
 
He was beyond hating her.

He knew only that he loved her with a hopeless love and would forever.

It was lucky for him that ‘forever’ in a situation like his, he acknowledged with a wry smile and a clank of the manacles that kept him chained in his corner, was unlikely to be very long.

The road to Burgundy for the escaped prisoner and his rescuers was blissfully uneventful.
 
They stayed at roadside inns each night, posing as one family, and no one questioned them.
 
The further away from Paris, the less chance there was of any pursuit.
 
Once they crossed the border into lands held by the Duke of Burgundy, that chance became very slim indeed.

Courtney did not share in the general jubilation as they neared safety.
 
She could not forget the look on Pierre’s face when she had abandoned him to his fate in the prison.

He had been there for so few days when she saw him, and already he had looked as if he had been there a month.
 
He had grown a stubbly beard and his face had been lined and gray.

Her father had been put to the rack when he was in the Bastille, and he had been accused of nothing more than fraud and deception.

Pierre had been accused of treason against his King – the worst crime of all.
 
The King would not let him live.
 
He could not afford to let him live for the sake of his own safety and the safety of his crown.
 
Pierre would die a traitor’s death – his entrails cut out of him while he was still alive and his body hacked into pieces and scattered on the ground.

Death was not to be feared, but such torture was.
 
By the time he was executed, even this evil death would be a welcome release for him.
 
She shuddered to imagine how else the evil monks would torture him before they killed him.

She could not bear to think of his beautiful body broken on the rack, his limbs stretched out until the joints parted company with each other.
 
The cruel rack was only the least of their punishments.
 
They might hang him upside down until he swooned, beat him with red hot irons, cut out his tongue, or pluck out his eyes.

She had had it in her power to save him from such a fate and she had tossed it aside.
 
In her pride and hurt, she had wanted only revenge for what she had suffered.
 
She had left him in manacles, knowing that she had abandoned him to a life in prison, but she had not fully considered the dreadful fate she had left him to suffer.

Even her father, his body still broken from the rack that Pierre himself had consigned it to, had asked for his freedom.
 
Her father had not born a grudge.
 
Why should she?
 
She had told herself that justice was all she sought, but she had deluded herself.
 
She had not wanted justice so much as she had craved vengeance.

By the time they reached the safety of Sophie and Ricard’s manor house in Burgundy and received a warm and friendly welcome from her former comrades in arms, her mind was made up.
 
Her conscience would not let her abandon Pierre to such a fate.
 
She would go back and risk her life one more time to save him.
 
If she succeeded, she would not have the stain of his blood on her hands and on her soul.
 
If she died, she would at least die knowing that she had done her best to save him.

She settled her father and son down into the chambers Sophie had prepared for them and sank into her own bed with a sense of determination.
 
Her rescue of Pierre was for herself and herself alone to attempt.
 
She would not drag anyone else into danger.
 
If she failed, she would fail alone.

In the middle of the night she rose from her bed.
 
She was scarcely rested from her journey, but she could not wait a moment longer.
 
Even now, Pierre might be suffering unspeakable torments because she, in her stubbornness, had refused to rescue him when she could have done so.

She tiptoed into her father’s room.
 
He was sleeping peacefully, his face looking more rested than she had seen it for many a day.
 
The shadow of the prison was starting to lift from his brow, though she doubted it would ever be completely gone.
 
He had suffered too much for that.
 

She bent down and kissed him lightly on the brow.
 
“Au revoir, papa,” she whispered into the darkness.
 
“I left Pierre in the Bastille for the harm he had done to you.
 
Forgive me, but I must now rescue him for the harm he has done me.
 
He made me fall in love with him, papa, just as dearly as you loved my mother.
 
I cannot live knowing that he is suffering because of me.”

Luc was sleeping in his cradle at Suzanne’s side.
 
She stroked his soft cheek with the back of her hand.
 
“I go to rescue your papa, my sweet,” she whispered into his sleeping ear, “so that you may learn to love him as dearly as I loved my papa.
 
Be a good boy for Suzanne while I am gone.
 
God willing, I shall be with you again before long.”

The stables were well-stocked with fine horses of all kinds.
 
She chose a gentle-looking mare, and hoped that Sophie would not mind her borrowing it.
 
Her need was great and her time too short to waste.

The moon was high and bright in the night sky by the time she had saddled and bridled her beast and started off on the long road back to Paris – and to Pierre.

Her plan was still only half formed by the time she reached Paris some days later, after riding hard each day and sleeping restlessly each night in her borrowed bed.
 
Her conscience pained her too much to let her sleep, and her brain was too exhausted to come up with much of a plan.

She would not be able to use the monk disguise again – that much was clear.
 
The guards at the gate might well let her into the Bastille, but she doubted they would ever let her out again.
 
The guard they had stunned and gagged might well recognize her by her assumed voice.
 
Even if he did not, she could well be tossed into a cell while her credentials were checked out - and she had no way of obtaining a recommendation from a real Abbot in a real monastery.
 
No, she would have to think of another plan.

Disguises on the whole were too dangerous, particularly as she had no backup.
 
There was no point in standing at the front gate with her sword in her hand and trying to fight her way in through the guards and gates.
 
She needed to get in quietly, without attracting any undue attention to herself, and get Pierre out again before anyone noticed that he was gone.

She could not get in through the gates.
 
She could not get in over the walls.
 
She would have to turn rat and burrow in underneath the very foundation of the prison itself.
 
The guards would hardly expect an attack to come from beneath their very feet, from the sewers.

She would have to ask Miriame to help her – she could not see another alternative.
 
Miriame had been a street rat from the day she was born – she would know where the entrances to the sewers were and which ones would lead in the direction of the prison.
 
It seemed she would have to call on her friend once more to help her.

She would not allow Miriame to come with her though.
 
She would not put her friend in danger to save Pierre.
 
Miriame would have cut through his shackles days ago if only Courtney had said the word.
 
Her pride and her desire for vengeance had been too strong for her then, overpowering the love she refused to admit she still felt.

She would save Pierre, and her conscience would be clear.
 
Even were they to part at the prison gates and never see each other again, she would be satisfied that she had done what was right.

Miriame wasn’t at all surprised to see Courtney when she banged on the door of the lodgings in the middle of the night.
 
She let her in and threw a heap of blankets on the floor for the exhausted Courtney to crawl into.
 
“You came back for Pierre de Tournay?”

Courtney nodded, shamefaced, as she tossed off her boots and crawled into the nest of blankets, clothes and all.

Miriame grinned.
 
“I knew I should have freed him then and there and be done with it.
 
I was quite sure you would regret it if you left him there, but the decision was not mine to make.
 
Now you are back again - and riding to the rescue of your Musketeer in distress.
 
I suppose you want my help to make another prison break?”

Miriame knew her even better than she knew herself.
 
She supposed she should not be surprised – Miriame was a shrewd judge of character.
 
“No, not directly.
 
I do want you to tell me where the entrances to the sewers are in the morning, though, and anything else you know about them.”

Miriame wrinkled her nose in distaste.
 
“The sewers?
 
They stink.”

She would brave a thousand filthy sewers to free Pierre.
 
“But they run right under the Bastille, do they not?” she asked with a yawn.

“I suppose they do.
 
I have not explored them thoroughly.”
 
She gave Courtney an unrepentant grin.
 
“I am only a filthy gutter rat, not a really disgusting sewer rat.
 
Sewer rats are another step below even me.”

She would not give up for all Miriame was making fun at her expense.
 
“Do you know any sewer rats?”