Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (28 page)

Giles could almost chart the leagues as they sailed swiftly south. "We'll reach the Thames estuary soon," he whispered.

"How do we warn the fort?"

"I don't know. Even if we overwhelm our guards when they bring our food and drink, there is always one that stands off with his musket primed, watching us."

"Could we call for de Witt in all pretense of cooperation?"

Giles shook his head. "Felice has given him as much as he needs to override his admirals' caution," he answered, each word dipped in bitter rue. "He would believe nothing we said. He knows we overheard the war plans, but he is so sure of himself now that he does not fear what we know."

"Then how do we warn Sheerness Fort?"

Giles had no answer, but stared at the stern bulkhead as if to see through it to some escape.

At last Meriel fell asleep in his arms, the deep sleep of an exhausted mind and well-loved body. When she awoke, hours had passed and Giles was now pacing with short steps in front of her.

"The ship is readying for action," he said. "I hear the starboard guns being run out and the gun captains shouting for powder and shot. We must be off the fort."

Meriel saw Giles's fists clench. It was painful to see a man of action unable to act, as shackled to inactivity as if clamped in irons. She watched as he moved to the small door leading to de Witt's large cabin, put his shoulder to it, then stepped back two paces and rammed into it again, harder. The oaken door did not move a hairsbreadth, though Meriel rushed to rub his shoulder back to feeling.

"Don't, Giles," she said, unable to bear his futile sparring with a door that would not give to any man's weight. "We will have a better occasion."

"I have not your surety or your great ease of sleep."

"Nor true knowledge of what I am thinking or suffering." She didn't bother to remove the sharpness from her words, though she regretted it almost at once.

He nodded in answer, and the pounding cannon soon ended any chance of talk between them. For an hour they stared overhead, as if they could see through the ceiling to the battle outside. At each broadside the ship heeled sharply to starboard. Several times the ship shuddered as an answering English cannonball found its target.

"Listen!" Meriel said, putting a finger to her lips.

A scrape of key sounded in the oak door lock, and it swung open.

Felice stood there, magnificent in lavender satin and strands of pearls, two pistolas in her jeweled hands, one pointed at Giles, another at Meriel, both weapons cocked.

For a startled moment, Meriel almost admired Felice. She was either fearless or without any idea of danger, because there was murder in Giles's face and absolute purpose in the way his hard body tensed to take her bullet. The hero of the Battle of the Four Days did not shrink from a small pistola.

But Meriel would not allow Giles to die for her fault. "I'm the one you want," Meriel said in Felice's high, clipped court voice, followed by hard laughter. "I took your place, easily made your lord husband love me as a truer wife than you ever were, and exposed you for a traitor.
Me!
A servant girl bested you,
your ladyshipl"
As she had hoped, Felice's intense eyes and purpose changed their direction. Both pis-tolas swung to point at Meriel.

Giles leapt at his wife, knocking one weapon from her hand as they fell back through the door into de Witt's main cabin and scrambled on the floor. Enraged, Felice worked her mouth, but no curses came from it.

With a scream as they struggled, Felice brought the second pistola up.

Meriel kicked out at the weapon. Pray God, her aim was true. She yelled in triumph as the pistola skittered across the floor.

Giles lifted Felice to her feet as easily as if she were empty of substance and thrust her from him with a fury that Meriel knew had been kept tightly leashed for years. "Get away from me, Felice. Once and for all time, get away from me. If you come near me again, or near this woman, who has the better of you in all ways, I will kill you and save the Tower headsman the trouble." His words penetrated the tumult of a new broadside as if each word were an English cannonball.

Felice moved quickly toward the door leading to the deck. "We are not quit yet, husband," she said, regaining a bit of bravado as she reached safety.

Meriel looked on the scene as her heart near stopped.
Better than you in all ways,
Giles had said. Her mind raced to search out any other meaning, or could it be as he had simply said? She almost dared not allow herself to think he loved her, Meriel St. Thomas, and not this countess, though he had murmured words of love in her bunk.

She opened her mouth to ask him as Felice slammed shut the heavy door and locked it.

But hell exploded, knocking them both to the floor, Giles atop Meriel.

In the center of the cabin lay a shattered, smoking ruin of furniture smashed, stern windows blown out, the door to the cabin a smoking hole and the deck opened to expose the hold that had been their first prison.

Giles rose, his ears ringing, his bandage off and his head wound seeping blood. He kicked at the debris, then reached down for Meriel. He wouldn't leave her ... couldn't leave her. "You must stay close. The eighteen-pounders at the fort can penetrate deep into any hull. If you stray ... I might not be able to come back for you."

"My lord, you will need to match
my
speed!"

Giles pointed to his ears and shook his head, temporarily deafened. But he almost grinned because he did not need to hear her words to understand such a beautifully determined face. He stepped across beams and splintered oak to look out the stern windows, or rather where they had been. "My ketch! It's still tied below, praise be." He leaned out farther. "And not in any way damaged that I can see, and the railing repaired. The Dutch are too neat by half! Now I must free my crew, for I cannot leave them. I must change into Dutch clothes to gain the for'ard hold."

Meriel heard a sound like a kitten mewling. "Did you hear something, Giles?" she said, pointing to her ear.

Again, he shook his head. "Make haste! Felice could reach de Witt, or an officer come to report the damage at any moment!"

Meriel heard the mewling sound again. "There, I did hear something .. . something hurt. Perhaps .. ."

With strength that she did not know she had, Meriel joined Giles to move splintered wood and smashed beams where the main door had once been. A little more clearing, and Felice's ashy white face appeared on the floor, bloodied from oak splinters protruding everywhere . .. and—Meriel's stomach lurched—an arm sheered off by the cannonball.

Giles knelt close beside the wife he had thrust away forever just minutes earlier, using his black Dutch captain's coat to staunch the blood. Large pearls lay scattered across her breasts, shining like bright ivory against her pallor. "Felice, make peace with your God," he said, the words thick in the back of his throat, for though she deserved death, he could remember a time that she was yet uncorrupted.

Felice was not looking at Giles, or looking to heaven, but with eyes already draining of life, she Fixed on Meriel and spoke.

"Mother—"

Meriel's heart near broke, remembering the woman in the painting. She bent close to hear Felice's last words.

"Your win, Mother, goddamn your immortal soul to hell!" Her last breath rattled away.

The lovely Countess of Warborough, toast of every noble cuckold in the merry court of Charles II, went to meet her maker with a strange curse on her lips.

The Earl of Warborough closed the lifeless eyes of his dead countess and drew his coat soaked in her blood over her face. He acted with such a tender finality that Meriel was forced to look away and swallow to relieve the dry ache in her throat. As poisoned as had been Felice's life, her face in death held no hint of the malice she had intended, but had softened to the peace of early youth as she gave up everything.

Did Giles know or suspect what she meant by such a curse against her own mother? It was no time to ask that question, or any other.

Meriel searched for the two pistolas and saw one lying near the severed arm. Giles followed her gaze without speaking and moved to retrieve the weapon. She should not pity a man whose wife had been on a mission to make herself a widow, and yet she did. Her heart was breaking for him. Two women had betrayed his trust and love. Only a man with Giles's strength could come safely through such torment, standing tall and confident as he was this moment.

As if to confirm Meriel's esteem, Giles's mouth set in a hard line. "Felice obtained the key from de Witt and meant to kill us."

"But de Witt said—"

"There is no man's person Felice could not gain access to ... even an honorable man like de Witt."

"My lord, be that you above?"

Giles whirled to look for the familiar voice. "Is it Tom? Good Tom Barnes."

"In the hold below ye, my lord!"

Both Meriel and Giles saw the sea-weathered face of Tom Barnes appear in the shambles the cannonball had created.

Giles quickly grabbed the blanket that had separated him from Meriel for these last days and interred Felice's body under it, while Meriel, finding new strength, awkwardly shoved a beam down the shell hole to make a rude ladder. Tom soon emerged, followed by the rest of the
No Name's
crew, pale and shaken, but grinning and tugging at their forelocks in salute.

"The Lord be praised," Tom said. "When the Hollanders moved us from the for'ard quarters away from their powder magazine, we be thinking never to see Norfolk again." He looked about him at the fractured cabin. "Lady Felice, it be good to see ye well in this place."

Giles did not correct him. He heard debris being shifted and Dutch voices calling from the upper gangway door. "Out the stern windows," Giles ordered. He looked at Meriel. "Can you climb down three decks?"

"Leave me to the Dutch if I cannot."

She caught a flash of admiration in his face.

It wasn't an easy descent, but she had gathered her skirts under her waist ties and was not hindered. There were toeholds that became handholds, and quickly she made her way down to the bow of the
No Name,
planting her feet firmly on the small deck. And she wasn't the last to arrive, to her great satisfaction.

It was dusk, but not full dark. Flashes of brilliant light came from the cannon of Sheerness Fort, answered by ten times their number from
De Zeven Provencien
and the other ships of the Dutch squadron. The explosions sent waves of sound to beat upon their ears.

"Loose the cable," Giles ordered. "We must risk the Hollanders seeing us, yet hope they think we are merely adrift. Everyone below!"

"And what of you?" Meriel demanded.

"I will make myself small and keep her into the wind, or else she will run aground."

Meriel laughed. "You could never make yourself small, m'lord. I am of a smaller size and I will keep her heading. Sir Edward taught me well."

Tom Barnes looked from his lord to Meriel, and she smiled on him. She knew that he was thinking the marriages of lords were most amazing, and such a commoner's wife would be ducked in the village pond for a shrew. That is what she would have thought not so long ago.

Giles hesitated.

She lowered her voice, sending the half-angry words through her teeth. "You fear to be in the hands of an able woman, my lord of Warborough."

"I fear no man or no woman," he answered, and knew that what had always been truth might not be so now. This was a woman such as he had never met, with twists and turns of pride.... Aye, and of daring he had not seen in her sex. And strangely, for a spying counterfeit, she was without guile. "You may have the right of it. Yet I will stay at the hatch for your guidance. Now all below with no more speeches. Quickly!"

Meriel crawled along the deepening shadows of the deck, and reaching the wheel, drew a piece of canvas sail over her, sending the last of her tortoiseshell pins flying and her coif tumbling about her shoulders.

The
No Name
drifted away from the Dutch three-decker, and as the gap widened, Meriel turned the wheel slightly one way and then another. If any Hollanders were looking, the ketch would appeal' to be drifting aimlessly. But she gradually brought the bow into the estuary current and dropped behind the huge warship and away from the Hollander's fleet.

She heard shouts from the high stern taffrail over the smashed cabin.

"They see us," Giles said. "Tell me if any boats are put over the side,"

Meriel watched from under her canvas cover. "Yes, they are putting troops ashore for an assault on the fort.. . barges full of soldiers. They are too busy to send after a ketch adrift." She also saw muzzle flashes followed by explosions and acrid smoke drifting down to choke her. "Giles, I fear there is little answering fire from the fort, and I think the walls are breached. The Hollanders will walk right in."

Giles, bending low, ran to her, ducking under the canvas. "We must get to the ships guarding the chain and warn them of the Dutch plans to come against them next."

"Surely, they will hear the firing."

"Aye, but they need to bring in more fire ships at once to disrupt the Hollanders' fleet. It is the only way to stop them, or they could reach London." He looked back to Sheerness. "The fort is lost. The chain is our next best hope now; after that, the warships anchored at Chatham. Beyond, all London and Whitehall lies exposed." He breathed deeply, his chest expanding in full, his voice intense with resolve. "The English will forever be disgraced if London falls. The king's majesty would never ... never survive it. After plague and fire, there is already treason spoken openly in the streets. He does not lack for personal courage, this king. He showed it while fighting the great fire with his own hands and body ... but he lacks a kind of diligence, loving his ease and mistresses too much."

Meriel, kneeling beside Giles, straightened her back and half rose. "Then his loyal subjects must have diligence for him."

Giles stared hard at her. "No woman needs be that right in such a political matter."