Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (31 page)

Meriel saw real fear in Chiffinch's eyes for the first time and caught at Giles's arm. "No, Giles. If I could be undone by words and names, it would have happened long ago."

Giles opened his fist slowly and wrapped his long fingers around the spymaster's throat. "Say that about her again in anyone's hearing and you die. Now delay us no longer."

The words that came from him were so hard and evenly spaced that each had the impact of a hammered nail. For once Chiffinch was silenced, finding no sarcasm to mine in this situation. "As you say, m'lord." The words gurgled in his constricted throat.

"The king? Where is he?" Giles asked the questions in a tone that brooked no more delaying wordplay from the spy-master.

"He is supping with my lady Castlemaine."

"Where?"

"You may not disturb—" But Giles's fingers crushed further advice.

"Where, you fool? The kingdom is about to come undone through your bungling!"

"The Duke of Monmouth's house."

"But is not the duke with the militia?"

"More like swiving all the country maids around."

"I know his grace's house," Giles said, having no time for court gossip about the king's bastard son. He released Chiffinch so swiftly that he stumbled backward into his writing table. Without another glance, Giles took Meriel by the hand, walking through the spymaster's apartments and out into the palace. "We must dress ourselves for the king's presence or risk not being admitted. I will come for you in minutes."

Meriel's voice was urgent. "Promise not to leave me behind, Giles. I would take this to the end, whatever is my fate."

He bent his head to her. His lips touched hers briefly, and repeated with emphasis: "I will change my clothes in minutes. Now make all haste."

Meriel hurried toward her rooms, taking a short way through the king's Presence Chamber, now empty but for sleeping porters. She had near forgotten the crystal chandeliers and rich crimson and gold damask hangings draping the walls. As her steps echoed on the marble floor past the dais holding the two thrones, she could yet hear the music of viols and oboes playing a sarabande, and smell the musk of a heavily perfumed noble crowd. For a few hours, this had been hers by right of birth. She smiled at that crazed bit of thinking. It had been hers only as being a queen on stage for a night was Nell Gwyn's true station.

She looked up at the gallery from which she had first glimpsed Giles in his living flesh. She fixed it in her mind and heart one last time. She would never again see it from this vantage.

No majordomo opened her door, and when she stepped into her apartments all was disorder. Her furniture removed. No sea coal in the fire with tinder close by. Chess pieces strewn upon a floor with no bright turkey carpet to warm her feet. Clothing was tossed about her bedchamber as if picked over by a hundred crows.

Agnes sat at the dressing table, looking at Meriel through the mirror, a crack running from top to side. "I ne'er expected to see you again."

"That is obvious."

"Nay, you mistake me. This is not my work. These lordlings and their ladies in Whitehall are like vultures.

When Chiffinch reported Lady Felice was dead, they descended to apportion her furniture and fittings amongst them. To honor her memory, they said."

Meriel began to sift through what was left, thrown hig-glety-pigglety on the bedstead, shorn of its feather mattress.

Behind her, Agnes said, "I hoped you would return."

"How did you know it was Felice's body and not mine they buried?"

"I knew that you were too clever by far for the damned cheesemongers. Did they torture you?"

"Nay, but I cannot recount my adventures now. Giles will be here within minutes. Help me to be ready to gain admittance to the king's presence."

Though Agnes looked interested and obviously longed to know more, she rose and gave up her bench in front of the dressing table. "Let me dress you hair, m'lady."

"Hurry, I have but minutes. And don't call me m'lady."

"It is how I see you."

Although Meriel gave a swift squeeze to Agnes's arm, nothing more was said until Giles came through the door, shaved, dressed as an earl at court and armed with fine Spanish steel.

Meriel rose and curtsied to his formal bow as if they had not spent nights together at sea on the deck of a Dutch warship, not to mention on the ketch.

Giles surveyed the room and nodded to Agnes as she curtsied, nothing showing on his face. He was beyond surprise.

Agnes handed Meriel a hooded cape to match the bright blue velvet of her gown and to cover her lack of jewels.

"If I survive this, I will have you with me," Meriel said softly to Agnes.

"Did the knife—?"

Meriel smiled. "Most handily cut the ropes that bound us both."

And then Giles and Meriel were out the door and down to the Holbein Gate straddling King Street, where a carriage waited, flares held by footmen to light their way through the darkened thoroughfares full of Londoners crying doom.

Every window in Monmouth's house on Hedge Lane was ablaze when they drew up, and Giles lowered the steps and leapt out without waiting for help.

"Stop!" yelled an officer of the king's guards.

"I have urgent business with His Majesty,"

"The king is occupied and no one is to be admitted."

"I am—"

"I know who you are, my lord earl," the officer said, "but my orders are to allow no one to disturb the king's pleasure."

"Who gave such orders?"

"His Majesty's keeper of the privy closet."

Meriel came up to Giles's side. "Chiffinch," she said as a one-word indictment. "He wants to take the credit, to be the hero."

The officer brushed her aside. "One more step, your lordship, and I will be forced to order you and your lady arrested and removed to the Tower."

Giles took two long steps, drawing his sword as he went, and Meriel thought she would never forget the hissing sound it made as the steel left the scabbard.

Three guardsmen drew their heavier swords to meet Giles's lighter, faster Spanish steel dancing in front of them. He feinted to one side, testing the guards' defenses. With an easy smile and a thought to recommend a new fencing master to the king for his soldiers, Giles increased his pressure and broke through first one and then another's parry, not meaning to wound, just to teach a lesson.

Meriel could not stand to one side. She jumped into the melee, pummeling two and tripping one with her slippered foot.

"Stand back, Merry!" Giles shouted.

At that sweet name, the first time he'd uttered it since leaving Harringdon Hall, she redoubled her efforts. She staggered another guard with an elbow to the stomach, a move she'd learned long ago in the charity orphans' house. She dodged behind the swirling throng and shouted for the king, pounding on the door. She was at once grabbed from behind and held by other guards running to the sound of clashing swords.

She clawed and twisted her body like an eel caught in a fisherman's net, but dared not call to Giles for help and distract him as he frantically parried a semicircle of thrusting blades attempting to disarm him.

Aye, this was her fight, as well as Giles's.
Hey, well, could any woman worth a copper stand aside when the man she adored was in danger?

"Rally to your master!" she shouted at the footmen, who seemed content to goggle like ninnies and hold their flares aloft to light the scene.

Meriel could see that the guards were gradually pressing Giles back and back, and she redoubled her efforts to escape the tight arms about her. She hit her mark more than once.

At last, Giles ran around the carriage, swung through the door and out on the house side, catching two king's guards with his boot heels and laying them flat on the cobbles. "Bravo, Giles!" she sang, giving up her failed effort at silence. Who could not applaud the most brilliant fighting move ever seen?

But Giles was tiring; she could see that, too, and intensified her struggle, keeping two guards and finally a third too busy with her to join the fight.

At last one guard slipped his blade through Giles's defense and sliced through his coat, gashing his sword arm, which dropped to his side of its own will, although he did not lose his rapier.

Instantly, a half-dozen steel points were being held against his heart.

"Hold there!"

Meriel swallowed the scream in her throat as the king loomed over all.

With murmurs of "Your Majesty," the guards stepped back, saluting, freeing Meriel to rush to Giles.

"Your arm," she said, touching him and coming away with his blood on her fingertips.

"It's nothing. Sshh. Don't be such a woman." He was grinning down at her.

"I have it in my mind being more of one as soon as ever may be," she whispered quickly, before the king reached them.

Charles II moved regally down the steps toward them, tall and richly attired, but not as dandified with bows and ribbons as the nobles crowding at the door behind him. For the monarch of a lascivious court rivaled only by Louis of France and the spectacular palaces at Versailles, Charles was somewhat severe in his costume. Yet in Meriel's eyes, it only enhanced his regal authority.

"What mischief is this?" he asked, though he sounded more curious than vexed.

Meriel curtsied and Giles bowed, his arm dangling.

"You are wounded, m'lord earl. Our guards are overzeal-ous in protecting our person. With London in disarray there is much fear of mobs...." He sighed. "Indeed, we do know you intend us no harm, though we cannot vouch for this lady, sir, since she does seem to have crippled two of our guards, their shins in a tragic state of hurt." The king enjoyed spectacle and he had it in plenty before him, missing only trumpets and a fanfare.

Meriel curtsied most formally, wondering if this one would truly be the last one she would ever perform before being sent to the Tower or back to the scullery. She waited for Giles to speak, as was proper. Her time with Giles was now very short, perhaps hours, even minutes, and totally out of her control. Thus, it was right to show him this last courtesy.

Giles saw her open her mouth and hesitate, almost grinning at her unusual restraint; then he bowed to the king as best he could and spoke with no tremor in his voice, though his arm pained him damnably. "Your Majesty, the Dutch are coming against the chain and then on up to Chatham and—"

The king put up a warning hand. "Come inside Giles, where we may speak privately with you and"—he smiled at Meriel, rising from her curtsy—"your lady, of course."

Giles and Meriel followed the king inside the candlelit Duke of Monmouth's house to face a furious Lady Castle-maine. "Charles, you have quite spoiled our hunt!"

"Aye, Your Majesty," said little Anna, Duchess of Mon-mouth, petulant in her extreme youth. "We were having such mighty amusement chasing the large moth from candle to candle."

The king smiled at her pout. "You will needs pursue it without us, m'dear, for the business of state intervenes. Now we must withdraw to speak of real hunts and serious matters."

The Countess Castlemaine stared at Meriel, a sneer marking her fading beauty, though she was now delivered of her babe and not so swollen. "Ah, the
other
little actress pretending to be what she is not."

Meriel realized the countess knew she was not Felice, and with her the entire court was in on her masquerade. Chiffinch must have seen some benefit to himself in exposing her. Who could imagine how many schemes he had in progress?

Her days as Lady Felice were truly ended, and she felt no regret at that. Yet she knew that Lady Castlemaine referred also to Nell Gwyn, her new rival for the king's affections, and also a woman who had risen from the gutter. Meriel laughed, gladdened as the sound brought a rush of color to Babs Castlemaine's face. "Yes, m'lady, I am an actress of a kind, only such a one as acts on the stage of war against the king's enemies." She curtsied abruptly. "I leave the art of chasing moths at parties to you."

The king stifled a smile, but held his hand up for silence, since offended cries erupted from every corner. "Call for our good Dr. Wyndham to tend the earl's arm. Now, pray, excuse us."

Giles and Meriel followed the king through the doors of an adjoining room, its tables laid for cards. A guard was posted and the doors were quietly closed.

The king turned slowly and deliberately toward Meriel. "You object, we think, to a king's pleasures as his kingdom is under attack. . . . When distraction is perhaps most needed. We think that impertinent, m'lady." The voice was soft, even amused under the serious accusation.

Meriel knew this king heard less truth than any other Englishman, so she would not betray him with a further lie. "Aye, Your Majesty, I am quite impertinent. A necessary trait, I think, for a spy in these troubled times. Yet I pray you know that I was responding to m'lady Castlemaine's insult without you in mind."

"Come now, we think you would have us racing about the streets, sword in one hand, pike in the other. Don't you know it would only strike more fear in the populace to see their king in a terror?"

Meriel bowed her head, a bit ashamed not to have thought of this. But she had no chance to say so.

Giles stepped forward, holding his wounded arm in a tight grasp, blood seeping between his fingers, his voice urgent: "Your Majesty, there is so little time. We overheard the Hollander battle plans while held prisoner on
De Zeven Provencien,"

"Indeed! This sounds a grand adventure that we must fully hear someday. But now, what news other than that which comes to our ears with the sound of cannon? The Isle of Grain is invaded, and we have the sad report that Sheer-ness is taken with much loss of life. The eighteen-pounders we ordered for the fort and watched installed last February were so poorly maintained that they jumped right off their carriages as the first shot was fired." The king clasped his hands behind his back, perhaps to hide the anger shaking them.

Giles brought the king back to the needs of the moment. "Sir, I fear there is now fighting at the chain and the Hollanders will be master of it soon, if not already. They were coming on behind us yesterday."