Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (32 page)

Charles paced up and down, and spoke seriously as if addressing his council. " 'Od's fish! Think you they will come up as far as to Chatham and fire the fleet?"

"The men of the
Royal Charles
have deserted or been taken elsewhere by command. There is naught to stop the Dutch from working their will."

The king's face was thunderous. "First the plague, then the great fire. When no taxes can be collected, I cannot get monies from Parliament to pay my seamen and soldiers. They cannot eat the tickets we give them instead of coin, and they refuse to fight. It is no wonder the people think God has turned his face from England.... Or that their king has."

"The people, sir, hope that you will save London." Giles could not tell him that the people talked treason, though he did not doubt that Charles knew it. Although he appeared to be a man without much care, indeed Charles knew and cared for everything.

The king barely smiled at Giles's compliment. "You think the Hollanders would dare to come up so far as London when we are in treaty negotiations? They want the port of Tangiers that came with my queen's dowry. And they would give us in trade the port of the former New Amsterdam, now called New York in the colonies." He blinked hard as if with a starting megrim. "Though we think a port in that far and empty country a poor trade." He paced forward, turning back immediately. "We ask you again, Giles, would they dare so much as our city of London?"

Meriel could keep quiet no longer, and certainly Giles would not have expected this much silence from her. "If we do not show them our teeth, your Majesty, de Ruyter will dare much, although de Witt will stop him if there is risk." She stepped close to the king. "I say we make it risky for them!"

Charles II looked down at her and she thought the look held admiration, but one could not tell with this man, who had learned in his cradle to guard his public face.

"And what risk would you have us take, Mistress Impertinent, when all Bedlam runs in the streets and in the very air?" he asked.

Giles bowed and then looked into his king's eyes, where they came to a man's understanding. Both knew strong women. "She would be an admiral, sir, but for now she is in need of my training."

The king's tone moved past such banter to urgency. "Give us your best advice, my lord earl."

"Fireships, sir, and many of them, indeed anything afloat. I will lead them to Chatham to confound the enemy. We must stop them there or they will come up to Whitehall to dictate their terms."

The king began his pacing again. "By law, we can commandeer ships in such times as these. If we sign a warrant of authority for the Admiralty—"

Giles interrupted in haste. "I will gather all that I can and move with barrels of pitch and tar from the naval stores downriver to Chatham and save our capital ships. But I must move before first light!"

"You promise much, m'lord."

"We
promise much, Your Majesty," Meriel added, lest she be forgotten amidst these towering men.

"This is not woman's work," Giles said, unwilling to risk her life further and daring her to challenge him in front of the king.

"Was it not woman's work to board the Dutch flagship as a spy? Was it not woman's work to escape the—"

The king looked interested but weary of female discourse, since he had a palace full of it. "Do not o'er plead your argument, mistress, when you have won it at first salvo. We do not see in the Earl of Warborough the desire to deny you a triumph against the enemy that cost you so dear. We see only his loving protection."

Meriel blushed and curtsied again. Charles II bent his head and whispered for her ear alone as she rose, head bowed. "We give you our royal promise that our keeper of the privy closet will honor his bargain with the king's spy on pain of our displeasure. Our great displeasure."

"My thanks to you, sir," she said, and with her arm on Giles's bloodied sleeve she marched out of Monmouth's house past a glowering Castlemaine and gossiping lords, murmuring questions and surmises into each other's mountainous periwigs.

As the majordomo closed the front doors behind them, Meriel spoke quietly for Giles's ears. "You called me Merry when you were fighting."

"Did I?"

She dared not look at him, and he said no more.

The guard who had wounded Giles bowed and opened the carriage door. "I beg pardon, my lord."

"You did your duty and I commend you for it."

Dr. Wyndham sat inside, his physician's pack spread open on a lap grown a little more ample with success, his feet scarce touching the floorboard. "Come up, my lord earl, and let me see to that arm. My lady," he said, acknowledging Meriel as she was handed in. He beamed. "It is our great pleasure to see you alive and well.... And I hope happy." He shifted his gaze to Giles then back to Meriel, finding no confirmation in either face. "Ah, well. .." And he began to cut away the earl's coat sleeve.

Giles called to his footmen. "One of you make quick passage to Whitehall and ask Sir Edward Cheatham to meet me at the Admiralty as soon as may be." When the carriage bounced, indicating the man had departed, Giles shouted out the window to his driver: "Now, to the Admiralty as fast as you can with safety."

As the doctor worked on his arm, Giles looked at Meriel, sitting across from him, her head resting on the upholstered seat back, with the look of a fresh court beauty, though her eyes were shadowed with fatigue. Tired or no, she had the finest steel for a spine. He tried to sort the thoughts in his troubled mind, but he could summon no resistance to her and little except desire. But how could he ever make a happy end? To interrupt his confusion, he spoke. "Sir Edward will know how we can commandeer every rowing boat, shallop and barge to be had."

"Yes, and he will help us," Meriel said, looking away from the gaping slash on his arm, now exposed to wavering light like a bloodied, toothless mouth.

"M'lord, you will need stitching, which I cannot do in this conveyance."

"Bind it, good doctor, with your infallible salve to provide its miracle to which this lady's complexion does endlessly provide a testament. You can do your surgery at the Admiralty while we await ships."

"As you wish, m'lord earl. In my younger days I healed many wounds from swordplay, although none of late since Jeremy Hughes, the great actor of the Theater Royal, was unfortunately stabbed by a jealous actress in a performance of
Macbeth,
Act Two, Scene Two, if you can believe such a thing in this modern day. That was before the fire of London. Since that sad time, my practice has changed somewhat, indeed more than once."

"I am eager to hear of it," Giles said, grinding his teeth as the bandage was twisted tight to halt the blood.

"My miracle salve has been much used by gentlemen of all rank, sir, to improve their ... er, fading nature."

Giles nodded, his lips twitching. "I have heard it well spoken in that regard."

The doctor, though concentrating on his work, continued merrily. "And in the highest circles, m'lord, if you don't put me down as the worst braggart. But ah, more recently, I am much sought, sir, for the healing of marriages. Indeed, I give public lectures. 'Tis a skill not taught in any university of medicine that ever I attended."

Meriel laughed. "Well then, 'tis not taught anywhere upon this earth, I vow," she said. Upon seeing a fleeting upset on his sweet face, she quickly added, "But is a fine idea and sorely needed, I would imagine." She smiled at him, liking him exceedingly. "Yet is there enough bandage in the kingdom for such a wide practice?"

Dr. Wyndham looked up at her with a most confident grin. "You jest, m'lady, which is your way, but, in truth, it was you and his lordship here who gave me the idea at Har-ringdon Hall."

Sir Edward was at the Admiralty when they arrived, having worked through the night. At sight of Meriel, he leapt up from a writing table covered with maps and drawings to embrace her. "Meriel, m'girl, I had such fears for you that were like to give me the apoplexy. Are you well? How—"

"I am as well as may be, sir, and I long to tell you all, but the tale must wait for—"

"Another time, with my apologies, Sir Edward," Giles said, handing over the king's warrant and proceeding to detail, with Meriel's interruptions, all that would be required to go against the Dutch fleet advancing up the Thames.

Sir Edward nodded and stood. "It is a hard thing to take a man's property, m'lord earl, but if we don't stop the Dutch, all London will belong to them. I will scour the river, sir, for everything that floats and every man jack who can pull an oar."

"And pitch and tar," Meriel added, "barrels of it."

Sir Edward smiled. "Aye, Meriel, you have not changed, thank the Lord of blessed name for that when all the world is full of ill change. I will use every man in the Admiralty as a press gang to round up men from—" He broke off his promise to execute it, calling for a servant to take the orders he was writing.

Impatiently, Dr. Wyndham tapped the back of a chair. "M'lord earl, I must be at my stitching. Delay will bring more pain, but be assured that I can take that away."

"No laudanum, my good doctor. I will need all my wits and Meriel's, too, these next hours."

Meriel stood by. The doctor first checked Giles's head wound and found it well along in healing. Thence, she made herself watch the slash being cleansed and closed, because she could bear to see the surgery, but not the pain on Giles's mouth that never became a single cry. "You are mighty skilled, Doctor...." She bit down on her lip. "But I beg you do not prescribe your little red pills, for we have much hard work ahead this night."

"M'lady," the doctor said, not looking up but smiling, "you have a talent that is prime for happy marriages."

Giles straightened himself but said nothing, since he needed all his strength to concentrate the pain of knife and needle into a manageable place elsewhere in his mind. Besides, was all the world conspiring to tie him to this woman tighter than he was already? And could he resist?

"And what is that talent?" Meriel asked, especially since Giles made no comment. "I am no cook, being barely skilled enough to watch bread rise in its bowl."

"Why, m'lady, you have surely just shown it again. You see the truth of a thing through a jest, as in my little red emetic pills. And more important, you remember it so that it gets better with each telling."

"Oh, surely you do not prescribe your pills to heal marriages, good doctor!"

The doctor laughed heartily and wiped his eyes on his sleeve before taking the last stitch in Giles arm. "Ah, me, you have done it again. But a good humor is a true part of the healing of marriages, mistress. Yet I think you have the other necessary parts, as well."

Meriel laughed and because she could not stop herself from looking, she saw that Giles laughed, too, but silently.

Near dawn, when they boarded a pinnace loaded with barrels of pitch below Tower Gate, they were again smiling as Giles swung her to the deck.

But that was soon to end.

Long before they reached the English capital ships anchored below Chatham, Giles and Meriel heard the continuous roar of cannon and musket fire, smelled the smoke of burning ships and heard the squeal of buckling timbers. Yet clasped together at the prow of a small single-masted fishing wherry, they were most dismayed by the triumphant calls of Dutch trumpets and drums issuing orders to its crews. The pall of smoke and the cheers of the Dutch drove Giles from Meriel's tight embrace to grab an oar, ignoring his bandaged arm, and pull with all his strength with the outgoing tide.

Still feeling the remembered warmth of Giles's arms, Meriel leaned hard against the rail, as if to urge the boat on through burning wreckage with the force of her own body. She smiled inwardly at the idea that she was admiral of the motley fleet of commandeered small boats and barges crowding behind them, even a Thames lighter used to carry goods from the London side to Southwark. The tiny vessels were loaded with pitch to set burning and send toward the enemy. Wooden ships with tarred ropes and canvas sails burned easily.

Then they rounded a turning in the river and sailed into a flame-lit hell.

"Steer toward the
Royal Charles,"
Giles shouted to the man at the tiller, leaving his oar and returning to the rail alongside Meriel. "Cock's life! The Dutch are boarding her!"

Meriel counted the small Dutch boat's crew. "Giles, only nine men. Surely we can ..." The rest of her protest was lost as they saw the Hollanders scramble aboard the flagship and strike the English flag to raise their own.

"Not one man to resist," Meriel said, putting words to the deep shame she knew that Giles was feeling, too.

He put an arm about her waist, since her legs seemed to want to give way. "Don't despair, Merry," he spoke into her ear past the noise. "We will send our fire ships against them. Better to burn the
Charles
than let the Dutch have her." He scrambled back amidships, shouting to the following boats to come alongside.

The first box of fuses was too wet to light, but the second box was dry as tinder and blazed readily. "Knock off the top of the casks," Giles ordered the crews as they came near. He took their men aboard and threw fuses at their open casks, and one by one he saw the fires start. With a mighty push, each of the boats took the outgoing current and drifted toward the Dutch.

"Stand by, men," he said, and steered for the
No Name
at the dockside.

With a heavy heart he watched the Hollanders take in tow the
Royal Charles,
the king's enormous gilt emblem carved on the stern transom, and retreat down the Thames, heading for the Channel.

"They'll never get her to the Medway," Giles said. "For her draft, she needs high tide."

"Look!" Meriel shouted, tears of frustration starting. The huge English flagship slowly heeled over on its side and tow lines pulled it safely over the shallow water.

Giles couldn't keep admiration from his words. "They've shifted ballast and guns to lay her over so she could pass. They're fine sailors, the Dutch."