Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (33 page)

The Hollander ship,
Agatha,
sailed alongside the
Royal Charles.
Standing at the taffrail was Cornelis de Witt, and even through smoke and distance both Meriel and Giles saw his wide smile. Meriel raised a clenched fist, but if he saw it, he was merely more amused.

Giles watched grim-faced as Dutch fireships rammed the badly undermanned
Royal James
and
Royal Oake
anchored near the shore, setting them both ablaze, the few seaman still aboard leaping into the Thames. And with sinking heart, Giles saw the Dutch sailors on the
Agatha
busy with long hooked poles pushing away the fireships that he and Meriel had sent against them.

"Nothing will stop them from coming on to London now," Meriel said, defeat written in the slump of her shoulders.

"Don't surrender quite yet," Giles said, ignoring his wounded arm as he had all morning and hauling aboard men clinging to debris from the river. Most sailors could not swim, and these were no exception.

He mounted the small cabin amidships. "Men, we will yet stop the Hollanders from coming up to London!"

Most of the tired men had been dragged from their businesses and off the narrow alleyways of Southwark by press gangs and did not respond, their chins sunk in exhaustion on their chests, though some looked at Giles as if he were crazed.

"With what weapons, m'lord?" one of the group asked, appearing to have very little will.

"Our bare hands belike," said another, his face showing anger.

"Aye, men, if needs be with our bare hands to save our city, your shops and homes," Giles said, walking between them, slapping each on the shoulder or back with his good arm.

"Aye," Meriel echoed him, holding her arms aloft. "And with these woman's hands. Are you Englishmen to let a woman fight where you would not go? Listen to Lord Giles. In truth, you know him by his past deeds."

"We know him, but what can 'e do, mistress? We be without guns, proper ships. We be no fighting men, but coopers and sedan chair carmen. How can such as we be keeping the Hollanders from London? All the men with rich goods be fleeing the city as fast as may be. We commons be left to do the fighting yet again."

Giles continued to walk amongst the men. "It is Englishmen such as you"—he pointed-—"and you, who won the day at Crecy, again at Agincourt, and then kept the Spaniards' armada from these shores. If we have no weapons to hand, we have my good ship at the dock, waiting to take the fight to the enemy. And there are other ships here not worthy of the Hollanders' trouble and badly in want of brave Englishmen to man them. There is a way yet."

One man spoke up. "An how will ye be using what small merchant ships be left to keep the Hollanders from London, m'lord?"

All the men leaned forward.

"They have fired our capital ships, but the way to London is barred to them by the wreckage. I believe the Dutch will now try to sail their sloops and longboats crammed with marine troops up the small creeks and waterways to attack London by land."

Giles's strong voice could be heard above the Dutch cannon, each word an answering shot. "We will sink small ships at the mouth of each river and creek—" He paused. The men muttered in low tones amongst themselves for a few moments, then their spokesman rose. "Name's Robert, m'lord. Do ye propose we drown after we sink 'em?"

Giles raised his hand to stop that thought from advancing. "Not a bit of it, Robert. We scuttle and you walk safe home with my thanks, and more. Any man of you who applies to me henceforth at Whitehall for this day's good work will gain gold coin for his duty."

Meriel saw the men look up at Giles almost as one, a stirring of hope in their lined, worn faces, or if not hope, at least no longer abject defeat at the slender possibility that they would see their homes yet again. "What say you?" she yelled. "Shall we fight like men, or end in a Dutch galley on the Guinea Coast trade?"

"Don't overdo, Merry," Giles muttered. "The Dutch have few galleys."

"Aye, but they'd build one if they captured you and me."

Giles laughed heartily at the retort, and Meriel saw that his high spirit gave heart to the men in the midst of what seemed horrible defeat.

Robert pulled off his hat. "I be with ye, m'lord, since I'd rather have good English gold in me pocket than Dutch gulden."

The others nodded, some still reluctant, but the promise of gold enough to bring them together.

"One thing, m'lord," Robert said.

"Aye?" Giles ordered the man at the tiller to steer around floating debris and close on the dock where the
No Name
was moored. Tom Barnes stood in the rigging, waving his cap.

"How do 'e sail a ship, m'lord?"

Giles smiled. "There will be a good helmsman with each ship, and you but do as he says with anchor and rigging. Hard work, men, but you all know hard work."

The men cheered, at first politely, then with good hearts.

As Meriel scrambled aboard the
No Name,
her gown no longer fit for a countess, even a counterfeit one, she looked about the ketch's familiar deck and felt at home, not for the first time. And then she remembered the similar feeling when she had first entered Harringdon Hall. Perhaps home was where Giles was. The sweet thought was not a happy one. It meant that in truth this might be the last time she would have the sense of belonging she had so rarely known in her life.

But she had little time for sadness, since she might not have a future of any kind unless they stopped the Dutch.

In seaman's breeches once more Meriel helmed the
No Name
that day, ferrying Giles, Tom Barnes and the other men from one ship to another and one creek to another, until the masts of sunken ships seemed to dot the shores of the Thames as if a forest had once grown underwater. She heard the guns firing below them at old Upnor Castle, and now batteries all along the shore cannonading the Dutch. But all the while, she looked downriver past her shoulder, expecting Hollanders to sail back for an attack on London to cap their victories at Sheerness, the chain and the taking of the
Royal Charles.
After such success, even de Witt had probably lost his normal caution.

And each time Giles returned to her, more worn and wet, she thanked the God of blessed name for his safety.

As dusk fell, they were left alone on the
No Name,
sailing near St. Mary's Creek.

"No, Giles, you can't," Meriel said, reading his face.

"I must. My ship is no better than those of any other man's taken and sunk this day to save London."

The determination on his face silenced her, and she steered toward the mouth of the creek, while Giles was below, pounding caulking from the ship's seams.

Meriel felt the beautiful ketch settling sluggishly under her feet, taking a piece of her heart with it to the bottom.

They dove together from the bowsprit, slicing the water at the same moment, arriving on shore in near dark except for a perfect half-moon and stars. It was a clear night, though the smell of burning wreckage lingered. They walked onto the shore to stand there, shoulders touching, while the ketch disappeared beneath the water up to midmast, making scarce a ripple, as if in a pout for being treated so.

Meriel sat suddenly on the greensward, lying down in the cool grassy bed, dripping and exhausted.

Giles looked down on her and she could see the dark well of his eyes, but could not read their depths. Were they sad, or eager to draw a curtain over this strange part of his life? When he spoke, his voice told her what his eyes had not.

"Your work is done, Merry, all that any man, whether king or spymaster, could expect, and much more than I would ever ask." He had not meant the words to sound so final, but her black curls flowing across her creamy throat would tempt one of the old religion's saints and had put him on high guard. And if the curls had not entranced, her eyebrows had. They slanted slightly upward in that ironical way she had, as if she were always just about to laugh, as if life were the greatest jest of all. It was the thing about her face that he loved most... except for her lips, and the curve of her cheek, and the dimple in her chin, a chin pointed yet not severe ... He closed his eyes tight before he had to decide on one favorite feature to remember over all the others. Because remembrance was all that there could be of this woman for him. There would be no acceptance in all the land of a marriage between low commoner and peer of the realm, with a title as ancient as any in England. All their children would be counted base-born bastards. Such a union would deny all that had ever been and ever would be for the house of Warborough. And yet... ?

"Aye, m'lord, all work accomplished," she said, taking his words as a dismissal. Another time she might not have heard it that way, but her emotions were rubbed raw. She would not plead. In her heart she had known that this day would come. It did not take an astrologer the likes of Dr. Ashmole to divine Giles's meaning.

Maybe she had simply imagined that he loved her for herself and not because they had been comrades in a great adventure. Any minute of the day, in every cottage and hamlet in England, a woman was fooling herself about a man, and apparently Meriel St. Thomas was no smarter.
Hey, well, I never claimed to be smarter about womanly things!

Giles sat down beside her, then lay back, allowing his body to sink into the thick, tufty grass, sighing as if seeking a deep rest for his sore limbs. He did not touch her and he did not know what to say. So he said the wrong thing. "You can collect your reward now."

"Does that mean what you think it means?" she asked, half in jest, but with a need to know the truth. She would not prolong a good-bye if one was to be said. Even a servant girl was too proud to spread the broken shards of her heart at this lord's feet.

"I don't know what I mean, Merry."

Struggling up from what felt like the softest goose-down mattress, she started to rise. "I'll be off, then, m'lord. Good health and long life!" No woman could keep an edge from her words when she was being sent away with a "well done and true, little miss"!

With a throaty groan probably heard in Chatham Dockyard, Giles caught her arm and pulled her atop him. "I have scarce the strength left to stop you, but I don't want you to leave."

The sense of her body melting into his erased her anger in less than a beat of her heart. "You seem to have strength enough, Giles."
Hey, well, tired and wet have not made me less a woman who knows when a man's body is ready for sport!

He smiled at her and she saw his teeth flash in the half moonlight. "You do seem to assist me in always gaining new strength, mistress."

"My pleasure, m'lord."

He laughed, one of those wonderful full laughs that he so rarely allowed, a laugh that shook him.

Giles rolled over, taking her with him. "Merry!"

It was obvious to her that he was struggling fiercely with himself and losing. "Giles, I know what it is you cannot say."

He kissed her, having no trouble finding her lips in the dark, and knowing that he would be forever finding them again in his dreams. His hand slipped inside her sodden sailor's shirt, finding a cold breast. "My love," he said, and parting the ties, began to kiss both quivering mounds until they turned warm. More than warm. He groaned again. "I should not... we should not. If I were to get a child on you, it would dishonor . .."

She whispered fiercely against his ear, "Don't forever prate of honor"—she laughed to show the words were not angry—"especially when your pants are down. They are down, aren't they, m'lord?"

He buried his face in her hair, not knowing whether to laugh or mourn, her wet curls winding about him as if they would never let go.

She whispered, "If I am with child, you would leave me with that which is most precious to me, a part of you to hold by me when all this crazed time is gone and long forgotten."

Giles shivered, but not with the night breezes against his rapidly drying shirt, but from the heat of their two bodies demanding to be joined. "Never forgotten, Merry. I pledge to you: never forgotten." He meant the words with all his heart and tried to imagine another woman not out of the scullery and of his rank at his side, her children in the fields of Har-ringdon Hall, another woman in his boyhood oak tree beside him sharing his longings.... Another woman who did not look like Felice, who every day would not remind him of a man's worst betrayal before the whole court.

Though her words were wanton, Meriel didn't care. "I have no pretense left to me, Giles. Please leave me with something to remember my love for you." She nestled against his check, kissing it, adoring his rough beard.

His arms tightened about her. "'Tis said of love," Giles whispered in the familiar words of Cervantes, "there is no force able to resist it."

"Then cease your resistance," she said, and he did. She felt the hard strength of him moving against her leg, blindly thrusting against her, as she struggled with her sodden breeches until she finally kicked out of them.

"Now, Giles, now!"

Giles drove into her almost defiantly, taking her lips roughly with his at the same time, as if to finally conquer all his doubt by taking all of her.

Meriel rose to him eagerly, holding his cod inside as tightly as she could, as deeply as she could, and when it poured into the farthest reach of her womanhood, she cried out, gripping all the tighter to imprison him for as long as she could, making a final memory.

At last she let him go and, limbs shaking, he rolled to his back. "My God, Merry—" he said, almost choking on the name.

Meriel stood and quickly dressed herself, and without looking back began to walk away, swiping away tears as she went.

"Merry," Giles called softly, "you must understand how impossible ... we are far apart in station ... you look like Felice ... you would never be accepted at court or in the shire. How would—"

"That is for you to decide, Giles, Earl of Warborough." Meriel continued walking, though there was still one thing she must know. "But it was Meriel St. Thomas, common serving woman, you loved, the Merry of the oak tree. Aye or nay. Not so difficult a decision for a brave peer of the realm."