Marrying the Musketeer (33 page)

William bared his teeth in a challenge.
 
“I will fight you for the right to kill him.”

Pierre rested his head in his hands for a moment for the courage to do what he knew he must.
 
It was enough that he would die - he would not take William with him into death.
 
His last act would be to save Courtney’s cousin from the death that awaited them both.
 
He could only hope that God would look less harshly on his many sins on account of his final generous deed.
 
“Don’t be a fool, William.
 
There is no need for us both to die here.
 
Run, for God’s sake, and save yourself if you can.
 
I can hold them all off for long enough for you to get away and hide.”

The boy looked confused at this answer to his challenge.
 
“Why would you sacrifice yourself for me?”

“It is too late for me.
 
My life is forfeit, and not worth the saving.
 
I have no great desire to keep on living.
 
I ask only one thing in payment.
 
Find your cousin.
 
Keep her from want.
 
And tell her...”

“Tell her what?”

“Tell her that Pierre de Tournay loved her above all other women, that he bitterly repents the wrong he did to her, and that in the end he died with honor.”

Still the boy hesitated.

“For God’s sake, go.
 
You must go.
 
Who will look after your cousin when I am dead if you do not?”

Just at that moment Charent edged cautiously around the corner on his mount.
 
“I hereby arrest you in the name of the King,” he shouted at the pair of them.
 
“Put down your arms, come with us quietly and you will not be harmed.
 
You have my word on it.”

“Your word?”
 
Pierre gave a mocking laugh.
 
Beside him he could see William quietly sidling backwards on his horse, waiting for the moment to break away and run.
 
Please God, the boy would take heed of his pleas and save himself.
 
“I dare say you are forsworn a dozen times before you break your fast each morning.
 
When was the last time your word counted for aught?”

Charent gave a malicious grin.
 
“So we meet again, Pierre de Tournay, my old friend.
 
I had hoped you would had given up your foolish ideals by now.
 
I always warned you they would prove dangerous in the end.
 
Here they are at last, bringing you to the brink of death.”

“Not only me,” he muttered under his breath.
 
He gave his mouth a sudden kick and it sprang forward beneath him.
 
His sword whirling around his head, he attacked Charent with all the pent-up hatred of the man that had festered in his soul for so many months.

Charent recoiled under the brunt of the attack, but he could not fall back far.
 
The rest of his company had come up in his wake and were behind him blocking the narrow path.
 
“Give me room,” he shouted, as his horse whinnied in terror and he tried to calm its fears with one hand on the reins and block Pierre’s battering onslaught with his sword arm at the same time.
 
“Give me space or give me assistance - I care not which.”

There was no room for his comrades to give Charent any help.
 
The path was wide enough for two horses to stand or even to walk slowly abreast, but there was barely width enough for even one rider to swing his sword.
 
The horses behind him shuffled back slowly, but not fast enough to be of any use.

Pierre saw with a gleam in his eye that Charent had run out of room to retreat, or even to maneuver himself into a better position.
 
They traded blows back and forth, their swords clashing together with a ringing that carried through the night.
 
Pierre did not let up on the pressure for an instant.
 
Blow after punishing blow he struck at Charent, at the engineer of his own despair, wanting only to take his enemy into oblivion with him.

Behind him he heard the sound of galloping hooves.
 
He paused for a moment to say thanks to God that William had taken his advice and run for it.
 
Shouts of fury came from the pursuers, trapped helplessly behind Charent in the narrow path, as they watched one of their quarry escape.

Charent looked away for an instant to see what the commotion behind him was all about.
 
That two seconds of inattention cost him his life.

Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, Pierre plunged his sword deep into the unguarded heart of his enemy.
 
Charent looked down at his chest in surprise for a moment, as if he couldn’t believe the sight before his eyes – a sword buried to the hilt in his chest.

Pierre pulled out his sword again, dripping with Charent’s lifeblood.
 
He felt no elation, just a bone-deep satisfaction that justice had at last been served.
 
The man who had goaded him to destroy his soul had himself been destroyed.

Charent’s eyes grew wide at the sight of the blood spurting out of the hole in his chest.
 
He put his hands to his chest to stop the flow, but there was nothing he could do.
 
The blood still streamed from him in thick, viscous stream that spelled his approaching death.
 
His face becoming whiter by the second, he swayed sideways in the saddle, lost his balance, and toppled with a sickening thud into the muddy roadway.

There was a collective groan from the other pursuers as their leader fell.
 
Pierre sat on his horse holding his dripping sword in front of him.
 
There was a hurried conference, and a couple of his pursuers wheeled their horses around and headed back down the path again.
 
He had no time to wonder where they were going or what they were planning as another man was upon him, sword held high.

Back and forward they traded blows until Pierre’s sword arm started to ache.
 
His opponent must have felt it, too, as he dropped back and let another man take his place.
 
The new man was fresh and ready for action and Pierre was starting to tire.
 

By the time this man retired in his turn and let yet another man take his place, Pierre was so weary he could hardly hold up his sword arm.
 
He had been wounded, too.
 
A flesh cut in his side and another in his leg.
 
Neither of them were dangerously wide or deep, but their insistent ache sapped his strength and slowed his movements, laying him open to further more dangerous cuts.

He hoped that William had gone to ground somewhere he would not easily be found.
 
He doubted he could keep going for much longer.
 
Still, every moment that he kept them from passing him by was another moment that William had to make good his escape.
 
With a supreme effort of will he fought on doggedly.
 
He had no strength left to go on the offensive.
 
All he could do was block the blows that were aimed at him as best he could and prevent his attacker from driving him backwards into the open where he could easily be surrounded and killed or captured.

On he fought, and on, until the sweat was dripping into his eyes and he could barely see for the sting of it.
 

He heard the sound of hooves behind him but he could not even turn his head to look.
 
There was no possibility that anyone had come to save him and he had no strength left to fight on two fronts.

“Take him alive,” he heard a voice call from in front of him, and there was an answering yell of assent from behind him.
 
“The King wants him alive.”

He swung his sword one last time with all that remained of his strength and the man in front of him cursed volubly as the tip of it grazed his cheek.

He felt an impact on the side of his head that made him reel in the saddle.
 
Slowly the world went black before his eyes and he knew nothing more.

Courtney raced along the lanes as if the devil were after her.
 
Thanks to Pierre, she still had a chance, however slim it might be, of saving both Miriame’s life and her own.
 
She did not know how long Pierre would be able to hold out against their pursuers – she only hoped it would be long enough for her to get safe away.

Her cottage was close by, barely five miles at a guess.
 
She hated to lead the soldiers to her place of refuge by running to ground there, but she could see little choice.
 
Once she were safely ensconced in her cottage, her clothes hidden away and her moustache burned, there would be nothing to connect the well-dressed gentlewoman Courtney Ruthgard with the rebel Musketeer fleeing for his life.

She held on to her horse for grim death as she rode.
 
If she fell off and injured herself now, she would be dead before she knew it.
 

It seemed forever before her little cottage came in view.
 
There was no sight or sound of her pursuers yet.
 
Pierre must have sold his life dearly.
 
She heaved a sigh of relief as she flung herself off her horse and battered on the door with one hand as she ripped off her false moustache with the other.

Suzanne, her pale, anxious face framed by her white bed cap, opened the door a crack and peered out, a candle in her hand.
 
Seeing Courtney standing there, her face wild with fear and her horse in a lather of sweat, she took the chain off the door and opened it wide.

Courtney wasted no time on explanations.
 
“Take my horse, for the love of God, and pull off his saddle and bridle.
 
Rub him down well and give him a bucket of water and a measure of corn.
 
They must not suspect that he has been ridden hard this night, or my life will be forfeit.”

She was inside before she had finished her explanation, and pulling off her boots.

Suzanne did not wait to be told again.
 
Wearing only a mobcap and her nightgown, she rushed into the yard and led the horse away to the stable around the back.

Never had Courtney undressed so fast.
 
Before she knew it, her clothes were in a heap on the floor.
 
The boots she would keep, but the rest had to go.
 
She bundled them into a heap and shoved them into the fire in the kitchen, prodding at the banked embers with a poker until they burst into flames.
 
The shirt burned quickly, the jacket less so, and the leather breeches smoldered away slowly.

Suzanne dashed back inside and into her bedchamber.
 
“I have taken off the saddle and bridle already, but I could not groom your horse in my nightgown,” she said, as she ran back out again in a moment clad in a sturdy woolen gown.
 
“If they saw me in the stable undressed like that, that would arouse their suspicions for sure.”

There was a bucket of water in the kitchen ready for the morn.
 
Courtney lathered herself up with strong-smelling lavender soap and washed off in the ice-cold water, shivering as it touched her skin.
 
She lathered her hair and dunked it in the basin as well.
 
She did not want the faintest trace of the smell of horse or leather to linger on her body.
 
There must be nothing, nothing at all, to connect her as a woman with her as a Musketeer.

By the time she had thrown on a nightgown and covered her hair with a white cap just like Suzanne’s, the worst of the clothes in the hearth were burned beyond recognition.
 
She carefully picked the pewter buttons from her jacket out of the embers with a pair of long-handled tongs so they could not give her away and dropped them in the bucket of water with a hiss and a sizzle to cool.
 
She would hide them tonight, and bury them in the garden when the coast was clear.

With a careful hand she banked the fire again with slabs of turf that would hide the last scraps of leather from her breeches and keep the embers hot until the morn.
 
Firewood in the middle of winter was as precious as food.
 
A blazing fire in the kitchen hearth in the middle of the night would be a dead giveaway that something was amiss.

The dirty water she threw outside into the mud.

Just as she finished, Suzanne came running back into the cottage and shut the door behind her.
 
“I heard horses,” she said, leaning back against the door and panting hard.
 
“Lots of horses.”