Prisoner of the Flames (Leisure Historical Romance) (30 page)

“What you do here is wrong,” Robert insisted. “These holy men have done you no harm. To sack and burn their
trappings is one thing, but this,” he gritted his teeth, nodding toward the swaying cleric dangling overhead. “This is sacrilege, and—”

The toe of the admiral’s boot in his face cut him short. “This is necessary,” Coligny contradicted. “These are idolaters—heretics. Catholics showed no mercy to unarmed civilians at Vassy—the troops of Charles de Guise cut them down like wheat spears. This is only the beginning. We will bury them.”

Robert spat out blood. “God have mercy on your souls.”

Another boot replied, this time to the young Scot’s ribs. “Enough!” Coligny growled. “You will not go free. You will die like the rest here in this street—on this very gallows, but not yet, my lord. First, you will hang the others—you and Jacques.” He nodded toward a mounted soldier a few yards off that Robert hadn’t even noticed, who quickly backed his horse up toward the gallows in response to the silent command. The dead cleric plummeted to the ground alongside him. “I hope you were paying attention,” Coligny went on. “You will man the noose, and Jacques will…well, you are no simpleton. You, of course, will be last, once you have seen to all these.” He swept his arm wide toward a huddled group of well-guarded priests and monks behind him, their ashen faces tinted red in the glow of the bonfire the troops had made of their church trappings. The stink of burnt tapestries, perfumed with stale incense, of beeswax and tallow and ancient wood, flared Robert’s nostrils and threatened to make him retch.

“And how do you expect me to do that like this?” Robert snapped, exhibiting his bound wrists.

“You will manage,” said the admiral, a triumphant smile fixed in place. “You are quite the enterprising fellow.”

“The king will not thank you for this, Coligny.”

The admiral laughed. “The king will be content in the knowledge that you died for our cause nobly in battle—it
may even prosper from it—the cause, that is. It might just be the prod to nudge him over to our side…considering his fondness for you, and considering that he is so filled with idealistic fantasies, and is so easily led. Be assured I will tell His Majesty how bravely you died…for the cause.”

Just then a disturbance on the far side of the bonfire turned the admiral’s head. Some of the troops were herding the whores from the stews into the square, and the soldiers were joining them, their lewd, jeering laughter testimony to their intent. Coligny scowled toward the mob they had become. His cold eyes narrowed in the heat of the flames that had crawled closer to the gallows, belching plumes of thick black smoke and spitting tufts of fiery ash into the misty drizzle.

The admiral drew his sword and beckoned to Jacques to follow him. Then turning on his heels, he plunged into the melee, leaving Robert without a backward glance, and only a scant few soldiers guarding the clergy that had been prodded nearer the gallows because of the fire.

Robert wasted no time wriggling into position to retrieve the
sgian dubh
from his boot, but the soldiers guarding the clerics were closer now, and he had to work quickly, keeping a close eye on the disturbance. The admiral would not leave him unattended long—even tethered. He would soon return, or send Jacques back to stand guard. He was working desperately against time. It had served him in the past, and he prayed with all his strength that it would serve him now.

Inch by inch, he slipped the blade along inside the boot until he was able to grip the handle and coax it closer to his fingers. Glancing toward the soldiers keeping the holy men contained, he noticed that some of the monks were watching him, and were silently alerting the others. He made eye contact with them. Freedom was within his reach, but there was nothing he could do to help them. Reading their expressions, it was clear that they knew it.

In one covert motion, Robert withdrew the
sgian dubh.
Working in the shadow of the portly body that had fallen alongside him, he began sawing at the ropes, with a close eye upon the soldiers. Thus far, they had been craning their necks toward the fracas that was taking place beyond the bonfire, clearly anxious to join in the licentious revelry with the rest. Now they were growing restless and impatient, and he’d almost severed his bonds, when he noticed one closest to the gallows begin to turn.

Heart pounding, Robert stopped mid-stroke, his breath suspended—scarcely believing his eyes—as the captive clergymen began to wail and thrash about, raising their arms toward heaven in a chanting, moaning supplication in unison that captured the guards’ attention.

For a split second Robert stared slack-jawed, until he caught the pleading eye of one of the elder priests, and then he sawed like a madman while the soldiers were occupied until the rope finally fell away. After severing the length attached to the iron collar, he crawled off into the smoke-filled darkness.

Robert didn’t want to think about the fate of the holy men he was leaving behind. He prayed that some had broken free and stolen away as he had done, but he didn’t think it likely. They were being too closely watched. That he would be hunted was a foregone conclusion. He was a fugitive sought by all factions now. Alone in the rain-swept darkness, in an unfamiliar place, he was at a grave disadvantage. He no longer had his helm or the cloth traveling mask for anonymity, and the spiked iron collar was still fastened around his neck. If he were seen, he would be remembered, and surely betrayed to that fearsome, intimidating army of marauding Huguenots.

It was a certainty that Coligny would follow after him. Now that he had taken Rouen, the admiral would establish a garrison, leave some of the troops behind in the city, and
head south with the rest to join Conde, sacking God knew how many other cities in his path along the way. Bordeaux could well be one of them. Montaigne was in danger, not to mention Aengus and Violette. The admiral knew they were at Montaigne’s château. He would certainly go there now. It was a point of honor. There was no time to waste, and he wracked his addled brain to recall the map the magistrate had made him memorize before they parted.

The strident sounds of the melee grew louder, the priests’ raised voices having joined the noise. Flattened up against the buttressed wall of the cathedral, Robert assessed the perimeter. Which way to go? The city was crawling with Huguenots. It was impossible to elude them on foot. He glanced behind toward the direction of the square, thankful that he could not see what was happening to the priests that had abetted his escape. They were close enough to the gallows to have overheard his conversation with Coligny, and to realize that he was no Huguenot. They had saved him, and his heart ached that he could not return the favor in kind. But then, of course, they knew that when they staged the disturbance that set him free. That their sacrifice shouldn’t have been in vain, he covered his ears to shut out their cries, and stumbled off in the darkness in search of a horse he could steal that would see him south. First, however, he had to find his way out of the city.

O
nly one thing was certain.
Robert needed to put as much physical distance between himself and the Huguenots as possible. Dangerous as flight in the open was, he had to risk it. He could not linger. No longer afforded the protection of the cathedral’s tall, shadowy façade, he inched his way through the deserted streets of Rouen. Flattening himself against other, less majestic buildings in his path, he moved toward the southern outskirts of the city, away from the pandemonium building in the village square behind, audible clear to the wheat fields he’d plunged headlong into.

The drizzle had become a downpour, bending the wheat spears low around him, and his prayers of thanks that the harvest was late that year were short-lived, as the shelter the tall crop growth had promised was stripped away. Lightning speared down, flooding the fields with an eerie blue-white glare that illuminated a barn not too far distant. It stood alone; no farmhouse nearby that he could see, though he knew there had to be one somewhere in close proximity considering the lay of land so richly planted. Praying now that such was so, and that a horse would be kept there, he ran full-bent toward the weathered structure, and reached it just as an ear-splitting crack of thunder extracted a nervous equine response from the shadows within that told him fortune had once more smiled upon him.

It was a swayback mare, not nearly as grand as Montaigne’s bay, and certainly not bred for speed, unmistakably a plow horse. It would have to do—at least until he could steal another. Bit and bridle hung on a rusty nail on the
wall, and he quickly snatched it and fixed it in place. There was no saddle, and doubting that the animal had rarely—if ever—seen one, Robert swung himself up bareback, and kneed the sluggish nag out into the rain.

Over and over again, he called to mind the map Montaigne had made him memorize. It was two hundred miles as the crow flies from Rouen to Bordeaux; it would be closer to three hundred following the magistrate’s convoluted intricacy of detours and byways, which would take him first to Brittany, back through the forests of Tours, then along the Loire River in a zigzag course that threaded along the outskirts of Richelieu and Poitiers, and finally into yet another deep, dense forest that bypassed La Rochelle, and would shelter him as he followed the coast due south to Bordeaux. But which direction would Coligny and his men take? Certainly one more direct—one that would see them to Bordeaux in record speed, with bloodlust to drive the fast horses underneath them.

There was no question that Montaigne’s route would have to be altered, and with palpable dread that Coligny might reach Bordeaux first, and Violette’s beautiful frightened-doe image dangling before him like a carrot before a hungry horse, he spent all his energies on shortening the distance between them. Regardless, the journey would take many days.

Bypassing Brittany altogether, the young laird spurred his mount in a straight southwesterly line toward Alençon, avoiding the city proper, and staying well within the forest, always keeping a river or stream in sight, since water would have to be gotten for man and horse alike en route. Food was another matter entirely. Gleaning what edibles he could from the land sufficed for a time, but he knew that soon he would have to venture into the open and find more satisfying fare, if he were to keep up his strength coming back so soon from two serious wounds that had weakened
him considerably. Except that he was traveling south, he had no knowledge of the lay of the land, and no idea where he was going. He needed reliable guidance Quickly.

Then he saw it—a church spire rising from the twilight through the trees. As if lightning-struck, he knew what he must do, and he broke through the thicket and urged the swayback mare straight toward it. It was a small church nestled in a little glade. He surmised that it served more than one of the surrounding pastoral communities, judging from the clusters of modest dwellings looming in the near and far distance, and not another spire in sight.

Lazy plumes of smoke rose from chimneys of the sleepy little village closest to the wood he traveled through. He’d passed many like it along the way. All around, the hills were white with sheep, their bleating carried on the evening breeze. A beautiful sight, if he were at liberty to enjoy it. As it was, he wasted no time addressing the door panels of the priest’s residence—no more than a cubicle—attached to the back of the church alongside a dilapidated smokehouse.

A narrow aperture in the door came open partway.

“Who comes?” said a thin voice from inside.

“Good priest, there is no time for proper introductions. I come to warn you.” Robert said. “Huguenots led by Coligny ride south to rendezvous with their ally, Henry of Navarre. They come from Rouen, where they slaughtered many of your brethren, and sacked the cathedrals in retaliation for Vassy. The city there is reduced to rubble.”

“Mon
Dieu!
” said the priest. “But what would they want here? We are a humble parish—no cathedral.”

“That matters not to men driven by lust for the blood of Catholics, good father.”

“How do you know this?”

“I was there—I saw—I overheard them say that they would sack and burn churches all the way to the border on their way south. They will surely pass this way. It is the
shortest route, I think. I travel south myself and I must reach Bordeaux before they do else my uncle, a humble monk from St. Michael’s Mount, and an innocent blind lass, be taken unaware and slain, and I am unsure of the way.”

There was a shuffling noise from within, then the rasp of the bolt being thrown and the priest opened the creaking door and faced him, making the sign of the cross as they stood face-to-face.

“It is not plague,” said Robert, having become accustomed to making that defense since he first set foot on French soil. “A fire marked me in my cradle.”

The priest gasped. He was well past his prime, of an age, Robert suspected, few lived to see in such times. He was short, and rotund in stature, with articulate hands. Working them ceaselessly, he pointed toward the nag.

“Is
that
how you mean to travel south ahead of Coligny’s Huguenots?” he said.

“She was the best I could steal,” said Robert.

“You haven’t stolen much,” said the priest, “she’s hardly worth imposing penance over. If you’ve ridden her from Rouen, I marvel that she hasn’t dropped down dead. You are no judge of horses, my son.”

“I am no judge of anything in this accursed land,” Robert said, “but I know the men of whom I speak firsthand. The threat is real. I beg you, hide your trappings amongst your congregation—bury them if needs must, or you will lose them.”

“Come,” said the priest, standing aside for Robert to enter. “You speak the language as if you were born to it, but you are no Frenchman. From whence do you come?”

“I hail from the Scottish borderlands north of Hadrian’s Wall,” said Robert.

“A Scot,” the priest marveled.

“I am Robert Mack, of Paxton, Laird of Berwickshire,”
the young Scot replied. “I have come to France on a fool’s errand, and unwittingly put those I love in danger. I am trying to make amends.”