On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (6 page)

The old woman had a point, Sophie was forced to concede.
 
She might find it difficult to find another place to stay.
 
But still she hesitated.
 
Paying so much for her board would mean draining badly needed funds away from the family estate.
 
She was reluctant to do that, but both she and Seafoam were close to collapse and needed to rest.
 

At her silence, the old woman relented slightly in her greed, fearful of losing a paying customer.
 
“Ach, seeing as you’re an old friend, I’ll let you have it for a bit less.”
 
She named a sum that Sophie could live with.
 
“Payment in advance though,” she said, as she stuck out her skinny claw.

Sophie tipped a couple of livres into the outstretched hand.
 
“Bring me some hot water and food.”
 
She added a couple of sous.
 
“And have your boy take my horse to the stables.”
 
The old woman tucked the coins away in the pocket of her apron with a feral look in her eye.
 
Sophie doubted her poor boy would see any of the coins for himself.

When the landlady had shuffled away again, Sophie sat down on her bed, the thin straw rustling beneath her.
 
She was in Paris.
 
She had found herself lodgings – meager though they were.
 
She was going to be a Musketeer.
 
No one had questioned her sex – as far as the world was concerned, she was a man.
 
Maybe, just maybe, she would succeed in her mad scheme.

Her confidence had evaporated into heat and worry by the time the landlady returned carrying a small basin of barely lukewarm water for her to wash away the grime of travel, and a bowl of thin, watery-looking gruel.

She shut the door, pushed the dresser against it to be sure she was free from interruption, and washed as well as she could in the rapidly-cooling water.
 
How could she ever pull off her masquerade when she was so obviously a woman?
 
Would it not be evident by the way she walked and talked – even by the way she wore her clothes?
 
She would be exposed in front of all of Gerard’s companions, and shame him for ever.

The gruel was edible, but little more than that.
 
In her hunger, she wolfed it down anyway.
 
The hard winter had robbed her of most of her reserves of body fat.
 
She hoped the food at the barracks would be more appetizing than her landlady’s meager mush or she would grow thinner than ever.
 
She had to build up her strength or she would easily be discovered.

The night was warm and the city air that crept in through the open casement window was heavy and putrid.
 
She tossed and turned throughout the night, disturbed by the cloying heat and unfamiliar noises and smells of the city that surrounded her, dreaming of discovery and shame.

In the early hours of the morning she was wakened by the calls of the street-sellers peddling their wares.
 
With a groan she rose, wrapped her breasts in a thick layer of linen strips, and covered them with her shirt, tucked into her leather breeches.
 
The wrappings felt doubly uncomfortable and constricting in the thick, moist heat of the city but she was woman enough that she had to bind her breasts tightly to hide them.
 
She would not allow her womanhood to be discovered through such an elementary mistake.

The barracks were close by the lodging house - in the very center of the heat and noise and dirt of the city.
 
By the time she arrived there on foot, the perspiration was dripping down her neck and soaking into her clothes.

Men in the uniform of the King’s Guard hustled hither and thither, all seemingly engaged on errands of supreme importance.
 
Sophie stood confused in the midst of the commotion, feeling lost and out of place, not knowing which way to turn.

She felt tears prick the back of her eyelids.
 
Gerard would have known what to do and where to go.
 

Gerard was no longer there to help her.
 
She was on her own.
 
With all the resolution she could muster, she squared her shoulders and began to stride off in a random direction, hoping that she looked more purposeful and in control than she felt.

She was arrested in mid-step by the shout of a fellow Musketeer.
 
“Gerard?
 
Gerard, is that really you?”

Sophie stopped dead in her tracks and instinctively turned away from the voice.
 
A critical part of her plan had been to avoid all Gerard’s old friends as much as possible, to lessen the chance of discovery.
 
“What do you want?”
 
She pitched her voice as low as she could, making it sound curt with impatience.

The Musketeer stopped short.
 
“Gerard?”
 
His voice was puzzled and hurt.
 
“Where are you off to in such a confounded hurry?
 
Have you no time to greet your friend?”

Sophie took in his appearance out of the corner of her eye.
 
He was taller than average, certainly far taller than she was, and broader in the shoulders than most men.
 
Despite his bulk, he wore the flared jacket of his uniform with an unstudied grace that she couldn’t help but envy, though he walked with a slight limp and noticeably favored one side above the other.
 
His hair was a rich wheaten gold that curled around his shoulders and his thigh-high boots were gleaming with polish.
 
She wondered which one of Gerard’s friends or acquaintances he was, but short of exposing herself by asking him, she had no way of knowing.

Whoever he was, he was well worth the looking at, did she ever have the liberty to look.
 
She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped the toe of her boot on the ground.
 
“I’m looking for the Captain.
 
Have you seen him?”

The Musketeer gestured to the group of buildings on the far side of the courtyard.
 
“Last I saw of him, he was giving the Captain of the foot soldiers an earful.”

Without another word, Sophie strode off in the direction he indicated and the Musketeer fell into step beside her.
 
“I was sorry to hear about your loss.
 
I grieved that I could be of no help to you.”

Sophie grunted.
 
Even after all those months of solitude as she recovered her strength and taught herself how to fight, her loss rubbed raw against her spirit.
 
She did not trust herself to speak of it.

“I knew how close you were to your sister, and how much you loved her.”

Her heart swelled with an anguished pride to hear herself so spoken of and to know that Gerard had confided his brotherly love to his comrade-in-arms.
 
She had to clear her throat several times before she could speak.
 
“We were twins.
 
We had seldom been apart from each other.
 
We were two, and now I am one.
 
I feel as though a part of me is gone.”

“I, too, mourned her death.
 
I was more than half in love with her already from the reports you had made of her.
 
I had hoped to be your brother by now…”

Lamotte.
 
Of course, such a handsome fellow had to be Lamotte – the author of her ruin.
 
She stopped dead, and faced her enemy for the first time.
 
“No matter,” she interrupted, stopping him in his tracks.
 
“Sophie is dead and buried, and nothing can bring her back.”

Lamotte stood still, gazing at her with an earnest puzzlement.
 
“You are not the man you used to be.”
 
His voice was tinged with a sober melancholy.
 
“The sickness has changed you in both mind and body.”

“I am the man I always was.”
 
She shrugged her shoulders and began to walk away, the memory of her solitary winter in a house of death making her shudder.
 
Lamotte had promised her brother he would take care of her, but he had broken his vow.
 
How she hated him for that.
 
“I had no time for cowards and scoundrels a year ago, just as I have no time for them now.
 
Good day.”

The words had barely left her mouth when she felt a sudden prick in her belly.
 

The Count, moving quickly despite his limp, pressed the point of his sword uncomfortably hard against the leather of her jerkin.
 
“No man, not even you, Gerard, calls me a coward.
 
Draw your sword.”

So this was it, Sophie thought, as she moved back a step and drew her sword.
 
Had she been cooler and more detached, she would not have provoked him so readily.
 
In the heat of the moment she had been overcome with her hatred of all that he stood for – the death of her brother and her loss of faith in humanity.
 
Forgetting that she was now a man and her words would be construed as a deadly insult, she had given in to the temptation to taunt him.

Now they would fight.
 
She had no illusions about her skill with the sword.
 
She had done her best to learn on her own, but she was direly in need of an expert teacher.
 
Unless she was lucky or he was a worse than usual swordsman, she would most likely die.

She had no fear of dying by his hand, only of dying without honor.
 

She focussed all her concentration on the sword in her fist.
 
She would acquit herself well in this fight and avenge her family if she could.
 
If she were unsuccessful, at least she would die in peace, knowing that she had done her best.

Gerard, this is for you
, she screamed in her heart as she made the first lunge, which he deflected with a quick flick of his wrist.

He feinted and then lunged back at her.
 
She knew that trick.
 
Her brother had taught it to her when they were both still children.
 
She twisted her body to one side, and the force of his blow cleaved only the empty air.

Backwards and forwards they went, now attacking, now defending, the clash of their swords drawing a crowd of the curious around them.
 
Sophie was breathing hard and her sword arm was starting to tire.
 
Lamotte, though his limp was more pronounced than ever and his face pinched with pain, had barely broken into a sweat.

She attacked once again.
 
He parried her thrust, bowed awkwardly to the onlookers and was upright again, his sword at the ready, before Sophie could react.
 

The audience guffawed with laughter.
 
He was ridiculing her lack of skill in front of their comrades.

“Are you ready to eat your words yet, boy?”

His mocking words made Sophie redouble her effort.
 
He was baiting her, toying with her, as a cat played with a mouse.
 
“Never.”

She attacked him with a renewed fury, concentrating all her attention in the movement of his body, seeking for hints of his next movement, those tiny clues that would give her the advantage in the attack.

One of the onlookers called out an encouragement.
 
Lamotte unwisely turned on his heel to acknowledge the favor with a tip of his hat.

In an instant Sophie was on him, drawing blood from the fleshy upper part of his arm with a lucky hit.

He cursed at the sight of the blood staining his jacket and his levity fled on the instant.
 
Sophie quaked in her borrowed boots at the new determination on his face.
 
Even the rowdy onlookers fell silent, sensing that the fun was now over.
 

Thrust after fatal thrust he aimed at her, steadily driving her back against the wall of the courtyard, until she could retreat no further.

He lunged again.

Sword raised to parry his blow, she tripped and fell sprawling on her back in the dirt.
 
The force of the impact knocked her weapon out of her hand, out of her reach, into the mud.

He stood above her blocking the sunlight, his sword at her throat.
 
She stared up at him, hatred in her heart, willing him to slit open her gorge with his blade and end her struggle.