Prisoner of the Flames (Leisure Historical Romance) (11 page)

“But—”

“Be still now, child, and pray that I remember how to find it.”

T
he birds had begun to twitter awake, and the cock to crow
as the fugitives reached the ruins. The rain had stopped falling, and an eerie, predawn mist hovered over the land in its place, all but hiding the wounded castle ruins from view. The attached smokehouse was the only viable option offering shelter and seclusion. They entered cautiously, for it, too, was strewn with rubble, and it would be awhile yet before first light illuminated the pitfalls.

Exhausted, Robert sank down on the moldy straw that carpeted the place, and groaned in response to the searing pain he had thus far put aside owing to the urgency of the journey. Now, having freed himself of the helm in Violette ‘s blind presence, he indulged in the sheer pleasure of that groan, and lay still while her small, soft hands attended its cause.

“God, but you have a gentle touch,” he told her, surrendering to it.

“You have lost much blood,” she said. “This is no simple gash. A sword has cut deeply in. You are in grave need of a physician, my lord, and I know not where or how to fetch one.”

“One is already fetched, little flower,” said a shadowy shape emerging from the blackness.

Startled, Violette cried out, and Robert’s narrowed eyes strained the first hint of dawn diluting the darkness astonished, as the flowing gown and angular headdress of Michel de Nostredame bled into focus.

“D-Doctor Nostradamus!” he murmured. “What are you doing here?”

“Awaiting you,” the healer replied flatly.

“You are indeed a sorcerer. How could you know that I—that
we
—would come here, when I did not know myself, until the very last?”

Strolling closer, Nostradamus smiled. “It doesn’t take a sorcerer to fathom what a cornered rat will do. But there is a certain facet of…perception afoot in all this. It was I who introduced you to this haven if you recall? And I told you we would meet again somewhat…abruptly, did I not? Some of that might well be deemed sorcery, but, for the most part, is pure logic; nothing more.”

“Well, logic, accident, or black arts, I am glad, indeed, for the sight of you, sir.”

“You have been wounded,” the healer said, “and I see you have found our Violette.”

“When I did not seek her, as you foretold,” Robert realized.

“So I did. And you, child,” said Nostradamus, scrutinizing Violette in his inimitable manner. “How did you come to be among the apostates? Surely, you have not converted?” he urged, his voice grown stern at the prospect. “That would be unwise.”

“No, Doctor Nostradamus,” she murmured demurely. “They gave me food and lodging in exchange for honest work among the beasts in their keeping.”

“Ahhh,” the healer said, clearly relieved, for it was well known that he would have no truck with Huguenots. “But you look a fright, girl. Are you in need of my unctions, also?”

“No, sir,” she said. “I am in his lordship’s debt over my good health, but he is gravely injured. Much blood has been lost, and the wound wants cleaning badly.”

“Mmm,” Nostradamus grunted. “Can you stand, young ram?”

“If I must,” Robert replied.

The healer reached the brickwork that had once enclosed the ovens in two shuffling strides, and pressed heavily on a brick at the back of it. With that, a slab moved in the floor until a hole appeared at his feet.

“Come,” he charged. “You cannot stay here. These old walls are far too pervious. Any façade that will let in the rays of dawn will also permit the eyes of Coligny’s troops—not to mention the cardinal, who has the eyes of a ferret.” He beckoned, and waited while Violette helped Robert up. “Come,” he said, “we go below.”

Robert stared bewildered at the gaping hole, and Nostradamus smiled. Producing a beeswax candle and tinderbox from the folds of his gown, he lit the candle.

“All old castles have their secret rooms,” he said. “They were designed to protect women and children in times of siege. I found this one quite by accident some years ago. Old ruins fascinate me. There is a similar mechanism for opening it from below as well.”

Holding the candle high, he led them below to a spacious chamber gouged into the very bowels of the foundation. A long straw pallet lay in the corner. Spared the dampness of the upper level, it was actually fresher than the one Robert had vacated above, and hadn’t been visited by rats. It wasn’t the soft mattress he had dreamed of, but he sank gratefully into it nonetheless.

“No one will sight the candle down here,” the healer told him. “This sanctuary is most cleverly designed. Many of the dovetail joints in these walls have been altered to form vents that let in the air when needed, but in such a way that no telltale light will leak through. It was intended to shelter many indefinitely. There are other chambers also—a maze of them, but enough of pre-Crusade architecture. Let’s have a look at that wound. Violette…,” he said, taking her hand, “let me lead you, child. I shall need you to assist me.”

Saying no more, the aging physician drew a sack of herbs
and powders, and a skin of fresh water from the folds of his gown, which seemed to serve as his traveling apothecary. And, while Violette held the candle with his guiding, he proceeded to cleanse, purify, and cauterize Robert’s wound, reviving him afterward with a medicinal cordial brewed of herbs.

“He will recover, no?” Violette begged.

“Most certainly, little flower,” Nostradamus assured her, blatantly astonished at the question. “He will mend quickly with rest and tending.”

“I will leave you a draught made from the poppy for pain that will allow him the sleep he needs, and another to bathe the wound for now. It needs a poultice of bread and cheese mold. I will bring some when I return. You must dress it morning and night after a thorough cleansing. Here are clean binding strips,” he said, putting them in her hand.

“No…!” Robert moaned from his drug-induced consciousness, “she…cannot stay here. I was going to leave her in Montaigne’s keeping. That is not possible now. The cardinal and Coligny’s men are at the château seeking me. That’s why we came here. They seek her also. The gendarmes, Jean-Claude and Henri, seek her. That is why she took refuge among the Huguenots. I am to blame for it. They would have liked to bury me in that filthy jail. But for her, I would be there still, or dead. For that, she will suffer if left unprotected.”

“What is to be done with her, then?” asked Nostradamus.

“Have I no say?” Violette interrupted. “My lord, you need not trouble over me. I will make my own way, just as I have always done.”

“How?” Robert challenged, “—blind, alone, and sought by the authorities? How, lass, the way you did with Louis de Brach? Things are different now. You can no longer ‘do as you have always done.’”

“I am not your responsibility.”

“I must leave France now, while they think me dead. But first I must know that you are safe and cared for. Doctor Nostradamus…can you shelter her?”

“No, young ram, I cannot, more’s the pity. I had hoped to be on my way home to Salon by now, but the king has suffered a relapse. He is consumptive you know, in the early stages of the disease. The foolish child took an outing yesterday in the autumn air without my sanction or anyone’s knowledge. It has set him back apace, I fear.”

“God’s teeth!” Robert gritted through rigid lips. Clenching his workable fist, he pounded the pallet. “It isn’t serious?” he urged.

“It isn’t fatal, if that’s what you’re asking,” Nostradamus replied, “but it is serious enough to keep me here awhile longer—too long, I’m afraid, to be of service to our little flower here, and you are right, you must be away soon, young lord. The soldiers of Coligny shan’t be duped for long. When your body is not found among the dead, they will certainly seek you among the living, and it is hardly going to be a simple task slipping through their fingers in that silver bonnet of yours.”

“Suppose she were to stay here once I’ve gone? Could you…look after her, and perhaps see her south to some safe place, a convent, or an abbey, when you finally do depart from the city?”

The healer thought upon this, tugging at his beard. “I suppose that could be arranged,” he said at last. “There are several fine convents in the south that I must pass by returning home. I am sure—”

“You speak as though I am not even here!” Violette cried, fiercely stamping her foot. “I am no piece of property to be disposed of! I will not be shut up in a nunnery!”

“Is there no one to care for you?” Robert pleaded. “No kindred whom perhaps you have overlooked, lass?”

“I never knew my parents,” she murmured, shaking her
lowered head, “only that they loved me, and named me Violette because my mother so loved the violets that bloomed in the spring, when I was born. They both died shortly after, of a fever. My aunt Marie kept me until she died when I was eight. We frequented the vendors daily, and I became well acquainted with them. That is how I came to be one when she died. Jacques and Justine Delon had lost a child that autumn, and they took me in. The vendors are my friends. Any one of them would come to my aid now and suffer execution for it. More than friends—they are my
family
—poor folk who have no means to buy leniency. I cannot endanger them, and I do not want to be entombed in any nunnery!”

“What do you want, Violette?” Robert asked softly.

“I…I want to sell my flowers by the bridge,” she sobbed bitterly, “and be free—as I have always been.”

Robert sighed. “I am a blunderer at best, but this. This is the greatest blunder to my credit yet. Can you forgive me?”

“There is naught to forgive, my lord,” she said, “but…please do not shut me up in the convent. I shall die if you do! I could not bear to be caged.”

That admission struck a chord. Hadn’t he said much the same to his uncle before this nightmare began? She was no more cut out for the religious life than he was. It was plain that the mere thought of it terrified her, and he had no words of consolation or persuasion. He would not force upon her what he would not himself endure. Not unless her very life depended upon it, and there were no other options. Her fierce spirit would never thrive there.

“Little flower,” Nostradamus soothed in his most gentle voice, “you need not become a nun to take shelter in a nunnery. The good sisters will care for and feed you in exchange for performing chores, just as you did at the Huguenot village, until they find some other situation suitable for you. You will be protected there—given sanctuary. We are seeking a safe haven for you.”

“But my flowers…,” she moaned.

“There, there, child, do not grieve so,” Nostradamus comforted. “You cannot sell your flowers in Paris any longer. Besides, soon all the flowers will be gone until the spring. Do you trust me, Violette?”

She nodded.

“Ahhh, good!” said Nostradamus. “I will come again at dusk with food, and all you shall need. We will speak again of your dilemma then, once we have all had time to ponder it. You must never grieve over that which you have no power to control. Do not fly in the face of destiny. Whatever fabric it is that God weaves for your future already has its warp and weft. No tears that you can shed will shrink it, that tapestry.”

“Doctor Nostradamas,” Robert murmured haltingly, unable to hide his pain behind the stilted control of a voice grown husky, “you have done so much for me already…I hesitate to ask, but…is there any way that you could send word to my sponsor that I live? I would be eternally grateful, sir.”

“That would not be…wise,” Nostradamus warned.

“But, surely he will not betray me? He thinks me dead. Can I not spare him needless sorrow? He has been a good and generous friend to me in France.”

“I did not say that I would not deliver your message, young ram,” the healer said quietly, though his voice boomed like thunder, “—only that it is…unwise. But that, alas, is also part of the tapestry. Wisdom, or the lack of it, is no more than sand in God’s mortar. I, it seems, am to be the pestle to grind the paste of your future. But who—or what—shall be the oil to bind the stuff? Or will it be venom that congeals it?”

“Oh, Christ, I beg you, please, no more idioms—no riddles—no cryptic verse. You waste your precious breath
here now. In my present state, they are beyond my comprehending.”

Nostradamus smiled. “Some things, I fear, are better left beyond our comprehending,” he said. “This, my rash warlord, could well be one of them.”

T
he bondservant, Francine, ushered the physician in at the
château, and led him to the parlor study to wait for seigneur de Montaigne to join him. The sun had scarcely cleared the southern hills and its warmth had not yet reached the château. The air had grown cooler since the storm, promising an early frost. Such was the healer’s view as he gazed through the leaded oriel window toward the courtyard beyond. When Montaigne entered through the open door behind him, though he had not heard him do so, Nostradamus spoke.

“Thank you for receiving me at such an early hour, Michel,” he murmured, turning at last. “My business is urgent…and personal. Are we quite alone?”

Francine still waited close by, and the magistrate dismissed her with a hand gesture, and shut the door behind her. The healer listened for the scuffling sound of her footfalls receding along the passageway outside, but, strain though he did he heard no such sound.

“None but myself and the bondservants are in residence, Doctor, and they are all completely loyal to me.” Montaigne assured him. He seemed pale and drawn, evidently for lack of sleep, judging from the dark shadows wreathing his bleary eyes.

Nostradamus nodded through a doubtful smile. “Yes, well, I will be brief,” he intoned. “I have just come from the Laird of Berwickshire. He is wounded, but he lives. He was most distressed that you would presume him dead, despite the fact that he conceived the deception to spare you chastisement, and was anxious that I come with gentler news.”

“Praise God!”
Montaigne breathed. “But he is wounded, you say? How serious is it, Doctor Nostradamus?”