Prisoner of the Flames (Leisure Historical Romance) (16 page)

“You are not having yours,” she pouted, shivering against him again.

“I will save it,” he informed her, glancing over his shoulder again. “When it is needed, it will be had. It is all we have left. What ails you, are you cold?”

“The taste,” she whined. “My stomach rejects it…”

“Nonsense,” he scoffed, scowling at her contorted face and tearing eyes. “Stop complaining, and obey me! I am in no humor for childish rebellion. We must form another plan here now—and quickly. I need all of my wits about me to deal with that.”

He turned back again, fixing his eyes on the path ahead, ignoring her sudden wracking cough and heaving body as it stiffened against him, dismissing it as obvious theatrics staged to win him over, though he cast her another scathing glance over his shoulder as it continued. How could she be such a child in one moment, and such a sensuous, passionate woman in the next? Having known none save strumpets in the stews at home, he had no understanding of the virtuous female psyche, though he had often fantasized about it. This female, however, had put his patience to the test. Despite it all, try though he did to deny it, he would miss her once they parted, and that nagging thought had contributed to his foul temper.

“What will we do?” she asked him warily, before he had a ready answer.

A muttered string of well-rehearsed oaths replied to that.

“Which way do we travel?”

“We cannot go south,” he snapped. “You heard the sister,
the plague is rampant there, and we cannot return to Paris. That is certain death for us both. He
knew
this, damn him! Yes, he knew. What else does he know, I wonder?”

“Doctor Nostradamus?”

“Doctor Nostradamus,” he echoed. “What is he, saint, or demon? I do not know, but I wish I’d never come seeking his counsel. I wish those blasted flames had eaten me whole in that damnable cradle. I wish…oh, Christ, I
wish!
You think that
you
are in prison? Hah!”

“But where will we go?” she persisted. “And do not blaspheme. We can ill afford to anger God here now.”

“There is only one way we can go,” he said “—north, to the channel. I will take you to the Mount. Uncle Aengus will know what to do. He will arrange sanctuary for you at the convent there.”

“How long a journey is it?”

“How in God’s name should I know that?” he responded. “I have never made it from this vantage. We shall have to rest awhile here in the forest before we set out in any case, else this poor beast fall down dead beneath us. Besides, I have not slept, and I can go no further.”

“Your wound grieves you?”

“The devil take my wound!” he snarled, reining in beside the stream the nun had spoken of. “We will have to pass the night here.” Lifting her down, he made her comfortable in a bed of leaves, tended the horse, and began rummaging through the provisions sack. “It is as good a spot as any, and there is water,” he said. “Our skin is empty, and the horse is wanting.” He studied her closely then, noting that her grimacing had miraculously ceased. “Have you finished your lozenge so soon?” he queried.

“Y-yes,” she murmured.

“You haven’t chewed it, have you?”

“No, I did not chew it, my lord.”

“I have no doubt that we shall soon be disposed of,” he
growled, setting a piece of bread, and a small wedge of cheese in her hands. “This is the last. If we are to depend upon Doctor Nostradamus’s wisdom, this would indicate that soon now we reach the journey’s end.” Digging deeper in the sack, he found the map and spread it wide to the eerie fleeting bursts of moonlight filtering down through the trees, for the storm had passed over.

“God’s precious blood!” he barked, tracing the old healer’s skillful outline on the sheepskin. “I thought as much.”

“What is it?” Violette murmured, the bread suspended halfway to her mouth.

“He has laid out our course through the channel, so it seems,” he told her.

She gasped.

“I hadn’t noticed before, but I see it here now. There are no markings at all to the south, yet the north is fully detailed. He knew we would be taking this direction. He meant for us to take this turn, God rot him!”

“How long before we reach the quay?”

“Not long, but any length is too long here now.”

“What do you mean, my lord?”

“Nevermind,” he snapped. The longer their journey together took, the greater the temptation she would become, and the more difficult it would be for him to part from her when the time came. But this he dared not let her know. This wasn’t part of his plan.
She
wasn’t part of his plan. But here she was in all her innocence, all soft and fresh and vulnerable…and willing—everything he could have hoped for—his for the taking, and yet he dared not if he were to satisfy his honor. “Finish that and go to sleep, child,” he said. “On the morrow it will end, this nightmare, if I must die in the attempt.”

T
t was three days before Robert and his charge reached St.
Michael’s Mount. They replenished their food supply at the marketplace along the quay, but they consumed precious little of it. The channel crossing was a hazardous voyage fraught with howling winds that whipped up heaving white-capped swells of churning water, tossing the galley like a cork amid the froth and swill and spindrift at the mercy of the autumn sea. At times it seemed alive, a vengeful human entity full-bent upon swallowing them whole.

Violette clung so desperately to his homespun sleeve in her terror of the storm, that his arm beneath was sore and swollen from the outset. She scarcely touched the food, though she retched repeatedly, and he was thankful that he’d given her the lozenge long before they ever reached the coast or it would surely have been wasted. She told him that she had never traveled by sea before, and, though she didn’t complain, her fear was obvious. Her trembling became quaking, and there was no color in her. He was no fonder of sea travel than she, but he was accustomed to it, and it was easier, being able to see the waves, to anticipate their direction, and to dodge the cruel spray and backwash from the sea. He couldn’t begin to imagine what it must be like to suffer such a voyage blind, and he tried to soothe her with tenderness and compassion.

He managed to keep her fairly dry for the duration, but her trembling never ceased, and when they finally set foot on the rockbound shingle that girded the foot of the Mount, he held her even closer, for she reeled and staggered
like a cup-shotten sailor. They had reached the summit before her feet seemed to remember that she walked again upon dry land.

No one paid them any mind on their way to the abbey. One more monk and nun were hardly conspicuous in a place where practically all the populous were religious, and Robert finally began to draw an easy breath. A strange monk showed them in and led them to the refectory, where he bade them wait, but it was not his uncle Aengus who joined them there, but the abbot himself. Puzzled, Robert rose and approached the elder cleric, whose cold, hooded eyes, the color of slate, shot him through with spine-tingling chills. Beyond that they were cold, unwelcoming, and unreadable.

“I am Robert Mack of Paxton, Laird of Berwickshire, nephew of Aengus Haddock of this abbey,” he greeted.

“I know who you are, my lord,” the abbot said stiffly.

“I seek audience with my uncle over a most urgent matter, good abbot…If I might see him but briefly?”

“He is no longer with us,” the abbot intoned.

“He…he isn’t…isn’t…?”

“Dead? I doubt it, but of course I cannot be certain.”

“What riddle is this? Not here? Where is he, then?”

“He has been taken, my lord.”

“Taken? Taken where?”

“To prison,” the abbot said flatly.

“Prison? Who has taken him? Where? What prison?”

“Yesterday, the cardinal of Lorraine arrived with an entourage from Paris. They took him into custody, and departed again for that city less than an hour after they arrived.”

“How did they come, by way of the Seine through the channel, or from Brittany, to the south?” Robert gritted through clenched teeth, his rigid arm impervious to Violette’s pinching grip upon it.

“By way of the channel.”

“You say they returned to Paris?”

The abbot nodded.

“That filthy, makeshift Bastille?” Robert breathed.

Again the abbot nodded.

“But why? What is the charge?”

“Treason against the Church,” said the abbot. “He is chastised for
your
crime, young lord. You are not welcome here. I must ask that you leave the Mount at once. You are wanted for murder, and your uncle, our good brother, accused of heresy and sedition in light of your…misadventures in France. Did you expect that Mount St. Michael Abbey would embrace you with open arms?”

“I knew nothing of this until this moment, good abbot,” Robert stammered. “I will return to Paris at once and see him released. He will not be punished for my crime, I promise you.”

“It is far too late for noble heroics,” the abbot said. “You should have thought beyond your actions beforehand. Nothing will sway the cardinal now. If you return, it will be to join your uncle, not to affect his release. In any event, you cannot remain here.”

“I will leave at once, of course,” said Robert, “but I beg you, let the child remain. She has done no wrong, and she is blind.”

“I cannot do that. She is wanted also.”

“On what charge?” Robert demanded, acutely aware of her hand tightening on his arm, not out of fright this time; she was clearly trying to restrain him.

“Heresy, and complicity in your escape,” the abbot said with raised voice. “There is talk that sorcery is afoot, and that when she is caught, she will go before the Inquisitor. She
cannot
stay here. We cannot harbor her. It is treason to do so.”

“You must!” Robert thundered.

“I beg your pardon?” the abbot intoned, incredulous. “Remember yourself, and where you are, my lord.”

“I beseech you…she is blind,” Robert persisted. “She has no one. Pestilence is widespread on the mainland. You seal her death warrant, sending her back there. She is but a child!”

“She is a Huguenot, and a heretic,” the abbot corrected.

“Forgive me,” Violette interrupted, turning both their heads, “but I am neither. I am Catholic, as yourself.”

“Why, then, were you living amongst the heretics?” the abbot insisted.

“She tended their livestock for food and lodgings, nothing more,” Robert put in.

“She can speak for herself, so it seems,” said the abbot. “Hold your peace, and let her do so.”

“He speaks truth,” she murmured.

“And you would have me believe that you were not one of them?”

“It is true,” she insisted.

“This man you cling to so tenaciously stands accused of the murder of General Louis de Brach, under the cardinal’s command. What say you to that, child?”

“It is true, good abbot,” Robert answered for her.

“Will you hold your tongue and let her speak?” the abbot thundered, “or must I separate you to have this sorted out?”

“General de Brach overpowered me while I was setting the cattle free of the burning barn where I slept, and made an attempt to…to take me down,” she explained, her fingers pinching Robert’s arm so acutely that he winced. Understanding their message, he kept silent. “If he had not intervened, the general would have…violated me. They fought, and the general was slain. Laird Mack was wounded also. The wound needs tending. I know it, though he will not admit it. Please, won’t you help him?”

The abbot breathed a thoughtful sigh. “Is what she speaks the truth, my son?” he queried.

“All save that my wound is grievous. It is clean, and mending well enough. There is no need to trouble over it.”

“Some of our own have sunken to the heretic’s level so it seems,” the abbot mused, “but that does not alter the charge against you, or the validity of it. You stand accused and guilty of the crime by your own admission. I will not judge you, but I cannot help you either, else we all be shut up in the Bastille. These are dangerous times. I am sorry, my lord, for you, and for the girl, and most of all, for Brother Aengus. A pity you sought to enmesh him and this abbey in your irresponsible misadventures. No. You must go at once from Mount St. Michael Abbey. There can be no help for you here.”

“I seek none for myself, but please help the lass,” Robert begged. “Or, at the very least, recommend a convent where she might find sanctuary.”

“She cannot stay here, and I cannot recommend her. There can be no more complicity—no further accusation of sedition against this abbey. Do you know what it is that you ask? Your request is out of the question. Surely, you can see that?”

“I see a poor, blind, frightened child, whose only crime is that she happened to have the gross misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and has managed to tangle herself into my misfortune in her helplessness. You would condemn her to death for that, a holy father—an
abbot of the Church?.
I am loath to believe it.”

“Believe this then—no holy Catholic sanctuary this close to France will have you—either of you, so long as treason and sorcery taint you, and it will be so long as Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine, draws breath. His influence is far-reaching. I am sorry. You must go. You have tarried too long here already. There are spies everywhere.”

“I will take her to Scotland,” Robert conceded, “but first I must go to Uncle Aengus. Please, will you keep her just until I return?”

“You will
never
return, my lord.”

“I cannot take her back there, you know that. They will execute her!”

“I am thinking that sorcery really is afoot here,” the abbot said. “I am thinking that this child bewitched Louis de Brach—and you—and now would try her sorcery upon
me
here in this holy place!”

“You cannot possibly believe that.”

“Doctor Nostradamus’s hand is in this, is it not? And has he not thrice been before the Inquisitor?”

“And twice
acquitted,”
Robert hurled at him, his whole body delivering the word. “How do you dare accuse this child of witchcraft?
You
are the blind one. If nothing else, propriety dictates here. She cannot travel with me alone…unchaperoned, to God knows where for God knows how long. Can you give me no direction—no guidance at all?”