Gideon's Angel (5 page)

I looked into Marguerite’s flushed face.

“Your audience was a fruitful one, I trust?” asked d’Artagnan.

“We discussed the Arras campaign,” I said, drawing Marguerite’s cloak closer about her shoulders as I propelled her ahead of me.

The musketeer’s bronzed face opened into a full-toothed grin. “Perhaps our Spanish problem will have an English solution.”

“Farewell, friend,” I told him as I saluted with a touch to my brim. “I am sure we’ll see each the other at the Cardinal’s next play, and in short time.”

Marguerite’s heels clopped unsteadily across the cobbles as I held her arm through mine. She let out a sigh. “Richard, I would rather you escort me to my rooms. I am fully spent after such a conversation with
Monsieur
d’Artagnan. He has fair talked me to death, I think. A most intense gentleman. He has quite left me breathless.”

I was saddened that I would not now have her to distract me from my darker thoughts, thoughts that now crept up fast on me. Mazarin was not a man to be easily fobbed off and would expect more than just a mean morsel—he desired meat. And so I took her to her apartments and then made my way into the freezing streets again, to a coffee house. Paris was roiling with the late morning swarm of sedan chairs and their huffing bearers, swearing drovers, footmen, and vendors bundled in their cloaks against the chill like corpses in shrouds. I blew inside the nearest establishment and finding a place on a bench apart from others, the bitter drink of the Turkmen soon warmed my bones and began to enliven me.

And then the Beast came.

Like a kettle filling with water, I could feel it rising up within me. And, as before, I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it. Welling up inside me was the most overwhelming sensation of cold sickening dread. My hands started to shake, my heart raced, and I drew breath as if I was being chased by a legion of monsters. I could feel the sweat dripping down my face. In a few moments, the sickness had embraced me in its terrible arms. I hunched over the table, hands cupped tightly about my drink, and tried to summon all my will to master the fear that was washing over me. It was all I could do to hold on.

It was my dreadful secret, one I had yet to share even with my Marguerite. I had faced Croats, Germans, Poles, Cromwell’s Ironsides, and Spaniards, all without flinching. When battle surrounded me, I revelled in the noise and clash, never once turning tail. But this curse, this unseen creature that pounced on me without warning, it froze me like a terrified lamb. The beast could strike for hours—or minutes. It had started only a few years before. And since then, it came again and again, every few months, even when nothing was troubling me. But I knew this time what had brought it upon me.

My jaw clenched as I stared into the Turkish brew. And suddenly, someone behind called out my name. With his usual habit of surprise, Andreas Falkenhayn was suddenly there in front of me, his churchyard cough echoing and raising heads. It was never lost upon me just how strange that we two, companions in some twenty seasons of campaign, were now again united under a common paymaster: the Cardinal. I had made his acquaintance in the German wars fighting under the Danish king when I was a lad new to soldiering. I latched onto Andreas and he made sure I stayed alive. If I was now around forty-and-six years old, God alone knew how old Andreas was.

“
Rikard
! You old bastard,” he croaked. “I had given up hope that you would ever visit again whilst I drew breath.”

I could already feel the Beast retreating, loosening its claws from me. “By God, you look like you’ve been whoring and drinking again,” I said as he sat down on the bench next to me. In truth, he looked drawn, grey-faced, and very, very weary.

A rumbling laugh welled up from his chest, seasoned with a goodly amount of phlegm. “I suppose my looks give away my night-time frolics. And, well, I’ve slowed a bit since our adventures last summer. But, hey, what’s this? You look not well either, my friend.”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “Born of drinking coffee too quickly. But you, you’re in need of a physician. Has the good widow not summoned someone to see to you?”

“Bah, there’s little any barber surgeon can do that the goodwife hasn’t tried already. I’ll right myself by April.”

The more he prattled the quicker the Beast fled me. Restored, I told him the tale of my conversation with our common patron and that I was to spy upon the house of Stuart for the Cardinal. But I left out any mention of the true quest I had been given: to find out whether King or Parliament was entreating with the Devil. He shook his head slowly and said, “You’ll find yourself taking fire from both sides,
Rikard.
You’d better play this one with care.”

“I know that, friend, and I think I would rather take my chances against the Spanish at Arras. At least there the musket balls come from just
one
direction.”

“Surely there’s some empty scrap of intelligence you could offer up, as it were.”

“Not this time. The Cardinal has other spies at work in the court and he will quickly put to the test any fables I invent for him.”

The Cardinal would need his report. Yet, perhaps I might buy some time to figure out my course of action. The two chief factions at the court, those gathered about Sir Edward Hyde, the more cautious lot, and those gathered about Lord Herbert, the king’s Attorney-General, calling themselves the Swordsmen, had been angling to gain my support for months now. Perhaps it was time to show more interest.

“There’s a damned good reason I’ve kept my head this long,” said Andreas. “And that’s because I don’t commit myself to anything before I’ve reached the dregs of the cup. By that time, the path forward is usually clear.”

“Even if one’s head is not,” I remarked, smiling at the old soldier. And I was dead tired, tired before my work had even begun.

Chapter Four

“W
HAT SAY YOU
, Colonel? Are you game?” Lord Herbert had just refilled my cup for the second time. He retook his seat and watched me, his rheumy old eyes narrowing, eager for my answer.

“A
promised
uprising in the West Country is about as good as a promise of payment from a pauper,” I said. “Unlikely to ever happen and too late if it does.”

“I told you not to waste time with this mercenary,” said Herbert’s companion. “He’s managing well enough. He has a feather bed and someone to warm it for him.”

I was too old and too hardened to rise to the bait on that one. I merely smiled and raised my cup. “You have not laid out a strategy, gentlemen, only a prayer.”

Baron Gerard, a fire-eater who was at least ten years younger than me, neither liked nor trusted me. “Don’t lecture me on strategy, sir. I speak of duty. I was in the saddle at Worcester, clouting Roundheads. But I don’t recall
your
presence there.”

Lord Herbert tut-tutted and shook his head in an attempt to calm the waters. “Give Sir Richard his due, my lord. He has done great service to the Crown.”

They had revealed to me a plan to rise up simultaneously in Devon and London in the coming summer, the West Country rising to begin a week before the one in the capital, the better to lure Cromwell’s regiments away from the city. Even so, it seemed to me less a plan and more wishful thinking. Ensconced in Lord Gerard’s chambers, away from prying eyes and ears, these two had shown me that Mazarin was correct in his suspicions that the Swordsmen were quite willing to have another go at Mister Cromwell. But nothing I had picked up in the last few weeks had led me to a supposed circle of courtiers doing the work of the Devil under the noses of King Charles and his all-knowing mother. I was in danger of failing Mazarin’s mission, and now, here I was being handed another fool’s errand.

Gerard wrenched a chair back and plumped himself at the table, leaning in towards me. “My kinsman John waits in London even now, drawing more numbers to him. We need more old campaigners such as you to stiffen the spine in the west. This thing can be done, sir. Every report we receive tells us the country is ready to rise against the Tyrant.”

I did admire Gerard. He, like me, had served in exile with the French under General Turenne. He spoke from experience hard-earned and fought. He was no idle fop. Yet even so, talk of rising was a forlorn hope—and I had finished with that a long time ago.

“How many men do you have between Exeter and Plymouth?” I asked him.

“Three hundred thereabouts. We have arms and can seize powder at will when the time is right.” Gerard’s eyes seemed to get bigger as he spoke. He was convinced of the moment, but he, unlike me, still burned with the Faith.

I sighed heavily at the woeful number. “This plan succeeds only where the blow falls in both west and east. You don’t have enough men to fight the whole army. Timing is balanced on a knife edge. If too soon or too late, one or the other attack will fail.”

Gerard’s hand came down on the table, spilling the wine. His long handsome face, unblemished despite his many battles, shone with a determination that shamed me. “We don’t have to defeat the whole of the army! The feint in the West will draw out enough troopers for us to take London. When that pin falls, the others will quickly follow.”

Lord Herbert nodded. “We have a strong chance. The whole country is like a rotten apple. It only has to be cut open to reveal its corruption.”

I then asked what had to be asked. “And what does His Majesty say to this enterprise?”

The pause, short though it was, told all.

“The king trusts in us to regain the kingdom,” said Herbert. “But others prefer to sit upon their arses or talk of wishful purpose with the Dutch.”

“So, Chancellor Hyde does not know your plan either,” I said quietly.

Lord Gerard leaned back into his chair like a scolded schoolboy, his face in a sulk. “We thought you would see the world as we do—like a soldier. One who understands what must be done to set things to right again. But I perceive in this I was mistaken.”

Lord Herbert was not so quick to give up on me. “Colonel, Hyde and his ilk are content to stay here until we all rot—or the French throw us out. Time is not with us, sir. We must act and soon, lest the folk come to believe their king has forgotten them.”

I lifted up my head and looked him in the eye. “I shall not speak for the king but
I
have not forgotten them. I left my wife and my children—lost all that I possessed—to fight Cromwell. After Naseby, they banished me, but my family suffer in Devon still. I’ll not hazard their lives in a new folly against the Parliament. You failed at Worcester in open battle—fairly fought. The next will bring much the same result. And more death, and want, and woe for those who resist.” And I regretted the words even as they flew from my lips.

“If I had known that you believe the Cause is lost, I would not have shared my confidence,” said Herbert. “I am heartily sorry for it.”

Gerard stood. As far as he was concerned, the business was at an end. “Don’t waste your breath. He’s a beaten man... as I told you.”

I rose, staring him down. “I have been to places and grappled with things that you have only glimpsed in your nightmares. I choose my own battles these days, sir,” I hissed. “And I have suffered a bellyful of lost causes.”

Gerard shook his head in disdain. “You’re broken.”

How could I even have begun to tell him I have spoken with the ghosts of men?

A
WEEK PASSED.
A week in which I contemplated throwing my lot in with Hyde and the other arse-sitters, in which I dreaded the arrival of a summons from Mazarin, and in which I very nearly returned to the regimental barracks to hide, besotted in drink. My dear Maggie, she who I could open my heart to, I spared the worry and the secrets. She knew I was distracted, but wouldn’t press the matter even as she tried to comfort me. Yet, I suspected that she had guessed the cause of my strife. It could be timed to the moment I had met the Cardinal in his wine cellars. And so, I had finally arrived at that dark, deathly quiet place where no one in the world is to be trusted.

A summons arrived for me. But it was not from Mazarin even though it was brought by a runner from the Cardinal’s regiment. He had found me at the barracks after asking for me in the Louvre. The lad, his face nearly purple from the cold and the brutal run through the streets, doffed his hat and gushed out the message in between gulps of air. “Sir... Captain Delacroix begs... that you come with me at once. Major Falkenhayn is gravely ill. He... the German, is asking for you.”

When we reached the door to his house, I saw two dragoons standing nearby. I was halfway up the staircase to his chamber when the smell filled my nostrils. Sweet and metallic, it could have been a butcher’s shop. I saw a figure sprawled upon the bed, hands clenched into the coverlet that loosely covered him. Captain Delacroix, a young officer of Mazarin’s horse, touched my forearm as I stood in the threshold. “
Monsieur
, he lives yet... just. He has asked for you.”

“Where is the surgeon?” I asked. The only other person who stood in the room was the old widow who owned the place, silent and expressionless.