Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (24 page)

"There is more you are not telling me. I cannot take the time to wring it from you, but I promise you will both suffer if any harm comes to her." Giles thrust a pistola in each boot and drew on a cloak, and called for his majordomo, who appeared as if he never slept. "Have my horse saddled and brought round. Pack my saddlebags with a plain black suit and sturdy boots and send to Tom Barnes at once and tell him to ready the ketch, dismount the bow culverin and take it below out of sight. I will be with him at the dock within the hour."

Giles grasped his rapier and baldric from the great table, buckling it under his cloak. "I leave you to pray, Doctor, and you to hope, Agnes. But I will go for her and bring her home if I have to fight both Cornells de Witt and Admiral de Ruyter."

Agnes shrank into herself. "You cannot hope to win against all their guns."

"Obvious. I must outsmart them, and you've given me the way."

The doctor looked up from his clasped hands. "Are we free to return to London, your lordship? I have a wife with a babe in her belly, and patients who are ill served by others' physic."

Already the tail of Giles's cloak was disappearing out the high stone entrance of Harringdon Hall.

Two sailors helped shove Meriel from de Witt's spacious cabin into an adjoining room scarcely the size of a large horse stall.

Felice ordered her captive's body wrapped in a hammock until she could not move. De Witt confirmed her wish to his men in the Hollander's tongue.

Felice stood over her, triumphant. "Whoever you are, you are not even a good counterfeit. Sir, do you not think her features are much coarser than mine?"

Meriel, staring defiantly between the rope loops, assumed Felice had a heart, but saw no sign of it. Felice had lost the fresh beauty she claimed, but Meriel kept these observations to herself. Though young, perhaps twenty and five, Felice's face had begun to reflect the hard use to which she had put her body and her soul.

De Witt made the politic answer.
"Ja,
nor on close observation does this spy have your experienced manner, Countess."

"Or, the burn mark, which I have carried since a childhood accident." Felice reached between the hammock's coils and lifted Meriel's hair, taking a step back, amazement and more anger on her face. "This cannot be!"

De Witt bent forward and lifted Meriel's hair. "William Chiffinch is a most formidable spymaster,
neeT
He looked on Meriel with some pity in his broad face. "We Dutch have need of such a one. Indeed, only France with its Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin is more clever than England with its Chiffinch. And perhaps not as ruthless."

Meriel had been countess for long enough to dislike being talked over as if she were a brainless servant. "Well, get on with it," she said, liking the defiance of the words, although being trussed reduced their intended bold effect. "Throw me overboard or hang me, but don't waste my remaining time when I would be about making my soul's peace."

Felice kicked her. "You make no demands here, you lowborn bawd."

"Oh, la, how different from a highborn bawd? If you must talk so much tittle-tattle, then tell me, Felice, how you escaped the Tower." Meriel pretended the kick had not hurt, though her hip would probably bear a mark tomorrow. If she had a tomorrow. "I may have need of such knowledge if Chiffinch gets his hands on me ever again." It pleased Meriel to deliberately omit any title or servile speech.

She put on an impish grin and a broad wink for de Witt, who was frankly admiring her through the hempen ropes tightly crisscrossing her bosom. "The Tower would surely be my lot, if you let me go." Meriel pretended anguish. "What a dilemma for a representative of the Dutch States-General, sir. Hanging a woman from your yardarm would surely alter your country's gentle reputation for coffee trading and tulip growing for some time to come."
Hey, well, I will gain more admiration with defiance, though I doubt much more leniency!

"Ja, I am tempted to return you to your spymaster with my compliments. Unless—" He let the word hang in the air. "You might be persuaded to work for us in truth. We will not have my lady Felice in London, and we could use a bold one like you, who, I don't doubt, has intrigued Chiffinch and half the court.... Perhaps Lord Giles himself." His face suggested more than his words.
"Ja,
quite tempted."

Although he didn't sound as tempted as Meriel would have liked, she laughed gaily. It proved an unsuccessful attempt and sounded more a gargle. "Are you offering a bargain, sir?" At least if she kept de Witt engaged, even challenged, they would not be putting a rope around her neck in the next few minutes.

Felice was furious, almost spitting the words at her. "You make no haggle here, bawd, as in the whore that spawned you!"

"And what whore would that be?" Meriel spit back.

"I will be the questioner, spy. Tell us your story and take care, for we know much already."

Meriel ignored her, looking to de Witt and keeping her voice vivacious to engage the regard for her that was all too apparent. "Then, sir, if you do not command here as it appears, make an end to me. I might enjoy a little hanging, since that would tend to lengthen the graceful neck you earlier admired, and stop this traitor's prattle in my ears." Meriel had always observed that what was first requested was usually last granted. She hoped this request would be no exception.

De Witt grinned. "Mistress, you make me happy we do not fight Englisher women."

Meriel laughed. "Do you not, Cornells?"

This angered Felice more. "Cornells? Do you allow her to cozen you? Take her below with the rats. That will loosen her tongue, or I will do it for her."

He bowed to Felice, but without a flourish.
"Ja,
I believe you would, but you forget yourself, my dear countess. I command here."

Felice held her next words, though Meriel thought her only temporarily halted.

De Witt stepped to his main cabin door and spoke to an officer in words that Meriel could not understand. She did understand the two sailors who appeared and carried her trussed up on deck like a ewe for market and thence down into the hold.

Thus far, she thought, as the seamen climbed back up to the deck, leaving her in the dark, Felice and her Hollanders were trying to frighten her in hopes of discovering more of her business. And from the way her heart thudded under her breast, they might be close to success. Was she a coward? Would she tell all when faced with the noose?

Her mind raced to find some plausible story. She had not exactly admitted to being Chiffinch's spy. They had assumed so and she had jollied them. But she could think of no other explanation for her presence on this Dutch warship that did not involve witchery or angels. Nor could she think of any escape. Except for de Witt, who might prove to be an unexpected friend, for it was certain he neither respected nor admired the Countess Felice.

Giles galloped toward Great Yarmouth in the glow of first light without his usual appreciation of morning sun flowing over pastures and fields already showing good spring crop growth. Everywhere in his mind, he saw his wife as she was now: the sweet curve of her body under his hands, the hard and bitter shell of the court beauty replaced by a soft and yielding girl, who must always have been there and who seemed touched by new love.

As he was.

He would not lose her again to Whitehall as once he thought he had. Now he understood her behavior of last night and those last words:
Remember our oak tree!

With his heart pounding in time to his horse's hooves, he clattered onto the streets of the harbor town and straight into a fruit seller's stall, scattering Spanish oranges everywhere. Giles reined in, his horse dancing in a circle. He untied his purse and tossed it to the vendor, leaving him openmouthed and richer by a month's receipts.

Tom Barnes waited quayside, the bow ropes half untied in his hands. "The crew be here, my lord, though I had to pull them from their warm beds."

"Gather on the foredeck, Tom."

With a quick touch of two fingers to his head, Tom wrapped the bow ropes securely and ran aboard, returning with four men, all deepwater sailors by their weathered faces and rolling gait.

Giles stepped to the deck and stood amongst his men. "My lady is now aboard a ship in the Dutch fleet, which is sailing south and up to some mischief against England. This ketch is of Dutch design. I mean to go out flying their flag as a packet sent to take her to Holland. A gold sovereign for any Englishman who helps me."

One man studied his bare toes. "That be temptation aplenty for a poor man, my lord, but the Hollanders have seventy-gun warships. They could blow us to smithereens, if ye don't fool them."

"I speak their language. I'll make them believe me."

"And what if they don't, my lord?"

"Any man wishing to go ashore is free to leave my service," Giles said in a tone that said he was finished with talk. "The rest of you cast off and make all sail."

The sailor who had no taste for Dutch cannonballs jumped to the dock. The rest cast off and hauled on the mainsail, which caught the wind and propelled them into the Channel.

Giles took the helm, setting an easterly course, shouting for all sails to be raised, and steered the ketch with the wind until it seemed to skim the waves like a seagull looking for a fish to break its fast.

He tried to keep a lighter touch on the helm as he changed into his solemn Dutch captain's clothing, but he found himself gripping the wheel, as if he could urge on the little ship faster with the sheer strength in his arms. He shouted continuous orders, raising and lowering sail to take advantage of every shift of wind.

Tom brought him ale, which he drank down quickly to warm his stomach, and bread, which he ate wet with spray, not tasting either. Nothing mattered, not comfort, not safety, not even his ketch, which he had built with his own hands and loved above all ships. Only this new Felice, this Merry, as he thought of her now, held his regard. She had become his world.

Meriel awoke in the dark hold, smelling rotted salt meat and worse. She tried to move but was still wrapped in the hempen hammock. It proved a tighter binding even than those she'd worn as a child at the charity house when punished in the miniature stocks thought fitting for orphans: those who swam in the Stour, disobeyed the master, stole bread or failed to beg enough pennies with their fake crutches.

Her stomach growled at the very thought of bread. She'd gladly sit in the stocks again for a piece of that warm bread
and thick Dutch butter resting on de Witt's map table. For a moment she was grateful for the hunger that kept her mind from Giles, and what he was doing and thinking.

She felt the knife along her thigh, but could not reach it.

A rat's claws skittered on the wood deck, a scrambling rat brushing against her foot. She kicked out as best she could in her rope cocoon. Shuddering, she turned her mind to anything but what was happening to her. And what Felice might be planning.

The little doctor and Agnes must be well on the south road to London by this time. And Giles? She smiled ruefully.
Hey, well, so I can't keep my mind from him.
Had he gone after the doctor's coach, thinking to find her? Or was he so angry that the old Felice had come again that he had finally ceased to care?

Against her will, she dozed and woke several times. With the overhead hatch closed she had no idea what time had passed, whether it was yet day or dusk. She was still wondering when she heard many feet running on the deck over her head, back and forth, and the sound of faintly shouted orders.

Meriel looked up as if she could see through the planking, and waited to hear the loud boom of a great gun. She had not long to wait. A cannon boomed and the ship rocked to starboard, then she heard nothing. After the silence came worse. She didn't need to know the language to understand shouts of triumph.

Was an English warship taken so easily?

Though she tried to force her mind to focus on all the reasons why it could not be so, there was one answer that resisted all her effort to reject.

Giles!

Sabers drawn, Dutch sailors swarmed down the starboard side of
De Zeven Provencien
and boarded the ketch
No Name.

"Steady on, men," Tom Barnes said to the three English crew. "Give the Hollanders no cause ter kill yer. Lord Giles be needing us."

One English sailor held Giles's bleeding head as he lay on the deck, barely conscious, a handkerchief tied about his blood-matted hair.

Cornells de Witt called down to the English seaman, "Bring Lord Giles up—carefully now. We'll take your ketch in tow. We may have use of it later."

A sling was ordered, but by the time it was lowered, Giles had staggered to his feet and stood braced against the shattered railing. "Tom, make all fast," he said, holding his voice steady for his men. He pushed away all help and slowly climbed the ladder to the enemy deck, gripping each step and blinking hard to force his eyes to see the next rung clearly. He scarcely felt the prodding pistol of the Dutch officer behind him.

On deck, de Witt bowed to him as the English crew was marched to the forward hold with muskets at their backs. Giles returned de Witt's courtesy, and unbuckling his baldric surrendered his sword, saying in perfect Hollander formal words he had never thought in this life to say:
"Ik ben uw gevangene."
He had always planned to die before losing his sword or telling a triumphant enemy /
am your prisoner.
But Merry had changed his wish to die gloriously in battle to living gloriously for her, though he thought her much crazed to take on spying, no matter how well intended. And without consulting him. True, they had been estranged much of the time. Finally, his head ached too much from the wood splinter that had grazed him to assign blame. Damned foul luck! How was he to know that de Witt would be on deck and he'd recognize the Dutch captain come out to take the Countess of Warborough to Holland. Would knowing have stopped him? No, but he wouldn't have risked his men's lives. If it was ransom the Hollanders wanted, he'd pay it.