Honour and the Sword (47 page)

I shut the bedroom door and quietly turned the key behind me. They didn’t see me do it, they were too busy laughing at the sight of Florian sitting fully dressed and drinking his wine.

‘Having a party of your own,
hijito
?’ said Pablo.

I think Florian had a little difficulty adjusting to the sight of them. He had probably thought as I did, that here were our rescuers at last.

He said ‘No one invited you in. Please go away.’

‘That’s not very nice,’ said Luiz, picking up the empty jug. His hands seemed unsteady, and I guessed he must be drunk. ‘I see you’re enjoying our hospitality, you can scarcely object to our extending it to your sister as well.’

I kept the key behind my back and edged away from the bedroom. I felt the little table behind me, groped blindly for the vase and slid the key gently inside. As I withdrew my fingers, they brushed against the petals of the faded rose.

‘I’ve told you once,’ said Florian, and his voice sounded almost as strong as it used. ‘My sister is not well. Now please leave.’

‘No need to shout,’ said Pablo, almost pleasantly. He crossed the room to the window, looked down at the patrolling guards, then firmly pulled the casement shut.

I felt suddenly very afraid.

Jacques Gilbert

Stefan and André attended to Marcel while I signalled the bowmen out of the trees and gave the patrollers the go-ahead to take out the wall guards on their next round. Pinhead was to deal with the guard on the east, and Bruno the one on the south, then we’d have control of three of the four walls. We couldn’t touch the west guard, not in full sight of the soldiers at the
porte-cochère,
but we didn’t think it mattered. We’d got the east wall to get us safely round to the south side, we didn’t need to go near the west at all. As long as they saw four patrollers going constantly past they weren’t going to worry about anything else.

I was, though, my brain was fuzzy with panic because of Marcel. If he was seriously hurt we were stuffed, there was no one else could go inside with Stefan and André. He was sitting up when I joined them, but he’d cracked his head on the flags when he fell, and still looked sort of dizzy and unfocused. There was dark blood gleaming in his fair hair.

‘He’ll be all right,’ said Stefan, checking Marcel’s eyes. ‘He’ll be fine, he just needs a few minutes.’

I unscrewed the bar in the store-room window, then stood back and waited, listening to the music and laughter seeping out of that big mess room. It was unnerving thinking of all the soldiers milling about on the other side of that glass, the light from the window making a great square patch on the lawn. I knew perfectly well they couldn’t see us, we were in the dark and they were in a room with about a million candles, but it somehow didn’t feel like it at the time.

Something changed on the fringes of the square of light, something was shadowing it in a far corner, and I peered up to see a dark shape leaning out of the hostage’s window. I caught a quick glimpse of a black sleeve and a bearded face before the window was pulled shut, but that was enough to see it was a Spanish soldier. For a moment I just stared, with the same sick feeling as that night at Ancre when I saw the soldier in the Seigneur’s apartments. Only this was even worse, because it was Mlle Anne’s window, and she was in there with him.

A tiny intake of breath beside me told me the boy had seen it too. He whispered sharply to Stefan ‘How long?’

Marcel was trying to stand, but it was no good, his knees were buckling. Stefan said irritably ‘I told you, just give us a minute.’

André looked up at the window, then back at Stefan. ‘No,’ he said calmly. ‘We’re going in now.’

He turned to Bernard and Marin, who were watching us nervously, and said ‘Take Marcel to Dom at the south wall for dressing. Then go over the wall yourselves and join the musket teams, all right?’ There was an authority in his voice I’d never heard before, and Marin actually saluted.

But it was still madness, we’d always said it needed three, they couldn’t not wait for Marcel. I turned quickly to Stefan, but André didn’t wait to be argued with, he just turned and headed for the window. I ran after him but he stuck his palm against my chest and said ‘It’ll be all right, you know I have to.’

‘Then I’m coming with …’

‘No,’ he said simply. ‘If there’s no one to follow the plan out here then it’s all for nothing.’

It was the bloody Manor all over again, only this time I couldn’t stop him, I couldn’t knock him out, I couldn’t do anything but watch helplessly as he started climbing over the sill. ‘Come on,’ he said over his shoulder to Stefan. ‘We can do it with just two, come on.’

Stefan grabbed his shirt and yanked him back. ‘Wait, you stupid bugger,
wait.
’

André didn’t struggle, he just gently detached his collar from Stefan’s hands and looked up into his face. I heard him say ‘Please, Stefan. Please.’

I could only see Stefan’s back, but it had gone sort of rigid. Then André smiled at him, turned and disappeared inside.

Stefan said ‘Oh, fuck it,’ and went through the window after him.

Anne du Pré

Now I know what courage is. Pablo went towards our bedroom, but my brave Florian simply threw himself at him, trying to force him away from the door. He didn’t know it was locked, he thought this was the only way to protect Colette, but Luiz joined them immediately and Florian was no match for two. They overcame him in seconds, and dragged him back towards his own room.

‘Come on now,’ said Luiz. ‘If you can’t behave yourself we’ll have to send you to bed.’

I tried to go to my brother, but the Slug caught my arm and held me back. Florian looked desperately at me, and his face was wretched. ‘Where are they, Anne?’ he whispered. ‘Where are they?’ His eyes were fixed on my face, as if he believed I had the answer.

‘He gets madder every day,’ said Luiz. They pushed him inside his room and locked the door.

Then they turned to me.

Stefan Ravel

Two men against two hundred. They weren’t quite the odds I’d have chosen for myself, Abbé, but I could hardly let the kid go in on his own. He knew it too, which I thought was interesting. Sod his nobility, when it came to it he just called me as soldier to soldier, so of course I came. He never even turned to see if I was following, he was already at the store-room door and flapping a hand behind him to warn me there was someone outside.

I stood behind him and picked the leaves off his smart black cloak. It was important, Abbé. Of the two of us, André was the only one who could pass for an officer, with all the freedom of movement that entailed. Apart from the nice clothes and fancy rapier, he’d got the hair for it. A lot of working men don’t bother growing it below their shoulders, and if you’ve ever caught a hank of hair under your knife when scraping and graining a hide you’ll know why. But André had gentleman’s hair, long and well kept, and what’s more he’d got the look, that ‘don’t fuck with me’ arrogance that distinguishes the officer. All right, he was beardless, but they’d got young ones in the Spanish army too, I’d seen them strutting around in charge of experienced men, fresh off Daddy’s
hacienda
and thinking themselves heroes. André would fit in a treat.

He stepped back, held up a finger to tell me ‘one’, picked up a handful of cherries from a basket, and strolled into the corridor, casually popping one into his mouth. I watched through the crack in the door.

There was a single officer wandering about the passage, looking confused and more than a little pissed. André leant against the wall opposite and ate his cherries, looking the man in the eye the whole time.

The officer said something, and I’d love to tell you what, Abbé, but my Spanish isn’t all it might be. The tone gave me the impression he was telling André he ought not to have been in that room, let alone eating the food out of it.

André went right on looking at him, and spat out a cherry stone. That got his man moving all right, he came charging up in a flurry of outrage to snatch the cherries out of André’s hand. His back was towards me, but over his shoulder I saw André smile, then the man sagged down, and there was André standing alone, the cherries in one hand and his bloodied knife in the other. Nice job. It would be, of course. I taught him myself, remember?

We dragged the body into the store-room, concealed it tastefully behind some cheeses, then started off down the passage to the back stairs, though it took us rather longer than it should have done without Marcel to lead the way. For one thing, his description led us to expect a grand north entrance hall with rock-crystal chandeliers, enormous tapestries, paintings and gold-framed mirrors, and we had to walk through twice before realizing we were actually in it. The floors were black with grime, the walls bare and stained with smoke from the chandeliers, the one mirror had a crack right across it and a surface so grimy with handprints and dust you couldn’t see a candle in it, let alone your own face. It was a relief to reach the more normal squalor of the nether regions where we found the back stairs.

There was a miserable-looking guard there, just as Jeanette said there would be. He was probably pissed off at missing the party, but we soon sorted that for him, I parted his windpipe in the first blow. We stuffed the corpse under the stairs to stop a passing don tripping over it and giving the alarm, then mopped up the blood trail with his own shirt. André was muttering under his breath at the delay, but it was his own fault for leaving Marcel behind. We had to clear up after ourselves, but there were too many guards to tackle alone. I said ‘Come on, little general, the hostages have been here three years. What difference can ten more minutes make?’

Anne du Pré

Pablo smiled almost reassuringly, then went to try the bedroom door.

‘It’s locked,’ he said petulantly. He rapped sharply on the door and called to Colette ‘Open up, sweetheart, it’s me, I’ve come to take you down.’

We could hear her rustling inside, and I pictured how scared and undecided she must be. I called out ‘Don’t, Colette. Stay there.’

Luiz swung round and told me to shut my mouth. He’d never spoken so before, he’d never dared, and it frightened me he did now, it made me feel our last protection was gone.

‘Come on, Colette,’ said Pablo, impatiently. ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t.’

I heard her try the door handle, then rattle it again. Her voice came thinly through the door as she said ‘I can’t. It’s locked on the outside.’

Pablo stared at the door as if he couldn’t understand it, then kicked it with temper. The Slug jumped nervously. I think he was afraid Pablo would force the door, which was something he could never have explained away.

Luiz laughed, then turned back to me. ‘Come on, where is it?’

Pablo looked round, then seemed to understand. ‘The key,’ he said to me. ‘Where is it?’

I said nothing. They began to hunt around, while I backed myself up against Florian’s door and stayed out of their way. Pablo went right by the table with my rose on it, and after a moment he lifted the vase to see if the key was underneath. I quickly pushed away from the door to draw their attention.

Luiz looked at me, then again more closely. ‘She’s got it on her,’ he said. ‘It’s in her hand.’

I kept my hands behind my back, but curled them into fists. Pablo came briskly up and actually took hold of my arms. He said ‘Come on, hand it over.’

He took my hands and tried to force them open. I couldn’t believe he dared. I twisted my wrists away, but he held me quite firmly, and pressed me against the wall to give himself freer play. He was laughing and saying ‘Come on now’ in almost a friendly way, as if this were a game and at any moment he would start to tickle me instead. He was obviously as drunk as Luiz.

The Slug said nervously ‘Keep the noise down, will you?’

Pablo threw him an irritated look, then addressed himself again to my hands. He took the right one first, held it in one hand, and forced it open with his fingers. When he saw it was empty, he did the same with the left, then threw it down in disgust.

‘She’s got it on her somewhere,’ said Luiz. He was leaning back against the mantelpiece, and watching us with real amusement.

‘Have you?’ said Pablo to me. He felt my sleeves, then began to run his hands down my chemise, as if I could possibly have hidden something in there. Then he said ‘I don’t suppose …?’ and actually slipped his hand inside. I understood what he meant, I’ve seen Colette put things in there, but she is bigger than me, and you need a proper dress to do it. I think Pablo realized that at once, but he didn’t withdraw his hand. He slid it over me, actually over my skin, until his palm brushed my breast. Then his hand curled round and held it.

I wrenched away from him so violently the ruff of my chemise tightened against my neck. Pablo only laughed, but he did withdraw his hand.

He said ‘I’m sorry, de Castilla, I don’t think she’s got it.’

The smile seemed to grow tighter on Luiz’s face. He said ‘If you imagine I’m going to be made a fool of by a couple of—’ and then a word I didn’t understand.

I think Pablo was nervous of Luiz’s tone. He looked at me irresolutely a moment, then said ‘There’s always an alternative.’ His hand cupped my breast again, he was pushing it up in his palm. He said ‘This one’s—’ and then something like ‘
madura
’.

Luiz looked at me, and shifted position against the wall. He said ‘You’d never get her downstairs unnoticed in that nightdress.’

‘No need,’ said Pablo. ‘We can stay here. Rivera will say she invited us in, won’t you, Rivera?’

There was something funny about the Slug’s face. It was always sweaty, but now it almost seemed to gleam. His mouth looked wet.

Luiz smiled and held out his arms towards me. Pablo didn’t move, but Luiz made an impatient noise between his teeth and clicked his fingers, then Pablo shoved me in the back so that I stumbled across the room, and Luiz caught me in his arms. His shirt was unlaced at the top, my cheek was pressed against the sweat of his naked chest.