On My Lady's Honor (All for one, and one for all) (43 page)

Chapter 11

Sophie bowed her head for a moment.
 
There was nothing more they could do for her.

“Dead?”

Sophie nodded.

Miriame swore.
 
“Let’s get out of here.”

They had no need of their disguise now and voluminous skirts would only slow them down.
 
With hasty fingers they ripped off their skirts and tossed them to one side.
 
Clad once again in the breeches of their more familiar disguise, they leaped over the bodies of the false priests and the fallen guards and took to their heels as fast as they could go.

To the courtyard they raced as if they wings on their heels.
 
Behind them they could hear a hue and cry start up.
 
They had mere moments up their sleeve.

The courtyard was deserted, with only a few smoky torches casting a flickering light onto the blackness that surrounded them.
 
So far their luck was holding up.
 
They ran to the wall where the rope should be waiting for them.
 
They searched the wall on either side with desperate eyes.

No rope.

Behind them, a dozen guards with drawn swords rushed into the courtyard.

Miriame swore again, worse than before.
 
“I should have slit Lamotte’s throat too, while I had the chance.
 
He has failed us.”

Sophie took her dagger in her hand.
 
They stood no chance against a bevy of well-armed guards, but she would not simply give in.
 
“We’ll have to fight our way out and hope to slip by them in the dark.”

A whistling noise made her look up.
 
An arrow attached to a length of line hurtled down mere inches from where she was standing.
 
She stuck her dagger in her teeth and grabbed the line.
 
Lamotte had not failed them after all.
 
“Hold off the guards,” she cried as she pulled on the thin rope.
 

Attached to the thin rope in her hands would be a length of thick rope.
 
That rope was their ticket to freedom.

The thin rope seemed endless as she pulled and pulled on it, looping lengths and lengths of it at her feet.
 
Miriame danced around her, her sword flashing, keeping her from harm.

Ah, there it was.
 
Finally she could see it.
 
With another burst of energy she pulled in the last lengths of thin line, until she felt the thickness of their savior in her hand.

A grapnel was attached to the end.
 
She gave three swift sharp tugs on the rope, followed by another three.
 
“Jump on,” she yelled to Miriame, as she felt the rope start to move.

The sharp ends of the grapnel bored into the soles of her boots as she balanced on it, holding on to the rope for dear life.
 
With a leap, Miriame joined her.

The guards stared in openmouthed wonder as the rope was pulled higher and higher into the air, away from them on the ground out of their sight into the darkness above, until they were standing on the topmost battlements of the Bastille’s outer wall.

Below them, the guards were running for the gate to catch them on the other side.

Sophie hooked the grapnel over the edge of the battlement and tugged on it firmly.
 
It held tight.

She unbuckled the belt from her waist and swallowed nervously.
 
“Ready?”

Miriame grinned.
 
“This looks like fun.”

The rope was stretched taut all the way from the topmost battlements to the street barrow on the road below, where Lamotte waited with the horses who had so bravely hauled them to the topmost tower of the Bastille.

Sophie flung her belt over the rope, wrapped the ends of the belt around her wrists, said a brief but heartfelt prayer, and flung herself over the battlements into the air below.

It was almost like flying, she thought, as she plummeted towards the ground at an alarming speed.

A hay wagon loomed out of the darkness in front of her.
 
Her landing would be softer than she had hoped.
 
She let go of the belt and slammed into the hay with such force that it knocked the breath from her body.

A moment later, Miriame fell beside her.
 
“Whee, that was fun,” she spluttered.
 
“Let’s go up and do it again.”

Sophie shuddered as she reached overhead and cut their lifeline.
 
The cut end whipped back like a snake, and hung twitching against the prison wall.
 
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Lamotte, waiting with their horses, had seen their wild ride down from the battlements.
 

He vaulted down from his horse and gathered Sophie into his arms.
 
She ran there willingly, feeling as if she had come home.
 
“You are not hurt?”

She shook her head.
 
A little breathless maybe, and her arms would surely ache in the morn from her wild ride, but that was little enough.
 
“No.”

He brushed hay out of her hair with a hand so tender that it brought tears to her eyes.
 
“Henrietta?”

“Dead.
 
Murdered a mere instant before we could get to her.”

He hugged her closer.
 
“I care not, so long as you are safe.”

Just then, a huge commotion broke out behind them.
 
Sophie turned her head to see the cause.

A barrow cart had broken an axle and overturned just before the gates of the Bastille.
 
The owner of the barrow was wringing his hands and wailing at the top of his voice.
 
Apples were rolling everywhere to the delight of the street kids who scavenged a meager living under the shadow of the Bastille.
 
With cries of glee they dashed in among the guards and horses to gather such an unforeseen treat into their grubby hands and pockets.

The rolling apples under their hooves and the squealing children darting around their legs were too much for the horses.
 
One by one they whinnied in panic and fear and reared up, depositing their riders on the ground.
 
Those who managed to retain their seats were too busy trying to get their scared mounts under control to give chase.

Lamotte hugged her to his side.
 
“Hugh.
 
It seems he has his uses after all.”

They put the spurs to their horses, dodging the crowds who had come to witness the fun.
 
Several guards who had escaped the melee caused by Hugh’s cart load of apples gave chase.

Miriame lifted her hat off her head and whirled it around her head as they rose at top speed through the narrow streets.
 
“Wheeee,” she shouted at them above the noise of the galloping hooves.
 
“This is almost as much as flying down the rope.”

Sophie looked back at their pursuers.
 
There were half a dozen of them now, riding after them as fast as they could go, caring little for the innocents who may get caught up in their furious path.
 
“Shall we split up and divide the pursuit?” she shouted at her companions.

Lamotte shook his head vehemently as he galloped along.
 
“I will not let you out of my sight, wife.
 
You seem to get into trouble the instant I turn my back on you.”

Miriame waved her hand in a gesture of farewell.
 
“I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone then,” she called with a grin on her face.
 
“Until later.
 
Don’t worry if you get yourselves caught.
 
I’d come to your rescue just for the sake of another wild ride down that rope.”

With a quick twist of her reins, she disappeared down a side street.
 
Two of the guards wheeled around to follow her.
 
The other four kept up their dogged pursuit.

Through the streets they went, their sole aim to lose the guards so they could make their way unmolested to their nominated meeting place.
 
Sophie started to get worried as the chase went on through the darkness until the sky was pinkening with the approaching dawn, with no sign that the guards were flagging.

One of their pursuers gave a cry and went down, felled by a missile thrown at his head.
 
It looked suspiciously like an apple.
 
Hugh must still be on the case, Sophie thought with glee.

Through the streets they went, making their way slowly towards the marketplace.
 
The market was thronged with early morning shoppers.
 
They picked their way among them as fast as they were able.

There was a crash behind them as another pursuer went down, felled by a barrow stand accidentally kicked over by his comrade’s horse.
 
Only two were left now.

The day was breaking and the sky becoming dangerously light.
 
They could not allow their pursuers to see their faces in the clear light of day or they would be doomed.
 
Sophie looked at Lamotte.
 
“Now?”

He reached into the saddle bags behind him and drew out two large gourds.
 
Sophie reached behind her and drew out two of her own.
 
They were heavy in her hands.
 
Gripping her horse tightly with her knees, she unplugged the stoppers and threw the leaking gourds over her shoulder.
 
Within moments, a thick, slippery, treacherous oil slick covered the ground behind her.

A barrow cart trundled by its owner slid out of control into the path of the guards.
 
Seeing their quarry escaping them, they took a desperate chance and tried to leap over the impediment.
 
The horses’s hooves could get no purchase of the slippery ground.
 
The lead horse slid on the oil and its legs went from under him with a sickening crunch of broken bone.
 

The last guard left on their tail saw the disaster that have befallen his comrade and tried to pull his horse up short from the jump, but he was too late.
 
Pulled down at the last minute from the jump, the second horse, too, lost its footing on the treacherous cobblestones and crashed in a heap.

As Sophie and Lamotte turned the corner out of the marketplace, all they could hear behind them was the screaming of the horses and the cursing of their pursuers at their double loss.
 

The sky was bright and blue when they reached the house of the Widow Poussin where they had arranged to meet.
 
Sophie had no love for her avaricious old landlady, but her old attic chamber had proven a perfect bolt hole for Hugh of Coventry to hide in.
 
As a lodger in a respectable boarding house, he would attract no undue attention to himself.

Wiping her hands on her greasy apron, the Widow Poussin herself shuffled outside to meet them as they dismounted, greeting them with an unpleasant grin that showed her teeth rotted down to the yellow stumps.
 
“The others are waiting for you upstairs, if you please.”

Sophie did not like the way the woman’s eyes gleamed with a fearful gold fever as she watched them with her beady eyes or the way she wrung her hands together under the pretext of wiping them.
 
She felt a cold shiver run down her back as the widow bobbed a curtsey at them and held the door open for them to enter.
 
Old Widow Poussin was not usually so welcoming.

She stopped Lamotte with one hand on his arm as he strode towards the stairs.
 
All was not right here.
 
She could smell fear and lust together on the old woman’s breath.

“Go upstairs and fetch them for me, would you,” she said to the Widow, tossing a small silver coin at her.
 
“My legs are too stiff from riding to manage the stairs.”

Lamotte looked at her with a curious eye and opened his mouth to speak.
 
She silenced him with a finger laid to her lips.
 
“All is not right,” she whispered soft in his ear.
 
“I suspect a trap.”

As she had suspected, the Widow’s face grew black at her request.
 
“Step inside and fetch them yourself,” she grumbled, as she tucked the coin into her skinny bodice and scuttled back into the doorway.
 
“I am no maidservant to a couple of traitors.”