A Lady Betrayed (Secrets of the Musketeers Book 2) Page 29

  She thrust her hand into the second saddlebag, smacking her lips in anticipation. She wouldn’t say no to some more food like that she’d just eaten. If she could eat like that every day, she’d soon be even fatter than the landlady.

  No food in this saddlebag, but clothes instead. She drew them out with a wondering hand. Half a dozen shirts of white linen, softer than silk. A pair of waistcoats covered in lace. More silk stockings than she could count. A pair of breeches the twin to what the stranger wore. Even a tortoiseshell comb and brush, and a pretty jeweled knife, more like an ornament than a weapon. She sighed in wonderment over such riches, wishing she could wear them instead of taking them off to Conard to be sold.

  She shook her head at her foolishness. In the slums she lived, people would knife her in the back for the lace on one of the sleeves. She could never wear them. She’d get a good price for them, and buy herself a coat to keep the winter cold from her back instead.

  Her curiosity about the saddlebags satisfied, she drew out the papers she had taken from the stranger earlier. She pulled the ribbon from the packet of papers and a bundle of letters spilled out on to her lap.

  A noise outside in the corridor startled her and she leaped up in a sudden fright to bolt the door, cursing her greed that she had forgotten to do it before now. The stranger had been knifed for his papers. Those who had knifed him might have found out by now that they hadn’t got all of what they came for and be on the hunt for him again. At any rate, she oughtn’t be taking any chances.

  The door once safely bolted, she sat down cross-legged on the floor to puzzle over the letters. Her mother had taught both her and her sister Rebecca their letters when they were small, but since their mother had died, she had had precious little chance of reading anything. What use were her letters to her when all she wanted to do was to protect her sister and to feed them both? Since Rebecca had been taken from her up into Heaven, she had even less desire to make out her letters. Her life had been one long struggle to survive.

  She puzzled over the symbols, making them out with some difficulty. They were obviously letters – from some woman to the stranger lying on the bed, she had no doubt, judging by all the ‘darlings’ and ‘sweethearts’ that lay sprinkled over the pages. They were signed ‘Marie’, every one of them, with an ornately curved M at the beginning. She riffled through them, and then tossed them aside with a snort of disgust. What a sentimental young fool the stranger was, carrying them in the lining of his cloak, as if they were more precious than the jewels he wore in plain sight on his fingers.

  Only the two single pages were left. She picked them up, hoping they were worth rather more than the letters she had tossed aside. No one would kill a stranger for a passel of old love letters, to be sure. The thugs in the street must have stolen the right papers after all.

  The two loose sheets seemed to be written in the same hand, but they were rather more difficult to make out. The words were writ smaller, and they were much longer and more complicated. At least, Miriame saw with a shrug of satisfaction as she quickly scanned the sheets, there were no `darlings’ or `sweethearts’ on these pages. They were filled with serious words – words, she hoped, that might mean money.

  With a grunt, she settled down to painstakingly read through the pages, her finger pointing to each word in turn as she spelled them out one by one.

  The dawn was beginning to break in earnest by the time she had finished reading them through. They had given her an idea – a wild idea, an unthinkable idea, an impossible idea – but an idea nonetheless.

  She stood up and stretched, her legs stiff from sitting cross-legged on the floor for so long. The man on the bed was still lying there with his eyes closed. His chest labored up and down with each faint breath he took. He was still hanging on to life, but only by a thread.

  Young and beautiful though he was, he could not expect to live. His Maker was even now preparing him a bed in Heaven, where he would be the most beautiful of all the angels, she had no doubt. Except for Rebecca – she would always be the most beautiful angel of all with her dark eyes, her long curling hair the color of a raven’s wing, and her sweet sweet smile. A pity that Death had found him so young, in the first bloom of his strength and beauty, just as it had found Rebecca...

  She shook her head. She had no leisure to think about Rebecca now. Her sister would have cautioned her to keep her mind on the task in front of her and not to let herself be distracted. She would do so still, for the memory of Rebecca, if nothing else.

  The man on the bed, Jean-Paul Metin of the South of France according to the letters he carried, was like to die. His letters could not serve him now. He was a stranger to Paris from the provinces. He knew no one and no one knew him, save for the mysterious Marie of the letters. There was no one but Marie to know if she were to take his place. No one but Marie to suspect that Jean-Paul Metin was not the person he claimed to be.

  If she were like other women, this Marie would be sure to lose interest in poor, murdered Metin if he never replied to her letters. Indeed, Miriame could not answer them in his name even if she would. They were not furnished with an address. Poor Marie would have to live disconsolate without her `sweet cherub’ beside her.

  With legs that shook with wonder that she dared to carry off such as trick as she was contemplating, she ran down to the kitchen. “Have the maid bring me a tub of water, as warm as you can make it,” she instructed the landlady, who was standing at the bench, her arms covered to the elbow in flour. “I need a bath.”

  The landlady snorted at her impudence, but Miriame pressed another small coin into her hand. The landlady took it with her grimy paw, dropped it in her bosom and went back to kneading the dough. “One tub of water coming right up.”

  The water arrived quickly, but not quickly enough for Miriame. She had been pacing up and down in the chamber, one eye on the door and the other on the wounded stranger. Jean-Paul Metin. The name had a nice ring to it. She wouldn’t mind being known by such a name.

  His brow was white and covered in perspiration. He looked in terrible pain. She hoped for his sake that he died quickly - she didn’t hold with making a man suffer when his time had come. It crossed her mind to give him a quick tap on the head to ease him gently into the afterlife, but something stayed her hand. He had done her no wrong. She would not be his murderer.

  At last came a knock on the door. The maid wrestled in a small hip bath, following it with plenty of jugs of steaming water. “Shall I stay and help you wash?” she asked in a bored voice, as she tipped the last of the water into the tub and began to roll up her sleeves in expectation of an invitation.

  Miriame waved her away. “No thank you all the same.” She had a character to preserve now – one that she would easily lose again were some one to see her naked.

  Once the maidservant had left, she bolted the door once more. Just for good measure she drew the coverlet off the bed and hung it over the door to make sure that every little peephole was safely covered. Only then did she begin to undress.

  One by one she laid her rags aside and put the tip of her toe into the water. She had never had a whole bath before. Even when her mama had been alive, the most she had done was sponge herself all over with a washcloth.

  She looked down at her feet. They were grey with grime, their nails black with accumulated dirt. She would not be so disrespectful of the stranger’s soft leather boots as to put her unwashed feet into them. Besides, no one would ever take her for a member of the gentry with face dirty and her hair matted and tangled with the filth of the streets. “Like it or not,” she told herself firmly, “you have to wash.”

  Gingerly she sat down in the bath and rubbed herself all over with the sweet-smelling soap they had given her. The water was warm. She found to her surprise that washing wasn’t as bad as she had expected. Lying back in the warm water, her legs bent right up under her chin and her head resting on the edge of the tub, it was almost pleasant.

  Or it was until she got
soap in her eyes. That wasn’t much fun at all. She screwed up her face and bit back a wail as the harsh soap burned her. She splashed water on her face and blinked furiously until she could see again. Men did not cry because they got soap in their eyes in their bath. She scrubbed her face furiously, roughening the tender skin under her nose and around her chin, to make it look as though she had shaved herself closely.

  Once her hair was washed, too, she got out of the tub and rubbed herself dry. Wrapping herself in the towel, she took the wide-toothed comb from the saddlebag and began the long, laborious task of combing through her hair. She’d kept it short for years, hacking it off above the shoulders so no one would ever suspect she was a woman. She didn’t like what happened to women on the streets – no more than she liked what happened to pretty boys – and was determined that no one would ever so much as suspect her disguise. Even despite the ragged haircut, though, it took her some time before the comb would go through it without getting snagged on a nasty snarl.

  She drew out some fresh linen from the saddlebag and put it on, feeling more like a thief than she ever had before. Taking a man’s money was nothing, but taking this man’s linen as he lay back on the bed, dying by inches, gave her an uncomfortable feeling. She shook it off as well as she could. She had done him no harm, but tried her best to save him. His murderers should be the ones to harbor a guilty conscience, not her, who merely had the good fortune to profit from their crime.

  The jacket fitted her well enough, buttoning across her front to hide the fact that she was a woman, but the breeches were far too big, bagging around her waist and bottom like a saggy skin. She knotted a leather tie around her waist to keep them up, and as an afterthought, added a pair of rolled-up stockings in the front to give a realistic bulge. She would defy anyone to catch her out now.

  Boots now. With a reverent sigh she took the stranger’s boots and drew them on over her calves. They were slightly too long in the foot for her, but she hardly noticed. They were boots. Real leather boots, rich and brown, and as soft as her new-washed hair.

  Her disguise was nearly complete. A scrap of leather to tie her hair at the nape of her neck, the stranger’s befeathered hat to clap on her head, his greatcoat to throw around her shoulders, his rings to go on her fingers, his letters to be tucked inside her jacket, and his well-stocked wallet to be worn inside her shirt next to her skin.

  She made an awkward bow at the wall, wishing she had a looking-glass to check her disguise in. No matter, she had passed as a lad in rags for years – why would anyone suspect her now she was dressed as a gentleman?

  The landlady was cutting up vegetables and tossing them into a stewpot when Miriame went into the kitchen. Her eyes widened when she saw Miriame in the doorway. “You do clean up nice,” she said, as she went back to her chopping.

  Quick as a wink, Miriame snaffled a couple of carrots and a turnip and stuffed them into one of the pockets of her greatcoat. They would do very well for her to munch on for her supper that night. “Thank you,” she said gravely.

  “What can I do for you, Monsieur?” the landlady asked, putting down her vegetables and wiping her hands on her apron, when Miriame made no move to leave.

  “My master upstairs is gravely ill and like to die.”

  “Aye that he is,” the landlady agreed, absentmindedly sharpening her vegetable knife on a long steel that hung in a corner of the kitchen. “Them as murdered the poor lad did their work well. He’ll be lucky to last until the morrow.”

  “I must leave him for now to carry out a commission that he entrusted to me, but I would have him well looked after in my absence.” She held out the smallest of the stranger’s rings – a circle of gold with a dark blue stone embedded in it. “Care for him well. Cure him if you can. This should well recompense you for your trouble.”

  The landlady put aside her knife and took the ring with a glint in her eye. Any protest that she may have made was instantly stifled at the sight of the jewel. “I shall.”

  “And if you cannot cure him, then see he is decently buried.”

  The landlady looked up sharply. “You will not be coming back, then?”

  Miriame smiled to herself. Not if she could help it. She knew that the landlady suspected her theft, though she had bought the woman’s silence for now. “My journey must needs take me to the farthest corner of France, but I will return when I can for news of him,” she lied.

  The landlady nodded, seemingly satisfied. “God speed you on your journey, then, Monsieur,” she said, chopping her vegetables with her newly sharpened knife with renewed vigor.

  Miriame tipped her hat as she left, the purloined carrots giving her pocket a comforting weight. She’d not starve tonight.

  The horse was well- rested and well-fed when she made her way to the stables. She tipped the stableboy a handful of sous for looking after it so well, and he saluted her with a tip of his dirty cap. He looked after her with admiration as she clambered awkwardly on to its back. “Where be you off to then, Monsieur?” the lad asked, as she tightened her knuckles around the reins and urged her horse out of the yard.

  She gave a big belly laugh as she rode off, clinging to the horse’s back like a beggar to a rich man’s leg. She could hardly believe it herself. “Me? I’m off to join the King’s Musketeers.”