On My Lady's Honor (Secrets of the Musketeers Book 1) Page 3

  The door to her brother’s chamber was slightly ajar. As she approached it she heard a voice calling out to her. She quickened her step as much as she was able. If her brother was yet well, they could work together to survive this tragedy that had felled the rest of their family.

  “Gerard?” she called as she tapped at the door.

  He mumbled unintelligibly back at her through the partly-opened door.

  She pushed it open and went in. Gerard was lying fully-clothed on his bed, and to her horror she saw that his face was dripping with the sweat of a desperate fever. She rushed to his side, not knowing what else she could do but soothe him with her presence and let him know that she was near him.

  He opened his eyes and seemed to focus on her face. “I will get up and make you some more soup soon, Sophie,” he muttered. “I just had to lie down for a bit first. I don’t feel so well. My head hurts.”

  His head was burning. Sophie looked around wildly for a rag, but there was nothing she could use. With a strength born of desperation, she tore the ruffle from her cotton nightgown, dipped it in the pitcher of water by her brother's bed and used it to sponge the sweat from her brother's forehead.

  He relaxed a trifle under her ministrations. “That feels so good,” he mumbled. “I am so hot.”

  “You have made yourself sick with nursing me,” she said. “Lie back and you will soon recover.”

  “Mother and father…” he began, his voice trailing off into nothingness.

  She knew what he wanted to say and would spare him the pain of giving it voice. “I know,” she said simply.

  He shut his eyes in anguish. “I tried my best, but it was not good enough. I could not save them.”

  “No man on earth could have saved them. God had marked them for his own.”

  “I did my best, but they went so quickly in the end. There was nothing I could do.”

  She laid her hand on his burning forehead, sharing his anguish. “Hush now and try to rest.”

  He tossed and turned with a feverish agitation. “When I die you will be left all alone.”

  “Do not be foolish,” she reproved him. He was her beloved brother – her twin. She could not live without him. He could not be so sick as all that. “You are ill with exhaustion. Nothing else ails you.”

  He gave a wan smile as he drew his right arm from under the bedclothes and pushed the sleeve up to his elbow. “You cannot fool me, sister, and you will not be able to fool yourself for much longer. You had best be prepared for the inevitable.”

  She stared at the black spots on his arms with a horror verging on madness. Not Gerard. Not her brother. God had taken her mother and her father. Could he not spare her brother?

  “I have the plague. I have seen many others die of it these last weeks and I do not flatter myself that I will survive where so many others have not. I will be dead before the morn.”

  She would not let him go so easily. She would fight Death for the life of her brother. She clutched at him with frantic fingers. “You must not die. I will not let you die.”

  He loosened the death-grip of her fingers and took her hand in his. “I have made my peace with the world and I am content to leave it. It is time for me to join God’s kingdom. My one regret is that I will not be here to take care of you. You will have to look out for yourself. Promise me that you will take good care of yourself.”

  “I promise.”

  “I had thought to see you married this summer. I would have danced at your wedding with a good grace.”

  She shook her head with impatience. “I care naught for being wed.”

  “Count Lamotte is a good man. He would be a good husband for you, Sophie, or I never would have proposed the match. I loved him like a brother, and knew you would love him as I did.”

  She bit her tongue. She would not quarrel with her brother when he was so ill.

  “You will need someone to look after you when I am gone. If the King takes any notice of his wealthy new ward, it will only be to marry you off to the highest bidder, or to some new favorite who has more charm than wealth. Promise me that you will consider Lamotte’s suit.”

  How could she think of marriage when her parents were both dead and her brother was dying? “You must think only of getting better, not of such foolish things as my marriage. I can look after myself. Besides, you will not die.”

  “Promise me.” His voice was urgent.

  However unreasonable she considered it, she could not refuse a sick man’s request – not when that man was the brother she loved better than she loved herself. “I promise.”

  She was promising only to consider Lamotte’s suit she told herself, to quiet her uneasy conscience. If she could not have Jean-Luc, she had no intention of marrying anyone, but she would give Lamotte’s suit fair consideration if ever an appropriate time came to do so.

  Her words brought her brother ease. He heaved a faint sigh of relief and closed his eyes as a spasm of pain crossed his forehead. “You have put my last care to rest.”

  Fear clutched at her heart as she looked at her brother’s drawn face. He was preparing himself for death. “I carry ill-luck around with me. He may not want to wed me now.”

  He gave a hoarse, hacking cough. “He swore on his mother’s soul that if aught happened to me, he would care for you. I sent word to him when I first arrived, telling him that we had the plague in the house. I know him, Sophie, and he is no oathbreaker. I can die in peace, knowing that he will come to your aid as soon as he can be here.”

  Sophie laid a finger over his mouth. The strain of talking was weakening him before her eyes. “Hush now, and rest.”

  He closed his eyes again, and exhausted with the effort of conversation, he soon sank into an uneasy slumber.

  Sophie sat in the armchair by his bed keeping watch over him, dozing fitfully when her eyes would no longer remain open. She did not leave his side, forgetting her own hunger and thirst in the pain of watching, in terrified helplessness, as her brother’s life slowly ebbed away.

  When his face beaded over with sweat, she laved his forehead with water to cool down the raging heat of his body, and prayed for the Virgin Mary in her grace to heal him. When he cried out in his sleep, tossing and turning in the grip of a fearful nightmare, she stroked his hand and murmured soft words of peace and love into his ear until he calmed down once more. Towards morning, when she heard the death rattle in his throat and watched his breath fade away until there was nothing left, she brushed his eyelids over his staring, sightless eyes and held his hand until the warm flesh grew cold and stiff in death.

  She could not cry for him. She was beyond tears. She had gone far beyond grief to a place where utter desolation became a new normality.

  The gray of dawn was creeping over the horizon. She stood at the window, irresolute. One step was all it would take. One step, and her body would lie broken on the cobblestones of the courtyard, and her soul would be winging its way to Paradise with her twin.

  Of its own volition her hand crept to the casement and began to open it. Through the crack, fresh morning air crept in to dispel the putrid miasma of death.

  She hesitated. Death would mean an end to her pain, but was she brave enough to face death – so unprepared as she was to meet her Maker?

  Besides, she was thirsty, and her hunger was beginning to return tenfold. She dropped the casement again. Before she made any such choice to join her family in death, she would slake her thirst and fill her belly.

  The kitchen was empty and the fire in the grate long since gone out. There were no servants and no sign of life. Sophie had not expected to find any, but she felt her heart sink even lower nonetheless. There was no welcoming life or heat to greet her, only ashes long grown cold. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, smelled only of decay and death.

  A quick rummage around the kitchen afforded her some smallbeer, a hunk of cheese, some crisp, green apples and a crock full of gooseberry preserves. With her booty tucked securely under her ar
m, she tottered back to her bedroom. She had no desire to explore the house further. Her reserves of courage and endurance were gone, and she feared to find more unpleasant surprises.

  After a nibble of cheese and a sip or two of smallbeer, her stomach revolted and she did not want to eat anymore. She had seen too much of death to be concerned with mere food.

  Still, she forced herself to plow through the provisions she had gathered. There was little point in dying of starvation and weakness now that she had survived the plague. She ate and drank half-heartedly through much of her plunder before falling deeply asleep, a half-eaten apple core grasped tightly in her fist.

  Late in the afternoon she woke for a while to eat the remainder of her supplies and drink the rest of the smallbeer, until exhaustion claimed her again.

  A new day had dawned before she woke once more. Her body felt stronger than before, and her mind more clear.

  Desolation and sadness had replaced her utter despair of the previous morning. No longer did she want to end her life – her natural will to survive was stronger than her desire to die. Her duty lay in burying her loved ones with all the respect they deserved, in saying masses for their souls so that they may be released the sooner from Purgatory, and in honoring their memory in every word and deed.

  As she had feared by the oppressive silence, the house was deserted by all but bodies. Her brother had simply been the last to die.

  She screamed when she stumbled across the bloated carcass that had once been Piers, the scullery lad. No more would he sneak extra rations from behind the cook’s back, disarming those who would reprove him with a cheeky grin. He had died as he had lived, hiding away from his duties in a dark corner, a stolen pastry clutched tightly in his hand.

  By the time she found the head gardener slumped against the orchard wall, flies crawling in and out of his open mouth, she was inured to death, and had no room left for more horror or disgust.

  Behind the herb garden she found what she had been half looking for all the while – a partially filled-in grave. The length and breadth of it left no room to doubt the seriousness of the plague that had descended upon the manor house.

  She had no wish to disturb the light covering of soil that lay over the human remains – to uncover the ghastly remainder of people she once knew and loved. She could only add her mite to the pile.

  Carting dead bodies for burial was heavy work, and she was not yet back to full strength after her long weeks of illness. Still, she persevered, dragging one body after another to the edge and tipping them into the shallowing pit – unwilling to spend another night in a charnel house. She refused to cry over each familiar face as she tipped the rotting corpses one after the other into the hole. She had no energy to waste on tears.

  Her family she left until last. She could not mete out such an undignified end in a common grave to her mother and father and brother. The shovel was heavy and awkward, but the ground was soft enough, and after an afternoon’s labor, she had dug three graves –deep enough to keep their bodies safe from scavengers.

  “Farewell,” she whispered into the wind, as she lay them gently side by side in the ground. “May we meet again in Heaven.”

  With the last of her strength she shoveled a covering of dirt on their bodies.

  The sun had set before she returned to the house once more. She was filthy – covered from head to toe in mud and filth and the stench of corruption.

  The water from the well was sweet, with no taint in it. She stripped naked in the courtyard and hauled bucket after bucket of water up from the well, tipping each one over her in turn to wash away the horror of the day.

  Only when all of her felt clean again, from her head of dripping wet hair to her bare feet on the cobbles, and she had overpowered the smell of death with that of sweet lavender and rosemary, did she go inside once more.

  She lay exhausted on the bed, unable to sleep, thinking back to the last day of normality, before her world had turned into a living hell.

  How trivial her concerns of a few weeks ago seemed to her now. She would gladly marry the Count a thousand times over to have her old life back again, but no marriage would bring the dead back to life again. How foolish did her thoughts of rebellion seem, another whole life ago, that morning in the marshes.

  The marshes.

  Her blood suddenly ran cold, and fear and guilt assailed her.

  Her mother had warned her against going into the marshes for fear of the swamp fever that had hit the next village. She had disobeyed her mother, and God had punished her by sending the fever to her house.

  Faint with despair, she racked her brains with the effort of remembrance. She had been well when she went to the marshes – she had returned sick. The household had been in good health until she went to the marshes - and when she returned to herself again, they were all dead or had fled.

  She could not escape the feeling of dread that washed over her. With her willfulness, she had murdered all those she had ever loved.

  If only Count Lamotte had not wanted to marry her, this tragedy would never have come about. Had she not had this marriage sprung upon her, she would not have disobeyed her mother, she would not have caught the plague from sleeping down by the marshes, and her family would yet live.

  She half hoped that Lamotte had not escaped the destruction that had fallen on her family. It would be no more than he deserved. She would have traded his life a thousand times over for one extra day for her brother. Why could God not have taken him in Gerard’s place?

  She had no intention of marrying the Count now. Indeed, she would never wed at all unless she ever found a man worthy of her esteem in every way. She had no need of a man to take care of her. Henceforth, she would depend on no one but herself.

  Her family was gone. She was the only remaining survivor. For the rest of her life she would study how to atone for her fatal act of disobedience, seeking only to uphold the honor of the family she had destroyed.

  Two weeks earlier:

  Lamotte tucked the precious bottles wrapped in thick rags into his shirt, where they would lie in safety against his skin. He had paid a King’s ransom and more for them. A charm to keep the plague away was worth more than its weight in gold in times like this, when rumors of sickness in the outlying counties were reaching even the ears of self-absorbed Parisians. The King’s physician himself had prepared the medicine he now carried so carefully with him.

  Within the hour he had left the city, carrying little but a small amount of food and a clean shirt in his saddlebags. His horse would carry him further and faster if it was more lightly loaded. Gerard had need of him – and of what he carried with him. He would not tarry on the way.

  For the first few days, the wayside inns were welcoming – offering him a warm fire and hot food to fill his belly. He traveled far and fast, stopping only when his horse began to stumble with weariness and the road was too dark to see.

  As he got further into the provinces, people looked at his travel-worn clothes and flagging horse suspiciously. Even his gold was little use to him here. More than once he was turned away from an inn late at night and had to sleep out under the stars, his clothes wet with the dew and his belly rumbling with hunger.

  Rumors of sickness were rife. Once he passed by an quiet farmhouse and thought to exchange a few sous for a loaf of bread and a glass of fresh milk. He knocked on the door, but none answered. The door had not been latched securely and it came open with the force of his knocking. Such a stench of putrefaction and death came from the opening that he immediately turned tail and fled. He was too late to help the dead who rested within, and he had no desire to feast his eyes on the ghastly spectacle that lay behind the door. He could imagine it only too well.

  How he hoped that Gerard’s family had been spared the worst. Gerard’s letter had told him little – only that his sister, Sophie, was sick. Sophie, his best friend’s twin sister, and the woman he had contracted to marry.

  He fingered the miniature he car
ried in his breast pocket, next to his heart. Gentleness and femininity shone out of her clear blue eyes, so like her brother’s in color, though, as befitted a woman, lacking his martial spark. Her soft brown hair hung in pretty ringlets about her white neck as she gave a half smile at the painter who captured her spirit on the canvas.

  She looked all softness and beauty – everything he admired in a woman and valued in a wife – and he was half in love with her already. He ached to be her savior and protector – shielding her from all that would destroy the delicate blossom of her innocence. He could not bear to lose her to Death before he had even begun to know her. If the medicine he carried next to his heart could save her, he would count himself a lucky man.

  He was barely three day’s ride away from his journey’s end when he came upon the mob of peasants on the road. Hatless and shirtless most of them were, and dressed in little better than rags, but their faces all bore the same look of grim determination and desperation.

  The foremost of them shook a pitchfork in his direction. “Halt,” he called in a guttural voice when Lamotte had approached close enough to hear.

  Lamotte pulled up his horse and laid his hand on the hilt of his sword, though he didn’t draw it out of its scabbard. The villagers were unarmed – unless one could count wicked-looking scythes and pitchforks as weapons – and he was no coward to draw his sword on unarmed men. “What do you want?”

  The leader held his pitchfork braced on the ground with the sharpened points turned out towards him in a threatening manner. “Don’t come any closer. Turn your horse around and go back the way you’ve come. You may not pass.”

  “Why not? I have done no wrong.”

  A babble of angry voices came back to him.

  “We have no sickness in our village.”

  “We don’t like strangers around here.”

  “Get back to the pit of Hell you’ve come from.”

  “Get off with ye – we won’t have no truck with you, ye plague-ridden devil.”

  He would not turn his horse around and lose a day’s riding because of the ill-founded fears of a mob of peasants. Even now, his own sweet Sophie may be dying for want of his medicine. “I come from Paris. There is no plague there. I do not have the sickness.”