Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (25 page)

De Witt motioned for Giles to follow him below, and Giles did so, holding himself rigidly upright, refusing to take hold of his head though it pounded like all the demons in the bottom of a brandy barrel. "My wife, sir, the Countess Felice ... is she well? What have you done with her?"

"All in good time, my lord of Warborough," de Witt answered formally enough, though with an attitude of high good humor that would have brought a challenge had Giles been in any position to deliver one.

They descended to a bright cabin obviously occupied by Cornelis de Witt, a Dutch plenipotentiary and brother of the leader of the governing States-General of Holland. Giles recognized him from his earlier diplomatic missions before the war and had been known in turn. So this was indeed a real attack on England and not a feint to gain advantage at the bargaining table. Giles accepted subterfuge as part of war, since he knew that English ships were attacking Hollanders at sea, peace talks or no. But his mind swarmed with other questions, real questions. Why was he not taken to Merry immediately? De Witt was a gentleman not given to mean-spirited games.

"Be seated, your lordship," he said, motioning for his men to search Giles.

They removed his boots and took his pistolas, while de Witt smiled amiably.

De Witt dismissed his men. "It grieves me, my lord, to see you injured, though it was exactly the foolish bravery I might expect of you. And you might have fooled any other captain... . Ah, m'lord, please accept my deepest apologies for foiling such a courageous act. You have great spirit,
nee,
though I could not have imagined so bold a move." De Witt bowed again, real admiration on his face accompanying a puzzled frown. Briskly tapping his map table, he added, "I have sent for my surgeon and will try to give you what comfort a warship can supply to an enemy during your stay with us, which will not be long if our business goes as I and Admiral de Ruyter plan it." He grinned widely, his round face flushed with patriotic pride.

Since de Witt chose to speak English, perhaps not to be overheard by his crew, Giles answered him in like manner. "I need no comfort, sir, beyond knowledge of my wife's safety. How long are we to be your guests?"

"An uninvited guest on your part, my lord," de Witt corrected. "And do please sit. Head wounds can be grievous hurtful."

Giles decided it would be churlish to refuse, and his head was spinning with the effort to remain standing, though he could see that towering over the shorter, thicker Hollander gave him some small advantage.

The surgeon bustled in, cleaned the wound and pronounced it not serious, a glancing blow from a piece of the rail smashed by the single cannonball, He bled Giles, produced a foul-tasting blood tonic for which he rattled off a list of ingredients, which included the full-moon-picked leaves of a rare scarlet tulip. Then he applied a stinging poultice bandage and left, ordering the patient to rest and stay clear of too much exposure to fresh air. This last was said with a smirk.

De Witt offered food, which Giles refused, hoping not to regret it later, and a tankard of strong beer, which he accepted with thanks. "My wife, sir," Giles insisted in a tone not to be longer denied. "I fear she has been misguided by those who would take advantage of her ... innocence."

Taking a seat behind his map table, de Witt nodded, though with one eyebrow raised. "I believe you think it, my lord of Warborough," he answered, now clearly amused. "I could not possibly agree. The Lady Felice did come to us of her own will in want of funds you would not supply a needy wife, according to her tale." He shrugged as one husband to another. "Yet has she been long a loyal courier to the States-General, e'en while you warred against us in the Battle of the Four Days." Though there was some triumph in the words, a gentleman's regret was there also.

Giles pretended ignorance, but it was difficult to keep the shock from his face. Had not his wife taken up spying but recently, and not years past when he had restricted her allowance? "I do not believe it, sir," Giles said. "Bring me to her, for I would hear it from her own lips." Was de Witt playing an enemy's game to discover what a husband knew of this business, or could add to save the life of a wife he loved enough at risk to his own? Had Merry made a triumph of her work for Chiffinch? Or been exposed? Questions rose one after another like surf pounding against Dover's cliffs, and nothing was answered, each question making his hard-sought sureties murkier, bringing him to ask the most difficult question: Was the change from Felice to Merry that he had gloried in to be the last and most cruel betrayal?

De Witt lowered his voice. "My dear Lord Giles, I regret that we meet again in such circumstances, for I know you to be an honorable man who wears his love for his wife on his face and is a patriot of renown in both our countries. Yet must I ask you for information, as is my duty when an Eng-lisher nobleman is captured pretending to be a countryman. By the law of the sea, I could have you hung for a spy."

Giles held his aching head even higher. "Do your duty, sir. As I will do mine and refuse you information."

Undeterred, the Hollander tapped a feathered quill against a map, showing the mouth of the Thames and its islands. "You are of the court and in the confidence of your king, close to secrets of the Admiralty. If you tell me what we need to know of the strengthening of these defenses during the month past while your lady was .. . er, sojourning in the Tower"—he ignored Giles's leap to his feet—"and, my lord, the defenses from the fort of Sheerness to Upnor Castle." He raised his quill. "And thence on upriver to Chatham. I especially want to know how the chain across the river at Gillingham is now situated and at what depth, and beyond to your city of London—"

Giles, his head spinning from all de Witt had said and the sudden lunge to his feet, nevertheless was incredulous at that last statement. "You intend to strike at a city laid waste once by plague and again by fire! That is dishonorable, sir, and I would not have thought it. And you are mistook about the Tower. My wife was with me except for a week at Harring-don Hall." He tried to remember. Was not it on her return that he began to notice such a great change?

De Witt tightened his jaw. "Seat yourself, my lord. War is not honorable or dishonorable, as is spying, but merely necessary, all men being but men and most easily bought." Amused as well as triumphant, he smirked a bit. "Or in this case, women."

"You insult me, sir, to think me capable of being traitor to all I e'er fought to defend. Or that my countess is such. What I
will
tell you is that you lead your fleet into certain disaster against superior forces."

It was obvious to Giles that de Witt's generous smile meant that he had better information. Merry? His heart felt squeezed between what he had heard and what he desperately wished to believe.

De Witt continued, "Then many Englishmen will die that you could have saved."

"No true subject of His Majesty, King Charles, would want his life spared to the ruin of his country's fleet or chiefest city, sir."

A side door opened and Felice, the Countess of Warbor-ough, stepped into the light of the cabin windows. "Oh, la, my lord husband," she said, highly amused in her turn. "Here is one subject of the king who will have her life spared and a goodly treasure into the bargain. You are yet impossibly noble, attempting rescue of Chiffinch's slut. She must have given you a very good ride indeed."

This was Felice, but the old Felice, her face hard again as if her new sweet vulnerability had peeled away. Giles took a hesitant step toward her, nearly losing his balance except for grabbing the map table that stood in his way. "Merry?"

"Halt!"
Two men answered de Witt's shout. One of them using his pistola butt hit the back of Giles's head as he reached for Felice.

"The wound has affected his mind, Cornelis," Felice said, rounding the table to stare down with curiosity at her husband's crumpled body. "He thinks me the other when the difference is more than plain."

"Indeed, my dear countess, I believe he does think you the counterfeit, the woman he risked his life for, which answers some questions and raises other quite interesting ones."

Meriel had ceased to strain her ears, unable to decipher any of the faint sounds coming from the deck above. She was aware that the ship, which was hove to after the cannon fire, had turned her bow once again to meet the Channel waves, running before the wind.

The hammock ropes had loosened from her tugging just enough for her to sense the lump in the purse tied round her waist, which had slipped almost to her knees. Wyndham's Infallible Miracle Salve! She felt the small waxen packet she had happily thought to bring with her.
Hey, well, a young miss already in the prime of youth must always care for her face upon the sea, if she wishes to remain ..
.
prime!

Meriel inched up her gown and between two fingers was able to open the packet on one end, squeezing the dewy, slippery salve against the ropes until she was able to slide up the knife in its sheath on her thigh. She said a prayer of thanks for the little doctor's nostrum, then busied herself severing rope loops along her leg as far as she could reach until the hatch opened and light came streaming in, almost blinding her.

She rolled to her side to hide the opening in her rope prison, wondering if Felice or de Witt or both would descend into the hold to taunt her. Several seamen carried a heavy bundle to the bottom, shouting words she did not know but could readily guess were aimed against such work. They dropped their load none too gently before retreating back up through the hatch, slamming it shut.

The bundle groaned and cursed. "Cock's life!"

Frantically, Meriel began to roll in the dark toward the hatchway, crushing the little vial of laudanum the doctor had given her to help her withstand torture.

Giles gasped out a challenge in Hollander. When she didn't answer, he shouted in English, "Who shares this rat's den with me?"

Meriel could have touched him if her hands had been free. But would she have dared without knowing what he knew and what he thought about it? Had he changed from the lover he had been at Harringdon Hall to an avenger?

"Speak your name!" Giles ordered.

"Merry," she whispered.

"But—"

The one word was followed by silence, though she could almost hear him organizing what he did know and guessmg at what he did not. "For Christ's sweet sake, Giles, please. .."

Finally, after agonizing in the black darkness and even blacker silence, he spoke in a tone of inquiry, as if sorting the words into recognizable heaps. "I left my countess in de Witt's cabin, claiming you a counterfeit. You are Merry? Your voice is as I remember it... in a recent night. And that was not the voice I heard in de Witt's cabin." There was a short, thick pause before he spoke words she had hoped never to hear: "Damn you for a liar. Who are you?"

There was nothing left but truth before death, either from the Dutch or from Chiffinch ... or perhaps from an enraged Giles himself. Any magistrate would grant an earl that he had just cause. Her breath trembling, she said, "I am Meriel St. Thomas ... the Merry of the last days at court, the Merry of your bed and of the oak tree." Then, her heart pounding in her throat, she was completely breathless, done, destroyed.

His voice rasped out a denial. "But your face ... we do not live in an age of miracles."

Her breath hardly came to her in time. "You are most wrong, Giles. In any age, the love we shared is a miracle."

"You dare speak of a lie as love! My meaning is of your perfect match to Felice, as a twin babe from the same womb, and yet there were differences from the first. I saw them, and didn't believe them."

"You believed them. You wanted to believe them. I know you did."

He hated her at that moment because he knew she was right. He'd been a willing dupe, but he would not admit it. "You know nothing, girl, but how to turn love to lies! In that even Felice is not your peer."

Giles's words had been wrung from some deep, wounded place in his soul. Meriel knew his heart and mind had snapped shut against her. It was in his tone, in his words, in the air, suffocating her. And yet she had to hope for his understanding, or what use was her next breath?

She could hear him moving, perhaps sitting, his breathing labored. "Are you hurt?" she asked.

"What I am is not your concern. Speak the truth or speak not at all."

"Yes, my lord, I will speak the burden that I have carried these several weeks, and rid myself of it, no matter what the cost." Being practical, she added: "But I could speak more clearly if I were not choked in rope."

"My hands and feet are tied."

"I have a knife and have it free of its sheath. They ne'er thought to search a woman."

"I will not make such a mistake now that I know any gown can hold a Judas."

Ordinarily, Meriel would have disputed how men thought women incapable of cleverness, but she could not answer this accusation. "When you hear my story, you may see I had no choice."

"There is always choice." He grunted with some great effort. "Can you reach my bindings?"

"Move to the sound of my voice, as I have almost freed one arm." She felt a little hope return as he inched closer, and wondered briefly if he remembered all that had passed between them as she did, or if those gentle hands would reach for her throat. Somehow, the possibility did not concern her, since if Giles was lost to her, she would end her life as it had started. Alone.

It took some interminable time, but she sawed through the ropes on his hands, and he, taking the knife, freed his legs.

For a minute Giles hesitated, holding the knife in the faint light from the hatch rim, and staring into its dull glint.

"You would get no blame from me if you plunged the knife into my heart." Her voice caught on the last word. "You would have my blessing, for I have done you a great wrong . .. though the fault was not mine."

"Whose fault then, Mistress Merry, although that is not your true name?"

"It is my truest name, and I followed Chiffinch's orders and the king's to save my life and for England. It is not just men who can fight for their country." She paused, breathing deeply, so many words trying to crowd into her mouth, she hardly knew what to say first. "Believe me, I always thought to do more good than harm in my pretense to be your countess. . .. And I had always—" She stopped as she felt the knife begin to cut through the hammock ropes and they fell away from her body one by one.