Gideon's Angel by Clifford Beal Read Free Book Online Page B

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    “If our business is to conclude here,” I said, “then it is to be now. Done and dusted, sir. I am the only one who will answer this call to arms and that you know already. Make me your instrument.”
    Lord Herbert looked at me and then off into the trees. “It is not for me alone to decide.” He turned fully, facing me. “Why then, this change of heart, Sir Richard? Surely it was not Gerard’s youthful taunts against your honour?”
    I smiled. “It was not Lord Gerard. The example of a far older comrade has shown me my error. Unlike him, I still have the time to put things to right.”
    “And if your offer of aid is refused, what then?” said Herbert. “Will you sulk off to fight the Spanish instead?”
    I slowly closed the ground between us, hands thrust in the pockets of my breeches. “No,” I said quietly, “That was a lie. I think you know that I will go to England, just the same.”
    And Herbert’s look of utter disarm was proof that he believed me too.
     
     
    B UT THERE REMAINED one problem, one entirely divorced from the scheming of the Swordsmen. It was not my fear of how Mazarin would take the news of my sudden departure. I penned the resignation of my command knowing his fury would be swift at my failure to discover the Devil’s pawn among the exiles. God willing, he wouldn’t discover my absence until I was out of France. To further throw his hounds off the scent I let slip my intention to go to Sweden once again for employment as I had done years before. He was too crafty to swallow this whole so I sweetened the cake by making arrangements to send off a chest containing some worthless belongings by way of coach to an inn at Cologne, on the road to Stockholm. I was sure that distrustful musketeer, Lieutenant d’Artagnan, would quickly look for such arrangements, thereby buying myself a little more time to escape.
    No, the problem was my mistress. She was far too sharp a pin to be fooled so easily as the Cardinal. Of my plans to fight the Spaniards, lavishly embellished by my yearning for the saddle, Marguerite drenched these with scorn. She knew that my regiment was staying put around Paris for the time to safeguard the king and she called me the bigger fool for thinking she would believe such a shallow ruse. So I changed tack, telling her that I would be going farther afield, to Germany, Denmark and Sweden, to find my comrades of old. She, better than anyone else, knew how the death of Andreas had shaken me. But this too fell upon stony ground and was met with a shriek of desperate outrage.
    “You would leave me the discarded whore then?” She shook her head as if to answer the question herself. “No, you shall not buy me off with such a tale either, my love. There’s more to this change of heart than mere soldiering, I swear.” And she paused a moment, her eyes big and wet, before turning away. But then she turned back, looking at me hard. “You’re returning to England. That’s your clever plan, isn’t it? But why?”
    I stammered that she was wrong but she cut me off with an accusing finger.
    “No! I shall guess it, sir. I shall puzzle it out, for I know your heart better than you do.” And then a slow, grim smile crept onto her plump face, now bright pink with anger. “You’re going home . You’re going home to Devon. To find your wife and children.” She was nodding now, and quickly closing the ground between us as we stood in her little bedroom. “ Memento mori . That’s why you’ve acted the baited bear these last days.”
    I could say nothing, and the colours fluttered down from my mast.
    “You would leave me here alone to this drudgery,” she said, “with my father returning in a few weeks to find I have been carrying on with you?”
    “It’s time for me to go home again, Maggie. That’s the truth of it. And I don’t know what I shall find there.”
    She seized me hard by the arm. “What you shall find? You shall find the end of a rope! You’ve told