Sophia James: Scars of Betrayal

He wished that he had the whisky to dull the pain. He wished for a bed that was not on a forest floor, but some place warmer, more comfortable, some place where his heartbeat did not rattle against the cold hard of earth.

‘If you sit, it should help with the drainage.’

He was shivering now, substantially, and went to drape his jacket around himself to find warmth, but she held it away and shook her head.

‘You are burning up. The mind plays tricks when the fever rages and as I cannot shift you to the stream we will have to make do with the cold night air instead. I had hoped it would snow.’

Her accent was Parisian, the inflection of the drawing rooms and the society salons where anything and everything was possible. He wondered why the hell she should have been in Nay, dressed in the clothes of a lad, and when he inadvertently blurted the thought out aloud, he saw her flinch.

‘I think you should sleep, Monsieur Colbert.’

His name. Not quite right. But he needed to be quiet and he needed to think. There was danger here. He wished he could have asked her who she was, what she was, but the camphor was winding its way into the quick pricks of pain and he closed his eyes to block her from him.

* * *

He would be sore in the morning if he lived. The wound or the fever could kill him, but it was the bleeding that she was most concerned about. She had not been able to stop it. Already blood pooled beneath him, more hindrance to a body struggling with survival.

Tipping up the flask, she took the last drops of water.

She was starving. She was exhausted. The embers of the fire still glowed in the dark, but outside the small light the unknown gathered.

Baudoin had not existed alone and she knew that others would follow. Oh, granted, this stranger had hidden their tracks well ever since leaving Nay, his cart discarded quite early in the piece. She had watched him set false lures into other directions, the heavy print of a foot in a stream, a broken twig snagged with the hair from her plait, but she knew it would only be a matter of time before those in France’s underworld would find them.

She held far too many secrets, that was the problem. She had seen some of the documents Baudoin’s brother had inadvertently left in Celeste’s chamber, documents she knew had been taken from the carriage of a murdered man on the road towards Bayonne. A mistake of lust and an error that would lead to all that had happened next.

Her fault. Everything was her fault and her cousin had not even known it. The same familiar panic engulfed her, made her lean forward to catch breath, trying in the terror to hold on to the reason of why Celeste had done as she did. Cassie still felt the sticky blood across her fingers, the warmth of life giving way to cold.

Softly she began to sing, keeping herself staunch; the ‘Marseillaise’ because it was fast paced and because it was in French.

To arms, citizens,

Form your battalions,

We march, we march...

Celeste was dead. And the Baudoin brothers. How quickly circumstances changed. In a heartbeat. In a breath. She looked across to the stranger, Colbert, and determined that he was still in the land of the living before she shut her eyes.

* * *

The girl was asleep, her hat pulled down across her head and her jacket stretched over the bend of her knees. As Nathaniel looked at her in repose there was a vulnerability apparent that was not evident when she was awake. She was thin, painfully so, and dirty. On a closer inspection he saw on her clothes the handiwork of small, finely taken stitches covering rips and larger holes. Her shirt was buttoned to the throat and the jacket she wore was tightly closed. More than a few sizes too large, it held the look of a military coat without any of the braiding. He knew she still had the knife, but it was not visible anywhere. Too big for the pockets, he imagined it tucked in under her forearm or secreted in one of the boots she wore beneath loose trousers.

A child-woman lost into the vagaries of a war that could not have been kind.

He felt stronger, a surprising discovery this, given his fever, and although the wound tugged when he shifted it did not sting like it had. Still, his vision blurred as he stood from the loss of blood or his own body’s heat, he knew not which.

Camphor. Perhaps there was something in the doctoring, some healing property that would confound even the best of physicians? He resolved to use it again.

She stirred across from him, wild curls escaping from the plait and falling around her face. In sleep she looked softer, the burden of life not marking the spaces between her eyes. Her ruined left hand sat on top of the right one and fire outlined the hurt in flame. Not a little injury and not an accident either. This looked to be deliberate, a brutal act of damage that would have taken weeks to heal. It was strange to see such a battle scar on one so young. His own back was filled with the vestige of war, but he had been in the arena of secrets for some time and such damage was to be expected.

Her eyes flicked open suddenly, taking him in, fear reverting to wariness.

‘How do you feel?’ Even fresh from sleep she was observant.

‘Better.’

Her glance at his throat read the measured beat of his heart. ‘Your temperature is still high so you should be drinking as much as you can. In a moment I will fetch more water.’

A frown of concern slashed the girl’s forehead, but he was tired of thinking of her as ‘the girl’. ‘What are you called?’

‘Sandrine Mercier.’

Rolling the name on his tongue, he liked the sound of it. ‘How old are you?’

‘Almost eighteen.’ Surprisingly forthcoming, though she did not look to have as many years as she professed.

‘And your cousin?’

Moonlight caught her face as her chin lifted. ‘Celeste was twenty and she loved music. She loved everything beautiful and charming and good. She played the piano and sang like an angel...’ Her voice came to a halt.

Nat knew what she was doing because he had done the same himself when those close to him had died. A memory they might be, but in speech they came alive, drawn for others to know, almost living.

‘Did Baudoin kill her?’

Only the quick shake of her head.

One day she will be beautiful, he thought. One day she will take men’s hearts and break them. For now she was young. Too young for him. For now the stamp of grace lay in her long limbs and her boyish defiance, the promise of womanhood only hinted at.

He turned away, not wishing for her to see his regard.

* * *

He was back to being angry, his eyes the colour of a storm, not dark, not light, but the in-between shade that spoke of rain and coldness.

‘Are you a part of Guy Lebansart’s circle of spies?’ If she found out something about him, there might be protection there.

His interest ignited. ‘Spies?’

‘Men who would take secrets and use them.’

‘For France?’

‘Or for whoever is paying the most.’

His frown deepened. ‘Did you ever know any of these secrets, Sandrine?’ In his words she could hear exactly what she did not want to. Interest and intrigue. Eight months in captivity had taught her every nuance in the language of deception.

‘No.’ She kept her voice bland and low, shaking out the truth with effort. ‘I was only a prisoner.’

‘Where did they keep you?’

She did not answer, moving instead to retrieve the flask. Her mattress had been in a room off Celeste and Louis’s chamber, a sanctuary she tried very hard to seldom leave. Lying low, she only ever ventured out when the early hours of the morning saw each inhabitant befuddled by strong drink, her cousin included. But Celeste had made her own bargain with the devil and had won conditions to make the tenure livable. Cassie’s thoughts went again to Celeste’s beautiful voice and her smile. When memory was selective, everything was easier.