Gideon's Angel Read Free

nothing left for us here. The money has run out and the cause is lost. I may as well become a whore and get paid.”
    “Don’t talk of such things. Think upon Christmas a few weeks hence, my sweet. And remember that in London not one Yule log will be burnt nor a figgy pudding steamed. Copper Nose Cromwell has forbidden it.”
    She pulled her hands to her bosom and her fingers tugged the coverlet snug across her neck. “Christmas is just a child’s diversion for a fortnight. We’ll soon be back to the usual fare, short bitter days, and the endless bickering.”
    I reached over and ran my fingers along her cheek and she turned toward me, a smile broadening in spite of her huff. “One day,” I said, “England will spit out the Puritan lump of gristle stuck in its throat and have done with the whole canting lot.”
    “My love,” she said, stroking my chin and running her hand down my neck with the touch of a fairy, “you above all men must surely know, after all you’ve seen in this world, that people have a capacity to endure—to survive. To look the other way in the face of trouble. That is how they manage under Cromwell.”
    “Aye, well, I won’t tell you otherwise. But where one door closes, another opens. And that’s from an old soldier who knows.” I leaned out of the bed and pinched the candle that guttered in the cold draught. Pulling her in to me once again, I drank in her perfume.
    Softly, she spoke again. “I think it’s time you told me what happened to you this summer—what you did for the king. What really happened. And why he knighted you. I know you don’t have enough money to have convinced him. You must have done something else.”
    I sighed and lay back, falling into the pillow with her head upon my chest. “Very well,” I whispered, “but there are good reasons why few people know what happened. You mustn’t tell a soul lest you bring harm to yourself and others. There are enemies who would learn such things of the Stuarts.”
    “I swear to you,” she said.
    Like a moth, my bumbling, aimless flight had brought me back into the Stuart flame after several years on the Continent as a soldier in the pay of the French. Or to be more exact, His Eminence Giulio Raimondo Cardinal Mazarin. The French had gotten it into their heads to have a little civil war like we English and my skill at arms drew a good price. So I told her of that day last July, as the French rebel army retreated to the gates of Paris in hope of being let in by the city fathers. The Parisians were much too wise to let any army into the town so the rebel leader, Prince Condé, pleaded his case at the city gates while King Louis, the Cardinal, and the royal army closed in for the kill. Condé knew he was trapped at the walls of Paris, so he barricaded himself into Faubourg village, and prepared to fight us.
    “I know all that,” she said. “What was your part in all this?”
    “Not so fast,” I chided. “I will relate that soon enough. What you probably didn’t know is that young James, the brother of our own good king, was also with us that day. Aye, the lad was doing good service as an adjutant to General Turenne, running messages and the like.
    “It was late afternoon before what would prove to be a day of battle outside the walls,” I said. “I was leading a few squadrons of the Cardinal’s cavalry, harassing Condé’s stragglers. Andreas Falkenhayn was with me.”
    “The loutish German fellow we saw today?”
    “The same. My old comrade of many long years. There was a rebel musketeer behind every window flowerpot and every hedge and wall, all taking shots at us as we rode by. The whole afternoon we lay into them as they dug deep into the village like fleas on a poodle.
    “Major Falkenhayn and I found a messenger waiting for us with orders to see the Cardinal at once. When we reached the summit of the hill above Faubourg, the Cardinal emerged from his tent, cassock flapping about him like an ensign on the