Gideon's Angel Read Free Page A

field of battle.
    “We had scarcely bowed and made a reverence before he barked at us to join him in his tent. His Eminence was not alone. There, next to a trestle table scattered with maps and documents, stood a soldier I had not met before.
    “Mazarin’s hand rested on a letter that lay half crumpled upon the table in front of his chair. He gestured at the soldier without even looking at us.
    “‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘May I introduce Monsieur d’Artagnan, of the king’s company of musketeers.’ He picked up the letter and waved it my way. ‘And these two worthies are my trusted servants, Colonel Richard Treadwell and Major Andreas Falkenhayn, of my own regiment. Now then—listen well—we have little time.’”
    “And who is this d’Artagnan?” asked Maggie, her voice quite muffled under the coverlet.
    “He is some young Gascon of lesser nobility, come to Paris to find his fortune, and already a trusted emissary of Mazarin for such a tender age.”
    “Pray, continue,” she whispered.
    So I told her what Mazarin had told us, his Italian-accented French tripping so rapidly that I was hard-pressed to follow him. “‘That young fool of a Stuart prince has managed to get himself captured—or killed,’ said Mazarin, sinking further into his leather camp chair. ‘If the rebels discover they have the Duke of York in their grasp it will give them a strong hand to play against King Louis.’
    “‘Where, Your Eminence? Where was he taken?’ I asked.
    “But it was d’Artagnan who answered my question. ‘He fell off his horse in the main square of the village. He was seen to be dragged inside one of the houses by a group of rebel musketeers before the rest of his party could rescue him. Word is he was as limp as a sack of grain when they pulled him boot-first through the doorway. He might even be dead.’
    “I looked over to Andreas who merely raised his eyebrows in reply.
    “‘And you, gentlemen,” said Mazarin, wagging a long bony finger at me and Andreas, “you are going to get him back—this very night. You will find him. If he is dead then we shall know. If he yet lives you will bring him back here. If you cannot get him out, then, in such an eventuality, I’m afraid for the good of the State you must kill him where he is.’
    “I just stood there, dazed. ‘Aye, Eminence, I shall assemble the squadron—’
    “Mazarin jumped up, flapping like a puppet. ‘No, man! This is work for three, not a regiment. Use your wiles, sir, it is what I have paid you for these last years!’
    “‘What three, Your Eminence?’
    “‘D’Artagnan will accompany you. He knows roughly where the Englishman was taken and you’ll find he is a useful man in such circumstances.’
    “D’Artagnan gave a slight bow but said nothing.
    “‘I pray that James Stuart has not opened his mouth to say who he actually is,’ said the Cardinal as he dragged a lantern across the table onto one of his maps, his attention already moving to other concerns.
    “I blinked in the gloom of the stifling tent, waiting.
    “‘You may go,’ the Cardinal said without looking up again. ‘God be with you.’”
     
     
    I T WAS NEAR to midnight before we could commence our plan, hatched as best one could on short notice and with barely a scrap of intelligence. I looked up at the moon, two days waxing full, and cursed our luck.
    “Too much light,” whispered Andreas. “We’ll be as naked as a cuckoo at Christmas.”
    I don’t know how long it took us to scale the low wall that confronted us, then skirt the gardens and make our way alongside the little abbey and so into the village. But at last, we entered an alleyway cut between two houses and followed it out to the street. And then, as one, we stopped. There were at least a hundred rebels, many around well-stoked braziers in the middle of the street.
    D’Artagnan crossed to the far side and we followed, ducking into another alley.
    “How long do you expect our good fortune to