But as she asked the question, she saw the wound. It was at his side below the breast, hidden by the dark colour of his close-fitting jacket. Melusine ripped at the buttons of the garment, dragging it open and away, and gasped at the massive red stain on his shirt.
She glanced at the Frenchman, and found him struggling with the portrait that was embedded around his scalp. All at once she became aware of sounds outside. Furious shouting, and the thunder of running feet.
The soldiers! They must not find her here. Nor Jacques. Better they should find the so-called Valade. They would arrest him for the French spy they had thought her at first. What better way to be rid of him?
‘Jacques,’ she uttered urgently. ‘Quickly! You must get up. We will go to the passage and then I shall bind you. Come, mon ami, come!’
Ever faithful, Kimble dragged himself into a sitting position, gasping at the pain this caused him.
‘Parbleu, the bullet is still inside you,’ Melusine guessed, remembering how the Mother Abbess had diagnosed Leonardo’s suffering when he had first come to the convent.
She looked round wildly, as if seeking some source of help, as the boots halted at the front door and the shouting intensified.
But there was only Gosse, still struggling with the picture, looking dazedly towards Melusine and the lad he had shot, then away towards the sounds of pursuit, and back again.
‘Do not think—’ he panted, ‘that I am finished—with you, mademoiselle.’
‘Let’s...go...while we can,’ Kimble managed, and dragged himself onto his knees.
Melusine got to her feet and, tucking her shoulder under his arm on the uninjured side, put her arm about him to hold his waist, and thus contrived to take most of his weight. Together they made their painful way to the door, not even checking, in the effort this cost both, on what Gosse might be doing.
Once they were on the move, Kimble seemed to find strength from somewhere. ‘I’ll make it, miss. Hurry...before them soldiers...get in. The panel in the bookcase...it’s open.’
They passed through a little antechamber, and Melusine sighed with relief as she entered the library next door. Activity in the hall intensified. The militia were in already. They must have a key. She hurried with Jack as fast as she could to the open door to the passage. The lantern was on the ground inside, ready. She let Jack go as he passed through the opening. He went in and leaned, panting, against one wall.
Melusine came in, picked up the lantern, and heard the library door bang open just as the panel clicked closed behind her.
‘Come, Jacques, mon pauvre,’ she uttered, and reached for the lad again, hardly aware of the muted sounds of running feet and much banging and crashing beyond the secret door.
She helped Jack to sit down, and dragged the jacket off him, lifting his shirt to expose the gash that had sliced across his side. Using the shirt, she cleaned away the blood. It was not as bad a wound as she had at first thought, and the blood was only oozing now. Melusine sighed with relief and set to work by the light of the lantern.
Jack seemed glad enough to rest, his back against the wall, and closed his eyes. Melusine ripped strips off her under-petticoats and fashioned a pad, which she bandaged as tightly as she could over the wound, working swiftly, unperturbed by the gore. She had not nursed Leonardo for weeks for nothing. The nuns had no regard for the sensibilities of a “lady” and expected Melusine—for it was her allotted task—to clean and tend the soldier’s wounds even when they festered.
While she worked, Melusine worried over the problem of getting Jack home. First the passage to be negotiated. Then a ride to London on horseback. Could she hold him and manage the reins? If only Gerald had not gone. No, this was imbecile. She had begun alone. She would end alone. Voilà tout.
‘Up, Jacques, up,’ she ordered.
Her faithful servant struggled, with her assistance, to rise. Melusine’s heart ached for him, but she had to force him on.
There was barely room for one, let alone two, in the passage, and Melusine ended up backwards, supporting Jack as best she could as he stumbled along, grasping the rough walls on either side with both hands.
Melusine cursed herself for his injury. Cursed him for his devotion that had made him come back for her, only to get himself shot by the fiendish Gosse. And where was that devil? Had the soldiers found him? She could not think he had escaped, for she had only just made it into the passage as they entered the library. Unless—would he hide from them as he had hidden from her? It was a big house, he said. Catch him, she begged silently.
All at once she realised that Kimble had halted, leaning heavily against the wall.
‘Jacques?’
‘No...good, miss. I can’t...’
He slid slowly down and collapsed to the stone floor, fainting dead away.
‘Jacques!’
Melusine dropped to her haunches beside his inert form, feeling for the wound. It was bleeding again. She tightened her bandage and sat back, biting her lip. They could not go on. Tears sprang to her eyes. What a pig she was. If Jack should die, all though her fault, she could never forgive herself.
She put a hand to the lad’s cold cheek and choked on a sob. ‘Jacques, do not die while I am gone.’
Grasping the lantern, and heedless now of the discomforts of the passage, Melusine flew like the wind back towards the library, the vision of Jack Kimble’s white face driving her on. Reaching the panel, she was able with the aid of her lantern to find the lever at once. Her heart full of dread, she dragged on it.
As the secret door opened, the sounds within the house came at once to her ears: the tramping of feet above, and the hoarse voices echoing through the mansion. Leaving the panel wide, Melusine dashed to the library door and flung it open, racing into the hall.
‘You, soldiers,’ she yelled. ‘To me, quickly!’
There was a brief hush, and then the shouts resumed and several pairs of feet clattered towards her from, as it seemed, several directions. A militiaman came belting down the stairs, another leapt from outside the front door, and a third, stalwart and stolid, came in through the door that led to the rooms to the front of the house. Melusine recognised the burly form of Captain Roding’s sergeant.
‘Ha! It’s you, is it?’ He threw a glance at his two juniors. ‘Cover her, men. That Frenchie, that’s who she is.’
Relief flooded Melusine. ‘You are the one that I have met in London.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed the militiaman, coming forward to stand before her. ‘Sergeant Trodger is who I am. Now then, missie—’
‘Bon,’ said Melusine, interrupting him without ceremony, and paying no attention to the muskets that were pointing at her from two directions. ‘I am glad it is you, because you can help me.’
‘That depends, that does,’ said Trodger guardedly. ‘Now then, where did you spring from?’
‘Do not concern yourself from where I come,’ Melusine snapped. ‘More important is that you help me instantly, as even your capitaine would command.’
‘Capting Roding wouldn’t never command me to help no Frenchie,’ said the sergeant positively.
