Joy V. Sheridan writes

Charity Amour Part III

Near BORDEAUX: WINTER 1788

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE part 1

A hawk hovered, a blurring aerial performer enacting early-morning calisthenics, spot-lit by a freshly risen orange orbed sun. Not a cloud blinked the sheer bolt of ice blue, not one cloud.

They stood at twenty paces, facing each other. No misty remnants of night’s chilly ethers to disguise their purpose. Or their intent. A lone bird warbled in the invisible distance, to be answered by the echo of an ominous second feathered presence.

For a second or two the two figures seemed to be studying one another - one, lean, muscular, upright and dark; - the other, shorter, thickset, flamboyantly clothed, a flash of white about the neck and wrists. Now each had an elbow raised, eyes glued to sights, hand supporting elbow.

As the pistols fired into life, so did an opening gambit of sunshine run steamily down upon the sparse and icy grass which separated the protagonists. The pistols kicked, a smattering of small sparks, a smelching of spent powder. The taller of the two figures fell to the ground, clutching at his chest, kicking his legs into the emptiness of space as he did so, flinging the weapon away from him, the reflex action of a mortally wounded being.

The gunshots petered away through the stillness. On came the upright figure, examining as he did so his own spent weapon. Reaching the still body, now recumbent amidst the ice-riven earth, he knelt, bent in token abject abjuration; resumed his standing position, turned, walked back. Facing once more where his fallen rival now made a rigid black horizontal upon the frosty ground, he posed, one hand resting upon his hip, before throwing his own pistol to obscurity.

Turning his back upon the scene of mortality he had helped to occasion, he walked from the scene. After a few seconds, the fallen figure too raised himself and vacated his plot. A small round of applause came from two pairs of invisible hands.

“Well done my friends: very well done indeed!” Lord Rispian beckoned both the adversaries so recently embattled towards him. “Your lordship is pleased with our portrayal?”

Jarvis’s obsequious voice wobbled on the iceloaded stratas as a steam of breath followed his words. “Excellent! Excellent! Though ’tis a pity we shan’t have a wider audience to view your performances, other than Sir Dicken Mortimore. The aged old fool that he is!” “It is wisdom to choose a fool to relay to London what you will have believed,” murmured Madame d’Esprit in a coaxing tone. “Yes, and that’s the beauty of it. I hear his eye-sight, poor fellow," Lord Rispian’s tones were full of sarcasm, “is failing him too along with his hearing. Alas, poor Clover, he was always a lousy shot!”

Lord Rispian laughed heartily at the joke, whilst Madame looked slightly to the side and down towards to the ground; she was smiling in an archly secretive sort of way, though her face contorted when she saw that the other of the two marksmen come over the ground. At a distance he looked uncannily like her own last encounter with the man who called himself ‘Monsieur Le Bon’. Her mind worked mercurially fast. Could it, then, she thought, have been Rispian's own cousin whom she had so lustfully enjoyed?

Rispian was by this time reaching for a silver-topped flask and was throwing the contents of it down his oily cheeks; some of the alcohol slopped over the stubble of his unshaven face. He offered the flask to Hinches and turned to address Jarvis once again.

“In the meantime, my fine fellows, I am expecting you to have successfully dispatched my lamentable kinsman in quite a different fashion. Perhaps at the hands of this Secret Peoples’ revolutionary group, this Justice Party mayhap? Yes, I am sure that they would spare no time nor scruples in putting an end to a possible spy for the English - or the gentry!”

“The knife is always reliable, Sir, and it is quiet. It has no language other than the speech it delivers, usually directly across the wind-pipe. It is not truly a gentleman’s weapon either. Your lordship and I feel sure that it would be the ideal tool for the blood-crazed puritanical revolutionary to use. These Frenchies – beg pardon ma’am, - can be a right murderous and despicable crew!”

Jarvis grinned broadly and nudged the flask off Hinches, “Don't mind do you, Lord Rispian, if I takes a little swallow too. Jus’ to whet me appetite so to speak?” Madame d’Esprit glanced up: “It is as well Fitzroy that your own underground network is so advanced.”

She referred to recent information which they had received via the man Mellors, so that there was news of a suspect party, constituted of a foreign gentleman of quality, a valet sort and two females who were even then en route for Bordeaux. They had not escaped the environs of the Château des Amourettes, or the village of Monterique, completely unnoticed. And Mellors, being the complete smaller shadow of a red cardinal - with his idol Richelieu’s cunning - had ensured he had one or two paid men in the village.

Thus it was that he had been able to eventually catch up with the fleeing Madame d’Esprit, His lordship and the two mercenaries - and with the news which he had possession of. The four had been trailed as far as a village, not too far removed from Madame’s country farm. Lord Rispian was merely bidding his time until it became right to strike like a snake does when its prey is immobilised. Obviously Lord Seyton Clover and his companions would eventually find their way to Bordeaux, seeking some sort of assistance and a return passage to England. Such had been surmised by Lord Rispian and Mellors, and agreed with by Madame. Such was the case, as it later proved.

“Shall we get back to breakfast now, Nat. I don't know about you, but all this damn early mornin’ rising and fresh air has landed me with an awful appetite.”