Chapter Four: Of Thee I Will Believe
Jacqueline stared down at the paper. The first letter of the first word of the first sentence was an A. The next one was an N. Of this much she was sure. The rest of the letters marched across the paper in random groups she knew must be words, but she could not read them. Blinking away tears of frustration as the instructor droned on about time and restrictions, Jacqueline tried again to make sense of the test. The third letter was an S, but as she tried to put a name to the fourth, it began to move across the page. The rest of the letters were moving too, swirling, merging, until she could no longer recognize a single one.
She raised her hand and waited for the proctor to call on her. "Sir, I think there's something wrong with my test."
The letters coalesced as he strode over and picked up the booklet, holding it up so the rest of the room could see. The young men around Jacqueline began to snicker, and then to laugh outright, their mockery filling the room. Shoving her chair back, she tried to push through the throng of desks to the door, but before she reached it, many hands had seized her and begun to tear at her uniform….
Jacqueline opened her eyes in the darkness and lay frozen in bed, trying not to shiver in the sweat-soaked, swiftly cooling sheets. Steeling herself, she threw them off and rolled over, hissing as her weight fell on her shoulder. It began to throb, and she knew she'd never get back to sleep, even though she'd only gone to bed a few hours before. The afternoon's nap and her shoulder contrived to keep her from sleep, even though she'd worked with Siroc past dark, rebuilding his distillery as he taught her the sounds of the alphabet.
It was so very early in the morning that "late at night" wasn't quite over. Jacqueline sat up carefully and thought about going for a walk or a ride. And then she thought about saddling a horse one-handed. A walk it was, then. She dressed slowly and padded down the hallway, boots in one hand, knowing that if she woke Captain Duval, a notoriously light sleeper whose room was right next to the door, he would not be inclined to leniency, and she'd be in the dungeons with d'Artagnan and a mop.
A thin line of gaslight lit the hallway as she turned the corner, still shining through the ajar lab door. Either Siroc had forgotten to turn out the light, or he was still at work. Jacqueline suspected the latter, and stuck her head in the door to tactfully suggest he go to bed.
At first glance the room appeared empty, but as Jacqueline reached for the gas switch, a soft snoring reached her ears. She looked around again, and spotted him behind the workbench. Siroc had fallen asleep slumped in a low-backed wooden chair, body limp with exhaustion, hand and apron chalk-streaked, a smear of chalk dust on his pert nose. His lashes lay still on pale, calm cheeks, lips moving softly as he breathed, mouth half open with a hint of a smile in the corners, trusting and expectant in sleep.
Jacqueline sighed as loudly as she dared, half-laughing and half-pitying, and set her boots down. Tiptoeing back to her room, she caught up the quilted blue coverlet she'd bought with part of her first real wages. Back in the lab, she tucked it around Siroc's sleeping form. Then she turned off the lights, caught up her boots, and left.
Outside, a sliver of moon tried to light the streets and was all but thwarted by scudding clouds. Jacqueline shoved her feet into her boots, shouldered her baldric, and set out down Rue Chenier.
Of the sprawling city that was Paris, Jacqueline knew well only a rough ellipse, its foci the Palace and Musketeer headquarters. She set out to walk the perimeter, keeping to streets more or less well-lit and avoiding alleys, aware that she was one woman alone, but also that she carried a sword she knew how to use. She was not afraid, but her shoulder throbbed and she had a lot to think about.
The nightmare had shaken her, dream-truth trying to weasel its way into the realm of fact. 'It's not for two months,' she told herself, 'and letters do not move once printed.' But a knowing dread still lurked at the back of her mind. 'If I fail, they will throw me out of the Musketeers.' Her footfalls made a taunting chorus: "If I fail, if I fail…"
Jacqueline quickened her pace, destroying the rhythm, and turned along Rue Ferou.
If she failed….
She felt the need to walk the implications out; this she did, until in the effervescent darkness before dawn, Jacqueline felt the knots in her stomach ease, and the pain in her shoulder subside to a dull throb. She would not fail. She had a good teacher, and she would work hard. She would not fail.
Turning back toward headquarters, she tried to calculate an excuse for Captain Duval if he caught her sneaking back in after a night on the town.
She had just considered going straight to Café Nouveau to seek out the enigmatic baker, Noret, not returning to headquarters at all, when she heard the scuffling in the alley behind her. In the light from the flickering streetlamp, Jacqueline turned, and a burly figure barreled out of the alley and into her, narrowly missing her shoulder.
"Oh, sir," he gasped, fawning. "Sir, I can't tell you how sorry I is." His eyes widened upon seeing her uniform. "You're a Musketeer! P'raps you can help. It's my sister; she's in a bad way…." He seized her arm and pointed back down the alley. Even in the shadows, Jacqueline could see what was clearly a large man hitting a small woman, probably with the intent to do other things to her, as well.
Jacqueline took off before she could stop to wonder why the man couldn't help his own sister, though he was close behind her as she sprinted toward the pair. They sprang apart as she neared them, turning to face the sound of footsteps with feral eyes.
What Jacqueline had first thought was a cautionary hand on her left arm became a vice-like grip. Puzzled, she tried to turn, body kicking into self-defense mode, and the man's arm snaked around her neck. The formerly feuding pair converged on them as she fought the stranglehold, unable to use her half-drawn sword at such close range. "A Musketeer!" the woman crowed. "What's he got on 'im?"
Jacqueline had, in point of fact, nothing on her and said as much. But that didn't stop the woman patting her down and rifling through her pockets while the men held her. Jacqueline held her breath, praying that they wouldn't feel anything amiss, or notice if they did, and waited until the woman finished before making her move. Going limp in their grip, she kicked backward at the fellow holding her left arm, and tried to draw her sword when he bent down to clutch at his shin, swearing.
The woman, who had taken the meager contents of Jacqueline's pockets out to examine them under better light, returned upon hearing the noise. While Jacqueline struggled in the grip of the remaining thug, the woman watched, a bemused smile flitting over her thin, rouged lips, then calmly stepped forward and punched Jacqueline's right shoulder.
She screamed, feeling something separate in the joint as the arm fell limp by her side. Biting her lip bloody to keep from crying out again, Jacqueline glared out through blurring tears as the woman, smirking, said, "Tie 'im up, boys. We won't have no more trouble from this one."
"Not from him, but you will from me." All four looked up to see a figure silhouetted in the mouth of the alley, hair tousled, sword in hand.
Jacqueline spit out the half-tied gag. "Siroc? Thank God! How-" The second thug's hand caught her across the face, snapping her head back and splitting her lower lip. Siroc dispatched him with a pistol, drawn in an eye-blink and fired left-handed, as the other two charged him.
Jacqueline scrambled to her feet to help him, stumbling over the still-warm corpse as she fought to reach the brawl. The remaining man and woman had evaded his blade long enough to get inside his guard and, once inside, the fact they were unarmed did not matter: Siroc couldn't use his sword.
Watching the trio of Musketeers whose fourth member she was fast becoming, Jacqueline had noticed that Siroc was the worst fencer of the group, only mediocre by the corps' standards. But mediocre by Musketeer standards was expert by any others'. Even so, at close range and in the darkness, a rapier was not the ideal weapon.
So he did what Jacqueline had been silently willing him to do: he dropped it and clubbed the man over the head with the still-smoking pistol, leaving the outraged woman to claw at his face. Siroc did not, in keeping with the Musketeers' Code, make a habit of fighting members of the gentler sex, and now without a choice in the matter was at a loss. He backed away, tripped, and tried in vain to ward her off as she leaped on him.
Jacqueline had no such qualms, however, and ended up yanking the woman bodily off of him by the back of her gown, but not before the hoyden had shredded the back of his shirt and started in on his back.
Struggling one-armed with the bundle of furious energy that had formerly been her attacker, Jacqueline cried out as the woman hit her shoulder once more. She stumbled backwards, and the woman gathered herself up. With a hiss of invective directed equally at her fallen comrades and the Musketeers, she ran off toward the shadows at the opposite end of the alley.
Mind filled with bright spangles of pain, Jacqueline slumped against the clammy wall, too dazed to even think of going after her assailant. Siroc retrieved his sword, laid the pistol down and knelt beside her. "The shoulder?"
"Yes," Jacqueline spoke carefully around her split lip, spitting blood. "How did you find me?" The knot on the back of her head had begun to throb, and the parts of her body that did not ache gently hurt actively.
His fingers probed gently around the joint. "I followed you. I woke up and went to return your blanket."
Jacqueline opened her mouth to deny ownership, then realized he must have seen it in her room the day before. She cleared her throat. "Oh, don't worry about it. Gah!" she hissed as he hit a hole where none should be.
He sat back on his heels. "That's dislocated, not broken. Once it's set it won't hurt so much."
"Well, set it then!" Jacqueline groaned.
"I need better light. We'd better get back to headquarters anyway. It's nearly dawn."
"Captain Duval," Jacqueline muttered as he gave her a hand up, "is going to kill me. I'll try not to mention you."
"I think he'll notice." Siroc twisted to survey the ruin on his back. "That's the third shirt this month."
Under a lightening sky and a rising wind, the bedraggled pair made their way back to headquarters; Jacqueline moving slowly, as every step jarred her shoulder to new heights of agony, Siroc hissing softly whenever the breeze hit his lacerated back. The few people about their business that early gave them strange looks but said nothing. After all, they'd seen the King's Musketeers in stranger situations.
In the courtyard before the front door Siroc stopped, chewing his bottom lip pensively. Jacqueline, straggling along behind, nearly ran into him. "The Captain's up," he muttered, tipping his head at the light gleaming in one of the windows, "which under normal circumstances would mean I'd take the back way." He glanced at her shoulder. "Can you climb one-handed?"
She started to shrug and then stopped. "I can climb and pitch hay at the same time."
"Good enough." Siroc led the way around the building.
"I didn't know there was a back way," Jacqueline commented.
"Well, there isn't really. D'Artagnan needed a convenient way to go in and out after curfew without the Captain knowing, and he enlisted my help because the only way into the attic is the trap door in my laboratory. And he needed someone to help him take the hinges off."
Now more puzzled than before she'd asked, Jacqueline watched him retrieve a ladder that lay innocuously in the rubbish of the alley, as though abandoned by a party of workmen. He carried it around the building and propped it beneath a gable window near the roof. Clambering up, he pulled the shutters open.
Starting up after him, Jacqueline noticed that the woman in the alley had not been the first to touch Siroc's back with malice. Through the tatters in his shirt, she could see that scars covered his entire back from shoulders to waist. While many had faded to little more than thin white lines, the worst formed thick silver wedges, cutting across the smooth muscles. She thought with some regret that it must have been quite a beautiful back at one time. His skin was fair and fresh, and the lines of bone and muscle were still solid and graceful, the shoulders flat and square-set and the backbone a smooth, straight groove cut deep between the rounded columns of muscle that rose on either side of it.
Looking at this wanton damage, she could not avoid a mental picture of the process that had caused it. She tried not to imagine the muscular arms raised, spread-eagled and tied, ropes cutting into wrists, the sandy head pressed hard against the post in agony; but the marks brought such images all to readily to mind. Had he screamed when it was done, like the man in the square long ago, when her mother had forced her to look away.? Jacqueline pushed the thought hastily away as she reached the top of the ladder and let him help her through the window.
Inside, Jacqueline looked around at a tiny, dusty garret, a part of headquarters she hadn't known existed. Worn, broken chairs and dusty trunks lay scattered around, and the space smelled moldy and sad. Siroc was already kicking open a trapdoor, letting the attached ladder unfold before descending. Shivering, Jacqueline followed.
Once in the lab, he set to work clearing off the largest table with quick, business-like sweeps, muttering to himself. "Lay down," he ordered, "and let you arm hang off the side."
Jacqueline obeyed, trying to reassure herself that he knew what he was doing. Her shoulder did not take kindly to letting the arm hang off the side, so she propped herself up on her chest with the other elbow until Siroc came around, touching the dislocated shoulder.
He was chewing his lip again, and looked not at all sure of himself. "I don't know if this will hurt or not. Do you want something to bite?"
"What do you mean you don't know if it will hurt or not? Haven't you ever done this before?" Jacqueline stared up at him.
"Not exactly. I've seen it done, though. It did look like it hurt, come to think of it." He frowned at the memory, shoving unruly, touseled hair out of his eyes.
"Siroc," she groaned. "This arm is my life. If I can't fence…" She glared up at him, trying to hide how scared she was.
"You'll be able to fence, don't worry. In a couple of months. Trust me." And Jacqueline found she did, that the earnest brown eyes convinced her.
Jacqueline subsided into prone silence on the table as he knelt and began to pull the arm slowly toward the floor, using a strong and steady force. The shoulder protested. Jacqueline gritted her teeth in silence.
After what seemed an interminable while, he let go, and she gasped as the shoulder–there was no other word for it- popped into place. Almost all of the pain ceased. She rolled off the table, flexing experimentally.
"You'll have to wear it in a sling for a few months, but other-" Jacqueline cut the surprised inventor off with a fierce, unthinking bear hug of pure joy.