The Hidden Evil Read online

  She could hear again the evil of their voices as they called up all the malevolent spirits in which they believed.

  Danger! Danger! She could hear the Duc’s voice, long long ago it seemed to her, saying that very word and she had not believed him.

  At last they reached the courtyard. It was one that she had never visited before, small and unobtrusive and obviously in the less important part of The Palace, perhaps somewhere near the vast kitchens for there was refuse and old wine bottles tumbled about outside and hungry cats stalking in the shadows.

  A coach was waiting and already the footmen were lifting her trunks onto the roof and Maggie was helping her up the step and through the door into the soft-cushioned interior.

  There was no need for Sheena to look at the emblazoned Coat of Arms that decorated the panels to know just who it belonged to.

  One glance at the six horses that pulled it, with their crested harnesses and nodding head-plumes, was enough.

  It was the Duc’s coach. It was the Duc who was sending her to safety.

  They were off. The coachmen turned the horses, Sheena felt them drive slowly through the gateway and then the speed was increasing, the wheels were flying round and the hoofs were ringing out on the cobbles of the empty streets.

  “Thank the Lord we’re awa’.” Maggie said and there was such a heartfelt cry of relief in her voice that instinctively Sheena put her hand over her maid’s to comfort her.

  “We are safe enough, Maggie,” she said, “if the Duc takes care of us.”

  “I was so afeared they would stop us,” Maggie said and Sheena saw tears in her eyes and heard the break in her voice.

  “What did – he say to you?” Sheena enquired and there was no need to ask whom she meant.

  “He brought you into the bedchamber in his arms,” Maggie said. “For a wee moment I thought you was dead and then, as he laid you down on the bed and put the covers over you with the gentleness of a woman, he said, ‘we have to take your Mistress away now at once tonight. Do you understand?’”

  “I didna answer and he went on, ‘your Mistress is in danger, terrible danger. If she stays here, she will die or even a worse fate might befall her.’”

  Sheena drew a deep breath. She knew full well what the Duc meant.

  Maggie suddenly took her handkerchief from her sleeve and mopped her eyes. .

  “It seemed as if I’d never get all the things packed up,” she said. “‘Leave your Mistress until the last moment,’ he told me, and I obeyed because of the way he said it and all the time I was afeared I would be too slow or too late.”

  Maggie gave a little sob and Sheena put her arm around her shoulders.

  “It is all right, Maggie. It is all over now.”

  “Is it?” Maggie asked her. “Not until we’re out of this accursed country. They may come after you. They’ve got soldiers and men on horseback can ride faster than we can travel even with all these horses.”

  “We have a start on them anyway,” Sheena commented soothingly.

  She realised that the coach had been built for speed. It was much lighter and there was far less room in it than in any coach she had travelled in before. She could feel by the way the wheels bounced over the road that the horses found it had little weight to slow them down.

  “Did he – did he say he was sending me ‒ home?” Sheena asked.

  “Nay, he didna say that, but where else would we be goin’?” Maggie asked. “Nowhere in France is safe for you, you can be sure of that.”

  Sheena closed her eyes. It was obvious, of course, that he was sending her home and yet she longed to cry out against it.

  How could she go and leave him behind?

  How could she bear to go and never see him again?

  She thought of his face but somehow she could not make a picture out of it. Somewhere stirring in the depths of her memory was something he had said last night. He had been tender or had she dreamed it? He had spoken words of love too. No indeed she must have dreamed that.

  She could not remember. She could recall quite clearly the terror as she lay helpless and unable to move in the great four-poster bed in the King’s bedchamber. And then he had come to rescue her.

  She could feel again that sudden warmth and the knowledge that her love was flooding over her like a full tide.

  He had picked her up in his arms and she had known that she was safe even though she could not speak and could not move. And after that she could remember no more.

  She forced herself to think back, but somehow it was an utter blank.

  “I knew no good would come of this journey,” Maggie was saying. “You’re not the type, thank the Lord, who should be livin’ in Palaces with all those as has lustful ways and whose wickedness stinks to the very nostrils of Heaven.”

  Sheena wanted to smile at Maggie’s denunciations, but she could not deny that they were true, no one knew that better than she. They were true. The wickedness and evil was all there and they had tried to make her a part of it.

  And yet now the moment was upon her she did not want to leave. She wondered if all her life would be spent dreaming of the Duc, remembering her love for him, remembering and recalling the way her heart seemed to leap into her mouth when he appeared and how she had hated him and not realised all the time that it was because she was so near to love.

  The coach came suddenly to a halt. Sheena looked at Maggie and knew that the terror on her face was echoed on her own.

  Instinctively, without a word, the two women’s fingers were interlocked.

  The coach door was then opened. Sheena awaited, tense with every nerve of her body, the command to alight.

  Then someone climbed into the coach and with a feeling of astonished relief she could see who it was.

  “Gustave!”

  The Christian name came easily to her lips and she forgot to be formal.

  “Sheena, thank God you are safe. You are late and I was beginning to worry.”

  Unobtrusively Maggie moved from Sheena’s side onto the small seat with its back to the horses and the Comte sat down beside Sheena and taking her hands in his raised them to his lips.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “The Duc told me to wait for you here,” he said. “I am to escort you from the environs of Paris to the first stopping place.”

  “And then what happens?” Sheena asked, a sudden hope rising in her heart.

  “I don’t know,” the Comte replied. “I have just been given my orders.”

  “Oh.”

  Sheena could not help the note of disappointment sounding in the monosyllable.

  “All that matters is that you will be safe,” Gustave went on.

  Sheena looked him in the eyes.

  “How much do you know?” she asked.

  “Very little,” he answered. “Only that the Queen has been up to some of her tricks and that the Duc was able to rescue you in time.”

  “Yes ‒ just in time,” Sheena breathed.

  “It was not possible to tell you anything more, there was so much to be arranged. All the Duc wanted was that you should have an escort of someone reliable for the first part of the journey.”

  “Where are we going?” Sheena asked.

  “Towards the coast,” he said.

  “I guessed that,” she replied and felt again that sudden heaviness because, even though she was going home, she must leave the Duc behind.

  “I am not concerned with anything,” the Comte was saying, “except that you are safe.”

  “I cannot believe what happened last night was true,” Sheena remarked.

  “Who was there?” the Comte asked briefly.

  “The Marquis de Maupré.”

  “That swine!”

  “Why do you say that?” Sheena asked.

  “Do you not yet know him for what he is?” the Comte enquired. “He is one of the lowest beasts that ever stepped on this earth. A procurer, a man who makes a living by catering for the depraved taste
of those who can afford to pay for it.”

  Sheena gave a little exclamation of horror.

  “Yes, it is true enough,” he said. “You may as well know the sort of people from whom the Duc is rescuing you. Maupré started in quite a small way by finding nobles who wanted to be introduced to pretty girls. He made love to them himself and then recommended them to those who could afford to pay what he asked.”

  The Comte’s tone of voice was a condemnation in itself.

  “Then he aimed higher and tried to interest the King in his wares,” he went on, “but the Duchesse gave him short shrift and so he changed his allegiance and went over to the enemy. He became the Queen’s flunkey, someone who was always at her beck and call and someone who was always ready to procure anything she asked of him.”

  Sheena put her hands up to her ears.

  “Don’t tell me any more,” she pleaded.

  She saw now what a fool she had been to be taken in, as perhaps many other foolish girls had been, by the Marquis’s good looks, by his most persuasive tongue and by the apparent sincerity of his honeyed words.

  And all the time he was trying to inveigle her into being interested in the King simply because the Queen required her, or someone else, to distract His Majesty’s attention from the Duchesse whom he adored.

  “I am so sorry,” the Comte said quietly. “I should not have spoken so violently. Even the name ‘Maupré’ makes me see red!”

  “You are right, quite right, in all you think about him,” Sheena said. “Do not let’s speak about him anymore.”

  “Let’s speak about ourselves,” Gustave suggested. “I understand from the Duc that you are leaving France. Instead will you not stay with me?”

  He spoke with a yearning that seemed to come from the very depth of his being and then, before Sheena could say anything, he went on,

  “I have estates far away in Bordeaux. We could drive there now and no one would be the wiser what had happened to you. We could be married in the Chapel that adjoins my Château. I am well off, Sheena. I could give you everything you require and I believe that I could make you very happy.”

  “Thank you so much, Gustave,” Sheena replied tenderly. “Thank you for your kindness, for loving me and for offering to make me your wife. But I cannot say ‘yes’.”

  “You will be safe with me,” Gustave insisted.

  “It is not my safety that concerns me,” Sheena answered him.

  “Then what?” he asked.

  She looked into his eyes and in the pale dawn sunshine coming in through the windows it seemed to him that he looked down into the very depth of her soul.

  “You are in love with someone else,” he said intuitively.

  Sheena nodded.

  “The lucky devil!” he exclaimed. “What would I give to stand in his shoes? But I might have known I could never be good enough for you.”

  “It is not that,” Sheena said. “Oh, Gustave, it is not that. You are too good for me, much too good, but I could never marry anyone without love – and as it is I shall never marry.”

  “You mean that he does not love you?” Gustave asked.

  Sheena shook her head.

  “There are many, many barriers between us.”

  As if to comfort her, Gustave kissed her fingers and held her hand protectively in his as they drove on in silence while Maggie fell asleep on the seat opposite them.

  There was a long, long day ahead of them and they talked a little and slept a little as the coach carried them swiftly and without incident towards the coast.

  *

  It was dark and the horses were picking their way slowly over country roads before they reached the inn where they were to stay the night.

  “I shall not see you in the morning,” Gustave said as, exhausted, Sheena turned towards the stairs.

  “You mean you will not be here?” she asked.

  “No,” the Comte answered. “I am to stay for an hour or so to see that all is well and then ride back to Paris.”

  “But – but why?” Sheena questioned.

  “My dear, I just don’t know,” he said. “But I can only obey orders. You see, as far as I am concerned, the Duc commands and I don’t question his instructions.”

  “Why do you do this for him?” Sheena asked curiously.

  “For one reason because he is the finest man I ever met in my life,” the Comte answered. “But it is too late now for me to recount all his kindnesses to me since I first came to Paris.”

  Long after she had said ‘goodbye’ to the Comte and was lying on her hard bed at the inn Sheena could hear his voice saying, “he is the finest man I ever met.”

  Why had she not realised from the beginning, she wondered, that the Duc stood head and shoulders above everyone else in The Palace? Why had she let herself be swept away into an anger and hatred of him merely because she had overheard one cynical remark?

  How stupid she had been, how blind!

  And now it was too late.

  Tomorrow she would be sailing away to Scotland and leave him behind. It was then in the darkness of the room at the inn, that she realised that even her love for her homeland was as nothing beside her love for this strange unaccountable man who had come into her life.

  She had clung to her thoughts of home because they were all she knew of security.

  Now she saw her existence there for what it was, empty and lonely, her father away in Edinburgh, she and Maggie struggling to make ends meet on a small allowance and the house crumbling into ruins with the gardens unkempt and neglected.

  What else could she expect while her country was at war? And, because she was only a woman after all, she felt weak and unable to cope with it all.

  She must have slept for a little while, for she was awoken by Maggie telling her that it was five o’clock and the coachmen were ready to be off. They had a hasty breakfast and then were on the road again and travelling at a great speed.

  They must have gone for many miles before Sheena dared to ask the question that was in her mind.

  “Do you think, Maggie,” she asked her tremulously, “that we shall ever see the Duc de Salvoire again?”

  “Nay, there be little sense of it,” Maggie answered. “He will have made arrangements, I daresay, for our berths aboard a ship. Perhaps the messenger had left Paris before we did. But otherwise there’s nowt more he can do for us.”

  “Nothing more,” Sheena replied and closed her eyes as if she could no longer bear the sunshine outside.

  They reached the coast. The sea looked grey and a wind was rising, which made Maggie moan at the memory of her last journey through the North Sea. The coach drew up at a small inn and the coachman climbed down from his box to wish Sheena ‘bon voyage’.

  “Thank you for bringing me here so swiftly,” Sheena said and gave him one of the few gold coins that she and Maggie still possessed.

  He thanked her and then she watched the horses move away, her eyes lingering on the emblazoned Coat of Arms until she could no longer see it because the tears blinded her.

  Maggie had already walked into the small inn and Sheena stood for a while looking out over the grey sea. It was just fitting, she thought, that the sunshine should not be on it for it seemed to her that her whole life in the future would be grey and pointless.

  ‘I must work for Scotland,’ she told herself and wished that the flame of patriotism that had been there in the past could infuse some fire into her words.

  She turned away and went into the inn. The innkeeper, bowing politely, met her in the passage.

  “The sitting room reserved for you is at the end of the passage, mam’selle,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  She had walked away from him before she remembered it might have been wise to ask him when there was a ship sailing and whether he knew if any reservations had been made for herself and Maggie.

  And then, because of so much unhappiness in her heart, she felt that she could not speak to anyone for the moment.r />
  She wanted to be alone. She wanted to take a hold of her courage which was all she had left to face the future with. She opened the door of the low-ceilinged room.

  There was a bow window looking over the sea and a fire burning brightly in the big open hearth and because at last she was unobserved, Sheena let the tears roll down her cheeks and as she shut the door she stood for a moment with her back against it, savouring in its fullness the aching and loneliness of her heart.

  “Do you really mind leaving so much?” a voice asked quietly, startling her into giving a gasp as she opened her eyes and saw him standing there at the far side of the room, his hands resting on the back of a high chair.

  “You!” she exclaimed. “I did not expect ‒ to find you here.”

  “And I did not expect to find you crying,” the Duc answered.

  He walked across the room and taking her little chin in his fingers turned her face up to his.

  “Why these tears?” he asked. And then, as she did not answer but only stared at him, he added gently, “Is it France that you mind leaving or your little Queen?”

  She then shook her head dumbly, unable to find her voice and unable for the moment to realise that he was really there and at her side.

  “What then?” he insisted.

  There was something in his voice, in the expression on his face and the soft touch of his hands which made her realise that he knew.

  She felt the colour rising in her cheeks in a sudden flood and felt herself begin to tremble while her hands crept up to stop the throbbing of her breast.

  “Cannot you tell me?” he asked very very softly.

  Again she could not answer and now, suddenly and surprisingly, his arms were around her and his lips were very close to hers.

  “I love you, you foolish child,” he said. “Did you really think I would let you go alone or that I would ever let you go?”

  She felt something leap within her. She felt a sudden quickening over her whole body.

  Then his lips were on hers and his mouth took her very soul into his keeping.