By My Sword Alone by David Black (ebook reader ink TXT) 📕

he was striding purposefully through the front of house of the Kaiserhof, heading to the back stairs to the princess’ suite. There was no tumult, or alarm in the air. The quiet meant they were still as yet undiscovered in their plot. In a moment he was up the stairs and at the door, unlocking it with a slow dexterity. He wanted in, and out again; no fuss.

The suite itself was dark and still. All he could hear was the measured, light breathing from beneath the bed’s heaped blankets. Heipke was obviously asleep, and he smiled as he briefly marvelled at her cool.

He approached the bed. Knelt. Opened the small bedside night table. And inside he felt the knobbly, velvet shape the size of a cannonball. His fist closed around the neck and the sound of voices came from beyond the suite’s door. Then a key in the lock. No quiet subterfuge this time. In a moment James was on his feet and across the room to the far wall and shadow, the brief hiss of his sabre as he drew it from its scabbard.

Damn and blast it! Why had he not grabbed the velvet bag before he leapt?

The door opened, and there was the spill of guttering light from candelabra. Two figures entered; the first an elderly civilian in a formal coat and breeches and the second, one of the Austrian cuirassiers, sans cuirass, in a white shirt, waistcoat and breeches, and his heavy cavalry top boots that looked even more clumpy and inappropriate in a bed chamber than they did of the polished wooden floors of the foyer.

‘Your royal highness,’ wheezed the elderly man, ‘it is I, Doctor Lubbe, to inquire after your health at the feldmarschall’s request.’

The game was up. James stepped into the light and said, in French, ‘You have chosen an inconvenient moment for me and the princess, messieurs.’

The doctor turned, eyes wide with shock. James had no idea whether he had understood anything he had just said, but from the way the old man’s be-spectacled eyes fixed upon his drawn sabre, that was enough to send him scuttling, with amazing agility from the room, dodging nimbly round the advancing soldier as he too drew his sword; a far heavier weapon than the one James brandished.

The Austrian, like the gentleman officer he obviously was, immediately assumed the en garde stance, sword arm extended, before getting ready to lunge. As he did, Heipke sat upright in the bed, a terrified yelp escaping from the muffling of her silken gag, which James assumed she herself had just tightened. The Austrian saw her rise out the corner of his eye. Three things snagged his gaze at once, and held it longer than they should have; the gag on the poor girl’s face; the tightly bound wrists she’d raised to cover her face, and her golden, not dark, blonde hair; hair that fell only to her shoulders. That a princess whose safety he had been entrusted with should be lying bound and gagged in her own bed was not be countenanced any emperor’s officer; and that the girl, bound and gagged and now lying in the princess’ bed was not the princess, only compounded the already unthinkable for him, and made it harder to comprehend.

While all that jostled in his brain, James stepped forward. James, whose early handiness with the epee had been roundly honed in subsequent years. In an advancing flick of his sabre, he engaged the Austrian’s raised blade, ran his point down it to the guard until the tip snagged the fretwork, and then he flicked the heavy steel of it right out of the Austrian’s hand. All executed in mid-step, as he passed outside the Austrian’s sword arm and careened into his back, forcing him to pirouette, so his face was now to the wall; whereupon James then promptly slammed him with the full weight of his body into it, before standing back and pressing his sabre point to the base of the Austrian’s spine – just nicking the skin and no more, to gain his attention, and make his own intentions clear.

‘What have you done with her royal highness, you scoundrel?’ said the Austrian, in a perfectly acceptable French, delivered in a voice of steel as cutting as the blade of the sword he no longer held.

James didn’t answer. The doctor would be summoning this officer’s entire squadron of heavy cavalry. He needed to get to the bed-side table, get the velvet bag and be gone. But if he moved his blade from this man’s spine, he’d be on him in a flash; and it wouldn’t be to negotiate his surrender. He couldn’t ask Heipke to get it; she was supposed to be his victim, not a co-conspirator.

Princess bloody Clementina, that bloody woman. All this bloody trouble was likely to get someone killed, not least him. He gave the Austrian another prick for want of something to do.

‘T’were best if you stick it in entirely, m’sieur,’ said the Austrian. ‘My honour shall not survive this. But then, nor will you, you whoreson.’

The insult sharpened James just enough. He found himself looking at the single strap of material descending from beneath the Austrian’s high-backed waistcoat to the buttonholes at the top of his breeches; the back support of his braces.

‘You presume, m’sieur, to involve my lineage?’ said James, flicking back his blade. ‘Those are not the words of a gentleman. M’sieur, you do not deserve the honest point of a sword.’ And he made a tight, hard swipe, severing neatly the brace’s strap.

The Austrian’s breeches immediately dropped, tangling around his knees in the down-turned tops of his heavy boots. As the man stumbled, James was across the room, and the velvet bag was in his hand. He looked back to see the victim of his swordplay forfeit all dignity as he struggled to stand, move and untangle his breeches