Threads of Silk Read Online Free PDF Page B

remembered hearing from Dumas how their child caught a sickness and died a year ago. Before that, there had been a baby born dead.
    “Enough,” he said to Julot and Gallaudet, and turned to the woman, ignoring Sully, who crouched in a corner under the stare of Julot.
    “Where is your husband, Madame?” he asked quietly.
    She looked at him, then away quickly, lowering her face with evident shame.
    “He fled away, Monsieur Marquis. Where, I do not know, and that is the truth. All I know is he told me he’d be coming into twelve gold pieces.”
    “Twelve pieces of gold? Who would give him such a reward, and why?”
    “I swear he never told me.”
    She pointed a finger toward Sully, no sign of geniality in her prematurely lined features. “I do not know what Sully told you, Monsieur Marquis, but he knows what it was about. Sully was to get some of the gold pieces.”
    “And the plan?” Fabien asked. “Were any other of my guards involved?”
    She shook her head. “Ah, Monsieur Marquis, I know nothing more of it, I swear it. I have been busy working the castle gardens with the other women. My husband told me none of the details. He thinks little of a woman’s tongue.”
    He believed her.
    She pointed at Sully, and resentment flickered in her eyes as though she blamed him for her husband going astray. “He knows. He came here for supper, too lazy to make his own, always talking in whispers with my husband.”
    “You lie,” Sully said. “I sometimes brought things to pay for my supper. More times I brought you a fat duck.”
    “Likely stolen from the marquis as not.”
    “I stole nothing from the marquis! I got the ducks honest, and I will swear to it.”
    “Enough,” Fabien said.
    “Ask him, Monsieur Marquis, about the gold pieces.”
    Sully’s mouth twitched. He shot her an ugly look.
    “Take him outside,” Fabien told Julot. “I want the truth from him.”
    Julot grasped his arm. “On your feet, traitor.”
    In the trees, some distance from the castle Fabien stood by, affecting indifference to Julot and Gallaudet’s pretense of savagery as they tied Sully to a tree. They began arguing about the best way to kill him.
    “The new methods I learned from the Dutch pirate are certain to loosen the tongue,” Julot said. “The Dutchman learned them from his Spanish captors.”
    Sully looked wildly from one to the other, as if assured his old comrades-in-arms had degenerated into masters of Spanish cruelty since sailing with pirates.
    “Now, if you want my opinion, there’s no reason for such unpleasantness,” Gallaudet said. “Traitors that don’t speak the truth are best just dead and buried, or even better — alive and buried.”
    Fabien turned away to start back for the castle. “Let me know when it is over.”
    “Monseigneur,” Sully screeched. “Do not go, Monsieur! I will tell all I know.”
    Fabien turned to look at him. “Very well, say on.”
    Sully swallowed and licked his lips. “Comte Maurice Beauvilliers promised Captain Dumas a dozen gold pieces if he would play the spy for him here at the castle. He was to inform the comte of all that went on here. He was to send word as soon as you returned and — and send someone to open the gate when he and his men-at-arms arrived.”
    “And who might that be?” Julot snarled in his face.
    “Tonight when the captain saw the mademoiselle with you, he rushed away to tell the comte. True, he was affrighted the boy would tell and put his spying to an end, but the captain knew the arrival of the mademoiselle was the grand news the comte needed to give Dumas his gold pieces. He was to deliver the news to the comte, then sneak back here. It was my duty to let him in through the western postern gate. He would get his wife, and we would be ready to leave as soon as the gate was opened for the comte. We would be gone before anyone missed us in the battle. I was to get two gold pieces, and the captain would keep the rest.”
    Fabien watched him