Falconer's Quest Read online

  “The Place des Moulins,” the banker puffed as he pointed.

  The square was rimmed by sputtering torches and a series of open-fronted taverns. A decrepit windmill rose from the square’s far end, its limbs motionless in the still night air. The patrons drank and laughed and ate and jeered at the man imprisoned at the square’s center.

  The pillory was set upon a circular platform in the shape of a sundial. The wooden structure had five openings, all bordered in leather. The young man’s wrists, ankles, and neck were trapped, and he sat morosely upon a narrow bench. His features were streaked with debris tossed by the tavern patrons. He had been turned ancient by his ordeal.

  Falconer glanced behind. The empty lane dropped off so steeply he looked over the rooftops to the two portside fortresses. The moon was almost full. The sea glistened black and silver, out to where a watch fire burned upon the Château d’If. Falconer saw no one stalking them.

  “Guard my back,” he said, and raced forward.

  He headed straight for the pillory. The young man, fearing another taunter, watched him approach with genuine fear. “We’re going to get you out of there, lad,” Falconer told him.

  He doubted Pierre understood the words but hoped he was at least able to catch the tone. Falconer studied the two massive padlocks, both of them from another era.

  “A hammer and a chisel,” he muttered to himself. “You should have thought of this long before now.”

  All of Falconer’s senses were at full battle readiness. He could slice the seconds into a myriad fragments, each holding its own crystal clarity. He heard the imprisoned young man whimpering in pain and confusion. He heard footsteps clatter across the cobblestones and knew without turning that those who approached were friends. He heard Bernard speak words of assurance to Pierre. Then he heard the first roar of opposition. Bernard and his pilloried friend both blanched with genuine terror.

  Falconer, however, took it as his cue.

  He turned and raced toward the man now rising to his feet. The night’s shadows made Raban’s guard even larger and more fearsome than when he had been inside the café’s confines.

  Raban’s beast recognized Falconer and overturned his table and half-finished meal with one angry sweep. Patrons shouted and scampered.

  Then the man’s hands swept to his belt. One hand came up with a pistol, the other with his long curved dagger.

  Falconer had one chance. A man of that size was accustomed to opponents hesitating. The giant was used to having the advantage, the one who dictated the terms of battle.

  Or so Falconer fervently hoped.

  Falconer did not hesitate. Instead, he powered faster still, racing as fast as the slick cobblestones allowed.

  He saw the beast’s eyes widen in surprise. And knew he was right to charge.

  As he passed the café’s periphery he grabbed an overturned chair. He added his forward momentum as additional force to the two-handed swing, wielding the chair as a club.

  The beast was caught completely off guard. He tried to deflect the chair with his forearms. The chair splintered, but the beast lost both his weapons.

  Raban’s guard bellowed and went down on one knee.

  Falconer spun about by the force of his own attack. He gripped a table and continued to spin, making a complete circle and gathering speed as he did so.

  When he let fly, the table shattered into a thousand fragments, and this time the beast went down on all fours.

  Falconer gripped another table and brought it crashing down upon the man’s head. He went prone at Falconer’s feet.

  But Falconer was not done. He kept moving, his force carrying him from one table to the next in the space of two heartbeats.

  The two guards backed up against the tavern’s side wall. Typical sheriff ’s deputies, they were chubby characters accustomed to bullying their way forward, their official titles the only defense they required. Now they recognized a force beyond their ability to counter. They held their pikes in trembling hands and wailed protests Falconer did not need to understand.

  Falconer effortlessly plucked the weapons from the guards’ fingers. He tossed away one of the pikes. He stripped the pistols from their belts and flung them into the night. He silenced the men with a single look and ran back to the pillory.

  “Stand aside.”

  He hefted the borrowed pike and used the spearlike end to smash first one and then the other padlock.

  As the sailors lifted the pillory’s upper gate, the guards shouted a feeble protest. Falconer turned and silenced them with a single glare.

  The two sailors brushed Bernard aside and hefted the limp and whimpering man. Now that his rescue was imminent, his cries became half-formed words.

  Falconer was in the process of ordering his men back to the ship when an image struck him with the force of a branding iron. He saw again the lifeless gray eyes of the young woman enslaved to Raban and heard her whispery voice. He recalled Raban’s hand stroking her face, one robbed of all hope. Just another den of iniquity. He had known many such places, and sinned in them many a time, blind to all the sorrow his gold helped fuel.

  But this night would be different.

  As Falconer led his men from the square, he wrested a flaming torch from its stanchion and said, “All of you would be far better off taking yourselves back to the ship.”

  Soap understood him correctly, for the old sailor said, “And leave you to battle the fiends alone? My mother didn’t raise her son to fall into any such nonsense as that, sir.”

  “This has nothing to do with our quest or the captain’s orders,” Falconer said. “I have a task of my own to fulfill.”

  “That don’t change a thing. I’m your man,” Soap said fiercely.

  The bullyboy whose forehead remained scarred from the attack at landfall agreed. “As are we all, your honor, sir.”

  “Then grab torches for yourselves and follow me!” Falconer pointed to Bernard. “You get your friend to the ship. We’ll join you soon as we can.”

  “With respect, I must refuse.” Clearly Bernard understood what Falconer intended. “I can show you the swiftest way to the café, and as I speak the language, my help may be required.”

  Falconer heard the captain’s timepiece ticking away the seconds in his mind. “Make haste!”

  They clattered down the way. Falconer took Soap’s torch so the older sailor could help Bernard bundle his friend down the slope. They moved at such a pace that the freed prisoner skipped upon the cobblestones, his feet taking virtually none of his weight. Neither Bernard nor Soap minded the burden. The sailors had the battle gleam in their faces. Bernard’s features were alight with a fierce joy.

  At a sign from Falconer, they propped Pierre against the wall across the lane from the café’s entrance. Falconer handed Soap his torch and said to Bernard, “Stay close. You lot, we are after speed and mayhem.”

  The bullyboys were grinning broadly. “You’ve got the right mates for that, sir.”

  “We’ll start on the ground floor. Light what burns. Clear out the place as we go. No one is to get hurt this night, most especially yourselves.”

  “None save Raban,” Bernard hissed, glaring at the top floor hideaway.

  “You stay close at my side. I need you to translate.”

  “What am I to say?”

  In reply, Falconer raced across the lane. He struck the café’s front doors with a force so explosive both were burst off their hinges, flying far back into the café’s gloom. He roared a single word, “FIRE!”

  A trio of musicians seated upon a raised dais midway back froze in comic unison with the belly dancer. The café’s patrons halted in mid-cheer. Falconer hefted a table in the hand not carrying the torch and smashed it against the side wall. He continued in his sweep, using the torch now to light the damask curtains and one empty set of cushions. “FIRE!”

  His men spread out, roaring and smashing and spreading fiery chaos as they flew. Bernard’s shrill warning rose in Frenc
h, pointing at the door and imploring the patrons to escape.

  The café exploded into a crashing, banging, screaming mob. Falconer stepped further from the doorway and shepherded them along with his torch and his club. One of the sailors rushed past, supporting a guard who nursed a welt on his head and complained in a whining voice. The sailor booted him out the door, cast Falconer a merry grin, and rushed back for more.

  Falconer shouted over the din, “Bernard! Come with me!”

  They headed for the side stairs, the ones which mirrored the hidden stairs leading up to Raban’s quarters. Falconer crashed through the middle floor’s door as though it were paper. He entered a sweetly scented din of soft lighting and screams. “FIRE!”

  There was so much to burn on this floor. The gambling tables and the soft cushions and the draped alcoves all begged for his torch. The layers of misdeeds and misery added to the smoke and the flames.

  He waited until Bernard had sped on their way the last of the screaming patrons and servants, then yelled, “Upstairs!”

  His boot took care of the bar set upon the door’s other side. Together with Bernard and one sailor, Falconer leapt up the final set of stairs.

  He spied the servant just in time. “Down!”

  He flung himself upon Bernard and pummeled the banker to the stairs just as the servant fired his pistol. The sailor behind them was more accustomed to close-quarter fighting and had not needed any further warning. The bullet whined safely overhead. Falconer jumped to his feet and took the final steps in one bounding leap. He caught the servant in the process of aiming his second pistol. He ripped the pistol away and flung the man against the wall. The man crumpled.

  Falconer used a favorite warrior’s trick then. He sprang into the room and just as swiftly sprang back. Which meant Raban’s ready pistol fired and shot nothing but the wall. Instantly Falconer bounded back into the room, crossed the space in two great strides, and smashed his club across Raban’s trembling arm. The man squealed as the second pistol went spinning across the room.

  Raban’s gun landed at the grinning sailor’s feet. The sailor knew good loot when he saw it. He slipped the gold and bejeweled pistol into his belt and said, “Thank you kindly.”

  “You,” Falconer said to the crouching young woman. “Flee now.”

  The woman rose uncertainly to her feet. Raban hissed a single word but went quiet when Falconer jammed the torch within an inch of his face.

  “Wait.” Falconer turned to Bernard. “Ask her if she knows where Raban keeps his treasure.”

  The sudden glint in her eyes was all the response Falconer needed. “Tell her she can take all she can carry, and may it help her recover a semblance of hope and life.”

  The young woman flung herself at Falconer’s feet until Bernard was able to coax her up and away. They remained thus, surrounded by ever thickening smoke. The sailor whistled as he walked from room to room, lighting everything in his path. Finally they heard the woman shrill a further thanks as she fled down the stairs.

  Falconer tossed the torch onto the cushions. He gathered up the unconscious servant, tossed the man over his shoulder, and said to the cowering Raban, “Stay or flee. It is all the same to me.”

  “We are all done here,” he said to the men who watched him.

  Chapter 21

  Before they finally left Marseilles behind and headed out to sea, they deposited Pierre upon the lone Frioul island which was inhabited. The fishermen’s harbor was too small for the clipper, so she laid anchor in protected headwaters while Pierre was rowed ashore. Reginald Langston and Bernard Lemi accompanied the two sailors who stretchered the young man across the beach and into the rough-hewn fishing village. Reginald saw the young man safely into the island’s only decent inn, woke up the innkeeper, and paid in gold for two weeks’ food and lodging. More gold was left for a new set of clothes and for the innkeeper’s wife to see to Pierre’s wounds—at least those to his body. The rest they could only leave with the Almighty.

  When they were again on board, a perplexed Bernard Lemi sought out Falconer and reported, “Langston asked my friend for his word that he would never gamble again. He also said that the rescue was a gift. He urged Pierre to find God, and through God find the strength to free himself from his vices.”

  “That sounds a solid bargain in the making,” Falconer replied with a nod.

  The rosy hint of breaking day illuminated the banker’s confusion. “When Langston bid me farewell, I begged him to let me come along on this voyage. He said I was welcome but that I owed him nothing at all, that he had not done this for me. He also said his strongest ally had been forged in similar depths of confusion and woe, and that I should speak with you.”

  Falconer directed his words to the brightening eastern sky. “I was once a slaver.”

  “You told me that before, and I still do not understand.”

  “How I came to be here? Or why Reginald treated your friend as he did?”

  Another breath, then, “Both.”

  “They are one and the same answer. The friends I have here with me, we share not just this mission but a faith in the God of miracles and grace.”

  Bernard worked on those words for a time. “I hear your words, but I do not fully understand.”

  Falconer felt a certain reluctance to continue. “Perhaps one of the others could help you comprehend more fully what it means.”

  From behind them, a woman’s voice said, “No, I think not, John Falconer.”

  “I did not hear you approach, Mrs. Henning.”

  “But you did hear what the gentleman said, yes?” Amelia Henning spoke with a different voice, somewhere between a whisper and song. “Reginald Langston sent him to you,not another.”

  Falconer dropped his head. “Since my loss, most of my prayers have fallen like clods of winter earth from my mouth. Perhaps this same absence of Spirit is why Bernard does not understand what I have said.”

  She rested her hand lightly upon his arm. “John Falconer, do you think God hears only those who are whole in heart and mind? Tell me this and I shall throw myself overboard, for the last shred of hope I have will be lost forever.”

  He had wept only once since he had put Ada in the ground. Yet here he was, fighting against eyes that burned like coals. “I do not know what to say, madam, except that it feels as though anything I say to this man is only half the truth.”

  “Tell him why, and let him be the judge.” Slight as she was, her gentle pressure was enough to turn him around. “Speak, John Falconer.”

  He tore a ragged breath from the salt-laden air. “My wife died last February. A love I waited a lifetime to find, gone like that.” Thumb and finger clicked her passing as Falconer looked into the man’s face.

  Bernard Lemi’s gaze shifted from one to the other. The fighter who stood a head and more taller than himself, and the slight woman beside him. “I can only offer my sincerest regrets, sir.”

  “You heard what I have said to the lady. I feel as though my wounds have left me unable to speak with the same strength of conviction as before.”

  A multitude of questions working through the young banker’s mind played across his features. “And yet, when I hear you talk, I feel as though a door opens before me. One through which I am invited to enter. Though I understand not what lies on the portal’s other side.”

  Falconer glanced back at Amelia, pleading now.

  She revealed to him an uncommon change. Peace and trust shone in her face so that her own wounds, visible in eyes and expression, diminished. “Answer him the best you can. Leave the rest to God.”

  Falconer stared at the eastern sky, out to where the sun was moments away from appearing. “Some time back, the year I captained a slaver, I met a man of faith. He spoke to me of a Savior. He spoke words I had never heard before, or perhaps heard yet never thought could apply to the likes of me.”

  Bernard was silent through a trio of waves that crashed against the oak timbers beneath them. “And those word
s?”

  “Salvation.” Falconer felt his voice crack, though he could not name the reason. “Healing. Eternal hope. Heaven.”

  Bernard’s hunger to understand was so great he did not seem to notice Falconer’s distress. “I have lived among the churched all my days and never heard words spoken in such a manner as this. As though…”

  When he was unable to explain, the woman on Falconer’s other side offered, “As though the words are not now spoken to your ears and mind, but rather to your very soul.”

  Bernard took a long moment to murmur, “Indeed.”

  “Ask him, John Falconer,” Amelia said.

  He gripped the railing with both hands, as though wrestling with the wood helped him take that vital step beyond his own internal questions. “Would you care to pray?”

  The day passed in the steady cadence of life at sea. The watches changed, the sails were shifted to meet the vagaries of wind and tide, the decks were holystoned, the meals served. Amelia Henning joined the men for dinner and even managed a smile at the tale they served up with the main course, of the heroics at the top of a cobblestone hill. The officers renamed it the Skirmish of Windmill Square.

  After dinner she waited for the assembly to depart before turning to say, “Your prayer this morning, John Falconer, with the young French gentleman moved me. I think it moved him as well.”

  He stared into her face and saw the fire rise strongly enough to quench momentarily the pain in her gaze. “I can scarcely remember a single word I spoke.”

  “Some of the finest prayers I have ever known were formed just like that.”

  “I could not have spoken those words, madam, had it not been for your urgings. You were right in all you said.”

  “It is strange how I found the strength to speak only by looking at you.” The smile, though tiny, warmed them both. “I was thinking it might do us all good to begin a time of study and prayer. Captain Harkness has been good enough to offer us the use of his day cabin. Would you care to join us after breakfast in the morning?”

  “Mrs. Henning, I could think of nothing more welcome.” Falconer found the smile remained imbedded on his heart long after she was gone.