Read Online Prisoner of the Flames (Leisure Historical Romance) by Dawn MacTavish - Free Book Online Page B

confessed. “She tried to help me, and I have cost her her livelihood, and endangered her life. She heard them holler ‘plague,’ when they removed my helm—she heard their panic, and yet she did not fear it. She even attacked the gendarme called Jean-Claude, followed his voice and kicked him soundly in his shins. That man was restraining me, and she was close enough to touch. What if I did have plague?”
    “We should all be so ‘blind’ as our Violette,” the healer observed.
    “Sir?”
    “For all her blindness, she sees far better than you ever will, young ram, because she sees with her spirit.”
    “Riddles? Montaigne warned me to expect them.”
    “ Tis no riddle.
Pay attention!”
he thundered. “Step out of yourself, and hear words that one day may well save your life,
or hers
if you will but heed them.”
    “I do not understand your convoluted speech. Can you not speak it plain?”
    “Violette cannot see with her eyes, and so she sees with her spirit—her instincts. It is common knowledge that when one of our senses fails, other senses are heightened to compensate. In Violette ‘s case it is her sense of perception that has been heightened.”
    Robert’s ragged sigh, and brows knit in a puzzled frown replied to that. He was no student of philosophy. It had no hilt to grab, and no sword point to thrust.
    “You still don’t understand?” Nostradamus said, vexed.
“You
are the blind one. She knew without seeing you that you did not have plague. Her instincts told her. She did not need the physical proof her eyes might have provided to know it was safe to champion you—to come near to you. She saw this with her spirit.
You
must learn to see with your spirit, young ram. There will be times when it will be vital that you do so, and you are so preoccupied with how othersview
you
, you cannot see
them.
I would advise you cultivate the art—and quickly. If you take nothing else away from this interview, take that advice to heart. As gospel.”
    “It is a warning, this?” Robert asked.
    “Riddle—warning—prophesy—call it by what name you will, but know it as plain fact. You are out of your element here. This is not Scotland, where war means hand-to-hand combat on an open field, and there is at least some semblance of honor in it. War here means something else entirely—something more political than physical, though blood lust is an integral part of it. It is waged primarily in the shadows—clandestine—deceptive. There are no real ‘sides,’ only ambitions, and a man can lose his head without even knowing why. You are ill-equipped to wage this kind of war, my blind young ram.”
    “But I learn quickly. I have met your Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine, and his henchman, General Louis de Brach.”
    “What do think you of these men?”
    “Guise is unfit to wear the robes of a cardinal, and Louis de Brach thinks he rules him, but that unholy prince of the Church will cut him down like wheat in the field the minute he is of no more use to him. This is why he keeps him close, so that he may use him up before he strikes like the viper he is.”
    “You are learning. Tell me, how do you view the Huguenots?”
    “I pity them! Blind faith in God empowers them, but faith need not be so blind as to annihilate God’s faithful. They are too gullible. They should be warned, and I cannot do it, else I put Montaigne and my uncle in grave danger. The Huguenots are unprepared for what will come, and many will die needlessly.”
    “Who is speaking in riddles now?”
    “There will be slaughter done, and I am to be part of it. Ihave no choice. You must know, or we would not be meeting here in these ruins at the midnight hour, but openly in your rooms, and your reply would not have been encrypted.”
    “Never grieve for what cannot be changed,” the healer said.
    “Montaigne tells me that the boy king is seduced by both factions now, and that the Guises head the Church in France and vie for the