by Pierre Pevel
‘I can’t guarantee,’ Rochefort said, adjusting his baldric, ‘that the cardinal will reeeive you soon.’
He donned his hat, preparing to depart.
‘La Donna claims to know something of a plot against the king,’ La Fargue revealed.
Rochefort raised an eyebrow.
‘Well, now . . .’
‘And she is willing to reveal the details if certain of her demands are met.’
‘So La Donna is making demands . . . What are they?’
‘She asks for His Eminence’s protection.’
‘Nothing else?’ the cardinal’s henchman said with amusement.
‘What does it matter, if she’s telling the truth?’
‘No doubt, no doubt . . . But do you believe that she is?’
La Fargue shrugged.
‘Who knows? But she gave me something that will perhaps help the cardinal form an opinion.’
The old captain held out a stained and dog-eared letter that seemed to have got wet at some point. It was the letter La Donna had entrusted to him before fleeing into the storm on the back of her wyvern.
‘This comes from La Donna?’ Rochefort enquired.
‘Yes.’
He took the document and examined it with a casual air. Then he placed it in his pocket and walked to the door.
‘I’m expected at the Palais-Cardinal,’ he declared from the threshold. ‘Then I will join His Eminence at the Louvre.’
‘Very well,’ replied La Fargue, who himself went over to glance out the window. ‘But time is running short. La Donna promised to make contact this evening and before I meet her again I need to know what the cardinal has decided with regard to her. Moreover, she is being pursued by a band of dracs who I’m sure will give her no respite. And if they find her before we do—’
‘Dracs? What dracs?’
‘Black dracs, Rochefort. Mercenaries. Judging by the markings on their leader’s face, I would swear they are former soldiers from the Irskehn companies.’
In the drakish tongue, Ir’Skehn meant black fire, and the Irskehns were cavalry companies levied by Spain and composed solely of black dracs. Although they were unreliable on a battlefield due to their inability to control their fury, these cavaliers had no equals when it came to marauding, harassing, and plundering. They were held responsible for several particularly horrible civilian massacres. The mere rumour of their arrival was enough to empty whole areas of the countryside.
Rochefort’s eyes narrowed as he took this detail into account.
‘And who else would privately hire Irskehns—’ he started to say.
‘—other than the Black Claw,’ La Fargue concluded for him.
Gripping the back of the chair and craning his neck, Marechal was leaning far over his master’s shoulder to observe the trictrac board. The old dragonnet was keeping a rapt eye upon the dice, which he loved to see roll across the flat surface. As for Laincourt, he sat unmoving with a blank gaze, his mind elsewhere.
‘Come now, Arnaud! Are you going to play?’ The young man raised his head, forcing Marechal to straighten up, and looked over at his opponent in bewildered surprise. Amused, the other man smiled at him, arms crossed, in a slightly mocking fashion but with an affectionate gleam in his eye. He was a bookseller called Jules Bertaud, about fifty years old. He’d known Laincourt for almost a year now, and already nurtured paternal feelings for him. They shared a taste for knowledge, for books, and more particularly, for treatises on draconic magic which were a discreet speciality of Bertaud’s bookshop. Lastly, they were both from Lorraine, which had helped to forge a bond between them.
‘It is your turn, Arnaud . . .’
Once a week, Laincourt and Bertaud convened at the latter’s establishment to talk and play trictrac. Since the weather was fine today, they had installed themselves in the pleasantly sunlit rear courtyard of the bookshop, which was located on rue Perdue in the neighbourhood surrounding Place Maubert, where booksellers and printers abounded.
‘Oh yes . . .’ said Laincourt, returning to the game. ‘It is my turn, to be sure. I need to roll, don’t I?’ he asked as he seized the dice cup.
His gesture immediately drew Marechal’s full attention.
‘No,’ Bertaud replied impatiently. ‘You’ve already rolled—’
‘Really?’
‘Really!’ called another voice.
In addition to the gaunt old dragonnet, the match had acquired another spectator: Daunois, a ruddy-faced man in his forties, with the physique of a stevedore and a rather sinister-looking face. In his case, however, appearances were deceiving. A printer by trade, Joseph Daunois possessed a fine wit that was intelligent, cultivated, and sometimes cruelly ironic. He and Bertaud were good friends who nonetheless could never resist trading barbed insults with one another.
The printer stood at the threshold of his workshop, and behind him one glimpsed workers busy with their tasks. But above all, one heard the creaking of the big hand presses and smelled the paper and fresh ink which rather effectively countered the city stinks that had worsened in the hot weather.
‘Yes, really,’ Bertaud confirmed. ‘And you rolled a seven.’
‘Seven,’ repeated Laincourt.
‘Yes, seven.’
‘Since he’s telling you so!’ interjected Daunois as he came over to join them.
His massive body cast a shadow over most of the small square table.
‘Just give me a few moments to think,’ Laincourt begged, leaning over the trictrac board.
He said nothing, but it took him a few seconds to recall that his pieces were the white ones.
And to discover that he was in serious difficulty.
‘That’s right,’ the printer said jokingly. ‘Think it over . . . We wouldn’t want to you to make some hasty mistake—’
‘You know,’ added Bertaud, ‘it’s no good having me abandon my bookshop and customers to play with you if you take no interest in the game . . .’
The young man made to reply, but Daunois beat him to it, in a sarcastic tone:
‘Yes, because don’t you know, Arnaud, that Bertaud’s bookshop is positively packed? There’s an impatient mob milling at the door and threatening to break through the windows. They’re beating them away with sticks, riots are breaking out, and the city watch will soon be turning up to restore order. It’s a right state of panic—’
The truth was that, even if Bertaud was not facing financial ruin, his shop was not well patronised.
‘Have you already spoiled all the paper delivered to you this morning?’ retorted the bookseller. ‘Don’t you have some handsome inkblots to inspect? Some botched print you need to perfect? But perhaps I’m being a trifle unfair, seeing as in your shop, you press more fingers than pages . . .’
He had risen as he spoke and, since he was rather small, did not make nearly as impressive a figure as Daunois standing before him. But he held himself firm and his gaze did not waver.
‘Your witticisms only amuse yourself, bookseller!’ replied Daunois, swelling his chest.
‘And you, printer, bore everyone with your remarks!’
Their voices rose while Laincourt, not paying the slightest heed to their altercation, studied his pieces, wondering how to obtain as many points as possible. A trictrac board closely resembled that used for backgammon, with the same division into two sides and the same series of twenty-four black and white long triangles along which one moved the counters. But trictrac was a game with complex rules, where the aim was not simply to remove your counters as quickly as possible. Instead, players earned points as they progressed in order to accumulate a pre-determined score.
Laincourt lent an ear to the discussion just as Daunois was growling:
‘Is that so? Is that so?’
‘You heard me!’
‘So how is it, then, that people say what they do?’
‘And what, pray, are people saying?’
‘Quite simply, that—’
‘Papa?�
�
A pretty girl of sixteen, with dark hair and green eyes, had just opened the door leading to the room at the rear of the bookshop. The quarrel immediately ceased and its cause was forgotten.
‘Good afternoon, Clotilde,’ said the printer with a kind smile.
‘Good afternoon, monsieur. And good afternoon to you, monsieur de Laincourt.’
‘Good afternoon. How are you?’
‘Very well, monsieur,’ the girl answered with a blush.
‘Well, my girl?’ queried Bertaud. ‘What is it?’
The bookseller’s only daughter said in a faint voice:
‘There is someone in the shop, papa. A gentleman.’
Bertaud, who had leaned down to listen to Clotilde, straightened up triumphantly.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, his words directed so ostensibly at Laincourt that he could only be in fact aiming them at Daunois, ‘but I must attend to my business. Unlike some, I cannot spend all day idling about while others do my work for me.’
Daunois, of course, could not let this pass by unanswered:
‘Allow me to bid you good day, Arnaud. I must return to my workshop, where there are some delicate operations awaiting that cannot be carried out without my supervision.’
And thereupon, the printer and the bookseller, both draped in a theatrical air of dignity, turned on their heels and went their separate ways. Pretty Clotilde, however, did not follow her father back inside. She lingered for a moment within the frame of the doorway until, embarrassed when the eyes of the former Cardinal’s Guard did not shift from the trictrac board, she finally withdrew. No doubt any man other than Laincourt would have perceived the sentiments she felt for him. But this young man, so skilled at detecting lies and dissembling in a thousand different clues, was unable to read the heart of a young girl in love.
Bertaud returned after a few minutes.
He sat back down, observing with pleasure that his opponent had finally made his move.
‘So?’ asked Laincourt. ‘This customer?’
‘Bah! He only came in to browse. He didn’t even know what he was looking for . . .’
The young man nodded knowingly.
‘Slender, elegant, with a blond moustache?’ he guessed.
‘Yes,’ the bookseller replied in astonishment. ‘But how—?’
‘And wearing a beige doublet?’
‘Precisely! Do you know him, then?’
‘Slightly,’ said Laincourt, holding out the dice cup. ‘It’s your turn, Jules. This game is certainly dragging on.’
Upon leaving the Red Eagle, following his interview with Rochefort, La Fargue rejoined Almades and together they returned to the Hotel de l’Epervier on their exhausted mounts.
They chose the shortest route, which is to say, they took the Pont Rouge. Thus named because of its coating of red lead paint, the wooden bridge had been built the previous year. Like the Pont Neuf, it allowed Parisians to cross the Seine river directly, but there was a toll to be paid, making it less popular.
On the Left Bank, La Fargue and the Spaniard rode up rue de Beaune, through a neighbourhood that had only recently sprung up from the ground in the Pre-aux-Clercs, the former domain of Queen Marguerite de Navarre. Beyond it, they finally reached the faubourg Saint-Germain. Rue de la Sor-bonne led them to the right-angled crossing with rue des Saints-Peres, which they followed alongside the facades of La Charite hospital before passing in front of Les Reformes cemetery and turning into the small rue Saint-Guillaume.
They arrived at their destination and, despite the questions about La Donna and the alleged plot against the king that still nagged at him, the old captain could only think of finding a bite to eat and then going to bed. He rang the bell at the entrance to the Hotel de l’Epervier without dismounting, and waited for someone to open one of the great rectangular doors of the carriage gate. It was not monsieur Guibot but Andre, the new groom, who hurried over. Once inside the courtyard, La Fargue and Almades handed him the reins of their horses.
They found the others in the garden.
Agnes, Leprat, and Marciac were chatting away beneath the chestnut tree at one end of the old table, where the meal had not yet been cleared away. Looking happy and thick as thieves together, they sipped wine and conversed for the sole pleasure of enjoying one another’s company. The heat was bearable out here in the garden. The air was fresher and a relaxed hush reigned which was only slightly disturbed by the regular snores from Ballardieu, asleep in an armchair.
The old soldier had drunk a fair amount of wine and he merely stirred in his sleep when the others greeted the new arrivals. He groaned and smacked his lips without opening his eyes as La Fargue and the Spanish fencing master sat down and took their ease, removing their hats and baldrics, downing a few glasses of wine, and attacking the remains of the repast.
While polishing off the last quarter of the pate en croute, the captain of the Blades recounted his meeting with La Donna. He reported what she had told him and what she was demanding in exchange for the information she claimed to possess. Then he described the confrontation with the dracs, without omitting any details. Almades, meanwhile, remained silent as usual, eating little, controlling his urges despite his hunger and thirst.
‘Can we believe what this woman says?’ Leprat wondered aloud. ‘Isn’t she a schemer and a spy of the worst possible kind?’
‘As far as scheming and espionage go,’ observed Marciac, ‘the worst possible kind is also the best . . .’
‘To be sure. But all the same ... A plot against the king!’
‘What is she like?’ asked the young baronne de Vaudreuil. ‘They say she is very beautiful. Is she?’
‘Yes,’ the captain answered. ‘She is.’
‘And what impression did she make on you?’ Agnes persisted.
‘I found her to be intelligent, determined, skilful—’
‘—and dangerous?’
‘Certainly.’
‘If we know anything about La Donna,’ Leprat commented, ‘it is that she only acts out of self-interest. So what does she gain from exposing this purported plot?’
‘The cardinal’s protection,’ Marciac reminded him.
‘A protection that she must truly need,’ Agnes emphasised.
‘True,’ agreed the Gascon. ‘You are thinking of the dracs—’
‘Yes. La Donna is not only being hunted, but the pack chasing her is a ferocious one—’
And snapping at her heels.‘
‘Black dracs and an unnatural black mist,’ noted Leprat. ‘I don’t know about you, but to me all this reeks of the Black Claw . . .’
Marciac and Agnes both nodded.
Led by power-hungry dragons who would stop at nothing to achieve their ends, the Black Claw was a secret society which was particularly strong in Spain and her territories, including the Spanish Netherlands within whose borders La 1 )onna had waited for La Fargue. Its most ancient, influential, and active lodge was to be found in Madrid. But although there were close links between it and the Court of Dragons, the Black Claw’s goals were not always in accord with those of the Spanish Crown. Its ultimate aim, in fact, was to plunge Europe into a state of chaos that would permit the establishment of an absolute draconic reign. A reign that would spare no dynasty.
No human dynasty, that is.
‘If La Donna is being pursued by the Black Claw,’ surmised the Gascon, ‘one can certainly understand her eagerness to find a powerful protector ... I would not like to be in her shoes—’
‘And yet you are,’ Agnes said in an amused tone. ‘Do you suppose that the Black Claw has forgotten the defeat we recently inflicted upon its agents?’
‘But in my case, I have you,’ Marciac responded. ‘Whereas La Donna has no one.’
The young baronne smiled.
‘But why would the Black Claw be after La Donna?’ Leprat wanted to know.
‘Perhaps . . . ,’ Agnes started to suggest, ‘perhaps the Black Claw is the origin of the plot against the ki
ng. Perhaps La Donna somehow got wind of the secret, perhaps the Black Claw knows this, and now wants to silence her . . .’
‘All right,’ granted the former musketeer. ‘Or perhaps the Black Claw is seeking La Donna for some other reason, and she has concocted this tale in the hope that the cardinal will protect her, at least for a while . . . What do you think, captain?’
In the heat of their discussion, Leprat, Marciac, and Agnes had forgotten the presence of La Fargue.
Turning their faces in unison, they saw Almades lifting an index finger to his lips in warning . . .
The captain was fast asleep in his chair.
Aubusson leaned back in his chair and considered the painting with a weary eye. It seemed to be resisting him today. Any further effort was useless. His mind was elsewhere and he could produce nothing worthwhile on the canvas.
‘I might just as well go for a walk,’ he grumbled to himself as he put down his brushes and his palette.
Like all artists, he occasionally had black days and now had no trouble recognising the signs.
Nearly sixty years old, he had more than four decades of experience as a painter. Starting as an apprentice he had followed the ordinary course demanded by his guild. He rose to the rank of journeyman and finally — after completing a piece his peers judged to be of superior quality — that of master. Acquiring this title was essential for him to open his own studio. Aubusson could then accept commissions and earn a living from his work. He became one of the best portrait painters of his generation. Perhaps the very best of them, in fact. His renown had spread across borders and the courts of Europe vied for his services as he spent years roaming the roads of France, Germany, Italy, England, Spain, and even travelled as far as Hungary and Sweden. He reached the very height of his glory when Marie de Medicis, widow of Henri IV and mother of Louis XIII, had sent him to Madrid to produce a faithful likeness of the Infante Doha Ana Maria Mauricia, the future Anne d’Autriche, queen of France. It was said that even the Grand Turk himself had requested that Aubusson portray him.