by Pierre Pevel
And he was losing.
It had not taken him long to realise that his opponent was of a different calibre to the mercenaries whose bodies lay scattered across the luminescent floor. Like them, Rauvin had experience. But he also had talent. His strokes were quick, precise and powerful. Although driven by a ferocious hatred of the musketeer, he kept his calm.
Surprised by a thrust, Leprat was forced to step back and parry several times as Rauvin launched a series of attacks, high and low, in rapid succession. Their blades ended up crossed near the hilts and the two men circled before shoving one another away roughly, both of them nearly stumbling.
Leprat moved back, seeking room to manoeuvre.
No longer able to conceal the fact that he was struggling, he feared Rauvin would try to wear him down. His combat with the freebooters had drained him and he sensed that he had still not recovered from the worsening of the ranse that had struck him the previous day. Indeed, he wondered if he would ever truly recover. He was also wielding a rapier made of ordinary steel, which demanded far more of his wrist than the elegant ivory blade to which he was accustomed.
All things considered, the only point in his favour was the fact that he was left-handed.
It was not much of an advantage.
Rauvin attacked, obliging Leprat to step back again. But with a wide swing of his blade, the musketeer forced the other man to expose himself and landed a nasty right hook with his fist. The hired swordsman staggered. Emboldened by this success, Leprat seized the upper hand and made his opponent retreat. Rauvin quickly pulled himself together, however, feinting and slashing at face height. That stopped Leprat’s momentum as he had to duck in order to avoid being disfigured.
Rauvin managed to disengage and quickly discarded his doublet which was making him uncomfortably hot.
For his part, Leprat caught his breath.
He had lost a lot of energy in this last assault and his wrist was hurting him more and more. Sweat was making his hair stick to his brow and his eyes sting.
‘It looks like you’re having a hard time,’ observed Rauvin ironically. ‘Age, no doubt . . .’
Leprat, who was approaching forty, displayed a weary smile.
‘I ... I still have some resources left . . .’
‘Really? And for how much longer?’
Both remained en garde, circling and giving each other a measuring stare.
Rauvin suddenly delivered a cut, which Leprat parried and then riposted. After that, there was a whole series of parries and ripostes, one man retreating while the other advanced, and then vice versa as the advantage switched direction. Their soles slipped on the dark marble and the heels of their boots clattered beneath the great dome. Their blades clashed with a clear ringing sound. Their features tightened and their gaze became fixed with the strain of their efforts.
Leprat was weakening.
He wanted to put an end to matters and delivered a false attack. It fooled the hired swordsman who was expecting a flurry of strikes and had modified his guard position accordingly, exposing himself to a thrust which he saw coming too late. The musketeer lunged and scored a hit. Unfortunately he lacked reach and could not press the blow hard enough.
Nevertheless, Rauvin took an inch of steel in his left shoulder. His surprise and pain made him cry out. He stepped back in a panic, pressed one hand to his wound and watched the blood trickling down over it with astonishment.
‘Hurts, doesn’t it?’ said Leprat.
Humiliated and furious, Rauvin launched an assault so vigorous that the musketeer could only defend himself, parrying, dodging and retreating, again and again. For too many long seconds, Leprat had to mobilise all of his strength and attention for the sole purpose of surviving, blocking and deflecting attacks that became increasingly sly and dangerous. He was being overpowered. Which was as good as saying that he was vanquished in the long run, because eventually he would make a mistake.
So he was already seeking some way out when the course of the fight took a disastrous turn for the worse.
His rapier broke.
The steel snapped cleanly and most of the blade bounced on the marble floor with a clang. It was a moment of amazement for Rauvin, and absolute horror for Leprat ...
. . . after which the hired swordsman smiled and resumed his attack with even greater energy than before.
Leprat leapt backward to avoid a cut, quickly stepped aside to stay clear of a thrust and parried another with the remaining stub of his sword. Other desperate manoeuvres permitted him to stave off the inevitable. But he finally lost his balance and only managed to avoid falling thanks to his right hand, which reached out and grabbed the blade of his enemy. In spite of his glove, the steel cut viciously into the palm of his hand. The musketeer screamed in pain before retreating from Rauvin who stalked towards him, jabbing with his rapier, his arm outstretched. Leprat reeled like a drunkard, unable to take his eyes off the metal point threatening him. Finally, he felt his calves bump against the rim of the central well and almost fell backwards into it, in danger of being swallowed up by the shadowy void.
It was here that all strength abandoned him.
He fell to his knees and, with a confused gaze, watched Rauvin looming over him.
The mercenary was cold-bloodedly preparing to deliver the fatal blow.
So this is how it ends, Leprat thought to himself.
‘Any last words?’ asked Rauvin.
The musketeer somehow found the force to utter a painful snort and, in defiance, spat out some bloody phlegm.
‘No? As you wish,’ said the hired swordsman. ‘Goodbye.’
He lifted his arms up high, both hands gripping the pommel of his rapier, holding the weapon point downwards, ready to plunge it into Leprat’s unprotected chest . . . . . . when someone said:
‘Just a moment.’
Rauvin halted his gesture to glance over his shoulder . . . and saw Mirebeau.
Stunned by this development, he turned around.
It was indeed the gentleman in the beige doublet who had somehow risen from among the dead and, pale and bloody, approached with a stiff, hesitant step, his left arm held against his body and his right straining to lift his sword.
Leprat struggled to stand, leaning on the rim of the well.
‘I wanted . . .’ Mirebeau said to Rauvin. ‘I wanted . . .’
‘What?’
‘I wanted you to know who was going to kill you.’
The mercenary sneered at this: Mirebeau was unable to even hold his rapier up, much less fight with it . . . But the sneer vanished when Rauvin saw the gentleman suddenly lift the pistol held in his left hand.
The gun fired.
The ball hit Rauvin in the middle of his forehead and he fell over backwards, arms extended, as Mirebeau sank to the floor in exhaustion.
Having made sure that the mercenary was quite dead, Leprat hurried over to the dying gentleman. He gently lifted his head. The other man could barely open his eyes.
The musketeer didn’t know what to say. He could not utter any words at all, with his throat constricted and tears welling in his eyes.
‘Th . . . thank you,’ he finally managed to croak.
Mirebeau nodded very faintly.
‘A ... A favour . . .’ he murmured. ‘For me . . .’
‘Ask it . . .’
‘I do not ... I do not . . . want ... to die here . . . Please . . . Not here . . .’
Beneath the trees of the orchard at Dampierre a bitter fight had ensued during the fireworks display. The Blades and Savelda’s mercenaries engaged one another while dazzling Hashes accompanied by loud bangs lit up the foliage before gradually fading into flickers. The changing light sculpted their faces and silhouettes as the steel of their rapiers reflected back the same light as the blood of their wounds and the feverish gleam in their eyes.
A nasty kick and a two-handed blow with the pommel of his sword delivered between the shoulder blades allowed La Fargue to eliminate his first opponent.
At last enjoying a moment’s respite, he looked around him at the scene revealed by a crackling bouquet that illuminated the whole sky and dispersed into thousands of multicoloured sparkles.
Saint-Lucq, having coolly shot down, at close range, one of the three mercenaries who had rushed him at the beginning of the assault, was now battling the other two with his rapier, holding his pistol by the barrel in his left hand as a parrying weapon. He did not seem to be in any difficulty, in contrast to Laincourt who, having received a pistol ball in the right shoulder, was backed up against a tree and defending himself as best he could. Fortunately Marciac had come to his aid and was fending off three men with his sword and dagger, despite a wound to the arm. The Alchemist had disappeared. But where was the queen?
La Fargue saw her.
Savelda was carrying her off towards the wooden walkway that crossed over the moat. Was the Black Claw’s agent intending to reach the garden and then seek refuge in the castle? It would be like throwing himself into the wolfs jaws, but there was no time to ponder the matter.
‘The queen!’ La Fargue yelled, just before another mercenary engaged him in a duel. ‘Savelda has the queen!’
Only a short distance away in the orchard, Saint-Lucq heard his captain’s call over the explosions of the fireworks. But he also heard an order to surrender. He had just eliminated a second opponent and, keeping the point of his elegant rapier pressed to the throat of the third, he glanced over his shoulder. Some musketeers were taking aim at him . . .
Alerted by the sound of shots being fired, members of the King’s Musketeers patrolling in the domain had rushed to the orchard.
‘In the name of the king, cease fighting!’
La Fargue froze, having planted his sword to the hilt in the belly of a freebooter who now clung to him in a close embrace, glassy-eyed, and had started to drool a reddish foam. He allowed the dying man to sink to the ground as he freed his blade with a flick of his wrist and then looked around him.
The musketeers had already surrounded the site and, acting on the commands of their ensign, tightened their ring. They obviously intended to push everyone out from beneath the cover of the trees.
Savelda and the queen were almost at the small wooden bridge.
‘Throw down your swords and surrender!’ the ensign ordered.
The fight had come to a halt but everyone present still hesitated. The threat of being shot down on the spot, however, overcame any inclination on the part of the Black Claw’s mercenaries to resist further. Weakened by his wound, Lain-court was only too happy to slide down to the foot of the tree he had been leaning against . . . and then he passed out. Cautiously, La Fargue and Marciac re-sheathed their swords and slowly backed away from the musketeers, their arms extended from their bodies.
‘In the service of the cardinal!’ called the old gentleman, between two pyrotechnical explosions. ‘Don’t shoot!’
‘Who’s speaking?’ demanded the ensign, keeping his distance.
‘Captain Etienne-Louis de La Fargue.’
‘Never heard of you!’
‘Monsieur de Treville knows me.’
But something else drew the young officer’s attention.
‘What the . . . You! Halt! Don’t move!’
La Fargue was horrified to see several muskets turn away from Marciac and him to point instead at Savelda and the queen by the bridge. Anne d’Autriche seemed more dead than alive in the arms of the one-eyed man with the ranse.
‘No!’ EXCLAIMED THE CAPTAIN OF THE BLADES. ‘YoU RISK KILLING THE QUEEn!’
‘You should listen to him!’ cried Savelda as he retreated up the few short steps leading to the walkway.
The fireworks’ grand finale was now bursting overhead. The rockets’ explosions sounded like cannon fire and, in the deafening din, no one could be certain of being heard.
‘Halt, or we’ll shoot!’ warned the ensign.
‘It’s the queen!’ La Fargue screamed. ‘By all the
SAINTS, LISTEN TO Me! It’s THE QUEEN?‘
He tried to take a step forward to explain. Three muskets immediately took aim at his chest and forced him to stop.
Savelda and the queen were now crossing the bridge. They would soon be out of sight.
‘Musketeers, on my command!’ ordered the young officer raising his hand.
‘No!’ yelled La Fargue at the top of his lungs.
But the order he dreaded so much never came.
Bringing the fireworks to a culmination, two immense gold and blue comets exploded at the same time as dozens of more ephemeral stars. The lights dazzled everyone except Savelda who had his back to the spectacle. The others averted their eyes, squinting or protecting them with their forearms.
It was the moment the Black Claw agent had been waiting for.
Pushing Anne d’Autriche over the railing on the left, he leapt over the one on the right. The two bodies splashed into the moat’s deep waters only a second apart. That of the unconscious queen immediately began to sink.
Marciac was the first to react.
He took off running, making himself the target of a volley of musket fire, the balls buzzing past him as he dove into the moat. He vanished without it being clear whether or not he had been hit. Everyone present — La Fargue and the ensign leading the way - rushed to the edge of the steep ditch. The incandescent remains of the fireworks falling back to earth were reflected in the black waters while, at the other end of the castle, the duchesse’s guests applauded the end of the display.
Unbearable seconds passed by as they all waited . . .
. . . until Marciac finally resurfaced holding the queen, who was coughing.
And therefore alive.
‘Her Majesty is safe,’ the Gascon announced to the dumbfounded musketeers. ‘Could you lend me a hand? If you please?’
They hurried to assist him just as Almades and Treville arrived from the garden along with more men in blue capes, the captain of the Musketeers quickly taking charge of the situation.
Unnoticed by anyone, La Fargue stood apart from the others and looked out at the orchard for a long while, hands on his hips. The queen had been saved and that was the main thing, but the Alchemist had once again escaped . . .
Then he heard that two musketeers had been found unconscious among the fruit trees and, noticing that Saint-Lucq had also vanished, he smiled.
Saint-Lucq moved through the forest skirted by the road upon which the Alchemist’s coach was travelling. He had heard the horse-drawn carriage leaving by way of the gate to the orchard and since then he had been following its progress by sound, pushing aside the low branches and eating up the distance with his steady, powerful strides. Thanks to the days spent watching the Dampierre domain, he knew which route the coach would be forced to use. Right now, the road curved around the woods while the half-blood was able to take a shortcut. The vehicle would have to slow down as it approached a small bridge, and that was where Saint-Lucq hoped to intercept it.
The trees became more spaced out as the noise of the carriage came closer. Saint-Lucq realised that he was in danger of arriving too late. He picked up his pace, plunging through the underbrush and emerged from the forest, face covered in scratches, only to see the coach disappearing over the bridge.
He’d missed it!
But the Alchemist was escorted by several riders, including one straggler who was only now arriving.
Saint-Lucq seized this last chance available to him. He did not slow down, but instead adjusted his trajectory and gathered his momentum to take a flying leap from a mound close to the road. The rider never saw him coming. The horse whinnied and crashed to the earth in a great cloud of dust . . .
And stood back up, full of fright, but now mounted by the half-blood who urged it to a gallop.
Inside the coach, instinct warned the Alchemist that he was in danger. Leaning his head out the passenger door, he looked back and saw Saint-Lucq hot on his trail.
‘Back there!’ he alerted his escort, y
elling to be heard over the thunderous hoof beats and the creaking of the axles. ‘A rider! Stop him!’
Then he sat back and rapidly came to a decision.
Leaning forward, he opened a compartment beneath the bench opposite him and took out a case which he placed on his knees before opening its inlaid lid. Inside was a flask containing the liqueur of golden henbane.
He would have to transform himself.
His last metamorphosis, in Alsace, had exhausted him to the point that he was still unable to regain his primal form, but even an intermediate stage might be enough to save him now. He removed the stopper from the flask and greedily emptied its contents before he was overcome by a fit of coughing, shortly followed by violent pains.
Three riders on horseback were escorting the coach, one before and two behind. Warned by the Alchemist, those two slowed down to detain Saint-Lucq who had already caught up with them. Shots were exchanged, using pistols that had been tucked into the saddle holsters. The half-blood came under fire first and responded in kind. He hit one of the mercenaries, who toppled out of his saddle. His companion fired at the half-blood in turn. The ball narrowly missed Saint-Lucq who drew closer still. The other man then took hold of his second pistol and turned to shoot, but the Blade was quicker and succeeded in lodging a ball in the middle of his brow. The mercenary fell forward and was carried off into the distance by his mount.
Seeing the turn that events were taking, the coachman screamed and was heard by the rider galloping in front. The latter drew aside from the road and, hidden behind a thicket, allowed himself to be passed by. Saint-Lucq remained unaware of this trickery. He drew abreast of the horse belonging to the first mercenary he had shot and only had eyes for the pistol remaining in its saddle holster. He grabbed the weapon as he went by and tucked it into his belt, then spurred his own mount forward.
He caught up with the coach in the long dusty cloud raised by the hooves of the horses and the iron-rimmed wheels. He drew as close as possible, reached out his arm, found a handhold and clambered on to the narrow platform used by the footman. He thought he could then catch his breath, but a detonation sounded and a ball smashed into the coach next to his head. Still hanging on, he turned to see the last escort rider coming up the road at breakneck speed, already brandishing his second pistol. The shot, luckily, misfired, the powder burning without exploding and the weapon only spitting out a jet of flame. The mercenary threw it away and drew his sword. Saint-Lucq did the same. A fight commenced between the two men. The half-blood only had the one handhold and one foot on the platform, and he found himself hanging hallway out over open space, at the rear of the coach whose jolting caused him to sway back and forth, thumping violently against the cabin. As for the rider, he was making wild slashes with his sword which Saint-Lucq sometimes parried and sometimes evaded by swinging a quarter turn to the left or right. But finally the half-blood struck back. Reaching out as far as he could, he planted the point of his blade into the mercenary’s flank, who hiccupped and dropped his weapon in order to hold his belly with both hands. His horse slowed to a trot and then a walk, before coming to a halt as the coach vanished into the night.