A Candle For d'Artagnan

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  Francois brought his foot down. “Yes!” he burst out. “Yes, yes, yes. We must be bold. Now is the time for us to act, to be rid of the Italian and the Spanish woman once and for all. You are too timid, mon Duc. I tell you: it can be accomplished tonight. This night.”

  “Or all might be destroyed,” said le Duc gravely. “That is what I fear. I cannot say so more directly than this: we are not ready. If we forge ahead now, before we have strong commitments from those who say they might stand with us, then we are apt to fail. And if we fail here, Francois, that will be the end of us, of Le Fouet, of all we wish to do. We will not make ourselves martyrs to France, we will become the forgotten ones.”

  “They will rally to us,” Francois insisted with zeal. “They will see that we are right and they will come to us with glad hearts.” He stopped. “Is someone at the door?”

  Olivia listened to him cross the room and open the door; all the while she did not want to admit that they might somehow be aware of her presence. She deliberately looked down at the floor instead of in the direction of either man; Sanct’ Germain had told her fourteen hundred years ago that it was dangerous to stare at persons from hiding, especially their hands or heads. He had shown her how often such staring brought about discovery. She stared at the floor and listened.

  “Well?” the Duc asked as Francois closed the door.

  “I saw no one,” he said, but with doubt. “Possibly someone—a servant—went by.”

  The Duc chuckled twice. “Are you still so certain you want to bring our cause to a head tonight? You are apprehensive when you think just one man might—I say might—be listening to our conversation. Yet you want to reveal your intentions to all the nobles here. You are inconsistent, my friend.” The chair scraped as he again moved nearer the fire. “Take my advice. Wait. Listen to everyone you see tonight, and guide their talk to our advantage rather than rush blindly ahead. Be circumspect, Francois. Use this gala to examine more of those who have expressed their discontent with the present state of affairs. If they are like-minded or have similar complaints, tell them what you believe must be done to change this, and then take the steps that will be necessary to lay careful plans. Once the time comes to act, there will be no occasion to draw back. We will have a single opportunity. Then we will triumph or we will fall.”

  “We cannot fall,” insisted Francois. “We have right with us.” He strode around the room, expounding. “France has become nothing more than a vassal of her enemies, all because we have a Queen who is sister to our enemy in Spain, and she is guided by an Italian Eminence to raise up the children of Richelieu.”

  It was tempting, so tempting, to want to look, to discover who these two men were. She chided herself for her folly and hoped she would be able to remember their voices.

  “Just the one son,” said the Duc. “I am told she is determined to make sure the younger one shares the same vices as her husband did; she wants him to be a catamite. She clothes him in dresses and surrounds him with young men who crave unnaturally for boys.” He spat. “Vile woman. After her marriage, she does this. It is unthinkable to do that to a second son. What if her Louis does not live to reign? France will be as it was before, with a King who cannot insure the succession. She was a married Queen without a husband, and she wishes another woman to live as she did.” His chair scraped. “You asked me to give you my thoughts, and you have heard them.” He walked away toward the door, his step weightier than Le Fouet’s. Then he stopped. “You know, Francois, the son of Richelieu is not the worst King we might have. This is not the child of a groom or a lackey, but the First Minister of France. He was a true Frenchman, Richelieu; noble, and no man has guided the kingdom with a truer hand, little though you or I liked him.”

  “He was not of the Blood Royal,” said Francois, shocked.

  “No,” agreed the Duc. “This is the sticking point for me. But there are many who may be willing to forget that, especially if this Italian really can bring about peace at last. The Queen will not stop him making truces, because of her little boys. She does not want them faced with battle because they are so young. We have been at war for more than fifteen years; put a man on the Throne and we might war for another fifteen. The cost for such a venture will be thought too high by those who have smaller holdings or have lost more than you and I have. A boy may be a more acceptable King to many than any man grown.” He opened the door. “Bon chance, Francois.”

  “But you are with me,” Francois said desperately, his voice rising again. “Mon Duc, you have—”

  “I have pledged you my life,” said the Duc. “I will stand by that as binding for as long as there is breath in my body. I have sworn my honor, Francois. Are you so lost in our cause that you no longer know the worth of that vow? What I want to impress upon you is danger of acting as precipitously as you propose. Too many nobles remember de Soissons and the others. They know what happens to those who conspire against the Throne, and they will not hurry to the same fate. I tell you these things so that you will be ready to answer the arguments you may encounter, not because I believe them. But if you insist on questioning the Queen and her children, you will encounter objections, no matter how much Mazarin is distrusted or the Queen is despised.”

  “For love of Mere Marie, close that door!” ordered Francois in an undervoice. “Mon Dieu, why not announce to the world that I am Le Fouet? Close the door.”

  The door remained open. “We have been closeted too long; someone will notice,” said the Duc in a polite but critical way. “For every spy you have in the Cardinal’s household—and I recall you have at least three close to His Eminence—there are a dozen watching this gala tonight. Whatever you have learned, they will learn tenfold more.” The Duc left the room, calling from the hall. “Will you join me? The orchestra is about to resume playing sanguine music in the next hall.”

  “A ridiculous conceit,” snapped Francois, but he followed after the Duc, slamming the door behind him.

  Olivia remained in her hiding place until she heard the distant sound of music. She rose to her feet, telling herself it was cowardly and foolish to think that one of the two men had remained to apprehend her, and was waiting for her to make herself known so that he could silence her. At last, holding the book she had been reading—she could throw it or use it as a shield—she stepped tentatively out of the dark alcove into the light from the hearth.

  The room was empty: the only sign that anyone had been in it was a small gold button on the floor by the chair. Olivia had just knelt to pick it up when the door opened once more.

  “Magna Mater!” she exclaimed, turning, the book at the ready to throw.

  “Olivia,” said Cardinal Mazarin, between amusement and consternation. He extended his ring to her, then offered her his hand to help her to her feet. “This is an unusual reception even for you.”

  Olivia stood, and turned to the mantel in order to set the book aside, then smoothing her clothes with unsteady hands, she directed her attention to Mazarin. “I apologize, Eminence,” she said, then switched from French to Italian. “I have just passed several minutes listening to two men discuss the overthrow of you, amico Giulio, the Queen, and the Throne.” As he looked at her in dismay, she went on to repeat as much as she could remember.

  “But who were these men?” Mazarin asked when she had finished. He sank down into one of the chairs, crossing himself as he did. “They are so ready?” he asked distantly.

  “You knew about them?” Olivia watched him closely, not entirely willing to trust him to answer truthfully.

  “Yes,” he said with a bitter smile. “There is no reason to deny it, not to you.” He touched his hands together. “Le Fouet. Are you certain of that name?”

  “Yes, and Francois,” she said. “The other man was a Duc, but no name and no title were revealed.” She held out the gold button on the palm of her hand. “One or the other of them was wearing this.”

  Mazarin took it out of her hand and laughed mirthlessly. “A single g
old button. At a royal gala. We might as well look for a scrap of lace, or a pearl.” He looked closely at the button. “Nothing remarkable.”

  “You were hoping for arms on the button?” Olivia suggested, her hazel eyes dancing more with danger than humor.

  “It would have been useful,” said Mazarin as he tucked the button away. “A Duc, possibly a Royal Duc,” he mused. “Many of them are ambitious and a few are discontented. But which one? If I accuse the wrong man, I succeed only in turning another noble against me.” He glanced toward the alcove. “Are you sure they did not know you heard them?”

  “I am certain that I would not be speaking with you now if they had discovered me,” said Olivia in a hard voice.

  “And, of course, they know you are part of my embassy,” he went on, more to himself than to her. “They would be suspicious if you were to show any undue attention to them.”

  “I don’t know which ‘them’ they are,” Olivia said bluntly.

  “And it would be dangerous for you to attempt to find out,” Mazarin finished for her, and continued in French, “I think it would be best if you were to have many conversations tonight. Nothing serious, nothing very long. That way, if you can recognize the voices, you may have a better chance of hearing them.” He rose. “Why Francois? Why not something unusual, like Baltesard or Paulot or Ulisse? There are so man Francoises!”

  A discreet knock on the door was followed at once by the chief lackey stepping inside, leaving the door open. “Eminence, the Queen urgently desires your attention.”

  Olivia gave Mazarin a sharp look, and finished his observation for him. “Why not have a single Duc here, as well,” she recommended. “Then there would be no difficulty determining who he is.” She gave a full curtsy as she kissed his ring, knowing that her position in his suite demanded such formality.

  Mazarin blessed her. “We will speak later, Bondame Clemens,” he said, then went to the lackey. “Take me to the Queen, and then place yourself at Bondame Clemens’ disposal. She has much to do on my behalf.”

  The lackey bowed, first to Cardinal Mazarin, then to Olivia.

  “I will be in the next hall,” said Olivia as the lackey started to leave the room. She did not want to be in this little room any longer, for it suddenly seemed to her to be worse than a baited trap. “Find me there.”

  “Madame,” said the lackey as he left with Mazarin.

  For the next three hours, Olivia followed the Cardinal’s instructions. She had rarely spoken to so many people in so little time as she did at the gala. Her conversation ranged over every topic she could think of, from the collapse in the price of tulip bulbs in the Low Countries some ten years ago, to the rumors of an outbreak of Black Plague in Spain, to the Dutch and English importing fur from Nieuw Amsterdam and Hartfort, to the preference for Belgian lace, to the Portuguese trading with Japan, to the comparative superiority of French and Italian velvets, to the Turkish efforts to wrest Crete from Venice, to Evangelista Torricelli’s invention to measure the pressure of the air, to the difficulty of obtaining fine emeralds from India, to speculation on the possible fate of King Charles of England, to the victories of the French forces in the Rhineland.

  Shortly before the midnight banquet was to be served, the chief lackey took Olivia once again for a private audience with Cardinal Mazarin, this time in the withdrawing room where the musicians kept the cases for their instruments and their part scores.

  “Well?” Mazarin asked without preamble.

  He was looking exhausted, Olivia thought, and decided that he must need sleep badly. “I cannot say,” she answered. “I have been listening all evening, and I have heard a few conversations that were not flattering to you or the Queen, and one or two of the guests have said disparaging things about the King, but … I did not recognize the voices.” She looked down at one of the sheets, a page of music for alto basanello, and wished that voices were as easily identified as music.

  Mazarin accepted this with a resigned gesture. “I did not truly expect you to discover the men. I hoped, nothing more.” He put his hand to his forehead. “My wits are out tonight.” He laughed unhappily. “You know how it is with me—I love the chance to tell a story or a parable or a homily. Tonight, nothing stays in my mind. I cannot follow the thread of my own tales. I keep wondering if I am speaking to someone who is plotting to kill me, or someone who expects to replace the King on the Throne of France, or who has vowed to see the Queen Regent killed. It is worse than hearing a lying confession, or a perjured oath.” His large, deep brown eyes were filled with tears. “What can I do that will not put every one of us in greater danger? I have prayed for guidance, but … nothing comes. And then I fear that I have erred, and that I am truly bringing disgrace to France, that my oath to Richelieu was false and I am filled with shame.” He stopped himself, bringing himself back under full control. “I … I did not intend to speak of such things.”

  Olivia gave a faint smile of sympathy. “No. We never do.” She folded her hands. “But I am relieved to know that I am not the only one with such doubts, Giulio,” she said in Italian.

  “E vero,” he agreed. He watched her a little longer, evaluating her state of mind. “Do you wish to remain the rest of the evening?

  “No,” she said bluntly. “I am … tired. I also fear that if I remain, those with Le Fouet might—”

  He silenced her with a gesture. “No more risks, not tonight.” He waved her toward the door. “I will send for you in the morning, and we will talk then, when everyone else is half asleep, and the servants are too busy gossiping about the gala to notice what you and I say.”

  “As you wish,” she said, adding, “Where do we meet?”

  “I will send you word,” Mazarin told her. “After morning Mass. Be ready.”

  “I will,” she said, curtsying formally once more. When she had kissed his ring she added, “If I knew who these people are, I would not be so frightened. It is not knowing that makes it so hard to endure.”

  There was a wistful, angry light in Mazarin’s eyes. “I thought the Papal Court prepared me for this. I assumed I had seen all of the sins political life could bring. But it was not the same in Roma, where you could identify your enemies, if not their henchmen. I have come to wish for a vendetta, for all its blood, because there would not be this maddening courtesy to penetrate. In Roma, if a man is your enemy, he will acknowledge it in private, if not in public. But here in Paris, who is enemy and who is ally when all behave like … like puppets. ‘God give you good day, Eminence,’ ‘A vastly fine entertainment, Eminence,’ ‘Most admirably done, Eminence,’” he mimicked, with bows. “How do you know which man is your friend?”

  “Well, the Paris Parlement seems to be against you,” Olivia offered ironically.

  “They are,” said Mazarin emphatically. “And I am grateful for that. I know their complaints. I know what they wish me to change. I know that they blame me and are suspicious of the Queen because we are foreigners. But the court, the nobles—that is where the power lies, and where the real traitors are. And I cannot find them.”

  Olivia met Mazarin’s eyes with her own. “Will there be a rebellion? Will they try to bring down the King?”

  “Like England?” Mazarin asked. “No. I don’t think that is possible. They have no Oliver Cromwell and the Protestants in France are contained. Richelieu saw to that.” He coughed once. “Protestants are only an inconvenience. The ones to fear are all gathered for this gala.”

  “‘Kill them all; God will know His own’?” Olivia quoted the ferocious twelfth century bishop who had destroyed the city of Albi to be rid of the Catharists there.

  Mazarin could not bring himself to laugh, though his mouth twitched at the corners. “Yes. It would be the simple answer, and I would no longer need to worry about the court. As it is, I see a lackey I don’t recognize and I think he may have been sent to kill me. That is because I am Italian, and I have been taught to be wary of servants. The French are not like that. The courtiers�
�how am I to separate those who are trustworthy from those who are deadly?—are most troublesome. How do I conduct myself? What do I advise Queen Anne to do?” He favored Olivia with a bow as she rose. “I can no longer conceive of this court without treachery.”

  “No,” said Olivia, recalling that treachery was not limited to this court, or this country, or this time, nor despair to Jules, Cardinal Mazarin. “No more can I.”

  Text of a letter from Gaetano Fosso to Niklos Aulirios.

  To the most respected major domo of the esteemed Bondama Clemens, who honors us both with her employ, Niklos Aulirios, I, Gaetano Fosso, serving in your stead at Senza Pari, send my greetings and the assurance steps have already been taken to comply with the requests you have sent.

  As per your orders, we have dispatched riders with horses to the remount places you have indicated, with money to support them and a single groom apiece to care for them. The funds will pay for a full year at the remount places, and are to be renewed on your order, as I understand it. I do not mean to press or to question these instructions, but I am concerned, for it seems to me that since Bondama Clemens has her own stud farm at Tours, it would be more sensible for her to supply these remount stations from there rather than have her horses come all the way from Roma. I mention this not as refusal, but to satisfy those employed at Senza Pari who are as baffled as I am. There is also the matter of the lack of coaches required. With the horses sent, why was it that Bondama Clemens did not ask for her coaches as well? Or do these horses have nothing to do with her return to Roma and are instead to be put at the disposal of Cardinal Mazarini and his couriers and the couriers of the Vatican? I pray that some answer be provided in order to silence the gossip that had been thriving since the grooms and horses left here more than a week ago.