by Pierre Pevel
The captain of the Blades reflected further and finally, reluctantly, admitted:
‘Laincourt is right. The cardinal no doubt deemed it was still too soon to go to the Superior General with questions, and to risk incurring her displeasure by suggesting that the Chatelaines had anything to do with the disappearance of two Blades.’
‘Well … presented in that light …’ Marciac conceded. ‘So when will La Vaussambre receive you?’
‘Tomorrow. But I doubt that our interview will be fruitful.’
‘Why is that?’ asked Laincourt.
‘La Vaussambre nurtures some resentment towards me. If the cardinal supported me in this matter then perhaps I could obtain answers from her. But if we must depend on her good will alone …’
The door opened with a creak, and the gaoler holding the torch stayed in the doorway while the other man, always the same one, entered the cell. He was a tall man, strong and heavy, who spoke in a calm, even voice, and with a friendly tone intended to soothe. His gestures were equally gentle and careful, almost affectionate. He was one of those people who seemed to be sincerely kind, and so tended to instil in others a desire to please them in return.
Crouching down near Agnès, he discovered that she had not touched her meal and had drunk only a few drops of water. Yet he knew the stew was good, for he ate the same himself. And the water was cool and clean.
‘Madame,’ he said in kind reproach, ‘you are still not eating. It is an unhappy thing to see you perishing in this fashion …’
He shook his head with a disconsolate air.
Seated on the ground in a corner, Agnès pointedly looked away from him. She was pale and thin, filthy from wearing the same clothes she had been captured in, and her long curls of black hair had almost all escaped from the remains of her braid. In her weakened state, her stomach ached and her blue eyes blazed with the sickly, savage glow of hunger. She had steadfastly refused to eat for several days. Partly because she had given in to despair, haunted by the image of Ballardieu falling backwards into thin air. But also because it was one of the few things she could still do, stuck in this cell without light or air.
‘It serves no purpose to let yourself die in this manner, madame,’ added the gaoler as he gathered up the full bowl and wooden spoon. ‘But I will leave you the water.’
Hearing that, Agnès looked daggers at him as if he had insulted her and she kicked over the ewer standing on the floor. She couldn’t bear the presence of this man, because of the kindness he showed her. She would have preferred some silent, pitiless custodian, one she could naturally hate, whose throat she could cut at the first opportunity.
And the worst thing was that, as far as circumstances allowed, he was looking after her much as Ballardieu would have done.
In a sorrowful voice, he asked:
‘Come now, madame … Why do that?’
He did not wait for a reply, but stood up and walked to the door.
Then, in a tone betraying a certain discouragement, he said:
‘We won’t allow you to die, madame. I may very well receive orders to force you to eat. It would involve soup, a funnel and an oily leather tube. It’s … It’s extremely unpleasant.’
Resolute, Agnès turned her head towards the wall.
With a sigh, he went back into the corridor where his colleague had stood with the torch. He closed the door and turned the key in the lock twice, leaving his prisoner in the dark.
The night passed, and took the brief coolness with it.
The following morning, Paris woke up with the air already warm and a merciless sun blazing a path up to its zenith. A thousand hot stinks rose and, without any wind, remained there to bake all day beneath the vault of the dazzling sky.
Before noon, La Fargue and Laincourt asked André to saddle two horses. They left the faubourg Saint-Germain and crossed the Seine by way of the Pont Neuf, where, despite the heat, the traders, actors and charlatans managed to draw crowds which were almost as numerous as usual. Standing on a stool, a man was distributing pamphlets and haranguing his audience against the cardinal. It was imperative, he claimed, for the king to dismiss Richelieu and place power in the hands of the Sisters of Saint Georges, as they alone knew how to protect the kingdom from the dragons that had already begun their assault on Paris. And the man stretched his hand towards the massive silhouette of Le Châtelet where his audience could just make out, in the distance, the burnt-out remains of the central keep. La Fargue took a pamphlet which he read while continuing to ride. When he finished, he crumpled the paper without uttering a word and threw it away as they arrived at the Mégisserie quay on the Right Bank.
Travelling upstream alongside the river, the two Blades came to Place de Grève, passed in front of the Hôtel de Ville, and by way of the rue des Coquilles and then rue Barre-du-Bec, they entered the rue du Temple which they followed for its full length beneath the burning sun and slowed by the congestion of carriages and foot traffic, encroaching market stalls, deliveries, and the sporadic fights that were all common phenomena in the streets of Paris.
Finally they reached their destination, with dripping backs and damp brows under the brims of their hats. They crossed the drawbridge leading into the Enclos du Temple in silence, entering the former Templar headquarters in the heart of Paris, still surrounded by its crenelated wall, which now belonged to the Order of the Chatelaine Sisters.
Mère Thérèse de Vaussambre received La Fargue in the chapter hall, a vast high-ceilinged room, almost bare but luminous with the light streaming through the arched stained glass windows. A table stretched before the rear wall, covered in heavy white cloths that seemed to merge together and fell to the flagstone floor, beneath a large tapestry depicting Saint Georges in armour and on horseback, slaying the dragon with his spear. There was only one chair at this table, one made of black wood with a narrow seat and a tall back. And upon this chair, at the centre of the table, facing the room and the captain of the Blades as he entered, alone, sat the Mother Superior General of the Sisters of Saint Georges.
The heels of his boots ringing out in a heavy silence, La Fargue advanced with a firm step, bare-headed, his hat in his right hand and his left fist curled around the hilt of his sheathed Pappenheimer. He gave her a dignified salute, and then he waited. The cold setting for this audience failed to daunt him, but it did not augur well for the outcome of their meeting.
‘It has been a long time since last we met, monsieur,’ declared Mère de Vaussambre in a clear voice.
‘It has.’
The Chatelaines’ leader might have been forty-five or fifty years in age. Tall and slender, her expressionless face enclosed within the oval of her wimple, she wore the white robe and headdress of her Order. She was sitting very straight, her arms extended before her and slightly apart, her hands placed to either side of a letter whose broken wax seal lay scattered in scarlet pieces across the immaculate tablecloth.
‘I was asked to meet with you,’ she said without lowering her eyes to the missive sent to her by the cardinal. ‘Speak then, I pray.’
This prayer sounded more like an order.
‘I have come to request your help, mother superior.’
‘My help?’
‘I mean to say, the help of the Sisters of Saint Georges.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Agnès de Vaudreuil is missing—’ the captain of the Blades began.
But he did not finish, as he caught glimpse of the hint of a smile on the nun’s harsh, thin lips.
‘Do you not find it somewhat ludicrous, monsieur, that you of all people come here, asking none other than me for help, in an affair that concerns the young baronne de Vaudreuil?’
La Fargue remained silent.
‘Because was it not you,’ insisted Mère de Vaussambre in an even tone, ‘who took her away just before she made her vows? If not for you, and if not for your Blades, Marie-Agnès would have taken the veil and today she would be sitting at my right-hand side.’
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br /> The old captain wisely chose to hold his tongue. If she continued along these lines, the conversation could only become acrimonious. And displeasing La Vaussambre was the last thing he wanted.
‘If not for you,’ continued the Superior General, ‘Marie-Agnès would have followed her destiny. Do you have any idea of the consequences that her refusal to take her vows had? Do you know what it has cost us? And do you know what it will still cost if she does not come to reason?’
‘By come to reason, you mean come to you,’ La Fargue could not help himself from saying.
He immediately regretted it, seeing a flash of fury cross Mère de Vaussambre’s hitherto icy gaze. But she quickly regained mastery of her emotions, aided by a welcome distraction. Having knocked, a Chatelaine entered by a small door and with muted steps in the deep silence, she slipped between the wall and the long table to whisper a few words into her superior’s ear.
La Vaussambre listened before giving a nod.
Having recovered her self-control, she waited until she was alone again with La Fargue, and then said in the most formal of tones:
‘So, captain, you find yourself without news of the baronne de Vaudreuil for a short while. Is there any serious reason to be worried by this?’
‘I believe so.’
‘You believe,’ stressed the Superior General.
La Fargue clenched his fist around the hilt of his rapier.
‘I suppose,’ he conceded.
‘Ah, now you suppose. Soon, you will imagine …’
And then, locking her eyes on the captain’s, Mère de Vaussambre lifted the cardinal’s letter from the table and, slowly, deliberately, she tore it in two.
La Fargue returned to the Hôtel de l’Épervier boiling with rage. He swept across the fencing room where Saint-Lucq and Marciac were waiting and vanished into the small office set aside for his personal use. Laincourt came in just as the captain slammed the door shut violently behind him.
‘THAT BITCH!’ they heard La Fargue yell.
In the large hall furnished with odds and ends, Marciac and Laincourt exchanged a glance, before the first man asked, ‘As bad as that?’ and the second replied, ‘I fear so.’ But the young man knew nothing more, as the Blades’ captain had seethed with silent anger throughout their return trip. Sitting in profile in the deep recess of a window, Saint-Lucq turned his head towards the garden.
After a moment’s hesitation, Marciac drew a deep breath, clapped his hands against his thighs, and then rose from his seat to knock on La Fargue’s door.
‘What?’
‘It’s Marciac, captain.’
‘Come in.’
The Gascon obeyed.
After spending a while containing his urge to break something, La Fargue had finally removed his hat and hung up his baldric. He fell into his armchair, placed his crossed feet upon his desk, and sat there breathing heavily, his face grim and his fingers drumming an ominous beat upon the elbow rest.
‘La Vaussambre made a fool out of me,’ he said in a strained voice. The drumbeat abruptly ceased. ‘She only received me to show me her contempt and demonstrate my impotence. She knows I can learn nothing from her unless she wants me to and she had no fear of letting me know it. It doesn’t matter to her that I serve Cardinal Richelieu. Or the king. Or even if I served the Pope. Nor did it take her long to dismiss me, on the pretext that His Majesty urgently required her at the Louvre.’
‘That is quite possibly true,’ said Laincourt.
The young man had joined them, standing at the office’s threshold while Marciac sat before the desk in the only other chair within the modest room. Saint-Lucq, whose senses were more acute than those of common mortals, could hear everything from his post in the fencing room. He had closed his eyes behind his red spectacles and looked as though he was napping.
‘There is talk that Mère de Vaussambre will soon occupy a seat in the Council,’ explained Laincourt.
‘Truly?’ said La Fargue, frowning.
‘Nothing has been decided, but—’
‘Then the situation is even more serious than I thought.’
‘The people are afraid and the Parlement is demanding that the Chatelaines be brought into government, as they were in the past. Some even believe they should be given the keys to the kingdom, if it would help them rid France of the dragons.’
‘Right now,’ interjected Marciac, ‘I couldn’t care less whether La Vaussambre becomes pope or sultan. What did she have to say about Agnès?’
‘Nothing,’ the captain of the Blades was forced to admit. ‘Nor anything about Ballardieu … But she knows something, I’m convinced of it.’
In the adjoining room, Saint-Lucq opened his eyes a fraction of a second before Guibot came through the door to the main hall, hobbling on his wooden leg. He carried a letter which he hastened to hand over to the half-blood, who asked in return:
‘From whom?’
‘From a boy on a mule who just arrived,’ replied the concierge. ‘He said—’
‘The mule spoke?’ interrupted Saint-Lucq, without the slightest trace of a smile.
‘No, the boy …’ Flustered by the interruption, Guibot struggled to resume his train of thought. He looked at the half-blood with an astonished and fearful expression, and then stammered: ‘He said … He said he was the stable boy at the Reclining Lion inn.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘It’s in Trappes.’
Trappes was a village outside Paris, where old Guibot had no doubt never set foot in his life. Saint-Lucq gave him an intrigued glance.
‘It’s what he told me,’ the concierge explained. ‘The boy, I mean,’ he added, just in case.
The half-blood nodded and abandoned the game.
‘Thank you.’
Realising he’d been dismissed, Guibot bowed, but then asked:
‘And about the answer?’
‘Thank you, Guibot.’
The old man departed, thinking to himself that the boy could wait for a while, or go back to Trappes on his mule, just as he had come. After all, Guibot had other matters to attend to. And so he closed the door with a worried frown, wondering if Saint-Lucq had been jesting when he asked whether or not it was the mule who had spoken.
The letter was simply addressed to: Hôtel de l’Épervier. Rue Saint-Guillaume. Faubourg Saint-Germain. Saint-Lucq opened it and raised an eyebrow.
So, Ballardieu was alive.
They arrived covered in dust and drenched in sweat, on horses that were exhausted having kept up a fast trot all the way from Paris. La Fargue was the first to alight from his saddle in the Reclining Lion’s courtyard. Marciac, Laincourt and Saint-Lucq immediately did likewise and all of them entered the inn. If the din of their mounts’ hooves had drawn the eyes of all those present to the windows, their sudden appearance brought conversation to a halt.
A man of about fifty, with a receding hairline and sagging cheeks, was wearing an apron over his full belly. Who else could he be, but the inn’s proprietor?
‘My name is La Fargue,’ said the Blades’ captain, holding up the letter that had arrived an hour earlier at the Hôtel de l’Épervier. ‘Where is he?’
With a shaking finger, the innkeeper pointed to the staircase and, more generally, to the floor above where the guest-rooms were no doubt located. The four men took the steps two at a time, with a clatter of spurs and a hammering of hobnailed boots that soon resounded across the ceiling. They found Ballardieu sitting in a bed behind the third door they pushed open. His head bandaged and his cheeks hidden by a villainous-looking beard, the old soldier flashed them a smile that erased the traces of fatigue from his rugged face.
They were forced to abbreviate the embraces that Ballardieu was keen to distribute all around. Then, since he was in as fine a shape as could be hoped for, despite a great weariness, a devil of a thirst, and a hunger worthy of Pantagruel himself, La Fargue made him tell his story as he devoured an omelette, pâté, and ham, all the while emptying bott
le after bottle. It was an impressive spectacle, Ballardieu having the appetite of an ogre even under normal circumstances. They finally resorted to driving away the servant girl who was bringing up more and more victuals. Softened by a smile from Laincourt, one look from Saint-Lucq put an end to her visits, and they closed the door to the room much to the regret of the curious onlookers who had crowded behind the innkeeper in the stairwell.
So: Agnès and Ballardieu had left for the abbey at Mont-Saint-Michel, acting upon a letter received from Mère de Cernay, the former Mother Superior General of the Sisters of Saint Georges. The young baronne de Vaudreuil was hoping to uncover information about a secret expedition to Alsace; the expedition that had included François Reynault d’Ombreuse, a lieutenant in the Black Guards and the missing son of the marquis d’Aubremont.
‘Reynault stopped sending his father news when he embarked on this mysterious journey,’ Ballardieu declared between mouthfuls.
‘And this worried his father greatly,’ said La Fargue. ‘Especially when the Chatelaines refused to give him any explanation. Do you know who Agnès was going to meet at Mont-Saint-Michel?
‘A Chatelaine she knew from her novitiate.’
‘Her name?’
The old soldier thought for a moment, but then admitted:
‘No, I’ve forgotten it.’
‘Never mind. Continue.’
They had used the cover of night to carry out their operation. While Agnès secretly entered the abbey with help from an accomplice, Ballardieu had remained at the foot of the mount, in the bay, guarding their horses. But he had grown worried and finally climbed the same stairs the young woman had taken and had entered the abbey in turn.
‘That was when the alarm was sounded.’
‘Through your fault?’ asked Marciac.
‘No! But I quickly realised that the girl was in trouble.’
Ballardieu did not recount how he had deliberately diverted Agnès’ pursuers towards himself, but rather jumped forward to the moment when he took a musket ball to the shoulder and had fallen into the void.
‘I hope that Agnès did not witness it,’ he said in a desolate tone. ‘Or she will believe me dead, poor thing.’