by Pierre Pevel
Athos was right, for the most part. But Leprat was also aware that the other musketeers looked at him differently as news of his illness spread. The ranse was eating away at both his flesh and his soul. In the long run, decades in some cases, its victims were slowly and irremediably transformed into grotesque, pathetic creatures, whose deformed bodies and tortured minds clung hopelessly to the last shreds of their humanity. But one of the disease’s first symptoms was that at least some of the afflicted’s acquaintances began to treat them like monsters as soon as they learned of the illness, long before that final stage was reached, and saw nothing but the inevitable and abject fall from grace. From that point on, sufferers ceased to be themselves and became merely diseased.
Became ranse-ed …
Antoine Leprat, the chevalier d’Orgueil, had known he had the ranse for several years now yet he had never thought of himself in those terms, as being diseased, not as long as he had kept it a secret. Now the looks he received every day reminded him of his condition and reduced him to being just that: diseased. And it wasn’t just looks; there were the conversations that stopped dead when he approached, embarrassed faces, the slight gestures of recoil, and all the other more-or-less disguised, and more-or-less involuntary, signals of discomfort that were made in his presence.
His thoughts slightly befuddled, Leprat saw that his jug of eau-de vie was empty.
Already?
He was thinking of calling for another when the door opened. It was not Athos, but two other musketeers Leprat recognised, although neither was wearing their cape: Broussière and Sardent. The two men noticed him in turn and Broussière seemed to want to go elsewhere, but his companion obviously disagreed.
They sat down at a table.
Of the pair, Leprat was better acquainted with Broussière, Sardent having joined the King’s Musketeers recently. He had never had any cause for complaint regarding the first man, but the second was one of those who were treating him badly, and doing so with increasingly boldness. Until now, following Athos’ advice, Leprat had not responded to any of his cutting remarks and crude allusions. But it was becoming difficult for him not to hear them and understand the hurt they intended. Why had Sardent been behaving this way? Perhaps his spiteful hatred towards the diseased was born of fear, as was frequently the case. Perhaps he hoped, by denigrating a famous musketeer, to demonstrate that he was a better recruit to the King’s guard. He was the younger son of a great lord with aspirations of adding glory to his name.
Leprat did not care to know the reasons behind the other man’s animosity. But today, helped by his over-indulgence of alcohol, he was in no mood to tolerate it any longer. He knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that things would turn out badly if he stayed.
And yet he did.
The two musketeers had ordered drinks. As soon as they were served, Sardent called the girl back and asked in a loud voice:
‘Is the crockery washed thoroughly, here?’
He pretended not to see Leprat giving him a black look. But Broussière noticed and seemed worried.
‘Of course, monsieur. I assure you.’
The wench had started moving away to attend to other customers when Sardent asked:
‘Is that truly the case?’
She turned round, looking uncertain.
‘I … I can assure you that it is, monsieur.’
‘That’s enough, said Leprat in a cold tone of voice.
‘Now, Sardent,’ Broussière said in an appeasing tone, ‘there’s no need—’
‘Because, you see,’ his companion continued, undeterred, ‘there are some people whose glasses you really wouldn’t want to drink from …’
‘I beg your pardon, monsieur?’
Leprat, livid, was on the verge of rising from his seat and only just managed to contain his anger. With a wave of his hand, Broussière dismissed the girl, who left with a shrug of her shoulders. Sardent seemed to have let the matter drop … when he pointed to the brim of his glass and asked:
‘Is that not a trace of the ranse I see there?’
The mere mention of the disease provoked shudders of disgust among the other customers, some of whom instinctively leaned back away from their tables. Leprat stood up suddenly, and Broussière did the same as he saw the former Blade approaching with a furious step. Sardent detected the murderous gleam in the chevalier d’Orgueil’s eye too late and Broussière moved to put himself between them, placing a hand on Leprat’s chest.
‘Leprat, please—’
But Broussière didn’t complete his sentence. A sharp blow from Leprat’s forehead broke his nose and made him tumble over backwards. Leprat continued to advance on Sardent. He had already unsheathed his famous white rapier. His gaze was that of a man who had decided to pin his adversary to the wall, rather than cross swords with him according to the rules.
‘MESSIEURS!’
Leprat wasn’t listening.
Sardent was scrambling to his feet and trying to draw his sword at the same time. But all he managed was to trip over his own scabbard and he lost his balance, falling among the suddenly deserted chairs behind him with a heavy crash. With the point of his ivory blade, Leprat pricked the other man’s throat and forced him to stay on the floor.
Still simmering with a barely mastered rage, Leprat felt a hand calmly but firmly close about his wrist. It was Athos, who had just arrived and whose imperious call, ‘Messieurs’, had gone unheard.
‘Get a hold on yourself, Leprat,’ the gentleman said quietly.
With the air of a man waking from a bad dream, Leprat took two steps back and lowered his sword. Sardent stood up, while Broussière, his nose bleeding, struggled to rise. Athos’ eyes ordered the pair to go, and they hastened to obey.
‘This matter won’t end here, will it?’ asked Leprat.
‘No, my friend, I’m afraid it will not.’
Sent out to gather news in the Temple neighbourhood, Marciac returned to the Hôtel de l’Épervier in the early afternoon. He found La Fargue and the others out in the garden, beneath the chestnut tree, sitting around the old table where they had just finished lunch. The Gascon’s first act was to empty a glass of white wine. Then, drinking again and filching titbits from the dishes before Naïs cleared them away he recounted, between mouthfuls, how the Sisters of Saint Georges had managed to explain the previous night’s commotion.
‘The tocsin woke everyone in the vicinity. Not to mention the shots fired at Laincourt and the patrols sent out into the streets looking for us …’
He broke off his report to save two slices of tarte aux prunes from being returned to the kitchen, by swiftly placing them safely out of reach from Naïs, and her unassuming but formidable domestic efficiency.
‘Go to the cellar and fill these wine jugs instead,’ Agnès suggested to her gently.
‘Yes,’ said the Gascon. ‘Go and do that instead.’
‘Well?’ Laincourt insisted. ‘What was their explanation?’
‘Dracs. Apparently some dracs tried to invade the Enclos last night. And the Black Guards, as one might expect, displayed their unceasing vigilance, bravely drove the intruders out, and then carried out a sweep of the nearby streets to make sure the danger had been entirely eliminated.’
‘And why would these dracs have been trying to enter the Enclos in the middle of the night?’
Marciac shrugged.
‘That remains a mystery. However, the Chatelaines are exhibiting four scaly corpses as evidence, one of them a colossus with two heads which is causing quite a sensation. People are packed shoulder-to-shoulder all the way to rue du Temple for the chance to see it.’
‘I’d like to go and see it myself,’ Ballardieu said in Agnès’ ear.
The baronne preferred not to reply.
‘I can understand the two-headed drac,’ observed Saint-Lucq, ‘But where did the other three come from?’
‘I don’t know,’ Marciac confessed.
Nor did the problem seem to interest him much.
‘Perhaps the Chatelaines were holding them in some dungeon or other,’ suggested Laincourt. ‘And did away with the poor creatures to support their story.’
‘Then again, there are plenty of dracs to be found in Les Écailles,’ said the baronne de Vaudreuil.
Les Écailles, or ‘The Scales’, was the drac neighbourhood built on Ile Notre-Dame, which would later be re-named Ile Saint-Louis.
‘The important thing to note here is that the Chatelaines are lying,’ decreed La Fargue, as Naïs returned from the cellar with full wine jugs.
Having finished the prune tart, Marciac held out his plate to the young servant girl with a smile and a faint bow of the head. Shy Naïs took it and fled. Agnès, amused, gave the Gascon a swift elbow in the ribs as punishment for teasing the girl.
‘If they’re lying,’ continued the Blades’ captain, ‘it’s because they want the whole affair to end here and the truth never to come out. So we won’t have to answer any accusations, as I thought. Mère de Vaussambre has too much to lose in a scandal …’
‘But we still don’t know why she was keeping you a prisoner,’ said Saint-Lucq, turning to Agnès.
The previous night, after they were reunited, Agnès had told the Blades everything from the moment she set foot inside the abbey at Mont-Saint-Michel to her capture on the wyverns’ flight platform. She had been there on a mission to find the son of the marquis d’Aubremont, François Reynault d’Ombreuse. A lieutenant serving in the Black Guards, he had disappeared after taking part in a clandestine expedition to Alsace. What had become of him? Was he alive or dead? Wounded? Ill? And if he was well, why did he send no word?
This was what the baronne de Vaudreuil had hoped to learn thanks to Sœur Béatrice d’Aussaint, the White Wolf who had led the expedition to Alsace, and who had been held in secret at the Chatelaines’ abbey fortress on the mount.
Nothing, however, had prepared Agnès for what she actually discovered.
Still suffering from her ordeal, Sœur Béatrice had not told her how, with the support of a detachment of Black Guards under the command of François d’Ombreuse, she had tracked and almost vanquished a dragon belonging to the Arcana lodge. But she had warned Agnès of an incredible danger, when she shared a nightmarish vision of a great black dragon burning Paris to the ground. The White Wolves of the Saint Georges Order often had the gift of prescience, and the young baronne de Vaudreuil had not doubted the coming disaster was true, or that there was an urgent need to take action. Unfortunately, no further light was shed on the danger by the sister’s confused ramblings afterwards, her strength exhausted. Thus there were still too many unanswered questions: Who was this dragon? Where did it come from? Why was it going to attack Paris?
And above all: when?
Her gaze becoming pained and thoughtful, Agnès returned to the crux of the matter, the vision she had seen on that fateful night:
‘I saw a black dragon attacking Paris and reducing the Louvre to ashes,’ she said. ‘That’s why the Chatelaines were holding me. They don’t want me to divulge this secret, one that for her part Sœur Béatrice wanted me to learn at all costs.’
‘But they couldn’t have held you forever!’ Marciac objected.
‘They could have detained Agnès long enough,’ Saint-Lucq declared coldly. ‘Until the secret no longer had any importance. Or until Agnès agreed to hold her tongue about it.’
‘Mère de Vaussambre has not yet given up on the idea of my taking the veil,’ stressed the baronne de Vaudreuil.
‘She’s convinced that your destiny lies with the Sisters of Saint Georges,’ said La Fargue.
‘My destiny lies wherever I want it to.’
‘There is one thing I don’t understand,’ confessed Laincourt, who was following his own train of thought. ‘If your vision is prophetic—’
‘It is,’ affirmed Agnès. ‘If nothing is done, then what I saw that night will come to pass.’
‘In that case, why are the Chatelaines remaining silent? Why are they keeping this terrible prophecy a secret? Are they hiding something else, something even worse than the danger threatening Paris?’
‘That’s what we need to find out,’ La Fargue declared.
A surprised silence followed this statement.
‘Us?’ Marciac finally asked. ‘Why us?’
‘Because someone needs to and no one else will. And because I have decided that we should.’
The Gascon felt that this last reason trumped all the others.
‘So be it,’ he replied.
‘I have no scruples about going through the Chatelaines’ dirty linen,’ said Saint-Lucq. ‘But the cardinal may see things in an entirely different light, under the circumstances …’
‘The Chatelaines are powerful,’ added Laincourt. ‘Right now, they are in favour with the king, the Parlement, and the people, while the cardinal is more criticised than ever. Like Saint-Lucq, I doubt His Eminence will approve of our initiative.’
‘That’s true,’ acknowledged the Blades’ captain. ‘That’s why we won’t tell him about it.’
Among his other names, both true and false, he was called the Gentleman after one of the twenty-two figures forming the Major Arcana of the Shadows Tarot. It was a tradition of the lodge to which he was proud to belong, a lodge so secret it was wreathed in a legendary aura even within the Black Claw. Like an unmentionable curse, the Arcana lodge inspired awe in those who believed in its existence and, in the remainder, an uneasy, superstitious respect. Even the powerful masters of the Grand Lodge in Madrid hesitated to call it to account for its plans, when it knew of them. As for its members, they obeyed no one but their leader: the Heresiarch.
Seated in a walnut armchair covered in Genoa velvet, The Gentleman was meditating in front of a mirror that stood on a table placed against a wall, between two large silver candelabra. His wrist lay limply on an armrest, his fingers grasping the rim of a glass filled with a golden liqueur which he swirled slowly, wrapped up in his thoughts. His blond hair was still damp from his evening bath, and he wore nothing but a pair of breeches and a shirt made of fine cloth that he had quickly pulled on over his wet skin. Tall and slim, he looked thirty years old. His features were delicate, almost feminine, and imbued with a strange, perverse charm. He was handsome, but there was something disturbing about the thrill he provoked in others.
The last rays of a flamboyant sunset still filtered through the curtains. They made the dust particles shine in the quiet dimness of his reading study, and gave an amber and purple sheen to the varnished furnishings, the lustrous woodwork, the rich tapestries, and the expensive book bindings. Stirring gently, the liquid gold in the Gentleman’s glass gave off reddish shimmering glints, along with a heady fragrance.
The Enchantress came into the room.
Seeing her willowy figure approach in the mirror, the Gentleman smiled without turning round and caught her eye. She was almost naked, only wearing a pair of white stockings secured by crimson velvet ribbons. Her self-assurance and shamelessness were enough to clothe her. She was also smiling as she came towards him, slowly, splendid and sensual; the heavy curls of her mahogany-coloured hair falling to the dark areolas of her breasts. She slept or lazed about most of the day, and would only come out at night to partake in the cruel debaucheries that were her principal source of entertainment. She was of the Arcana lodge, like the Gentleman, and like him she belonged to the younger generation of dragons – the ‘lastborn’ – for whom the outward appearance of humanity had become more natural than the draconic form.
The Enchantress leaned over the back of the armchair to kiss the Gentleman on the cheek, then came round the chair to face him, gripped the table behind her with both hands, and hopped up to sit nimbly on its edge in front of the mirror framed by the twin candelabra. A mischievous gleam in her eyes, she wormed one silk-sheathed foot between the Gentleman’s knees and let it slither upwards to his groin.
He allowed her to do so without protest.
‘So, what news?’ she asked playfully as she started to caress him.
‘I spoke with the Heresiarch last night. The Grand Lodge is growing impatient. It is anxious to see results.’
‘And when was it ever otherwise?’
‘Indeed. But the stakes are greater now. Our allies have become scarce, and silent. Our enemies, on the other hand, grow in numbers and speak ever more loudly. They are scoring easy points by saying that our endeavours are too costly and don’t lead to anything.’
‘And what do they know of our endeavours?’ the Enchantress scoffed.
‘Nothing. Precisely.’
‘They’re imbeciles. They will soon be jostling one another for the crumbs of our glory.’
‘Right now, they are a nuisance which might hinder us. Who knows where their boldness may lead them?’
The Enchantress did not answer, but she did remove her foot. She stretched her hand out for the Gentleman’s glass, took a deep swallow of the delicious liqueur and said:
‘Don’t drink too much of this nectar. You know the harm it can do.’
It was golden henbane liqueur, a popular drug amongst the idle rich. For dragons, it was the drink of choice. They relished it and sometimes indulged to the point of excess, especially the last-born. In their case, golden henbane woke long-buried instincts. It helped them reclaim their fundamental essence and, under its influence, those who struggled to assume even intermediate draconic forms were able to achieve complete metamorphoses. But there was a heavy price to pay for it. With habituation, heavier and more frequent doses became necessary, doses which could weaken, and even poison them. Numerous last-born had destroyed themselves in this manner.
Setting the glass down, the Enchantress slipped down from the table and, looking deep into his eyes, joined him on the armchair, straddling his thighs so that she knelt over him.
‘But it’s not those old lizards of the Black Claw who worry you, is it?’ she asked him.