by Pierre Pevel
‘But there was never any question of such a thing between madame de Chevreuse and me!’
‘Precisely. That’s how she will realise the particular worth of this book.’
‘Will she accept it?’
‘Without question. But if she does not, pretend that you wanted to offer it to her as a token of your admiration, but did not know how to phrase your compliment … But I assure you, madame de Chevreuse will take the book.’
‘And after that?’
‘After that, act just as you normally would. Go about your ordinary business and come home when you are finished. Neither sooner nor later than usual.’
‘I don’t wait for a reply?’
‘Don’t wait for anything. Don’t change any of your habits. It’s possible they are watching you.’
‘“They”?’ asked the bookseller in a worried tone.
‘The cardinal’s men.’
This reply disturbed Bertaud.
‘But I thought you …’
‘The matter is complicated,’ Laincourt said evasively. ‘Would you prefer to renounce this? I would understand if you did.’
‘No! … So I just come home as if nothing were out of the ordinary?’
‘Yes. If she wishes to, the duchesse will have transmitted her reply to you before then. It will either be “Yes” or “No”.’
‘And where will you and I meet?’
‘Nowhere. If madame de Chevreuse replies yes, ask Clotilde to wash the shop windows this evening. If no, make sure she does nothing of the sort … Have you understood?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Perfect.’
After leaving Bertaud’s shop, Laincourt met the hurdy-gurdy player who was waiting for him and proceeded to walk along beside him.
Everything will go well, boy. The duchesse de Chevreuse will find the note you slipped inside the cover of the book and she will be at the rendezvous this evening.
That’s not what worries me.
You’re thinking of Bertaud.
I’ve compromised him. If they discover he—
There is still time for you to go back, recover the book from Bertaud and ask him to forget this whole affair. Will you do that?
No.
Well then, silence your remorse.
At the Hôtel des Arcanes, the Enchantress joined the Gentleman in the study where he kept – behind glass, set in racks, or placed on display stands – his collection of rapiers. He possessed several dozen, all of them forged by the best craftsmen of Europe. Each was worth a fortune, but that was not the main thing. Although he did not refuse to wear them, or to wield them, the Gentleman simply enjoyed the company of these lethal masterpieces. When he was preoccupied with something he spent hours, sometimes whole nights, admiring them and maintaining them in perfect condition. He would recall the memories attached to them, cherishing in particular those blades that had already taken a life, and promising the others they would shed blood soon enough.
‘It seems the Heresiarch is suspicious of you,’ said the Enchantress.
‘Yes.’
‘That’s new.’
‘I think the Heresiarch is suspicious of everyone right now,’ the Gentleman declared calmly as he rubbed the blue steel of a sharp blade with an oiled cloth. ‘His Grand Design has never been so close to being accomplished.’
‘Or to failure.’
‘Or, indeed, to failure.’
The Enchantress slowly walked around the study, pausing before one blade, running her fingertips down another. Wearing a crimson robe, she was beautiful and bewitching, her mahogany hair caressing her pale shoulders.
‘The Illuminator gave me a letter from the Heresiarch.’
‘A letter from the Heresiarch? Addressed to you?’
‘To me rather than to you, that’s right. Which is also something new, isn’t it?’
The Gentleman rose to put away the rapier whose blade he had just been cleaning. He placed it within a long chest which he closed. For a moment he remained still, reflecting, before turning back to the Enchantress.
‘And what was the subject of this letter?’
The Enchantress fixed her eyes resolutely on those of her lover.
‘The Heresiarch thinks that the Arcana need new blood. He asked me to admit an initiate. In my own name.’
‘An initiate. As if this were the time for initiations! And who does he want you to initiate?’
‘The vicomtesse de Malicorne.’
For an instant, the Gentleman thought he had misheard.
‘The vicomtesse … de Malicorne? Are you jesting?’
The vicomtesse de Malicorne was also a dragon. And although she did not belong to the Arcana, she had been one of the Black Claw’s best agents in Paris. Daring and ambitious, she had come very close to establishing a Black Claw lodge in France, something the Sisters of Saint Georges had always managed to prevent. But it was not the Chatelaines who had thwarted her, it was the Cardinal’s Blades. She had failed and had emerged broken from the ordeal. Struck by the aftereffects of a powerful ritual that had been brutally interrupted, she was no longer even capable of assuming the appearance that she had long made her own, that of an adorable young blonde woman.
‘But she is nothing!’ protested the Gentleman. ‘I know the Alchemist met with her recently. She was downcast, reduced to the state of an old woman deluding herself with dreams of one day recovering her power … The Alchemist said she was finished.’
‘He was mistaken. The vicomtesse de Malicorne can recover her strength and vitality. She can do so thanks to me, and that is what the Heresiarch wishes.’
The Gentleman gave the Enchantress a long look.
‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘I know you can manage it … But even so? Why does the Heresiarch want us to initiate Malicorne now? I’m starting to think he’s losing his mind …’
Drawing closer, the Enchantress displayed a superior smile, the smile of someone about to deliver a major revelation.
‘Do you know why the Alchemist went to see La Malicorne after her failure?’
‘To put his mind at rest, I suppose. To make sure she—’
‘No,’ the Enchantress interrupted. ‘He went to her at the Heresiarch’s behest. He was worried about her …’
‘What?’
‘La Malicorne came very close to establishing the first ever lodge of the Black Claw in France. You can imagine what sort of feat that would have been, can’t you? But do you believe she came so close on her own? And why was the Black Claw willing to entrust her with the Sphère d’me that was so essential to her plan? La Malicorne was capable and trustworthy, true enough. But to go from that to having the old masters agree to entrust her with one of their precious Sphères d’me?’
‘No doubt in their eyes, the game was worth the candle,’ the Gentleman suggested.
‘And now La Malicorne has failed, now she has lost everything, now she has lost her allies but still knows numerous secrets, how is it that the Black Claw has not had her assassinated?’
‘Do you mean to say …?’
‘Yes. She is under the Heresiarch’s protection. But he is doing things as he always does, and as he has always fostered her projects in the past: in secret.’
‘But why?’
‘You make me laugh!’
‘The Heresiarch and La Mal—?’ He cut himself short, shaking his head. ‘No. That isn’t like him. The Heresiarch has never been one to give way to passion.’
‘The Inferiors say that the flesh is weak. That applies to us, too … Happily so. How boring things would be if we were the same cold creatures as our ancestors!’
The Enchantress gave a burst of merry laughter.
After which, regaining a straight face, she said, almost tenderly:
‘But rest assured. The Heresiarch did not forget strategy when he took La Malicorne under his wing … Answer me this: would the old masters of the Black Claw have ever permitted one of us, one of the Arcana, to attempt to found a lodge
in France?’
‘Certainly not! If one of us had succeeded, we would have won far too much prestige and influence.’
‘And if it had been one of the Heresiarch’s protégés?’
‘No. For the same reasons; they would have been destined to become one of us.’
‘But by secretly favouring La Malicorne, the Heresiarch was disguising his progress. If she had succeeded, no one could have prevented her from joining the Arcana, and certainly not the old lizards in Madrid. It would have been a fait accompli. They’d be furious, certainly. But powerless to stop it.’
The Gentleman nodded slowly, looking thoughtful, an admiring smile on his lips.
‘Clever. Very clever, even … Which is much more like our old serpent of a Heresiarch.’
‘And his plan offered the final advantage of not compromising the Arcana if La Malicorne failed. Which is indeed what happened …’
‘So you believe that by resuscitating La Malicorne and admitting her to the Arcana …’
‘… we will accomplish what the Heresiarch wants to do, but which he cannot. If he openly comes to the vicomtesse’s rescue, the Black Claw will learn of it and realise what he has been doing all along.’
‘Do you really believe the Heresiarch still feels something for La Malicorne?’
‘If you ask, then you’ve forgotten that he continues to protect her. He must, since she is alive. Besides, can we afford to displease the Heresiarch in this matter? He wants his sweetheart? Well then, let’s offer her to him.’
The Gentleman silently reflected on this.
The Enchantress, however, knew she had already won the argument. Pressing herself to him, she presented him with a little note folded in quarters and, in his ear, she said:
‘She goes by the name madame de Chantegrelle and she is pining away in a convent in the faubourg Saint-Jacques, whose address is written here. I know you can find the words to convince her …’
Night was falling when Marciac returned to the Hôtel de l’Épervier with the news they had all been waiting for.
‘The bookseller’s daughter washed the shop windows,’ he announced to the Blades gathered in the fencing room.
‘So the duchesse de Chevreuse has agreed to my rendezvous,’ said Laincourt.
‘I don’t understand it,’ confessed Agnès pouring a glass of wine for the Gascon. ‘Or not entirely … If I were her, and had almost handed the queen to the Black Claw, I would be relieved to be merely banished from the royal court. I certainly wouldn’t risk giving the king the slightest motive to regret his clemency.’
‘That’s because you’re not the duchesse de Chevreuse … She has the taste, a true passion, for intrigue. Not to mention that boredom is probably gnawing away at her.’
‘But now she knows who you really are! She knows you serve the cardinal …’
‘Precisely,’ said La Fargue. He was straddling a chair, his forearms resting flat across its back. ‘That detail must have particularly piqued the duchesse’s curiosity. Because she must guess that it is not by the cardinal’s order that Laincourt wants to see her. If his approach was of an ordinary nature, why surround it with such secrecy? Why try to elude the spies swarming about the Hôtel de Chevreuse? Isn’t he supposed to be serving the same master as they are?’
‘So the duchesse has already realised that we are acting without the cardinal’s knowledge,’ said Marciac.
‘Yes.’
‘That’s hardly very reassuring.’
‘More than that, it’s dangerous,’ declared Saint-Lucq.
As was his custom, he remained slightly apart from the rest of the group, sitting in profile in the recess of one of the windows looking out at the unkempt garden with its old table and chestnut tree.
‘Dangerous?’ enquired Ballardieu.
‘Saint-Lucq is wary of a trap,’ Agnès explained to him. ‘Am I right?’
The half-blood, who had been carefully cleaning his spectacles, nodded.
‘La Chevreuse might want to offer the king a token of her loyalty by betraying you, Laincourt. She might pretend to agree to meet you in order to give you up to His Majesty’s officers.’
Because he was a former spy and had some experience in such matters, Laincourt was forced to admit that this hypothesis was plausible.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s possible.’
‘Betraying you is even doubly in the duchesse’s interest,’ La Fargue added. ‘For the reason that Saint-Lucq has just given us, first of all. But, secondly, because the rendezvous you have proposed could easily be a ruse of Richelieu’s to test her loyalty. She is too sharp-witted not to have thought of it. And so the duchesse has every reason to ensure your ruin …’
‘I am betting that madame de Chevreuse will not resist the temptation of hearing me out,’ said Laincourt. ‘Furthermore, I think she even feels a certain degree of affection for me.’
‘It’s too risky,’ decreed Saint-Lucq. ‘I’ll go with you.’
‘No. It will depend entirely on madame de Chevreuse’s goodwill whether she answers my questions or not. We need her, whereas she has nothing to gain from helping us. I doubt that she will be well disposed towards us if she senses that we are wary of her …’
‘That is a valid point,’ admitted La Fargue gravely.
‘You are taking the risk of placing yourself, alone, in the wolf’s jaws, Arnaud,’ said Agnès, trying to make him see sense.
‘I know. But it is a risk that I must take if we are to have any chance of succeeding. Don’t forget that it is not just a question of me, or of us. The only trail likely to lead us to the dragon that attacked Le Châtelet passes through the Hôtel de Chevreuse.’
‘Nevertheless, be very careful, Laincourt,’ La Fargue instructed him. ‘You will need to elude the Cardinal’s Guards, and you more than any of us know their worth.’
The tavern was located in the depths of Les Écailles, on the Ile Notre-Dame. Daylight never penetrated here and the air was stagnant and moist beneath the low beams of a ceiling blackened by the smoke from the oil lamps. The dracs who gathered in this place were of the very worst sort. Thieves, mercenaries and assassins came here to amuse themselves, drink and to seek work or opportunities for plunder.
The Illuminator abruptly released his aura as he pushed through the door.
A silence immediately fell in the large hall, which, at this hour of the evening, was packed. All eyes turned toward the dragon. Some were fearful; most were wary and hostile; a few were violently hateful. Then interest in him subsided and conversations resumed as the Illuminator, his heavy schiavone at his side, diminished his aura and advanced with a tranquil step.
He approached a red drac who was dining alone, eating a thick fish soup. Tall and thin, the drac was dressed as a hired swordsman, wearing an old leather doublet over a filthy shirt whose collar gaped wide open, revealing his scaly chest. Behind him, a muscular black drac stood motionless with his arms crossed.
The red drac did not look up from his bowl as the Illuminator halted before him and threw a heavy purse on the table.
‘Departure in one hour,’ announced the dragon.
The drac nodded, without even pausing over his meal.
Laincourt left the Hôtel de l’Épervier on his own.
A short time later, Captain La Fargue came out in turn, but took a different route into Paris, as a magnificent summer sunset stretched across the darkening sky, the last layers of purple, red, and orange light swathing the horizon and making the scattered clouds glow.
3
After a light supper, the duchesse de Chevreuse announced that she wished to enjoy the tranquillity and cooler air of the evening, at her ease. She thus refused to be accompanied during her stroll and walked off across the large terrace on her own. Despite the tall torches that burned here and there, darkness reigned in the immense garden that, at the rear of the Hôtel de Chevreuse, stretched as far as the rue Saint-Nicaise, between the Hôtel de Rambouillet on the right and the more modest dw
ellings on the left. The silence was soothing in this elegant island of nature. And the air was sweet, the Parisian stink relieved by a welcome breeze.
As if weary, the duchesse sat down on a bench sheltered by the branches of a handsome elm tree, near a torch stuck in the ground. With a wave of her hand she drove off an imaginary insect, which allowed her to cast a glance over her shoulder. No one had followed her and no one seemed to be watching her from the terrace. Then she opened the volume of poetry that she had been given that afternoon by Bertaud and pretended to read.
Ten minutes later, as the bell of the Saint-Thomas church was striking the half-hour, madame de Chevreuse closed her book and took on the pensive look of someone thinking about what they had just read. While doing so, she counted to five in her head, beating the time with her index finger against the cover of the book.
After which, she pretended to resume reading.
It was the signal that all was well. Almost immediately, Laincourt emerged from the shadows. But he stayed well back, visible only to the duchesse.
‘Good evening, madame.’
‘Good evening, monsieur de Laincourt,’ replied madame de Chevreuse, without raising her eyes from her book.
He could observe her at leisure and was once again surprised by her beauty. The duchesse de Chevreuse was reputed to be one of the most beautiful women in Europe and Laincourt did not doubt the truth of this, as he admired, in the warm, lively torchlight, the perfection of her profile, her milky complexion, the shine of her tawny hair, and the roundness of her throat.
Laincourt collected his wits, convinced that the duchesse was well aware of the effect she was having on him.
‘I want to thank you for agreeing to this rendezvous, madame.’
‘To be frank, I almost doubted that you would come. You must know the risks you are courting here.’
‘Have you thought about laying a trap for me?’
She turned a page.
‘I thought about it, yes. However, playing the role of an auxiliary of the cardinal’s police would be more than I could bear. You guessed as much, didn’t you?’