by Pierre Pevel
He held a wine bottle in one hand and, in the other, something which looked like a wooden skittle.
“Finally?” Agnès was astonished.
“Of course! We’ve been waiting for you!”
“‘We’? Who is this ‘we’?”
“These messieurs and myself.”
Tearing her incredulous gaze away from the old soldier with great difficulty, Agnès observed the men. They were all a sorry sight to see, having received a severe chastising.
Two very richly dressed men—merchants no doubt—were piled up one on top of the other, either unconscious or pretending to be. Another—most likely a pedlar—had scarcely fared better: he was sitting with his arms and chest pinned inside a large wicker basket through the bottom of which his head had burst, the latter now swaying woozily on his neck. Finally, a fourth member of the party was huddled up at Ballardieu’s feet, and his cringing manner indicated that he feared another thump. This one the baronne knew by sight at least: he was a veteran who had lost a leg in the Wars of Religion, and henceforth, hobbling around, dedicated his days to a tour of the local inns.
“You’ve left them in a pretty state,” commented Agnès.
She noticed that the veteran was missing his wooden peg leg, and suddenly realised it was the skittle-shaped object with which Ballardieu was playing.
“They deserved it.”
“Let us hope so. Why have you been waiting for me?”
“I wanted this man, right here, to offer you his apologies.”
Agnès looked at the unfortunate one-legged man who, trembling, was protecting his head with his forearms.
“Apologies? For what?”
Ballardieu suddenly found himself extremely embarrassed. How could he explain, without repeating the vulgar and abusive comments that had been made about her?
“Uhh …”
“I’m waiting.”
“The important thing,” continued the old soldier waving the wooden peg leg like a sceptre. “The important thing is that this lout offers his apologies. So, lout, speak up! The lady is waiting!”
“Madame,” groaned the other, still seeking about for his prosthesis, “I beg you to accept my most sincere and respectful apologies. I have ignored all my obligations, which not even my poor nature, my neglected education, and my deplorable habits can justify. I promise to mind my conduct and manners in future and, conscious of my faults, I deliver myself to your goodwill. I add that I am ugly, have a mouth like an arse, and that it is difficult to believe, having seen me, that the Almighty made Adam in his own image.”
The man had recited this act of contrition in a single breath, like a practised speech, and Ballardieu had followed the tirade with regular shakes of his head and the synchronous movements of his lips.
The result appeared to satisfy him.
“Very good, lout. Here, take back your leg.”
“Thank you, monsieur.”
“But you forgot to mention your ugly mug, which is—”
“—so foul it turns milk into piss. I’m sorry, monsieur. Should I start again?”
“I don’t know. Your repentance seems sincere to me, but …”
Ballardieu questioned Agnès with a look.
She simply stared at him, dumbstruck.
“No,” he said again. “Madame la baronne is right: that will suffice. The punishment must be just and not cruel if it is meant to be a lesson.”
“Thank you, monsieur.”
Ballardieu rose, stretched, emptied his flagon of wine in two swallows, and threw it over his shoulder. At the end of a beautiful arc through the air, the aforementioned flagon bounced off the pedlar’s head, who was still sitting imprisoned in his wicker pannier.
“Good!” cried Ballardieu joyfully, rubbing his hands together. “Shall we go?”
Behind him, the stunned pedlar tipped over onto his side like an overturned basket.
22
Alerted by her son, the woman appeared on the threshold of the thatched cottage to see the rider who had just arrived. With a word, she ordered her son to go and bring her something from inside. He was quick to obey, returning with a wheel-lock pistol which he handed to his mother.
“Go and hide, Tonin.”
“But mother—”
“Go and hide under the bed and don’t come out unless I call you.”
The afternoon was drawing to a close, with a faint warm breeze in the air. There were no other dwellings anywhere around the cottage for as far as the eye could see. The nearest village was a good mile away, and the road leading there passed by some distance away. Even pedlars and sellers of almanacs only rarely stopped off to visit them. In this lonely corner of the French countryside, the inhabitants were by and large abandoned to their own devices.
Remaining at the door alone, the woman checked that the pistol was loaded and that the gunpowder in the chamber was dry. Then she let the weapon hang at the end of her arm, slightly behind her body, out of the rider’s sight as he entered the yard where a few hens pecked at the brown sun-beaten ground.
She barely nodded when Antoine Leprat greeted her from his mount.
“I should like to water my horse. And I would be glad to pay you for a glass of wine.”
She studied him for a long while without saying a word.
Badly shaven, grimy, and bedraggled, he seemed exhausted and hardly inspired either confidence or fear. He was armed: pistols were tucked in the holsters on his saddle and a curious white rapier hung at his side—his right side, as though he were left-handed. His night-blue doublet was open over a sweat-stained shirt and its sleeve, up by the shoulder, had a nasty gash through which a recent bandage could be glimpsed. Fresh blood had trickled over his hand, a sure sign that his wound had reopened.
“Where are you going?” asked the woman.
“To Paris.”
“By these roads, you won’t reach Paris before nightfall.”
“I know.”
She continued to study him.
“You’re wounded.”
“Yes.”
After his battle with Malencontre and his hired killers, Leprat had not immediately realised that he was bleeding. In the heat of the action, he had not noticed which of his adversaries had cut his arm. Nor had he felt any pain at the time. In fact, the wound had only begun to trouble him when he saw the threads of blood running from his sleeve and making his right hand sticky. It wasn’t particularly dangerous, but the gash deserved medical attention. Leprat had simply applied a makeshift bandage and immediately returned to the road.
“An unlucky encounter,” he explained.
“With brigands?”
“No. Assassins.”
The woman didn’t blink.
“Are you being followed?”
“I was being followed. I don’t know if I still am.”
Since leaving the staging post Leprat had followed the minor roads which, although not the shortest route, reduced the risk of being ambushed. He travelled alone and his wound made him easy prey for ordinary brigands. But also he feared there was another ambush laid for him along the Paris road, set by those who had put the mercenaries on his trail.
“I will see to your wound,” said the woman, no longer making any effort to conceal the pistol she held. “But I don’t want you to stay.”
“I ask only for a bucket of water for my horse and a glass of wine for myself.”
“I will see to your wound,” she repeated. “I will look after you, and then you will leave. Come in.”
He followed her into the house, whose interior consisted of one large, dark, and low-ceilinged room, poor but clean, with a few pieces of furniture on the hard-earth floor.
“You can come out now, Tonin,” the woman called.
While her son climbed out from beneath the bed and offered a timid smile to the stranger, she prepared a basin of water and clean linen cloth, all the while keeping the pistol close at hand.
Leprat waited until she pointed him to a bench before si
tting down.
“My name is Leprat,” he said.
“Geneviève Rolain.”
“And I’m Tonin!”
“Hello, Tonin,” said Leprat with a smile.
“Are you a gentleman?” asked the boy.
“I am.”
“And a soldier?”
“Yes.”
“My father was a soldier, too. Of the Picardy regiment.”
“A very old and very prestigious regiment.”
“And you, monsieur? In which regiment do you serve?”
Predicting the reaction he would provoke, Leprat announced: “I serve in a company of His Majesty’s mounted musketeers.”
“With the King’s Musketeers?” Tonin marvelled. “Really? Did you hear, mother? A musketeer!”
“Yes, Tonin. You’re shouting quite loudly enough for me to hear you—”
“Do you know the king, monsieur? Have you ever spoken to him?”
“A few times.”
“Go and water monsieur the musketeer’s horse,” Geneviève interrupted, placing a basin of water on the table.
“But mother?”
“Now, Antoine.”
The boy knew it was never a good sign when his mother switched from “Tonin” to “Antoine.”
“Yes, mother.… Will you still tell me about the king, monsieur?”
“We’ll see.”
Delighted by this prospect, Tonin left the house.
“You have a lovely little boy,” said Leprat.
“Yes. He’s at that stage where they dream of nothing but glory and adventure.”
“It is a stage which does not always pass with the coming of manhood.”
“And thus his father died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, madame. He fell in battle?”
“Soldiers are quicker to die of hunger, cold, or disease than a thrust from a sword.… No, monsieur, it was the ranse which took my husband during a siege.”
“The ranse,” Leprat murmured, as though evoking an old and dreaded enemy.…
It behaved like a virulent disease, and originated from dragons and their magic. The dragons—or more accurately their distant descendants of human appearance—suffered little from it, but the men and women who frequented their company for too long a period were rarely spared. The first symptom was a small mark on the skin, scarcely more alarming than a beauty spot, and which often went unnoticed in an age when people did not wash and never took off their shirts. The mark grew, becoming purplish in colour and rough to the touch. Sometimes it would slowly develop black veins and begin to crack open, oozing pus, while deeper tumours would develop underneath. This was known as the “Great ranse.” Then the patient became contagious and felt the first pains, the first lumps, the first deformities, and the first monstrosities.…
The Church saw this as clear proof that dragons were evil incarnate, to the extent that they could not even be approached without mortal danger. As for seventeenth-century medicine, it was impotent to either fight or prevent the ranse, whether great or small. Remedies were sold, to be sure, and new cures appeared in the apothecaries’ dispensaries and the smooth-talking vendors’ stalls almost every year. But most of these were nothing but the work of more or less well-intentioned charlatans or practitioners. As for allegedly more serious medications, it proved impossible to measure their effectiveness objectively because those afflicted were not all equally susceptible to the ranse. Some passed away after two weeks, while others lived for a long time after the appearance of the first symptoms and suffered little. Meanwhile, you could still encounter other unfortunate victims in the final stages of the disease who, having been transformed into pitiable monsters, were reduced to begging on the streets to survive. They were obliged to wear a red robe and announce their presence by shaking a rattle, when they were not forcibly incarcerated in the recently founded Hospice des Incurables in Paris.
Shrugging away her bad memories, Geneviève helped Leprat remove his doublet. Then she unwound the bandage he had hastily wrapped around his bicep, over his shirt sleeve.
“Your shirt now, monsieur.”
“Rip the sleeve, that will suffice.”
“The shirt is still good. You just need to have the tear sewn up.”
Leprat reflected that the price of a new shirt was not the same for a gentleman as for a countrywoman forced to make economies.
“It is,” he admitted. “But please, close the door.”
The woman hesitated, with a glance at her pistol, but finally went to shut the door which still stood open to the yard. Then she lent a hand to the musketeer, who was stripping to the waist, and understood immediately when he bared his muscular back.
Large, coarse, and purplish splotches of the ranse spread across it.
“Do not fear, madame. My illness has not yet reached a point where it could affect you. But it’s a sight that I’d rather spare your son.”
“Do you suffer?”
“Not yet.”
23
Sitting at a table in an empty tavern whose keeper was sweeping the floor at the end of a very long day, the Gascon was glowering into the bottom of his glass when he realised someone was standing nearby.
“Captain.”
“Good evening, Marciac.”
“Please, take a seat.”
“Thank you.”
La Fargue pulled a chair toward him and sat down.
A second glass, as clean as one might hope for in such an establishment, was placed on the table. Marciac took and filled it for the old man.
It was the dregs of the jug. Barely a mouthful.
“Sorry, captain. It’s all that’s left.”
“It will do.”
La Fargue didn’t touch his glass and, while the silence stretched out, noticed the crumpled letter which the Gascon had received in rue de la Grenouillère.
“The Blades are recalled to service, Marciac.”
The other nodded, pensive and sad.
“I need you, Marciac.”
“Mmh.”
“The Blades need you.”
“And who are they?”
“The same as before. Other letters have been sent. They will be arriving soon.”
“The same as before. That’s to say: those who still live.”
“Yes.”
The silence fell again, thicker than before.
Finally, Marciac burst out: “I have a life now, captain.”
“A life which pleases you?”
They exchanged a long glance.
“Which pleases me well enough.”
“And where is it leading you?”
“All lives lead to the cemetery, captain. What matters is to make the path pleasant.”
“Or useful.”
“Useful? Useful to whom?”
“We serve France.”
“From the sewers.”
“We serve the king.”
“And the cardinal.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“Not always.”
Their conversation, sharp and delivered like a lethal clash of blades, ended with these words. Averting his eyes, Marciac drained his glass and asked: “Will we be justly rewarded?”
“With neither honour nor glory, if that’s your idea. In that respect, nothing has changed.”
“Let us speak of finances instead. If I accept I want to be paid handsomely. Very handsomely. On the day and hour specified. At the first delay, I hang up my sword.”
La Fargue, intrigued, blinked slowly.
“Agreed.”
The Gascon allowed himself a few moments of further thought while he examined his steel signet ring.
“When do we start?” he asked.
24
There were a dozen courts of miracles in Paris. All of them were organised according to the same hierarchy, inherited from the Middle Ages: they consisted of an enclosed area where the communities of beggars, criminals, and other marginal elements could congregate. Scattered through the cap
ital, they took their name from the professional mendicants—the kind with fake diseases and fake mutilations—who were “miraculously” restored to good health after a hard day of begging, once they were far from the inquisitive eyes of outsiders. Cour Sainte Cathérine was one such refuge, situated in the Saint-Denis neighbourhood; another was to be found on rue du Bac; and a third near the Saint-Honoré market. But the most famous court, the one which had earned its status as the Court of Miracles—with capital letters and without further reference—was the one on rue Neuve-Saint-Sauveur, near the Montmartre gate.
According to a chronicler of the times, it was located in “the worst-built, the dirtiest, and the most remote district of the city” and consisted of a vast courtyard dating from the thirteenth century. It was rank, muddy, surrounded by sordid, rickety buildings, and hemmed in by the tangled and labyrinthine alleys behind the Filles-Dieu convent. Hundreds of beggars and thugs lodged here with their women and children, so that there were at least a thousand inhabitants in all, ruling as absolute masters over their territory, permitting neither intrusions nor strangers nor the city watch, and ready to repel them all with insults, thrown stones, and bludgeons. When, eight years earlier, a new street was supposed to be laid nearby, the workers were attacked and the project had to be abandoned.
Jealous of its independence, the insubordinate little world of the Court of Miracles lived according to its own laws and customs. It was led by one man, the Grand Coësre, who Saint-Lucq was waiting to meet this afternoon. Through the slimy glass of a first floor window, from behind his red spectacles, he observed a large, sorry-looking, and at this hour almost deserted cul-de-sac—it would only become animated at nightfall when the thugs and beggars returned from their day of larceny and mendicity in Paris. The décor had something sinister and oppressive about it. Those who ventured here unawares would sense that they were in enemy territory, and being spied upon, just before the inevitable ambush.
The half-blood was not alone.
An old woman dressed entirely in black kept him company. Sitting in her corner she nibbled on a wafer like a rabbit chewing a chicory leaf, clasping it between the fingers of her emaciated hands, her eyes lost and vague. Tranchelard was there too, the thug Saint-Lucq had threatened earlier. The man endeavoured to make the atmosphere as unpleasant as possible with a heavy silence and a fixed black glare directed against the visitor, his hand on the pommel of his sword. Back turned, Saint-Lucq was unaffected. Minutes passed in this room, where the mottled and stained appearance of the floor, the walls, and the door frames contrasted with the motley collection of luxurious furniture and carpets stolen from some mansion or wealthy bourgeois house. Nothing but the old woman’s chewing disturbed the silence.