The Cardinal's Blades

by Pierre Pevel

  Since Saint-Lucq was also in the game, the Cardinal’s Blades were now, arguably, complete. Complete except for two, that is. Those two would never return. One of them, Bretteville, was dead. The other, Louveciennes, had betrayed them. He had been La Fargue’s companion-in-arms, his oldest and his best friend, with whom he had founded the Blades and recruited all the others. As brutal as it was unexpected, his treason had first led to the death of Bretteville during the siege of La Rochelle and then brought about the infamous disbanding of the Blades as a whole. La Fargue had witnessed the shattering of his life’s work at the hands of a man he had considered as a brother and who, rich from the fortune that this crime had earned him, had found refuge—it was said—in Spain.

  The wound was deep. It had probably never healed and no doubt explained why La Fargue distrusted everyone, including the men under his command. Agnès understood this to a certain degree, but her resentment of it remained sincere and profound. The Blades were a citadel in which La Fargue was the central keep. Without the certainty of being able to find refuge there in case of need, Agnès could not imagine herself fighting for long upon the ramparts.

  Having almost reached the end of its journey, the coach slowed as it climbed a winding and stony track.

  Then it pulled to a halt.

  Savelda descended first and, holding the door open, signalled for Agnès to follow him. Beneath a sun which, after the darkness inside the cabin, dazzled her for a moment, she found herself surrounded by the partially crumbled ruins and ramparts of a fortified castle whose imposing keep dominated a courtyard which had long been invaded by weeds and shrubs. Isolated on top of a rocky and wooded height overlooking the Chevreuse valley, the place was a scene of bustling activity at odds with its ancient sleeping stones. Men and dracs were busy planting torches, building woodpiles for bonfires, and erecting three tiers of benches on either side of an open-air stage. Wagons loaded with materials were entering the site. Riders came and went. Overseers gave orders and assigned tasks, hurried by a sense of urgency. A wyvern and its rider circled in the sky. A second, saddled, waited in the shelter of a covered enclosure.

  Savelda seized Agnès by the elbow and led her into a small building of which only the exterior walls remained standing, its interior being overgrown with brush. He made her descend a stairway carved into the rock, at the bottom of which a hired swordsman was already posted. Upon seeing them he opened a door and Agnès entered an underground chamber filled with dusty debris. There was an old oven for baking bread in one corner. Daylight entered through a small semicircular window which looked out on the courtyard.

  A fat woman rose from her seat, abandoning her knitting.

  “Keep an eye on her,” Savelda ordered.

  Then, turning to the prisoner, he warned her: “Don’t try anything. If you obey us, no harm will be done to you.”

  Agnès nodded and the one-eyed man departed, closing the door behind him and leaving her alone with her female guardian. After a moment, as the fat woman did not seem to be overly concerned about her, she went toward the window, whose bars she gripped with both hands in order to raise herself on tiptoe and, while verifying the solidity of the iron, gazed outside.

  Something important was about to happen here and, despite the risks she was taking, Agnès knew she had been right to let herself be brought here.

  15

  Because it was designed to take in plague victims, the Saint-Louis hospital had not only been built outside Paris but also resembled a fortress. Its first stone had been laid in 1607, after the serious epidemics which the Hôtel-Dieu, the only big hospital the capital possessed at the time, had been unable to cope with. Its four main buildings, each formed of a single storey above a ground floor with taller structures at their centre and extremities, surrounded a square courtyard. Two rings of walls separated it from the rest of the world. Between them, symmetrically distributed, were the dwell­ings of the employees, nurses, and nuns who worked there. The pantries, kitchens, storerooms, and bakeries were built against the outer wall. Around them spread the gardens, fields, and pastures bordering the faubourg Saint-Denis.

  Having shown his pass several times, Marciac received directions to the immense ward where, among the moans and murmurs of the other patients, he found Castilla lying on one of the beds aligned in rows. Cécile was sitting near him. Pale, her eyes red, she caressed his forehead with a light touch. The wounded man was clean and bandaged, but his face was swollen and horribly deformed. He was breathing but showed no reaction to his surroundings.

  “Leave me be,” said the young woman on seeing Marciac. “Leave us both.”

  “Cécile …”

  “That’s not my name.”

  “It’s of little importance.”

  “Oh, but it is … ! If I wasn’t who I am, if he who claims to be my father wasn’t who he is, none of this would have happened. And this man here, he would live.”

  “He isn’t dead.”

  “The sisters say he won’t live through the night.”

  “They don’t know anything. I’ve seen many men survive wounds that were believed to be fatal.”

  The young woman did not reply, seeming to forget the Gascon and, leaning over Castilla, continued to caress his brow.

  “What should I call you?” asked Marciac after a while.

  “Ana-Lucia … I believe.”

  “You want this man to live, don’t you, Ana-Lucia?”

  She glared at him with damp eyes, as if this question were the worst possible insult.

  “Then you should leave here,” Marciac continued in a gentle voice. “The men who tried to abduct you are no doubt still after you. And if they find you here, they’ll also find him.…”

  She stared at him and a new worry caused her drawn features to look even more distraught.

  “You … you really think so?”

  “I know so, Ana-Lucia. Please come. You will need to be brave. I promise you that we’ll return tomorrow.”

  Back in Paris an hour later, the beautiful Gabrielle, mistress of a brothel located in rue de la Grenouillère, heard knocking at her door. As no one in the house answered and the knocking continued, she wondered why she bothered paying her porter and, more resigned than angry, leaned from her window.

  Outside, Marciac lifted a grave-looking face toward her, which worried her because the Gascon tended to be one who smiled in the face of adversity.

  “I need you, Gabrielle,” he said.

  He was holding a tearful young woman’s hand.

  16

  The coach picked Rochefort up at Place de la Croix-du-Trahoir and, after a short conversation with the comte de Pontevedra, it left him in front of the scaffolding covering the façade of the Palais-Cardinal. The ambassador extraordinary of Spain had demanded this discreet meeting urgently. He had promised that he had important news and he had not been lying.

  La Fargue and Saint-Lucq were waiting in an antechamber of the Palais-­Cardinal. They were silent and pensive, aware of what was at stake during the interview His Eminence was about to grant them. Their chances of rescuing Agnès lay with Malencontre, a man Richelieu was keeping locked away and was not likely to give up to them easily—and they had no guarantee of success if he did.

  After some considerable hesitation, Saint-Lucq rose from a bench and went to join La Fargue, who stood gazing out a window.

  “I found this at Cécile’s house,” he said in a confidential tone.

  He held out an unsealed letter on a yellowed piece of paper.

  The old gentleman lowered his eyes to the missive and finally took it with a doubtful air.

  “What is it?”

  “Read it, captain.”

  He read, looking stiff and grim, haunted by old torments that he refused to show on his countenance. Then he refolded the letter, slipped it into his sleeve, and said: “You also read this.”

  “It was open and I had no way of knowing its contents.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I
haven’t said anything to the others.”

  “Thank you.”

  La Fargue resumed looking out at the cardinal’s gardens, where workers were finishing digging the basins. Trees rooted in large sacks of earth were arriving in carts.

  “Captain, did you know you had a daughter?”

  “I knew it.”

  “Why did you hide it?”

  “To protect her and safeguard her mother’s honour.”

  “Oriane?”

  Oriane de Louveciennes, the wife of the man who—until his act of treason at the siege of La Rochelle—had been La Fargue’s best friend.

  Saint-Lucq nodded, impassive behind his spectacles’ round, red lenses.

  “Why do you think Oriane wrote this letter so many years ago?”

  “No doubt so that Anne might one day know who her real father was.”

  “Perhaps your daughter came to Paris in the hope of meeting you.”

  “Yes. Perhaps.”

  A door creaked and Rochefort passed through the antechamber with a quick step without seeming to pay them any notice. Unlike them, he did not have to wait before being received by the cardinal.

  “I don’t like the look of that,” said the half-blood.

  In his large and luxurious study, Richelieu was discussing matters with Père Joseph when Rochefort entered and interrupted them. They were speaking of Laincourt, of whom they had heard nothing.

  “Please forgive my intrusion, monseigneur. But I have some important news.”

  “We are listening.”

  “The comte de Pontevedra has just informed me that the chevalier d’Ireban is in Madrid. Although he was thought to have disappeared here in France, in fact he decided to return to Spain by his own means and without letting anyone know.”

  The cardinal and Père Joseph exchanged a long look: they did not believe a word of what they had just heard. Then Richelieu settled back into his armchair with a sigh.

  “Whether it’s true or not,” said the Capuchin monk, “the mission en­trusted to your Blades no longer has any reason to continue, ­monseigneur.…”

  Richelieu nodded thoughtfully.

  He nevertheless took time to reflect before declaring: “You are right, father. Have Captain La Fargue come in.”

  17

  Back at the Hôtel de l’Épervier, where Marciac had returned just a quarter of an hour before them, La Fargue and Saint-Lucq found the rest of the Blades gathered together in the main room.

  “Richelieu refused,” announced the captain upon entering.

  Dismayed, they all fell silent as La Fargue poured himself a glass of wine and emptied it in one gulp.

  “Does he know …” Ballardieu started to say in a voice buzzing with anger. “Does he know that Agnès is in danger? Does he know that she is being held prisoner by the Black Claw? Does he know—?”

  “He knows!” said La Fargue sharply.

  Then he added in a quieter tone: “He knows all that because I told him.”

  “And despite that, he still refuses to return Malencontre.”

  “Yes.”

  “This time, it has not taken His Eminence long to desert us,” said Leprat whose dark gaze was lost in a limbo where he saw the outline of La Rochelle standing before him.

  “But there’s more, isn’t there?” guessed Almades, standing in a corner where he leaned with his arms crossed. “Richelieu was not simply satisfied with refusing to allow you to speak with Malencontre.…”

  “No,” admitted the Blades’ captain.

  He paused for a moment and then said: “Our mission has been cancelled. The chevalier d’Ireban has supposedly turned up recently in Madrid. Therefore we no longer have any reason to continue searching here in Paris.”

  “But Ireban does not exist!” exclaimed Marciac. “He and Cécile were always one and the same person! How can he be back in Spain now?”

  “Nevertheless, this is the case. At least, if one believes the ambassador extraordinary of Spain.”

  “It’s absurd!” objected Leprat. “The cardinal can’t be taken in by this lie—”

  “It was at Spain’s request that Richelieu entrusted us with this mission, and it is once again at her request that he has called us off. The stakes of the negotiations that are currently taking place in the Louvre go well beyond us. It was a matter of pleasing Spain. Now it is a matter of not displeasing her.…”

  “And we are suddenly asked to forget all about the existence of Ireban,” said Marciac. “And about Malencontre. And about the Black Claw which is scheming in the very heart of the kingdom!”

  “Those are our orders,” insisted La Fargue.

  “Are we also to forget about Agnès?” Ballardieu demanded.

  “There is no question of that.”

  Leprat rose and, despite his wounded leg, could not stop himself from pacing back and forth.

  “Malencontre remains our best hope of finding Agnès quickly,” he said, thinking out loud.

  “The cardinal only deigned to tell us that Malencontre was being held at Le Châtelet, awaiting transfer to the prison in the Château de Vincennes,” indicated Saint-Lucq.

  Leprat stopped pacing to and fro.

  “I will go and speak with Malencontre,” he declared.

  “But he’s being held in solitary confinement!” the half-blood pointed out. “No one can see him without a signed order.”

  “I am only on leave from the Musketeers. I can still wear the cape and monsieur de Tréville will not refuse to help me.”

  They all fell silent while they considered this idea.

  “All right,” said La Fargue. “Let’s suppose that you manage to reach Malencontre. Then what? You have nothing to propose in exchange for his information.”

  “Just let me have two words with him,” suggested Ballardieu, balling his fists.

  “No,” replied Leprat. “Malencontre and I are almost old acquaintances by now. Let us do this my way.…”

  Later, while the Blades were getting ready, La Fargue took Marciac by the elbow.

  “Did you find Cécile?”

  “Yes. At the Saint-Louis hospital, at the bedside of the man she loves, just as I guessed. She was listening at the door when you announced that he was dying there. She fled the house in order to be with him.”

  “Is she in a safe place at present?”

  “She is in rue de la Grenouillère. No one will go looking for her in a brothel and Gabrielle and the girls will take good care of her.”

  “I thought you and Gabrielle had … ?”

  “A falling out … ?” said the Gascon with a grin. “Yes, we did, for a while.… Let’s just say that she did not particularly appreciate the fact that I was returning to active service under your orders. She remembers how things ended the last time only too well.” He fell silent, thinking, and then with a shrug concluded: “Bah! She can always marry a haberdasher, if that’s what she wants.”

  He was turning away in a fairly good mood, when the captain called him back: “Marciac!”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  Puzzled, the Gascon frowned but said nothing.

  18

  At Le Châtelet, the guards and other personnel were relieved at five o’clock in the evening. Wearing his blue cape with its silver fleur-de-lis cross, Leprat presented himself twenty minutes before the hour at the admissions counter with an authorisation signed by the hand of monsieur de Tréville, captain of His Majesty’s Musketeers, and was led to Malencontre’s place of detention. The man was being held in Le Puits, or the Well, one of the individual cells in the gaol’s lower depths. There reigned a dark and putrid dankness that would have undermined the health and courage of even the most solid of men.

  The gaoler left his lantern with Leprat, saying that he would remain within earshot at the other end of the corridor and then shut the door. The light it gave off was dim, barely illuminating the miserable hole, but it sufficed to dazzle the prisoner. Filthy and tired-looking, stinking of
urine and refuse, he was sitting on a carpet of rancid straw, his back toward the wall to which he was chained by the wrists. His position forced him to keep his arms raised, his long pale blond hair hanging before his face.

  “Leprat?” he asked, squinting. “Is that you, chevalier?”

  “It’s me.”

  “You are very kind to pay me a visit. Would you like some foul water? I think I also have an old crust of bread that the rats haven’t carried off yet.…”

  “I came to speak with you.”

  The musketeer swept his ivory rapier back, crouched before Malencontre and set the lantern down between them.

  “Do you know what awaits you?” he asked.

  “I wager that I will soon be asked lots of questions.”

  “And will you answer them?”

  “If that can save my life.”

  “Then talk to me. If you talk to me, I will help you.”

  Malencontre stifled a small chuckle and made a grimacing smile that highlighted the scar at the corner of his thin lips.

  “I doubt that you have anything to offer me, chevalier.”

  “You’re wrong. Those who will come after me will ask you the same questions, but in a different manner. Le Châtelet has no lack of torturers.…”

  “The cardinal will not send me a torturer right away. He will first seek to learn if I am disposed to talk. I will reply that I am and I will be treated well. I am no hero, Leprat. I am quite ready to collaborate and only ask for some small consideration.”

  His crouching position becoming too uncomfortable due to his wounded thigh, Leprat stood up and, spying a stool in a corner, sat down on it, leaving the lantern where it was.

  “You work for the Black Claw,” he said.

  “Not really, no. I work for a gentleman who may, perhaps, work for them.… You serve one master, I serve another.”