The Cardinal's Blades (15 page)

Agnès broke the wax seal showing the Cardinal Richelieu’s arms and, without expression, read the contents.

“What is it?” asked Ballardieu coming over for news.

She didn’t reply at once, but turned her head and stared at him for a few moments.

And then, finally, for the first time in a very long while, she smiled.

27

That evening three riders passed through the Buci gate—or Bussy, as it was written then—entering the vast and peaceful faubourg surrounding Saint-Germain abbey. They rode down rue du Colombier at a slow walk, soon reached rue des Saints-Pères, passed Les Réformés cemetery, and, in front of La Charité hospital, turned into rue Saint-Guillaume.

“Here we are,” said La Fargue, stepping down from his horse.

Marciac and Almades shared the same expression as they looked toward the huge gates before which they had stopped—these were massive and gloomy, with two carved, rectangular wooden panels fixed in place with large round-headed nails. They also dismounted and, as their captain rapped the wrought-iron knocker three times, they observed the tranquil street which forked halfway along its length toward rue de Saint-Dominique. There were only a few people walking on its filthy paving stones beneath the golden and crimson skies at sunset, and its tradesmen were packing away their stalls. The vague odour of cooking mingled with the excremental scent of Parisian muck. Not far away, a fistful of knotted hay served as a sign for a local tavern.

“It’s barely changed,” said the Gascon.

“No,” the Spanish master at arms replied laconically.

A door for pedestrians had been cut into one of the great panels of the carriage gate. This door was pushed open slightly and, from within, a voice inquired: “Who’s there?”

“Visitors,” replied La Fargue.

“Are they expected?”

“Their presence has been called for.”

This curious exchange made Marciac smile with nostalgia.

“Perhaps we should change the passwords,” murmured Marciac to Almades. “It’s been five years, after all.…”

The other made a face: right now, all that mattered was whether the door would open for them. And it did.

La Fargue going first, they passed through the small door one by one, leading their mounts by their bits to make them lower their heads. As soon as they crossed the threshold the horses’ shoes clattered loudly against the paving stones, filling the courtyard into which they emerged with echoes.

* * *

It was a massive old residence built in a severe architectural style, entirely out of grey stone, which a strict Huguenot had commissioned according to his specifications, following the massacre on the feast day of Saint-Barthélemy in 1572. It evoked the ancient fortified manors which still survive in some parts of the French countryside, whose walls are veritable ramparts and whose windows can be used as embrasures. A high wall separated the courtyard from the street. To the right, as one entered, rose the scabby, windowless wall of the neighbouring building. Opposite the gates were two coach doors leading into the stables, which were topped by a hay loft. Finally, to the left, the main building stood at an angle. Flanked by a turret and a dovecote, it comprised a tier of tiny attic windows embedded in its slate rooftop, two rows of stone-mullioned windows looking on to the courtyard, a protruding study, and a ground floor which could be reached by a short flight of steps.

Abandoning his horse Marciac climbed these steps, turned toward his companions who had remained behind, and declared with affected pomposity: “And so we have returned to Hôtel de l’Épervier, the House of the Sparrowhawk, which, as you can see, has lost none of its charms.… Damn!” he added in a lower tone. “This place is even more sinister than I recalled, which I hardly believed possible.…”

“This house has served us well in the past,” declared the captain. “And it will serve again. Besides, we are all familiar with it.”

Having closed the pedestrian door again, the person who had granted them admission now came to join them.

The old man limped on a wooden leg. Small, skinny, dishevelled, he had bushy eyebrows and his bald head was surrounded with a crown of long thin yellowish white hair.

“Good evening, monsieur,” he said to La Fargue, holding a large bunch of keys out to him.

“Good evening, Guibot. Thank you.”

“Monsieur Guibot?” interrupted Marciac, coming closer. “Monsieur Guibot, is it really you?”

“Indeed, monsieur, it’s me.”

“I thought I recognised your voice but … have you really been guarding these sorry stones for the past five years?”

The man reacted as though someone had insulted his family: “Sorry stones, monsieur? Perhaps this house is not very cheerful and no doubt you will find, here and there, a few cobwebs and some dust, but I assure you that her roof, her structure, her walls, and her floors are solid. Her chimneys draw well. Her cellars and stables are vast. And of course, there is always the small door at the bottom of the garden which leads to a dead-end alley which—”

“And her?” Almades interrupted. “Who is she?”

A young woman in an apron and white bonnet hovered on the threshold to the main building. Plump and blonde, with blue eyes, she smiled timidly while wringing her hands.

“This is Naïs,” Guibot explained. “Your cook.”

“What about madame Lourdin?” inquired Marciac.

“She passed away last year, monsieur. Naïs is her niece.”

“Is she a good cook?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Can she hold her tongue?” asked La Fargue, who had his own sense of priorities.

“She is, so to speak, mute, captain.”

“What do you mean, ‘so to speak’?”

“She is so timid and bashful that she almost never utters a word.”

“That’s not exactly the same thing.…”

Naïs hesitated to approach, and La Fargue was about to beckon her closer when the knocker on the carriage gate was heard again. It took everyone by surprise and even made the young girl jump.

“It’s him,” Guibot announced with a hint of worry in his voice.

The captain nodded, his silver hair touching the collar of his grey doublet.

“Let him in, monsieur Guibot.”

“‘Him’?” asked the Gascon while the porter obeyed. “Who is ‘he’?”

“Him,” said the captain lifted his chin toward the gentleman who entered the courtyard leading a bay horse by the bridle.

Somewhere between forty-five and fifty years old, he was tall, thin, and pale, patently smug and self-assured, dressed in a crimson doublet and black breeches.

Marciac recognised him even before he caught sight of the man’s well-groomed moustache and the scar on his temple.

“Rochefort.”

28

As was his habit, the young marquis de Gagnière dined at home, early and alone. An immutable ritual governed even the tiniest details of the meal, from the perfect presentation of the table to the silence imposed on the servants, as they presented a series of dishes prepared by a famous and talented rôtisseur who was accustomed to the tastes of the most demanding of his customers. The crockery laid out on the immaculate linen tablecloth was all made of vermeil, the glasses and decanters were all crystal, the cutlery silver. So luxuriously dressed that he would dazzle at court, Gagnière ate with a fork according to an Italian fashion which had not yet become commonplace in France. He cut small, equal pieces which he chewed slowly, emotionless and stiff, his gaze always directed straight ahead, and pausing between each dish he placed his hands flat to either side of the plate. When he drank he took care to wipe his mouth and moustache in order to avoid dirtying the edge of the glass.

He had finished a slice of pheasant pie when a lackey, taking advantage of one of the pauses between dishes, murmured a few words into his ear. The marquis listened without betraying any emotion or moving a muscle. Then he nodded.

A little later, Malencontre entered.

His manner was defeated; he was filthy and bedraggled, stank like a stable, had his hair stuck to his face and his left hand trussed up in a grimy bandage.

Gagnière accorded him one clinical glance.

“I gather,” he said, “that all did not go according to plan.”

A stuffed quail was placed before him, which he proceeded to meticulously carve up.

“Your men?” he asked him.

“Dead. All of them. Killed to a man.”

“By one man?”

“Not just any man! It was Leprat. I recognised his rapier.”

Gagnière lifted a morsel of quail to his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.

“Monsieur Leprat,” he said to himself. “Monsieur Leprat and his famous ivory rapier …”

“A musketeer!” insisted Malencontre as though that justified his failure. “And one of the best!”

“Did you think the king would entrust his secret dispatches to comical lackeys … ?”

“No, but—”

“The letter?”

“He still has it.”

The marquis finished his quail while Malencontre watched his expressionless young face in silence. Then, having crossed his fork and spoon on his plate, he rang a small bell and said: “You can go, Malencontre. And take proper care of your hand; you’ll be less useful to me without it.”

A lackey entered to serve him, and the assassin, in leaving, passed a servant who carried a sealed missive on a plate. He presented it to Gagnière, who carefully unsealed and opened it.

It was written in the vicomtesse de Malicorne’s hand.

Your man has failed. The courier will arrive at the Saint-Denis gate before midnight. The letter must not reach the Louvre.

The marquis refolded the paper and allowed himself one last mouthful of wine.

At the same moment Leprat, travelling alone, was riding into the sunset on a dusty and empty road.

Lying against his heart, in the folds of his shirt, beneath his dust, sweat, and dried bloodstained doublet, he carried a secret piece of diplomatic mail which he had sworn to defend even at the cost of his life. Exhausted and wounded, weakened by the illness which patiently ate away at him, he galloped toward Paris and nightfall, unaware of the dangers which awaited him.

1

Huge torches lit the Saint-Denis gate when the chevalier Leprat d’Orgueil arrived there an hour after nightfall. Tired, grimy, his shoulders slumped and his back in torment, he was scarcely in a better state than his horse. As for that poor beast, its head drooped, it was struggling to put one foot in front of the other, and was in danger of stumbling with every step.

“We’re here, my friend,” said Leprat. “You’ve certainly earned the right to a week’s rest in the stable.”

Despite his own fatigue he held his pass out with a firm hand, without removing his plumed felt hat or dismounting. Distrustful, the city militia officer first lifted his lantern to take a better look at this armed horseman with a disturbing, dangerous air: unshaven cheeks, drawn features, and a hard gaze. Then he studied the paper and upon seeing the prestigious signature at the bottom, he displayed a sudden deference, saluted, and ordered the gate opened.

Leprat thanked him with a nod of the head.

The Saint-Denis gate was a privileged point of access to the city of Paris. Pressed up against the new rampart and fortifications to the west that now encircled the older faubourgs, it led into rue Saint-Denis which crossed the entire width of the city’s Right Bank from north to south, stretching as far as Le Châtelet and the Pont au Change bridge. During the day this almost straight arterial road teemed with turbulent, noisy life. Once twilight fell, however, it became a narrow trench that was quickly filled with mute, menacing shadows. Indeed, all of Paris offered this dangerous visage to the night.

Leprat soon realised that he was being watched.

His instincts warned him first. Then the peculiar quality of an expectant silence. And, finally, a furtive movement on a rooftop. But it was only when he drew level with La Trinité hospital that he saw the barrel of a pistol poking out between two chimneys and he suddenly dug his heels into his mount.

“Yah!”

Startled, his horse found a last reserve of energy to surge forward.

Gun shots rang out.

The balls whistled past, missing their targets.

But after a few strides at full gallop, the horse ran straight into an obstacle which slammed into its forelegs. Neighing in pain the animal fell heavily, never to rise again.

Leprat freed himself from the stirrups. The shock of impact was hard, and a sharp pain tore at his wounded arm. Grimacing, he got to his knees—

—and saw the chain.

Parisian streets had capstans at either end which made it possible to stretch a chain across the roadway—an old mediaeval device designed to obstruct the passage of the rabble in the event of a riot. These chains, which could not be unwound without a key, were the responsibility of officers of the militia. They were big and solid, too low to stop a rider but high enough to oblige the horse to jump. And in the darkness, they had been turned into a diabolical trap.

Leprat realised then that the gunmen’s main objective had not been to shoot him, and that this was the true ambush, on the corner of rue Ours, not far from one of the rare hanging lanterns lit by the city authorities at twilight, which burned until their fat tallow candles were extinguished.