The Cardinal's Blades (35 page)

“It is a tale whose subject matter is already familiar to me.”

“I am coming now to precisely those elements of which you are perhaps ignorant.”

“Very well. Continue.”

“I said earlier, our gentleman was worried that a particular enemy of his was pursuing his daughter. He was indeed worried, but was not surprised by this. It must be said that his daughter had become bound by ties of affection to a handsome adventurer who was in the pay of the enemy in question. That is to say, the Black Claw. The daughter was unaware of this fact. But the gentleman knew. And it was no doubt in seeking to separate her from her dangerous admirer that he provoked her anger and subsequent flight. Because the girl was of an age when people are willing to sacrifice everything for love—”

“You promised to speak of developments that are unknown to me.”

“And here they are: your daughter’s lover is dead, but before he died he told us who she is, which we did not know until then. You must recognise that she constitutes a significant prize for us.… But it remains the case that your manoeuvres have placed the Blades on our trail. This must cease. As of today.”

“What guarantees do you offer me?”

“None. You have persuaded Richelieu to deploy his Blades against us. See that he henceforth employs them for another purpose and your daughter shall live.”

“Richelieu will refuse if he suspects something.”

“Richelieu already suspects something. His suspicions began the instant you demanded he involve the Blades in this matter. Don’t forget that he knows who you really are. But does your daughter know? And if she doesn’t, do you want her to remain ignorant of the facts?”

14

Escorted by riders, the coach had all its curtains lowered and was travelling at a rapid pace along a dusty, rutted road that subjected its creaking axles to constant torment. Inside, shaken by the bouncing of the cabin, Agnès did not utter a word. She was sitting in front of the one-eyed victim of the ranse who had abducted her. Savelda pretended to pay her no attention, but he discreetly kept his eye on her, watching her slightest movement.

After surprising her at Cécile’s dwelling, Savelda and his henchmen had taken Agnès to the courtyard of a nearby inn where their horses were waiting for them. She was placed on the rump of one of their mounts and, still led by the Spaniard, the riders left the faubourg Saint-Victor at a trot, depriving Saint-Lucq of any chance of following them. Their destination was an isolated house where Agnès was kept under guard for a while, no doubt just long enough for news of her capture to be transmitted and for orders to come back. Finally, she had been forced to embark in this coach, which had been on the move ever since. But where was it going?

No one had questioned her yet. For her part she did not speak, remained docile, and tried to appear anxious and overwhelmed by all these events. She wanted to lull her guardians into a false sense of security until the moment came for her to act and, until then, she did not wish to say or do anything that risked compromising the misunderstanding that had led to her abduction. These men—Savelda at their head—mistook her for Cécile. Agnès wanted that to last until she was able to discover who she was dealing with and what their motivations were. As they seemed to attach great value to their hostage, Agnès did not feel actually threatened. But the problem remained that she herself did not know Cécile’s true identity. She was playing a dangerous game, trying to impersonate someone about whom she knew almost nothing. The best she could do was to adopt a low profile in order to avoid making any blunders. She didn’t fancy her chances if her deception was revealed.

If her story were to be believed, Cécile was an innocent young woman searching for her elder sister who had disappeared at the same time as her lover, the chevalier d’Ireban. Agnès was convinced that she had been lying to the Blades, at least in part. Therefore, Cécile no doubt knew more than she was prepared to say about the hired swordsmen Marciac had saved her from the previous night: she must have some idea what they wanted and why. If it was simply a question of their wishing to eliminate an overly curious sister, then they would have tried to murder her, not abduct her. Rather than merely an awkward witness, she was in their eyes a bargaining token, or perhaps a means of applying pressure on someone.

But for the young baronne de Vaudreuil, the real cause for worry lay elsewhere. She suspected La Fargue knew some of Cécile’s secrets. Secrets that he had not shared with anyone.

This was both abnormal and disturbing. It was completely unlike the captain, who, with his frankness and absolute loyalty, had always shown himself worthy of the blind faith invested in him by his Blades. Where had this mistrust come from? Had the years changed him to such an extent? No, time alone did not cause well-tempered souls to bend. But the betrayal of a friend, perhaps …

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.