The Cardinal's Blades

26

“You know that it’s not your fault, don’t you?”

Agnes de Vaudreuil jumped as though she’d been poked in the kidneys with a blazing poker. She had been dozing and, startled by the voice, dropped the book which had been lying open on her lap. A feeling of surprise tinged with fear took hold of her, but a second was enough for her to realise that she was alone. Besides, the voice that she had heard or dreamed could only have been speaking from beyond the grave.

As soon as she returned from the inn with Ballardieu she had shut herself away in her favourite room in the manor, a very long hall almost devoid of furniture, where, when it fell, the silence seemed greater than anywhere else in the house. On one side, old suits of armour on their pedestals alternated with panoplies and racks of mediaeval weaponry. On the other side, through four tall windows with stone mullions, daylight fell in oblique rays-against which the armour seemed to be mounting a resolute guard. Two large chimneys opened their blackened brick mouths at each end of the hall originally intended to host banquets. But the chairs and the immense table had been removed, and the great iron chandeliers now looked down on empty flagstones.

Agnes was drawn to this room when times were bad, either alone or with Ballardieu. She liked to take refuge here to read, reflect, or simply to wait until another day, or sometimes another night, was over. For this purpose she had arranged an area for her use around the one fireplace which could still serve against the early frosts. There was an old leather-covered armchair there, a table polished by age and use, a worm-eaten old chest, some shelves where she stored her treatises on fencing, and an old quintain.

Her entire world was here.

On this afternoon, Agnes was taking her ease with a book. She had hung her belt over the quintain, removed her boots and her thick red leather corset, and then she had ensconced herself comfortably in the armchair, legs stretched out and ankles crossed on the chest before her. But she was clearly more tired than she had thought. Sleepiness had won as she thumbed through a chapter dedicated to the comparative merits of quadruple and sextuple parries against a point lunge delivered by an adversary with the advantage of a longer reach.

Then there came the voice: “You know that it’s not your fault, don’t you?”

Agnes’s gaze fell on the quintain.

Before reaching the ultimate disgrace of becoming a porte-manteau, it had served as a training mannequin for fencers for a long time. Its horizontal arms had been shortened by two-thirds and its bust-firmly fixed to a solid base which no longer allowed it to pivot-was covered with notches, the number of which increased in proportion to their proximity to the heart symbol engraved on the wood. It was Ballardieu, the soldier to whose care Agnes had been abandoned by her father, who had brought this worm-eaten device in from the field where it had then been serving as a scarecrow. At the time, still a child, the future baronne had to struggle, with both hands, in order to lift a rapier that was almost as tall as she. But she had refused to use any other.

The cry of a wyvern nearby tore through the silence.

Agnes pulled on her boots, rose, laced up her leather corset which fastened at the front, and, with her baldric slung over her shoulder and her sheathed rapier crossing her back, she headed for the courtyard on which the first shadows of the evening were beginning to encroach.

The wyvern rider was already climbing down from his white mount, its broad leathery wings now folded against its flanks. The beast’s colour and the man’s livery were unmistakable: he was a royal courier. He had evidently come straight from the Louvre.

After he had assured himself of the identity of the baronne de Vaudreuil and had saluted respectfully, the wyvern rider held out a letter drawn from the great reptile’s saddlebags.

“Thank you. Is an immediate response expected?”

“No, madame.”

Seeing Marion appear on the kitchen threshold, Agnes directed the royal messenger to her so that he could partake of a glass of wine and whatever else he desired before setting out again. The man thanked her and left Agnes in the company of his wyvern which, calm and docile, twisted its long neck around to observe its surroundings with a placid eye.

Agnes 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.