The Cardinal's Blades

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 Chatelet 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 Trinite 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.

Three men emerged in the pale glow and more were arriving. Gloved and booted, armed with swords, they wore hats, long dark cloaks, and black scarves to hide their faces.

Leprat got to his feet with difficulty, unsheathed his ivory rapier, and turned to face the first of the men charging toward him. He dodged one and let him pass, carried on by his momentum. He blocked the second’s attack and shoved the third with his shoulder. He struck, pierced a throat, and recoiled in extremis to avoid a blade. Two more masked killers presented themselves. The chevalier d’Orgueil broke away and counterattacked at once. He seized one of his new assailants by the collar and threw him against a wall while continuing to defend himself with his sword. He parried, riposted, and parried again, endeavouring to set the rhythm of the engagement, to repulse or elude one adversary in time to take on the next. Although being left-handed gave him a small advantage, the reopened wound on his arm handicapped him and his adversaries had the advantage of greater numbers: when one faltered, another took his place. Finally, he skewered the shoulder of one and, with a violent blow of his pommel, smashed in the temple of another. This attack earned him a vicious cut to his thigh, but he was able to step back as the combatant with the wounded shoulder fled and his partner fell dead on the muddy pavement.

The two remaining assassins paused for a moment. They moved prudently, with slow gliding steps, to corner the chevalier. He placed himself en garde, his back to the wall, careful to keep both of them in his field of vision. His arm and thigh were giving him pain. Sweat prickled in his eyes. As the assassins seemed unwilling to take the initiative, Leprat guessed that they were expecting reinforcements, which were not long in arriving: three men were coming down rue Saint-Denis at a run. No doubt the same men who had fired on him from the rooftops.

Leprat could not afford to wait for them.

He altered his guard slightly, pretending to attack the adversary to his left and thereby offering an opening to the one on the right, only to abruptly change his target. The ivory caught a ray of moonlight before slicing cleanly through a fist which remained clenched around a sword hilt. The amputee screamed and beat an immediate retreat, clutching his stump which was bleeding in vigorous spurts. Leprat promptly forgot him and pivoted in time to deflect a sword thrust aimed at his face. Parrying twice, he seized an over-extended arm, pulled the man toward him, and head butted him full in the mouth, then followed it with a blow of the knee to his crotch and finally delivered a reverse cut with his sword that slit the man’s throat.

Letting the body fall into the blood-soaked mud, the chevalier snatched a dagger from its belt and made ready to face the three latecomers. He deflected the first thrust with his white rapier, the second with the dagger, and dodged the third which, rather than slicing through his eye as far as his brain, merely left a scratch across his cheek. Then he shoved one brawler away with a blow from his boot, succeeded in stopping the blades of the two others with a high parry, and with the ivory grating beneath the double bite of steel, heaved them both back and to the side, forcing their blades downward. His dagger was free: he stabbed it into one assailant’s exposed flank three times. Pressing his advantage, Leprat planted a foot firmly on a boundary stone and, spinning into the air, decapitated the man he had just kicked away before the latter managed to fully recover his balance. A bloody scarlet spray fell in a sticky rain over the chevalier d’Orgueil and his third, final opponent. They exchanged a number of attacks, parries, and ripostes, each advancing and retreating along an imaginary line, mouths drawn into grimaces and exchanging furious glares. At last the assassin made a fatal error and his life came to a swift end when the slender ivory blade slid beneath his chin and its stained point exploded from the back of his head.

Drunk from exhaustion and combat, weakened by his wounds, Leprat staggered and knew he was in a bad way. A violent retch doubled him over and forced him to lean against a door as he vomited up long strands of black ranse phlegm.

He believed the fight was over, until he heard a horse approaching at a slow walk.

Keeping one hand against the wall at whose foot he had vomited, Leprat peered to one side, his tired eyes straining to make out the rider advancing toward him.

He was a very young and very elegant gentleman with a blond moustache, mounted on a lavishly harnessed horse.

“My congratulations, monsieur Leprat.”

All his limbs in agony, the chevalier made an effort to straighten up, although he felt as if even a breath of wind would knock him over.

“To those with whom I am unacquainted, I am ‘monsieur le chevalier d’Orgueil.’”

“As you wish, monsieur le chevalier d’Orgueil. I beg your pardon.”

Leprat spat out the remains of blood and bile.

“And you. Who are you?”

The rider offered a sympathetic smile and levelled a loaded pistol at the chevalier.

“It is of very little importance, monsieur le chevalier d’Orgueil, if you carry my name with you to your grave.”

The chevalier’s eyes flared.

“A man of honour would face me with his feet on the ground and draw his sword.”

“Yes. No doubt he would.”

The marquis de Gagniere took aim and shot Leprat with a pistol ball straight to the heart.