by Pierre Pevel
… unless the Demoiselle was reserving some refined piece of cruelty for him.
The door suddenly opened. A drac and two men burst into the room. The first struck Laincourt in the face before he had time to react. The others seized Clotilde despite her screams of terror. Laincourt tried to defend her, but a kick from a boot to his belly cut off his breath. The men dragged the girl out by force and the drac slammed the door shut behind them. He locked it with a key as Laincourt got up, staggered over, and threw himself against it in vain. His brow pressed against the wood, he hammered on the solid panel with both fists, but could only hear Clotilde crying and calling out to him for help.
‘No!’ he shouted. ‘No! TAKE ME! ME! TAKE ME!’
Alessandra had been serving the Guardians for several years now. She enjoyed their confidence and knew Valombre, their representative in Paris, quite well. She liked him, had a genuine affection for him. So there was a growing fear in the pit of her stomach as she rode towards the house where the dragon dwelled on the Ile de la Cité. Sensing her fear, Marciac watched her out of the corner of his eye as they rode. He had spurred his horse forward to catch up with her at the end of rue de Tournon and had been escorting her since, without really knowing what to expect.
Having crossed the Seine via Pont de l’Hôtel-Dieu, they passed in front of Notre-Dame cathedral and were astonished to see it lit up. Surmounted by the gallery of the kings of Israel and of Judah, the three portals of the western façade were open and gave them a glimpse of intense activity within, while Chatelaines and Black Guards were assembling on the forecourt. Marciac thought there were even some White Wolves among them.
‘What’s going on here?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ replied La Donna.
But, like him, she feared the worst.
They entered the private little neighbourhood of the canons’ Cloister, to which Alessandra had a gate key.
‘Valombre entrusted me with it,’ she explained before the Gascon could ask.
The dragon was lodged on rue du Chapitre, not far from the old footbridge that linked the Ile de la Cité with Ile Notre-Dame-des-Écailles: a vestige of the days – before the dracs moved in there – when the canons of the cathedral still laid claim to the neighbouring island. Marciac and Alessandra found the door to the house locked but, backing up a few paces, the Gascon noticed an open window on the first storey.
‘Keep an eye out,’ he said to La Donna as he handed her the reins to his horse.
Then he climbed the façade with ease and slipped inside.
Increasingly anxious, Alessandra kept watch as she waited for Marciac to appear again. In the nocturnal silence she heard the murmur of religious chants coming from Notre-Dame. And wasn’t that a bell tolling in the distance? A bell, which others were now answering?
Marciac opened the front door for her.
‘Come inside quickly,’ he said.
Hitching the horses to a ring fixed to the wall, she followed the Gascon into the house. Silent and dark, it seemed deserted.
‘Nobody upstairs,’ Marciac announced in hushed voice.
They explored the ground floor by the glow of the moonlight that entered through the windows. They wanted to remain discreet. They did not call out, they made no light, and they almost failed to notice the badly damaged wall panel. It looked as though someone had been kicking at it about halfway up. As if they were trying to break it down.
As if it was a door.
Alessandra and Marciac understood. Exchanging a glance, they began to examine the wooden panel, running their fingertips along the frame, fishing around and finally finding the places to push and determining the correct order in which to push them. All of this took some time, but La Donna, luckily, had experience in these matters. At last, the panel slid to one side and revealed an iron door which the Gascon opened cautiously, pistol in his fist. It concealed a staircase at the bottom of which they found Valombre, lying in a pool of his own blood, lit by the dying flame of an oil lamp.
In 1621, Queen Anne d’Autriche acquired a property in the faubourg Saint-Jacques where she decided to install a community of Benedictine nuns from the Bièvre valley. Three years later, the first stone of their new cloister was laid. Thus was born the Val-de-Grâce abbey, a place where the queen experienced a tranquillity she could never find at the Louvre, hidden far from the royal court and – so she believed, at least – Richelieu’s spies. She went there often and liked to stay there on Fridays, taking her meals in the refectory and lodging in a modest two-room apartment. After the Dampierre affair, the king severely reduced the liberties he allowed his wife. But he was unable to force her to give up her weekly retreats to Val-de-Grâce, even though she used them to meet in secret with her friend the duchesse de Chevreuse and to send letters to Spain with the aid of the abbess, Mère de Saint-Étienne. None of this had escaped the cardinal’s notice.
La Fargue and Leprat reached Val-de-Grâce at a full gallop. If the queen was there, she was in some kind of danger. At least that was what Pontevedra had claimed before he died.
‘Louveciennes only told us the queen was under threat when he was on the very brink of death,’ observed Leprat as they rode. ‘Why was that, do you suppose?’
‘No doubt he knew the queen was in danger, but not how imminent that danger was.’
‘And he finally understood when he fell to the two assassins?’
‘I think so. He must have believed that if they were attacking him now, it meant that the plot against the queen was about to take place.’
‘But attacking him is the same thing as attacking the Black Claw. Who would want that?’
The captain did not reply: they were arriving and slowed their mounts.
Val-de-Grâce offered an unusual spectacle at this hour of the night. Approaching at a walk, the riders discovered the abbey lit up and the gate open. In the courtyard, numerous soldiers belonging to the light cavalry company of Saint Georges – the celebrated Black Guards – were coming and going. All of them were wearing breastplates and most of them had swords in their hands. But they were moving calmly and efficiently, without shouts or excessive haste.
‘No one may enter!’
La Fargue gave his name to the sentries at the gate, showed his pass signed by the cardinal, and announced that he had a message of the highest importance for the officer in charge.
‘One moment,’ said one of the guards after examining the document in the glow of a lantern.
He ran off.
‘Black Guards?’ murmured Leprat in surprise. ‘What are they doing here? They’re not assigned to watch over the queen.’
‘I know. And yet …’
The sentry was speaking with an officer in the middle of the courtyard. The officer listened to him, before turning to beckon La Fargue and Leprat forward. They dismounted and walked towards him, leading their mounts by the bridle. It was only then they recognised François Reynault d’Ombreuse.
‘What’s happening here?’ asked La Fargue after exchanging a frank handshake with the young officer.
‘We have just repulsed an assault by winged dracs. There’s no merit in it, we were expecting an attack.’
‘Is the queen safe?’ worried Leprat.
‘The queen is not here. She’s being kept in safety at another location, which I don’t know. You have come to warn us of a danger threatening her, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said La Fargue. ‘But you knew that already. How?’
‘Thanks to information secretly transmitted to the Sisters of the Saint Georges. And you?’
The Blades’ captain was about to answer when a cavernous bellow made the night tremble. Together, they turned to the north, towards the centre of Paris.
There they saw the Primordial, flying in slow circles in the sky and roaring.
With rage boiling in his belly, Laincourt had resigned himself to wait. He knew that he would only exhaust himself in vain by hammering away at the door of the cubby-hole where they ha
d him locked up. It was also useless to shout, to call out, to insult his captors. He needed to save his meagre strength so he could act when the moment came. His tormentors had neglected to tie his hands. No doubt they believed him less dangerous than he really was, an error which he was counting on being able to turn to his advantage.
For now, the hardest thing was trying not to drive himself mad imagining what Clotilde was being subjected to. That was precisely the reason why the girl was still alive and why they had been locked up together. It was so they could tear her from him, reduce him to impotence, and leave him to torment himself. La Malicorne – she would never have any other name for Laincourt – knew how to torture souls …
The key turned in the heavy lock.
Sitting with his back to the cubby-hole wall, Laincourt seemed listless and defeated. Even close to being unconscious: body limp, breathing slow, head hanging, and hair before his eyes. His left hand rested inertly on the floor, palm upwards, easily visible. He was hoping to divert attention from the right hand, which lay concealed beneath his thigh, gripping a shard of pottery he’d discovered in the dust. A feeble weapon that would only allow him to strike once, but which might just slice through a jugular vein.
As long as the intended victim came close enough. And bent over.
Laincourt waited, hearing the door open with a creak and someone come inside dragging … a sack?
‘I would appreciate it if you lent me a hand,’ said a familiar voice.
Flabbergasted, Laincourt opened his eyes and discovered Saint-Lucq, dragging the dead body of one of the guards who had been posted in the corridor.
‘Saint-Lucq? But how did you—’
‘There’s another one,’ said the half-blood.
Laincourt got up and, together, they laid a second body on top of the first inside the cubby-hole. One of them had his throat cut; the other had been stabbed in the heart. All done without the slightest noise.
‘Hurry up,’ said Saint-Lucq.
He had posted himself on the threshold and was glancing furtively into the corridor.
‘But how did you manage to find me?’ asked Laincourt as he stripped one body of its sword and baldric.
‘The cardinal has charged me with eliminating La Malicorne’s cult. That will be achieved by the time I’ve finished up here.’
‘By eliminating—’
‘Yes.’
Laincourt stopped fiddling with his scabbard.
‘Clotilde is being held prisoner.’
‘The bookseller’s daughter. I know, yes.’
‘We have to save her!’
Emotionless, Saint-Lucq turned the blank and hypnotic gaze of his scarlet spectacles towards Laincourt.
‘I thought you might say something like that.’
He offered him one of his pistols.
Valombre still lived.
Lying motionless at the foot of his hidden staircase, he had moaned when Marciac had gently turned him over onto his back, then he had regained consciousness while the Gascon examined him.
‘Don’t move, monsieur. My name is Marciac and I serve Captain La Fargue.’
‘I know who you are, monsieur.’
‘Then you also know that I am something of a doctor.’
The dragon had a deep wound at his side whose edges seem to have been eaten by acid, a sure sign that it had been inflicted by a draconite blade. He also had a broken leg and a nasty bump on his forehead.
‘You have broken your femur. But I am going to take care of this wound first, before you drain yourself of more blood.’
Alessandra came back with thread, a needle, a basin of water, and cloths which she had found upstairs in the house. They would need a stretcher to lift the wounded patient up to the ground floor above, but unable to do so right away, Marciac had decided to tend to the most urgent injuries on the spot. Afterwards, they’d see about the rest.
Grimacing with pain while the Gascon sutured his wound, Valombre explained that he had been surprised by two winged dracs in his chamber, that they had attacked him, but that he had been able to escape and close the secret passage behind him. Then he had lost consciousness at the top of the steps.
‘What is this room?’ asked Marciac.
They were in a small hexagonal chamber, empty and bare.
‘A meditation study,’ replied Valombre. ‘A place which is indispensable if one wishes to keep control of …’ He searched for the right words. ‘If one wishes to keep control of the dragon.’
The Gascon nodded distractedly.
‘Your would-be assassins could not linger, which certainly saved your life,’ said La Donna. ‘They still had much else to do.’
And then she recounted how two winged dracs – the same two, no doubt – had assassinated Pontevedra at the Hôtel des Ambassadeurs, prompting them to come and see about him. ‘So they dared,’ said the dragon. ‘The Arcana dared to strike at the Black Claw …’
‘And at the Guardians.’
‘Unfortunately, I’m afraid that they will dare do much worse before tomorrow, madame.’
‘Did you hear that?’ asked Marciac, cocking an ear.
The Primordial had first flown over Paris at a fairly low altitude, making circles and bellowing. Then, as the bells of the capital joined together to sound the tocsin, the Parisians surprised in their sleep had sought to comprehend what was going on before lifting alarmed gazes towards the great black dragon which flew over their heads again and again, describing great loops in the night sky but not doing more than bellowing occasionally, its black scales gleaming in the light of the moon and stars.
The uncertainty of the population, however, did not last.
It gave way to horror when the Primordial began to belch its destructive fire, pulverising rooftops and seeding immense blazes at random across the city.
Reynault d’Ombreuse and his detachment of light cavalry left Val-de-Grâce at a fast trot. Accompanied by La Fargue and Leprat, the Black Guards rode up rue du Faubourg-Saint-Jacques as the neighbourhood became agitated, and the residents’ anxiety turned to fear. The dragon seemed to be sparing the faubourgs, but for how long? Should they wait, or try to go now? Save their lives, but leave their dwellings and worldly goods behind, perhaps to be pillaged in their absence?
Reynault had had the foresight to send one of his men ahead. The troops thus found the Saint-Jacques gate open to them, but were forced to slow down nevertheless. Within the city walls, the streets were thronged. Houses were burning and the roar of fires was mingled with cries and sobs, along with the deafening din of all the city’s bells pealing out at once. People deserted their homes, taking whatever they could with them. Others fought the flames with the inadequate means were at hand, or tried to help their neighbours. Shouts advised the inhabitants to flee, to stay, to take refuge in the cellars, to go the churches to pray, or to run towards the banks of the Seine. Jostling became brawls. Some poor wretches were trampled. Leprat saw a woman, babe in arms, throw herself from a second-storey window of a house on fire.
They often had to force passage through the crowds.
Reynault, La Fargue, and the riders at the head of the column had no choice but to push their horses into the innocents they knocked down, the imperative being to reach Notre-Dame as quickly as possible. In this fashion, the detachment reached the Petit Châtelet, which guarded the bridge leading to the Ile de la Cité. As they were crossing the smaller arm of the Seine river, Leprat exclaimed:
‘LOOK!’
In the sky, the Primordial was no longer alone.
Mounted on white wyverns, the White Wolves of Saint Georges surrounded it, harassing it, drawing its attention, dodging away, goading it again and again with their draconite blades. They were taking every risk to drive the creature mad. But at least it was sparing Paris as long as they kept it distracted. At least it was directing its incandescent spurts at them rather than at the city below.
Behind Reynault, the Black Guards were cheering them on.
&nbs
p; ‘We need to hurry!’ he ordered, breaking the mood. ‘The sisters can only offer us a brief respite!’
The Ile de la Cité, too, had become a chaos of flames, cries, and terror. Making their way through the crush, Reynault and his men took rue Neuve-Notre-Dame which led straight to the cathedral and its beautiful twin towers. A row of three terraced houses was burning, and as the façades threatened to collapse into the street, the column urged their horses to pass by, braving the torrid swirls of hot coals and ash.
At last they reached the cathedral’s narrow forecourt.
Men, women, children, and old people had gathered there. Seeking refuge in Notre-Dame, they had come up against a wall of Black Guards on horseback, who, impassive, with their swords at their sides and their musket butts resting on their thighs, held their mounts in place with a steady hand and would not let anyone approach the cathedral. Fear and anger on the one hand, and intransigence on the other, threatened to provoke a riot. Fists were being raised among the rancorous crowd. Two or three stones had already flown through the air.
Prudently, Reynault d’Ombreuse skirted the forecourt and led his troops alongside the cathedral to the southern entrance, or Saint-Étienne portal. This was also guarded, but as it was protected by the episcopal palace, the immediate area around it was relatively peaceful. La Fargue and Leprat dismounted with the rest of the column. They alone, however, followed Reynault inside.
Within Notre-Dame, there was a strange atmosphere of calm.
Thirty metres tall and ten spans long, the immense nave was deserted, as were the side aisles, the transept, and the crossing where four imposing pillars rose directly to the vault far above. The air seemed to be vibrating. The silence, in fact, was resonating softly with an incantation whispered with fervour by a group of kneeling Chatelaines in the choir, located behind the high altar. There was magic in their prayer. It gave off a power which set one’s nerves on edge.
Discreet but vigilant sentinels, Black Guards were posted at the doors and in front the altar steps. Calling one of them over, Reynault charged the soldier with conducting Captain La Fargue before Mère d’Aussaint. But he requested that Leprat remain by his side: it was clear he would soon have need of an experienced officer.
