by Alex Archer
And Auguste had enjoyed his years collaborating with the man. It was satisfying work, though it was far from fulfilling. He knew history, and read much, and had ideas. He was a born treasure hunter, if only on paper. But now he had little to claim as assets beyond a small apartment on the Left Bank.
His financial straits had forced him to draw up a document that would ensure Alexandre pay him one hundred thousand livres over the next six years to keep Auguste quiet about what works, exactly, they had collaborated on. Auguste then agreed to renounce all claims to future royalties.
He simply wanted the monies owed to him. Yes, he understood that Alexandre was no better off than him, but Dumas had squandered not only his own money, but also that which should have been paid to Auguste for his work in the first place. That damn château Dumas had built in Saint-Germainen-Laye being such folly. He was generous, yes, but recklessly so. It was almost as if the man did not know the value of things.
Alexandre agreeably signed the document. It had stunned Auguste at the time. But he and Dumas had been true friends over the years; perhaps his former partner had turned over a new leaf.
It had been over a year. Dumas had made no attempts to contact Auguste. No money had made it into Auguste’s hands. He should have expected as much. Blood from a stone and all that. He’d been forced to start court proceedings. Dumas denounced him as a rogue and cheat. There was no way to win against one so famous and popular with all of France.
It was on a particular evening, as he whiled away a miserable defeat in a local tavern, that Auguste remembered the map, copied carefully from Nicolas Fouquet’s files while researching the musketeer stories. A map François Mansart had drawn up for Queen Anne. It would lead a very lucky musketeer beneath the labyrinths and catacombs on the Left Bank to a royal treasure.
Auguste suspected Fouquet had intended to go after the treasure himself, but he had been waylaid when arrested for embezzlement. And having ruled out d’Artagnan retrieving the cache, Auguste had the smallest hope that the queen’s treasure might still be intact.
It could really exist.
There was no possible way to navigate the keyless map, but Auguste had an idea that it was somewhere close to the Val-de-Grâce. Where else?
It would be an arduous venture, crawling about beneath the city with no means to navigate the twisting passages on the map. But he was desperate. After breaking ties with Dumas, he quickly found that no publisher was interested in what Auguste Maquet had to write. Who was he?
He tapped the box Dumas had given him. Painted white and flourished with ridiculous commercial detail. A trinket designed to promote the book. All For One, One For All danced around the top. It was worthless, as Dumas’s friendship had turned out to be.
“To a successful venture,” Auguste said, and he raised his last bottle of Anjou wine to his lips.
Seventeen days later, Auguste Maquet retired to a quiet countryside estate near Dourdan. The motto engraved across the decorative stone ribbon over the doorway read Selon Mes Mérites.
“As I deserve.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-2447-0
SWORDSMAN’S LEGACY
Copyright © 2008 by Worldwide Library.
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