"Everything now becomes clear," said the vicomtesse. "At least until the Cardinal's Blades entered the scene...."

Gagniere forced himself to contain his skepticism on the subject.

His a.s.sociate's obstinate tendency to see Richelieu's agents everywhere was becoming worrisome. Granted, her magic might be informing her of more than she was telling. But it was almost as if there were an old dispute between her and the Blades that obsessed and blinded her.

"Madame ..." he started to say in a reasonable tone. "Nothing indicates that-"

"And just who, according to you, rescued Pontevedra's daughter last night?" she interrupted. "Her saviour did not fall from the Moon, so far as I know. . And he was able enough to carry her off in the face of numerous opponents ... ! Courage, audacity, valour: the very mark of the Blades.... What? You still have doubts ... ?"

She had become uselessly worked up, as the gentleman's cautious silence made her realise. In order to calm and perhaps rea.s.sure herself, she opened a precious-looking casket set on a table beside her. It contained the Sphere d'ame, which she caressed with the tips of her fingers, her eyelids half closed.

She drew in a breath and then carefully explained: "Do me the favour of thinking the matter through. You are the comte de Pontevedra and you know that your daughter has fled to Paris-where she is perhaps under threat from the Black Claw. Now, there is nothing that France would refuse you, given the importance of the negotiations that you are conducting with her. Would you not seek help from the cardinal? And would you not demand that he mobilise his very best men?"

"Yes," Gagniere admitted reluctantly.

"The very best, meaning the Blades."

"I believe you."

"It's about time ... ! But what a shame that Pontevedra's daughter managed to evade us! What a lever she would have provided us against him!"

"All is perhaps not lost on that score. I sent Savelda to the girl's house, in rue de la Fontaine. He may find something there and, if not, it will at least keep him busy."

"Excellent initiative. We will thus have our hands free to prepare the ceremony this evening. Is everything ready at the castle?"

"We are applying ourselves to the task."

"Nothing must disturb our very first initiations, marquis. The Grand Lodge will not forgive us if there is the slightest sour note."

"I know that. However ..."

Gagniere, hesitant, left his sentence unfinished.

But as the vicomtesse was looking at him with a frown on her face, he continued: "We need now to discuss a delicate case, madame."

"Which is?

"Laincourt."

9.

Agnes de Vaudreuil cursed between her teeth when she discovered the empty cache in the bedroom floor.

Suspecting that Cecile wanted to recover something compromising from her home, Agnes had quickly and discreetly gone there to search the small house from top to bottom. To do so, she had hailed an empty sedan chair that was pa.s.sing on rue des Saints-Peres and asked the bearers to carry her to rue d'Orleans in faubourg Saint Victor, by way of rue de la Fontaine. She had paid in advance, climbed into the little cabin through the door at the front, between the two handles, and, as soon as the curtains were drawn, felt herself being lifted before she let herself be cradled by the steady rocking of the bearers' walking pace. As they pa.s.sed along rue de la Fontaine, she had opened a curtain slightly to identify the house Marciac had described and inspect its surroundings without being seen. She had seen nothing disquieting. Descending from the vehicle in rue d'Orleans, she had circled round to enter the premises from the rear, through the garden, remaining out of view of any watchers.

And now Agnes had to face up to two obvious facts. First, she had indeed guessed correctly about Cecile's intentions: she had been hiding something in her bedroom, something valuable enough to her that she wanted to return to the house despite the danger, even attempting to use her charms on Marciac to convince him to accompany her. And second, someone had pipped Agnes at the post and seized the prize before her.

But who?

The same men who had tried to abduct Cecile, no doubt.

Makeshift as it was, the cache in the floor was not large and offered no clues as to what it had contained. The best thing to do, therefore, would be to seek information from the princ.i.p.al interested party, Cecile herself. In any case, Agnes felt that the Blades-at La Fargue's request-had been too gentle with her. Granted, the young woman had been the victim of a brutal attempt to kidnap her and she did not seem prepared to face this sort of adventure. But the grat.i.tude which she displayed toward her new protectors did not extend as far as laying her true cards on the table. Now convinced of Cecile's duplicity, Agnes was determined not to tolerate it any longer.

To set her mind at rest, she continued to search the entire house. In vain. And when she pushed open the little door leading to the garden, Agnes suddenly found herself standing nose-to-nose with an armed, one-eyed man in black who-initially as surprised as Agnes-smiled at her in a sinister manner.

"Well, well!" he exclaimed with a strong Spanish accent. "So the little bird has returned to its nest...."

Agnes immediately understood.

She wore a plain dress, a thin brown coat, and a matching short cape with a hood. The modesty of her attire had been calculated: not knowing that she would have the luxury of making her journey in a sedan chair, the young baronne had left the Hotel de l'epervier thinking that she would have to walk to her destination, then loiter near the house while she scouted the surroundings. She had thus wished to go unnoticed and, to that end, the best thing was to seem neither too rich nor too poor. But Cecile could very well have been dressed in similar fashion. She and Agnes also had their beauty, their long, dark hair, and their youth in common, being only a few years apart. If the one-eyed man had never met either of them and had been given only a brief description of Cecile, he was entirely likely to mistake one woman for the other.

Agnes promptly adopted a fearful att.i.tude, as one would expect of a defenceless young woman who had just fallen into the hands of a menacing enemy. Besides, the one-eyed man was not alone. Some hired swordsmen with an evil look accompanied him.

"As Heaven is my witness," said the Spaniard, exhibiting the cruel signs of the ranse that had destroyed his eye and was ravaging his cheek, "I could never have hoped for so much in coming here.... My name is Savelda, Cecile."

"What do you want from me?"

"I don't know what's wanted of you and it isn't for me to decide. I can only promise that no harm will come to you if you follow us without making a struggle or noise. So, Cecile? Will you be reasonable?"

"Yes."

A few minutes later, Agnes found herself back on rue de la Fontaine, closely hemmed in by the hired swordsmen, with Savelda leading the way. It was there that she saw and recognised Saint-Lucq; wearing dark clothing and a sword at his side and discreetly positioned at the entrance to an alleyway, he observed the scene from behind his ever-present red spectacles.

Agnes's astonishment was such that she almost betrayed her emotion. All they needed was the half-blood for the Cardinal's Blades to be complete, but La Fargue had not announced his recruitment to anyone. Yet ... his presence here could not be mere chance? No doubt he was watching the house. Perhaps it had even been Saint-Lucq who had searched the premises and emptied the cache inside. It was ironic that it was her own fault they had missed one another: he could not have guessed that she was in the sedan chair that had pa.s.sed by in the street and then she had entered the house by the rear while he had been keeping his eye on the main facade out front.

Seeing Agnes being led away, Saint-Lucq was already taking a step toward her and reaching for his sword-if he hadn't lost any of his skills the matter would doubtless be quickly settled. Only Savelda could perhaps pose a problem. But the false captive stopped the half-blood in his tracks with a glance that she hoped he would comprehend.

Sometimes, throwing yourself into the lion's jaws was the only means of finding its den.

10.

La Fargue and Almades returned around noon covered in sweat, soot, and blood, the hooves of their horses suddenly filling the walled, cobbled courtyard with loud echoes that woke the Hotel de l'epervier from its sad torpor. They turned the care of their mounts over to old Guibot, who came hurrying as quickly as his wooden leg would allow, while they dashed up the front steps.

"War council, now!" shouted the captain as he burst into the main room of the house.

Leprat, trapped in his armchair by his wounded leg, was already there. Marciac joined them and for a brief moment there was expectant silence. Obviously, there had been an urgent new development, about which Leprat and the Gascon were both anxious to learn the nature, while La Fargue paced back and forth before finally asking: "And the others?"

"Agnes has gone out," said Marciac.

"Ballardieu?"

"Here," announced the old soldier, entering the room.

He had just arrived himself-he had even seen La Fargue and Almades pa.s.s him in the street at a rapid trot as he was returning from Palais de la Cite, where Saint-Lucq had shaken him off his tail.

"'Gone out'?" asked the captain, thinking of Agnes. "Gone out where?"

Receiving the same questioning look as Marciac, Leprat shrugged his shoulders: he didn't know anything about it.

"She's gone to search Cecile's house," explained the Gascon.

"Alone?" inquired Ballardieu in a worried tone.

"Yes."

"I'm going over there."

"No," ordered La Fargue, visibly upset. "You stay."

"But, captain ..."

"You're staying right here!"

Ballardieu was going to protest further but Almades placed a rea.s.suring hand on his shoulder.

"Agnes knows what she's doing."

Reluctantly, the old man subsided.

"Marciac," said La Fargue. "The doors."

Nodding, the Gascon closed all the exits to the room and when he finished the captain announced: "We found Castilla. Tortured and left for dead."

"Is he dead now?" Leprat wanted to know.

"No. But he's hardly better off for being alive. His tormenters spared him nothing. Almades and I rescued him at the last minute from a fire set to make him vanish. We took him straight to the Saint-Louis hospital which, fortunately, was close by."

"Did he speak?"

"Two words only," interjected Almades. "Garra negra. The Black Claw."

Everyone went quiet: they all knew what that meant.

The Black Claw was a secret society that was particularly powerful in Spain and its territories. It was not secret in the sense that its existence was unknown, but in that its members did not reveal their ident.i.ties. And for good reason. Directed by dragons who were avid to acquire power, the society stopped at nothing to further its ends. For a time, it had been thought to serve Spain. However, even though its most active and influential lodge was to be found in Madrid, its ambitions were not always in harmony with those of the Spanish crown. Sometimes they were even opposed. The masters of the Black Claw in truth wanted to plunge Europe into a state of chaos that would aid their plans to inst.i.tute an absolute draconic regime. A state of chaos that, in the end, would not spare the Spanish Court of Dragons.

Tentacular in nature, the Black Claw was nowhere as powerful as it was in Spain. It was nevertheless at work in the Netherlands, in Italy, and in Germany where it had established lodges which remained subordinate to the oldest and most dreaded of them all, the Grand Lodge in Madrid. As for France, so far she had eluded the society's clutches. Although the Black Claw sometimes hatched schemes within the French kingdom, it had never succeeded in implanting a lodge there.

"If the Black Claw is involved," said Leprat, "it explains why the cardinal suddenly called us back to service. It also means that the danger is great. And imminent."

"So this whole affair could just be a pretext to put us on the trail of the Black Claw?" ventured Marciac.

"I doubt that," answered La Fargue. "But the cardinal may know more than he has let on."

"So what are we to believe? And who?"

"Ourselves. We only believe in ourselves."

"That's a tune I've heard sung before...."

"I know."

"Back to the matter at hand," prompted Leprat, seeing that the company was rehashing its shared bad memories. "If the Black Claw is, like us, searching for the chevalier d'Ireban, it is no doubt because he is something more than the debauched son of a Spanish grandee."

"That much, we already guessed," interjected Marciac.

"So then, who is he?"

"Perhaps he and Castilla belonged to the Black Claw. If they betrayed it, they had every reason to flee Spain and seek refuge in France, where the Black Claw still enjoys little influence."

"If the Black Claw were after me," observed Almades in a grim tone, "I would not stop running until I reached the West Indies. And even then, I would stay on my guard."

"Castilla and Ireban might have less good sense than you, Anibal...."

"I'll grant you that."

"We still need to know," said Leprat, "what information the Black Claw wanted from Castilla and whether or not they obtained it."

"If he hadn't talked we would have found a dead body," a.s.serted La Fargue. "Judging by his sad state, he resisted as long as he could. He therefore had some important secrets to hide."

"Perhaps he was trying to protect Ireban."

"Or Cecile," suggested Ballardieu, who until then had remained quiet.

His remark gave rise to a pause. To some degree or other, all of them had noticed the curious att.i.tude La Fargue seemed to have adopted with regard to the young woman. Anyone else in similar circ.u.mstances would have been closely questioned by the Blades. But it was as if the captain wished to spare her for some obscure reason.

La Fargue understood the silent reproach being directed at him by his men.

"Very well," he said, a.s.suming his responsibilities. "Where is she?"

"As far as I know," said Marciac, "she's still in her room."

"Fetch her."