Outside, Marciac lifted a grave-looking face toward her, which worried her because the Gascon tended to be one who smiled in the face of adversity.

"I need you, Gabrielle," he said.

He was holding a tearful young woman's hand.

16.

The coach picked Rochefort up at Place de la Croix-du-Trahoir and, after a short conversation with the comte de Pontevedra, it left him in front of the scaffolding covering the facade of the Palais-Cardinal. The amba.s.sador extraordinary of Spain had demanded this discreet meeting urgently. He had promised that he had important news and he had not been lying.

La Fargue and Saint-Lucq were waiting in an antechamber of the Palais-Cardinal. They were silent and pensive, aware of what was at stake during the interview His Eminence was about to grant them. Their chances of rescuing Agnes lay with Malencontre, a man Richelieu was keeping locked away and was not likely to give up to them easily-and they had no guarantee of success if he did.

After some considerable hesitation, Saint-Lucq rose from a bench and went to join La Fargue, who stood gazing out a window.

"I found this at Cecile's house," he said in a confidential tone.

He held out an unsealed letter on a yellowed piece of paper.

The old gentleman lowered his eyes to the missive and finally took it with a doubtful air.

"What is it?"

"Read it, captain."

He read, looking stiff and grim, haunted by old torments that he refused to show on his countenance. Then he refolded the letter, slipped it into his sleeve, and said: "You also read this."

"It was open and I had no way of knowing its contents."

"Indeed."

"I haven't said anything to the others."

"Thank you."

La Fargue resumed looking out at the cardinal's gardens, where workers were finishing digging the basins. Trees rooted in large sacks of earth were arriving in carts.

"Captain, did you know you had a daughter?"

"I knew it."

"Why did you hide it?"

"To protect her and safeguard her mother's honour."

"Oriane?"

Oriane de Louveciennes, the wife of the man who-until his act of treason at the siege of La Roch.e.l.le-had been La Fargue's best friend.

Saint-Lucq nodded, impa.s.sive behind his spectacles' round, red lenses.

"Why do you think Oriane wrote this letter so many years ago?"

"No doubt so that Anne might one day know who her real father was."

"Perhaps your daughter came to Paris in the hope of meeting you."

"Yes. Perhaps."

A door creaked and Rochefort pa.s.sed through the antechamber with a quick step without seeming to pay them any notice. Unlike them, he did not have to wait before being received by the cardinal.

"I don't like the look of that," said the half-blood.

In his large and luxurious study, Richelieu was discussing matters with Pere Joseph when Rochefort entered and interrupted them. They were speaking of Laincourt, of whom they had heard nothing.

"Please forgive my intrusion, monseigneur. But I have some important news."

"We are listening."

"The comte de Pontevedra has just informed me that the chevalier d'Ireban is in Madrid. Although he was thought to have disappeared here in France, in fact he decided to return to Spain by his own means and without letting anyone know."

The cardinal and Pere Joseph exchanged a long look: they did not believe a word of what they had just heard. Then Richelieu settled back into his armchair with a sigh.

"Whether it's true or not," said the Capuchin monk, "the mission entrusted to your Blades no longer has any reason to continue, monseigneur...."

Richelieu nodded thoughtfully.

He nevertheless took time to reflect before declaring: "You are right, father. Have Captain La Fargue come in."

17.

Back at the Hotel de l'epervier, where Marciac had returned just a quarter of an hour before them, La Fargue and Saint-Lucq found the rest of the Blades gathered together in the main room.

"Richelieu refused," announced the captain upon entering.

Dismayed, they all fell silent as La Fargue poured himself a gla.s.s of wine and emptied it in one gulp.

"Does he know ..." Ballardieu started to say in a voice buzzing with anger. "Does he know that Agnes is in danger? Does he know that she is being held prisoner by the Black Claw? Does he know-?"

"He knows!" said La Fargue sharply.

Then he added in a quieter tone: "He knows all that because I told him."

"And despite that, he still refuses to return Malencontre."

"Yes."

"This time, it has not taken His Eminence long to desert us," said Leprat whose dark gaze was lost in a limbo where he saw the outline of La Roch.e.l.le standing before him.

"But there's more, isn't there?" guessed Almades, standing in a corner where he leaned with his arms crossed. "Richelieu was not simply satisfied with refusing to allow you to speak with Malencontre...."

"No," admitted the Blades' captain.

He paused for a moment and then said: "Our mission has been cancelled. The chevalier d'Ireban has supposedly turned up recently in Madrid. Therefore we no longer have any reason to continue searching here in Paris."

"But Ireban does not exist!" exclaimed Marciac. "He and Cecile were always one and the same person! How can he be back in Spain now?"

"Nevertheless, this is the case. At least, if one believes the amba.s.sador extraordinary of Spain."

"It's absurd!" objected Leprat. "The cardinal can't be taken in by this lie-"

"It was at Spain's request that Richelieu entrusted us with this mission, and it is once again at her request that he has called us off. The stakes of the negotiations that are currently taking place in the Louvre go well beyond us. It was a matter of pleasing Spain. Now it is a matter of not displeasing her...."

"And we are suddenly asked to forget all about the existence of Ireban," said Marciac. "And about Malencontre. And about the Black Claw which is scheming in the very heart of the kingdom!"

"Those are our orders," insisted La Fargue.

"Are we also to forget about Agnes?" Ballardieu demanded.

"There is no question of that."

Leprat rose and, despite his wounded leg, could not stop himself from pacing back and forth.

"Malencontre remains our best hope of finding Agnes quickly," he said, thinking out loud.

"The cardinal only deigned to tell us that Malencontre was being held at Le Chatelet, awaiting transfer to the prison in the Chateau de Vincennes," indicated Saint-Lucq.

Leprat stopped pacing to and fro.

"I will go and speak with Malencontre," he declared.

"But he's being held in solitary confinement!" the half-blood pointed out. "No one can see him without a signed order."

"I am only on leave from the Musketeers. I can still wear the cape and monsieur de Treville will not refuse to help me."

They all fell silent while they considered this idea.

"All right," said La Fargue. "Let's suppose that you manage to reach Malencontre. Then what? You have nothing to propose in exchange for his information."

"Just let me have two words with him," suggested Ballardieu, balling his fists.

"No," replied Leprat. "Malencontre and I are almost old acquaintances by now. Let us do this my way...."

Later, while the Blades were getting ready, La Fargue took Marciac by the elbow.

"Did you find Cecile?"

"Yes. At the Saint-Louis hospital, at the bedside of the man she loves, just as I guessed. She was listening at the door when you announced that he was dying there. She fled the house in order to be with him."

"Is she in a safe place at present?"

"She is in rue de la Grenouillere. No one will go looking for her in a brothel and Gabrielle and the girls will take good care of her."

"I thought you and Gabrielle had ... ?"

"A falling out ... ?" said the Gascon with a grin. "Yes, we did, for a while.... Let's just say that she did not particularly appreciate the fact that I was returning to active service under your orders. She remembers how things ended the last time only too well." He fell silent, thinking, and then with a shrug concluded: "Bah! She can always marry a haberdasher, if that's what she wants."

He was turning away in a fairly good mood, when the captain called him back: "Marciac!"

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

Puzzled, the Gascon frowned but said nothing.

18.

At Le Chatelet, the guards and other personnel were relieved at five o'clock in the evening. Wearing his blue cape with its silver fleur-de-lis cross, Leprat presented himself twenty minutes before the hour at the admissions counter with an authorisation signed by the hand of monsieur de Treville, captain of His Majesty's Musketeers, and was led to Malencontre's place of detention. The man was being held in Le Puits, or the Well, one of the individual cells in the gaol's lower depths. There reigned a dark and putrid dankness that would have undermined the health and courage of even the most solid of men.

The gaoler left his lantern with Leprat, saying that he would remain within earshot at the other end of the corridor and then shut the door. The light it gave off was dim, barely illuminating the miserable hole, but it sufficed to dazzle the prisoner. Filthy and tired-looking, stinking of urine and refuse, he was sitting on a carpet of rancid straw, his back toward the wall to which he was chained by the wrists. His position forced him to keep his arms raised, his long pale blond hair hanging before his face.

"Leprat?" he asked, squinting. "Is that you, chevalier?"

"It's me."

"You are very kind to pay me a visit. Would you like some foul water? I think I also have an old crust of bread that the rats haven't carried off yet...."