The man had recited this act of contrition in a single breath, like a practised speech, and Ballardieu had followed the tirade with regular shakes of his head and the synchronous movements of his lips.
The result appeared to satisfy him.
“Very good, lout. Here, take back your leg.”
“Thank you, monsieur.”
“But you forgot to mention your ugly mug, which is-”
“-so foul it turns milk into piss. I’m sorry, monsieur. Should I start again?”
“I don’t know. Your repentance seems sincere to me, but…”
Ballardieu questioned Agnes with a look.
She simply stared at him, dumbstruck.
“No,” he said again. “Madame la baronne is right: that will suffice. The punishment must be just and not cruel if it is meant to be a lesson.”
“Thank you, monsieur.”
Ballardieu rose, stretched, emptied his flagon of wine in two swallows, and threw it over his shoulder. At the end of a beautiful arc through the air, the aforementioned flagon bounced off the pedlar’s head, who was still sitting imprisoned in his wicker pannier.
“Good!” cried Ballardieu joyfully, rubbing his hands together. “Shall we go?”
Behind him, the stunned pedlar tipped over onto his side like an overturned basket.
22
Alerted by her son, the woman appeared on the threshold of the thatched cottage to see the rider who had just arrived. With a word, she ordered her son to go and bring her something from inside. He was quick to obey, returning with a wheel-lock pistol which he handed to his mother.
“Go and hide, Tonin.”
“But mother-”
“Go and hide under the bed and don’t come out unless I call you.”
The afternoon was drawing to a close, with a faint warm breeze in the air. There were no other dwellings anywhere around the cottage for as far as the eye could see. The nearest village was a good mile away, and the road leading there passed by some distance away. Even pedlars and sellers of almanacs only rarely stopped off to visit them. In this lonely corner of the French countryside, the inhabitants were by and large abandoned to their own devices.
Remaining at the door alone, the woman checked that the pistol was loaded and that the gunpowder in the chamber was dry. Then she let the weapon hang at the end of her arm, slightly behind her body, out of the rider’s sight as he entered the yard where a few hens pecked at the brown sun-beaten ground.
She barely nodded when Antoine Leprat greeted her from his mount.
“I should like to water my horse. And I would be glad to pay you for a glass of wine.”
She studied him for a long while without saying a word.
Badly shaven, grimy, and bedraggled, he seemed exhausted and hardly inspired either confidence or fear. He was armed: pistols were tucked in the holsters on his saddle and a curious white rapier hung at his side-his right side, as though he were left-handed. His night-blue doublet was open over a sweat-stained shirt and its sleeve, up by the shoulder, had a nasty gash through which a recent bandage could be glimpsed. Fresh blood had trickled over his hand, a sure sign that his wound had reopened.
“Where are you going?” asked the woman.
“To Paris.”
“By these roads, you won’t reach Paris before nightfall.”
“I know.”
She continued to study him.
“You’re wounded.”
“Yes.”
After his battle with Malencontre and his hired killers, Leprat had not immediately realised that he was bleeding. In the heat of the action, he had not noticed which of his adversaries had cut his arm. Nor had he felt any pain at the time. In fact, the wound had only begun to trouble him when he saw the threads of blood running from his sleeve and making his right hand sticky. It wasn’t particularly dangerous, but the gash deserved medical attention. Leprat had simply applied a makeshift bandage and immediately returned to the road.
“An unlucky encounter,” he explained.
“With brigands?”
“No. Assassins.”
The woman didn’t blink.
“Are you being followed?”
“I was being followed. I don’t know if I still am.”
Since leaving the staging post Leprat had followed the minor roads which, although not the shortest route, reduced the risk of being ambushed. He travelled alone and his wound made him easy prey for ordinary brigands. But also he feared there was another ambush laid for him along the Paris road, set by those who had put the mercenaries on his trail.
“I will see to your wound,” said the woman, no longer making any effort to conceal the pistol she held. “But I don’t want you to stay.”
“I ask only for a bucket of water for my horse and a glass of wine for myself.”
“I will see to your wound,” she repeated. “I will look after you, and then you will leave. Come in.”
He followed her into the house, whose interior consisted of one large, dark, and low-ceilinged room, poor but clean, with a few pieces of furniture on the hard-earth floor.
“You can come out now, Tonin,” the woman called.
While her son climbed out from beneath the bed and offered a timid smile to the stranger, she prepared a basin of water and clean linen cloth, all the while keeping the pistol close at hand.
Leprat waited until she pointed him to a bench before sitting down.
“My name is Leprat,” he said.
“Genevieve Rolain.”
“And I’m Tonin!”
“Hello, Tonin,” said Leprat with a smile.
“Are you a gentleman?” asked the boy.
“I am.”
“And a soldier?”
“Yes.”
“My father was a soldier, too. Of the Picardy regiment.”
“A very old and very prestigious regiment.”
“And you, monsieur? In which regiment do you serve?”
Predicting the reaction he would provoke, Leprat announced: “I serve in a company of His Majesty’s mounted musketeers.”
“With the King’s Musketeers?” Tonin marvelled. “Really? Did you hear, mother? A musketeer!”
“Yes, Tonin. You’re shouting quite loudly enough for me to hear you-”
“Do you know the king, monsieur? Have you ever spoken to him?”
“A few times.”
“Go and water monsieur the musketeer’s horse,” Genevieve interrupted, placing a basin of water on the table.
“But mother?”
“Now, Antoine.”
The boy knew it was never a good sign when his mother switched from “Tonin” to “Antoine.”
“Yes, mother… Will you still tell me about the king, monsieur?”
“We’ll see.”
Delighted by this prospect, Tonin left the house.
“You have a lovely little boy,” said Leprat.
“Yes. He’s at that stage where they dream of nothing but glory and adventure.”
“It is a stage which does not always pass with the coming of manhood.”
“And thus his father died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, madame. He fell in battle?”
“Soldiers are quicker to die of hunger, cold, or disease than a thrust from a sword… No, monsieur, it was the ranse which took my husband during a siege.”
“The ranse,” Leprat murmured, as though evoking an old and dreaded enemy…
It behaved like a virulent disease, and originated from dragons and their magic. The dragons-or more accurately their distant descendants of human appearance-suffered little from it, but the men and women who frequented their company for too long a period were rarely spared. The first symptom was a small mark on the skin, scarcely more alarming than a beauty spot, and which often went unnoticed in an age when people did not wash and never took off their shirts. The mark grew, becoming purplish in colour and rough to the touch. Sometimes it would slowly develop black veins and begin to crack open, oozing pus, while deeper tumours would develop underneath. This was known as the “Great ranse.” Then the patient became contagious and felt the first pains, the first lumps, the first deformities, and the first monstrosities…