He had finished a slice of pheasant pie when a lackey, taking advantage of one of the pauses between dishes, murmured a few words into his ear. The marquis listened without betraying any emotion or moving a muscle. Then he nodded.
A little later, Malencontre entered.
His manner was defeated; he was filthy and bedraggled, stank like a stable, had his hair stuck to his face and his left hand trussed up in a grimy bandage.
Gagniere accorded him one clinical glance.
“I gather,” he said, “that all did not go according to plan.”
A stuffed quail was placed before him, which he proceeded to meticulously carve up.
“Your men?” he asked him.
“Dead. All of them. Killed to a man.”
“By one man?”
“Not just any man! It was Leprat. I recognised his rapier.”
Gagniere lifted a morsel of quail to his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.
“Monsieur Leprat,” he said to himself. “Monsieur Leprat and his famous ivory rapier…”
“A musketeer!” insisted Malencontre as though that justified his failure. “And one of the best!”
“Did you think the king would entrust his secret dispatches to comical lackeys…?”
“No, but-”
“The letter?”
“He still has it.”
The marquis finished his quail while Malencontre watched his expressionless young face in silence. Then, having crossed his fork and spoon on his plate, he rang a small bell and said: “You can go, Malencontre. And take proper care of your hand; you’ll be less useful to me without it.”
A lackey entered to serve him, and the assassin, in leaving, passed a servant who carried a sealed missive on a plate. He presented it to Gagniere, who carefully unsealed and opened it.
It was written in the vicomtesse de Malicorne’s hand.
Your man has failed. The courier will arrive at the Saint-Denis gate before midnight. The letter must not reach the Louvre.
The marquis refolded the paper and allowed himself one last mouthful of wine.
At the same moment Leprat, travelling alone, was riding into the sunset on a dusty and empty road.
Lying against his heart, in the folds of his shirt, beneath his dust, sweat, and dried bloodstained doublet, he carried a secret piece of diplomatic mail which he had sworn to defend even at the cost of his life. Exhausted and wounded, weakened by the illness which patiently ate away at him, he galloped toward Paris and nightfall, unaware of the dangers which awaited him.
1
Huge torches lit the Saint-Denis gate when the chevalier Leprat d’Orgueil arrived there an hour after nightfall. Tired, grimy, his shoulders slumped and his back in torment, he was scarcely in a better state than his horse. As for that poor beast, its head drooped, it was struggling to put one foot in front of the other, and was in danger of stumbling with every step.
“We’re here, my friend,” said Leprat. “You’ve certainly earned the right to a week’s rest in the stable.”
Despite his own fatigue he held his pass out with a firm hand, without removing his plumed felt hat or dismounting. Distrustful, the city militia officer first lifted his lantern to take a better look at this armed horseman with a disturbing, dangerous air: unshaven cheeks, drawn features, and a hard gaze. Then he studied the paper and upon seeing the prestigious signature at the bottom, he displayed a sudden deference, saluted, and ordered the gate opened.
Leprat thanked him with a nod of the head.
The Saint-Denis gate was a privileged point of access to the city of Paris. Pressed up against the new rampart and fortifications to the west that now encircled the older faubourgs, it led into rue Saint-Denis which crossed the entire width of the city’s Right Bank from north to south, stretching as far as Le Chatelet and the Pont au Change bridge. During the day this almost straight arterial road teemed with turbulent, noisy life. Once twilight fell, however, it became a narrow trench that was quickly filled with mute, menacing shadows. Indeed, all of Paris offered this dangerous visage to the night.
Leprat soon realised that he was being watched.
His instincts warned him first. Then the peculiar quality of an expectant silence. And, finally, a furtive movement on a rooftop. But it was only when he drew level with La Trinite hospital that he saw the barrel of a pistol poking out between two chimneys and he suddenly dug his heels into his mount.
“Yah!”
Startled, his horse found a last reserve of energy to surge forward.
Gun shots rang out.
The balls whistled past, missing their targets.
But after a few strides at full gallop, the horse ran straight into an obstacle which slammed into its forelegs. Neighing in pain the animal fell heavily, never to rise again.
Leprat freed himself from the stirrups. The shock of impact was hard, and a sharp pain tore at his wounded arm. Grimacing, he got to his knees-
– and saw the chain.
Parisian streets had capstans at either end which made it possible to stretch a chain across the roadway-an old mediaeval device designed to obstruct the passage of the rabble in the event of a riot. These chains, which could not be unwound without a key, were the responsibility of officers of the militia. They were big and solid, too low to stop a rider but high enough to oblige the horse to jump. And in the darkness, they had been turned into a diabolical trap.
Leprat realised then that the gunmen’s main objective had not been to shoot him, and that this was the true ambush, on the corner of rue Ours, not far from one of the rare hanging lanterns lit by the city authorities at twilight, which burned until their fat tallow candles were extinguished.
Three men emerged in the pale glow and more were arriving. Gloved and booted, armed with swords, they wore hats, long dark cloaks, and black scarves to hide their faces.
Leprat got to his feet with difficulty, unsheathed his ivory rapier, and turned to face the first of the men charging toward him. He dodged one and let him pass, carried on by his momentum. He blocked the second’s attack and shoved the third with his shoulder. He struck, pierced a throat, and recoiled in extremis to avoid a blade. Two more masked killers presented themselves. The chevalier d’Orgueil broke away and counterattacked at once. He seized one of his new assailants by the collar and threw him against a wall while continuing to defend himself with his sword. He parried, riposted, and parried again, endeavouring to set the rhythm of the engagement, to repulse or elude one adversary in time to take on the next. Although being left-handed gave him a small advantage, the reopened wound on his arm handicapped him and his adversaries had the advantage of greater numbers: when one faltered, another took his place. Finally, he skewered the shoulder of one and, with a violent blow of his pommel, smashed in the temple of another. This attack earned him a vicious cut to his thigh, but he was able to step back as the combatant with the wounded shoulder fled and his partner fell dead on the muddy pavement.
The two remaining assassins paused for a moment. They moved prudently, with slow gliding steps, to corner the chevalier. He placed himself en garde, his back to the wall, careful to keep both of them in his field of vision. His arm and thigh were giving him pain. Sweat prickled in his eyes. As the assassins seemed unwilling to take the initiative, Leprat guessed that they were expecting reinforcements, which were not long in arriving: three men were coming down rue Saint-Denis at a run. No doubt the same men who had fired on him from the rooftops.