Pierre Pevel - By The Alchemist in the Shadows Page 0,21
in bewildered surprise. Amused, the other man smiled at him, arms crossed,
in a slightly mocking fashion but with an affectionate gleam in his eye. He was a bookseller called Jules Bertaud, about fifty years old. He'd known Laincourt for almost a year now, and already nurtured paternal feelings for him. They shared a taste for knowledge, for books, and more particularly, for treatises on draconic magic which were a discreet speciality of Bertaud's bookshop.
Lastly, they were both from Lorraine, which had helped to forge a bond between them.
'It is your turn, Arnaud . . .'
Once a week, Laincourt and Bertaud convened at the latter's establishment to talk and play trictrac.
Since the weather was fine today, they had installed themselves in the pleasantly sunlit rear courtyard of the bookshop, which was located on rue Perdue in the neighbourhood surrounding Place Maubert, where booksellers and printers abounded.
'Oh yes . . .' said Laincourt, returning to the game. 'It is my turn, to be sure. I need to roll, don't I?'
he asked as he seized the dice cup.
His gesture immediately drew Marechal's full attention.
In addition to the gaunt old dragonnet, the match had acquired another spectator: Daunois, a ruddy-faced man in his forties, with the physique of a stevedore and a rather sinister-looking face. In his case, however, appearances were deceiving. A printer by trade, Joseph Daunois possessed a fine wit that was intelligent, cultivated, and sometimes cruelly ironic. He and Bertaud were good friends who nonetheless could never resist trading barbed insults with one another.
The printer stood at the threshold of his workshop, and behind him one glimpsed workers busy with their tasks. But above all, one heard the creaking of the big hand presses and smelled the paper and fresh ink which rather effectively countered the city stinks that had worsened in the hot weather.
'Yes, really,' Bertaud confirmed. 'And you rolled a seven.'
'Seven,' repeated Laincourt.
'Yes, seven.'
'Since he's telling you so!' interjected Daunois as he came over to join them.
His massive body cast a shadow over most of the small square table.
'Just give me a few moments to think,' Laincourt begged, leaning over the trictrac board.
He said nothing, but it took him a few seconds to recall that his pieces were the white ones.
And to discover that he was in serious difficulty.
'That's right,' the printer said jokingly. 'Think it over . . . We wouldn't want to you to make some hasty mistake—'
'You know,' added Bertaud, 'it's no good having me abandon my bookshop and customers to play with you if you take no interest in the game . . .'
The young man made to reply, but Daunois beat him to it, in a sarcastic tone:
'Yes, because don't you know, Arnaud, that Bertaud's bookshop is positively packed? There's an impatient mob milling at the door and threatening to break through the windows. They're beating them away with sticks, riots are breaking out, and the city watch will soon be turning up to restore order. It's a right state of panic—'
The truth was that, even if Bertaud was not facing financial ruin, his shop was not well patronised.
'Have you already spoiled all the paper delivered to you this morning?' retorted the bookseller.
'Don't you have some handsome inkblots to inspect? Some botched print you need to perfect? But perhaps I'm being a trifle unfair, seeing as in your shop, you press more fingers than pages . . .'
He had risen as he spoke and, since he was rather small, did not make nearly as impressive a figure as Daunois standing before him. But he held himself firm and his gaze did not waver.
'Your witticisms only amuse yourself, bookseller!' replied Daunois, swelling his chest.
'And you, printer, bore everyone with your remarks!'
Their voices rose while Laincourt, not paying the slightest heed to their altercation, studied his pieces, wondering how to obtain as many points as possible. A trictrac board closely resembled that used for backgammon, with the same division into two sides and the same series of twenty-four black and white long triangles along which one moved the counters. But trictrac was a game with complex rules, where the aim was not simply to remove your counters as quickly as possible. Instead, players earned points as they progressed in order to accumulate a pre-determined score.
Laincourt lent an ear to the discussion just as Daunois was growling:
'Is that so? Is that so?'
'You heard me!'
'So how is it, then, that people say what they do?'