Pierre Pevel - By The Alchemist in the Shadows Page 0,26

a corner. Not so long ago, a hurdy-gurdy player had performed his melancholy airs here in the evening. But he would be coming here no more.

Arnaud de Laincourt, however, still came.

He was sitting alone at a table upon which Marechal, roaming as freely as his little chain would allow, was scratching at old wax incrustations in the wood. With a grey stoneware pitcher and a glass before him, the cardinal's former spy had a lost, distant expression on his face.

And a sad one.

Despite himself, he was thinking of all the sacrifices he had agreed to make in His Eminence's service, and the little thanks he had received in return. He was thinking back on all the years he had spent living amidst lies, suspicion, betrayal, intrigue, and murder. He was thinking of that deceitful world where rest was never permitted, and which had little by little eaten away at his soul. He was thinking of all those who had lost their lives there. And in particular, of an old hurdy-gurdy player who had left nothing behind but a decrepit dragonnet.

Don't torment yourself on my account, boy.

Can't I at least shed a tear for you?

Of course you can. But I won't have you blaming yourself for my death. You know it wasn't your fault that I perished.

But I'm still alive. While you—

So what?

Laincourt looked at the empty stool in front of him.

It was the very same stool on which the hurdy-gurdy player used to take a seat during each of their clandestine meetings. The young man imagined that it was occupied once again. He had no trouble at all envisioning the old man, wearing his filthy rags and carrying his battered instrument on a strap around his neck. He was smiling, but his face was bruised and bloody. Laincourt could no longer remember him any other way than this, the way he had seen the hurdy-gurdy player for the very last time.

I've seen the man in the beige doublet again. The one who's been following me around these last few days and doesn't seem to care if he's seen. He was on the Pont Neuf. And I know he came by Bertaud's bookshop later . . .

You can't avoid meeting him much longer.

Bah!

Just because you've finished with intrigues doesn't mean they've finished with you. The world doesn't work that way . . . And besides, you were wrong.

Wrong?

Wrong to spurn the cardinal's offer.

The cardinal did not offer me anything.

Come now, boy! Do you think La Fargue would have proposed your joining his Blades without, at the very least, His Eminence's approval . . . ? You should not have refused him.

Suddenly weary, Laincourt looked away.

To the others present in the tavern, he was just a young man whose dragonnet was patiently waiting for him to finish his drinking.

To travel from the Louvre to the Palais-Cardinal, all that was necessary was to take rue d'Autriche, then turn left on Saint-Honore and follow to Richelieu's official residence.

A first obstacle, however, was posed in leaving the Louvre itself, which had been a mediaeval fortress before it became a palace. Its courtyard therefore had only one public exit: an archway so dark that one winter morning a gentleman had jostled King Henri IV there without even realising it.

Twelve metres long, this archway led out to the east. It was the main access to the palace, the one used by royal processions, but also by a crowd of people that gathered before it from morning till night. Flanked by two old towers, it overlooked a nauseating ditch which could only be crossed by means of a narrow bridge defended by a massive fortified gate, known as the Bourbon gate.

Having left the Louvre through this gate, however, other obstacles still lay ahead. The gate opened onto rue d'Autriche, a lane running perpendicular to the Seine, between the Ecole quay to the south and rue Saint-Honore to the north. In Paris, the narrowness of the city's streets made the passage of traffic difficult everywhere. But the very modest rue d'Autriche was the place where all those seeking to enter the Louvre crossed paths with all those leaving the palace. To make matters worse, its pavement was always filled with coaches, since carriages were denied permission to enter the precincts of the palace, except in the case of certain grand personages, foreign dignitaries, or for reasons of health. Thus the resulting jams,

collisions, and confusion were a permanent feature of rue d'Autriche, where people spent more time shuffling in place