Pierre Pevel - By The Alchemist in the Shadows Page 0,28

short legs. Heavy and slow, they possessed colossal strength and could easily knock over a wall by accident or pass right through a house without changing pace. As stupid as they were placid, they made excellent draught animals. They could also be readily harnessed to hoist machinery at building sites.

And there was no lack of building sites in the vicinity of the Palais-Cardinal.

'Do the best you can,' said Richelieu before letting the curtain fall back into place.

But he had no illusions: there was simply no way of hurrying a tarasque when it crossed a street.

The cardinal considered the letter that Rochefort still held in his hand. Stained and dog-eared, it seemed to him thicker than a simple missive. No doubt there was something inside.

He did not touch it.

'Open it, please.'

The comte undid the seal and unfolded the letter with a certain degree of apprehension. The threat of a possible attempt against Cardinal Richelieu's life was never far from his mind. And poisons existed — born of draconic alchemy —

which, reduced to a very fine powder, could kill the first person who breathed them.

The letter from La Donna presented no such danger. On the other hand, what it actually contained prompted Rochefort to recoil in an instinctive, superstitious manner.

His reaction could not fail to interest the cardinal.

'Well, then?'

'Monseigneur, look . . .'

Richelieu lowered his eyes to peer at the object the other man was showing him, lying in the hollow of the unfolded letter. Still attached to the torn corner of a sheet of parchment, it was a seal in black wax stamped with the sign of the Grand Lodge of the Black Claw.

'Monseigneur ... Is that what I think it is?'

The cardinal took his time to examine it closely, and then nodded firmly.

'Most assuredly, Rochefort.'

'But how could La Donna have obtained it?'

'That would be a very interesting question to put to her, wouldn't it?'

And as his coach started to move again, Richelieu turned back to the closed curtain of his coach door, as if absorbed by some spectacle that only he could perceive.

3

Rochefort came by the Hotel de l'Epervier in the early evening. Upon entering the courtyard, he leapt from his saddle, threw his horse's reins to Andre, and dashed up the front steps of the mansion.

Inside, at the bottom of the great staircase, he came across Leprat who, after La Fargue, was probably his least favourite of the Blades. To make matters worse, the former musketeer couldn't bear to see Rochefort walk into the house as if it were his own. He was not one of the Blades and never would be. Leprat therefore gave him a silent, icy welcome.

The cardinal's henchman, in a hurry, paid no heed to this.

'Where's La Fargue?' he demanded.

Leprat pointed towards the main hall on the ground floor, which the Blades had converted into a fencing room. It was a long, high-ceilinged chamber, decorated with gilt but now almost empty of furnishings, whose windows overlooked the garden. La Fargue was in discussion with Agnes and Marciac when Rochefort found him. Their conversation ended at once and all eyes converged on the intruder.

'We need to talk,' Rochefort announced.

La Fargue considered him for a moment.

Then he nodded and with his chin indicated the door of an antechamber, towards which Rochefort briskly led the way. Once the door closed behind them, Agnes and Marciac, both looking intrigued, turned to Leprat who was watching from the threshold.

'La Donna?' guessed the young baronne.

Leprat shrugged, before glancing over his shoulder to see Saint-Lucq approaching.

Although he had returned from the mission at the same time as La Fargue and Almades, the half-blood had vanished and only now was making his reappearance. No one dreamt, however, of asking him where he had been or what he had been doing. Agnes noticed that his clothes — black and perfectly tailored, as usual — were clean and freshly pressed. They were certainly not the same ones he had been wearing on the journey to Artois with La Fargue. But his boots were somewhat dusty, suggesting that he had ridden along a dirt road since he had changed.

'Good evening,' he said without addressing anyone in particular.

The others, preoccupied, answered him vaguely but their offhand greeting didn't offend him.

'Whose horse is that in the courtyard?' he asked.

'Rochefort's,' answered Marciac. 'He is in conference with the captain right now. He seemed to be in a hurry.'

'What's it about?'

'La Donna, no doubt.'

I see.

The Gascon was seated at a small table, where there was some food, wine glasses, and