Pierre Pevel - By The Alchemist in the Shadows Page 0,42

stroke of a quill without risking a scandal,' La Fargue acknowledged. 'In short, La Donna is asking for something she knows is impossible—'

'Let's not forget . . .' added Almades in a flat tone which nonetheless drew everyone's attention,

'Let's not forget that time is against La Donna as well as us—'

'What?' said the Gascon, astonished.

'Let us suppose that there is in truth a plot against the king. A plot about which she has some vital intelligence. What will happen if the plotters make their move while La Donna is still at His Eminence's mercy?'

Agnes understood:

'The cardinal will be merciless.'

'And La Donna will be lucky if this adventure doesn't end in a noose,' concluded Marciac.

The Spanish fencing master nodded.

'So what game is she playing at?' the baronne de Vaudreuil wondered.

'That is precisely what the cardinal wants us to discover,' declared La Fargue with enough authority to retake control of the debate and nip any further idle speculation in the bud.

The others all turned back to him and waited for him to continue.

'Let's start by finding those black dracs who are hunting La Donna. They know more about her than we do, and if we could learn why they are tracking her . . . Besides the cardinal would be pleased to hear they have been prevented from doing any further mischief.'

'How do we find them?' enquired Saint-Lucq.

'They are somewhere in Paris. They arrived five days ago.'

This piece of news aroused surprise. Then Ballardieu, who read the gazettes avidly, recalled that the previous week the

guards at one of the Paris gates had been found dead without any clues as to who had killed them.

The authorities had quickly removed the bodies. Was there a connection between the dracs' arrival in the capital and the deaths of these unfortunate men?

'Yes,' La Fargue asserted. 'One of the guards survived a few days in a delirious state. He spoke of dracs and of a "creeping black death". The cardinal's master of magic thinks it's the same black mist that accompanies our dracs ... By the way, Agnes and Marciac, you will be seeing him this afternoon.'

'The master of magic?' asked the Gascon.

'The cardinal believes he can be useful to us.'

'Good,' said Agnes.

The old captain then'turned to Saint-Lucq:

'As for you—'

'I know,' replied the half-blood. 'If the dracs have been in Paris for five days without being spotted, there is only one place they can be . . . Do you have any special instructions?'

'No. Find them, that's all. And don't get yourself killed . . . For my part, I will be meeting a man Rochefort claims knows La Donna well, who might be able to help us pin her down.'

'Who?' Marciac asked distractedly, observing bitterly that the bottle of wine was empty.

'Do you remember Laincourt?'

'The man Richelieu wanted us to recruit last month? The one who refused?'

Listening to the Gascon, one might wonder which crime, in his eyes, weighed more heavily against the former Cardinal's Guard: having almost become a member of the Blades out of favouritism, or having declined the offer?

'The very same.'

Marciac pulled a face.

'He saved my life at risk of his own,' Agnes said in a conciliatory tone.

'So what?' the Gascon retorted in perfectly bad faith. 'We save each other's lives all the time and we don't make a song and dance out of it—'

The captain clapped his hands and stood:

'Get going!' he cried. 'Into your saddles!' And then, in an almost paternal manner, he added: 'And watch out for yourselves.'

The group of people in the service of any great personage formed his 'household'. Thus one might speak of the king's household, or those of the queen, the duc d'Orleans and the marquis de Chateauneuf. As social customs required that everyone lived in a manner befitting their birth and rank, some households could have as many as two thousand servants all of whom had to be paid, fed, dressed, lodged, and looked after as needed. This applied especially to the king's household, but also to that of Cardinal Richelieu. And it cost fortunes.

Numerous, prestigious, and particularly onerous to maintain, the cardinal's household was commensurate in size with the rank of the public figure it served. It was composed of a military household and a civil household. Devoted to the protection of His Eminence, the military household comprised a company of horse guards, a company of musketeers and a third unit of gendarmes, which was generally deployed in military campaigns. In practice, the right to maintain a military household amounted to possessing a small