Pierre Pevel - By The Alchemist in the Shadows Page 0,44

As they waited in an antechamber Marciac removed his brown felt hat and wiped his brow. Agnes envied the comfortable casualness of his attire; she, too, would have liked to go about with her shirt collar wide open and her doublet unbuttoned, although in honesty she had little cause for complaint. True, the thick leather corset that cinched her waist was a little heavy, but her riding outfit — with breeches and boots — was far more practical than the starched dresses that polite society would have normally imposed on her given her gender and rank. Polite society which the baronne Agnes Anne Marie de Vaudreuil blithely chose to ignore.

'What?' asked the Gascon, noticing her watching him out of the corner of her eye.

'Nothing,' she said at first. Then she added impishly, 'That's a pretty doublet.'

They were standing side by side, looking straight ahead, in an antechamber which was almost devoid of furnishings.

'Are you mocking me?' asked Marciac warily.

He feigned nonchalance, if not indifference, towards his clothing, but was in fact quite careful of the image that he presented and even fastidious in his own fashion.

'No!' Agnes protested, hiding a smile.

'Then, thank you,' he retorted, without looking at her.

The doublet in question was a crimson garment that Marciac had not been seen wearing before his long, solitary mission to La Rochelle. The cloth was of quality and the cut elegant. It must have been expensive, yet all of the Blades knew full well that the Gascon chased after two things in life: money and skirts. And he was only ever lacking for money.

'A gift?' Agnes persisted.

'No.'

'I deduce, then, that you have funds. Did the cards smile on you ?'

The Gascon shrugged and said modestly:

'Yes they did, rather . . .'

'In La Rochelle?' the baronne asked with some surprise.

La Rochelle had been the Protestant capital of France since the failed siege in 1628 and the withdrawal of the royal armies. Agnes genuinely doubted that gambling dens abounded there, so Marciac was either lying to her or he was hiding something, but she was not given the occasion to ferret out the truth. Someone was coming.

They had expected to see the manservant who had asked them to wait. Instead a young man entered, barely twenty years of age. Perhaps less. He looked like some student from the Sorbonne, with wrinkled clothes, a badly buttoned waistcoat, short but tangled blond hair, a joyful almost impudent air and his hands still damp, as if he had just finished drying himself with a towel after a wash.

One of the master's pupils, no doubt.

'My apologies for keeping you waiting,' he said. 'I know your visit was announced, but . . .'

He did not complete his sentence, but smiled and looked at the visitors.

After a moment of hesitation, Marciac explained:

'We're here to meet with His Eminence's master of magic'

'Yes, of course,' the young man replied, still smiling.

And as he stood before them in expectant silence, realisation dawned upon the two Blades and they glanced at one another in astonishment.

It was Agnes who guessed first:

'I beg your pardon, monsieur, but would you be—'

'Pierre Teyssier, at your service, madame. How can I be of use to you?'

Laincourt pushed the door open and entered the cool dim interior of the small esoteric bookshop with pleasure. Removing his hat, he mopped at his brow with a handkerchief, only to see Bertaud

— after begging another customer to excuse him - come hurrying over.

The bookseller seemed anxious.

'There's someone here, waiting to see you,' he said in a low voice.

'And who would that be?'

Rather than answer, the bookseller instead pointed with his chin at a nook inside the shop. The cardinal's former spy looked over calmly, at the very moment when La Fargue put a book he had been glancing through back on a shelf.

The two men stared at one another without either showing any particular emotion.

Then, not taking his eyes off the old captain, Laincourt said over his shoulder:

'Don't worry, Bertaud. The gentleman and I are already acquainted.'

Turning away from the window, the Alchemist went over to his desk.

He had changed his clothes since his morning visit to the former vicomtesse de Malicorne. He still wore black, but now his attire was that of a member of the bourgeoisie rather than a gentleman.

Here, at home, he was a scholar, a master of magic known as Mauduit.

He sat in his armchair with a sigh of mixed relief and discomfort. Maintaining this cursed human appearance was becoming more and more taxing, both physically and emotionally.