Pierre Pevel - By The Alchemist in the Shadows Page 0,53

His Eminence's horse guards. La Houdiniere had only been a lieutenant then, and he had not delved into the circumstances behind Laincourt's dismissal. All he knew was that those circumstances were murky.

'You're returning to La Renardiere already?' La Fargue observed in surprise as he approached at a walk.

Almades and Laincourt remained behind.

'Yes!' replied La Houdiniere. 'Monsieur de Laffemas chose to cut short his interview today as he deemed it to be entirely unfruitful. La Donna's latest whim, it seems, has exhausted his patience.'

'A whim which I believe I know,' said the old gentleman, looking at the coach where a pretty hand had discreetly lifted the window curtain.

The note he had received at the Hotel de l'Epervier had come directly from Laffemas. La Houdiniere, no doubt, did not know its contents.

'Would you allow Laincourt to have a conversation with La Donna, right here?' asked La Fargue.

The other man thought for a moment and then shrugged.

'All right.'

He gave the necessary orders, and Laincourt, after a nod from the captain of the Blades, dismounted. He walked across the uneven paving of Le Chatelet's courtyard and, under the gaze of his former brothers-in-arms, climbed aboard the vehicle. No one heard what was said within, behind the richly padded walls and the thick drawn curtains. But less than half an hour later the coach and its escort moved off, taking La Donna back to La Renardiere, while La Fargue, Laincourt, and Almades proceeded to leave Paris by the Saint-Martin gate.

Taking the road to Senlis, then the one leading to Soissons, the three riders passed Roissy and continued at a gallop to Dammartin. There, they needed to ask for directions. The first good wife they came across in the village square was able to assist them. Everyone living in the area knew the manor belonging to the famous painter, Aubusson.

'Where did you meet La Donna?' La Fargue asked Lain-court as they followed the track that had been indicated to them.

Keeping a watchful eye all about, Almades brought up the rear in silence.

'During my stay in Madrid,' Laincourt replied. 'She was already busy there, hatching schemes.'

'Were you adversaries or allies?'

The young man smiled.

'Frankly I still don't know, to this day. But I would probably not be far wrong to say that La Donna had no true ally but herself, as is always the way with her . . .'

'You seem to be very wary of her.'

'As if she were a salamander on live coals.'

'But she must, for her part, hold you in some esteem. Laffemas has interrogated her for days, practically in vain, and here she is suddenly confiding in you.'

'Don't be fooled, monsieur. I count for nothing in this whole affair. If La Donna spoke to me it is merely because she had already decided to speak, to me or to someone else, in the fullness of time.'

'Then why did she ask for you?'

'Someone constrained by force or a threat to reveal a secret will often offer a final resistance by demanding the right to choose the person they shall finally speak to. It's a way of not surrendering completely, of maintaining some semblance of freedom and control.'

La Fargue nodded.

'And La Donna, according to you, was playing out such a scene.'

'Yes.'

'But why?'

'So that it would seem like she was finally giving in. So that we would be less suspicious of her impromptu revelations. And so that we would not wonder why she chooses to speak now, when in fact that is the only question which should interest monsieur de Laffemas.'

'Why now.'

'Precisely. Why now.'

The old captain raised his eyes towards the manor whose red tiled roofs could be seen behind the trees that crowned the hill.

They were getting closer.

'And this Aubusson. Do you know who he is or why La Donna is sending us to him?'

'He is a painter,' said Laincourt, drawing on his recollections. 'A portrait artist who, some years ago, was quite renowned. At present he seems to have retired from the world . . . But I do not know what bonds unite him to Aless— to La Donna. I imagine they met at a princely court somewhere in Europe, when Aubusson still travelled abroad.'

'Perhaps she was his mistress,' La Fargue suggested slyly.

'Perhaps,' said Laincourt impassively.

And perhaps she still is,' added the old gentleman, watching the other out of the corner of his eye. 'I have heard that she sometimes uses such means to further her ends.'

'We're almost there now.'

Aubusson was reading when his valet came to warn him that three riders were coming