The Cardinal's Blades

8

As they travelled back to Paris by coach, Nicolas Marciac and the vicomte d’Orvand enjoyed a light red wine designed to sharpen their appetites. A wicker basket filled with food and some good bottles of wine stood between them on the bench. They drank from small engraved silver goblets, half filled so that the bumps and jolts of the road, which shook them violently and without warning, soaked neither their chins nor their laps.

“You hadn’t been drinking,” said d’Orvand, referring to the duel.

Marciac gave him a wicked, amused glance.

“Just a mouthful for my breath. Do you take me for a complete idiot?”

“Then why this comedy?”

“To make sure Brevaux was overconfident and lowered his guard.”

“You would have defeated him without that.”

“Yes.”

“Moreover, you could have let me in on it-”

“But that would have been much less fun, wouldn’t it? If you could have seen your face!”

The vicomte could not help but smile. His friendship with the Gascon had accustomed him to this kind of joke.

“And who were the two charming ladies whose coach you borrowed to make your entrance?”

“Now, vicomte! I would be the very lowest of gentlemen if I told you that.”

“In any event, they seemed to have a great deal of affection for you.”

“What can I say, my friend? I am well liked-Since you are so curious, then know that one of them is the very same beauty upon whom the marquis de Brevaux, it seems, has set his sights. I’m sure he recognised her…”

“You are reckless Nicolas. No doubt the marquis’s anger grew and his skill as a fencer proportionately decreased when he saw you kiss the woman. But by doing so you gave him a reason to demand another duel. Not content to defeat him, you had to humiliate him. For you it’s a game, I know. But for him…”

Marciac thought for a moment about the prospect-which had not crossed his mind until now-of a second duel against the marquis de Brevaux. Then he shrugged.

“Perhaps you’re right… We shall see.”

And extending his empty goblet, he added: “Before we start on the pork, it would be my pleasure to drink a little more of your wine.”

As d’Orvand poured for his friend, risking his clean, beautifully cut breeches in the process, Marciac held the prize he had won from the marquis up to the light. Admiring the ruby, he slid it onto his finger, where it came to rest against a signet ring. But it was the signet ring itself which caught the vicomte’s eye-made of tarnished steel, it was etched with a rapier and a Greek cross capped with fleur-de-lis.

“There,” said Marciac admiring the shine of the stone, “that should keep Madame Rabier satisfied.”

“You borrowed money from La Rabier?” exclaimed d’Orvand in a tone of reproach.

“What else could I do? I have debts and it is necessary that I honour them. I am not the marquis de Brevaux.”

“Still, La Rabier… borrowing money from her is never a good idea. I would have been happy to advance you a few ecus. You should have asked me.”

“Asked you? A friend? You’re joking, vicomte!”

D’Orvand slowly shook his head in silent reproof.

“All the same, there is one thing that intrigues me, Nicolas…”

“And what would that be?”

“In the nearly four years during which you have honoured me with your friendship, I have often seen you impoverished-and even that word is a poor description for it. You have pawned and redeemed your every possession a hundred times over. There were times when you were forced to fast for days, and you would doubtless have let yourself die of hunger if I hadn’t invited you to my table under one pretext or another. I even remember a day when you had to borrow a sword from me in order to fight a duel… But never, ever, have you agreed to be separated from that steel signet ring. Why is that?”

Marciac’s gaze became vague, lost in the memories of the day when he first received the ring, until a sudden bump in the road jolted the two men perched on their stuffed leather bench.

“It’s a fragment of my past,” replied the Gascon. “You can never be rid of your past. Not even if you pawn it…”

D’Orvand, who found that melancholy did not suit his friend, asked after a moment: “We will soon be in Paris. Where would you like to stop?”

“Rue de la Grenouillere.”

The vicomte paused a moment, then said: “Did you not have enough of duelling for one day?”

Marciac replied with a smile, and muttered, almost to himself: “Bah!… When I die, I want to be certain at least that I have truly lived.”