long time. We’ll see. My years have been harder than yours. I know how full of secret places chaos is. Yes, we may well go under, we may perish, but until then we will have been wholly alive!”
He stood dazed. She knew she would need months wherein to prevail, if indeed she could. Well, she had the patience of centuries to draw upon, when there was something for which to work.
Clouds thinned, light broke through, the rain in the doorway gleamed like flying arrows.
5
Springtime came back, and that year it was mild, overwhelmingly bright, full of fragrances and the cries of wildfowl returned. Gorged with snow melt, the stream sprang white amidst hillside leaves, brawled through the dell, plunged into the bamboo forest, bound for the great river and so at last the sea.
A man and a woman followed it on the road. They were clad for travel. Staves swung in their hands. On his back was a load of needful goods, on hers a swaddled baby boy who gurgled lustily and happily as he looked around him at wonders.
The people stood gathered together behind, where their homes came to an end, and wept.
XI. The Kitten and the Cardinal
Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, cardinal of the Church, first minister to His Most Christian Majesty Louis XIII, who had created him duke, gave his visitor a long regard. The man was altogether out of place in this chamber of blue-and-gilt elegance. Though decently clad for a commoner, he seemed unmistakably the seafarer he proclaimed himself. Of medium height, he had the suppleness of youth, and the dark hawk face was unlined; but something about him—perhaps the alert steadiness of the look he gave back—bespoke a knowledge of the world such as it takes many years in many comers to gain.
Windows stood open to summer fragrances blowing from the fields and woodlands of Poitou. The river Mable clucked past an ancestral castle lately rebuilt as a modern palace. Sunlight, reflected off the water, danced in shards among the cherubs and ancient heroes that adorned the ceiling. At a little distance from the cardinal’s thronelike chair, a kitten played with its shadow across the parquetry.
Richelieu’s thin fingers stroked the parchment on his lap. Its age-spotted dun made his robe appear blood- bright. For this meeting he had put on full canonicals, as though to shield against demons. But when he spoke, his voice held its wonted wintry calm.
“If this be not falsified, today shall perhaps see the strangest audience I have ever granted.”
Jacques Lacy bowed with more grace than would have been awaited. “I thank your eminence for it, and assure him all is true.” His speech was not quite of the region nor of any in France. Did it still bear a lilt of Ireland, or of some land farther yet? Certainly it showed that, if not formally educated, he had read many books. Where did a skipper plying between the Old World and the New find time?
“You may thank the bishop who prevailed upon me,” said Richelieu dryly.
“After the priest of St. Felix had prevailed upon another, Your Eminence.”
“You are a bold one indeed, Captain Lacy. Have a care. This matter is dangerous enough already.”
“I humbly beg Your Eminence’s pardon.” The tone was by no means insolent, but neither was it contrite.
“Well, let us get on with your business.” Even away from Paris, hours were precious; and the future might not hold a large store of them. Nevertheless Richelieu considered for a minute, stroking the beard that brought the gauntness of his features to a point, before ordering: “Describe exactly what you said to the priest and caused him to do.”
Surprise slightly shook Lacy’s self-command. “Your Eminence knows.”
“I will compare the accounts.” Richelieu sighed. “And you may spare the honorifics hereafter. We are alone.”
“I thank Your— Well.” The mariner, drew breath. “I sought him out at his church in St. Nazaire after I heard that ... monsieur would grace these parts, no enormous distance to travel from there, with his presence for a while. I told him of the casket. Rather, I reminded him, for he knew about it in a half-forgotten way. Naturally, that caught his attention, for nobody else remembered. It had simply gathered dust in the crypt these past four hundred years.”
The kitten pounced at Lacy’s foot. A smile in its direction flickered across the cardinal’s lips. His eyes, huge and feverishly luminous, turned back to the man. “Did you relate how it came to be there?” he pursued.
“Certainly, monsieur. That was evidence for my good faith, since the story had not become part of folklore.”
“Do so again.”
“Ah ... in those days a Breton trader named Pier, of Ploumanac’h, settled in St. Nazaire. It was hardly more than a village—not that it’s major these days, as monsieur doubtless knows—but on that account a house cost little, and the location was handy for the small coastwise vessel he acquired. Men could more easily change their homes and trades then than now. Pier prospered modestly, married, raised children. At last, widowed, he declared he’d enlist in the crusade—the final one, as it turned out—that King Louis the Saint was launching. By that time he was old, but remarkably well-preserved. Many people said he still looked downright youthful. He was never seen afterward, and folk supposed he had died.
“Before he left, he made a substantial donation to the parish church. That was common when someone was about to go on a long journey, let alone off to war. However, to this gift he attached a condition. The church was to keep a box for him. He showed the priest that it contained nothing more than a rolled-up parchment, a document of some importance and confidentiality; whereupon he sealed it. One day he or an heir would return to claim it, and the parchment itself would validate that claim. Well, a request of this kind was not unheard of, and the priest duly entered it in the annals. Lifetimes went by. When I appeared, I expected I’d have to find the record for today’s priest; but he’s an antiquarian and had browsed through the books.”
Richelieu lifted the parchment and read it for perhaps the seventh time, repeatedly glancing at Lacy. “Yes,” he murmured, “this declares that the rightful heir will look just like Pier de Ploumanac’h, whatever name he bears, and describes him in full. Excellently crafted, that description.” The cardinal fancied himself a man of letters, and had written and produced several dramas. “Furthermore, there is this verse in supposed nonsense syllables that the claimant will be able to recite without looking at the text.”
“Shall I do so for monsieur?”
“No need—thus far. You did for the priest, and later for his bishop. The proof was sufficient that he in turn wrote to the bishop of this diocese, persuading him to persuade me to see you. For the document concludes by declaring that the ... heir ... will carry tidings of the utmost importance. Now why did you refuse any hint of their nature to either prelate?”
“They are only for the greatest man hi the land.”
“That is His Majesty.”
The visitor shrugged. “What chance would I have of admission to the king? Rather, I’d be arrested on suspicion of—almost anything, and my knowledge tortured out of me. Your eminence is known to be more, m-m, flexible. Of an inquiring mind. You patronize learned and literary men, you’ve founded a national academy, you’ve rebuilt and generously endowed the Sorbonne, and as for political achievements—“ His words trailed off while he waved his hands. Clearly he thought of the Huguenots curbed, yet kept conciliated; of the powers of the nobles patiently chipped down, until now their feudal castles were for the most part demolished; of the cardinal’s rivals at court outwitted, defeated, some exiled or executed; of the long war against the Imperialists, in which France—with Protestant Sweden, the ally that Richelieu obtained—was finally getting the upper hand. Who really ruled this country?
Richelieu raised his brows. “You are very well informed for a humble sea captain.”
