“I told you, monsieur! Your protection. A place in your service. The proclamation of what I am, and the promise that anyone like me can come to the same safe harbor.”
“Every rogue in Europe will swarm here.”
“I’ll know what questions to ask, if your learned men don’t.”
“M-m, yes, I daresay you will.”
“After you’ve made a few examples, that nuisance should end.” Lacy hesitated. “Not that I can foretell what the immortals will each prove to be like. I’ve admitted, my Mac-Mahon is a crude sort. The other whom I was sure of is, or has been, a prostitute, if she still lives. One survives as best one can.”
“But some may well be decent, or repent. Some may in truth be holy—hermits, perhaps?” Richelieu’s momentarily dreamy tone sharpened. “You have not sought for any new patron after that Egyptian king, more than two thousand years ago?”
“I told Your Eminence, one grows wary.”
“Why have you now at last let down your guard?”
“In part because of you,” Lacy answered at once. “Your Eminence hears much flattery. I needn’t go into detail about what’s the plain truth. I’ve already spoken it.
“But you by yourself wouldn’t have been enough. It’s also that I dare hope the times are right.”
The parchment jammed against a leg of the chair of state and resisted further attempts. The kitten mewed. Richelieu looked down and half reached. “Does my lord wish—?”
Lacy sprang to pick up the animal and proffer it. Richelieu took the small fuzzy form in both hands and placed it on his lap where the parchment had rested. Lacy bowed and resumed his seat.
“Continue,” the cardinal said while he caressed his pet.
“I have watched the course of things as well as a man can who’s in the middle of them,” Lacy said. “I’ve read books and listened to philosophers, and to common folk with native wit. I’ve thought. Immortality is lonely, monsieur. One has much time for thinking.
“It seems to me that in the past two or three centuries, a change has been coming upon the world. Not just the rise or fall of another empire; a change as great as the change from boy to man, or even worm to butterfly. Mortals feel it too. They speak of a Renaissance that began perhaps fourteen hundred years after Our Lord. But I see it more clearly. Pharaoh Psammetk—how far could his couriers go? How many could they find who’d understand my question that they bore, and not cower from it, ignorant and frightened? And he was as powerful a king as any in his age. The Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Persians, all the rest, they were little better as regards either knowledge or range. Nor did I ever again have access to a ruler I trusted; nor had I then thought to prepare myself for such a meeting. That came later.
“Today men have sailed around the globe; and they know it is a globe. The discoveries of such as Copernicus and Galileo—“ He saw the slight frown. “Well, be that as it may, men learn marvelous things. Europe goes forth into a whole new hemisphere. At home, for the first time since Rome fell, we begin to have good roads; one can travel swiftly, for the most part safely, over hundreds of leagues— thousands, once this war is over. Above all, maybe, we have the printing press, and more people every year who can read, who can be reached. At last we can bring the immortals together!”
Richelieu’s fingers amused the kitten, which was becoming drowsy, while his brows again drew downward. “That will take a considerable time,” he said.
“Oh, yes, as mortals reckon— Forgive me, Your Eminence.”
“No matter.” Richelieu coughed. “With none but Chariot to hear, we can speak plainly. Do you indeed believe mankind—here in France, let us say—has attained the security that you found to be such a delusion through all prior history?”
Taken aback, Lacy stammered, “N-no, monsieur, except that—I think France will be strong and stable for generations to come. Thanks largely to Your Eminence.”
Richelieu coughed afresh, his left hand to his mouth, his right reassuring the kitten. “I am not a well man, Captain,” he said, hoarsened. “I never have been. God may call me at any moment.”
Lacy’s visage took on a somehow remote gentleness. “I know that,” he said softly. “May He keep you with us for many years yet. But—”
“Nor is the king in good health,” Richelieu interrupted. “Finally, finally he and the queen are blessed with a child, a son; but the prince is not quite two years old. About when he was born, I lost Father Joseph, my closest councillor and ablest helper.”
“I know that also. But you have this Italian-born Mazarin, who’s much like you.”
“And whom I am preparing to be my successor.” Richelieu’s smile writhed. “Yes, you have studied us carefully.”
“I must. I’ve learned how, during my span on earth. And I, you too think far ahead.” Lacy’s words quickened. “I beg you, think. You’ll need a while to take this in, as well as to verify my story. I’m amazed how calmly you’ve heard me out. But—an immortal, in due course a gathering of immortals, at the service of the king—today’s king, and afterward .., his son, who should reign long and vigorously. Can you imagine what that will mean to his glory, and so to the glory ,. and power of France?”
“No, I cannot,” Richelieu snapped. “Nor can you. And I have likewise learned wariness.”
“But I tell you, Your Eminence, I can give you evidence—”
“Silence,” Richelieu commanded.
He rested left elbow on chair arm, chin on that fist, and I stared into space, as if beyond the walls, the province, the kingdom. His right hand gently stroked the kitten. It fell asleep, and he took his fingers away. The wind and the river rustled.
At last—the clock, on which Phaeton careered desperately in Apollo’s runaway sun chariot, had snipped off almost a quarter of an hour—he stirred and looked back at the other man. Lacy had gone Orientally impassive. Now his countenance came alive. The breath shivered in and out of him.
“I need not trouble myself with your tokens,” Richelieu said heavily. “I assume you are what you assert. It makes no difference.”
“I beg Your Eminence’s pardon?” Lacy whispered.
“Tell me,” Richelieu went on, and he came to sound nearly amiable, “do you, in the teeth of what you have seen and suffered, do you really believe we have won to a state of things that will endure?”
“N-no,” Lacy admitted. “No, I think instead everything is changing, everything, and this will go on and on, and nobody can guess what the end will be. But—because of it— we and the generations to come, our lives will be unlike any that ever were lived before. The old bets are off.” He paused. “I’ve grown weary of being homeless. You cannot dream of how weary. I’ll snatch at any chance of escape.”
Richelieu ignored the informal language. Perhaps he did not notice it. He nodded, and said as he might have crooned to one of his pets, “Poor soul. How brave you are, to have ventured this. Or else, as you say, how weary. But you have just your single life to lose. I have millions.”
Lacy’s head lifted stiffly. “My lord?”
“I am responsible for this realm,” Richelieu said. “The Holy Father is old and troubled and never had any gift of statecraft. Thus I am also responsible to a certain extent for the Catholic faith, which is to say Christendom. A good many people think I’ve given myself over to the Devil, and I confess to scorning most scruples. But in the end, I am responsible.
“You see this as an age of upheaval, but also of hope. You may be right, perhaps, but if so, you look on it with an immortal eye. I can only, I may only, see the upheaval. War devastating the German lands. The Empire— our enemy, yes, nevertheless the Holy Roman Empire that Charlemagne founded—bleeding to death. Protestant sect after sect springing up, each with its own doctrine, its own fanaticism. The English growing back to power, the Dutch growing newly to it, voracious and ruthless. Stirrings in Russia, India, China. God knows what in the Americas. Cannon and muskets bringing down the ancient strongholds, the ancient strengths—but what will replace them? To you, the discoveries of the natural philosophers, the books and pamphlets that pour from the printing presses, those are wonders that will bring a new era. I agree; but I, in my position, must ask myself what that era will be like. I must try to cope with it, keep it under control, knowing the entire while that I shall die unsuccessful and those who come after me will fail.”
His question lashed: “How then dare you suppose I would ever allow, yes, encourage and trumpet the knowledge that persons exist whom old age passes by? Should I— the doctor Descartes might say—throw yet
