1636: The Cardinal Virtues (9 page)
Read 1636: The Cardinal Virtues Online
Authors: Eric Flint,Walter H Hunt
Tags: #Fiction, #Alternative History, #Science Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General
“I am sure,” the messenger said, “if Monsieur le Comte de Soissons knew this information he would certainly have conveyed it. And I am here,” he added, more forthrightly than many who would stand in Monsieur’s presence, “because Your Highness commanded my master to send me.”
“Hah.” Gaston lifted his chin and looked down the end of his Bourbon nose. “I assume your master
commanded
you to say that. My cousin of Soissons would like nothing better than to retain information that I want . . . but while he is devious, and while I am sure that he places his own goals above mine, I do not think he would keep this from me. Ultimately, he wants what I want. He does not know. But he must find out.”
“I am sure that he is straining his efforts, Your Highness.”
“Tell him . . . tell him that he must not rest until he learns where the queen has gone. My dear brother Louis’ dalliance has proved fruitful—and if this child defies the odds and lives to term, and if, God help us, the child is a son . . .”
The messenger bowed his head.
Gaston made a fist. He gestured at the man. “Tell my lord of Soissons that his prince expects nothing short of success. And when we find out where she is . . .”
He bit the sentence off and turned away from the messenger, gripping the ornate carved back of a chair tightly enough for his knuckles to turn white.
“Your Highness?”
“That is all,” Gaston said, not turning. “You may go.”
Gaston noted with indifference when the door quietly closed, and he knew that he was alone. He walked slowly to his escritoire and sat down. He picked up his penknife and sharpened his quill, then drew a sheet of foolscap toward him, dipped the quill in ink and began to write.
M. le duc de Vendôme
My dear brother César:
I trust that you are well, and eager to pursue the work we have set before ourselves. The time we have awaited is nigh, for reasons of which we are both aware.
I have made certain provisions, the details of which you already possess. When I have the requisite information, it will be promptly conveyed to you. When at last we meet we shall glory in the rebirth of the kingdom we both love . . .
Chapter 12
May, 1636
Louvre Palace
Paris, France
It had been almost an afterthought: when the radio message came early in the morning, and was transcribed and placed into the cardinal’s hands, he put aside everything and prepared to depart. In his haste he had almost left the watch sitting on his desk in its prescribed place, a finely crafted instrument ticking away the seconds beneath the exquisite sapphire glass.
Richelieu had often picked up the timepiece, a gift from a courtier who had obtained it in some way from some up-timer. It bore the name
Cartier
, the family surname of the prestigious watchmaker of a Paris that never would be—but it put Étienne Servien in mind of the great explorer who had uncovered the mysteries of the North American coast a century ago.
When he took it up, turning it this way and that to best catch the light, Richelieu seemed lost in its depths. It seemed to Servien that the minute workings cast a spell upon him, reminding him that time was fleeting (as the philosophers were eager to say).
The day of the message, however, permitted no time for reflection, no time to be ensorcelled by
Grantvilleur
wonders. Servien knew its contents at once, though it was passed to him sealed—the sender, a coded name, told the entire story. He entered his master’s study, finding him bent over his work table upon which was spread a great map of the Germanies.
“What is it?” he said, without looking up.
“A message, Eminence.” Servien proffered the sheet of paper, folded once and sealed. Richelieu glanced at his intendant, took the message, and upon noting the name on the outside quickly slit it apart and looked at it, his eyes darting down the sheet and then back at Servien.
“Who else knows of this?”
“Other than the radio operator and myself, no one.”
“You are sure.”
“I came directly to you, Eminence,” Servien said. “The call came in not ten minutes ago.”
“There is no time to lose. Present yourself to Monsieur de Saint-Simon, if you please, and inform him that I will wait on His Majesty presently.”
“As you wish.”
“And, Servien . . . I need not say that you are to speak of this to no other. We did not expect this for some time, but neither did our enemies.”
“If they know of it at all.”
“I do not doubt that they do, despite our best attempts to keep it secret.” Richelieu permitted himself a smile. “But if all is well, they will be unable to interfere. All that I have worked for, these past few years, will reach its fruition—and there will be nothing that
Monsieur
can do about it.”
◊ ◊ ◊
Richelieu was admitted to the king’s presence without announcement or ceremony. At this early hour King Louis was untroubled by the court, and often spent his time with one or another project that ill-befit a monarch. The cardinal was not about to gainsay his master and the use of his time—but it meant that he might be in the dairy, or the stable, or a carpenter’s or smith’s shop rather than the royal apartments.
“Ah,” the king said, without turning around from the bench at which he sat, working on some project. “Monsieur Saint-Simon, I trust you found—”
Richelieu cleared his throat. Louis turned suddenly, his face set in a mask of displeasure, as if annoyed that he might be disturbed by any but his first gentleman of the bedchamber, the young Saint-Simon—the latest favorite upon whom he had heaped honors and titles. Few would stand before the king when he was thus annoyed; Richelieu merely waited patiently.
“Ah. It’s you.”
“At your service, Sire,” the cardinal answered, bowing, then folding his hands in front of him. “We have a received a message.”
“A message?”
“
The
message,” he said. “The one we have been awaiting.”
“Really!” The king stood, losing all interest in the project that had been occupying him. “Really. We are—we are somewhat early, aren’t we?”
“Shorter than the customary term, my king. But I am informed that all is well in hand. I intend to depart at once and ask your leave to go.”
“At once? I—”
Monsieur de Rouvroy, Seigneur de Saint-Simon, swept into the room at just that moment from the other hallway. He held a basket filled with tools and bits of metal and leather and began talking at once. “I think I found everything you wanted, but it was a bit of work, so I beg your pardon for being late, but—”
He stopped suddenly, noticing the presence of Cardinal Richelieu.
“Oh.”
Richelieu looked at him, stony-faced, his anger visible in his eyes. The young man reddened.
“You have our leave to go,” Louis said without turning. “Go—go find yourself something to break your fast.”
“As Your Majesty wishes,” he said. He set the basket on the king’s work-table and backed slowly out of the room, never taking his eyes from Richelieu.
When he was gone, Louis rolled his eyes. “You have frightened the man, Eminence. He’s quite harmless, really.”
“He is Captain of St. Germain and Versailles. He should not frighten so easily. I should have expected a trifle more decorum.”
“Saint-Simon and I had set about a—a project. I do not think he expected anyone else to be here.”
“I shall not trouble Your Majesty for very long.”
“No indeed. And I am sure he will find something to—to amuse himself while I am gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes. Of course. I will accompany you, Richelieu. I wish to see what has—come of our efforts.”
Richelieu paused. He had not expected this response. “My king, it had been my intention to leave at once. I do not think the proper guard could be assembled quickly to escort you. I intended to travel in haste—”
“I don’t think we need any of that, do we?” The king looked away from his minister, as if he was distracted by something on the escritoire. Richelieu could not see it clearly but knew what it was: a small cameo locket bearing the likeness of his queen. Now that matters regarding the heir had been arranged, the king seemed much more at ease with a display of affection toward Anne, even in something so trivial as a keepsake.
“I don’t think I take Your Majesty’s meaning.”
“I believe that we can dispense, dispense with an honor guard. I can be prepared to ride within the hour.”
“But . . . the safety of the royal person—”
“I shall take care to be armed and attired. I have ridden to war before, as you know. My lady the queen is more than—more than a month early in her labor,
mon
cardinal
, and even if my enemies suspected that she is with child, they do not expect her to give birth
now
. It is all a surprise. I shall ride as one of your gentlemen-at-arms.”
“I hardly think that is appropriate, Sire.”
“Oh, nonsense.” He furnished Richelieu with a royal wave and favored him with a smile. It was truly a wonder. Richelieu had seen Louis in every disposition, but in most cases he was distracted, suspicious or unhappy—his oncoming fatherhood had returned him to the lightheartedness of his youth. “I—I am sure that your guard-captain can find me an appropriate set of clothes. I will be just another member of your escort—at least until we reach the chateau.”
“I am sorry to disagree with Your Majesty, but I believe that this exposes you to unnecessary risk. There is a radio at Baronville. A message can reach you in due course and you can make your progress in state when the child is born. There is no need—”
“Need? You speak—speak of need?” Louis faced him directly. Richelieu immediately sensed a subtle change in his royal master’s mood. He was all too well versed in the way in which Louis could instantly shift from one affectation to another.
At this delicate stage
, he thought to himself,
I must tread very softly . . .
When Richelieu did not respond, the king continued, pointing a finger at him. “For a quarter of a century I have been king of France, and through all of it I have had to respond to
needs
. To my—to my mother and her interminable demands; to my sisters, and their requirements for proper marriages; to my feckless brother, who can no longer live in this realm, but to whom concession after concession was extended while he let his henchman go to the gallows or the block . . . to the Huguenots, to the pope, to every foreign nation that placed demands on my realm.
“And now at last I have what we most desire: an heir to the throne, an end to the intrigues of my lord of Orléans and all of his—his sycophants and coconspirators—and the queen tied by the strongest apron-string of all to this realm instead of the realm of her birth, the realm—the realm of Spain. You would deny me the pleasure of being present when that happens?”
“Your Majesty, I—”
“Answer me, Monseigneur, if you please. You would
deny me
this
?”
“No,” Richelieu said. “No, of course not. My hesitation derives not from selfishness but from care for your person and your safety. Of course you can take care of yourself as a gentleman and soldier.” He offered a deep bow. “If I have offended, I humbly beg forgiveness.”
While his head was still inclined, he could not see Louis’ face, but his posture altered and relaxed.
“No,” the king said at last. “No, my old friend.” A hand came out and took his, and Richelieu stood straight. The king was smiling again. “You have not offended,” Louis said. “Your concern is most—most understandable. But all is in order. I shall be perfectly safe in your company.”
Chapter 13
Paris
The balcony doors were open to the crisp spring air, contrary to the admonitions of all down-time physicians. The view was magnificent: he could see the imposing façade of the church of St. Eustache, now nearly finished after a century of on-and-off labor.
Claude de Bourdeille, Comte de Montrésor, was fond of St. Eustache. His grandfather had been also. Most people only remembered the Seigneur de Brantôme for his memoirs and writings—entertaining, yes, but a trifle too lurid and explicit for the common person’s tastes. Yet he had had an artistic eye as well as a critical pen, and he would have been very pleased to see the great church in this almost-complete state.
As for the rest of Paris, and the rest of France . . . Montrésor was not sure what he would have thought of that. The Ring of Fire had changed everything: politics, culture, science, and—for those who did not understand what divine or infernal purpose might have brought up-timers into this century—religion as well.
What he was not fond of was waiting. Or, to be honest, being summoned: the letter from Louis de Soissons had been insistent, almost to the point of rudeness. Louis was a prince of the blood and acted the part. He was a Bourbon to the hilt, as arrogant as his royal cousins. No lesser person would have commanded Montrésor’s attention.
Montrésor had almost reached the limit of his patience when the count himself swept into the room. He walked to where Montrésor stood near the doors.
“Claude. So good of you to come.”
“I could hardly refuse. But you should realize that I have been observed.” He waved out the window. Down below, on the Rue Saint-Antoine, near the steps of St. Eustache, there was a man loitering. He was plainly dressed and was looking up at the balcony.
Louis, Count of Soissons, stepped closer and looked down.
“Quality. One of the cardinal’s finest. Servien—and not the one who stays so close: his older cousin Abel, the one that styles himself
Marquis de Sablé.
”
Montrésor sniffed. “They are all the same.”
“They are
not
,” Soissons said. “But it is of no matter.” He reached into his doublet and drew out a sheet of paper. “They can watch all they want. I have news, and shortly your master will have it as well.”
“What news?”
“Our friend in the red robe is on his way to see the queen give birth. He has just received a message by radio, and has left the city.”
“Where is he going?”
“Somewhere to the west, not terribly far from Paris, Claude. I’m not sure just where. The queen—and soon the next king of France, assuming the blessed event is successful.”
“Monsieur will be glad of the knowledge, but he will not be pleased that the birth is imminent.”
Monsieur
, the title given to the heir to the throne, currently belonged to Gaston d’Orleans, the king’s younger brother. Montrésor had the honor at the moment to be Monsieur’s favorite, which was enough to keep him away from his beloved Paris. He had spent altogether too little time here, in part due to the constant suspicion of Cardinal Richelieu. Ever since Montrésor had decided to attach himself to Monsieur Gaston, his comings and goings had been carefully watched by the spies and intendants and other little creatures employed by the red-robed menace who ruled this kingdom and its weak-willed king. As a result he had thought it best to remain by Monsieur’s side or at his estate in the country, depriving himself of the pleasures of the great city—and incidentally depriving the cardinal of information on his friends and activities.
Soon
, Montrésor thought to himself,
that will all change.
“How did you get this information, did you say?”
“A radio transmission. There is a radio at the chateau.”
“And you have a spy at the Louvre who relayed the message. Very clever,
Monsieur le Comte
—I am surprised that you could break Richelieu’s security—”
“I didn’t, Claude. I merely intercepted the transmission.” Soissons smiled. “I have intercepted all the transmissions.”
Montrésor frowned, baffled. “I don’t understand. If you . . . intercepted the message . . . then how was it received by the cardinal?”
“You don’t really understand radio, do you?”
Montrésor put on his best expression of noble disdain, as if the entire matter was beneath him. “Some up-timer matter. I’m sure it is a wonder.”
Soissons sighed. Gaston—Monsieur Gaston, who should have been, and might someday be, king of France—was arrogant, petulant, self-absorbed and at times ruthless: but at least he wasn’t an idiot. The count wondered how long Montrésor—elegant, cultured Montrésor, who was near cousin to an idiot—would last as Gaston’s favorite.
“A radio message,” Soissons said patiently, “is not like a letter. It is like a town crier—one that speaks a different language that only its recipients can hear.”
“I don’t quite understand.”
“The town crier goes from place to place and gives out the news,” Soissons said. “Except
this
one speaks—I don’t know, Catalan. And no one in the town square speaks Catalan except one person, and he understands what the crier says.”
“So you bribed the Catalan speaker.”
“
No
,” Soissons answered. “No. I found someone who speaks Catalan and hired him. So when the crier gives the news, I hear it too, and understand it.”
“So . . . the people where the queen is in seclusion are sending you messages as well?”
“Yes. No, not exactly.” Soissons ran a hand through his hair. “The radio there is broadcasting—shouting—a message. Richelieu is receiving the message, and
so am I.
”
“Is that possible? I thought a radio talked to another radio.”
“A radio talks to all the radios that might be listening at the time. They use a code, but it’s primitive enough that it was easily broken. Everything His Eminence hears, my radio hears as well. He has no idea that I am listening in, of course—but now I know where he is going.”
“I assume that you are having him followed.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Better than that, Claude. If all goes well, our good cardinal will never reach his destination.”
Forêt de Rambouillet
César, duc de Vendôme,
légitimé de France
, sat on his charger, appreciating the quiet moment that occurred just before battle. To call what was to come a
battle
, of course, was an exaggeration at best; but the quiet was reassuring nonetheless. The weather enhanced the quiet. The rain had mostly gone, replaced by a faint drizzle and a fog that shrouded the late afternoon light.
This feeling joined with the elation he felt to be back in France. He had been away from his beloved country, having left in haste four years earlier, just after the arrival of the infernal Ring of Fire, exiled from France for perceived offenses against the crown. But it was not his younger half-brother, the king, who had exiled him. It was his advisor, his minister, the very incarnation of the Devil Himself: Richelieu.
He hated that name and hated the man who owned it. He had made sure to teach his sons to hate him as well—just as Hamilcar had instilled hate into his sons in ancient Carthage. Louis, who was now with César’s other half-brother, Monsieur Gaston, and François, who sat on his own horse beside him, had learned the lesson well.
“Father.”
César sighed, the quiet broken. “What is it, François?”
“Do you ever think about fate, Father? About what might have been?”
The duc de Vendôme smiled and looked at his son. François at twenty reminded him very much of himself at the same age: tall, handsome, smart—and ruthless.
A fine trait
, he thought to himself.
“I should like to say ‘never,’” he said. “But the truth is that I think about it all the time. The God-cursed up-timers have made us all consider what might have been and what might never been. There have been so many changes since they arrived . . . but imagine if they had come thirty or forty years earlier. Things might have been different.
Very
different.”
“Do you think you might have been king?”
“I don’t know.” César reached up and smoothed down his long moustaches. He kept them in a style a few years out of date in France; François was far more trim and in fashion. “I am the eldest son of King Henri. My mother, your grandmother, was the king’s first and greatest love—perhaps his only true love: Gabrielle d’Estrées. When she died, still as his mistress, he held a state funeral.”
“La Belle Gabrielle.”
“Just so. My father always thought she had been poisoned, along with my youngest brother who died with her. He mourned her death most piteously—I was not quite five years old, but I remember that he was inconsolable. The procession included every person of note, and made its way to St. Denis for the funeral mass—and then out to Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône where she was interred at Notre-Dame-la-Royale de Maubuisson in solemn ceremony. It was a wonder.”
“The queen must not have been happy.”
“Hah.” César leaned aside, hawked and spat. “She did not arrive for a year thereafter. King Henri did not marry for love, just as he did not embrace the One Faith from piety. He became a Catholic to become the king of France and he chose a wife to give him offspring. The old brood mare gave him just what he wanted: sons and daughters, my brothers and sisters. The queen—the lady Marie—brought us all together, princes and princesses of the blood and royal bastards. No one ever forgot their status. I was constantly reminded of it, and so was my brother Alexandre.”
His fist clenched where it held the reins of his horse. The mount, sensing the motion, stirred and neighed quietly. César ran his free hand gently through its mane and it quieted.
“Monseigneur Richelieu has much to answer for.”
François knew that his father and his uncle Alexandre had run afoul of the cardinal and they had both been sent to the Bastille for a plot against him. Alexandre had not survived the experience.
“And he
will
answer,” César said. “Most assuredly. With the intelligence given us, we are here to make sure of it. You and our other fine gentlemen—” he waved behind at the troop of horsemen waiting quietly in the fog—“can do whatever you wish with the guardsmen who travel with him: but Richelieu is
mine.
”
As the last statement hung in the air, there was a high-pitched whistle in the distance.
César de Vendôme turned to look back at his troop. He raised a gloved hand and gestured toward the road, lost in the fog ahead. The men pulled forward the hoods of their cloaks and, at a signal, galloped together toward their quarry.