Agnes promptly adopted a fearful attitude, as one would expect of a defenceless young woman who had just fallen into the hands of a menacing enemy. Besides, the one-eyed man was not alone. Some hired swordsmen with an evil look accompanied him.
“As Heaven is my witness,” said the Spaniard, exhibiting the cruel signs of the ranse that had destroyed his eye and was ravaging his cheek, “I could never have hoped for so much in coming here… My name is Savelda, Cecile.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I don’t know what’s wanted of you and it isn’t for me to decide. I can only promise that no harm will come to you if you follow us without making a struggle or noise. So, Cecile? Will you be reasonable?”
“Yes.”
A few minutes later, Agnes found herself back on rue de la Fontaine, closely hemmed in by the hired swordsmen, with Savelda leading the way. It was there that she saw and recognised Saint-Lucq; wearing dark clothing and a sword at his side and discreetly positioned at the entrance to an alleyway, he observed the scene from behind his ever-present red spectacles.
Agnes’s astonishment was such that she almost betrayed her emotion. All they needed was the half-blood for the Cardinal’s Blades to be complete, but La Fargue had not announced his recruitment to anyone. Yet… his presence here could not be mere chance? No doubt he was watching the house. Perhaps it had even been Saint-Lucq who had searched the premises and emptied the cache inside. It was ironic that it was her own fault they had missed one another: he could not have guessed that she was in the sedan chair that had passed by in the street and then she had entered the house by the rear while he had been keeping his eye on the main facade out front.
Seeing Agnes being led away, Saint-Lucq was already taking a step toward her and reaching for his sword-if he hadn’t lost any of his skills the matter would doubtless be quickly settled. Only Savelda could perhaps pose a problem. But the false captive stopped the half-blood in his tracks with a glance that she hoped he would comprehend.
Sometimes, throwing yourself into the lion’s jaws was the only means of finding its den.
10
La Fargue and Almades returned around noon covered in sweat, soot, and blood, the hooves of their horses suddenly filling the walled, cobbled courtyard with loud echoes that woke the Hotel de l’Epervier from its sad torpor. They turned the care of their mounts over to old Guibot, who came hurrying as quickly as his wooden leg would allow, while they dashed up the front steps.
“War council, now!” shouted the captain as he burst into the main room of the house.
Leprat, trapped in his armchair by his wounded leg, was already there. Marciac joined them and for a brief moment there was expectant silence. Obviously, there had been an urgent new development, about which Leprat and the Gascon were both anxious to learn the nature, while La Fargue paced back and forth before finally asking: “And the others?”
“Agnes has gone out,” said Marciac.
“Ballardieu?”
“Here,” announced the old soldier, entering the room.
He had just arrived himself-he had even seen La Fargue and Almades pass him in the street at a rapid trot as he was returning from Palais de la Cite, where Saint-Lucq had shaken him off his tail.
“‘Gone out’?” asked the captain, thinking of Agnes. “Gone out where?”
Receiving the same questioning look as Marciac, Leprat shrugged his shoulders: he didn’t know anything about it.
“She’s gone to search Cecile’s house,” explained the Gascon.
“Alone?” inquired Ballardieu in a worried tone.
“Yes.”
“I’m going over there.”
“No,” ordered La Fargue, visibly upset. “You stay.”
“But, captain…”
“You’re staying right here!”
Ballardieu was going to protest further but Almades placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“Agnes knows what she’s doing.”
Reluctantly, the old man subsided.
“Marciac,” said La Fargue. “The doors.”
Nodding, the Gascon closed all the exits to the room and when he finished the captain announced: “We found Castilla. Tortured and left for dead.”
“Is he dead now?” Leprat wanted to know.
“No. But he’s hardly better off for being alive. His tormenters spared him nothing. Almades and I rescued him at the last minute from a fire set to make him vanish. We took him straight to the Saint-Louis hospital which, fortunately, was close by.”
“Did he speak?”
“Two words only,” interjected Almades. “Garra negra. The Black Claw.”
Everyone went quiet: they all knew what that meant.
The Black Claw was a secret society that was particularly powerful in Spain and its territories. It was not secret in the sense that its existence was unknown, but in that its members did not reveal their identities. And for good reason. Directed by dragons who were avid to acquire power, the society stopped at nothing to further its ends. For a time, it had been thought to serve Spain. However, even though its most active and influential lodge was to be found in Madrid, its ambitions were not always in harmony with those of the Spanish crown. Sometimes they were even opposed. The masters of the Black Claw in truth wanted to plunge Europe into a state of chaos that would aid their plans to institute an absolute draconic regime. A state of chaos that, in the end, would not spare the Spanish Court of Dragons.
Tentacular in nature, the Black Claw was nowhere as powerful as it was in Spain. It was nevertheless at work in the Netherlands, in Italy, and in Germany where it had established lodges which remained subordinate to the oldest and most dreaded of them all, the Grand Lodge in Madrid. As for France, so far she had eluded the society’s clutches. Although the Black Claw sometimes hatched schemes within the French kingdom, it had never succeeded in implanting a lodge there.
“If the Black Claw is involved,” said Leprat, “it explains why the cardinal suddenly called us back to service. It also means that the danger is great. And imminent.”
“So this whole affair could just be a pretext to put us on the trail of the Black Claw?” ventured Marciac.
“I doubt that,” answered La Fargue. “But the cardinal may know more than he has let on.”
“So what are we to believe? And who?”
“Ourselves. We only believe in ourselves.”
“That’s a tune I’ve heard sung before…”
“I know.”
“Back to the matter at hand,” prompted Leprat, seeing that the company was rehashing its shared bad memories. “If the Black Claw is, like us, searching for the chevalier d’Ireban, it is no doubt because he is something more than the debauched son of a Spanish grandee.”
“That much, we already guessed,” interjected Marciac.
“So then, who is he?”
“Perhaps he and Castilla belonged to the Black Claw. If they betrayed it, they had every reason to flee Spain and seek refuge in France, where the Black Claw still enjoys little influence.”
“If the Black Claw were after me,” observed Almades in a grim tone, “I would not stop running until I reached the West Indies. And even then, I would stay on my guard.”
“Castilla and Ireban might have less good sense than you, Anibal…”
“I’ll grant you that.”
“We still need to know,” said Leprat, “what information the Black Claw wanted from Castilla and whether or not they obtained it.”
“If he hadn’t talked we would have found a dead body,” asserted La Fargue. “Judging by his sad state, he resisted as long as he could. He therefore had some important secrets to hide.”