1636: The Cardinal Virtues (29 page)

Chapter 38

Paris

The convent of the Capuchin Friars was located on the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, a relatively recent addition to the royal city. It consisted of a group of buildings surrounding a central courtyard and bordered by an iron fence on the street side. The entrance was through a gated arch; the collegiate church was opposite, with the chapter-house to the left and the brothers’ cells to the right. In a city of churches, it hardly stood out as unusual—one more steeple among many.

Indeed, it was the perfect place for the Company of the Blessed Sacrament to meet.

Most Parisians and most Frenchmen had never heard of the Company. The duc de Ventadour had founded it in the spring of 1630. His Grace had just escorted his wife in her retirement to the Carmelite convent, and found diversion in the establishment of this secret, pious confraternity. It had multiple goals: encouragement of piety among its members; charity among the needy and poor in the king’s city; and the promotion of the True Faith. Encouraged—covertly—by King Louis, it had never quite been recognized by letters patent despite a number of quiet petitions requesting the same. Cardinal Richelieu had favored its works but given it no official sanction, though his most trusted advisor, Père Joseph—now Cardinal de Tremblay—was a Companion and presently served on its nine-member council.

The abbot of the Capuchins knew that the Company met on its premises, in a small chapel accessible through a false door in the sacristy of the great church, decorated by a beautiful depiction of the Savior’s Sacred Heart. He had one of the four keys to that door; the lay superior and the ordained spiritual director each possessed a key as well. The fourth key, almost since the formation of the Order, had hung from the
cingulum
of Père Joseph himself.

On a cool late spring night, when the streets of Paris were cloaked with fog, the cardinal de Tremblay and Jean d’Aubisson were conveyed to the entrance of the Capuchin church in a closed carriage. The brother porter looked curiously at the young former guardsman, but Tremblay nodded and he admitted both of them without a word.

The two men made their way through the grounds into the main nave. The vespers office was over and the hall was largely vacant—a few oblates were attending to the altar candles and preparing the church for the night offices a few hours away. As they made their way down the main isle after kneeling and genuflecting, others stepped away; Tremblay turned left and walked up two steps and into the sacristy, d’Aubisson just behind.

Someone was waiting near the door: Philippe d’Angoumois, the Capuchin prior, another of the nine overseers.

“Brother Prior,” Tremblay said. “I apologize for being tardy. A few matters required my attention.”

D’Angoumois looked from Tremblay to d’Aubisson.

“I will vouch for him.”

“It is in no wise that simple, Eminence. You are here with someone outside the Company—it is bad enough that you brought him into the Convent—”

“I will vouch for him, Philippe, and that is an end to it. With the superior away from Paris the baton belongs to me, so the decision belongs to me.”

“What does he know?”

“Enough.”

D’Angoumois was dissatisfied with the answer, but looked away. “Your arrival was not noted, I trust.”

“Not as far as I know. Gaston’s spies are everywhere; the man has a positive talent for intrigue.” He smiled. “I humbly offer that I have some skill in that area as well.”

“I never doubted it, though since you are not alone—”

“Enough,” Tremblay said. “I assume the others are waiting within.”

“Yes. We would not begin without you.”

“I daresay you would not.”

D’Angoumois reached within his cassock and drew out an unusual key: instead of a straight bar, it was truncated by a small stylized flat plate like a seal, a splayed heart with lines radiating out from it. He placed it not where a normal door lock might be found, but directly on an almost-invisible indentation in the Sacred Heart in the portrait before him, pressing it inward; there was a mechanical click, and the door swung inward to a slight push. Beyond there was a narrow hallway, lit by a small flickering torch.

The prior led the way. Tremblay followed with d’Aubisson, who at a gesture closed the door quietly behind them.

The secret chamber where the Company met was small, mostly occupied by a long wooden table inlaid with ceramic tiles. Each tile depicted one or another saint, each a blessed hero of France: Saint Louis, the just and noble king; Saint Denis, the patron of Paris; and a number of others. At the head of the table was an empty chair; a small ivory baton sat on the table in front of it.

Before taking his seat on the far side between a man in episcopal dress and a lay person in noble’s finery, d’Angoumois picked up the baton and carried it to the foot of the table, where Tremblay took his seat before the inlaid tile that showed Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the great and charismatic twelfth-century divine.

At a gesture from Tremblay, d’Aubisson took up a position behind him. The others looked curiously at Tremblay but offered no challenges.

“I have just returned from Reims,” he began. “I was allocated a rather inconsequential place in the procession. Our self-styled
king is not much interested in cardinals
in pectore
.”

“There was no affront to your person, I trust,” d’Angoumois said.

“No, nor to my dignity, but there wasn’t much chance of that. It is my impression that Gaston has not yet drawn up his list of royal enemies. The dowager queen mother, though . . .” he gave a gesture as he let the sentence trail off, while members of the council frowned and muttered.

“She has taken up residence in the
Palais-Cardinal
, in case you were unaware,” he said. “Apparently she has not found the Palais du Luxembourg to her liking.” Before her exile on the Day of Dupes, Luxembourg had been her home in Paris.

“I believe she appreciates the irony of it. But of course she was hoping to find some plowshares to beat into swords—to use against my lord of Richelieu. She was disappointed, I am happy to say.”

“You would not have called us all here, in the absence of the superior, to merely pass on gossip of the royal court,” d’Angoumois said. “Nor, Eminence, would you violate our secrecy with an outsider without good and just reason. I am sure we would all like to know what that is.”

“You are correct, Monsieur l’Abbé. You are all apprised of the news regarding the healthy son born to our good Queen Anne.

“The fact remains that Gaston is on the throne,” Condé said. “And the queen and her infant son have vanished. I know that we had made provision for this circumstance—were they protected?”

“That . . . is the true reason for calling this meeting. Our protection was extended as planned, up to a point. I regret that I bear some distressing news. It seems that we have a turncoat in our ranks.”

There was silence in the room after he said it: the members of the Company looked at each other, then back at Tremblay.

“The turncoat himself is not among us. It remains to be seen whether anyone here has any connection to him. But I have learned that he has been taking the coin of Olivares, by means of the Spanish ambassador in Paris, the marquis de Mirabel, who has told my lord Gaston what he knows.”

After further silence, Condé said, “He’ll have sent his hound after her, then.”

“The duc de Vendôme—”

“The duc de Vendôme will clearly stop at nothing to achieve his aims,” Condé said. “He is already a regicide. He will not hesitate to kill again. Queens . . . princes . . .”

“The duc de Vendôme,” Tremblay repeated, patiently, “is no particular friend of Gaston. The man who styles himself king of France has done his best to make sure that he holds Vendôme’s life in his hands. There is only so much a man like that will tolerate—and I believe his tolerance is at an end.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means that the fate of the kingdom of France is in the hands of a legitimated royal bastard who has nothing to lose. Is that clear enough, my lord de Condé?” Tremblay leaned back in his chair. He closed his eyes, rubbing them with his fingers. “Is it clear to you that all of our planning, all of our prayers, all of our ambitions have come to this?

“We have no control.
No
control over events. It has come to this, and we have come here to consult over those events.” Tremblay opened his eyes and picked up the ivory baton, turning it in his hands so that its faceted edges and gold-chased ends caught the candlelight. “We might as well douse the candles and put up the chairs and go home.”

“Did you come here to tell us that, Eminence?” d’Angoumois said quietly. “To tell us that the Company of the Blessed Sacrament no longer has any purpose?”

“I wish I knew how to answer that, Abbé. Truly I do.”

“I rather expected a more positive answer.”

“I am so sorry to disappoint you.”

“Damn it, Eminence, that’s not good enough.” Condé pushed back his chair and stood, walking to stand next to Tremblay’s seat. “You tell us that the queen is—or soon will be—in the hands of the duc de Vendôme. You tell us that the king—that Gaston—is not the rightful monarch of our land, and that he is complicit in the death of his brother and Cardinal Richelieu. And what you have to offer in return is indifference—of helplessness?”

“What would you have us do?”

“Fight,” Condé said. “
Fight
. If Gaston is not the king, then we should fulfill our vows to protect the one who is.”

“By . . . riding out to join him? Wherever he is?”

“That may be necessary. If the Spaniard knows where to go—if Vendôme knows—if the king knows—then we can know as well. Are you ready to exert whatever influence you have to find the queen and her son?”

“How shall I answer you?”

“I offer you two choices, Eminence. Either say yes and we will all know what to do; or say no, and hand me the baton. The Company—” he gestured along the table, at the expectant faces there—“awaits your answer.”

◊ ◊ ◊

Colonel Erik Haakonson Hand knew that the role of ambassador would be an uncomfortable one, but the unease of the present situation was worse than he would have imagined.

He had not yet presented his credentials to King Gaston. After Rebecca Stearns, who had led the USE delegation for the coronation in Reims and reception in Paris, left for home, he had made application to the chancellor’s office to arrange a proper presentation—but had been put off several times.

It made his summons even more surprising.

There was nothing for it: his full dress uniform was in order, with the appropriate military decorations of the kingdom of Sweden, augmented by the red, white and blue sash of the United States of Europe; the gold-chased ceremonial sword that wouldn’t cut a rindy cheese; white doeskin gloves on a sweltering hot day in the airless Palace of the Louvre. He’d endured much worse, and looked much more foolish.

He was admitted to a small reception room at the east end of the
Grande Galerie
, the long closed arcade that Henry IV had built between the Tuileries palace and the old Renaissance structure of the main Louvre Palace. He was left in the company of a bishop, Gaston Henri, a royal brother—one of Henri’s many illegitimate sons. Hand knew of him but had never had occasion to meet him, and wasn’t sure why he was present.

“Your Excellency would find it tiresome to remain alone,” the man told him when he asked that question.

“I have had many solitary periods in my life, Your Grace,” he answered.

“That is as may be, Monsieur Colonel,” the bishop said. “But I am here by my royal brother’s command.”

A few minutes passed in silence.

Hand stood up and walked slowly around the room, examining the bookcases and art objects; occasionally he would reach up to touch something gently with his left hand. The right remained crookedly at his side.

“Are you injured, Excellency?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Your right arm. You favor your left.”

“Ah.” Hand turned to face the bishop. When they had been sitting together the effects of the old injury were far less pronounced; the other man was observant, perhaps deliberately so. “I led an attack during a battle and suffered an injury. Rather a permanent condition, I regret to say.”

“Could not an up-time doctor fix it with—” he gestured, vaguely. “Whatever wizardry they possess for the purpose.”

“Not as yet,” Hand said. They had examined him, but had said—regrettably—that most of the capability to address the damage remained up-time and inaccessible. “But there is always hope.”

“Yes, of course.” Bishop Gaston Henri folded his hands and looked piously off into the middle distance, as if posing for a portrait.

“Your Grace, do you know if I will have an opportunity to present my credentials at this time?”

“Have you not done so already?”

“No. I have been making every effort, but . . .”

“The royal bureaucracy moves very slowly, Excellency. My brother the king has many demands upon his time, and is keeping all of his ministers quite busy. He—”

Whatever else the bishop intended to say regarding the king was suddenly cut off when the doors opened and Gaston walked into the room. Two gentlemen-ushers stepped just inside; the bishop was on his feet and offering a low bow, which the king ignored.

“You have our leave to go,” he said to Gaston Henri without turning. The bishop bowed again—and was ignored again—and scurried out of the room. The doors were closed, leaving Hand and the king alone.

Erik Hand was a blunt and forthright man, accustomed to plain speaking with his cousin Emperor Gustavus Adolphus; but he knew that the first words would have to come from the king.

“Colonel Hand, isn’t it?”

“Erik Haakonson Hand, if it please Your Majesty,” he said, giving a bow of his own.

“No salute?”

“I regret to say that an injury renders that difficult, if not impossible. I appear before you as a civilian, and appointed representative of my government.”

“Your government,” Gaston said. He curled his lip in amusement, or perhaps distaste. “Ah, yes. The United States of Europe. Our . . . new neighbors.”