The Cardinal's Musketeer

The Cardinal's Musketeer by Mary Imlay Taylor

In early seventeenth-century Paris, during the reign of Louis XIII, a boy named Péron grows up as the adopted son of Jacques des Horloges, a master clockmaker whose shop stands on the Rue de la Ferronnerie. The child's origins are kept secret from him, though he is treated with unusual care and tenderness by both the clockmaker and his wife, Madame Michel. He receives careful education from a gentle priest named Père Antoine, is forbidden ordinary childhood companions, and is kept largely indoors. The household guards a mysterious locked attic containing three large chests, the contents of which are zealously protected by Madame Michel. As a young boy, Péron discovers the chests during Madame Michel's brief absence and finds within them exquisitely fine infant clothing and a small gold chain bearing a ruby engraved with heraldic symbols he cannot decipher. He pockets the jewel without understanding its significance. He also encounters, during a rare journey to the Château de Nancay near Poissy with the clockmaker, a beautiful and imperious young girl named Renée, who mocks his plain clothes and calls him a thief. She later relents and throws him a bunch of violets as a peace offering, which he secretly keeps for years. At twelve, Péron's remarkable bearing and skill attract the attention of the Prince de Condé, who takes him into his household and has him trained in arms. Several years later, during a demonstration of fencing in Condé's tennis court, Péron disarms Choin, the celebrated fencing master, in front of the Prince and Cardinal de Richelieu. The Cardinal, who has been watching closely, requests custody of the boy and transfers him to his own household, where Péron rises steadily in service as one of his musketeers. When Péron is a grown man, the Cardinal summons him to a narrow crimson room in the Palais Cardinal and reveals to him the truth of his birth. He is in reality Jehan François de Calvisson, the son of François de Calvisson, the true Marquis de Nancay, who was executed years earlier after being falsely accused of treason by his closest friend, a man named Pilâtre de Marsou. That man usurped the Nancay title and estates, and twice attempted to remove the rightful heir. Péron was spirited away as an infant by the clockmaker, his wife, Père Antoine, and the pastry cook Archambault, who had long served the real marquis and risked their lives to conceal the child under a false identity. The Cardinal informs Péron that the usurper, who now goes by the name Marquis de Nancay, has been summoned to the Palais Cardinal under the pretext of negotiating terms, as part of a trap. He has been caught in a conspiracy against the state and against the Cardinal's life. While Péron is hidden inside a great clock that had once served Catherine de Medici and concealed her spies, de Nancay arrives, is confronted with evidence of his treason, and attacks Richelieu. Péron bursts from concealment, seizes the man, and wrestles him to the ground without using weapons. The usurper faints in recognition of his victim's face, which bears an overwhelming resemblance to the man he had destroyed. The Cardinal then orders Péron to search the Hôtel de Nancay, seize all papers, and place the household under guard. There he encounters Renée de Nancay, who has grown into a proud and brilliant young woman. Not knowing who Péron is, she defies him fiercely, burns a sheaf of papers in the fireplace before he can prevent it, and mocks him throughout. He is struck again by her beauty and reminded sharply of the girl at the château. Shortly after, Richelieu assigns Péron a second delicate mission: he is to escort Renée to the house of the Image of Notre Dame in Poissy, where she will serve as an unwitting lure for her father's fellow conspirators. Péron accepts reluctantly, concerned both with the indignity of using a woman in this way and with his inability to control her. He engages Choin, his old fencing master, and three men-at-arms as his escort. The journey is contentious. Renée recognizes him as the boy she once encountered at Nancay and addresses him with alternating contempt and a sharp, reluctant respect. She attempts to stop at Ruel, where warning messages might be sent, but Péron outmaneuvers her by taking a different road. When they arrive at the appointed house, she throws a lighted candle from a window to signal the conspirators away, then exploits a moment of inattention to burn another batch of papers. Péron has the shutters nailed shut, but fears the damage is already done. In the night, however, one man does arrive: Gaston d'Orléans, the king's brother, who appears in disguise and is captured before he understands what has happened. When Renée reveals his identity to Péron, she expresses fierce contempt for the prince, whom she regards as a coward and a traitor to every man who served him. Péron keeps the prince's identity secret from his own soldiers and eventually escorts him, along with the two women, back toward Paris. They stop at Ruel, where the Cardinal himself is in residence, and Péron delivers his prisoner directly to Richelieu. The Cardinal compels the Duke of Orleans, through a combination of documented evidence and the threat of arrest, to sign an agreement renouncing his claims to succession and the regency. The prince, weeping and cursing, complies rather than face public ruin. Richelieu rebukes Péron sharply for having allowed Renée to signal from the window, but acknowledges that the capture of Orleans is the most significant prize of the enterprise. He then dispatches Péron on a new secret mission, alone and in plain dress, to Brussels, to retrieve a letter from a house near the Maison du Roi, warning him in absolute terms that the message must be guarded with his life. Throughout the story, Péron is defined by his sense of honor, his restraint toward the defenseless even when they are his enemies, and by the tension between his loyalty to Richelieu and his complicated feeling toward Renée de Nancay. He chooses not to press immediately for the restoration of his father's title and estates, recognizing that a sudden claim would cause suffering to those who are innocent of the usurpation, chief among them Renée herself.

By Mary Imlay Taylor · First published 1900 · Genre: Historical Fiction, Adventure, Romance · 30 chapters · 87,838 words

First lines

ON the Rue de la Ferronnerie, near the end of the Rue St. Honoré, where Henri Quatre was stabbed, stood the clockmaker's shop. In the days of the thirteenth Louis, the streets of Paris were narrow; the windows of one dwelling peeped curiously into those of its opposite neighbor, and especially was this true of the old Rue de la Ferronnerie and of the shop of Jacques des Horloges, the famous clockmaker, at the sign of Ste. Geneviève. It was shop and house united, the upper story overhanging the lower, and under the eaves of the gabled roof the swallows built their nests. It was a quaint little house, the weather stains upon its front and the narrow windows speaking plainly of its antiquity. The strong oak door, black with age, had iron clamps which formed crosses at the top and bottom, while in an alcove above was a rough stone image of Ste. Geneviève. Within, on the lower floor there were three rooms; the one in front was the shop, next to this was the living-room for the clockmaker's family, and in the rear the kitchen. In the second story there were three small apartments, and above these again was the attic in the gabled roof. From the interior of the house this garret could be reached only by a ladder, put through a trap-door in the floor; but there was another entrance by a stone staircase which ascended to the roof on the outside of the house, from the court in the rear. From these steps two doors opened into the interior, one at the second story and one, a small one, in the roof; the first was frequently opened, the latter was always securely fastened.

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historical fiction · adventure · romance · political intrigue · court life · seventeenth-century France · French monarchy · cardinal · musketeers · duels · espionage · conspiracy

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