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Fantasy Stories

Madame Pompadour's Blade

Written by Tom Purdom

Illustrated by Dan Skinner

They passed the carriage about an hour after they left Paris, as Geveaux had expected. It was a cool, sunny morning in early April. Even the peasants driving geese and pigs toward the city behaved as if they might be momentarily satisfied with their lot. Geveaux rode past the carriage on the left, with Francois behind him. He glanced at the windows but they were covered with dust. He would just have to assume Mademoiselle Arlette was seated inside. They were overtaking the carriage at the right point and it matched the description he had received from the spy at the Hotel Rousset: sandy brown with bright green wheels and trim, three bays and a black doing the hauling.

Geveaux raised his hat to the coachman. He shouted a pleasantry about the nature of the morning and the coachman saluted with his whip. The butt of a silver-plated pistol gleamed above the sash the coachman had wrapped around his cloak.

Geveaux turned in the saddle as he galloped past the front horses. Francois was plowing down the road with his eyes fixed on his horse's neck. Normally, Francois would have been bending in half offering exaggerated bows to any ladies who might be hidden behind the windows.

They left the carriage behind and Geveaux dropped back. "We'll reach the wood in about five minutes. Ten minutes after that we'll be on our way back to Paris."

Francois raised his head. "Did you count them? Could you see their weapons?"

"Through those windows?" Geveaux said. "With the sun shining on the dust?"

Geveaux jerked his thumb at the scabbard that extended through the side slit in Francois' riding coat. "Just remember you've got that, my good count. There isn't a pistol in the world can stand against that."

****

"It is a disappointing circumstance," Geveaux had told the marquise. "The sword is everything you have heard it is. But unfortunately, the fourteenth count of LechMutacque is everything he appears to be. As a courtier, Francois has all the necessary virtues. As a soldier. . . ."

The marquise had been wearing a loose, pale yellow gown. She had been standing beside her writing table when Geveaux entered the room—the perfect image of a composed woman of affairs. If she had been posing in front of a map, she could have been taken for a female monarch, like the Empress Elizabeth of Russia.

In actuality, of course, she was a more important figure than any empress. The Czarina Elizabeth ruled a hundred million Oriental serfs. The marquise de Pompadour dominated the courtiers of Versailles and all the magnificence controlled by the maitresse en titre to His Most Christian Majesty Louis XV.

To her adversaries, she was an upstart banker's daughter who had been elevated several leagues above her proper station. To most of her admirers—including Maurice Geveaux—she was a gift from providence. This was the first time Geveaux had actually talked to her but he had seen the fruits of her influence. Kings and czarinas exercised a secular, temporal authority. The marquise reigned over the eternal republic of the mind. She was the tasteful, enlightened patron—and even protector—of the artists and philosophes who were transforming civilization.

"But you still believe he can be of some service," the marquise said.

"I have been his companion for nine years. Francois was still a stripling when his mother placed him under my guidance. The sword is not a weapon that requires exceptional courage. With the proper direction—and a firm motivation—he can defeat adversaries who would send him scurrying if he were armed with more familiar weapons."

The marquise smiled. "There are limits to my ability to solidify motivation, Monsieur Geveaux. There is nothing magical about the size of my purse."

"I understand, madame. I should be quite willing to trust to your generosity, if you should ever decide our services might be of value."

It was a conversation in which everything was understood. They both knew the marquise was aware that Francois teetered on the verge of ruin. Francois' grandfather had mortgaged the family lands so he could cut a figure at the court of Louis XIV, Francois' father had mortgaged his patrimony yet again, and Francois had followed their example.

Louis XIV had subdued the aristocracy by turning them into courtiers who wasted their incomes on fashionable display and the endless gaming that constituted the primary social activity at his palace of Versailles. Louis XV was less relentless but the damage to the house of LechMutacque had become irreparable. Francois was the ultimate product of Louis XIV's cunning—an aristocrat who bowed beautifully, dressed superbly, and provided the ladies of Versailles with a pliant, somewhat comic, instrument of carnal pleasure.

Geveaux also knew, on the other hand, that His Majesty's mistress needed the kind of help he was offering her. He had asked her for an audience because the court gossip had been buzzing with reports of an intrigue that threatened to terminate her reign.

Madame de Pompadour had now been the recognized mistress for eight full years. She had managed to last so long, furthermore, in spite of a handicap that would have disqualified any other candidate for her position: she displayed a noticeable lack of interest in the activity normally associated with mistresses. The marquise had retained her hold on the king because she satisfied his need for intelligent female companionship—a need his neglected Polish queen could never assuage. The marquise played hostess at his intimate gatherings with his friends, listened to him as he chatted over private breakfasts, and offered him a refuge in which he could enjoy the comforts of relaxed human contact. She appeased his less domestic appetites by providing him with suitable temporary confections. In a typical week, Louis might embrace four, or even five, of the women she steered toward his bed. Few visited him more than once.

Now, according to the rumors, the marquise's enemies were advancing a formidable assault. The daughter of an obscure provincial seigneur was to be presented at court in just two days. She had been selected three years ago and gorged with all the education the marquise's family had once stuffed into their daughter. She could converse on astronomy and art with equal facility, the wags proclaimed. Her social graces could regulate a salon or a debauch. And she was eight years younger than la Pompadour.

The marquise had received regular reports on the new prodigy's training and she had prepared a response. Her agents had reconnoitered ten young women who had come to Paris dreaming of careers in the Parisian theaters. Their naked felicities, the gossips proclaimed, had been inspected by the marquise herself. The winning candidate had been whisked to a country chateau. A year of intense training had equipped her for her task. The day before the would-be mistress was scheduled to make her obeisance to the king, the marquise's representative would be slipped into His Christian Majesty's bed. She would remain at his disposal for a week, two weeks—until the marquise's rival retired from the fray.

The glorious distraction had been chosen by a woman with an impeccable knowledge of the king's tastes. No one doubted she would be successful. Unfortunately, the marquise's enemies had agents, too. The young actress was now a prisoner in the Parisian quarters of a particularly spiteful grandee.

"Has the count of LechMutacque actually used this weapon?" the marquise asked.

"Twice," Geveaux said.

The marquise studied Geveaux's face. He stared back at her with his eyes open and steady.

"You would make a wonderful charlatan, Monsieur Geveaux. You have such a broad, honest face I feel compelled to believe everything you tell me."

Geveaux bowed in response to the compliment. He was a muscular, slightly weatherbeaten man who had spent the first years of his career managing work gangs on the LechMutacque estates. Francois' mother had placed her son under his tutelage because she considered him dependable and honest—and knew he was not afraid to bend the truth when it was obviously politic.

"I can assure you the sword is quite real. It has been the personal weapon of the Counts of LechMutacque for over three hundred years."

"I have never doubted the existence of the sword, monsieur."

"I understand, madame."

"As it happens, there is something you and your charge might do for me now. As you may have heard, a young woman—a good friend of mine—has been victimized by someone who apparently hopes to wound me by wounding her."

Geveaux nodded. "I have encountered rumors to that effect."

"Then you may know Arlette is currently being held prisoner by her oppressor. My agents inform me that she will be carried out of Paris tomorrow morning. I would be grateful—extremely grateful—if she were liberated from her captors. And presented to me—unharmed—before the king retires tomorrow."

"Do you know the route she will be taking, madame?"

"I can put you in touch with a confidante who knows all the details. The timing is most important. And she must be unharmed. Not a cut, Monsieur Geveaux. Not a scrape. Unblemished."

****

Geveaux pulled them to a stop a few minutes after they passed the carriage. The road had described a gentle bend around some farmer's wood lot.

"You'll have all the advantages of surprise," Geveaux said. "They won't see us until they round the turn."

Francois pointed at the field on the other side of the road. Six peasants were breaking clods with their hoes.

"They're peasants, Francois."

"They'll think we're highway robbers."

"The way you're dressed? Don't you think they'll understand this is a quarrel between gentlemen as soon as they see the quality of your wig?"

Geveaux slipped off his horse. He pulled a small wheel lock pistol out of his coat pocket and wound the spring. "I'll pretend I'm adjusting my saddle. It will all be over in ten minutes, my good ami. You'll be riding back to Paris with Mademoiselle Arlette in your arms and Madame de Pompadour in your debt."

He returned the wheel lock to his coat. The long flintlock pistol in his saddle holster was already primed.

Tactically, they would have been in a better position if Geveaux had ridden behind the carriage, while Francois stopped it from the front. With anyone else, Geveaux might have done it that way. If he had tried it with Francois, he would have ridden around the bend and found the road empty and the master of LechMutacque cowering in the wood.

Geveaux hadn't lied to the marquise. Francois really had used the sword twice. The first time he had drawn it, he had plinked a young servant girl who had refused his advances. The second time, he had swatted an impudent innkeeper with the flat of the blade. He had struck from ambush—at over fifty paces—on both occasions.

Francois had just become the master of his estates the first time Geveaux had eased the weapon from its scabbard. Francois had left most of his clothes in Geveaux's custody while he romped in a bower with a country whore—an encounter Geveaux had arranged in the hope it would give him momentary custody of the sword. Geveaux had handled the sword a dozen times since, while Francois had been occupied with women or fussing with his grooming. The results had always been the same. Nothing he had tried had awakened the sword's power. There was no magical incantation. There was no series of improbable acts. The sword responded to the touch of the rightful and recognized Count of LechMutacque. And nothing else.

He could have remade the world if he controlled a weapon like Francois' sword. The marquise's enemies would have retreated to their bedchambers and remained there until she granted them amnesty. Instead, he was spending his days bolstering a dissolute poltroon.

His ear picked up the sound of horses’ hooves. "Now, Francois. Draw it. Strike as soon as you see them."

Geveaux was standing with his back to the oncoming carriage, watching Francois across the saddle of his horse. Francois' right hand crept toward the sword. Francois' fingers closed around the diamonds on the hilt. And the sword remained in the scabbard.

Geveaux's left foot found the stirrup. He heaved himself into the saddle as if he was trying to jump all the way over it. He clutched Francois' sword hand with both hands and forced it upward.

"Draw it, damn you! Draw it."

Francois' horse staggered into the roadway. Francois stared at the oncoming carriage as if he was recovering from a five day debauch.

"Get it done!" Geveaux bellowed. "It's your last chance. Do you want to spend the rest of your life eating potato soup and pronging the oldest whore in some pox-infested village?"

The sword had been a relatively dainty weapon in the era in which it had been fashioned. To modern eyes, it looked like a heavy, business-like cavalry brawler—an odd sight on the belt of a gentlemen who looked like he would be more at ease with a court sword that was as pliant as his backbone. Francois gripped the hilt with both hands as he pointed it at the carriage.

The sword could do its work at over a hundred paces—further than the practical range of a military musket. Francois merely had to pull it toward his chest and thrust at the coachman's upper body. A puncture wound would immediately kill or disable the coachman, a slash would disable a horse, and Geveaux would ride forward, break a coach window with the butt of his pistol, and confront their adversaries with the muzzle.

That was the plan anyway. Instead, Francois raised the sword above his shoulder and started the attack with a slash. A red gash appeared along the neck of the left front bay. Blood spurted. The horse's legs folded under it. It sagged in the traces and the carriage lurched to a stop.

"The man!" Geveaux shouted. "Get the man."

The coachman had already stood up. He jerked his weapon out of his sash and steadied it on the wigged and jeweled cavalier in the middle of the road.

Francois yanked his horse around. He sheltered his head behind his mount's neck and bolted off the road toward the comfort of the trees. He plunged past Geveaux with his sword dangling from his hand and Geveaux followed him into the shade.

****

Francois' horse had a cooler head than its rider. It slowed down before it battered its skull on a tree. Geveaux caught up with it and grabbed the reins.

Habit contained his rage. He was, ultimately, only a glorified servant. Francois could dismiss him on a whim. It would be a foolish act but Francois could do it.

"You had him in your hands, Francois. He was twenty paces out of pistol range."

Francois had lifted his head from his horse's neck. He was watching the road through the trees but he had already slipped into his courtier's hauteur.

"Are you aware of who that so-called coachman is? Do you think I would be improving my position if I spent the next year of my life waiting for a knife in the ribs because I hacked up a senior member of the Doubert family?"

"You're going to be a friend of the marquise, Francois—a friend of the king's best friend. You'll have a purse that can buy a hundred creatures like him."

"Charles Doubert is no common rogue. It's one thing to take on a single scoundrel. It's another thing to take on the chief cutthroat in the biggest family of assassins and bravos in the kingdom."

Geveaux had bent his back as if he were wheedling for a few extra coins for his purse. Sometimes Francois needed a sharp word. Sometimes you had to let him know you hadn't forgotten he was the lord of LechMutacque.

Geveaux had recognized the coachman as soon as he had seen him, of course. There were two marquis at court who owed their current splendor to the knife thrusts Charles Doubert had inflicted on their uncles.

"He's a dangerous man," Geveaux said. "You are taking a formidable risk for the future of your house. Your family will be in your debt for the next thousand years. But you won't be alone. The marquise has her forces, too. The king could have that