LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

shall revere Charles de Castelmore d’Artagnan.”

      Queen Anne nodded to Charles, who stood in full regalia—musket and bandolier spread across his black coat trimmed in gold. A red plume dusted the air above his right brow, and his boots were polished to a shine to rival the mirrors in Versailles.

      To the queen’s right, a liveried foot guard stepped up, proffering a red velvet pillow with a sword laid upon it.

      Containing his excitement, Charles drew in a breath and maintained a solemn expression.

      The queen took the sword by the gold hilt and held it before her, seeming to look it over, but moreover, displaying it to all who had congregated in the king’s private chapel to celebrate one of Louis XIV’s musketeers. She handled the weapon with skill, though d’Artagnan doubted she’d had occasion to use the weapon.

      “For bravery and valor,” Queen Anne recited in a regal yet quiet voice, which was her manner. “For honor among all men. And for all that you have done for your king and queen. You serve our country well, musketeer.”

      She presented the sword to Charles, blade extended horizontally to the right. The hilt sparkled. A bit of damascening curled up near the ricasso of the blade. It was a rapier, and quite ornate. No simple sword for this simple man.

      Head still bowed, Charles held open his hands to receive the gift. It wasn’t coin—which he could much use over another sword, especially one so decorative. But the gold on the hilt should fetch a year’s meals, and perhaps even outfit the ranks with the grenades Grosjean had demonstrated at Lille a fortnight earlier. They exploded on contact with the ground. What Charles wouldn’t do to put his hands to those marvelous weapons.

      The rapier landed on his palms. It was well weighted; he could determine that merely by holding it. It was likely fashioned by Hugues de Roche, the king’s sword maker, and a most sought after craftsman.

      This honor meant the world to Charles. To be publicly awarded this gift made him stand a full boot heel taller, and he felt his shoulders should never again slouch.

      Perhaps he’d keep this prize to hand. Though a gold hilt was never practical in active combat. The enemy would see it as plunder, instantly transforming Charles to a keen target among the ranks.

      Charlotte would insist he keep it. Yes, perhaps his sons should have this. It was rare he got a chance to visit the boys. It had been over a year since he’d last seen them.

      Now the queen bent slightly and leaned forward, which startled Charles. And it wasn’t because her heavily gilded dress creaked and the pearls roped about her neck and across her bosom clacked. The queen had reduced their proximity to close confidence. She had never done such around so many.

      “There is more to the eye than what glitters without,” she whispered.

      Straightening, she then stepped back and placed her hand in that of her son King Louis XIV.

      Remaining bowed before his majesties, Charles knew the king would send him off with a few words. But even as Louis spoke, he could not concentrate, for the wonders Queen Anne had stirred with her cryptic statement.

       Present day

      C HALON-SUR -S AÔNE WAS a thriving city nestled on the shore of a river that saw barges and tourist cruise boats heading northwest to Paris. The Saône was one of Europe’s largest commercial waterways.

      After her flight from England, Annja Creed had rented a car in Paris. She’d come from Stonehenge, after filming a segment for Chasing History’s Monsters. Since the builder’s settlement had been discovered not far from the stone monument, the archaeological world had been astir. Annja hadn’t been able to resist the assignment, but it was not finished, nor did she believe it could ever be truly completed. Stonehenge would offer marvels and mysteries for centuries to come.

      Upon arriving in Chalon, a quaint half-timber-and-brick restaurant lured her to park. Now she sat before a table on the restaurant patio beneath a maple dropping its leaves. Pea soup and a side order of potatoes and sausage made her forget that fast food ever existed. She was in pure, fattening, butter-laden heaven. She’d work it off later with a few hours of practice lunges.

      The restaurant was on the ground floor of an eighteenth-century building, just across from the river. Since Annja was half an hour early, she had taken advantage of the opportunity to eat. Her first rule of thumb when on the road was to eat when the opportunity presented itself.

      Finishing her cup of coffee, she dug out some bills and coins and left them on the café table in payment.

      Last night she’d received a hasty instant message from Ascher Vallois—a man whom, until today, she had only referred to as AnjouIII while communicating with him. He’d asked her to meet him as quickly as possible. Ascher knew from a previous online conversation that she had been wrapping things up at Stonehenge. His message had been littered with exclamation points.

      Ascher’s excitement had injected Annja with renewed exhilaration over a side project she’d been working on for years. It was one of her favorite geeky obsessions. And Ascher believed he had found it.

      She made him promise not to look at the find until she arrived.

      The find was the infamous sword alluded to in notes found in the nineteenth-century research journal of adventure writer Alexandre Dumas. The sword was gifted to Charles de Batz-Castelmore d’Artagnan by Queen Anne, the Austrian import, while her son Louis XIV reigned over France in the seventeenth century. Research notes written in the margins of Dumas’s notebooks—but not necessarily in his handwriting—had postulated that the sword had been a gift for a job well done serving as lieutenant of the king’s First Company of Musketeers.

      “D’Artagnan’s sword,” Annja murmured, a smile irresistible. “Finally.”

      Standing outside the white picket fence that corralled the café’s customers, she looked across the street and stretched her gaze beyond the parking lot before the river.

      “If Ascher is right, this day will so rock.”

      Though her specialty was the medieval and renaissance time periods, Annja had started following the life of the real-life musketeer—upon whom Dumas based his infamous hero—after reading a tattered copy of The Three Musketeers during her first year at college. If her fellow archaeologists discovered she spent her rare free time poring over copies of Dumas’s journals for the sword, they’d laugh.

      And a laughing archaeologist was a rare thing.

      Annja considered what she knew about the real musketeer. When Charles Castelmore, one of eight children born to minor nobility, signed on to the musketeers—some thirty years after Dumas had chosen to place him into his fictional version of history—the adventurous young Gascon used his mother’s maiden name of d’Artagnan. At the time, it carried more cachet than the Castelmore surname. His mother had been a Montesquieu, and the d’Artagnan name hailed from ancient nobility. His grandfather had been well-known to Henri IV, a valuable alliance to the Castelmore family.

      Castelmore lived an illustrious career serving the king’s First Company of Musketeers. Dumas had included many of the man’s actual adventures in his stories, including the capture and imprisonment of Nicolas Fouquet, the notorious superintendent of finances who had been arrested for embezzling royal funds.

      Not many people were aware that the swashbuckling hero from one of their favorite classic reads had been a real person; even fewer were aware of the sword. An allusion to the sword’s existence was marked by a notation in Dumas’s notes. Most literary researchers put it off as an abandoned plot line.

      Annja, on the other hand, had found that notation and had run with it.

      There were too many correlating facts for her to ignore. But she’d turned up nothing but a few enthusiastic historians and the occasional document signed by d’Artagnan for her sleuthing efforts. Once she realized that the real man had signed his name “d’Artaignan” she had also uncovered a few more items of interest, such as a copy of his marriage certificate—signed

Скачать книгу