Richelieu sat motionless.
“Oh, I was no knight of his, merely a trader who came by on my rounds,” Lacy stated. “Nor did I meet any Lancelot or Gawain or Galahad, nor see any glittering Camelot. Little of Rome lingered there. In fact, it’s only my guess that this was the seed corn of the Arthur legend. But monsieur will understand why I was reluctant to mention it at all, I was tempted to concoct a prosaic falsehood.”
Richefieu nodded. “I do understand. If you continue a liar, you are as skillful a one as I have found in a wide experience.” He forbore to inquire whether the Phoenician had embraced Christ out of expediency, the same as when he did homage to numerous other gods.
Lacy’s tone became wry. “I shan’t insult you by denying that I’ve given a great deal of beforehand thought to this interview.”
Richelieu plucked the parchment from his lap and cast it to the floor. It struck with a small rattling noise that drew the notice of the kitten. So much of a bodily gesture did the cardinal permit himself. He leaned forward, fingertips pressed together. Sunlight glistened off a great ring of gold and emerald. “What do you want from me?” he snapped.
“Your protection, monsieur,” Lacy replied, “for myself and any like me.” Color came and went in his lean cheeks, above the closely trimmed beard which had not a single silver hair.
“Who are they?”
“MacMahon is one, as your eminence must have guessed,” Lacy told him. “We met in France when it was still Gaul. I’ve encountered or heard of three more whom I wondered about, but death by mischance took them before I could be certain. And another I did feel sure of, but that person—disappeared. Our kind must be very rare, and shy of revealing themselves.”
“Vanishingty rare, as the learned doctor Descartes might put it,” said Richelieu with a flash of bleak humor.
“Some, over the centuries, may have tried to do what I am trying this day, and come to grief. No record of them would likely remain, if any was ever made.”
The kitten advanced cautiously toward the parchment. Richelieu sat back. Lacy had stayed well-nigh immobile, hands folded on the sober-hued knee breeches. “What more evidence have you to offer?” the cardinal asked.
Lacy gazed away at nothing visible. “I thought about this for lifetimes before I took the first measures.” His voice was methodical. “One gets into the habit of taking forethought and biding one’s time. Perhaps too much so. Perhaps opportunities slip by and it’s again too late. But one has learned, sometimes at a high price, monsieur, one has learned that this world is dangerous and nothing in it abides. Kings and nations, popes and gods—no irreverence meant—all go down in the dust or up in the flames, all too soon. I have my provisions, piecemeal made over the centuries, hoards buried here and there, tricks for changing identities, a tool chest of assorted skills, and … my reliquaries. They are not all in churches, nor are they ail of them caskets containing parchments. But throughout Europe, northern Africa, hither Asia lie the tokens I planted whenever I could. My idea was that if and when a hope came along, I’d go to the nearest of those caches and retrieve what it held. That should give me my opening wedge.
“Now, if Your Eminence likes, I can describe quite a few that will be accessible to his agents. I can say exactly what the nature of each is, and where it reposes. In several cases, at least, it will definitely have been there for a long while. In every case, they can verify that Captain Jacques Lacy could not possibly have made the arrangements at any time in the half century that men have known him.”
Richelieu stroked his beard. “And meanwhile you expect to wait in custody, hostage to this material,” he murmured. “Yes. I have little doubt that if exists, for you show no signs of madness. Therefore you cannot be an impostor either, of any sort known to criminal justice. Unless, indeed, you really are a sorcerer, or an actual demon.”