"I know your face, Monsieur."
Rochefort sat facing the hooded man, who was swathed in a thick black cloak, rocking gently from side to side as the carriage rolled through cobbled streets.
After the King had charged after his conniving queen, panicked at the thought that she may be gravely ill, and all accusations of treason momentarily forgotten, Rochefort had been marched back, in venomous silence, to the cart he'd arrived in by the remaining Musketeers. He'd spent each step wondering whether one of them would quietly drive a dagger into his back. Or whether they'd just lynch him from the nearest tree, a reflection on their first meeting, just to let him die with a cruel sense of irony.
The only irony here, Anne, my love, is that you cannot see how similar we truly are.
They had restrained themselves of course. This performance had rules that bound them, choked them, oh so many more laws and conditions than he had. God's laws. The King's laws. The Musketeer's code.
I am bound only to myself, he had decided.
Too long have I been a slave.
The inside of the cart was dark, lit only by three shafts of light that passed through the barred window. It smelt of dust and urine. No doubt, he thought, disgusted, from countless others who have fallen out of favour with the King, pathetic wretches who had decided that being on trial simply wasn't humiliating enough and that pissing themselves was the only way to counteract that.
The door was sealed shut with an impenetrable iron padlock. A dozen Red Guards and Captain Treville surrounded it, armed as if they were about to invade Spain, preventing curious civilians from getting too close and preventing any chance of an escape.
And yet, somehow, the sinister silhouette had managed to slip inside.
"I know that I did not dream of you."
The man's blue eyes could never have been so exquisitely imagined under darkness of sleep.
"My dreams have a disappointing habit of always being less than prophetic," Rochefort mumbled bitterly, resting his head against the wall behind him, "And yet you sit here. Flesh and blood, in that ridiculous cloak. And so I know you cannot be a hallucination. If you were, then yours would certainly not be the face I would choose to go mad by."
The figure did not respond.
"Tell me. Are you another of the Cardinal's lapdogs?"
No answer.
"Or the ghost of a man I once killed, come to seek vengeance against me?"
The man reached up slowly and pulled back his hood, exposing his face entirely. He moved with the same bored quality that he had used in the courtroom, fingers lazily drawing back the fabric, shoulders slumped a little, facial features set in their default unimpressed state. From his sleeve, he produced a little dagger, which appeared so fragile that it seemed it could break if dropped.
Lévesque.
"Soy ningún fantasma,señor."
Rochefort felt his heart stop, but was careful not to react.
"You are Spanish…?" he murmured, trying to mask his nerves with curiosity.
"Yes. A son of Madrid. Although I make a very convincing Frenchman, don't you think?" He twirled the blade in his fingers absent-mindedly. The Comte wondered if he should call out for the guards, and end the conversation before it really began, but something told him that a member of the jury being found speaking to him so intimately, and in Spanish for that matter, would not support his plea of innocence.
"How did a Spaniard manage to weasel his way into the King's court without being detected?"
Lévesque smirked slightly.
"An honest man believes others to be as honest as he is."
Rochefort stopped breathing.
Those words…
"So tell me… who do you think I am now?"
#
Rochefort no longer knew if he was screaming.
Somebody was.
A hollow, inhuman sound.
For six days, naked as a howling infant, he had been chained to a post. He'd long given up on trying to move his arms, gradually letting an excruciating numbness wash over them. The wooden stool he perched on had splinted into his bare buttocks, large shards of wood protruding out of the soft flesh, and infection was most likely imminent. His legs were outstretched in front of him, encased in an iron contraption he'd heard the jailors call 'the boot'. The tips of the rusty spikes that lined the inside were merely perched on his skin, only causing him pain if he shifted too much.
He knew that would soon change.
He had no clue how long he had been in the prison. He'd originally been confined to some sparsely decorated quarters, treatment befitting a man of his title, but that had lasted eight months at best. During that time, he'd had no word from Cardinal Richelieu, no contact at all with anyone from outside the gaol, except a priest who had come weekly to pray with him and who was, much to Rochefort's chagrin, unfalteringly loyal to Spain.
When the Spanish had realised that civility and diplomacy would not get him to share French secrets, the pleasantries had been dispensed with.
They'd started with starvation and dehydration.
He'd known the feeling before, on one of his most covert escapades.
He captured the rats that skulked in his cell to eat.
He drank his own urine.
Next came the Cat o' Nine Tails, which had stripped away the skin on his back and shoulders. When his old wounds had begun to heal, they would open them up again with another fifty lashes. He had tried to imagine that the warm liquid oozing down his back was from a fresh pail of water, rather than from his weakening veins.
He had laughed as a doctor appeared, to wash, bleed and bandage him, to ensure that he did not die of infected injuries before they extracted their desired information.
Now, as the door swung upon, a man wearing a scarf over his face entered, with an armful of wooden wedges and a mallet.
A man with eyes the colour of the sky.
"The Comte de Rochefort?" He asked, feigning ignorance.
Rochefort, who had not slept for three days, could not answer.
"It is rude not to reply." The man drawled, bored. "Aren't you French nobles taught any manners? Like how to dress modestly?" He came to a stop in front of the nude prisoner and half-heartedly laughed at his own joke. He let his arms drop and the wood went crashing to the floor. Rochefort started at the noise.
"No need to worry, señor. I need not use these if you are willing to tell me what I want to know."
He crouched down, not bothered by the fact that he was kneeling in a puddle of faeces, and lifted the Comte's head so he was looking directly at him.
"Now. You cannot be the only one of Richelieu's agents in Spain. I want to know their identities, the locations of their safehouses and how much value the dear Cardinal places on each of their lives."
He received no response.
"No? Nothing?"
Silence reverberated through the cell.
"You do not wish to say anything?"
Rochefort spat in his face.
The blue-eyed man wiped it aside indifferently. Then, he reached for one of the wedges and balanced it between the prisoner's knees. The captive gritted his teeth, hoping that he would not bite his tongue and choke to death on it.
The torturer struck it with the mallet.
The wood firmly lodged itself into the contraption and Rochefort felt his legs be pulled further apart, the spikes on the inside beginning to drive themselves into the soft tissue of his calf muscles. He did not cry out, but chewed down on his lower lip and screwed up his eyes in pain.
"Their names, if you please."
When he gave no response, another wedge was placed between his legs, and heavy smash with the hammer drove it down deeper than the first. The teeth of the boot bit ravenously into his flesh now, and Rochefort could not help but scream.
The torturer adjusted his gloves.
"Well, at least your mouth is open now."
Rochefort felt blood drooling from his gaping lips.
"I…am…the…only one…" he rasped, as he had done so many times before.
"Do not lie."
"I…am…not lying…"
The blue-eyed man stood and kicked at the 'boot' and a wail like a strangled cat escaped the Comte's throat.
"An honest man…" He reached down and picked up another wedge, "believes others to be as honest as he is. And a liar knows when another man is lying to him."
The third wedge was hammered between man and iron, and Rochefort could feel the spikes penetrate so severely that they were grinding against bone.
"God knows, I have not a single shred of honesty in me."
A fourth wedge was prepared.
Think of her, the prisoner thought weakly.
Think of her…
Imagine her face…
"And neither, I think, do you."
#
Rochefort felt sick to his stomach.
"Why… why are you here?" he croaked, scratching at his wrists where the chains were beginning to chafe, the memory of such tortures making his muscles stiffen with fear. The mysterious visitor grinned as he noticed the recognition dawn on the Comte's face.
"The Spanish King believes you to be a liability. Normally he would just leave you to your fate, but men like you often tend to possess information that you should not possess at all. Information that can be traded to avoid imprisonment. Torture."
Rochefort refused to look away from this nightmarish apparition, that he had hoped long dead.
"Or, in your case, execution."
The prisoner dug his blunt nails into his palm and set his jaw.
"Is there anyone in this world who does not want me dead?"
The visitor smiled a little.
"It is not personal, señor. Nothing I have ever done to you was personal."
Rochefort very much doubted that. There was not one inch of him that his man had not subjected to the most desperate agony, not one secret he had prized from him gathered without shattered bone, dried crusts of blood, sharp metal probing flesh and a sadistic smile plastered across his face. It may not have originally been personal, but the victim had felt the man's duty evolve into pleasure. He'd heard his torturer rolling the name 'Rochefort' around on his tongue, endlessly, as though it were a psalm. He'd seen the eager glint in his eyes.
Those eyes that seemed to be made of ice.
"I take it then your name is not Lévesque?"
The Spaniard snorted quietly.
"That? I chose it randomly from a French newspaper. Something about human trafficking, I think. Ismael Durante is the name I gave myself when I entered the King's service. It means 'God hears the stubborn'."
"How poetic." Rochefort sneered, trying to regain some courage.
Durante's glare intensified at the snide remark, but he did not make a move with his weapon.
"I chose it because the stubborn, the men who resist and stay silent, are generally the ones who die first. The weak tend to survive by adapting."
He smirked.
"Rather like yourself. For a man who is a spy by trade, and trained to hold your tongue under immense pain, you gave in laughably quickly."
Rochefort felt his pride take a hit, anger flushing in his cheeks. It was one thing to jest about his current misfortunes, but to make a mockery of his suffering, his torment in that hellhole, was to undermine his very being, his soul. I was forged in that prison, he thought, like a blacksmith forges a sword, reshaped from Richelieu's obedient pawn into a man who bows to no-one.
And I certainly have never bowed to Spanish pigs.
"I endured your tortures for five years…" he hissed angrily.
"I've seen men hold out for ten. Even twenty."
Perhaps, Rochefort agreed silently, but twenty years is a lifetime for some…
I was not so willing to give my life.
"Well, Monsieur, let me be the first to apologise for being so disappointing..."
Durante idly plunged the dagger into the seat beside him.
"I was not as disappointed as you were, I imagine, when the Cardinal did not pay your ransom… tell me, how did it feel to be so insignificant…"
Rochefort wanted to tear the man's eyes from their sockets and shove them down his throat.
"I may have been easily forsaken once," he growled, "but that man is dead. The Cardinal is dead. Since my return from exile, I have grown in wealth, in influence and in power. I am anything but insignificant…"
"Ah yes," Durante scoffed, "Your foolproof scheme for gaining power. To return to France and climb into bed with the queen."
The Comte felt a stirring between his legs at the very thought of it.
"I remember you used to moan in your sleep about her, about all the things you'd do to her, so frequently that I half imagined her to be a submissive little whore…how pleased I was to discover that you are in fact the whore…"
Rochefort, usually so restrained, lunged forward, but was held back by the chains securing him to the floor. He went thudding back into his seat, chest heaving with rage, madness glinting in his eyes. The sudden movement had made his back twinge with pain again, reminding him that while he may have regained his fine clothes and leather boots, his body was still scarred and torn beneath the fabric.
"YOU HAVE NO UNDERSTANDING OF WHY I SOLD MYSELF TO YOU." he spat in a harsh whisper, "OF HOW IT FEELS TO HAVE NO CLAIM OVER YOUR OWN SOUL…to…to…."
His rage faded a little, as a stormy ocean lulls between waves.
"To know that you cannot give another what is not yours."
They sat in silence for a few moments. Rochefort could see the rooftops of the Musketeer's garrison out of the window. There was, perhaps, another ten minutes left of his journey. Rain was starting to fall, battering on the wooden carriage with vexing frequency. The wind made the timber's creak.
His thoughts briefly wandered to Anne, as they so often did.
Durante began to remove his gloves with menacingly steady hands.
"You are incapable of love, Rochefort."
The Comte was pulled out of his imaginings and back into reality.
"What you feel for the queen is nothing more than a futile desire. And it has led to your destruction."
He drew out another blade and began using it to sharpen the edges of his weapon of choice. Rochefort watched the sparks fly from them as they collided. Each impact produced a painful screech, a scraping sound as though he was whittling down bone. The assassin was timing each one with the clattering of the wheels on the road, so that it would sound like loose nails to the guards outside.
I must somehow change his mind, Rochefort thought, trying not to panic. All men can be bought for a price. The trick is to decipher each individual's need. I sold myself for survival. For love.
What does this man want?
Looking at Durante, it was obvious that a monetary bribe was out of the question; the leather gloves on the seat beside him were new and he flaunted several jewels on his fingers. There would be no point in threatening him. Being weaponless and chained did not provide a single advantage.
The Spaniard had finished preparing his weapon and returned to stillness.
"Do you recall, in Spain, that no one ever called me Durante? They called me 'el Padre'. 'The Father'."
He paused for effect.
"Why do you think they used to call me that?"
"Is it your insistence on playing God?" Rochefort muttered.
Durante reached a hand forward and rested it on Rochefort's cheek.
The Comte flinched, startled at his touch, unable to suppress the angry tears, the frightened tears, suddenly appearing in his eyes.
Am I to die here, at the mercy of this phantom, after all I have seen and done?
"It is because I am the father to so many reborn men. Men who forsake their past lives, past personalities, past allegiances. Men who are willing to die for Spain. I broke you. I created you. I pulled your sanity from you, stuffed my own mind into you, just as I did for so many others. I made you believe you have always been this way."
You are no 'father' of mine, Rochefort began to curse.
But inspiration struck him.
The cart came to an abrupt stop and Treville could be heard loudly issuing orders for the prisoner's return to his cell. Durante glanced at the door, measuring how much longer they had together. Rochefort was uncomfortably aware that the assassin's window of opportunity was closing.
"And now I will destroy you. As is a father's right."
He moved until he was merely inches away, produced the dagger and held it at Rochefort's throat, the edge slowly causing little spots of blood to appear. The Comte was obviously trembling, unable to escape, just as he had been unable to escape for all those years.
Every word counts, he knew.
And he will know if I lie.
Rochefort stared deeply into his old adversary's eyes, with a ferocity that he summoned from the memory of all of those years of suffering.
"I have always been broken."
Durante looked surprised.
"My true father broke me when I was a child. The only thing you managed to succeed in doing to me, in all those years of torture and pain and humiliation…"
Rochefort swallowed.
"… Was to help me to see just what a wonderful father he was."
Durante froze.
"You, el Padre, have not seen what I have prepared for the court. You know nothing, of how I intend to save myself the embarrassment of a public execution. And should you slit my throat now, you will never see just how your, so-called, 'reborn son' will bring France to its knees with a few carefully considered lies."
"I do not care about…"
"You may not care, but I am certain that the Spanish King will be most displeased with you, should he discover you denied me the chance to finish my original task."
The assassin looked unconvinced.
"Give me time to show you that I am still of value."
"There is no point…"
"But why not allow yourself the chance to claim this as your legacy?"
The pressure on the blade relaxed a little.
"To claim it was your creation that burnt France to ashes? That removed that snivelling child from the throne? It would be a lie to claim that I was broken by you, Monsieur. But…"
Rochefort lowered his voice to whisper in the other man's ear.
"God knows, I have not a single shred of honesty in me. And neither, I think, do you."
Durante seemed to pause for a moment, as though considering something, before beginning to chuckle. It was a low, growling sound, resonating through his broad chest and in his throat, like organ music in the cloisters of a cathedral. Quickly, he sheathed his knife and Rochefort could not help but sigh with relief.
"I like you, señor. You are by far the most intriguing man I have ever tortured."
He pulled his hood back over his head.
Rochefort could feel his heart thudding.
"I will give you three days." He spoke as he put his gloves back on, "To prove to me in court that your allegations against the queen can still somehow lead to Louis and France's downfall. Three days to convince me that you are still worth anything to Spain. To me."
The door was being unlocked, the rattling of keys a signal of the meeting's end.
"If I am not convinced, I will kill you."
The assassin stood to leave. The Comte wondered how he would manage to exit unnoticed by Treville, who no doubt would be barging in at any second. But oddly, the man did not leave immediately. Instead, Durante reached into his coat pocket and tossed its solitary occupant to Rochefort.
A blue glove.
"This belongs, I believe, to la dama de invierno. Another risk to Spanish secrets. Another prisoner of mine, taken on route to England."
There was a slip of parchment slotted inside, bearing an address in Paris.
Durante bowed, before turning to leave.
"I look forward to seeing how creative you can be with her."