For Louis XIII, sombre and dark and lacking all the energy of his murdered father Henry IV, is too readily influenced by the Cardinal. But there are darker plots swimming under the surface. She invites him to a secret meeting with the Queen, at which Moret discovers that the Queen, the Queen Mother Marie de’ Medici, and the king’s brother Gaston d’Orleans, are plotting against Cardinal Richelieu. The lady he’s been meeting at the inn is none other than one of Queen Anne’s ladies-in-waiting, the irrepressible Fargis. Moret has only recently arrived in Paris, but he’s already being drawn into court intrigue. But a mysterious young man, disguised as a Basque peasant, has been meeting a lady upstairs in that very inn during the fracas and it transpires that he is none either than the Comte de Moret himself who, on hearing of the sacrifice Latil has made, leaves him money to aid his recovery. A duel becomes a mugging poor Latil finds himself close to death and the nobleman escapes with the aid of his friends. However, the sellsword, Etienne Latil, has inconvenient principles and, when he hears that his quarry is the Comte de Moret, the illegitimate son of Henry IV, he refuses the job. In the opening chapter, a hunchbacked nobleman attempts to hire a swordsman to do away with a rival in love.
Although the musketeers themselves don’t appear, there’s a handsome young hero, a beautiful heroine, battles, plots and, bestriding everything like a colossus, the Red Sphinx himself: the shrewd Cardinal Richelieu. For those who love derring-do, intrigue and swashbuckling, there’s a treat coming up in January: a fresh new translation of a little-known sequel to The Three Musketeers. Now that Christmas is almost upon us, we can start planning reading lists for the New Year.
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