Free Memory of Flames by Isabel Reid (Translator) Armand Cabasson Page B

him. Had he chosen to serve the Empire he would certainly have been high up in the hierarchy, either civil or military. But he had decided to support the King, and his ‘Grande Armée’ was merely a group of perhaps thirty, and instead of gliding through the enemy palaces he had seized, he was hiding from cellar to cellar. He was a sort of fallen angel precipitated into limbo alongside royalty. Although he was an idealist, he must have suffered from not occupying a rank commensurate with his talents. Margont’s argument about the need to be recognised had shocked him because it had hit the nail on the head ... The emblem of the Swords of the King was pinned to his jacket over his heart. Margont looked at it briefly, as if he were seeing it for the first time, and  noted that it corresponded in every particular with the one he had seen on Colonel Berle’s body.
    'I'm Vicomte Louis de Leaume.’
    ‘Delighted to meet you!’ said Margont, massaging his throat. ‘Baron Honoré de Nolant.’
    Nolant was overcome with embarrassment. It is not every day you are introduced to the person you almost murdered a few minutes earlier. He was a little younger than Louis de Leaume, and thin, but Margont was not taken in by his fragile appearance, knowing how easily he had been overpowered by him. Nolant did not look directly at Margont and appeared distracted, lost in his own thoughts.
    Varencourt looked pale. He did not dare move, as if he had not yet realised that the ordeal was over.
    He turned to Margont and said, ‘Incredible! You’re even more of a gambler than I am!’
    He laughed, bringing colour to his cheeks, but the rest of his face was still as pale as porcelain.
    A third man, who had been silent up until then, introduced himself: ‘Jean-Baptiste de Chatel.’ He was posted just inside the door, as if to intercept Margont should he try to flee. He was a little older, but not yet fifty, with a bony face and searching, narrowed eyes. He was so emaciated he looked ill, or as if he had endured many years of deprivation.
    Margont realised he had been put in front of a sort of tribunal. Everyone had been listening to him and when Louis de Leaume had proposed lighting a candle, any one of them could have sentenced him to death by replying ‘no’. In the meantime Jean-Baptiste de Chatel did not look happy. He had contemplated refusing the light!
    ‘Monsieur de Langes, perhaps you would like to suggest a suitable quotation from the Holy Bible. What do you know of the word of God?’
    ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ replied Margont, looking at Honoré de Nolant.
    ‘That’s a bit short.’
    Margont now felt trapped in the persona he had just projected. It would not do to appear merely as a pushy trouble-maker. He would have to temper the showy opportunism he had displayed with a demonstration of faith to win over the idealists present. Jean-Baptiste de Chatel looked as if he might be susceptible to this. So Margont pressed on.
    “‘Seeing he despised the oath by breaking the covenant, when, lo, he had given his hand, and hath done all these things, he shall not escape. Therefore thus saith the Lord Cod; As I live, surely mine oath that he hath despised, and my covenant that he hath broken, even it will I recompense upon his own head.” Ezekiel, Chapter 17, verses 18 and 19. He who breaks a covenant offends God and breaks away from him.’
    Jean-Baptiste de Chatel s expression was transformed, like a block of ice turned suddenly to vapour. He seemed about to take Margont in his arms. ‘Good, very good!’
    Margont had spent four years in the Abbey of Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert studying the Bible under the iron yoke of the monks. He had almost become a monk himself, against his will. So it would be hard to trip him up in his knowledge of theology. To lie effectively was it not best to lead your adversary onto territory that you were sure of?
    ‘What do you know about the Antichrist?’ Chatel demanded. Margont thought he was trying