Swordsman's Legacy

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 by Louis XIV—as well as the document of divorce.

She had explored the few sites d’Artagnan was known to have occupied or lived at, and had even been involved on a dig in Lille where d’Artagnan had served as governor of the city for a few miserable months. That dig had turned up nothing more than a few Spanish coins circa the sixteenth century and a dented copper pot.

She’d thought of Gens, the region close to Lupiac in southwest France, where he was born, but that had turned up little more than the usual facts about the musketeer’s military accomplishments. Though there was a nice museum dedicated to the musketeer in Lupiac.

Of course, Charles Castelmore’s last residence was not Lille, but in Paris on the rue du Bac. The site where his apartment once stood bore a small plaque commemorating the musketeer, but the building had long been torn down and replaced with a more modern design.

Annja had known Ascher Vallois for over a year, having met him online at alt. archaeology. esoterica, her frequent hangout when stuck in an airplane flying over any number of oceans. Ascher began instant messaging her after she’d filled in some information for him on Henri III, his favorite historical figure.

An unabashed flirt—yes, even though only in e-mail—the man had managed to wheedle some of Annja’s personal information from her, such as favorite color, favorite country to visit, and favorite geeky obsession—d’Artagnan.

That information had started an amusing and often informative cyber friendship. Ascher had been on the sword’s trail for years himself. Thanks to some extra research efforts the past two months, Ascher now believed the sword could be found in Chalon, the final resting place of Charlotte-Anne de Chanlecy—d’Artagnan’s ex-wife.

It was a solid theory, one that had caused Annja no amount of chagrin to realize someone had beaten her to the punch.

But though he’d called the moment something had been unearthed at the dig site—it appeared to be the end of a wooden sword box—she knew it could be any number of things.

If the sword had been found, then this detour before heading home to Brooklyn could prove most exciting.

Annja knew exactly what she was getting herself into by meeting Ascher Vallois. She’d already done a background check on him. Her good friend Bart McGilly, NYPD homicide detective, usually ran names through the law-enforcement system for her, but for overseas contacts Annja was left to her own devices.

It had been easy enough to find information on Ascher. He had his own Web site, which focused on fencing and parkour. While Ascher styled himself a part-time archaeologist who enjoyed extreme sports and who also taught at a children’s fencing school in Sens, Annja had decided he was really a glorified treasure hunter.

To be called a treasure hunter by a fellow archaeologist was a real insult. Duel worthy. Ascher had laughed her off when she teased him. Or rather, he LOLed her.

At least he wasn’t a pothunter. Their sort were unauthorized amateurs who scavenged marked-off sites, digging up fragments and then selling them on the black market.

Annja favored the social aspects of archaeology. She loved learning about the people behind the treasures. A treasure hunter was all about the find, the bling, the prestige over nabbing a valuable artifact and then selling it.

Not that she didn’t get excited over a find, but she was very rational and followed the law when it came time to turn treasures over to the proper authorities.

She had made Ascher swear that, if he located d’Artagnan’s sword, selling it was not his intention. He had promised it would go to the Lupiac museum.

“Chalon,” she murmured, smiling to herself. “I should have thought of Chalon.”

Exhaling, Annja then drew in a deep breath. The river, about a hundred yards off, sweetened the air with a marshy tang. She strode across the street, heading for her rental car to wait for Ascher.

Since inheriting Joan of Arc’s sword, Annja’s life had been completely turned on its head. It wasn’t a bad thing, but neither always good. Her job description had become more than a simple archaeologist turning up finds at a dig. She was so much more than a field reporter on a cable television program.

Around every corner she turned, it seemed she encountered danger. She had escaped from bullet fire, swum away from harpoons, battled demons and had come close to death too many times since she’d discovered Joan’s sword—her sword.

Almost daily, the world proved to Annja it was far more wicked than she could have ever fathomed. When Joan’s sword came to her from the otherwhere and fitted itself ready in her hand, it was because it was needed to stop evil or counter adversity.

And of late, Annja had been wielding it a lot.

Today felt like a vacation. An escape from the day job. For once the world did not sit heavily upon her shoulders. This trip to Chalon was a free moment away from Annja Creed, sword-wielding defender of innocence. It was a chance to breathe and to indulge herself.

“I need this,” she said aloud.

Leaning inside her car, she deposited her backpack on the front passenger’s seat, then closed the door and went around to sit on the hood. From here she could see the two steeples of Saint-Pierre, the city’s largest cathedral. She loved touring European cathedrals. And there were so many of them to see, she felt sure to never run out in her lifetime.

The parking lot bordered the shore of the river Saône. The scent of fresh water and grass overwhelmed even the leaky-oil smell coming from the rental car. Blond brickwork danced along the verdant shore, and the paved walkway was shaded by huge chestnut trees.

A white swan called out as Annja scanned the pedestrians, mostly tourists carrying shopping bags and maps. A newly remodeled strip of shops and cafés lined the street behind her. This part of the city catered to tourists, and offered hourly boat tours along the river.

“Tous pour un.”

At the deep male voice Annja turned and offered an enthusiastic reply to his “all for one,” with “Un pour tous.”

“Annja!” A six-foot-plus man with a smile as broad as his sunburned shoulders and curly, dark hair strode up and embraced her. He gave her a kiss on the left cheek, and then the right.

It happened so quickly, Annja just went with it. Normally she did not allow a stranger such ease with her. She enjoyed the social aspects of her trade but she protected her personal space keenly.

But Ascher wasn’t really a stranger. She’d been communicating with him for a year. And beyond the knowledge gained about him online, she couldn’t deny he smelled great.

“Ascher Vallois,” she said. “It is you?”

“ Oui, I am not to accost the beautiful star of Chasing History’s Monsters. Mademoiselle Creed, you are more gorgeous in person.”