Siroc's Notebook - Part 2

I went back to the garrison, and, as I always do when troubled, shut myself in my lab. I tried to occupy my thoughts and hands with other projects, but the notebook consumed me, and eventually as night fell I found myself simply pacing the floor in the dark, staring at the maddening scrap, until I was stopped by the sound of breaking glass. Outside a horse galloped away. At my feet lay a piece of paper wrapped around a rock. The note read:

For more secrets of the Master, meet me on the rue Asperges.

I didn’t even stop to think. I was ready to follow that map Mazarin had spoken of even if it were the Devil himself who handed it to me.

I walked slowly down the rue Asperges, wondering if I’d recognize whichever of the Cardinal’s friends came to meet me.

Someone came up behind me and grabbed my arm, saying, ‘You are Siroc?’

I was a little surprised to see a face I didn’t at all recognize, a common man’s face. ‘You sent the note? Why all the secrecy?’ I asked.

‘Forgive me, Monsieur.’ He looked around nervously. ‘I’m a simple man, but even I realized the papers I found were valuable. I needed someone I could trust.’

‘Papers?’ I read between the lines. ‘You found more than a scrap?’ We ducked under an archway, out of sight. ‘If you knew their value, why did you leave a scrap of them in your dirty laundry?’

‘In my excitement I made a mistake,’ he explained hastily before continuing. ‘You’re a man of honor, yes? But more importantly, you’re very smart. You invent great machines.’

‘Some not so great,’ I interrupted self-deprecatingly. That mechanized wall scrubber…

He ignored it, pulling out a paper. ‘As I promised, more of the Master’s secrets.’

I took it and looked it over hungrily, vaguely registering a drawing of something cannon-shaped before saying, ‘This is yet another fragment. Do you have the entire notebook?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he didn’t answer, looking around still nervously. ‘I can’t say anymore.’

His fear revived my earlier suspicions about the Cardinal’s involvement. ‘Who else knows about this?’

‘It’s our little secret, yes?’ Also not an answer, but at least I had more than a scrap now.

‘Our little secret,’ I agreed, shaking his hand. Then I tucked the page into my jacket and turned my steps toward home.

Once back in my lab I was able to study the new page more closely. It was a full page this time, and featured a sketch of a barrel-shaped device, which included, of all things, that handle that had first vexed me. There were also notes on how this internal part fit a described whole. This, then, was the crucial component of a larger machine. If I wanted to build this invention of DaVinici’s, I’d have to mentally deconstruct, and then reconstruct, it first. A three-dimensional puzzle. I smiled. Understanding the machine’s ultimate function, but not stopping to fully consider it, I pulled over my own notebook and began to sketch.

It took the lightening sky outside to alert me it was near morning. I pinched the bridge of my nose, tucked the page into my notebook, and made my way to the Café Nouveau for coffee. There I continued working, comparing my own designs to the original on the page, smiling, pleased with my progress. I could begin construction soon. I picked up my coffee bowl and began absently walking toward the door. ‘Ingenious!’ I muttered, in awe of the brilliance of DaVinci’s unprecedented creation.

‘Vegetables!’ a shout pulled me out of the notebook. I knew that voice. Across the street sat a familiar man. The one who’d given me the page.

‘Papa!’ a girl, the one who’d been clinging to D’artagnan in the washhouse, ran up and threw her arms around the man. ‘I think he’s going to propose!’ I stopped, curious.

‘Vegetables! That’s nice, dear,’ the man answered, not really listening.

‘You didn’t even hear me, Papa!’ the girl, I think her name was Mireille, continued, near hysteric. ‘I think I might be getting married! Married, Papa!’

‘Married?’ He stood. ‘Oh, my dear, why didn’t you say so? Who is this lucky man?’

Mireille grinned. ‘He’s a Musketeer.’ I wrinkled my brow. Something had happened, apparently last night, but D’artagnan and Ramon had left town the day before on an escort mission. Wait. Hadn’t I heard a rumor about Jacques going on a date? I bet that was awkward.

‘That’s wonderful, my dear,’ the merchant was saying. Deciding it was, after all, none of my business, I walked away. Time to begin work.

I had fallen into my usual rhythm, completely losing track of time, and was adjusting a gear when there was a knock on the door. ‘Come in!’ I called.

There were steps behind me, then a woman’s voice said, ‘Oh, monsieur, I think you left these behind at the washhouse.’ Mireille, the wash girl.

I instinctively turned and grabbed what she was holding, exclaiming, ‘I beg your pardon!’ surprised at her brashness. I looked more closely at what she had brought. A pair of truly enormous underpants. ‘Not mine,’ I handed them back, then continued tinkering with the gear.

‘Oh. My mistake,’ she said. There was a pause, and I thought maybe she’d leave me be. ‘Perhaps you know Jacques?’ she suddenly asked. Alas.

‘I know him,’ I sighed.

‘Do you think he would like my hair up or down?’

‘I don’t know.’ I continued to work, trying to ignore her, but every time I’d turn there she’d be.

‘Does he have a favorite color or a favorite song? I want to know everything about him.’

‘Why don’t you ask him yourself?’ I suggested, perhaps a bit more shortly than was polite with a lady. This almost seemed to stop her for a moment.

‘You will come to the wedding, won’t you? Oh, you must!’ I had no answer to this, thinking it was a bit premature. ‘Has Jacques had many…lady friends?’ she asked nervously.

This was the end of my patience. I was working, and not of a mood to discuss the private lives of my friends. I stood and gave her a smile. ‘No, I think you’re the first,’ I began leading her to the door, ‘and, very hopefully, the last.’ I just barely didn’t throw her out of the lab. ‘Right?’ I shut the door and returned to my worktable, sighing. I had a long way to go.

A day and a half slipped away. I have always gone somewhere else when I worked, but this was different. I think the absence of D’artgnan and Ramon made it easier to forget everything around me and fall into a realm of science, no distractions. It couldn’t last, though. Eventually they returned, and dragged me off to the Café, saying they hadn’t seen me in a while, and had something they wanted to ask me about.

I was shocked to see it was evening again.

We got coffee, and they filled me in on the events of their gold escort mission, then D’art produced the note they’d taken from the masked man, member of the secret society we suspected Mazarin of heading. It said:

The great leveler assembles. Victory will be ours.

I was still in a fog induced by intense work and lack of sleep, but this pierced through, and suddenly all the pieces came together in my head, the pieces of the machine I was building, the pieces of the circumstances surrounding its construction. ‘It’s not code,’ I finally managed, deciding, as usual, to keep things to myself.

‘But this ‘great leveler’ the note speaks of, this thing that could ensure the rebel army’s success – what could it be?’

I shook my head, shaken. ‘Hard to say.’ It wasn’t. I knew exactly what it was. I was building it, after all.

Mazarin had the notebook, or however much of it had been found by the merchant. He needed me, though, to make use of it. He had called that meeting with me in order to test me, see if I would agree, and to shake me when he saw I wouldn’t, make me acknowledge the part of me that would build something no matter what. Then he had used the vegetable merchant to ensure that this page specifically would fall into my hands. An entire notebook, and somehow I’d ended up with the one page depicting the key component of a weapon. Of course it wasn’t a coincidence.

This line of thought took less than a second. Ramon reached in front of me for food. ‘Maybe a weapon.’

I stood, walking toward the exit, preoccupied. ‘If it is, it would be the greatest weapon the world has ever known,’ I murmured.

D’artagnan had followed me. ‘But where could it come from? Who would build such a device?’

I glanced at him, trembling, and whispered, ‘Who could resist?’ Then I turned away from them.

‘Hey wait, don’t go!’ Ramon stopped me. I half turned. ‘D’artagnan met these sisters. They’re triplets.’ He laughed. ‘It’s gonna be a wild night.’

‘And if you two find ladies of your own, you’re welcome to join us,’ D’art joked, and they both chuckled.

I was already facing away again when I responded, ‘I’m busy.’ And I left.

Cardinal Mazarin had seen that that page had landed in my hands, and now was just waiting for me to fall all on my own. I knew this, but I couldn’t stop now. I was almost done. I had to see it through. I had to know if I could build this, if it would work. The scientist in me was committed, damn the consequences, and maybe myself as well.