Louis turned from the window, the memory dissolving. Fabien and Bontemps waited by a table with a sheet of vellum unrolled upon it. The vellum was covered with strange symbols.

“I’ve not seen this cipher before,” said Fabien. “Even the brilliant cryptographer Rossignol cannot break it.”

Louis looked at Bontemps. “This was in Montcourt’s rooms? And yet he walks free?”

Bontemps nodded. “Free but not unwatched.”

“I did not want to take action until I had heard from Rossignol, Sire,” said Fabien.

Louis leaned over the vellum, eyed it closely. “So we do not know what it says.”

“These symbols share a common thread with those we liberated from the prisoners.”

“The Spaniards.”

“I submit, Sire, we cannot be sure who they were. Whoever plotted this against you had no intention of their plan succeeding. This was a rehearsal to gain a measure of our defenses. Planning such an offense, one might plant a false flag of Span to divert attention elsewhere. And someone inside your court was helping them. Some inside was a friendly face.”

Bontemps looked from the King to Fabien. “We shall summon Montcourt to us.”

Fabien shook his head. “Better to lie fallow and collect information. This paper was placed freely upon Montcourt’s bureau.”

Bontemps considered this. “So he may not have known its true purpose.”

“You are a friend of Montcourt?”

Bontemps said, “I am a friend of the truth.”

Fabien turned back to the King. “One thing is clear, Sire. There is a plot against you.”

The door to the apartment opened and a footman announced Colbert, who joined the men at the table.

“Only one plot, Fabien?” said Louis. “To my left my excisemen rob me, to my right the Spanish want my neck, and now a chambermaid has hanged herself. Was she plotting, too? Or did she not pay her taxes?”

Bontemps looked hard at Fabien at the mention of the chambermaid. “A minor contribution at that.”

“A larger sum than any noble,” said the King.

Colbert nodded. “The nobles pay no tax whatsoever.”

Louis walked around the table, thinking. Then, “How many noble families attend our fashion pavilion for the tailors’ guild of Paris?”

“Every family within a day’s ride have been summoned, Sire,” said Colbert.

Louis stopped. “Make sure they are all there. Montcourt, too. After all, the true measure of a mousetrap is not the weight of the block. “

“It’s the smell of the cheese,” said Fabien.

Bontemps glared at Fabien.

“Touché,” replied the King.

Behind the closed door of the tack room in the royal stable, Louvois spoke in a low voice to the Swiss Guard members who had been responsible for turning back the caravan carrying the archives. There were two knocks on the door, then two more, then one. The recognized code.

A guard opened the door to admit Montcourt. Beneath his heavy brows his eyes flashed with fear.

“Meeting here is too much risk,” he said.