Monsieur de Garnache, the Queen-Regent's hot-tempered envoy, rides into Dauphiny to free Valerie de La Vauvraye from the Château de Condillac, where the dowager is holding her until she agrees to marry the dowager's son Marius, and finds he must draw a sword to get her out. Sabatini spoke five languages and wrote in English because, he said, all the best stories are told in it; the fencing here is technically correct, the comedy is dry, and the whole thing is set in Dauphiné under the regency of Marie de' Medici. Fifty-eight plates of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century portraiture and swordplay, including works by François Clouet and Jacques Callot, supply the exact faces and duels of the French court that Sabatini's intrigue demands.
