Ploermel
Excerpts from Chapter 2 of Deadly Secrets......
And now, Duc de Paimpont stared
eastward as he waited by the large front door
of Château de Paimpont. Though the northern
wind blew a considerable chill at that moment,
Jean–Claude stood unfazed in his long warm
deep–purple jerkin. Insulating the old duc even
more was his black gorget trimmed with silver
fox fur. With this, he draped the soft pelt around
his neck to keep out the nipping breeze. Armed
with a sturdy short sword, Jean–Claude wore a
soldier’s leather girdle. The Duc motioned to his
Master of the Stables, Marshall. He was the eldest
son of Paimpont’s former horse-keeper, Roy, who
had died a short time ago. Seeing Duc de Paimpont
wave him over, the good horse–keeper went to him.
As the young man did, a ten–man squad of cavalry
escorting a jet–black carriage drawn by four foam–flecked
midnight–black mares appeared in the distance. With a
wide turn the unit raced around the lower northeast corner
of the old duc’s lake. The four carriage wheels and the
fifty–six horseshoes kicked up a choking cloud of dust.
Watching it roll out across the water like a raging storm,
the old duc rubbed his beard and warily wondered, “Why is
Cronus here? What evil does he seek now? Peace runs
short it seems. This little fat man epitomizes his family and
its long Imperial history. I don’t like it. It seems that he is
intent on placing the yoke of Caesar over Armorica. Freed
from Rome some sixty years ago by the great King Constans,
I will be damned to let it happen during my lifetime.
“Already, Cronus gloats on presumed power and
will not stop until he has achieved true power. And
I fear that he may have found it in Vannes.
“I should have attended to my affairs better in
Vannes before I left fourteen years ago. Maybe
if I had done things differently, they wouldn’t have
fallen so easily into that Roman’s greedy little hands.
I thought that the mercantile clans of Morbihan would
have ended up better off than they did. I had hoped
that someone from the Veneti or the Burgher clans
would have been able to step up and take charge.
But instead, they bickered blindly between themselves.
Unfortunately their petty power struggles nullified
their resources and Vannes became vulnerable to
Cronus and his usurious ways.
“Left in this bitter resolve, much of the indebted
simpletons of the area eagerly accepted Cronus’
bailouts during the hard years that followed the
feuding. In no time though, Cronus has acquired
the capital to buy the damn Duchy of Vannes in its
entirety.
“And now. Now, he’s here in Paimpont. I don’t
like this in the least. He already wants more.
I wonder what it is now. Maybe, Ploërmel.”