The waning moon, tumbling through thickening clouds in the western sky, limned the old monastery with an eerie, nacreous shine when it broke out of them. Approaching the southern gate in the darkness of night’s end, da San-Germain felt a rush of consternation mixed with anger. That Madelaine should be kept in such a place! It did not matter to him that he had spent centuries in places worse than this: he loathed the thought of Madelaine having to endure such an ordeal. He could feel his horse tense under him, aware of his distress; he made himself contain his indignation as he dismounted and led the gray up to the warder-gatehouse next to the tall gate of iron-bound timbers. After a brief examination of the place, he found the bell-rope and pulled it, hearing a distant clang as he did. It was almost ten minutes later when the warder-gate opened and a man in a rumpled Revolutionary Guard uniform peered into the night, an old-fashioned lanthorn throwing a narrow beam of yellow light. “Ragoczy?”
