A Rendezvous in Averoigne

"A Rendezvous in Averoigne" is a short story by Clark Ashton Smith, first published in April/May 1931 issue of Weird Tales. It is part of Smith's cycle of stories set in Averoigne, a fictionalized province of Medieval France.
It was the title story of a collection of Smith's fantastic fiction published by Arkham House in 1988.
==Characters==
* Gérard de l’Automne, a professional troubadour "of much note and merit" who is the guest of the Comte de la Frênaie. He is enamored with Fleurette Cochin.
* Fleurette Cochin, the daughter of a well-to-do mercer named Guillaume Cochin, noted for her "blond piquancy." She has agreed to a rendezvous with Gérard de l’Automne in the forest of Averoigne.
* Sieur Hugh du Malinbois, the master of Château des Faussesflammes. A notorious sorcerer who has been an undead vampire for some 200 years. He is described as "inordinately tall and cadaverous,,,dressed in black garments of a superannuate mode. His lips were strangely red, amid his bluish beard and the mortuary whiteness of his face."
* Agathe du Malinbois, the chatelaine of Château des Faussesflammes. Like her husband, a sorceress turned vampire. She is "clad in a gown of emerald green that matched her eyes; in her face was the pallor of dead things, together with a faery beauty; and her lips were dyed as with the scarlet of newly flowing blood."
== Publication History ==
After its initial appearance, it was reprinted by Weird Tales in the January 1939 issue. It was also featured in the February 1971 issue of the Magazine of Horror.
It has been included in several collections of Smith's fiction, including Out of Space and Time (Arkham House, 1942), A Rendezvous in Averoigne: The Best Fantastic Tales of Clark Ashton Smith (Arkham House, 1988), The Emperor of Dreams (Gollancz/Orion, 2002), and The Door to Saturn: Volume Two of the Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith (Night Shade Books, 2007), as well as the Averoigne anthologies The Averoigne Archives (Pickman's Press, 2019) and The Averoigne Chronicles (Hippocampus Press, 2021).
It frequently appears in anthologies of vampire stories, such as A Feast of Blood (Avon, 1967), Vampires (Doubleday, 1987), The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories (Penguin Books, 1988), and Weird Vampire Tales (Gramercy Books, 1992), as well as The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales (Oxford University Press, 1992).
Category:Clark Ashton Smith works
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:Averoigne Cycle