The Mage Queen

by R A Dodson

  “Your injured arm is getting stronger,” he said stupidly.

  Aramis rolled his eyes and flashed him a pinched smile. “Just in time to support my friends as they collapse one by one, it appears. Now... out with it. Where are you hurt?”

  D’Artagnan shook his head. “I’m not. Not like you’re thinking. Just my wrist. Rope burn from when we escaped capture.”

  “And you’ve been looking after Athos since then?” Aramis asked astutely. He readjusted his grip, causing d’Artagnan to hiss out a surprised breath as the other man’s forearm pressed against his shoulders. Wincing, Aramis moved his arm and gently peeled d’Artagnan’s doublet away far enough to look at his upper back. Though he said nothing, d’Artagnan knew that the stripes of darkened shirt material where the blood had soaked through would be obvious.

  “I tried to help him,” he replied in answer to Aramis’ question, not addressing the rest of it. “He wouldn’t let me near his wounds, though. I’m so sorry. I really did try.”

  “Athos is an honorable and loyal man, d’Artagnan. Brave as a lion, crafty as a fox,” Aramis said philosophically. “Unfortunately, he’s also a complete idiot. Try not to take it to heart.”

  D’Artagnan opened his mouth and closed it again, not sure what to say in response.

  “Come,” Aramis said, taking pity on him. “You must make your report to de Tréville, and then you should rest.”

  “No,” d’Artagnan said, balking. “We can’t rest. I told you, we must leave immediately.”

  Aramis chivvied him into motion again. “And I told you, we can’t go anywhere just now. Come inside.”

  The other man led him into the same cozy parlor where they had earlier been reunited with the Queen, and indicated he should sit. But d’Artagnan shook his head, feeling his legs gain steadiness and his strength begin to rally now that he and Athos were back among friends.

  De Tréville appeared from an interior doorway a few moments later, looking as harried as d’Artagnan had ever seen him. Aramis flashed d’Artagnan an encouraging smile that did not quite reach his eyes, and excused himself to help deal with Athos.

  “D’Artagnan,” de Tréville said, clasping d’Artagnan’s upper arm in a gesture that seemed almost paternal. “I am relieved that you and Athos have returned, even if a bit worse for wear. Porthos said I should get a report from you, given that Athos is indisposed.”

  “Yes, sir,” d’Artagnan began, rallying his wits, “Grimaud is dead, but he’d already realized that you tricked him. He deduced that you must be hiding here with Her Majesty and informed his contact before we reached Blois. A troop of men could arrive at any time to attack; I’m surprised they didn’t beat us here, to be perfectly honest.”

  De Tréville nodded. “I see. And how came you by your injuries?”

  Forcing down frustration that his warning about an imminent attack seemed not to be taken seriously, he replied, “We arrived at Illiers-Combray to find that the Comte de Thimerais’ mansion had been burned to the ground. Several of the men responsible had remained behind to guard it, and they captured us. They tortured Athos for information about the Queen, but we escaped and made our way to Blois—where Athos killed Grimaud—and then back here.”

  “Did Athos break under torture?” de Tréville asked, as if they were discussing the weather rather than the honor of a man who had sacrificed himself to protect d’Artagnan’s own worthless hide.

  “No, of course not!” he replied hotly. “He would never—”

  “Yeah, he did,” Porthos interrupted from the doorway, and d’Artagnan wondered how long the man had been standing there. “Says no damage was done, though. He lied and told them we were at the inn at Châteaudun, but then he slipped up and gave them your name. Doesn’t matter—him and d’Artagnan here killed everyone who heard it when they escaped.”

  “Good enough,” de Tréville said, as if the matter was closed.

  “A bit better than that, actually,” Porthos replied. “Athos also said one of the interrogators made a mistake of his own. Made reference to getting orders from ‘the Red Magnus.’ And I think we can all guess who he meant...”

  As it happened, d’Artagnan couldn’t guess who he meant—though it was obvious that de Tréville could. The captain’s single eye widened in surprise before furious anger overtook his expression for a moment, only to be hidden once more behind a mask of detachment.

  “Interesting information, but not anything that’s useful to us at the moment,” de Tréville said with tight control. He turned back to d’Artagnan and softened slightly. “Well done, d’Artagnan. You have acquitted yourself admirably.”

  D’Artagnan looked from de Tréville to Porthos and back again in confusion. Well done? How was any of this well done? Athos had been tortured... armed assassins were descending on the Queen for a third time... why did no one seem to understand?

  “Sir,” he said, “perhaps I have not made it clear. Another attack is coming at any moment. We must get Her Majesty to safety. We have to leave.”

  From deeper in the house came a long, high-pitched female cry of pain. Porthos looked uncomfortable, and de Tréville’s brow furrowed. D’Artagnan snapped his jaw shut abruptly, the hair on the back of his neck rising. He had heard that sound once before, a long time ago, from his mother when he was still a young boy.

  It was the sound of a woman in labor.

  Chapter 31

  “She’s having the baby now?” d’Artagnan asked, the last word emerging as an undignified squeak.

  “Have some respect, lad,” de Tréville said, though he mostly just sounded tired. “This is your future King we’re talking about.”

  “At least, if it’s a boy it is,” Porthos muttered, cracking a rather brittle looking smile at him. “If it’s a girl, we’re all going to look like a right bunch of idiots.”

  “Porthos...” de Tréville said, squeezing the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb as if warding off a headache. “Go and take care of d’Artagnan. I’ll join the rest of you in a little while.”

  “Right you are, sir,” Porthos said agreeably, and gestured d’Artagnan to follow him down the hallway and into a generously sized bedroom. Athos was laid out on the bed, naked, with one arm thrown across his face. Aramis was leaning over him with a damp rag, attempting to clean his wounds. D’Artagnan froze in the doorway as he took in the full extent of the damage for the first time.

  He’d seen the burn under Athos’ eye and the way the marks trailed down his neck and onto his chest, and he’d assumed that their captors had started on his torso and worked their way up to his face. He had not realized that Athos also had burns on the inside of his right knee, marching up the tender flesh of his inner thigh all the way to his groin. Suppurating, where they had chafed against the saddle until the blisters wept blood and pus.

  Athos had ridden for hours with these injuries. For days. D’Artagnan had put him on a horse like this and made him ride for days. His gorge rose, and he choked. Porthos frowned and grabbed for a chamber pot, thrusting it under d’Artagnan’s face just in time for him to vomit into it, clutching the doorframe for support. When he glanced up, Athos had removed his arm from his face and was looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

  “That bad?” he drawled.

  Porthos snorted a laugh. “Bad enough, you fool. Good thing you already killed the bastards that did this. Saves us having to go out and do it.”

  “Athos, why didn’t you tell me?” d’Artagnan asked plaintively, forcing the words past a throat raw with bile.

  Athos shrugged. “What good would it have done? We still had to travel, either way.”

  “I could have treated you!” d’Artagnan said, his voice rising.

  Athos looked at him in confusion. “You did. You made the salve.”

  At this, Aramis looked up from his gruesome task with interest. “Salve, you say? Ah, I was wondering what that was. I could see that something had been applied to the burns. What was it made with, may I ask?” />
  D’Artagnan dragged his mind forcibly back from the shock of the past few minutes, enough to explain the recipe to Aramis, quickly outlining the ingredients and the process. “My mother swore by it, but it doesn’t seem to have helped much in this case,” he finished, somewhat bitterly.

  “On the contrary,” Aramis said, “you may have saved Athos’ life. Given the circumstances, I would expect these burns to be festering badly. However, only two of them appear to be infected, and even those are not as bad as they could be. You know—honey and oil of turpentine have both been shown on the battlefield to protect wounds from going bad. Your mother must have been an exceptionally intelligent and knowledgeable woman, d’Artagnan.”

  D’Artagnan swallowed. “She was, yes. Will he live, then?”

  “I am right here in the room, d’Artagnan,” Athos said from the bed, sounding deeply unimpressed by all the drama.

  “I’m afraid you’ve relinquished the right to have an opinion on the matter, my friend,” Aramis said. “But, yes, d’Artagnan, he will likely survive to deliver inappropriate quips another day. Assuming, of course, that we’re not all slaughtered by enemy troops in the interim.”

  Hurried footsteps heralded Milady’s arrival, moments before she pushed past d’Artagnan and into the room. She made a noise of distress and dropped to her knees by Athos’ bedside, grabbing his hand in both of hers.

  “Olivier,” she said.

  “Anne,” he replied, burying his free hand in her hair and dragging her to him for a kiss.

  “There. You see?” Porthos said from his position lounging against the wall. “Now he has to recover, because his wife will kill him if he doesn’t.”

  “Damn right I will,” Milady said as she pulled back from the kiss, “and don’t you forget it.”

  “How is Her Majesty?” Aramis asked.

  “The pains are coming closer together now, but I fear it will be a long labor nonetheless,” Milady said. As if to punctuate her words, another cry of distress floated in from the back of the house, and she glanced at the door anxiously. “Olivier, I’m sorry, my love—I must get back to her.”

  “Go,” Athos said, sweeping a stray ringlet of hair behind her ear. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

  She covered his hand with her own, pressing her cheek against his palm. “You’re an idiot, is what you are.”

  “That’s what I keep trying to tell him,” Aramis added helpfully.

  Milady looked up at Aramis, with none of her usual haughtiness or teasing.

  “Take care of him for me? Both of you?” Her gaze slid over to include Porthos as well.

  “You know we will,” Porthos answered gruffly.

  “I know,” she replied softly, dropping a final kiss on Athos’ forehead before rising and turning toward d’Artagnan. “And you—”

  D’Artagnan tensed and looked down, knowing he had failed utterly in his promise to look after Athos and stop him from doing anything foolish.

  “De Tréville told me what happened,” Milady continued, crossing to stand in front of him by the door. “Thank you for bringing him home to me, d’Artagnan. To us.”

  Startled, d’Artagnan looked up and met her eyes for a moment before dipping his head in a brief bow—only to be further surprised when Milady stretched forward to kiss him on the cheek. When he looked up again, she was gone.

  “D’Artagnan,” Aramis said, “would you be willing to make more of that ointment you used? Assuming, of course, that Mme Rougeux has the ingredients on hand. Since it obviously helped before, I see no reason not to continue with that treatment.”

  “Yes, certainly,” d’Artagnan replied. “Shouldn’t someone be on guard outside, though?”

  “M. Rougeux is patrolling the perimeter with a dozen lads from the village,” Porthos said. “He and de Tréville started organizing things this morning when the Queen went into labor. We’re not completely defenseless.”

  “I see,” d’Artagnan said, refraining from stating the obvious—that a few young men from the village would not stand a chance if Grimaud’s allies descended on them in force. They all knew it.

  Instead, he took his leave, finding Mme Rougeux in the kitchen and enlisting her help to brew up another batch of his mother’s salve. They were forced to use goat’s milk instead of cow’s milk and his hostess did not have any comfrey, but an hour later d’Artagnan thanked her politely and returned to the airy bedroom with a wooden bowl of golden-colored paste, along with a plate of bread and cheese and a mug of broth for Athos. Porthos raised a finger to his lips as d’Artagnan entered, gesturing toward the bed.

  “He’s asleep,” the big man said softly, moving across the room to take some of the items from d’Artagnan. “C’mon and sit down. Aramis went out to check with M. Rougeux and the lads from the village, but he told me to grab you and get your wounds treated as soon as you came back with the salve.”

  “Athos needs it more than I do,” d’Artagnan said quietly, looking at the man on the bed.

  “Pfft. There’s plenty for both of you, and Mme Rougeux can always make some more if need be. Now take off your doublet and shirt so I can see your back properly.”

  D’Artagnan looked up at him, his brows drawing together in a frown. “Aramis told you about that?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Porthos said kindly. “Yeah, of course he told me. Though it was pretty obvious from the way you were holding yourself that something was wrong with you. Don’t worry. He made me promise not to get after you about it. Now—shirt off, unless you want me to sit on you and do it myself.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” d’Artagnan mumbled, and gingerly removed the clothing, wincing a bit when his shirt pulled free from his back where the blood had dried and scabbed.

  “Merde, d’Artagnan,” Porthos swore under his breath, before shaking his head and turning his attention to the filthy bandage wrapped around his left wrist. “All right. Let’s see the wrist as well. This happened about the same time as Athos got hurt, right?”

  D’Artagnan nodded and unwrapped the cloth covering the wound. “My wrists were tied behind me to an iron ring in the wall. There was a burr on the metal and I used it to saw through the bindings, but the rope dragging back and forth tore my wrist up pretty badly.”

  Porthos lifted his arm and examined it closely. “Yeah, that’s a mess. Better than being dead though.”

  “Exactly my thought at the time.”

  “Hmm... looks like it’s starting to heal except where some of the rope fibers are still stuck under the scabs,” Porthos said. “I think if we clean it out thoroughly, it’ll be right as rain except for a bit of scarring.”

  He picked up a pair of tiny metal tweezers from the leather kit laid out on the table next to him, wielding them in his large hands with unexpected delicacy. D’Artagnan tried not to wince at the unpleasant tug and slide as Porthos patiently pulled the little threads of hemp loose from the flesh where they were trapped. Dots of pus oozed out where several of them had been, but when he was finished, the deep itching and irritation to which d’Artagnan had become accustomed over the past few days seemed much reduced.

  Porthos washed the wrist thoroughly with a clean rag dipped in spirits and indicated the pot of ointment with a gesture. “That’s good for all kinds of wounds, yes? Not just burns?”

  D’Artagnan nodded and replied, “My mother used it on everything.”

  “Good,” Porthos said, and applied a generous layer to the reddened flesh. When he was satisfied, he wrapped the injury with clean linen and indicated that d’Artagnan should turn around so his back was facing the light.

  D’Artagnan felt a deep sense of discomfort and vulnerability as Porthos carefully cleaned the whip marks, soaking the scabs until they loosened and he could flush out all of the areas with broken skin. True to his word, the big man was silent, but d’Artagnan imagined he could hear him gritting his teeth.

  “Look, Porthos,” he said eventually. “It’s fine. You don’t have to
—”

  “It’s not fine,” Porthos interrupted, his voice a growl, “and I do have to. So be quiet and stop squirming.”

  At that moment, footsteps in the hall heralded de Tréville’s appearance in the doorway. The older man’s single eye flickered over the scene, moving from Athos asleep on the bed to Porthos and d’Artagnan near the window. He frowned and crossed behind d’Artagnan to get a clear view of what Porthos was doing, and d’Artagnan heard a disgusted huff.

  “Not this again,” he said.

  The weariness and disappointment in de Tréville’s tone made d’Artagnan flush with shame, only to flush brighter still an instant later with defensive anger. Why could they not simply leave him be? He had never asked for their interference or their opinions on this matter, and he was doing nothing wrong.

  De Tréville continued, “I realize that the Church takes a lenient stance on this kind of nonsense. However, I do not. You weaken yourself unnecessarily for no rational reason, and that weakness puts others at risk, not just yourself.”

  D’Artagnan suppressed a flinch at the sharpness of the rebuke, and swallowed back the words that wanted to rise in his own defense.

  “As long as you are in the Queen’s service, d’Artagnan,” de Tréville stated bluntly, “I forbid you to engage in this practice. Leave it for the monks holed up in their monasteries and the madmen proclaiming the coming apocalypse. It has no place in the life of a soldier.”

  Chapter 32

  D’Artagnan’s breath came fast and shallow. He opened his mouth to say something unwise, only to feel Porthos’ hand squeeze an uninjured part of his shoulder in a supportive, grounding gesture with an undertone of warning.

  “Yes, sir,” he said instead, not meeting de Tréville’s gaze.

  The older man sighed audibly. “I don’t enjoy seeing those under my command bleed, d’Artagnan.” Out of the corner of his eye, d’Artagnan saw de Tréville divert his attention back to the still form on the bed. “It happens often enough as it is. I won’t stand by and watch a man bring it on himself.”