Aramis’s finger darted out, and stopped D’Artagnan’s lips. “Shh,” he said. “Shhh. Do not be foolish. Doesn’t even the Bible exhort you not to put your faith in princes?”
“But-”
“No,” Aramis said. “The devil. I’m starting to suspect, with Athos, that this whole thing is deeper than we thought. Where is Athos, speaking of him? What is he doing?”
D’Artagnan shook his head. “I presume he is back at his lodgings, with the servants. He did not tell me he intended to do anything else. At least…”
“At least?”
“At least since I disabused him of the notion that he could pass for a peasant looking for work,” D’Artagnan said.
Aramis’s chuckle echoed like a clap of thunder, all the more surprising because until it sounded, his features had been so grave and tense and full of foreboding. Now he grinned at D’Artagnan. “Surely even our friend could not-”
And at that same moment, Porthos lunged past D’Artagnan’s shoulder, sword out, so quickly that D’Artagnan was forced to dart out of the way or be trampled. And in darting out of the way, he noticed a motion. Something dark moving past his line of sight towards Aramis. At the same time, Aramis had his sword out, and his cloak wrapped around his arm, and was defending himself from two adversaries at once.
D’Artagnan in turn found himself fighting two men, attired all in black and wearing what looked uncommonly like monkish cowls. They had sword and dagger out, each of them, and there were at least six. They fought fiercely, with quiet intensity, their only noise being grunts of surprise when their attacks were parried, or sudden exclamations of pain, when first Porthos and then Aramis put his sword through one of the adversaries.
Faced with two of them, D’Artagnan, for the first time in his life, found himself sweating to hold his own in a duel. He’d fought two guards of the Cardinal before, and wounded them both. He’d fought more than two of them, sometimes, truth be told. But this-this was something quite different. These men fought with unerring ability, as though each of them had been as well trained as D’Artagnan himself had been by his battle-veteran father. It was all he could do to meet each of their thrusts and push them away.
In his mind, his late father’s voice echoed, in quiet reproach, never be happy that you are parrying each of an enemy’s thrusts, my son. The truth is that if you’re only parrying you have already lost, for you’re never attacking. You have to be lucky every time they attack, and they only have to be lucky enough to let the sword go through once.
But though his father had trained him on how to respond to sudden attack, and given him intensive practice on dueling two experienced swordsmen-often recruiting his friend, Monsieur de Bhil for the occasion-he had never trained him in fighting two people who were intent only on murdering him.
“Holla there, what goes here?” a voice called, out of the shadows.
On that sound, one of the adversaries lunged, and his sword blade thrust towards D’Artagnan. D’Artagnan had only the time to interpose his arm to push the blade away from his chest. And then his opponent was gone; vanished, as though he’d come out of the night, and left via the night itself.
And D’Artagnan realized, only then, that he’d been wounded and his arm was bleeding profusely. He watched the blood drip from the cut which had pierced both the velvet of his doublet and his flesh and, from the pain of it, had grazed the bone of his forearm.
“I see, musketeers with their swords out,” the voice that had spoken out of the shadows said again. “Dueling, were you?”
Into the relative light of their position-in the middle of the garden where neither shadow of tree nor of wall fell on them-strode Jussac, one of the Cardinal’s favorite guards. “Porthos, Aramis, D’Artagnan. Tell me, who was dueling whom? Not that it matters, as you have undoubtedly been dueling, and therefore you are all arrested and you’d best hope that the new edicts weren’t signed tonight, else you shall all be beheaded by first dawn.”
Porthos answered only with a long stream of swearing-inventive swearing, D’Artagnan noted, even in his shocked state, his hand holding his wounded arm up and staring in disbelief at the stream of blood pouring forth. He was fairly sure whatever the Cardinal might or might not have done to or for his niece Madame de Combalet, it could not be what Porthos had just said he did. Mostly because it was anatomically impossible and probably fatal.
He felt light-headed and as though he would presently lose consciousness; only Aramis touched him on the arm and said, “D’Artagnan.” And D’Artagnan, looking up from his arm, realized that Aramis had put away his sword, and was holding up one of his immaculate, embroidered, silk-edged handkerchiefs, and trying to remove D’Artagnan’s doublet.
“Can you remove your arm from the sleeve without my cutting it away?” Aramis said. “Your doublet might be salvageable with the insertion of some panels. I’m sure Mousqu-Well, one of our servants should be able to help with that. Only I must tourniquet your arm as soon as it may be, else you will bleed out very quickly.”
As though in a dream, D’Artagnan opened his doublet and removed his arm from its sleeve and watched Aramis tie the handkerchief around his arm. A gulp escaped him when Aramis tightened the handkerchief, and then Aramis made D’Artagnan lift his arm. “It will help stop the flood,” he said.
Meanwhile, the guards of the Cardinal had come into the light, and it was de Brisarac and Jussac and about six underlings. Jussac, apparently under the control of an idea that dominated all others, said, “Which of you wounded the boy? What were you dueling over? I thought you were inseparables.”
“I knew you had deformed moral structures, to serve the Cardinal so willingly,” Aramis said drily. “I did not know that you also had subnormal wits. Why would we be dueling each other, Jussac? We are friends. We are, indeed, inseparables.”
“The first time I met the boy, you were all dueling him,” Jussac said.
“Oh, that was because I had only come to town, and made their acquaintance,” D’Artagnan said. “Now I know them better than that, and I would never duel with all of them at once.”
“So you would duel them one at a time,” Jussac said.
Aramis gave D’Artagnan a warning look and said, “I wish you wouldn’t speak, my friend, not while your head is clouded by blood loss. You see that Monsieur Jussac is determined to judge us before he has any facts.” Then turning to Jussac, he said, “We were crossing the garden, together, as you see. We were looking for our friend Athos, who said he might come and help supplement the guard today. And out of nowhere, we were ambushed by men in black wearing monkish hoods. What you saw was our effort at defending ourselves, nothing more. It was no duel, with appointed time and seconds, but surely, even under the Cardinal’s rule, a man is still allowed to defend himself when in fear for his life?”
“I didn’t see any men,” Jussac said, mulishly, jutting out his chin. “What I saw was the three of you, with your swords out. And since I know you’ve fought each other before…”
A stream of invective escaped Porthos, prompting Aramis to say, “Porthos, I don’t think the Cardinal can have done that.”
“And why not?” Porthos asked, in a challenging tone.
“Because I think you’ll find,” Aramis said, “that only women have that organ.”
“Oh,” Porthos said, and frowned. “But I meant it in the sense where things aren’t really true, but the spirit of them is, anyway.”
“The metaphorical sense? Even in that sense, that is not something I’d ascribe to the Cardinal,” Aramis said, absentmindedly and then, examining D’Artagnan’s arm. “I think the bleeding is slowing.”
“Well,” Jussac said. “Porthos can have the pleasure of explaining to his eminence his views on anatomy and metaphor, both, since I know his eminence will be overjoyed to see you. As will, might I add, most of our comrades. If the edicts have been signed tonight, which will cause you to die in the morning, we might even throw a party.”
“Ah, yes,�
�� Aramis said. “I’ve long known that you were afraid of us.”
“Afraid? Us?” de Brisarac asked.
“Indeed. Else, why would you hope the law would rid you of us? Why else, but that you, yourselves, could not defeat us?”
De Brisarac reached for his sword, but Jussac held his arm. “No,” he said. “You do not want to answer to his eminence for that. We’ll simply arrest these miscreants, and they can tell his eminence their pretty tale.”
“It is not a pretty tale, you fool,” Porthos said. “Here. Come here.” Without ceremony, the giant musketeer grabbed Jussac by the arm and dragged him over to where he’d been fighting his enemies. “Do you see that? The ground is fairly hard, but even so you can see my footsteps and, see, two others.”
“So, you were fighting these other two and they-”
“Don’t be more foolish than you can help being,” Porthos said, and D’Artagnan had to suppress a wish to giggle, since that was a comment more often heard from Aramis to Porthos. “Look there. I wounded this man. See the blood? And before you tell me it’s D’Artagnan’s, note how the drops vanish into the shadows there. And here.” He forcibly led the guard another way. “Here, see, was where Aramis wounded his adversary. Look how he ran into the night, pouring blood out of him. Why, if the boy had bled that much, instead of simply looking white as a ghost, he would be a ghost.”
The guard made a noncommittal sound in his throat. And Porthos said, in a tone of utter, sneering disdain, “Your Cardinal is in many ways a man without honor. But he is not stupid. If you should go to him with that story, and I told him mine and showed him the evidence, I would not be the one arrested. Nor you, I dare say, since it is not a crime to be a fool. But if I know the tender mercies of the gentleman you serve, he would be furious you ignored attackers, loose in the grounds of the royal palace. And even more furious that you showed yourself for a fool. Now, I don’t know how true this may be, but I’ve heard stories of what happens to those who displease the Cardinal.”
Jussac was quiet a long time.
“Come, Jussac, you know he is right,” de Brisarac said, in a resigned tone.
“Very well,” Jussac said, in a tone that sounded more like challenge than like surrender. “We will follow your so-called attackers, but heaven help you if we find they were your accomplices.”
“How could they be our-” Porthos started.
But Aramis made a gesture to silence him. And as the guards vanished into the night, in the direction the figures had disappeared, he turned to D’Artagnan. “There, you have stopped bleeding. Now, if you can walk, we will go to Athos’s lodgings and see if we can unravel this very confusing hour.”
A Ghost Walking; A Musketeer’s Conscience; Where Athos Understands Porthos’s Difficulties
ATHOS left Rochefort’s office by way of a side door to the Palais Cardinal. He stumbled blindly past the guard there. And stopped.
Walking past him, down the darkened alley into which the door opened, was a ghost. It was a ghost he’d often seen in the dark, but never while wide awake. The ghost of the woman he’d once killed.
Tall, slim, though her heavy breasts and slim waist were disguised in a heavy cloak, Athos could tell she was indeed his late wife. Her carriage, the way she held her head, the pale blond hair that swept down to her waist-all of them belonged to Charlotte, Countess de la Fere.
Her name was on his lips. He wanted to pronounce it, to beg her pardon, to besiege her to look at him, to forgive him for having killed her. But she was so clearly there-solid, as solid as he was.
He thought, for a moment, madly, that perhaps Charlotte had had a sister-someone who looked exactly like her. But as she approached the door, without noticing him-not unbelievable, since he was wearing a musketeer’s attire and had his hat low over his eyes-she raised her hand to show the guard something. And on her hand, Athos saw a very small silver ring, with the glimmer of a pinkish stone. The ring that had once been his mother’s, the ring he had given his wife.
And the guard spoke to her, the guard answered her. He called her “milady” in English, as though she bore an English title, and she inclined her head to him as she went past.
Athos, pierced by regret, shock and confusion, remained standing where he was, long enough that the guard-a young man and, as such, brash and full of his own prerogatives and, after all, in his own territory-asked him if he needed anything more and suggested that perhaps he needed to move along.
Moving along was easy-at least physically. Athos allowed his feet to be set one in front of the other, insensibly carrying him away from the Palais Cardinal and towards his own lodgings, his mind benumbed. He’d hanged his wife. Of this he was as sure as he was sure he was alive, breathing, male, and Alexandre, Count de la Fere, now living under the penitent name of Athos. He had married the sister of his curate. She was well beneath his dignity, but so beautiful and seemingly so pure and pious that he couldn’t but fall in love with her.
A week after her elevation to the dignity, they’d been out hunting together. The countess, more eager in the chase, had spurred her horse ahead with such vigor, and charged with such intent blindness that she hit her head, hard, against the low branch of an overhanging tree, falling from her horse in the process.
Coming across his wife, to all appearances dead, the young count had panicked. With trembling hands, he’d cut her dress, to allow her to breathe more freely and perhaps recover consciousness.
They’d been married for a week. He’d enjoyed to the full the pleasures of his conjugal bed. He had not, however, seen his wife naked in the full light of day. Now, on a clearing on his lands, he saw her shoulder-and upon it, though small and very faded with cosmetics-was the brand of a criminal, the fleur-de-lis.
The shock and horror of that moment still made him reel, more than twenty years later. Branded criminals were adulterers, thieves, even murderers who had been branded between condemnation and execution, so that should they escape they would never be safe. It was the brand of infamy. [5]
Athos didn’t think-though it was hard to tell, looking back and trying to judge the feelings of that much younger man-he’d ever experienced anger. He didn’t think he’d ever moved beyond shock and throat-tightening horror. The wife whose position in life, by itself, would have caused Athos’s father to tell him he had besmirched the dignities of his life, had turned out to be yet far more unworthy and in a way that Athos couldn’t explain away by invoking her sweetness or her purity or even her beauty.
The sheer enormity of having picked, as the mother of his future children, a woman depraved enough to deserve that brand upon her shoulder had crashed about his head like a thunderstorm. He could only think of what people would say, should they ever find out. How, for the rest of his life, he would be pointed at and laughed at. How, should he ever marry again, his children too would be tainted with his dishonor, his mind-crushing miscalculation.
Unable to be angry, unable to think, he’d gotten a roll of rope that he kept in his saddle. He’d hanged his wife from a low hanging branch. He’d disposed of his affairs as though he had died. By the time evening fell, he was on his way to Paris with only Grimaud, who had once been his father’s valet and who had watched over Athos from earliest childhood.
Now, in the twilight of late winter, in Paris, twenty years after, he felt a headache forming. How can Charlotte be alive?
He’d hanged her. He remembered that. Though truth be told, he didn’t remember staying around and waiting to make sure she had indeed died. Such was his mental state at the time, that he thought he’d hanged her, then ridden away, disturbed by the last feel of her body in his arms.
Was it possible that as soon as he’d galloped away-if not before-the branch from which he’d hanged her had snapped? She’d been unconscious when he strung her up, so it was quite possible, though perhaps not probable, that she had survived a few minutes. Athos knew that what caused first damage when being hanged-at least when there was no substantial drop to ensu
re the executed broke his neck in the fall-was the frantic struggle against the rope. Being unconscious might have preserved her life longer, and if either branch or rope had broken shortly after…
He walked through the darkening streets. So suppose Charlotte had survived. Why had she not sought him out? If she were innocent-a possibility he had tormented himself with for so long-would she not have written to him, explained her case, made it known why she’d been branded and which enemy had managed it? If she truly loved him… Wounded though she might be by his having believed the worst about her, would she not have tried to reconcile with him?
Even now, even though he had reason to believe she was truly a criminal, wouldn’t he take her back in a second, if it could be proven to him that she hadn’t been guilty? Wouldn’t he?
He knew from the straining of his heart, from the sting of tears behind his eyes, that he would. But his wife was in town, and she’d not contacted him-she’d not, to Athos’s knowledge, made any effort to see him. In fact, though Athos had recognized her from the turn of the head, the way she stood, from the elegant slimness of her body and that moonlight-blond hair, she hadn’t seemed to notice him at all. She hadn’t seemed to recognize him.
Had he not haunted her mind as she haunted his? Not even in rage or wish for vengeance?
And she had been going into the Palais Cardinal, with every appearance of being well-known there. Surely, if that was true, the Cardinal would have told her about Athos, about who Athos was and what he was doing. She would know exactly how he lived, and anyone who knew him would have good reason to believe how remorse blighted his life.
So he would have to believe that she had not contacted him because in fact she did not love him and never had. He had been a rung on her climb, and his reaction to her perfidy had only meant that she would avoid him in the future.
It was the logical conclusion, and it should have made him feel better. He had, for so long, carried remorse over what he’d done, and doubt over whether it had been needed. Now his question had been answered and he was, in fact, fully justified. So why didn’t he rejoice? Why did he feel as though a band of iron had tightened about his heart?
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