Dying by the Sword

by Sarah D'almeida

  “Yes, but one should hardly be so blunt as to admit like that, to one’s friends, that one is enjoying a highborn lady’s favors.”

  Porthos shrugged, looking bored, then lifted his huge hands, and counted off arguments on his fingers. “First,” he said, “from what I hear, the strangeness of this would be if, given the slightest interest in bedding her, you hadn’t managed to do so. From what I understand there is a line down the halls from her room, and there have been musketeers called in simply to make sure turns are taken in an orderly manner.”

  “Porthos!” Aramis said.

  Porthos ignored him, and touched the second of his fingers. “Second, we are alone and without our servants, so I fail to see what good secrecy would do us. And third…” He touched a third finger. “And third, did you truly propose to discuss how you suspect her of involvement in a conspiracy without ever once mentioning her name?”

  “The lady,” Aramis said, “is not as you paint her.” He spoke through his teeth and had his hand on his sword hilt, but Athos noticed he seemed curiously detached. It was as though he felt he should defend the lady’s honor, and as such was going through it as though it were a play that he must perform, but without any of the feelings of outrage that would normally have colored his actions or motions. What was Aramis, arguably the most romantic of them all, since he was in love with the idea of woman, even when he was merely whiling his time away with the current specimen between his arms, playing at, to be sleeping with a woman he cared for so little?

  “Well, I’m merely saying what everyone repeats,” Porthos said, not seeming the least bit embarrassed. “They all say that she will take as a lover anyone who is comely enough, so I have long expected that… well… you are comely enough.”

  Athos looked towards Aramis to see how he took this announcement and found his friend making what he thought was a heroic effort not to laugh. “I think I should thank you, Porthos,” he said slowly, “for the compliment, but indeed…” He shrugged. “Well, I’ve been seeing the lady. And while her favors are not as widely given as gossip would have you believe, the truth is that part of the reason I settled upon her is that she will not expect from me that which I cannot give.”

  Porthos, who had looked disposed for battle, darted a quick, sympathetic look at his friend and said nothing.

  And Athos nodded. “You are probably right, Aramis about… er… Marie Michon being involved in something she should not be. But why do you think she would try to kill you because of it?”

  “I don’t know,” Aramis said. “It’s just… I might have said something that irritated her also.”

  “I’ve heard many things of the lady,” Athos said, “but none of them that she was in the habit of murdering her lovers over trifles.”

  “Oh, not that, it’s just… I had the feeling I left her on less than good terms.”

  “And she had cloaked assassins ready to follow you and attack us?” D’Artagnan said. “And she would send six men to attack you? You must pardon me, Aramis, but though the lady has graced you with her favors, do you mean to tell me she has such a high opinion of your sword arm?”

  Aramis shook his head. “I don’t know. All of us are taken as gods with the swords, you know, to hear court gossip.”

  “Demons, more like,” Athos said. And gave a look at D’Artagnan. “At least the Gascon there. He’s often been compared to a demon with a sword.”

  He hesitated, and flung out of his chair, with an impatient movement. Walking to the door to the stairs, he called, “Holla, Grimaud. Bring us cups and half a dozen bottles of the burgundy.”

  He couldn’t really hear Grimaud’s answer, an indistinct blur of syllables, such as they got at a distance, but he answered back, “Now, Grimaud. Your service and not your opinions are needed.”

  Despite the distance, Athos could swear he heard Grimaud’s sigh with full clarity. After a while there were steps up the stairs, accompanied with a tinkle of crockery. He and Planchet emerged, Planchet carrying four white ceramic cups on a tray and Grimaud bearing bottles.

  Though Athos had brought with him or, over time, sent for glasses and porcelain from his domains, normally he and the others drank out of serviceable ceramic mugs, which bore the distinct advantage of being sturdy and of large capacity. Even so, he didn’t know what to make of the fact that Grimaud had opened all the bottles. He set them on the table, side by side, his lips pressed into a tight line of disapproval, and Athos thought the fact that all the bottles were uncorked was meant as a reproach to him. As if to point out he couldn’t control himself.

  Grimaud poured wine in each cup and handed one to each of them. D’Artagnan looked at his own dubiously. “I’m not sure if it’s such a good idea after all the brandy.”

  But Aramis spoke up. “Drink it, D’Artagnan, for I’m sure that Athos will let you have accommodation for the night, and truth be told, I don’t think you should go back to your lodgings. Not in your state.”

  Athos waved the servants away, tossed back a cup of the full-bodied wine, then poured yet another and drank it. And found Aramis watching him with a cool look. “When you drink so much, Athos, it can only be because you wish to make yourself drunk. And if you wish to make yourself drunk, it can only be because-as you accused us earlier-you have been running all about, trying to get yourself killed.”

  Athos frowned at him. “Wide off the mark, my friend,” he said, quietly. “Wide off the mark. When I wish to get myself drunk, it is that I am very much afraid I might kill someone. And not in duel.”

  Aramis’s eyebrows went up. He took a sip of his wine, and said, almost fearfully, “Athos, you must tell us-what have you done?”

  “Well,” Athos said. He walked towards the window, and looked out through the small panes of glass towards the street immersed in darkness. “I know you will, all of you, consider me disloyal, but I could not consider that Monsieur de Treville would have any hold over the Cardinal. Not if the Cardinal felt that his own life or interests were threatened.”

  “No, I don’t consider you disloyal,” Aramis said.

  “Nor I, either,” D’Artagnan said, his words slightly slurred by the drink. “The thing is, I thought that Monsieur Treville might very well be able to delay the execution of Mousqueton, but only that. There would be little else he could do.”

  “It has occurred to me,” Porthos said, “that there wouldn’t be much the captain could do. I mean, they… they torture people in the Bastille, and if he couldn’t keep Mousqueton from being tortured, then he couldn’t keep him from being executed. People will confess to anything under torture.”

  “So you all agree with me,” Athos said, as he drank yet another cup of the wine. It would take a while to take effect. All the more so, because he had long since grown used to the wine as a palliative for his distress. But even so, the more he drank, the more he would look to his friends as though he had justification for any wild words, or wild thoughts. He was glad too that there were only three candles lit in the room, so that perforce the details of his expression would be obscured to their eyes. He walked from the chairs to the window, then back again.

  “You are behaving like a caged lion, Athos,” Aramis said. “And this, again, is never good.”

  Athos shrugged. “I think there’s very little good in recent events. Let me explain first, my reasoning, when the three of you left me standing alone on a street corner while you went to investigate multiple and disparate things.” He walked towards the window again. “I thought that since the captain could do next to nothing against the Cardinal, it would come down to the Cardinal in the end, and we would have to deal with him directly.

  “Now I couldn’t imagine living like this, waiting for the Cardinal’s trap to spring, so I…”

  “So you did what you always do, and ran headlong into the trap?” Porthos asked.

  Athos gave his large friend a surprised glance. Sometimes one forgot that Porthos, for all his difficulties with language, had a mind sharp enough t
o see through people’s motives. He shrugged and felt his cheeks heat. “You could say that,” he admitted, at length. “You could say I did, for you see, I reasoned that if it finally came to the Cardinal wanting someone to… to defray the conspiracy, I would…”

  “No.” Aramis had half risen from his seat, his features contorted by something like anger. “You cannot have meant to deliver the Queen to the Cardinal, for that must be your whole plan.”

  Athos frowned at his friend, and finished drinking the cup of wine he held. “It might be,” he said, and dipped his head a bit. “But I will admit, my dear Aramis, that the situation seems to me somewhat more complex than that.”

  He had the gratification of seeing Aramis raise eyebrows at him.

  “I mean,” Athos said, “that there might indeed be some sort of conspiracy at work, though most of the part where the Cardinal thinks it applies to him… well, it seems to have originated whole cloth out of his mind.” He poured himself more wine, then said, “As far as my conversations, first with his eminence,” he said.

  “Athos,” Porthos said, in shock, his hand going to his sword hilt, then forcibly away, as though he had but remembered that Athos was his blood brother, and one of those who had so often and unstintingly risked his life for Porthos. As though only awareness of that kept him from drawing, even right here, in Athos’s own lodging.

  Athos looked back at him, pleased to note that his eyes were becoming unfocused through the action of the alcohol. “Well, Porthos… I needed to do something. And no, Aramis, I was in no hurry to implicate our Queen in anything. In fact, as the Cardinal so kindly reminded me, a Queen’s value by far trumps a pawn’s, so that I would not even consider such an exchange.” He shook his head. “But I…” He drew a long breath. “I have told his eminence that I will try to unravel this conspiracy against him, if conspiracy it is.” He frowned, as he dredged from the depths a memory fast becoming clouded by the wine, the exact words and implications of what the Cardinal had told him. “Aramis, you who are up on all court rumors-have you heard of the Queen and… Marie Michon courting Ornano, the governor of the Prince’s house?”

  “Oh, that,” Aramis said. “I heard some rumor that they were opposed to the marriage of Monsieur, his being the heir apparent and all. But I’m not sure…”

  “I’m not sure either, except that the Cardinal seems to think that this means they are in a conspiracy to kill him, which he seems to have got from some correspondence between the Queen and Marie Michon. He also hinted-though I cannot credit it-that they intended to kill the King. Or rather, Rochefort hinted that. It is, I’m sure, something destined to spur me on into investigating this conspiracy the Cardinal pretends to see.”

  “And will you investigate it?” Aramis asked. “How?”

  Athos shrugged. “That, my friend, I do not have the slightest notion about. The Cardinal himself hinted that I do not… That I lack the cunning, and the contacts to penetrate this sort of court intrigue. I confess…” His gaze was now fairly unfocused, which promised that by the time he got to talking about what he feared, his brain would be fogged enough that perhaps he could avoid making a complete fool of himself. “I confess my intention was simply to buy time-to have Mousqueton unharmed, until we could find who killed the armorer.”

  “Right,” Porthos said. “And that’s the sort of thing we know how to do.”

  Athos looked at him, and lifted his cup of wine a little, in a silent toast. “That is indeed, Porthos, but perhaps this case is a little more complex?”

  “How more complex?” D’Artagnan asked, and, from the way his voice sounded, he was quite a good bit ahead of Athos in pursuit of a good drunk. “So far… well… if it was not Mousqueton-and don’t glare daggers at me, Porthos. I don’t believe it was Mousqueton-then it seems likely it was something happening in the man’s life. Something, perhaps, having to do with his wish to marry his daughter to Mousqueton. Perhaps the daughter decided to kill the father and implicate Mousqueton.”

  “Right now,” Athos said, “I am quite willing to believe anything of any woman. But it seems a little odd to be judging a creature we don’t even know, save for a report that she is cross-eyed.” For some reason, this struck him as funny, and he added softly, “I will remind you, D’Artagnan, that being cross-eyed is not a proof of being a murderer. In point of fact, it has been recorded, throughout history, that various people have been cross-eyed without being murderers.”

  D’Artagnan looked up at him, his expression vacant, which probably meant that, being further on the road to drunkenness than Athos, he would not retain any of this. Athos must remember to ask Aramis to relay to the boy what he heard. Because Athos didn’t think he could repeat it. Right now, Athos shook his head, and poured himself another cup of wine.

  Porthos frowned at the cup as Athos took it to his lips. “Athos… I don’t mean to count, but I think that is your fifth.”

  “Sixth. I figured I needed at least that, to…” He shook his head again. “Look, I don’t know what we can do to investigate the conspiracy, but… Aramis, on the off chance the conspiracy exists… And frankly, I don’t like the idea that Marie Michon is writing to Monsieur de Vendôme. We all know he’s hated the King ever since they were very young, and the hatred has only grown with time.”

  Aramis sighed. “You can’t deny it’s a sad thing for a sovereign to have been married ten years, and still lack an heir to the throne.”

  “I can’t deny it,” Athos said. “But I do find that perhaps Richelieu’s iron grip on France is causing more conspiracies than it should. If every lord were still independent in his own domain, it would be far more difficult to consider Paris, and what happens in Paris, all-important.”

  The others didn’t say anything, though Aramis nodded.

  And after a while in silence, Porthos said, “But that is not why you are looking like you died on your feet and are looking for a good place to fall over.” And then in a rush, “Or, forgive me, perhaps it is, but I’ve never known you to look like this… well… not since…”

  Athos could well imagine what the since was that took up his friend’s mind. He felt his jaw set, and a muscle work on the side of it, like a metronome to his anger and sorrow. Another woman, another… He shook his head, again. “No,” he said. “No, though for all I know that might be tied in. I can’t imagine the lady in question thinks well of me, or has any kindness towards me,” he said. “She has to have heard of me from…” He shook his head again. “She would… You know…” And suddenly, one question rising foremost in his mind, he asked. “Why didn’t she come to me? If it was all a misunderstanding… why didn’t she explain? Surely she knew I loved her still?”

  He looked out at his friends, who, at that moment, through the foggy veil of his emotions, looked like so many figures, sculpted in stone, their features blurry. He saw one of them thrust his head forward. It was the blond figure, and it was Aramis’s voice which spoke out. “What do you mean? Who is this ‘she’ you speak of?”

  “My wife.”

  “Your…” Porthos said.

  Athos felt suddenly very exasperated with his friends. He was not sure what he had told them before, but he was sure it had been enough for them to piece together something of his past. “I…” He normally told this story in the third person. He didn’t know how to tell it any other way. And yet, this time he must. “When I was very young, shortly after I inherited the domain from my father… well… I needed a wife and I knew that. My father had neglected to arrange a marriage for me, and I was in no hurry to find one through the usual channels. The daughters of my neighbors bored me; the prospect of marrying a stranger through some arranged exchange filled me with dread.

  “I am… in the normal way of life, rather reserved and would prefer to keep private, or only in the company of my close friends. And the idea of coming to Paris, of leaving my domains, made me feel as though my heart was breaking. You see… I was very fond of my domains. I had great plans for orchards and
vineyards, and I’d grown up there, amid the rolling ground, and I knew all of my peasants from infancy. I looked forward to living the rest of my life there.” He shrugged, dismissing this as one would dismiss an impossible childhood dream. “And then, suddenly, one of the parishes on my land came vacant and the new incumbent was a young man, almost my age. Very pious. Fervent, in fact. His beautiful sister lived with him. I was aware that in the eyes of the world, she was as far below me as one of my own peasants. But she was so beautiful, so chaste, so religious. I fell in love with her and spent many a pleasant evening talking to her brother in their little cottage. In the way of things, I, who had never fallen in love before, fell in love with this beautiful blond woman and I married her. One week after she’d been elevated to countess, we were out, hunting. She hunted like Diana, a swift rider and an exacting markswoman. She was riding ahead of me, and turned back to say something. As she turned, she went under a low branch. It caught her and pulled her off her horse.” He stopped, because he could hear his voice tremble, on the edge of tears. Fortunately not being able to see his friends’ faces made it easier, but he heard Porthos draw breath as though to say something and, right now, pity was more than he could endure. “I dismounted and ran to her, naturally. She had lost consciousness. I panicked, also naturally, and took my hunting knife and cut her dress away, to give her the room to breathe. Which is when I found that she was marked with a fleur-de-lis.”

  This time he couldn’t avoid hearing someone-he thought Porthos-say “Sangre Dieu” under his breath.

  “I, after all my careful picking, and my refusal to be drawn in to a contracted, loveless marriage, had given my hand, my lands, my honor, to a marked criminal. You must understand… I was as in love as anyone can be, and I was a callow youth. It would have been better, perhaps, if my father hadn’t raised me away from the world and its fashions, if he hadn’t kept me from society. If I’d been sent to Paris, years before, for a while, and spent some time with young men my age, I might not have fallen for Charlotte. Or, if I had, since she was so very beautiful and so very accomplished, I would have had more resources of mind and heart to turn my crushing pain into something more manageable. I had none of those. Thoroughly provincial, I could think only that my honor was crushed forever. I could divorce her. I could judge her publically, for having imposed upon me. In… in my domains, the feudal law still held. As such, I thought that I could… justly condemn her. Only… it wasn’t like that. If I tried her publically, all my tenants and all my serfs would know of it. It would be spoken about till the end of my life. I could not do that. It wasn’t in my mind-set.