the musketeer's seamstress

by Sarah D'almeida

  Athos looked up, startled, to meet Porthos’s innocent stare. He made a sound in his throat that he hoped didn’t seem like laughter and reached for the strips of linen that D’Artagnan had left at his hand.

  D’Artagnan got up and stepped around to provide Athos with the extra hand needed for this task and said, as he was doing it, “The seamstress who writes to Aramis on lilac-perfumed paper?” he asked.

  Porthos blinked.

  “A seamstress who seals her letters with the imprint of a ducal crown,” D’Artagnan said, meaningly.

  “But . . . why?” Porthos asked. “Why did the niece of a theology professor become a duchess? And how?”

  Athos could have told D’Artagnan that trying to insinuate things wouldn’t work with Porthos. Porthos was not stupid, nor was he incapable of deception. In fact, Athos was privy to a deception that Porthos ran on his very own.

  However, Porthos was abysmally bad at deception. So bad, in fact, that though Athos hadn’t spoken, he very much doubted either of their two other friends believed Porthos’s light of love to be the princess he said she was. Being naturally bad at deception, and abhorring confusing words and complex philosophies, Porthos naturally found it impossible to believe that Aramis, his closest friend, would run a more complex deception. He also would probably not understand at all why Aramis would call his duchess a seamstress while Porthos labored so hard to give the impression that he slept with crowned heads.

  “There was never a niece of a theology professor,” he said, as Porthos looked at him. “Aramis has always been involved with a duchess.”

  “A Spanish duchess?” Porthos asked, in tones of great amazement. “The maid yesterday called her by a string of . . .”

  Athos shrugged and was rewarded with a firm pull on the ligature that D’Artagnan was attempting to tie. “She was Spanish by birth,” he said. “I believe she grew up with Anne of Austria, as one of the young noble ladies chosen to be her playfellows and friends from a tender age. And when the Queen married our King, Aramis’s seamstress, too, was sent to France as part of her escort, and her marriage to a French nobleman was arranged, at the same time as the royal marriage. Her title is Duchess de Dreux, an old duchy in Brittany.”

  “She is . . . married then?” Porthos said, slowly. “Her husband is still living?

  And for just a moment Athos thought that Porthos was going to express or fake moral outrage at the woman’s liaison with Aramis while she was married. Which would be strange from Porthos, whose own lover was the wife of an accountant. And Porthos normally was not hypocritical. His very own lack of ability to explain away things with words made him unable to explain or excuse himself to himself.

  But, instead, Porthos said, “Where is her husband. Is he at court?”

  “No,” Athos said. And thought of her husband who had been his playfellow, or what passed for such amid their class, with each family living in its own isolated estate and rarely meeting the others. Raoul de Dreux’s father and Athos’s father had been best friends and, as such, once or twice a year one of them undertook the journey to visit the other and then stayed several weeks at the other’s house, hunting through the fine mornings, discussing poetry or history or philosophy through the heat of the day. Both men had lost their wives at their sons’ births and, both fathers being unusually devoted to their offspring, the sons and their complement of maids and nurses traveled with the fathers when they went anywhere. Which was how Athos had come to share a nursery with Raoul from earliest infancy for some weeks every year. And a school room with him later on. They’d learned fencing and reading together and later—as they grew to adulthood—they had developed a friendship as strong as that of their fathers.

  They had married very different women with results that, while not similar, were equally disastrous for both of them. The dissolution of Athos’s own marital bonds by means of a rope around his Countess’s neck had made Athos leave behind that, his most ancient friendship, as he had everything else—from estate to land to proud heritage.

  He was surprised to find tears in his eyes and realize he was thinking with longing of the simple, uncomplicated friendship of childhood. As much as he liked and trusted his present friends, it was strange to have no one around who truly knew him, who’d seen him grow up, who remembered the garrulous young man as well as the silent musketeer.

  “No,” he said. “Raoul . . . Monsieur de Dreux has no taste for the court. Truth be told, I never thought he had much taste for his wife. She was not . . . his kind. He is a quiet man, much fond of his books and his horses. She was bright and noisy and . . .” Athos realized he was relaying information from private letters and stopped. “The thing is that the marriage was arranged by his father, a glittering affair that meant not much. And then de Dreux returned to his domains, and his wife stayed in town.” He felt his lips twist into a wry smile, an expression that he knew well betrayed more bitterness than humor. “And found her own amusements.”

  D’Artagnan had finished tying the bandage in place. “Could he have been jealous of her? Could he have found a way to murder her?”

  “How?” Athos said. “By hiding under her bed while she entertained her lover?” He tried to imagine that situation and shook his head. “D’Artagnan, I don’t believe he cared enough for her to come to town and visit her, much less to kill her in a jealous fit.”

  “You speak as though you know him?” Porthos said, as always cutting to the heart of the argument.

  “I did,” Athos said. “Before I became a musketeer.” Porthos nodded. “And you don’t think he could be a murderer?”

  Athos pulled down his sleeve. D’Artagnan had turned his back and was rummaging in a trunk by the window where he kept his glasses and his wine. He came back with them and poured wine for both his friends, while Athos put his doublet back on and laced it tight. The doublet gave him a feel of protection, of covering up his thoughts as well as his body. It was part of his musketeer’s uniform, a penitent’s clothing he had assumed as eagerly as other men assumed sackcloth and ashes.

  “I’m not saying he couldn’t murder,” he said. “You must know, Porthos, for I’ve said it before and you’ve told me I was speaking nonsense, that I believe every man can be a murderer, given enough temptation and enough provocation. But Porthos, I don’t believe he is a murderer in this case. Not the murderer of his wife. If he loved her . . . Then I could believe he would turn on her.” He took a sip of his wine, which tasted sour and acid. He really must send some wine to D’Artagnan to keep for these occasions. Monsieur Des Essarts barely paid enough to his guards to keep them from begging on the streets. No wonder all the boy could afford for wine was barrel dregs.

  “You believe if he loved her he would have killed her?” Porthos said. “That makes no sense at all, Athos. By that reasoning the most logical suspect would be—” Porthos stopped, as if his own horror had stayed his tongue.

  “Aramis,” D’Artagnan said what Porthos could not say. He sat next to Porthos, facing Athos. The seat beside Athos, normally Aramis’s, was left vacant. “You suspect Aramis, do you not, Athos?”

  “I don’t know. Do I suspect him of the crime?” Athos lifted his glass of red wine to the light and looked through it. “Perhaps. I can’t say I didn’t think of it and you must admit it is the most logical solution. Aramis was alone with her, behind a closed door. Who else could have killed her?”

  “But,” D’Artagnan said in the tone of one who prompts.

  “I cannot believe you are saying this,” Porthos said, still looking shocked. “I cannot believe you’d think that of a friend.”

  “What makes you sure that there is a but?” Athos asked D’Artagnan, ignoring Porthos’s outrage.

  “There has to be a but, otherwise you’d have demanded of Aramis why he had killed her. And you wouldn’t have told him to leave town till we could clear his name. You’d have told him to leave town and pledge himself to some remote monastery, some out of the way retreat, where he could disappear
forever.”

  Athos nodded. “There is indeed a but, and that is that I can’t believe Aramis would lie to us. And there you have it, Porthos, I do not think that of my friend.”

  “Your reasoning seems flawed. Aramis lies all the time,” D’Artagnan said, looking puzzled. “He’s a courtier. He lies as he breathes.”

  “D’Artagnan. I cannot believe that both of you would so revile—” Loyal Porthos said.

  “Peace, Porthos,” D’Artagnan said. “I am not reviling anyone. But surely you know that Aramis lies to us all the time. He makes up stories to explain his presence where he shouldn’t be. He talks of the duchess of this and what she said to the marquess of that, and all the time I’m sure he’s just spreading rumors or passing them on, which is a lie after all. He lies to be diverting, he lies to protect others and he lies to hide the true cause of his actions. I’ve known this about him since we first met, notwithstanding which I consider him a true friend and one of the best men I’ve ever known.” He looked across at Athos, a keen, examining look. “But his being the best of men, I still fail to understand why Athos thinks he wouldn’t lie to us.”

  Athos smiled. “Oh, he’ll lie to us well enough.” He lifted his hand to still the protest he saw forming in Porthos’s features. “He’ll lie to us about where he ate dinner and where he slept, who gave him an embroidered handkerchief, and by what means he enters the palace late at night, but I submit to you that this he would not lie about. I’ve thought about it myself, because I, myself, suspected it, until I realized that if he had truly killed her, he would be putting us in danger by asking us to help him. And that, I don’t believe Aramis would do. He would only put us in danger if he thought it needed to vindicate his innocence. If he knew himself to be innocent.”

  It was the longest speech he made in a long time, and it rendered both of his friends speechless. Porthos still looked upset at the implication that Aramis might be less than honest, but he had stopped his protests.

  “But how could someone else have killed her if the room was locked and Aramis was there all the time, except when he went to . . . uh . . . relieve himself?” Porthos asked.

  Secret Passages and Palace Maids; A Count’s Connections and a Gascon’s Loyalty

  THAT was the question that D’Artagnan could never answer. Only Porthos would put it so clearly, because—in the month that D’Artagnan had known Porthos he’d come to know this—Porthos’s mind was clear and direct and untroubled like a straight road.

  He sighed, as he looked at his friend. “I don’t know Porthos, and I don’t understand it. But when Aramis took me to the palace with him, when we were investigating the death of . . . Of the lady we thought to be the Queen,” D’Artagnan said. He didn’t dare look towards Athos whose heart had gotten broken perhaps forever during that investigation. 1 “I found that the palace is honeycombed with tunnels and passages. Is it possible that there is a passage into the lady’s room?”

  Athos shook his head. “Didn’t Aramis say that there wasn’t? That there was furniture against every wall?”

  “Yes,” D’Artagnan said. “But Aramis was scarcely thinking clearly then. And besides, I know from seeing it, some of the doors to these passages have furniture built onto them. Surely Aramis knows that too, since he was the one who showed me these passages. But he was not himself...”

  “Are you saying that there could be a passage into the lady’s room that Aramis didn’t know about?” Athos asked.

  D’Artagnan nodded. “I am saying that is the only way I can think of for someone to gain access to her apartments.”

  “How are we to gain access to the palace, though?” Athos said.

  “I don’t know. Surely you have some people you know within?” He wasn’t so slow that he hadn’t long ago realized that his friend, in his unassuming musketeer’s uniform, with his small rented lodgings and one servant whom he had trained to obey signals and gestures, was really someone else—some Lord brought up in luxury and honor.

  Athos shook his head. “Not . . . in my present station. Oh, they would know me, but not in my musketeer’s uniform. I avoid the palace except for when I’m on guard or when Monsieur de Treville escorts us there.”

  “But surely the secrecy . . .” D’Artagnan started, meaning to ask if the secrecy was needed or if it could serve a purpose larger than clearing Aramis’s name. But he looked up at Athos’s face and saw Athos’s glance close as firmly as if doors had shut upon the dark blue eyes.

  “Well, then, it leaves us with no means of investigating the secret passageways of the palace and no way to verify if there are any into that room,” D’Artagnan said.

  “It would be difficult, at any rate,” Athos said. “From what I understand, in the palace, as in all old noble houses, sometimes even those who live there aren’t sure where the passages are or if they exist.”

  “Is there . . . any other way we can start to investigate . . . ?”

  “What about the maids?” Porthos asked.

  D’Artagnan turned to look at Porthos. The big man was often cryptic, sometimes inscrutable, but his opinion could never be discounted as being of no importance. And yet, D’Artagnan could not have the slightest idea what he meant.

  “The maids?” he asked, staring.

  “The palace has maids,” Porthos said, waving his hand as if this explained everything. And, as the other two stared at him in utter confusion, he sighed heavily. “Maids are easy to approach.” He blushed slightly. “I find it easy to talk to maids and working women.”

  “Of course,” Athos said. “You do have that gift, Porthos.”

  “And if anyone knows of secret passages,” D’Artagnan said. “Maids would. They clean and maintain and . . .”

  “Keep secrets from their masters,” Athos said, his eyes shining with the ironical light they sometimes acquired.

  D’Artagnan nodded.

  “I can take care of that part then,” Porthos said. “Getting maids to talk to me is easy.”

  D’Artagnan smiled, as he saw Athos give Porthos a shocked look.

  “I enjoy their company,” Porthos said. “And I believe they enjoy mine.”

  D’Artagnan could only imagine how this shocked the very aristocratic Athos. He, himself—brought up in a manor house so small and unimportant that it had exactly two servants, both treated as family—was not so much shocked as amused. It seemed to him the contrast between Porthos’s desperate seeking for the appearance of high connections and his enjoyment of maids’ company made the man more human and warm than either of his two other friends.

  “So what am I to ask them?” Porthos said.

  “If there are any passages into the room,” Athos said.

  “That is all? There is no part of this conversation that I failed to understand?” Porthos asked, standing up.

  “There is no part you failed to understand,” Athos said.

  “Good, because I don’t want to be told later that there was something else I was to ask.”

  Athos frowned thunderously in Porthos’s direction.

  “What have I done now?” Porthos asked. “Did I ask something I should not have asked?”

  Athos blinked. It seemed to D’Artagnan that the musketeer had awakened from some deep thought. “No Porthos, I was just thinking.” He looked at D’Artagnan, then back at Porthos. “Did Aramis, ever, in his gossip, tell you of anyone who might have hated Madame de Dreux?”

  D’Artagnan, never having heard that name before this day shook his head and added, “No, and no one who hated his seamstress, either.”

  “I thought his seamstress—” Porthos started.

  “Never mind, Porthos. Did he tell you of anyone who wished ill to either?”

  “Aren’t they the same person?” Porthos asked.

  “Yes, but Aramis would have referred to them as being two different people.”

  “Oh. No, he never spoke of anyone bearing animosity to either.”

  Athos let out breath with every appearance of ang
er. “He didn’t speak of anyone who hated her to me, either,” he said. “Which is remarkable in itself. For someone living in the hothouse that is the court, the lady made few enemies. Perhaps because her interest was more in Aramis than in court intrigue.”

  “I know she supported the Queen,” D’Artagnan said, recalling the events of a month ago. “And as such, perforce, the Cardinal must be her enemy.”

  Athos tilted his head. “So are we the Cardinal’s enemies. Yet I don’t see him going through some trouble to murder us by stealth. Those the Cardinal wants dead or vanished either are killed in open daylight or disappear during the night into the Bastille, never to be heard from again. Besides, Cardinal Richelieu is not a fool. He would not murder a duchess and expect it to pass unnoticed.”

  He drummed his fingers, impatiently upon the table. “There is nothing for it,” he said. “I must go as soon as possible and pay a visit to Raoul—Monsieur de Dreux.”

  It did not escape D’Artagnan’s attention that Athos had first mentioned the man by his given name. Twice so far. There was also something to the way that Athos said the name that implied great affection or great familiarity— perhaps both. He wondered if Athos thought he needed to go see Monsieur de Dreux because he wished to see him or because he really wanted to assess his guilt. And he suspected the first more than the second. “Her husband?” he asked, drily. “But you said, only a few moments ago, that her husband could not possibly be the murderer. That he was not in love with her.”

  Athos looked at him, for a moment, blankly, then rubbed his forehead with the fingertips of his bloodied hand. Though the blood had dried, it nonetheless left little flakes upon the pale skin. “I did. And it is true I don’t think he loved her, which means he had no reason to kill her in jealousy and rage. But there is another way he could have killed her, and I did not give it enough thought.” He looked at D’Artagnan and said, slowly, as though the words pained him. “He might have killed her in cold blood and calculatingly. He might have fallen in love with someone else, and killed his wife to be rid of her.”