the musketeer's seamstress

by Sarah D'almeida

  Aramis’s head ached, and the previous day ran through it like a series of scenes, a series of shadows on the blankness that had invaded his brain. As if they’d happened to someone else, he saw his escape from Paris, his gallop across the late-spring countryside, his arrival here, his mother.

  His mother had led him inside and to Mass, as if whatever had driven him from Paris had necessitated immediate shriving. She hadn’t even asked what had happened.

  He rubbed his fingertips upon the center of his forehead, as though trying to unknot the pain there. His mother had never asked. She’d never shown the slightest surprise that her only and prodigal son should show up like this, upon a fine spring afternoon.

  She’d treated Aramis exactly as if he’d been fourteen and home from seminary on vacation. A Mass of thanks-giving for his safe arrival—said by his mother’s tottering priest, who must be over a hundred, or at least looked it. And then dinner. Thin soup, bread and some boiled vegetables, because it was Friday and therefore a day of abstinence and mortification.

  All through the meal one of the servants—or possibly one of his mother’s hired companions—had stood and read passages from the lives of saints.

  And at the end of the meal, at a movement or a gesture from Aramis’s mother, Bazin had emerged from the shadows and escorted Aramis here.

  And now . . . And now, Aramis became aware of heavy breathing from near the foot of his bed, by the window. He realized the heavy shutters on the window had just been pulled open to let daylight in.

  Aramis sat up. Bazin, dressed in his clerical black, stood by the window. “Blessed be our Lord Jesus Christ,” Bazin said, in the tone he had said it throughout all of Aramis’s childhood, to wake him up.

  “Oh, leave off, Bazin,” Aramis said.

  “Blessed be our Lord Jesus Christ,” Bazin repeated, frowning.

  “Bazin, I am warning you. I am not in the mood for this.” Aramis pawed at his hair which, during the night, had lost the bit of ribbon with which he normally bound it. It had knotted upon itself and stood in clumps and whirls around his face, obscuring his vision.

  “Blessed be—”

  Aramis picked up his pillow and threw it at Bazin’s pious face, before resuming combing through the tangled mess of his hair with his fingers.

  “Monsieur, the lady your mother told me I was to wake you as I always did. She said that the rules of the house were to be followed, and Chevalier, this is her house.”

  “Don’t. Call. Me. That.” Aramis pawed through his hair and bit his lip at the sudden pain as he tugged on a knot. “And where are my hairbrushes?”

  “What else am I to call you, Chevalier?” Bazin said. “We are at your mother’s house and you—”

  And he had foolishly come back into prison for asylum. Oh, he needed to be safe and he was safe enough. No one could penetrate this house and wrest Aramis from his loving mother’s arms. But then, neither could Aramis escape. The first time, he’d managed it by going to Paris to study theology. And then by killing a man, by disappearing, by . . .

  And he’d come back because Violette was dead. And in his heart of hearts he wasn’t even sure he hadn’t killed Violette. Oh, he didn’t think he had, but . . .

  He groaned aloud, let go of his hair and covered his face.

  “Blessed be our Lord Jesus Christ,” Bazin said, again.

  “And forever blessed his mother, the Virgin Mary,” Aramis moaned from behind the hands clasped on his face. The hands that, somehow, could not block the recalled image of Violette. Cold, waxen Violette with blood—

  “As it was in the beginning,” Bazin prompted.

  “Be it now and forever.”

  “Secolum secolorum.”

  “Amen.”

  Aramis realized he was rocking back and forth, sitting on his childhood bed, with Bazin standing at the foot and, from the sound of his breathing, fairly alarmed.

  He removed his hands from his face with an effort. Violette was dead. Nothing could be done about that. Aramis was sure he hadn’t killed her. He couldn’t have killed her. If he had killed her he would remember, wouldn’t he?

  And at any rate, what could be gained by coming back to his mother’s house? Was safety worth this? “Where are my hairbrushes, Bazin?”

  “Your mother said I was not to give you anything that reminded you of your intemperate life in Paris, nor of your vanity, nor—”

  “Bazin!”

  “Chevalier, you know better.”

  “My hairbrushes, now, Bazin. Or I shall run through the house in my small clothes, looking for them.”

  The servant huffed. He left the room at what tried to be a stately pace but bore the hallmarks of a hurried retreat.

  Aramis waited, counting till a hundred, then started to get out of the bed. He was sure his mother would be shocked—perhaps halfway to her death—if he did run through the house in his small clothes. He was also sure he could never dress until he tamed his hair. His hair was blond and fine, abundant, and possessed of just enough curl to become a hopelessly knotted mass if not kept brushed. And his mother had never denied him his hairbrushes, not even when he was a child. He had no intention to put up with what he was sure was Bazin’s tyranny.

  He had set his feet on the scrubbed oak floor, and stood, when the door opened.

  Reluctantly Bazin proffered two silver-handled brushes. “You may have these,” he said. “But your mother said no mirror.”

  Aramis thought of what he would like to reply to that edict, as he plied his brushes with the well-accustomed ease of a man who had lived without a proper valet for far too long. Bazin had never been a valet in the sense of caring for Aramis’s appearance, and Aramis had long ago given up on trying to get Bazin to help him dress or comb since Bazin disapproved of vanity.

  He combed himself by touch, rescued his black silk ribbon from the bedclothes and tied his hair back with it.

  When he looked up from this task, Bazin had filled the small ceramic basin on its bare metal stand with water from a pitcher.

  The water was cold, but Aramis expected no more. He washed hands and face, quickly and found Bazin extending a rough linen towel, which Aramis used.

  Then he slipped into his white linen shirt, and then into the very plain black breeches and doublet that Bazin had got from the peg on the wall. They were uncomfortable, confining and prickly, compared to his normal outfits.

  Once fully attired, he put on his boots. But even with the boots—the same he’d worn with his musketeers uniform and which bore too military a cut to fit with this outfit—he was aware that he looked like the seminarian he’d once been.

  He felt curiously naked and vulnerable as he walked downstairs to be greeted by his mother, who waited him at the bottom of the stairs. Madame D’Herblay was dressed in all black silk, a columnar dress that made her seem at once frailer and more unassailable. She was putting on her black lace gloves, and looked at him reproachfully. “Rene,” she said. “You are late for Matins.”

  “Madame,” Aramis said, rebelling at his mother, at the use of his true given name, and at the idea of starting the day with a religious celebration.

  Truth was, while in Paris, in his musketeer’s uniform, even with Violette’s sweet caresses, even with all the pleasures of Paris, Aramis often felt like a displaced seminarian.

  But now, here, in the wilderness of his native domain, in his mother’s house with its monacal discipline, wearing the same black suit he had worn as a seminarian, the Chevalier Rene D’Herblay had never felt quite so much like Aramis, the musketeer.

  Where Old Friends Meet; The Count and the Duke; A Country Gentleman’s Estate

  “COUNT!”

  This was the greeting addressed to Athos as he and D’Artagnan were admitted into the gated manor house of what looked like an enormous domain.

  They’d ridden through the day yesterday, and then rested at an inn before riding again. Most of the morning they’d been crossing a verdant, well cared for land that had th
e look and feel of belonging all to the same domain and the same Lord. Serfs and farmers, in the fields, wore similar outfits. And were, D’Artagnan noted, well dressed and better fed than most peasants in France.

  “This is all Raoul’s land—the Duke de Dreux’s,” Athos had said, at a time when they were walking the horses apace. “Oh, he has other lands, in his vassalage. But these are under his care, proper.”

  And D’Artagnan’s, whose hereditary domain was smaller than the cemetery Des Innocents in Paris, had looked around, openmouthed, at villages and hunting lodges, at palaces and chapels and churches. So this was the domain of Athos’s friend? And the domain that Aramis’s lover had disdained? If D’Artagnan had the like, this kind of property to retire to, he doubted he would have any interest at all in Paris. And had Athos left a similar property behind?

  D’Artagnan didn’t know, didn’t want to think about it. But even he couldn’t miss the respect in the voice of the servant that opened to them the ornate gates set in ten-foot-tall stone walls.

  “Count,” the man said. He was an old man, with an unruly crown of white hair, and the sort of manner old retainers tended to acquire. And he was looking up at Athos as if he’d seen a ghost.

  Athos, atop his horse, not bothering to dismount, looked proud and magnificent, like the statue of some ancient king. He inclined his head, giving the impression of great condescension.

  Behind them, Planchet and Grimaud caught up.

  “We thought you dead,” the man said.

  Athos sighed. “I am not, as you see.”

  “The master will be pleased,” the servant said.

  “He is here, then? Raoul?”

  “The Duke is within,” the servant said and gestured vaguely towards the inner part of what looked to D’Artagnan like an immense garden. He noted the old retainer’s gaze examining him. Athos did not introduce D’Artagnan and D’Artagnan knew well that these old servants were by far more snobbish than their masters. Doubtless the old man was adding up the cost of D’Artagnan’s clothing and his all too common visage and coming up with a low total for D’Artagnan’s worth.

  But Athos was spurring his horse ahead and there was nothing to do but to follow him down a lane bordered by trees. Which ended in a vast garden full of roses and bushes trimmed in amusing shapes, and interspersed by statues and fountains, all seemingly carved of white marble.

  At the end of the garden was a vast space paved in a mosaic of white and black stones, the black stones forming the shape of a fantastical tree amid the white.

  At the end of this space, two staircases with carved stone balusters climbed curving, to meet in the middle, on a vast balcony that led to an ornately carved door.

  At the door stood a shorter man than Athos, wearing what looked—from this distance, like a plain russet suit, faded with age.

  A servant, D’Artagnan thought, and had no more than thought it when the man started, raised his hand and shouted, “Alexandre,” in the way of a youth greeting a schoolfellow.

  To D’Artagnan’s surprise, Athos, too, raised his hand and shouted, “Raoul.”

  The man who must—D’Artagnan deduced—be the Duke de Dreux himself, came rushing indecorously down the stairs. Even up close, he was as unimpressive as Athos was impressive, and looked as little like a nobleman as it was possible to look.

  A short man, shorter than D’Artagnan, he had hair of an indeterminate brown and features that could only be described as apelike—a flattened nose, a mobile mouth and deep-set eyes. Only those eyes, dark brown and lively, were in any way extraordinary. That, and, D’Artagnan thought as the man smiled, his look of intentness and welcome.

  He ran all the way to Athos’s horse, and offered his friend his hand, to help him dismount. “Alexandre,” he said. “We thought you dead.”

  “So your good Jacques has informed me,” Athos said. “And yet, you see, I am alive. And Jacques, too, which surprised me a little, considering he was an old man when we were young.”

  “He wasn’t old,” Raoul said, and grinned. “He was only thirty. Younger than we are now. It was only that we were children and he was in charge of us and therefore seemed to us ancient.”

  Athos dismounted and Raoul clasped Athos’s hand in one of his, while grasping Athos’s other shoulder, in something not quite an embrace and yet betraying more emotion and more relief and happiness to see his friend still alive than an embrace could have.

  “You must tell me how you’ve been and where,” Raoul de Dreux said. “And why you disappeared in such a manner.”

  Athos shrugged. “There isn’t much to tell,” he said. “I made a mistake, and I’ve been paying for it.”

  De Dreux’s intelligent gaze searched Athos, and seemed to accept that this was all the explanation likely to come in the near future. He nodded. “I see,” he said, though it was clear he didn’t. “Well, you must come and wash yourself and rest. I’m sure you’ve had a long journey, from the looks of you.” He looked back at where Grimaud and Planchet had come to a stop, just behind D’Artagnan. “Your servant can take the horses to the stable and—”

  “Raoul,” Athos said. “This is my fault, I should have introduced you.” He turned to D’Artagnan who, bewildered, remained on horseback.

  D’Artagnan scrambled, hurriedly to dismount, while Athos said, “This is Monsieur Henri D’Artagnan, a guard in the regiment of Monsieur des Essarts, as well as a gentleman from Gascony.” One of Athos’s elusive smiles fled across the musketeer’s lips. “And the most trustworthy friend you’d want at your back in times of danger or doubt.”

  “I see,” Raoul de Dreux said. “I see.” He bowed to D’Artagnan. “Monsieur, I beg your forgiveness, but you must know that it is not normal for the Count to travel without more than two servants. In fact, usually, he’s accompanied by more than three. I did not mean to be insulting.” He extended his hand to D’Artagnan, and clasped D’Artagnan’s for the briefest of moments. “You must come. I’ll order two guest rooms set up. I don’t know to what I owe this visit, but you can have no idea how welcome you are. I have missed Alexandre very much and any friend who accompanies him on a visit is welcome.”

  It seemed very strange to D’Artagnan hearing Athos called Alexandre. Truth be told, he would have found it easier had de Dreux just called Athos “count.” With his noble countenance, his fine figure, Athos always impressed anyone as a nobleman anyway. Count was no less than his due. Alexandre, on the other hand was a given name, the stuff of family and friendship dating back to the nursery. Both of which were hard to reconcile with Athos’s severe countenance, his aloof bearing. Which he retained even as the two of them followed Raoul de Dreux down echoing corridors ornamented with paintings and tapestries and roofed over with carved ceilings gilded and painted and ornamented with figures from mythology.

  “This wing is all new since you last visited,” de Dreux said. “With your wife, right after your wedding.”

  Was it D’Artagnan’s imagination or did Athos’s bearing become more military and more rigid at those words and his expression more determinedly aloof?

  D’Artagnan remembered the story that had come out of Athos’s mouth almost a month ago, the story that Athos had told of the Count who’d killed his wife. Even back then he had had the feeling the Count was Athos. Now he was almost sure of it, even if he couldn’t imagine Athos killing any woman.

  “I had this whole area rebuilt after my wedding,” Raoul went on oblivious. “While it might not be good for anything else, my marriage brought me money in the form of my wife’s dowry, and that I used to make sure that this part was renovated as it should be. You probably don’t remember, but in my father’s day it was all but roofless.”

  “Ah, Montagne,” the Duke said, at a servant who appeared at the end of the corridor and bowed to them. “Do we have guest rooms in some semblance of order, that my friend the Count and his friend, Monsieur D’Artagnan, can occupy?”

  The young man in livery bowed. “Certainly, sir. The
rooms by the library have just recently been cleaned, and I believe the beds are made.”

  “It is our policy,” de Dreux said, walking past the servant who—D’Artagnan noted—was dressed more richly than him. “To keep a few guestrooms ready in case of a surprise visitor, just as it was in my father’s day, though you must know I don’t get nearly as many visitors. My father was a far more gregarious being than I am.”

  He led them down another corridor, which ended in two doors. The doors, once opened, revealed two splendid rooms with curtained beds piled high with pillows and cushions, with carved trunks waiting to receive a copious wardrobe that D’Artagnan did not possess, and with glazed double doors which opened on a spacious balcony.

  In his room, D’Artagnan was almost immediately provided with warm water for washing. A servant stood by to help him dress, until D’Artagnan, embarrassed by the paltry simplicity of his wardrobe and by his own ability to dress and undress without help, sent him away.

  Then D’Artagnan washed and changed into fresh clothes. He’d just finished lacing his doublet, when someone knocked at the door. “It is I, Athos,” Athos said, before D’Artagnan had time to answer.

  D’Artagnan opened the door a sliver, and found his friend looking at him, his face attentive and stern. D’Artagnan opened the door all the way to let him in.

  Like D’Artagnan, Athos had washed the travel dust and changed into fresh clothes. But he looked even more browbeaten than D’Artagnan, whether by the decadent surroundings or by meeting his childhood friend, D’Artagnan could not say.

  D’Artagnan backed into his own room, ahead of Athos, who closed and locked the door behind himself, then stalked around the room, straightening a picture and looking behind a tapestry. “D’Artagnan, I trust your silence on anything you see or hear here that relates . . . That has to do with my true identity.”

  “Athos,” D’Artagnan said. “You know you can trust me.”