the musketeer's seamstress

by Sarah D'almeida

  “Sangre Dieu!” Raoul said.

  With his eyes closed, Athos heard his friend jump up, heard him open the bottle once more, and opened his eyes just in time to see Raoul refill Athos’s glass, before falling back on his own chair, staring horrified at Athos. “Sangre Dieu,” he said again, this time softly. “You married a criminal.”

  “I thought so,” Athos said, and took a draught of the wine, which was starting to make his head swim. He was used to drinking a lot more, but not this good a quality of wine. “I thought so, and I thought I could not turn her to the local court. At any rate, I was the local court, the judge instituted by God and the unbroken line of my ancestors, to adjucate all local crimes and claims. I know, I know, even so, I should have brought it out in public, flung the case down before the lawyers in my domain, and then got her to tell her story, get her tried—” He took another sip of wine and a deep breath, which came out ragged and fluttering. “The shame to my domain, the shame to my name . . . Forever, I would be known as the Count who married the branded criminal. Myself, and my sons, should I ever have any, would be laughed at. We’d never dare declare what has, until now, been a proud name.” He looked at the flames in the fireplace licking at the dark shadows of the logs, and dancing, like a prefiguration of the hell that waited him after this life was done. His reasoning had seemed so good at the time. “The tree against which she’d crashed was still nearby. I dragged her to it. I had rope in my saddle bag. I . . . I hanged her from an overhanging branch.” The image of Charlotte swinging from the branch, her long blond hair waving like a flag in the wind, made him close his eyes again. The silence went on. So even Raoul disapproved of him.

  When Athos opened his eyes again, though, he found Raoul looking at him, pale and shocked. But the expression in Raoul’s eyes was all sympathy, all concern. “By the Mass,” he said. “Sangre Dieu, man, how that must work at you. I’ve known you too long not to know you have the sort of conscience that wouldn’t let you sleep at night, after that.”

  “Should I be able to sleep at night after that?” Athos asked, and immediately, without giving Raoul time to answer, he continued. “I didn’t even return to my house for a change of clothes. I didn’t want to be there when they found her. Oh, when they found her, they would find the mark on her shoulder too, and they would know that I had reason to kill her. As the local Lord I had the right to kill her for that—”

  “You had the right to kill her for lying to you, for luring you into a shameful marriage,” Raoul said heatedly.

  “You don’t really believe that, Raoul,” Athos said, softly. All his thought of trapping his friend was gone, and he knew, knew with the certainty of an old friend that Raoul for all his heated words would never kill a woman merely for lying to him.

  Raoul shook his head. “Perhaps I don’t, but Alexandre, how can you expect your oldest friend to forgive a woman who has done this to you? Who has destroyed your life? You were the noblest and most accomplished man I’ve ever known. I expected—we all expected—great things of you.”

  “By the next day, I sent a message back to Grimaud, who had been my valet,” Athos said. “And told him to join me in Paris and what to bring with him. When he joined me, they hadn’t found her, yet, but I presume it can’t have taken much longer.

  “I made use of my father’s friendship with Monsieur de Treville to get a post in the musketeers, under the name Athos.”

  There was a silence, then Raoul wrinkled his forehead. “Isn’t that the name of a mountain?”

  “In Armenia,” Athos said. “The site of a famous monastery.”

  “Oh, Alexandre,” Raoul said, half exasperated, half amused. “How your mind is still what it was as a child. A monastery, of course. Expiating your sin. Alexandre, you are a fool.”

  “I realize that,” Athos said. “Only a fool would have married her.”

  “No,” Raoul said. “Only a fool would indulge in such browbeating recrimination over executing a criminal. Because that’s all you’ve done. You administered the justice she had too long evaded.”

  “But . . . what if the brand wasn’t real? What if it had been set there by an enemy? What if—”

  “A fleur-de-lis brand? By an enemy? Do you have any other fairy tales you wish to tell yourself, my friend? You executed a criminal. You’ve punished yourself enough. We heard you and your wife had both disappeared and, when you weren’t found, were presumed abducted and dead. Since there is some doubt, your cousin, de Falonage, has been administering La Fere from a distance. But you should go back. Go back, marry again, marry a worthy woman, sire half a dozen sons. All this guilt, all this—” Raoul waved his hand as if to do way with the musketeers, Paris, with Athos’s obsessive recrimination. “Drama will disappear. Like a bad dream. Which is all it is.”

  Athos shook his head. It wasn’t that easy. He had always known that he and Raoul were made of different stuff, hewn of different material. He couldn’t explain to Raoul that his guilt felt real, that his doubt about Charlotte was real. Nor that he loved her still. Instead, he forced a smile on his lips. “Is that what you intend to do, now, then? Sire half a dozen sons?”

  Raoul smiled in turn and finished his own wine in the glass he’d been holding, seemingly forgotten, between his fingers. “The good Lord willing,” he said. “You know, the funny thing is that my envy for what I thought was your love match inspired me. When it became obvious to me that madame my wife and I had nothing in common, I let her stay in Paris and I came here, to my vineyards, to the fields I love.

  “Please don’t think me bitter. There was nothing in it one way or another. Ysabella and I were two very different people, and she was no more than a stranger to me. My father had let our estate get to such a ruinous degree of downfall—between his bookish obsessions and his ignorance of all land management—that for me to go on living in it and raise a family in it, in estate, was impossible. My two choices were to run away from the debtors and do something like what you’ve done.” He smiled at Athos, and waved his hand vaguely again. “The musketeer uniform, the . . . All that. Or I could find someone to marry who brought a large enough dowry to cover the expenses of restoring the estate. My father’s distant cousin, his majesty, himself, wanted me to marry Ysabella and she certainly fit the bill.”

  He got up and threw one more trunk into the fireplace, then turned to smile at Athos. “Would you believe I was relieved she didn’t actually wish to live with me? She had no interest in living in Dreux, or in being mother to my children.” He nodded, possibly at something he saw in Athos’s expression. “Believe me, I was. After all, if she didn’t want to live with me, I had the time, the possibility, the ability to fall in love. And I could find someone who—like me— could never marry, but who would be happy with just our love.”

  “You took a mistress.”

  Raoul nodded. “Are you that surprised? Didn’t Ysabella have her lover?” He paused and looked shocked. “Good Lord, his name was Aramis, wasn’t it? He’s your friend whom you mentioned.”

  Athos shrugged, as if this were of little importance. “How do you know his name?”

  Raoul smiled. “There were always helpful people in Paris. My friends, or those who would have me believe them my friends. All too eager to send me information about what Ysabella was doing. I couldn’t get any of them to understand I didn’t care. And I didn’t. Ysabella and I had a bargain, and she fulfilled it. Her part of the bargain was that she could do whatever she pleased, provided she didn’t overspend her allowance, and she didn’t . . . get herself with child. As far as I know, she kept both ends of it. Oh, the Queen often gave her jewels and money, so the first one wasn’t difficult. And if she ever violated the second, she hid the pregnancy and got rid of the child, so I was not saddled with a bastard.”

  “And you?” Athos asked.

  Raoul de Dreux shrugged. “I found myself a friend, first. She is one of my tenants. Widowed, with a large farm to her care. Common, with common ancestry. But I started dropp
ing by her farm, and we started talking, and after a while, insensibly, I realized I was in love with her. She’s a sensible woman, whose ancestors have been in this region as long as mine, and who loves the land as much as I do. The implementing of that irrigation project was as much her brainchild as mine.”

  “And do you have . . . bastards?” Athos asked. His friend’s flinch at the word did not escape him.

  Raoul took a deep breath. Athos guessed that if they were not such close friends, and if it weren’t, in point of fact, the absolute, legal truth, Raoul would have challenged Athos to a duel then and there.

  Instead, he shrugged and in a voice that sounded more brittle than indifferent, he said, “As a point of fact, though we’ve been very careful all these years, just these last two months, Cunegunde has found herself . . . embarrassed.”

  Athos’s turn to flinch, inwardly, because this provided Raoul with the best motive for killing his absent wife. How could this family-proud, upright man not want his son or daughter to be legitimate? How could he not wish to have for his children the benefit of that established solidity that had graced his own birth and childhood.

  “What do you plan to do?” Athos asked.

  “What I planned to do,” Raoul said. “Was acknowledge the child, of course. Most of the people in my domain know that Cunegunde and I are lovers. Not to acknowledge the child as mine would be churlish. And then I thought, particularly if it were a boy, I would apply to Rome, through the hierarchy of the church, and have him legitimized. Make him my heir.”

  “You said it’s what you planned to do?”

  “Well, by God, Ysabella set me free at a most convenient time,” Raoul grinned, a wide grin. “I can now marry Cunegunde. Oh, there will be talk because she is not noble, but my father is dead, the king has problems of his own, and I’m, fortunately, my own man, free to choose as I please. I’ll marry her, and if the child is two months too early and seems a little well developed, who’s to talk?” He turned his smile on Athos, then his smile froze and he chuckled. “Alexandre, did you come all this way to see whether I might have murdered my wife? Only you look as though someone plunged a dagger into your heart. Was my wife murdered? Do you suspect me, my friend?”

  And Athos, who had indeed been suspecting his old friend and whose breath was frozen middrawing, now realized that were Raoul truly guilty he would never have come out and said that. He would certainly never have used the image of a dagger plunged in one’s heart. And he wouldn’t be smiling at Athos like a fool. Raoul was different from Athos, but that difference hinged on a more open nature, on a milder outlook on life. Not on his ability for consummate acting.

  Athos took a breath, another and glared at his friend. “No, I do not suspect you.”

  “But you did? Did you think I actually traveled to Paris to kill her? I didn’t, I assure you. You can ask any of my servants and verify—” He looked at Athos and guffawed, delightedly. “You did, you fool. You did already.”

  “I did,” Athos confirmed, refusing to laugh with his friend. “But a man of your position, of your income, does not need to kill his wife himself.”

  “What, and subject myself to never ending blackmail? Or did you think me so lost to all proper feeling that I’d then kill the wretch who killed her?”

  Athos shook his head. “I confess I can’t imagine you doing either.”

  “Oh, good, that means you’re just a fool and not a half-wit,” Raoul said. He seemed greatly pleased with the idea that Athos had suspected him at any time. “And what did you mean to do if I had been guilty? Have me turned in and killed?” He shook his head. “No. I can’t believe that of you. So it would have been the old, ‘fly, all is discovered.’ ”

  It took quite a while and much laughing before Raoul would let the subject rest. Then he extracted from Athos a full account of all that had happened and why Athos felt it necessary to investigate the crime. He sympathized with Aramis, though he couldn’t fathom the mind of a man who would fall for his late wife.

  By the time the two friends retired—without ever finishing their chess game—Athos was as sure as a human can be of anything that Raoul hadn’t killed his wayward Duchess.

  D’Artagnan hadn’t awakened and Athos picked up the book the young man had let fall—Systems of Irrigation and the Building of Ditches with Diagrams. No wonder the youth had fallen asleep—before waking him and sending him to bed.

  “I shall leave tomorrow,” Athos told Raoul.

  “Yes,” Raoul said. They stood at the foot of the stairs, which Athos would have to climb to his room. Raoul’s bedroom was in quite a different part of the house. “I understand why you must. Till your friend is proven innocent, you must investigate. But after he’s proven innocent, come and see me again, Alexandre. I want you to stand godfather to my son.”

  The Best Intentions of a Novice; Dark Eyes and Dark Thoughts; A Message from the Cardinal

  “I dreamed of her again, last night,” Aramis said. He sat in his room, on a chair and had, unconsciously, adopted a pose that had been common to him in early adolescence— his body slumped down on the seat and his arms hanging over the arms of the chair.

  The black suits his mom left out for him were linen mixed in with wool and itched like the fires of hell.

  Which the man standing at the foot of the bed, in the black habit of the Dominican was about to remind Aramis of, if Aramis was any judge of the expression in his eyes.

  “I despair of you, Chevalier,” the Dominican presently said. He looked over at Aramis with an expression of the deepest despair and betrayal. “Indeed, I do. You are so gifted, in your preaching and your thought, so capable, so clearly . . . called to the life of the church and to convert others to the wonders of the faith—and yet . . .” The Dominican opened his hands, as if to signify that he couldn’t possibly help Aramis if Aramis didn’t reform his ways. “Don’t you understand,” he asked, leaning close. “Don’t you understand that the woman is dead? She’s even now suffering the pains of hell that her sin with you earned her. And yet you . . .” The monk looked like he would presently make a very uncharitable comment about Aramis, and Aramis looked away before the poor brother disgraced himself by stomping his feet or growling or something equally undignified.

  He looked towards the window of his room, which was open to the still afternoon air, warm and suffocating with a foretaste of summer in its stultifying heat.

  Oh, he’d entered this of his own volition. Or at least, he supposed it had been his own volition, though when his mother was around, when she was concerned in anything at all, it became hard for Aramis to tell which was his decision and which his mother’s gentle manipulation. Though she was his mother, Aramis wasn’t blind to the reality that he’d got his guile and his ability to manipulate others from her. Nor that the master remained superior to her pupil.

  After she’d taken him to the cemetery and the gallery; after he’d seen where the enmity of the Cardinal had got his father, Aramis could only think to avoid the like fate. And avoiding the like fate—his mother had assured him— meant taking the habit as soon as possible.

  But now Aramis had started thinking that it made no sense. After all, being a musketeer had helped him avoid his father’s early death so far. Aramis had simply learned to use the sword better than anyone who wished to kill him.

  And the more he thought about it, the less he could believe that the Cardinal would have killed Violette because he meant to entrap Aramis. She was too close to the Queen, too high of rank, too connected in the court for the Cardinal to kill her as a mere pawn to his purposes. No.

  Violette had been killed for other reasons. And Aramis was here, hiding, while he left his friends to figure out the crime. He chewed, thoughtfully, on his lower lip. The idea that his safety, his ability to return to Paris as a free man depended on the cunning of Porthos made him sigh. Porthos, after all, had many admirable qualities.

  Porthos’s loyalty Aramis would vouch for; his strength could not be impeached,
and even where his intelligence was concerned, Aramis didn’t think it was quite so dim as many in the musketeers would avow.

  In fact, having known Porthos for these many years, Aramis was sure that Porthos was, if not brilliant, of more than average intelligence. Even if his was a peculiar form of intelligence that often had trouble translating itself to words. But Porthos’s cunning—well, Porthos’s cunning could only be considered at the same level as Porthos’ sense of fashion, which often made Aramis cringe and caused sensible people to shield their eyes.

  Then there was Athos. Athos was, of course, very intelligent. Or at least, he’d read a lot of books. And been given as good an education as an old, well-grounded noble family could afford. Ask Athos about philosophy, about the virtues of the ancients, about that corruption which had caused the fall of the mighty Roman Empire and you’d get well reasoned explanations, concise and set into words so carefully picked that even a school master could take no exception to them.

  Athos, when he was thus inclined—often after he’d drunk far more than anyone should drink—would debate even theology with Aramis himself, and could make his points over Aramis’s even on those things in which Aramis was well schooled. But Athos’s practical intelligence, his knowledge of people and people’s motives . . . well . . .

  Like most misanthropes, Athos tended to assume the worst of humankind. While this was better than assuming the best, it was just as fallible. Athos saw every man as a mirror of himself and himself as composed of the worst qualities he’d not even observed but read about. Aramis was not so dense that he hadn’t gathered that in Athos’s past there was something he viewed as a crime and for which he blamed himself. He would bet—from knowing Athos—that it was something no other human being would feel guilty about. Or at least, no other sane human being. Athos’s long silences, his brooding, his imbibing, his reckless and always unlucky gambling all seemed to bespeak a great love with ruin and death.