the musketeer's seamstress

by Sarah D'almeida

  He looked at the man’s face and saw no harm there. At any rate, what else could he do? He didn’t know how much blood he had already lost, but if he lost much more—and he would if he tried to walk on his own—the thing would be decided without any fighting and, if the Cardinal had meant to eliminate Aramis, he’d eliminate Athos too, with it.

  He put his arm over Fasset’s bony, wiry shoulders.

  “Come,” the man said, taking a step with the care that demonstrated that, for all Monsieur de Treville, when he wished to revile his men, upheld the guards as models of restraint and clean living, they too had plenty of experience in helping drunken comrades to walk.

  After ten such steps, northward, out of the alley, Athos said, “Where are we going, Monsieur? Should I be concerned?”

  “We’re going to my lodgings,” Fasset said. “It’s just on that street,” he pointed ahead. “Above a tavern. The sign of The Maiden’s Head, in fact. As for whether you should be concerned, no, Monsieur Athos, you shouldn’t. I intend no more than to bind your wound, perhaps in a way that will allow you to walk again, at least a little, so you can get to your own lodgings? If not, I will procure you a horse.”

  Athos took a deep breath. “Won’t your comrades be upset that you are undoing their work today? They took a great deal of trouble to leave me in the mud of that alley.”

  He could not see Fasset’s face, not in the way they were walking. But he felt Fasset’s shoulders tighten beneath his arm and he heard a long, drawn-out hissing of breath from the man. It occurred to Athos, a little belatedly, that in his condition the last thing he should be doing was goading or baiting a man who had some reason to resent him.

  But when words came out of Fasset, they didn’t seem to bear any trace of resentment against Athos. “They said they left you. In the alley. Dead.” Another of those long, hissed out breaths that sounded to Athos—an expert in the art himself—as an attempt at fighting extreme anger. “I came to verify that you were beyond help.”

  “And do they expect you to finish their work, then?” Athos asked.

  “They expect me to do nothing, Monsieur. I resigned my commission in the guards before I came for you. It was not the cowardly way they set upon you. You and I, doubtless, have taken part in ambushes. We are soldiers, all. I disapprove of cowardice, but I could understand it if there were a reason for it. However there isn’t. They tried to kill you without orders and just because they heard some words.”

  “How long . . . how long have I been . . . ?” Athos couldn’t quite frame his question. Walking like this wasn’t hard, as he didn’t need to put any weight on his thigh. And he could tell—at least from the feel of dried blood on his skin—that his bleeding had stopped, save for a trickle instigated probably by his efforts at assessing the wound. But his mind was confused and he felt as if he’d just awakened and hadn’t fully come to his senses yet.

  “I don’t know. More than an hour. They returned to the Cardinal’s palace to report,” he said. “Which is when I heard them, and I gave his eminence my commission back.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “He seemed to be amused.” This was said with some fury. “But I was not. And I got one of those two surviving wretches and pressed him to tell me exactly where they’d left you. I had to come and help you.”

  “How did you know I wouldn’t be beyond all help? What did you intend to do, aid with my funeral?”

  “Monsieur,” Fasset said. “The only way I’d believe someone had killed you in a fight, no matter what the odds for or against you, was if I’d personally removed your head and carried it away with me. And even then . . .” He paused. “There is an anger in you, a determination, that might very well manage to survive the loss of a head.”

  “Is this a case of a man recognizing his own reflection in the mirror?” Athos asked.

  A short bark of laughter escaped Fasset. “Perhaps. Ah, here we are. Let’s turn. I live three doors down.”

  He looked at Athos, in the sudden light of the lanterns over the tavern doors. “I have unlimited water at my lodgings,” he said. “Though not the means to heat it. I hope you will not mind cleaning up with cold water.”

  Athos nodded. At this moment he didn’t mind cleaning up with much of anything. He was aware of mud in his hair and mud on his scalp—the later worrying him more, because his scalp was torn and had bled and the presence of mud brought the risk of infection and fever. As for the rest of him, he thought the uniform would be hopeless, as would, probably, his stockings.

  But he would take advantage of Fasset’s hospitality to clean as much as he could. And to find out why it was so important to kill him that the Cardinal was willing to resort to four of his men to achieve it.

  Armand, Cardinal Richelieu was not so much a dishonorable man as a practical man. He would move heaven and Earth to achieve his goal and use whatever means he had to.

  But why had he thought it a worthy goal to get rid of Aramis? And, by extension, of Athos?

  A Gascon’s Lodging; The Secrecy of Salves; Where Musketeers Must Walk Even Without Legs

  FASSET’S lodging was as small as Aramis’s, as simple as D’Artagnan’s. The man had no servant or else, if he did, the servant wasn’t home and Fasset didn’t call him.

  They accessed the lodging via an external staircase with no rail on the open side, and climbing four flights to a landing outside Fasset’s door had proven a trial for Athos. But Fasset, once more proving that a noble heart hid somewhere beneath the Cardinal’s uniform—which he still wore—and his brusk Gascon mannerisms, made sure to keep Athos on the inside, so that Athos’s two or three uncertain lurches almost sent Fasset flying from the steps to dash brains on the ground below. But it kept Athos safe.

  And up on the landing, Fasset threw his door open and ushered Athos in to a single room that comprised about as much space as Aramis’s two rooms. The near part of it had been arranged with a small table and a single chair. Against the wall was a rack containing plates and cups and other oddments. Against the far wall, beneath the single window, was a single, rumpled bed, at the foot of which hung two uniforms. At the top of the bed hung a crucifix, a simple one, made of plain metal, without a figure or any unneeded ornament. It was much like what he expected to see in a monk’s cell, and it made him look at Fasset again, curiously.

  Oh, it wasn’t so much surprise that Fasset was religious. Weren’t they all, in their different ways? Aramis used his religion as a shield between himself and the human beings who often baffled him; Porthos seemed to think that his religion commanded him to love the world and those in it, and seemed to derive from it an ability to be charitable to children and women; D’Artagnan never said much about his religion, except to swear by the Mass or the divine blood. And no man could, ever, swear convincingly by religious symbols unless he loved those symbols in his deepest heart. As for Athos—he remembered the crystal clarity of his first communion, and the feeling of holiness, of sitting in church knowing he was in God’s grace. It was like being in love. Since then, he’d done many things that made it unlikely he’d ever feel grace again. Since then he’d also learned the failings of human love. But grace and love, in memory, still held his loyalty as they’d once held his heart.

  And yet, he couldn’t imagine putting a cross above his bed. And though he’d never caught more than a glimpse of Porthos’s bedroom, over the years, he was sure there had been no cross on the wall. There were no crucifix’s in all of D’Artagnan’s simple lodging. In fact, the only one of them to ornament his walls with religious symbols was Aramis. So . . . why did Fasset?

  “Here, Monsieur,” Fasset said, pulling the chair away from the table, and helping Athos sit in it.

  Freed of the encumbrance of Athos’s leaning on him, Fasset grabbed a small, cylindrical tinderbox from the rack with the plates. He brought it to the table. It was too dim in the room for Athos to see exactly what Fasset was doing, and other than catching the glimmer of the brass box and the striking of the flint
, he noticed nothing much till the spill caught, blazing brightly in the room.

  With a quick gesture, denoting much practice at doing this—which probably meant he didn’t have a servant— he lit the two candles on the table and blew out the spill. He closed the tinderbox and took it back to the rack on the wall, but came back shortly, carrying an oil lamp, which he proceeded to light from the candle.

  He left the lamp burning brightly by Athos’s side, and walked away, to come back with a rolled strip of immaculate linen, a basin of water and a small bottle of brandy.

  Then, beside all these supplies, he set another, a small jar which he opened to reveal greyish ointment. “This,” he told Athos. “Is a salve whose recipe has been in my family for generations. Any wound, so long as it hit no vital organ, be it—”

  Athos’s loud laughter cut his explanation, and Fasset started, his eyes opening wide. Athos, taken by surprise by his own mirth—never a normal reaction these days, and totally unexpected after the torment the night had turned into—took a deep breath and managed to finish the rest of the explanation he’d already heard from D’Artagnan twice. “Be it ever so deep or so injurious, will be healed in three days and leave no scar.”

  Fasset raised his eyebrows and closed his mouth. “I see,” he said. And gestured with the jar. “You have no need of this, then?”

  “Oh, I do,” Athos said. “I’ve used Monsieur D’Artagnan’s to almost miraculous effect twice already.”

  Fasset set the jar on the table, next to Athos’s elbow.

  “I’m sorry,”Athos said. “I do beg your pardon. My laughter surprised myself. I never knew . . .” He shook his head. “I never knew I was going to laugh till I did it. It’s just . . . does every family in Gascony, then, have the recipe for this salve?”

  Fasset frowned, then grinned. “Wouldn’t surprise me if they did, Monsieur Musketeer. What, with the Gascon temper, it’s quite possible that without this salve no Gascon would have ever survived to have children.” As quick as the grin had appeared, it vanished. “Monsieur Athos, use the water as much as needed for your thigh. I shall go and get more for your head, from the well downstairs.”

  “It is not needed,” Athos said. “The water will do.”

  “Monsieur, it will not do,” Fasset said, going to the corner, and grabbing a couple of leather buckets. “Your hair is all over equal parts mud and blood, and mud that’s mostly blood.”

  And with that, he left. While he was gone, Athos undid his breeches and then his under breeches. Both were ruined, and he saw not much reason to try to save them. They were both threadbare and worn to the last patch.

  With his breeches removed, his shirt fell almost to his knees, the way he normally let it fall, at night, to sleep in. He sat back down and pulled up the white cloth to look at his thigh.

  The wound was relatively clean, for which he was grateful—a simple thrust in and out. And it had caught no more than muscle and skin, and very little muscle and skin at that. He’d fought duels with greater injuries. It was only the dizziness of having hit his head combined with the pain from his thigh that had made it impossible to walk.

  He ripped a bit of cloth from his breeches, dipped it in water and washed away the blood from the wound. Then he dried it, and proceeded to apply the salve. As D’Artagnan’s salve—to which it smelled remarkably similar—it stung as it went on, causing him to grind his teeth. But almost immediately the pain receded, faded, and then all feeling faded from the affected area.

  Following instructions he’d often heard from his Gascon friend, Athos pushed as much of the salve into the wound as he dared, without risking making it bleed again. Then he bandaged the wound with a couple of turns of the white linen strip.

  He was just finishing as Fasset returned and it occurred to Athos that the former guard had waited just long enough to make sure Athos was decent—or close to it—again. As soon as Athos heard the door open, he pulled his shirt down, and looked no more indecent than he would have had he been awakened in the middle of the night, suddenly. He’d fought duels like this in the past . . .

  Fasset set the buckets down, picked up the blood-tainted basin, emptied it out the window and set one of the buckets on the table.

  “Monsieur Athos, this might sound strange, but it will save us both a lot of time if you just plunge your head into this bucket.”

  Athos blinked. It wouldn’t be the first time. He had done something like it often when he’d been drunk, just to clear his head.

  He stood tentatively, supporting himself on the edge of the table, and, reaching back, removed the now mud-encrusted tie that held his hair back. Then he plunged his head into the bucket. The cold water touching his wound both relieved it and made it hurt, in a way he couldn’t quite describe.

  As he pulled his head up, he had a glimpse of the water, turned grey and red, from mud and blood. Fasset pushed another bucket in front of Athos, “Again,” he said.

  And while Athos was obeying, he heard Fasset clatter out the door, throw away the water in the bucket, then— faster than would seem possible—return with another filled bucket.

  “I have them outside the door,” he explained in response to Athos’s stare. “I filled half a dozen while you were tending to your thigh. I keep some of them on the landing, always.”

  How he could see Athos expression while Athos remained half bent over, his hair streaming water and filth back into the bucket, Athos would never know.

  It took three more buckets of water, and then judicious and careful use of a comb and brush before Athos’s hair streamed only clear water. At which time Fasset handed him a large square of cloth for drying his hair, and had Athos lean slightly upon the chair so that the lamp lit the wound on his scalp.

  Fasset’s fingers prodded at the wound, and Athos heard himself gasp, before he could even register the sharp stab of pain that seemed to paralyze his breathing.

  “Easy, milord,” Fasset said. “It is something you cannot do for yourself, this one. And I’m afraid I must sew.” He went to the same cupboard from which he’d got his tinderbox and returned with a small cup, and a slightly larger, polished wood box. He set the box on the table, and poured brandy into the cup, which he proffered to Athos. “Drink, please,” he said.

  Athos took the cup and swallowed the brandy so fast he barely tasted it, save for the burning sensation at his throat. He coughed then looked at Fasset. “Milord?” he asked.

  “Pardon?” Fasset said. He was rummaging in his wooden box, bringing out thread and needle.

  “You called me milord . . .”

  Fasset grinned, a grin that was more politeness than amusement and which flashed across his face and was gone. “I don’t know your name,” he said. “Your true name. But everyone in the Cardinal’s guard says you’re a nobleman of some sort, hiding from some heinous crime. I’m not going to guess as to the crime, but I’d wager my right hand that you are a nobleman.”

  He touched Athos’s head, very lightly. “I’m going to sew the wound shut and it’s going to hurt. It’s not actually . . . It’s just skin. But anything on the scalp hurts like all the devils. You might want to take another shot of brandy.”

  “No,” Athos said. “I believe I can take it.”

  “As you please,” Fasset said. His fingers went for the salve and the burning coolness of the potion touched Athos’s scalp.

  “Brace now, milord,” Fasset said. This time his touch was firmer, holding Athos’s scalp in place. Then came the pain.

  It felt . . . like strings of liquid fire streaming across his head. Athos knew only two ways to deal with this kind of pain. One was to scream, the other to abstract his mind from the actual suffering. “You do this well,” he said, choosing the second. His voice only trembled slightly.

  “I learned it in seminary,” Fasset said.

  “Seminary?” Athos asked, his eyes going to the cross on the wall.

  Fasset chuckled. “Here before you stands the younger son of a moderately wealthy fa
mily. Oh, not like yours. I don’t think we were ever noble. Not as such. Just landowning. My parents had two sons, you see, and since both of us were rude enough to survive to adolescence, it was determined I was to be a monk. That way my brother could inherit the whole land, without throwing me out into the gutter, or suffering any dispute from me about the inheritance.”

  “I’m sorry,” Athos said.

  “Why? You didn’t do it. And it’s common enough. Done everyday. I had loving parents. The only thing is, they didn’t give me a choice between the military and the monastery. I entered the monastery as a novice at eleven and the closer I got to professing the more I found that I was a military man at heart.” He pulled on the needle, bringing an especially sharp pain to Athos’s scalp. “So I ran away before I professed. Took another name and came to Paris where his eminence was kind enough to employ me.”

  He picked up a dagger and cut the thread. He reached for his salve and slathered it along the suture.

  A post which Fasset had now lost, Athos thought, but didn’t say anything about it. He guessed at depths of pride and reserve in the man, and he didn’t wish to prod them, any more than he would wish a stranger to question him. And besides, there were other things which Athos must know.

  While Fasset rolled up his remaining thread and put it away with his needle, Athos said, “Why was I attacked? Do you know? Is it something you can talk about?”

  Fasset took a deep breath, something between a sigh and a gasp, and didn’t turn from where he was.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Athos said. “I realize while you may have resigned your commission, you still have a certain amount of loyalty and probably took oaths that—”