the musketeer's seamstress

by Sarah D'almeida

  “Or kill you,” Athos said, his features all grave, and he nodded. “No. You are absolutely right. You cannot go.”

  “I should probably not stay here, either,” Aramis said. “I mean, I don’t know if they have watchers on this place already. Perhaps not, as I’ve heard no noise of anyone discovering the bodies outside. But whether the Cardinal takes it upon himself to revenge himself on each of us, whether he still finds it needed to kill us all, or whether he merely wants to capture me—we are all at risk and I’m the most endangered.”

  “Here’s the plan,” Porthos said. He had known all along it would come to this, and while they were all talking, he had made a plan to protect Aramis. Because the last thing he wanted was for Aramis to be convinced that he had to leave Paris again.

  Porthos had felt like a man who has his left leg cut off at the knee, and wobbles around with a wooden leg. Only they’d all been such men. The truth was, whether they liked it or not, they were a quartet and they all balanced each other, their best qualities feeding the others’, their worst qualities neutralizing each other. Without Aramis, Athos became too aristocratic and demanded too much of them all, himself included. Without Aramis, D’Artagnan patterned all his actions on Athos, and became unable to oppose the older musketeer’s excesses or to cajole him out of his black moods with humor, as Aramis did and as D’Artagnan was learning to do. And Porthos? Without Aramis, Porthos felt even more inarticulate than he knew himself to be. Without Aramis, Porthos felt as though the language didn’t obey him and as if he lacked the means to communicate with either Athos or D’Artagnan.

  So, to prevent the chances of Aramis’s disappearing into the void of the countryside again, where he would be inaccessible to Porthos, Porthos had decided to find him a safe place. Now, as he announced that he had a plan and all the others turned towards him, he said, “It’s like this. I have a friend. D’Artagnan has met her, and been at her house. As has Athos.”

  “Your Duchess?” Aramis asked, suspiciously.

  Porthos sighed. He didn’t think that Aramis believed the lie that Porthos’s lover was a duchess. At least he hoped that Aramis didn’t believe it, because if he did, he would be forced to think far less of Aramis’s intelligence. The lie had been started long ago, when they knew each other a lot worse and when Porthos felt frustrated by his own inability to be interested in anything like duchesses and princesses. It wasn’t that he couldn’t attract them. In fact, they tripped over themselves to admire the fine musketeer, whose uniform normally contained twice the lace and more golden embroidery than even the fine clothes of the fine noblemen around the court.

  But their conversation—their conversation was all about whatever topic was fashionable at the moment, or else about themselves, their clothes, their carriages. Porthos had a very limited interest in those. Oh, he liked clothes. His clothes. But he ordered them made, and then he wore them. He didn’t talk about them.

  So when he’d found himself, happily and confusedly, falling in love with a woman of mind and sense, of understanding and a keen appreciation for the wonder that was Porthos, and had realized she was a mere accountant’s wife, he’d made up the story of a princess in disguise to camouflage it.

  But since then his friends had got to know him much better. And Athos and D’Artagnan had even met Athenais. For a moment, in fact, Porthos had been uneasy that Athos admired Athenais too much. He very much doubted that from the others’ conversations, Aramis hadn’t gleaned that Porthos mistress was no noblewoman. Or that Aramis, the consummate gossip and courtier hadn’t realized that Porthos’s lover did not, could not, live at court.

  So Porthos sighed and said, “Aramis, she’s an accountant’s wife. But here is the thing—you see, her husband takes on apprentices and clerks all the time, and really, her circles and ours do not mix, so no one will know you.”

  There was a wild snort from D’Artagnan and Porthos glared at him.

  “Porthos,” Athos said. “No one will see him. The husband of your excellent Athenais keeps his clerks in the cellar and feeds them on bread and water.”

  Aramis shrugged. “But I’ll be here,” he said. “I’ll be in Paris. And Porthos can bring me news of anything that happens. I can . . . not be shut out of all your investigations, all your discoveries. I can be available, should you need me.”

  “Yes,” Athos said, and twitched his lips upwards in a bitter expression that was not a smile, though it had the effect of a smile. “And if the Cardinal should decide to seek our lives, we can at least leave Paris all together.”

  D’Artagnan grinned. “Well, if we can leave together, it won’t be so bad, will it.”

  “But I have to get Aramis to Athenais before full day-break, before the city awakes. And before they find the bodies on the sidewalk.”

  Athos nodded once. “How will you hide Aramis till you get to Athenais’s?”

  Aramis stood up. “I have my disguise,” he said. And saying that, he rolled up his hair, and put it beneath his hat.

  Porthos pursed his lips. Oh, he would still know Aramis on sight. He had known Aramis on sight. But he had been friends with Aramis for many years, and he’d taught Aramis how to use a sword, how to defend himself. In other words, he’d studied the way Aramis moved, and he’d sought to improve it.

  This meant that he knew Aramis better than most people. He had to assume that in the sagging, threadbare black suit and with the hat hiding his hair and tilted to hide his face, Aramis could have been any of a hundred apprentices or clerks in Paris.

  “It will do,” he said. “However, an additional precaution for all of us. Do not leave by the front door, just in case the Cardinal has been alerted and has sent someone to ambush us.”

  Just because Porthos didn’t believe the conspiracy had originated with the Cardinal, didn’t mean he didn’t believe that Richelieu, a man forever likely to confuse the best interests of France with his own, hadn’t decided that France, and he, would be better off for the disappearance or death of three meddlesome musketeers and their equally meddlesome guard friend. And Richelieu would not be pleased with having lost a dozen or more guards tonight.

  “Mousqueton has a way out of the house,” Porthos said. “That he thinks I know nothing about. You leave by the window of his bedroom, jump on the roof of my landlord’s henhouse, and from there to a low wall that runs around the property. From thence it is but a moment to find your way to the alley at the back of this house.” As he spoke he noticed Athos flinch. “I can guarantee, Athos, that they are all small steps,” he said.

  Athos nodded. “I am sure I can manage,” he said. “Fasset was most kind with bandages to bind my wound, and my thigh is not really painful anymore.”

  “Your wound?” Porthos asked. He’d seen Athos arrive, running. And D’Artagnan had spoken of Athos fighting with him against the guards of the Cardinal.

  Athos shrugged. “I escaped the attack on me by being stabbed through the thigh—don’t worry, just flesh and some skin—and falling against the wall, which not only rendered me momentarily insensible, but also caused me to lose a vast quantity of blood, which was taken as proof of my death.”

  Porthos was astonished. With any of the other of them, if they’d come to the aid of the others in a fight, and been severely wounded throughout, they would, at the very least tell the others as soon as possible. But not Athos. Sometimes Athos was unreadable and unfathomable. As though he believed his wounds made him weak or less admirable.

  The three friends were already moving towards Mousqueton’s room, and Porthos followed them into the narrow chamber with its single bed, and across it to the window, which opened noiselessly—part of Mousqueton’s conviction that he was hiding his escapades from Porthos.

  “I’ll go first,” D’Artagnan said.

  Athos went after him, then Aramis and, finally, Porthos, who closed the window behind himself to give the impression the house was closed and to keep Mousqueton in his blissful innocence.

  It had always been
Porthos’s opinion that he could not possibly keep his servant from disobeying him. He viewed it as much more reasonable to know the ways that his servant was likely to disobey him, and then attempt to control the consequences of such disobedience.

  For instance, since Mousqueton always used that one window, and because Porthos knew that the window was a weak point in the defense of the house, he could lock it while Mousqueton was out and open it just before his errant servant was likely to return. And when they were both in the house, he could insist that Mousqueton keep a wooden shutter over the window.

  He leapt from the roof of the chicken house to the wall, and thence down to the street. Where his three friends gathered talking.

  “Porthos,” Athos was saying. “We think even our houses might not be safe, not if the Cardinal hears that we dispatched over a dozen of his guards. You know him. Even if he hadn’t been determined to murder us before, even if he’d only sought to scare us, he’d be determined to murder us now. He holds grudges and punishes all slights and all offenses.”

  “Where will you be staying?” Porthos asked.

  “Probably at Monsieur de Treville’s,” Athos said. “Even if I have to sleep in a corner of the antechamber, though normally it is not that hard for the captain to find me a guest room. And D’Artagnan can share the room, as well. If you come later, you might as well share it too. Just come through the back entrance, so your arrival is not too obvious and you’re not set upon on the street. But I think going through the antechamber should be no danger to us.”

  “No indeed,” Porthos said. “I would say our best chance of survival is to always be surrounded by so many people that there’s no chance to kill us quietly, in secret.” He looked at Aramis, undistinguished in his black suit. “All of us except Aramis, of course. Because he can be caught and imprisoned in public, on presumption of murder.”

  The friends parted, Porthos and Aramis heading towards the middle class parts of Paris, where wealthy merchants and accountants lived, and D’Artagnan and Athos headed towards the Treville house.

  Porthos’s Theory; Families and Friends; The Accountant’s Abode

  PORTHOS and Aramis walked for a long while in silence. Aramis wondered if he should tell Porthos how much he’d missed all of them but Porthos in particular, and how he’d come to realize how important their support of each other was.

  But he could not find the words. Or at least no words that wouldn’t sound silly and affected, and Porthos was not the kind of person to understand metaphors and all the imagery that literature had created to express the sense of friendship, the sense of loyalty that didn’t involve family or blood relations.

  So, instead, walking besides Porthos through the still silent late night of Paris, Aramis said, “I felt as if you don’t believe what Athos and D’Artagnan think. As if you don’t think that the Cardinal truly engineered my lover’s murder simply to see me out of Paris.”

  Porthos shrugged. “They are more learned than I,” he said. “And Athos far more knowledgeable in the ways of the court and the high nobility.”

  Aramis grinned. “Porthos, I have known you a long time. Don’t try to tell me that your brain is slow or that you do not understand what is happening. Your words might be—and often are—slow, but your brain is not.”

  Still Porthos didn’t answer, and after a while, Aramis decided to be direct. “Tell me what you think. What do you think happened.”

  Porthos nodded. “I think someone—an acrobat, perhaps, a dancer, someone trained to perform feats that seem impossible to us—managed to climb to that balcony, go in and kill your . . .” he permitted himself a smile. “Seamstress. I don’t know why. But I know that this same person returned, a few days later, wearing a boy’s outfit, and a hard, glittering ceramic mask. She rummaged through the trunk where your mistress kept her jewelry and pulled out a golden chain from which a plain gold cross hung. She kissed the cross, and then she left the same way she had come. And no, Aramis, the woman was neither a product of our imagination, nor a prank played upon us by someone. Only by the most fortunate coincidence were we there to see her, but . . .”

  “Woman?” Aramis asked.

  Porthos shrugged. “Athos says it was a woman, and though we can’t trust Athos on the character of any woman, we can probably trust him on the appearance of femininity in a stranger. I’d say a woman or a very young man, and the gestures were not those of a young man, nor do I think a young man could do what the murderer did, get away undetected, come back, steal something and get away undetected again. That takes self control and planning, neither of them natural qualities of young men.”

  Aramis nodded. “A plain cross and a chain?” He shook his head. “I think I remember what you are talking about. Violette never wore it, but once, when I was going through her trunk, looking for a jewel I might borrow, I came across it. She said it was given to her in her early childhood, in the convent.”

  “The convent?” Porthos asked. “Your mistress lived in a convent?”

  Aramis shrugged. “I assume she was brought up in one.” They’d left behind the narrower streets of the working class and had entered broader streets. The houses were bigger, though they still abutted directly to the sidewalk. And there were gardens behind each house, often vegetable plots too.

  “What do you know about her?” Porthos asked. “Her family?”

  Aramis shrugged again. “She was not from a family far above mine, but early on, her sister and she became play-mates to Anne of Austria. I believe the Princess chose them herself, and enjoyed their company above all other mates. So when it was decided that the Queen would marry the King, the Queen decided that a French marriage should be arranged for Violette, also, so that Violette could accompany her to France and be her companion in her new life. So the marriage with de Dreux was arranged. And the Queen supplied the dowry required by the Duke’s family. I don’t think they’ve ever even lived together.”

  Porthos nodded. “And her sister?” he asked.

  “The Queen’s sister?”

  “No, you fool, not the Queen’s. Your . . . Violette’s.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said and then, remembering the babble of Lida in the chapel at his mother’s house. “Wait, I do. Her sister is a nun in some monastery near the border with Spain, and is developing a reputation for sanctity. At least that’s what I heard from . . . one of my mother’s protégées.”

  Porthos looked inquisitively at Aramis, but said only, “Did she have a miniature of her sister? Or a painting? Or some other means by which we might recognize her?”

  Aramis shook his head. “No. In fact, she rarely spoke of her sister. Though I know she wrote to her, now and then.”

  He had no idea why Porthos would want to see a portrait of Violette’s sister. Except that this was Porthos. He might very well have the idea that the quickest and most expedient way to cure Aramis’s shock and grief over Violette was to find the convent where Violette’s sister was professed and kidnap her for Aramis.

  Aramis smiled, at the thought. And though it would be insane, he would likely still be grateful to Porthos. Oh, not for the woman, but for the thought, and the desire to make Aramis feel better. Right now Aramis wasn’t sure he ever would.

  Porthos stopped in front of a somber house, and lifted his hand to knock, but before knocking, he whispered to Aramis, “Remember, once anyone comes, that your last name is Coquenard, and that you’re Monsieur Coquenard’s distant cousin. Your poor old mother died, and you have come to Paris to apprentice as a clerk. You were brought up in a convent. That will account for—”

  “Porthos, I could not have been brought up in a convent.” And to Porthos’s quizzical look. “I am still male, Porthos.”

  “Oh,” Porthos said. “You were brought up in a monastery. We were speaking of convents and I got confused. The monastery will account for your fine hand and your knowledge of Latin. You do not know me and only asked me to escort you across town in the dark of night, because you wer
e afraid of robbers or murderers.”

  “Then perhaps you should keep this,” Aramis said, undoing his belt and handing it to Porthos. “Clerks rarely wear swords.”

  “An excellent point,” Porthos said, buckling Aramis’s sword belt alongside his own.

  “Won’t they be suspicious?”

  “Of someone coming and offering excellent skills for low wage? Aramis, even if Monsieur Coquenard thought you were the devil himself, he would keep you as long as he could. As for Madame Coquenard, she will know better, but Athenais knows when not to speak. And she’ll enjoy having someone in the house who understands her.”

  Aramis must have given Porthos an alarmed look. Because when Porthos said that, about understanding her, Aramis though of all the women who, throughout the years, had thrown themselves at him and declared themselves madly in love with him. What if that happened to Madame Coquenard too?

  But his look of panic was met with a genuine grin and a chuckle from Porthos. “Oh, Aramis,” he said. “I don’t fear your competition. You can dazzle your duchesses and enthrall your princesses, but I think that Athenais is just mine, and I wouldn’t trade her for all the crowned heads in Europe.”

  Speaking that way, he lifted his hand and knocked hard on the door. When no one answered he repeated the action. After a long while, the door opened a sliver and a head appeared—a disheveled young male head, looking like it had just woken up.

  “Good morning,” Porthos said, all happy courtesy. “I have brought someone who wishes to speak to Monsieur or Madame Coquenard.”

  The young man gave them a weary eye. “It will have to be the mistress. If we wake the master like that, this early in the morning, it will kill him.”

  “Well, the mistress then,” Porthos said, in the tone of one who thought this by far the worst alternative. “But make it quick. Tell her that Monsieur Porthos and Monsieur Francois Coquenard are waiting.”

  “Francois?” Aramis asked, as soon as the door closed, and the young man presumably retreated into the house to call his mistress.