the musketeer's seamstress

by Sarah D'almeida

  But he couldn’t understand why or how this could be true. Particularly because the place they were told to meet Porthos was an intersection taken up by a troupe of traveling acrobats.

  Athos seemed to understand it. At least, he said, “Ah!” as they arrived. And, “I see.”

  But before D’Artagnan could ask him what he saw Porthos arrived. Porthos, as usual, was as impossible to miss or ignore as a galleon at full sail upon a wheat field. He came cutting through the crowd of people, the tallest of whom reached no higher than his shoulder. On his arm, being dragged along was a . . . lady? D’Artagnan blinked, and looked up at Athos, to see if Athos understood this too. Athos had a most disquieting smile upon his lips. So disquieting, in fact that D’Artagnan didn’t dare ask him what he saw nor why.

  D’Artagnan removed his hat and made a bow in the lady’s general direction, not sure why Athos kept his hands planted on either side of his waist. Normally—for all his dislike of females in general—he was the most courteous of men to any particular woman.

  Porthos made straight for them. “You arrived,” he said. “Good. Now, I want you to pay attention—”

  “It is not needed, D’Artagnan,” Aramis’s voice said and D’Artagnan jumped back and half out of his skin, realizing it came from beneath the hat and the veil.

  He stood, open mouthed, staring at Aramis. How? And why?

  “It was Athenais’s idea,” Porthos said. His lips were shaking convulsively and he spoke in what, for him, was a low whisper. “She said it was the perfect disguise, and you must allow it is, but, my word, I wonder what she had against him.”

  “I have a sword,” Aramis’s sullen voice said, from beneath the wrappings.

  And now Athos’s lips too were shaking, and Athos was the closest to laughing that D’Artagnan had ever seen. D’Artagnan couldn’t understand what was so funny about it all. The disguise seemed to him perfect and yet he could quite understand Aramis’s annoyance at having to wear it. Of course, for him to stop wearing it they must—they truly must—find the murderer of the Duchess.

  At any rate, if they didn’t, soon Paris wouldn’t be safe for any of them. And D’Artagnan still had hopes of being in the musketeers, someday.

  He turned to Porthos, “Why did you ask us to meet you?”

  “There is someone,” Porthos said, “in the troupe, whom I want you to see.”

  He turned, as if to point someone out, but before he could, there was a noise from Aramis. It wasn’t a scream and it wasn’t a moan, nor a gasp, nor a sigh, but it had hints of them all and wavered on the spectrum between shock and grief.

  D’Artagnan looked the way Aramis was turned and there, seemingly suspended upon the air between two balconies, was a young man. No. A woman. A woman who looked eerily familiar.

  Before D’Artagnan could put a name to the look, Aramis sank to his knees. His voice, fortunately strangled by emotion, came out between a whisper and a moan. “Violette,” he said. “Violette.”

  “It cannot be her,” Athos snapped. “She’s dead.”

  “Oh, but it is her,” Aramis said. “See how she moves upon the air. It is her ghost.”

  “There are no ghosts,” Athos said, his voice so loud that several people turned back to look at them. “There are no ghosts.”

  “It’s a silk rope,” Porthos said. “It’s a silk rope stretched between the buildings.”

  But while Porthos and Athos spoke, Aramis had let go of Porthos’s arm, and had pushed into the crowd, hurrying, tripping and tangling himself upon his unaccustomed petticoats, but recovering before fully falling, pushing people aside with unfeminine strength, rushing.

  “Aramis,” D’Artagnan said, and took off after the blond musketeer. He hoped Athos and Porthos would follow too. Aramis was not, D’Artagnan felt, in his right mind, and someone needed to protect him. But if it came to holding the musketeer down, D’Artagnan was not sure he could do it. Aramis was taller than D’Artagnan, and older, and had been a soldier much longer. And, as he was all too fond of reminding them, he had a sword beneath that dainty green skirt.

  D’Artagnan couldn’t understand it, either, how Aramis’s duchess could be up there, dancing on the silk rope. He remembered Aramis’s description of the blood and the cold skin, and he knew it couldn’t be her. There had to be some other explanation. There just had to be.

  Aramis was faster than D’Artagnan and D’Artagnan was still trailing several steps behind as the musketeer reached the building where the rope ended. There, the lithe figure jumped onto the balcony and then scurried down from the balcony on an inconsequential rope ladder.

  And Aramis was there, his arms open to receive her, the masculine voice emerging, thick with emotion, from beneath the female attire, “God’s blood, Violette, God’s blood. I thought you were dead, I thought . . .”

  She hesitated upon the rope ladder, a good jump from the ground, frowning down at this strange apparition.

  D’Artagnan wasn’t sure what was happening, but they’d seen a woman who looked like the Queen before and who yet, clearly, wasn’t the Queen. What if this was a stranger? What if she—?

  He rushed forward, running.

  Aramis removed his hat.

  And the woman jumped from the ladder. “Fornicator,” she screamed. And, “Corrupción.”

  She flew at Aramis like a wild cat, tearing at his hair, his face, raining punches upon him.

  Aramis stayed very still underneath the assault, looking shocked and never even attempting to make use of his sword.

  Porthos and Athos ran by, one on either side of D’Artagnan and rushed to restrain the woman.

  Mirrors and Vows; Holy Grudges; The Guilty Party Begs Clemency

  RESTRAINING the woman was like trying to hold an eel. At least the thing it brought most to mind was Porthos’s experience fishing with his father’s steward in the river near their property and coming up with a fresh water eel that writhed and twisted in his ten-year-old hands until Porthos let go of it and it plunged back into the river.

  Now there were Athos and Porthos, both, each holding her on one side. And yet she twisted, she flexed, she wrenched her spine this way and that and, as she did it, she rained blows and kicks on Aramis.

  All this while the crowd laughed, probably thinking this was part of the act, and Aramis stood there, stricken, staring, his feminine hat in his hand, his face almost utterly devoid of expression.

  D’Artagnan, catching up with them, touched Aramis’s elbow. Aramis blinked, as though awakening, and turned to stare at D’Artagnan. “It’s not her,” he said. His voice sounded very young, like the voice of a lost child. “It is not Violette.”

  D’Artagnan only shook his head.

  Porthos had managed to get a firm hold on the girl’s arms, and pulled both her wrists together behind her back.

  Just then, two large men approached. “It doesn’t look as if Violeta wants to go with you,” one of them said.

  Athos spun around, unsheathing his sword. “Your friend has committed a murder,” he said. And while Porthos wondered if this was true, Athos interposed himself between the two men and Porthos, Aramis, D’Artagnan and their prisoner. “We’re the King’s musketeers,” he said.

  He saw the two men look at his uniform, then at Porthos’s. They cast a dubious look at D’Artagnan’s and they stared in wonder at Aramis. But the uniforms and the name of the musketeers had an effect on street performers who lived at the mercy of the local authorities. They stepped back.

  One of them asked, “What murder? What has she done?”

  But Porthos held the woman and D’Artagnan followed with Aramis, while Athos, with sword unsheathed and his feral face on guarded their retreat. It would take one more foolhardy or braver than could be found in that crowd to oppose them. And besides, the crowd had seen her attack on Aramis.

  They retreated into an alley, then along it. “Where are we going?” Athos asked.

  “Damned if I know,” Porthos said. “We must go somewhere
to question this lady.”

  The “lady” had gone limp in his arms and was muttering in Latin at a speed too high for Porthos to follow, though it sounded to him like Ave Marias.

  “I know a man,” Aramis said. And as Aramis said it, Porthos felt as if his soul had been set free above human problems and soared towards the heavens. Because it was the characteristic of Aramis that he always knew a man. If you needed a strange garment, a rare vintage of wine or a piece of jewelry unlike any other to be found even in Paris, that capital of the civilized world, Aramis knew a man who could supply it. If you needed a favor, a theological opinion, a dispensation for some act that fell outside church law, Aramis knew a man.

  Since the murder of his lover, Aramis hadn’t uttered that phrase, and after he’d gone all pale and still back there while the woman attacked him, Porthos had thought never to hear those words again.

  But Aramis cleared his throat and said, in a stronger voice. “I know a man, at the sign of The Fighting Saint, up at the next road, to your right. I’ll go in. He’ll let us have a room at the back, to question her.”

  Porthos looked dubiously at his friend, who carried the hat in his hand and walked in a thoroughly masculine stride that made mockery of his velvet skirts. If none of the others would remind Aramis that he wore a dress and that this might look funny, then neither would he. He had that feeling from Aramis now that he often got from Athos. That Aramis was poised on the thin edge between madness and sanity and that any push could send him careening into irrationality.

  So Aramis took the lead. For reasons known only to him, he slammed the hat down on his head, adjusted the veil around his face and walked into the tavern above whose door hung a sign of a man with a halo holding a bloodied sword.

  By the time Porthos got in, holding the woman firmly still, Aramis was leaning on the counter at the back speaking to the host.

  Porthos got closer, conscious of the stare of the three or four customers who yet had not the courage to say anything to a giant in a musketeer’s uniform or his two equally intimidating friends. Close enough, Porthos realized that Aramis had pulled up his face veil to show himself to the host, and that the host wasn’t laughing.

  Aramis pulled the veil down, as the host gave him a key. Turning, he led the group down a dark corridor to the side of the counter. The host nodded to them as they went and none of the customers made a sound.

  And Porthos realized that Aramis was a genius. If he’d walked in there with his face uncovered and everyone able to see he was male, some would-be hero or other would have got up and objected to four men taking a woman into a backroom—visibly against her will.

  But the fact that there was, seemingly, another woman in the mix stopped any acts of would-be heroism in the bud. And they got unmolested to a door that Aramis unlocked to lead them into a small room with no windows and no other door.

  Its only furniture was a small table and assorted chairs, which led Porthos to think it was normally rented out to gambling parties.

  Aramis locked the door behind them, slid the key into his sleeve, flung his hat into a corner of the room. Turning around, he said. “Let her go, Porthos.”

  Porthos obeyed, but stood by to hold the woman should she become a snarling fury again. Instead, she fell to her knees, as though she’d lost all strength, and muttered something in Spanish.

  Aramis rounded on her, “You’re Violette’s twin, aren’t you? Why did you kill her?”

  The woman looked up at Aramis and blinked. For a while it looked like no answer would come, then she said, as if speaking from a great distance, “She was sinning. She had taken her first vows and she was sinning.” She blinked at Aramis. “With you. And she told me all about it in her letters, when she deigned to write. Page after page of filthy details of your . . . fornication.”

  She spoke French well, with a slight accent, and her words seemed to make some sense to Aramis, who bit his lower lip and looked moist eyed. But they made no sense at all to Porthos. “Her first vows?” he boomed.

  “When we were children,” the woman said, looking now at Porthos with the sort of resignation the musketeer had only seen before in a deer at bay and surrounded by dogs. “Our parents decided that one of us would have a dowry and a marriage. While the other would be a nun. I was the older, so the dowry was mine. But Violeta didn’t have a vocation. She was bored in the convent.” The woman was crying now, with tears running down her face. “I got to visit her. Sometimes for weeks at a time. Our parents would let me spend time with her.” She blinked at Porthos. “When she was ten Violeta took her first vows. But she really didn’t want to stay. And I did. I’d listened to the sermons, and I’d listened to the nuns. I wanted to be a nun. Not her. We’d . . . Our parents couldn’t tell us apart. We changed. We switched. I stayed in the convent, she went back. Then she got married.”

  “I thought it would be fine. I thought marriage was a holy vocation too. But as I became more . . . holy, and I thought about it, it didn’t seem acceptable. She had taken her first vows. She had promised chastity. And she kept sending me these letters telling of her . . . fornication.”

  The woman looked towards Aramis. “So I ran away from the convent. I ran away with an acrobat troupe. I practiced . . . Walking on rope. And I ran away. I thought I’d come here to France, and I’d preach to Violeta and she’d either go back to her husband and live as a holy married woman should, or she would give up her . . .” She looked at Aramis again. “Fancy man.” She shook her head and two tears ran down her face. “I tried. She wouldn’t. She told me to go back to the convent. She told me I was crazy. She told me she didn’t believe. What was I supposed to do?” She shrugged and opened her hands, in front of her thighs, as though to signify her inability to control the situation. “What could I do? She wouldn’t listen, but she was my sister. So I came back. Many times I came back. And then I thought if I caught her in the act, and preached to her, and exorcized her, the evil spirits would come out.”

  She looked at each of them in turn. “But then, I used my little rope. It’s weighted and you can throw it in such a way that little hooks fasten on the balcony railing. We’ve done that when we’re not given permission to enter the house to hook the rope. And I used my little rope from the tree to the balcony, and walked across it, and looked at the window. Many times. Finally I caught her in bed with him.” She pointed at Aramis who blushed. “Then he went away and I went in, and I tried to exorcize her.” The beautiful face showed total disbelief. “She laughed at me. She . . . laughed. At me. I couldn’t let her go on mocking and sinning. There was a very sinful knife on a nearby table. It had a woman and man, fornicating. I . . . I stabbed her with it.” Her jaw went slack. “So much blood. I must confess. I shall never be cleansed.”

  “And the cross?” Porthos asked.

  The woman shrugged. “I thought if I got the little cross she’d received when she took her first vows, it would be as if I’d taken my first vows. And then everything would be well again. It would be as if we were the same person, then.”

  Having finished speaking she knelt there, looking at all of them, and seeming regretful and sad, but not in the way of a murderess. Rather in the way of a child who has committed a minor offense.

  Silence reigned for a while. Athos was looking at his hands, and D’Artagnan had removed his hat, as if he were at a funeral.

  “Her name really was Violette?” Aramis asked. “She said her legal name was Ysabella.”

  The woman on the floor shook her head. “I am Ysabella. She was Violeta. We changed names when we changed places. We went by the other’s name. But my true name is Ysabella.”

  “She told me her true name,” Aramis said.

  It sounded like an epitaph, Porthos thought. And then realized his friends would go on sitting here, forever, looking at the woman, unless he made a decision.

  “I told you it was all a matter of finding who could have got in that way,” he said. And then, “Now we must take her to Richelieu. H
e can talk to her and she can confess. And then he can stop trying to capture Aramis and trying to kill us. And it all can be as it was.”

  “No,”Aramis yelled. “No.”

  “No?” Porthos said.

  Aramis’s Guilt; The Confession; The Plan

  “PLEASE don’t deliver her to the Cardinal,” Aramis said. “He will kill her.”

  He realized how odd that sounded when all their eyes turned to him. He opened his own hands, by the side of his body. “Please, understand. She looks like Violette. If she were executed, it would be like watching Violette be killed all over again.”

  They all looked at him as if he were insane, except Athos, who nodded. “But how can we be sure she won’t kill again?” he asked.

  Aramis sank to his knees in front of the woman, and delicately tilted her head upwards. “Listen, Ysabella, for that is your name, that you will be called by at the final trumpet. Your only hope is to go back to your convent and live a holy life and expiate your sin, do you understand?”

  She moaned in his direction. “I am damned,” she said. “I have killed my sister. The sin of Cain is upon me.”

  “No, not damned. Look, didn’t the Lord say those who repent will be saved? Trust me, he did. I studied to be a priest. If you confess your sin.” He looked over his shoulder. “D’Artagnan, get paper and ink from the hosteller.” Then he turned back to the woman. “If you confess your sin, and you live a holy life, you will yet be redeemed. But you must never leave your convent, you understand. Because if you do, then we’ll find out. And if we find out, we’ll kill you, and then you’ll die unshriven and unprepared with your sins upon you. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, with tears in her eyes.

  D’Artagnan came back in and set the ink and the paper on the table.

  “Now, get up and write your confession and everything will be forgiven. When I am a priest—for you must know I intend to become a priest—I’ll read it and I’ll give you absolution.”

  She got up, very composed and sat on the chair and wrote, rapidly, in excellent French. She seemed not to trust Aramis to read Spanish. D’Artagnan read over her shoulder and the confession seemed complete. At the end she signed with both names, Ysabell and Violeta and a string of names, and she handed the paper to Aramis.