the musketeer's seamstress

by Sarah D'almeida

  “You will become a priest, then?” she asked him.

  “Yes,” Aramis said. “I promise you.”

  He unlocked the door and let her go then.

  He found his mind turning to Violette’s blood, soaking, black, onto the floorboards. When Ysabella talked of the blood it had made Aramis think of his father’s study, of the black stain on the floor. Could it be blood? His father’s blood? But how?

  Porthos’s Doubts; Aramis’s Appeasement

  “WHAT if she doesn’t return to the convent?” Porthos asked. The idea of letting a murderess go seemed insane to him.

  Aramis smiled, a sweet smile all the more unnerving for his still wearing a dress. “She will. She is a little crazy. It’s a type of madness I understand. She will go to the convent. She will live out her penance. She would be too afraid not to.”

  It seemed to Porthos that the woman was more than a little crazy. But then, now that he thought of it, so was Aramis. He nodded. “But Aramis, what if the Cardinal doesn’t believe that paper. For he’s not likely to.”

  “We’ll leave Paris together,” Athos said. “My friend Raoul might have need of a small band of armed men. We can—”

  Aramis shook his head. He looked . . . like a man who has had a revelation that has turned his world upside down. He retrieved his hat, put it back on his head and pulled the veil down, daintily. “I have a plan,” he said.

  “You know a man?” Porthos asked, smiling a little.

  “No, Porthos. I know a woman.”

  Sins and Atonements; Where Aramis Refuses to Bend

  ARAMIS hadn’t brought Bazin. Until he was sure the Cardinal was not searching for him anymore, he saw no reason to get his servant from his safe place.

  As for his friends, he’d left them all lodging together at Treville house, as safe a place as they could find.

  And Aramis, having shed his green dress, had donned again the black suit, and the black hat that hid his hair. And he’d ridden a fast horse through most of the day without incident, till, after nightfall, he fetched up at the D’Herblay estate.

  Dismounting in front of the main door, he tied his horse to a pillar, and he ran up the stairs, two steps at a time.

  A satisfying few minutes of pounding on the door brought three alarmed maids and a footman holding a very thick walking stick. Which was dropped when Aramis removed his hat and was recognized.

  “Chevalier!” the footman said, while the women curtseyed.

  “Get me Madame D’Herblay,” Aramis said, walking past them, hat in hand. “Tell her I will be in the study and I must see her right away.”

  The footman stared at him. “She won’t like being awakened in the middle of the night.”

  Aramis smiled, conscious that it was not a pleasant smile. “And I won’t like to be kept waiting. Kindly remember I’ve attained my majority, and I’m my father’s heir. This is my house. Now get the lady my mother and tell her to hurry.”

  He walked past them to the study that had been his father’s and that his mother kept locked. He took his dagger out and forced the lock.

  He then took the candle and candlestick that one of the maids was holding, opened the door wide and entered.

  There . . . Right where he stood, on the floor he kicked dust around, to reveal a stain much larger than he’d guessed it to be before. Blood. He had been in enough duels to know a place where a man’s blood had flooded out taking his life with it.

  When his mother arrived—and she did make him wait a little, though not as much as he’d expected—he was sitting behind the desk. He had done a cursory search of the drawers, which confirmed what he expected.

  “Rene,” his mother said from the doorway. “You should have told us you were coming. I would have had your room prepared. I—”

  He smiled, his not-nice smile. “Don’t trouble yourself, madame. I won’t stay long. I just came for your confession. Now sit down and write it.” He extended to her a piece of paper, a quill and an inkwell.

  “My confession?” Madame D’Herblay asked, taking her still beautiful hand to her still beautiful breast.

  “About my father’s death.”

  “I did not kill your father.”

  “No, madame, you did not. Your lover did,” he spoke calmly, factually. “That spot where you stand is soaked with my father’s blood. Because I look like him, I am going to assume I am truly his son, but the only way the duel over the woman both he and Richelieu loved would have been fought in this room is if my father came home and interrupted you and your lover. They fought their way down the stairs, and my father backed in here, perhaps because it was his room and therefore he felt safe here. But it didn’t protect him, and here your lover stabbed him through the heart, judging by the profusion of blood on the floor.”

  “How dare you?” Madame D’Herblay said. “How dare you accuse me of adultery?”

  “Very easily, madame,” Aramis said. “In your husband’s desk, in a secret compartment I suspect you knew existed but couldn’t figure out how to open, I found a packet of letters I’d wager he removed from your room. The letters are addressed to you. Signed by your Armand. With a note from my father about how he’d removed them from your room and if he should be found dead . . .” Aramis grinned. “I’d guess this is why you kept this room locked and everyone out of it. Because you didn’t know where those letters were. These desks are a common design. It is a common secret, madame, with a common spring. If you’d lived more in the world, you’d have found the letters.”

  Madame D’Herblay was trembling now. She sat in a chair, trembling, and turned her tear-filled eyes to her son. “Don’t judge me so harshly. I was so young. All my life, I’d been brought up here. All the life I remembered. I thought of your father more as a brother than as a husband. Armand was . . . exciting. And he told me he loved me.” She swallowed, then rallied a little. “And, you must know, it wasn’t a murder. It was a duel. Your father was killed in a clean duel. If you ask me to say he was murdered, I can’t for that will be a lie.”

  “Oh, no, you can say it was a duel. You should write it exactly as it happened. You see, it will embarrass your lover that much more, to have his youthful indiscretions revealed and to have it known he was once a lethal duelist.” He glared at her. “Now sit down and write, madame, or by the blood, I shall take these letters to the local magistrate and tell him I suspect you of having killed my father. By the time you’re proven innocent—and that’s if anyone subsists in the house who’s willing to testify against your former lover, now the most powerful man in France—everyone will know what is behind your facade of piety.”

  Madame D’Herblay sat down and wrote.

  When she was done, Aramis took the packet of letters and her confession, and slipped them into his doublet, near his heart. At the door, he turned back and said, “You weren’t sure I was my father’s, were you? That’s why you determined that I should join the church, both to expiate your sin and to make sure I didn’t inherit property I might not be entitled to.”

  His mother shrugged. “You didn’t look so much like your father as a child. I . . .”

  “You’ve said quite enough,” Aramis said. “It might please you to know that I have decided I will enter the church, anyway. When it pleases me.”

  He left the house behind and rode away, thinking that it was probably a sin to enjoy inflicting suffering on one’s mother. But his heart felt light and sunny as a summer’s day.

  Cardinal Doubts; Cardinal Sins; The Importance of Church Latin

  “AND why should I believe this letter,” the Cardinal asked, dropping the nun’s confession onto the table. “And who else will believe it? It seems all insane. Twins and switched identities, and vows.” He flicked the confession with the tip of his finger. “I don’t know this girl, if she exists. And she sounds more than a little mad, at any rate. Who will believe this, gentlemen?”

  He looked up at them and stopped on Aramis. Aramis smiled. He knew he had the way to make the ti
ger obey him, even if the tiger didn’t yet see the whip. It was there, hidden, and ready to be used when needed. And he’d told his friends they would be safe, arranging an audience with the Cardinal. His friends hadn’t believed him. They still didn’t believe him, judging by the looks they were giving him.

  The Cardinal got up, put his hands behind his back and paced. “Frankly, gentlemen, the Queen wants an execution to avenge the murder of her childhood friend and right now, at this moment, only you”—he looked at Aramis— “look good for it. I would, though you’ll never believe me on this, prefer not to have to do it. This is why I told you to stay in the country. But you wouldn’t listen.”

  Aramis smiled. “I completely understand, Your Eminence, and yet, I have some papers I think will make you change your mind.”

  “Papers?” the Cardinal asked.

  “Yes. I’ll show them to you if my friends would be so kind as to wait outside.”

  “Outside?” the Cardinal asked.

  “Certainly,” Aramis said. “We wouldn’t want certain . . . facts to be common knowledge. I do not even wish to divulge them to my nearest friends. So if they leave, I’ll let you read . . . a document.” He gestured for his friends to leave.

  After the door closed behind them, Aramis pulled a letter from his sleeve, and set it in front of the Cardinal.

  The Cardinal read it, and color fled his cheeks. Still, he looked up and snarled, “What is this? This is not Juana’s handwriting.”

  “Ah, no, it isn’t,” Aramis said. “Though it is her phrasing. The real letter, as well as the letters you wrote to her and which my father intercepted have been placed with someone whom you’ll never guess. In the unfortunate event that something should happen to me . . .” He shrugged.

  The Cardinal looked at him, stricken. “She didn’t burn the letters,” he said. “Women. They never burn the letters.” Then he raised his eyebrows. “You know, for a long while I thought you might be mine. Till you started looking like D’Herblay.” He tapped his fingers on the desk. “Perhaps you have something of me all the same. You have a deal Chevalier.”

  Aramis nodded. “And Fasset, your ex-guard, he is not to be harmed in any way.”

  “Fasset?” the Cardinal asked. “It would never occur to me to harm Fasset. His conscience is perhaps more delicate than it should be. So he’s not suitable to serve me.”

  “Which is just as well, since Monsieur des Essarts has offered him a post in his guard,” Aramis said.

  “I see,” the Cardinal said. “So it all falls into place, does it? I hope he does well.”

  OUTSIDE, Aramis found his three friends waiting. He smiled reassuringly at them. “All is well,” he said.

  “How?” Porthos asked.

  Aramis smiled. “Ah, Porthos, the Cardinal and I are men of the world. All you have to know is how to speak his language.”

  “Well,” Porthos said. “That can’t be French, because I’m sure people have tried. Is it church Latin?”

  Aramis smiled. It was good to have his friends back, but he was as lost as ever when it came to deciding whether Porthos knew he was making a joke or not. Was he teasing Aramis? Or was he really that literal minded? He looked at the giant. It was impossible to tell.

  “Jesuit,” D’Artagnan said, with a hint of irony in his voice. “I think Aramis spoke Jesuit to him.”

  “Ah,” Porthos said. “That, I never tried.”

  IN the street outside, the servants were waiting, with the horses. “There is a letter here for you, Monsieur,” Bazin said, bowing to Aramis and extending a letter printed on fine rose paper, which exuded, even from a distance, a smell of roses.

  Aramis took it and broke the seal, which, he saw, was a count’s insignia. The writing inside was feminine and beautiful, though utterly unknown to him. It informed her dear Chevalier that Lida had decided to marry the boring old Count, after all. And since both of them would be living in Paris now, would the musketeer Aramis condescend to coming and seeing her now and then?

  Aramis had to give her credit for having gone to the trouble of finding his assumed name.

  “It came by courier to the Treville house, and they sent him on here,” Bazin said.

  Aramis folded the letter carefully, smiling, and put it in his sleeve.

  “Aramis has another seamstress,” Athos said, with a hint of mockery in his voice.

  Aramis looked at his friend and smiled. “Not yet, Athos. Not yet.”

  Turn the page for a preview of

  the next Musketeers Mystery

  The

  Musketeer’s

  Apprentice

  Coming soon from Berkley Prime Crime!

  The Many Inconveniences of a Sin of Vanity; Flying and Fighting; Murder Done

  MONSIEUR Pierre Du Vallon—a huge man with broad shoulders and a wealth of red hair and beard—knew that his besetting sin was vanity.

  Oh, he wouldn’t put it that way, though his friend, Aramis often put it just that way. If pressed, Monsieur Du Vallon, whom the world had known for years as the musketeer Porthos, would say that he knew himself to be a well set man, twice as broad, twice as strong, twice as valiant as all others. Pushed further, he might admit he had a fine taste in clothes and that his sword work was the best ever seen. This he did not consider vanity, as such, but a mere statement of facts. It only seemed to him odd that most people refused to acknowledge these truths.

  That this made him particularly vulnerable to those who did know Porthos’s true worth, Porthos would be the first to admit. It had been Aramis’s admission that Porthos was the best fencing master in Paris which had caused Porthos to try to teach the effete young man—then known as Chevalier D’Herblay—how to fence in time for an impending duel. It had, however, been Porthos’s real worth as a teacher that had allowed Aramis to kill his opponent in that duel—in direct violation of the King’s edict against dueling. And this in turn had forced both D’Herblay and Du Vallon—his second in the duel—to go into hiding, as Aramis and Porthos in the King’s musketeers.

  None of which, Porthos thought, as he stood in the middle of the vast, empty room, explained why he found himself now waiting for a student who was a good two hours late.

  The student, Guillaume D’Harcourt, had approached Porthos weeks ago and had told Porthos that he knew Porthos’s secret. He knew Porthos’s true identity. Porthos had shrugged this off, because who would listen to a son of minor nobility, a young boy just turning twelve. And besides, Porthos was fairly sure that the King and Monsieur de Treville, captain of the musketeers, knew his identity pretty well. He was fairly sure, even, that it was an open secret in the court. It was only that—Porthos thought—as long as no one could prove it, the King didn’t need to punish Porthos for Du Vallon’s trespass.

  But then the young man—who had begged Porthos to teach him fencing—had said that Du Vallon had been universally acknowledged as the best fighter and sword master in all of Paris—which is to say in all the world.

  Porthos’s inability to resist hearing the truth thus stated, had made him agree to teach the boy to fence. And he’d done just that for weeks. The youth—a stripling promise of future manhood—had proven deft with the sword, capable of parrying and thrusting with the best of them, and with footwork fast and deceptive enough to rival Porthos’s own.

  Not that Guillaume was ready to fight duels. He was all of twelve, with dark red auburn eyes and an intent, serious expression and he’d listened most attentively to Porthos’s instructions not to duel. After all, the musketeers didn’t take boy recruits. But he’d proven a willing student, ready and capable of great work.

  He’d always been on time. Punctual like an Englishman. It was only today that he was late. Very late. And Porthos found himself worried against his wishes.

  The room in which Porthos stood was on the bottom floor of the lodgings he rented. Situated at the back, it faced the garden and the back gate. It had been—in the distant past when the house had been built and when this area of
Paris had still held fields and farmers—the loggia of the building, the place where harvest was brought in and fruits and vegetables stored.

  Vast and cool and windowless, it got all its light from the door when it was opened. Why the landlord hadn’t converted it into rooms to rent, Porthos didn’t know nor care. But when he’d found out that this room sat there, unused, at the back and bottom of the house, he’d made it his business to ask the landlord for the use of it.

  Given the musketeer’s size and girth, few men of normal size thought to say no to him. And so Porthos, and his friends—Aramis, Athos and D’Artagnan—had for some time commanded the use of this room for their sword practices. Musty and smelling of long disuse and dried apples, it was nonetheless broad enough and secret enough that they could have mock duels without calling on themselves the wrath of the Cardinal guards with their fanatical enforcement of the prohibition on duels. And here they didn’t have to listen to comments and heckling from other musketeers as they did when they practiced at Monsieur de Treville’s residence.

  Aramis had snickered it was vanity that had led Porthos to line the narrow space with many mirrors. And though Porthos felt aggrieved by the accusation, he did not know how to defend himself.

  For there was this in Porthos, able, accomplished giant that he was—that words scared him more than any foe might whom he could meet in field of battle or duel. Words slipped through his mind, where sounds and sights and senses resounded as clearly as church bells on a silent summer afternoon.

  So he lacked the words to explain to Aramis that the mirrors were there for two reasons—one to propagate what little light came through the open door. And another, to allow him to study his movements and those of his opponents when they practiced swordplay. If it allowed him to examine the excellent cut of his doublets, the fullness of his hat plume and the way his broad, ankle-long venetians molded his muscular legs, so much the better.