In 1624, six years ago, one Francois Thounenin was a cure at Dompt; he there made his will. In the following year he was transferred to Aubain, near Versailles, by the influence of my family, of which he was a relation. Two years ago he died in this same village of Aubain. Before dying, being on a visit to Dompt,he made a codicil to his will; it was incorporated with the original document deposited at Nancy. This addition, made in the fear of death, concerned a certain child. We knew nothing of the codicil naturally. Thounenin died soon after it was made, and learning of this, we arranged for the child.
This will has been taken from the archives. The fact was learned at once, pursuit was begun and I have every reason to believe that the document will be recovered and destroyed. That it concern you were impossible; yet I fear, my dear friend, lest it be made to concern you! I am closely watched, my friends are suspect, it is difficult for me to do anything.
If possible, send me a messenger whom you can trust. I may have no other chance to write you by a sure hand, yet it is imperative that you be kept informed of danger or—of security. Adieu! Destroy this.
Marie.
The woman who wrote this letter was Marie de Rohan, Duchesse de Chevreuse, the most able and determined of Richelieu’s enemies. The woman who read it was Anne of Austria, Queen of France, the most beautiful and helpless of Richelieu’s victims. When she had read the letter, the queen let it fall upon the flames in the fireplace; in another moment it had become a black ash lifting upward on the draught. Her head falling on her hand, the queen fell into agitated reverie.
“Good God, what can this mean—what is it about—what will they attempt next against me or my friends?” murmured Anne of Austria. Her beautiful eyes were suffused with tears. “And what can I do—whom can I send—in what person can I trust, when I am allowed to see no one in private except by express permission?”
At this instant a tap at the door roused her, caused her to efface all trace of emotion. Into the room came Dona Estafania, the only one of her Spanish attendants now remaining at her side. She curtseyed to the queen from the doorway.
“Your Majesty, the courier is here for the despatches. Madame the Queen-mother requests that if yours are ready, they be sent instantly.”
“They are lying on my secretary,” said the queen. Guessing from the formal address that the messenger was waiting, she added: “This courier—he is at hand?”
“Yes, madame,” said Dona Estafania. “He is M. d’Artagnan, a gentleman of the Musketeers—”
“Ah!” murmured the queen. “Wait—”
At the mention of this name, a swift pallor leaped in her cheeks and then was gone in a suffused red half concealed by her rouge. Perhaps she remembered this name; perhaps other days came before her eyes in this moment; perhaps the memory of dead Buckingham pierced her sharply.
“He is alone?” she asked quickly, impulsive
“Yes madame.”
“Ask him to enter. Get the letters. Close the door. You may remain.”
Next instant d’Artagnan, booted and spurred knelt above the queen’s hand and touched it with his lips. Smiling she looked down at his eager face, brimming with devotion.
“Artagnan—you depart for Grenoble?
“With despatches for His Majesty, madame.”
“Mine are ready—give them to me, Dona Estafania, if you please.”
From her lady she took the sealed letters and handed them to d’Artagnan, who bowed and placed them in his pocket.
“Monsieur,” said the queen, her voice a trifle unsteady, “would you serve me?”
D’Artagnan looked at her in astonishment.
“With my life, madame!” he exclaimed, eagerly.
“I believe you,” she said. “Indeed, I think that I have some reason to believe you. I am accused of forgetting many things, M. d’Artagnan—but there are many things I only seem to forget.” Once more a slight pallor came into her face. “M. de Bassompierre has declared openly that he serves the king, his master—and holds it to be the duty of a gentleman to recognize such service as superior to any other.”
D’Artagnan bowed, and his eyes flashed a little.
“Madame,” he responded vibrantly, “thank God I am M. d’Artagnan, and not M. de Bassompierre! A Marshal of France serves the king. A simple gentleman serves a lady. If Your Majesty has the least need of service—impart it to me, I implore you! It is the greatest happiness of my life to lay my service at your feet, holding you second only to God Himself!”
Truth shone in the eyes of the young man, sincerity rang in his voice.
“Ah, M. d’Artagnan!” exclaimed the queen softly. “If only you were in the place of M. de Bassompierre!”
“Then were I unfortunate, madame, since he is with the army and not here.”
The queen caught a warning gesture from Dona Estafania. Time was short.
“Good.” From her finger she took a ring and extended it. “Take this to Dampierre, give it into the hand of Madame de Chevreuse, tell her I sent you. That is all. She will give you a verbal message for me, I think. Go when you can, as you can obtain leave; return when you can. I am powerless to help you—if I tried, you would fall under suspicion—”
D’Artagnan came to his knee, kissed the fingers she proffered him, and rose.
“Madame,” he said simply, “my life is yours, my honor is yours, my devotion is yours! For the trust you confide in me, I thank you.”
The next moment, he was gone. The Queen relaxed in her chair, trembling a little, looking at her one faithful woman with frightened eyes.
“Ah!” she murmured. “I acted too impulsively, perhaps—I have done wrong—”
“You have not done wrong to trust that young man, madame,” said Dona Estafania. “His uniform answers for his courage; his face answers for his devotion. Be at ease. He will go to Dampierre.”
The queen bowed her head.
D’Artagnan, whose horse was waiting saddled in the courtyard, had no time to see Athos, who was at the Musketeers’ quarters. The letters from Anne of Austria and Marie de Medici, the queen-mother, were of imperative haste, admitted of not a moment’s delay—their importance might be judged from the fact that they were confided to an officer of the guards instead of to the post courier. D’Artagnan, therefore, had no choice but to mount and ride for Grenoble, where the king and the cardinal were stopping. It was now past noon; he must reach Grenoble before the following midnight.
In five minutes he was leaving the convent in the Place des Terreaux; in ten minutes he was passing the gates of Lyon.
As he rode, it seemed to him that the very few moments in the chamber of the queen must have been a dream—but no! He wore a ring to prove them real, and glanced at it. The ring was a large sapphire surrounded by brilliants; obviously, it was no ring for a cavalier to be wearing. Beneath his shirt, d’Artagnan wore a scapulary which his mother had confided to him upon her deathbed; as he rode, he loosened the chain of this scapulary, threaded the ring upon it, and replaced it. As he had said, the service of the queen came indeed next to the service of God.
“Well, I have leave due me—I can ask for it, take Athos, depart for Dampierre!” he thought with eagerness. “How things work out, eh? Excellent! And to think that I have seen her, have twice kissed her hand, have looked into her eyes—to think that she remembered me, after all! That she had not forgotten! Ah, damned cardinal that you are, to persecute this angel from heaven!”
He rode on, blind and deaf to all around him, lost in an ecstasy of blissful reverie.
France was at war with the Empire—with Spain, Italy, Savoy, with all the countries that comprised the empire of the Hapsburgs. Richelieu and the king, who had been together with the army and had conquered all Savoy, were returned to noble; the two queens had brought the court to Lyon, and Louis XIII besought his mother to come to Grenoble, hoping thus to patch up the bitter enmity between her and Richelieu. Marie Medici refused, and this refusal was being taken to Grenoble by d’Artagnan.
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Since he was not riding his own horses, he changed at every post-house and spurred hard; because of the rains, the roads were in places almost impassable, and despite all his effforts, d’Artagnan could not make great speed. His consolation was that another in his place would have made no speed whatever.
When darkness fell on the following day, he was still six leagues from Grenoble, had been unable to get a fresh horse at the last station, and was in despair.
“Die, then,” he muttered, seeing a long rise ahead, and put in his spurs. “Die if you must, but reach Grenoble ere midnight!”
Thin fantastic moonlight touched and glimmered on the dark Lizere river to the right, fille the trees to the left with strange shadows, broke clear and white on the sharp dust of the high ahead. The road pitched upward here, then broke down through a long descending ravine flanked by dark tree-masses.
At the crest of the rise, d’Artagnan drew rein; next instant, a cry of dismay came to his lips. The quivering gasp breaking from the horse, the animal’s terrible shudder, told him the truth—the poor beast was dying on its feet.
Abruptly, the sharp crack of a pistolet burst from the darkness ahead. This was followed by the fuller roar of an arquebus, and the loud cry of a man in mortal agony.
The cavalier reached for a pistolet and would have reined in, but the dying horse was now plunging forward, bit in his teeth, breath whistling, hooves thundering down the declivity and re-echoing from the trees. Sharp cries of alarm sounded ahead, men called one to another, then came the clatter of hastily departing riders.
“Robbers, pardieu!” muttered d’Artagnan, peering forward. “And they must have caught someone just ahead of me—”
His horse quivered, uttered one strange and awful cry, then came to an abrupt halt with feet braced wide apart, head hanging to the very road, its whole body trembling. The poor beast was dying.
D’Artagnan dismounted. He perceived that his approach had frightened the robbers from their victim. Ahead of him in the open moonlight a man’s figure was outstretched; he still gripped in one hand the reins of his horse, standing over him. The horse turned its head and gazed questioningly at the approaching d’Artagnan.
The man on the ground was senseless. D’Artagnan hastened to him, disengaged the reins from his hand, raised his head. The unfortunate traveller had been shot through the body; his clothes were drenched with blood, and be was dying. The moonlight brought out the details of his face, and his rescuer could not repress a gesture of repugnance; this face was brutal, treacherous, with heavy black brows meeting above the eyes.
“A lackey in his master’s clothes,” muttered d’Artagnan. “Or a rascal—”
As though the sound of human speech had penetrated his brain, the dying man opened his eyes and stared vacantly upward. His lips moved in faint words.
“I have discovered everything—everything! Bassompierr—du Vallon—that false priest d’Herblay—the evidence! The document was sent to London for safety—it will reach Paris in a week—we have them all! And above them all, she—she herself—”
The voice failed and died. At these names, d’Artagnan started violently. His face changed. One would have said that sudden terror had come into his very soul.
“Du Vallon—Porthos!” he muttered. “And d’Herblay—Aramis! Ah, ah—what is this, then? Is it possible? Am I dreaming?
Abruptly, the dying man clutched at his sleeve, tried to come erect. Now his voice rang out in anguished tones, clear and loud with the unmistakeable accent of death.
“Pere Joseph!” he cried out. “I can report everything—Betstein is the guardian of the child! A false birth certificate was forged by the priest Thounenin—the child is in the abbey of the Benedictines at St. Saforin. The prior knows the ring—I had the copy made! I have a letter from d’Herblay—he was wounded, du Vallon was killed—took papers—His Eminence must know—send Montforge to Paris—to Paris—”
The man coughed terribly, groaned, then relaxed from the spasm. Perfect consciousness came to him. He fastened wild eyes upon the face above.
“Where am I?” he muttered. “Who are you?”
“I am M. d’Artagnan, lieutenant of—”
“Ah, Jesus!” groaned the man, and shuddered as death tore out his soul.
D’Artagnan rose. In one hand he held a plain gold seal-ring, incised with a device unknown to him. In the other hand he held two letters and a small packet of papers, sealed heavily. He looked at the seal in the moonlight; it was the seal Aramis had habitually used.
Aramis—Porthos! Bewildered, dazed, doubting his own senses, d’Artagnan looked at the two letters. One he could not read, but he could recognize the tiny, perfect, beautiful script of Aramis. The other was a heavy scrawl, its words standing out clearly enough in the rays of the moon; the short message covered a whole sheet of paper, so black and pregnant was the writing:
M. l’Abbé d’Herblay:
Write me no more. See me no more. Think of me no more. To you, I am dead for ever.
Marie Michon.
“What the devil!” exclaimed d’Artagnan. “Marie Michon—that’s the lady-love of Aramis, then! Chevreuse, no less. Oh, fiend take it all—what I have uncovered here?”
He became pale as death, recalling what the dying man had said. Porthos dead,—Aramis wounded! Athos had received a letter from Aramis only a month previously; Aramis was then bound on a journey to Lorraine for reasons unstated. Porthos had left the service, had married, was somewhere in the provinces.
With a swift motion, d’Artagnan tore the letter of Marie Michon into tiny fragments and cast them on the breeze. The packet he stowed carefully away—he must destroy this sacred packet, still under the seal of Aramis. The first letter he studied again but could not read in the pale moonlight, and this he pocketed also. The ring, he slipped on his finger.
“Singular!” he reflected with agitation. “What secret did this miserable spy carry to the grave? Bassompierre, the greatest noble in France, lover of a thousand women—my poor stupid, honest Porthos—my crafty, shrewd, intriguing Aramis? And she—she herself—what did the rascal mean by those words?”
A terrible conjecture flashed across his mind. The dead man was obviously one of the spies of the silent Capuchin who was Richelieu’s secretary, who had organized his system of espionage, without whose advice Richelieu seldom acted—his Gray Eminence, Pere Joseph le Clerc, Sieur du Tremblay.
“She herself!” D’Artagnan repeated the words as though stupefied by their import. “Above them all—she herself!” His tone, more than his words—what had he discovered, then? To what woman did he refer? Who is the child? Who is Betstein?” He passed a hand across his brow; it came away wet with cold perspiration. “Well, at least he spoke the truth—he has now discovered everything in life and death itself!”
He turned, glanced around, went to his own horse. The poor beast stood in the same fashion, feet wide apart, head low, dying on foot. D’Artagnan took from the saddlebags the despatches he carried, thrust one of the pistols through his sash, then went to the horse of the dead spy.
“An excellent animal!” he observed. “Evidently, this is one of the dispensations of providence the clerics so often mention. That rascal fell among other rascals at the exact moment my horse gave out; he obligingly told me his mind and went his way to the greatest of all discoveries. I step into his stirrups—and my letters reach the king by midnight, after all! Decidedly Providence is tonight acting much more gracefully toward Louis XIII than toward his minister of war, the amiable Richelieu!”
D’Artagnan mounted. But, finding himself in the seat of a much taller person, it was necessary to adjust the stirrups.
“Now,” he said reflectively, as he worked at the leathers, “if the good Athos were in my place, he might think it his duty to carry word of all this to his Gray Eminence—hm! It would be most polite of me, no doubt—but what the devil can be in this letter from Aramis? It’s not like our clever Aramis to confide his neck to a lette
r! Why is the name of Porthos linked with that of Bassompierre? Most mysterious of all, who is Betstein, and whose child does he guard in conjunction with a Benedictine prior? Undoubtedly, M. de Richelieu might answer all these questions but I prefer to seek elsewhere.”
Again recurred to his mind those significant words: “above them all, she—she herself!” It was as though he spoke of the highest of women—but no, that were leaping too far at a venture! Besides, there were two queens in France. More likely some intrigue of Bassompierre was concerned. The marshal had just emerged from a scandalous three-year-suit before the high court of Rouen, and his intrigues with great ladies had resulted in more than one pledge of affection. At this thought, d’Artagnan brightened.
“Vivadiou! I’m making much out of little.” He glanced down at the dead man, crossed himself, and gathered up his reins with a sigh. “If only you had uttered a few words more, my good rascal! However, I give you thanks—your secret is safe with me. Away now—to Grenoble!”
And driving in his spurs, he was gone in a whirl of moonlit dust.
CHAPTER II
PROVING THAT NEITHER KING NOR MINISTER RULED FRANCE
In the summer of 1630, all France was bubbling with war, treason and civil strife.
True, La Rochelle was fallen, the Protestants were crushed, England was brought to terms—this was yesterday. Today, Richelieu was leading the army in Savoy to victories against the Empire; yet he was standing on a precipice, and at his back all the winds of France were gathering to blow him over the verge.
He was just discovering the fact, as he was just learning that the deadliest enemies of France were within her frontiers.
Louis XIII, son to Henry of Navarre, was nominal ruler of France. Marie de Medici, widow of Henry of Navarre, could not forget that her husband had actually ruled France. Armand du Plessis, the virtual ruler of France, intended that France should rule Europe. Here were three sides of a triangle—extremely unequal sides.
The H. Bedford-Jones Pulp Fiction Megapack Page 97