Death in Gascony

by Sarah D'almeida

  He expected an argument, but he got none. Instead, Mousqueton knelt down and pulled his allotted trunk to him.

  As for Aramis, he pulled the remaining trunk to him and looked, in some confusion, at the contents. There was what appeared to be an antiquated guard uniform of some sort, complete with hat, with its plume. It would seem to him, considering the horrible state of the plume and hat D’Artagnan had worn to Paris the first time, that his father would have passed this hat down to his son.

  But as he uncovered, farther in the trunk, a very fine sword and an even finer dagger, each in its scabbard, and beneath this a dress which, though water stained, had once been made of the finest material, he thought that he was almost surely looking at a man’s souvenirs of youth and, gently, he removed the objects, one by one, from the trunk and set them aside atop the slightly dusty floor.

  Being Aramis and, as such, a cunning man and a man of the world accustomed to the oddness of men—and women—in Paris, which was, rightfully, the capital of the world, he didn’t scruple to go through the sleeves of the uniform as well as to inspect it all for hidden pouches or recesses.

  In the sleeve of the uniform he found a note, addressed in neat handwriting, asking Monsieur D’Artagnan to meet the undersigned at such and such a time outside the convent of the Barefoot Carmelites, on an affair of honor that must be settled. He smiled a little at it thinking that the father was not so unlike the son. But the name of the signatory was quite unknown to him, and as such Aramis set it aside without regret.

  The woman’s dress was wholly devoid of any paper or anything that might have given an indication as to its wearer, save a single, crumpled handkerchief, within its right sleeve. It looked very much like it might have been cried upon, and the embroidery on the fine linen said “M. R.”

  He frowned at it a moment, before restoring it to its sleeve. Folding the gown carefully, he turned his attention to the other objects in the trunk. At the bottom, doubtless thrown there by his careless pulling of the garments, there was the famous Richelieu note. And next to that, covered in a brown leather binding, flaking with age, a sheaf of paper that had once been blank, and upon which someone had made a confusion of notes in a tight handwriting, in brown ink.

  All together, the notes, as far as Aramis could tell, came to very little. It was all appointments and notes about appointments. A noted battle of the wars of religion was written down simply with the name of the region and the single word, afterwards—survived, which of course was wholly unnecessary since there were many notes made afterwards.

  All in all, the writing, such as it was, gave Monsieur Aramis a pretty good view of Monsieur D’Artagnan père. He had doubtless been, just as his son, a noted duelist and much involved in those essential parts of the life of a young guard in Paris—drinking, dueling, dining out with friends.

  What Aramis saw no evidence of was his friend’s quick wit or his facility with words. Instead, Monsieur D’Artagnan père expressed himself with all the lack of elegance Porthos might employ.

  Tapping his teeth with his tongue, Aramis thought such awkwardness with the language could be dangerous. At least, when a man set himself to wading through the deep waters of intrigue, and through anything at all that involved his eminence, if he had no facility with meanings and words, and no friends to make up that defect for him, he would find himself very rapidly in trouble. As Monsieur D’Artagnan doubtless had found himself.

  The last entry in the notebook was “Marriage arranged. Father wrote to hurry me home. It’s farewell Paris.”

  Certain that the letter his friend said he had left for them in Paris contained more grief and better expressed chagrin, Aramis set the little book back in its place and was about to search the sheathes of the swords, when an exclamation from Mousqueton made him look up.

  The young man had gone about the business very meticulously and was now surrounded by small piles of paper. In his hands, he was holding what looked like a creased and bent note.

  “What have you found, Mousqueton?” Aramis asked.

  “It is a duel challenge, monsieur.”

  “From de Bilh?” Aramis hazarded.

  “No, monsieur, but from another name that has come up a few times.” Thus speaking, he handed Aramis the note.

  Aramis unfolded the age-brittle paper. A stain in the corner seemed to indicate that there was a mark of blood upon it.

  Inside the paper read, in terse terms, “To Monsieur Adrien de Comminges, if you’d do me the honor of meeting me at the threshing yard near old Jacques’ field tomorrow at sunset, I’ll seek satisfaction for the offense of which both of us are aware and which cannot be erased in any way but in blood.”

  For a moment, for just a moment, Aramis thought that he had found the thread to the whole thing, the duel that Monsieur D’Artagnan must have fought before he fought his last one. But then he looked at the date hastily penned in the corner. As it was over eighteen years past, it was unlikely that it was blood loss from that event that had made Monsieur D’Artagnan confused enough to attack de Bilh.

  “I don’t see how this is to the purpose,” Aramis said.

  “Well, we now know that they were not on good terms, Monsieur D’Artagnan and Monsieur de Comminges.”

  Aramis had to agree this was so, but pointed out that it had all been a long time since and clearly neither of them had died from the encounter.

  “The only puzzle,” he said, “is how Monsieur D’Artagnan came to keep that note, or why he bothered. However, since it’s marred with blood, perhaps he took it from the body of his fallen—if not dead—adversary. Not sure why, since the edicts against dueling were not in force then, but he must have had a reason to hide the encounter. Perhaps no more though,” he said, sententiously, “than the desire to hide that they didn’t quite get along. After all, in a region so riven by strife, he probably didn’t want anyone else to suspect they didn’t get quite well along.”

  Mousqueton looked dubious but nodded, and took the letter, and put it, gently, atop a stack. Aramis wondered if the entire stack was challenges to duels.

  He returned to his own work, searching out the sheathes of the blades, which proved to be fruitless. He was about to return the various contents to the trunk and ask Mousqueton to lock it yet again, when he noticed, caught in the leather lining, and almost hidden, a letter, which he picked up.

  There were bits of sealing wax adhering to the paper, which was unequivocally addressed to Monsieur Charles D’Artagnan.

  Inside…

  Aramis drew in a sudden and deep breath, as he discovered at least one of the answers to his many questions.

  The letter lacked a heading, and from the slanted handwriting, had been written in some haste.

  The contents read:

  I have conveyed your last letter to his eminence, and he is gratified you are making progress on his behalf.

  In the matter of Edmond de Bigorre, it is certain that he is a most dissipated gambler and that something might perhaps be worked upon to get him to break off his engagement. In point of fact, other agents, closer to that matter, have long since informed us that he is on the verge of being wholly bankrupt. Perhaps you should approach him and offer him money on behalf of his eminence if he should beg off his engagement. This would please his eminence and his eminence’s friend very much.

  On the other matter, we’re glad to hear de Comminges had indeed been in correspondence with the rebels at the Bastille. We have long since suspected his conversion to Catholicism was less than sincere and there is proof. We shall take steps to prevent his raising an army to come to their aid. And we will move to intercept further correspondence between him and Buckingham. The attached will give you an idea how to proceed.

  Yours as ever,

  Rochefort.

  There was nothing attached.

  A Priest’s Doubts; A Musketeer’s Fears

  ATHOS stared down at the paper between his fingers. It was about the marriage of de Comminges and for a momen
t—for a blinding, half-laughing, half-confusing moment—he thought it was D’Artagnan’s cousin who’d gone and got herself married to the boy he had started calling, in his mind, the hapless Geoffroi.

  But then he realized it was the marriage record of the Lord de Comminges, which, certainly, the young Geoffroi wasn’t, and some woman referred to as Lady D’Entragnes.

  The record itself was unremarkable, and dated over eighteen years ago—certainly the marriage of the Lord Adrien that was the father of the present lord.

  He was about to put the page back in the midst of the other pages and turn his attention to the rest of the book, when he found a note at the bottom of the page, in what appeared to be the same hand that had recorded the marriage.

  Spidery and so faint that it must mean the person pressed not at all with the quill, the hand was devilishly hard to read, but squinting and turning the paper to the light, he saw at the bottom an entry dated a month or two after the marriage, “Sent an enquiry to Paris regarding his previous marriage to Marie R. My messenger brought me back word that the priest, whom she’d said had performed the ceremony, could not be found. It must be assumed the paper Marie has is a hoax and that this marriage is valid and proper.”

  Athos darted a look at D’Artagnan, afraid the youth would look his way and ask what he had found. It seemed thoroughly useless to tell the boy about this document now. Marie might be his mother, then again she might not. There were a lot of women named Marie and there was no telling what the R might signify. And at any rate, if there had been a pretense of marriage with de Comminges, it had been a hoax and there was nothing to tell.

  All the same, he stared at the page in great unease. Something about this was trying to form into a thought—a feeling—Athos didn’t know what to call it, except he could feel it rising, like a dark thing from the layers of the unthought. And he was afraid of allowing it to fully emerge. He felt as though once that feeling that now troubled him, like a nagging pain within his mind, had coalesced nothing would be the same.

  D’Artagnan was collecting papers together and putting them away. He stopped suddenly. “Athos?”

  “Yes?” Athos asked, hoping that the boy had not found any note referring to the events he’d just read about.

  “I…This is my parents marriage record.”

  “And?” Athos asked. The boy’s voice had trembled. “Anything shocking?”

  D’Artagnan shook his head, then shrugged. “My mother’s name was Ravelet,” he said, frowning a little. “Doesn’t sound like a Gascon name.”

  “Perhaps it is only the name of the family who fostered her?” Athos asked. He was trying very hard not to think that she’d been Marie R. There must be many more Maries with a surname starting with R. Surely it wouldn’t mean anything.

  “Perhaps,” D’Artagnan said, but he still looked worried.

  “What is wrong, my friend?” Athos asked.

  “It’s…the marriage was three months before my birth.”

  “Oh,” Athos said. And sighed. “But you knew we had reason to suspect it, did you not? What is so shocking about it? They did marry.”

  “Yes,” D’Artagnan said. He laughed, uneasily, and shook his head. “It’s ridiculous, I know. It’s just…there is a difference between suspecting it and knowing it.” He blushed. “I mean…it is my mother. It is hard to think that she…”

  “That she is human?” Athos asked.

  D’Artagnan sighed. “I suppose.” He shrugged. “When it’s one’s mother, it’s easy to get foolish.”

  Athos nodded. “My mother died at my birth, but I can picture what it must be like. Yet…” He shrugged. “It is what it is, and many years have passed. We know nothing of the attendant circumstances. Perhaps it was the only way they could…I don’t know…and you don’t know how it came about. But you are legitimate nonetheless and…it can’t mean anything.”

  D’Artagnan opened his mouth as though to answer, but at that moment there was a voice from the church. “Father Urtou?”

  Athos held his finger in front of his lips, commanding silence, and pulled D’Artagnan towards the door out of the sacristy.

  Reaching for the handle, he started opening it, slowly, slowly, to avoid its creaking, while from outside the voice called again, “Father, are you there?”

  He managed to get the door open and ran out, into the morning light, with D’Artagnan after him.

  It wasn’t until they were some streets away that they checked each other and themselves for bloodstains. There were none.

  From the area of the church came loud screams.

  “We couldn’t let them think we’d done it,” Athos said. “It would only make apprehending the real killer that much more difficult.”

  D’Artagnan nodded, agreeing. “And now,” he said, with a deep intake of breath. “What do we do now? Father Urtou can’t talk to us, poor man…”

  Athos was trying to collect his thoughts. And more than everything, he was trying to keep at bay that one thought—that one image, feeling, whatever it was—that was attempting to surface. “We go back home,” he said. “We see what our friends have found.”

  Horses and Men;

  Monsieur Porthos Engages in Philosophy;

  The Odd Relationships of Provincial Gentlemen

  PORTHOS had spent the whole morning riding around; hit up all the taverns around there. In most places his probably not too subtle questions about horses had been dismissed with the sort of shrug that meant they thought the big man from Paris was less than sane.

  It was Porthos belief—and he philosophized on this a moment—that if anyone knew where the horses had originated, and if indeed there was any secret or shame attaching to their origin, the people would either hotly deny any knowledge of them or else—of course—innocently tell him what they knew.

  The shrug, on the other hand, and the shake of head of the provincial damsels he’d queried on the matter, he thought, meant that neither did they know of any horses having come that way, nor could they imagine any harm in a movement of horses between noble houses. Therefore, he presumed, these were not the people he was looking for.

  A visit to the de Bigorre house proved no more fruitful. Though there he met with more than a shrug, a smile and a head shake. The laughter, with which the groom told him that while de Bigorre was selling his horses it was piecemeal, not at all all at once, told him he was on the wrong track.

  Besides, he judged, with the proximity by blood of the two houses—de Bigorre and D’Artagnan—the grooms and stable boys were quite likely to know each other. Had the horses come from the de Bigorre house, then Bayard was likely as not to know where they’d come from. And while he might want to hold on to the fantasy that they came from Cardinal and King, he would not so blithely repeat it, because if he did he was likely to be uncovered in a lie and he would know it.

  As the sun climbed towards noon, Porthos found himself mounted upon his horse by the side of a bare field, while the weak sun of winter beat upon his broad shoulders and back. He was trying to accomplish something he did not very often attempt.

  Porthos, a huge man, good with his hands and with the physical movements of dancing and dueling, and an expert at noticing anything awry in a picture or a room, was slow and awkward with his words, and thinking of what other people’s words—or indeed their actions—meant was bound to confuse him.

  He sat on his horse, while his complaining stomach told him that he should head back to the D’Artagnan home for food. But the thing was—he tallied it on his fingers—the horses didn’t seem to have come to the D’Artagnan home through any of the surrounding villages, or any of the approaches from Paris.

  Even supposing that they’d come from one of the neighboring villages—supposing Athos was right about such details as how the horses were shod in a different manner from the Parisian work—they didn’t seem to have passed any of the roads they must have passed on their way to the bastide.

  And they’d not come from the de Bigor
re house. Of that Porthos was sure.

  He frowned at the pale blue sky. “The devil,” he said, to himself. “Unless Gascons have found a way to make their cattle fly, they must have come from somewhere around here.”

  It was then that he realized he had not yet checked de Comminges. There didn’t seem any reason to. He would own he didn’t like the fellow, despite his very hospitable behavior to them. In fact, he didn’t like him so much that he’d been inclined to forego the wine he’d served, because, truth be told, he wasn’t sure such a creature as that, dressed all in black and thinking himself so above anyone else, wouldn’t believe it incumbent upon himself to poison them.

  But he’d drunk the wine and come to no harm, and still he couldn’t like Monsieur de Comminges. A great part of that might be that he’d spent such a large time fluently discussing religion with Aramis.

  It was Porthos’s belief that anyone who could argue religion or philosophy at any length, turning one end against the other and back again, must perforce be someone that could not be trusted. But then again, he was a fair enough man to admit this might be his prejudice alone.

  And knowing he was prejudiced against the man caused him to hesitate to go and question his servants. Priding himself on his fairness, Porthos suspected that if he went in to speak to them, he would be likely—too likely—to interpret any dubious pronouncement as indicting de Comminges.

  But then again—he owned a very large house. It had many horses and some might easily have disappeared, without causing any alarm. What was more, he had farms and horses in the country, and in one of the villages both Athos and he had heard of horses being sent from the farm to the de Comminges house recently.

  Nothing for it but to go and check that last possible source for the cattle, before heading to the D’Artagnan home for a bit of food.

  Sighing, he set his horse on the road to the de Comminges house, which he approached the back way and through a gate which, he’d noticed, led to the stables. Approaching the stables, he’d smelled cooking sausage, and, his stomach rumbling, he’d approached, while frantically making up an excuse in his mind for his presence here.