“Ah, pardieu!” said Aramis. “Now you’ve set me to thinking. No, of course you’re not seeing things, mon cher ami, and now that I think about it, you’re right: that thin, narrow mouth, those eyes that take orders only from the mind and not from the heart. It’s Milady’s bastard, of course!”
“You laugh, Aramis!”
“From habit, that’s all. For I swear to you, I’d hate to encounter such a serpent in our path as much as you would.”
“Ah, here comes de Winter at last,” said Athos.
“Good, then there’s only one thing lacking,” said Aramis. “Now we need only our servants.”
“No,” Athos said, “I see them, they’re about twenty paces behind milord. I recognize Grimaud with his cocked head and long legs. Tony is bringing our carbines.”
“Are we going to embark at night, then?” asked Aramis, glancing toward the west, where the sun was just a golden haze sinking into the sea.
“It seems likely,” said Athos.
“The devil!” replied Aramis. “Even by day I don’t like the sea, and it’s worse at night—the slap of the waves, the whine of the wind, the dreadful shifting of the deck—I’d much rather be in the monastery at Noisy.”
Athos smiled his melancholy smile, for though he seemed to be listening to his friend, it was clear he really was thinking about something else. He made his way toward Winter, and Aramis followed him. “What’s wrong with our friend?” Aramis said. “He looks like those damned in Dante who had their necks twisted by Satan to turn backward. What the devil is he looking for behind him?”
Noticing them, Winter doubled his pace and reached them in no time. “What’s wrong, Milord?” said Athos. “You’re out of breath.”
“Nothing,” said Winter, “nothing. Only, passing by the dunes, it seemed to me . . .” And he turned and looked anew.
Athos gave Aramis a look.
“But let’s depart,” Winter continued. “Here’s the boat waiting for us, and our sloop is at anchor—do you see it there? I wish I was already on it.” And he turned again and looked back.
“Ah çà!” said Aramis. “Did you forget something?”
“No, I’m just distracted . . .”
“He saw him,” Athos whispered to Aramis.
They arrived at the gangway to the boat. Winter first sent down the lackeys carrying their arms, next the porters with their trunks, and then began to follow them. As he did, Athos noticed a man who was hastening along the shoreline parallel to the jetty, as if trying to reach the opposite wharf across from where they were embarking. He thought, through the descending twilight, that he recognized the young man who’d questioned them. “Oh ho!” he said to himself. “Is he a spy after all, and planning to block our departure?”
But if that was the stranger’s plan, it was already too late to put it into action. Athos, in his turn, went down the gangway, but without losing sight of the young man, who went out upon the breakwater. He seems to be angry at us, thought Athos, but let’s just depart. Once we’re on the open sea, he can be as angry as he likes. Athos leapt into the boat, the ropes were loosed, and it began to pull away due to the efforts of four brawny rowers.
But the young man began to follow the boat along the breakwater, or rather precede it. The boat had to pass between the end of the jetty, where the harbor lighthouse had just been lit, and a boulder at the end of the breakwater. The man could be seen climbing the boulder so as to tower over the boat as it passed.
“See there?” said Aramis to Athos. “That young man is definitely some sort of spy.”
“What young man?” asked Winter, turning to look.
“That one, who spoke to us earlier, followed us, and now awaits us. See!”
Winter looked where Aramis was pointing. The lighthouse clearly illuminated the little strait they were about to pass through, and the boulder where the young man stood waiting, head bare and arms crossed.
“It’s him!” Lord Winter cried, grabbing Athos by the arm. “It’s him. I thought I’d seen him, and I was right.”
“Him? Who?” asked Aramis.
“Milady’s son,” Athos replied.
“The monk!” cried Grimaud.
The young man heard these words, and perched over the water on the edge of the boulder, he looked like he was ready to pounce. “Yes, Uncle, here I am. I, Milady’s son; I, the monk; I, the aide and friend to Cromwell—and I recognize you and your companions.”
There were three brave men in that boat, men of whom no man could dispute the courage—but at that voice, in that tone, they felt a shiver of terror run down their spines.
As for Grimaud, his hair was bristling on his head, and sweat poured from his brow.
“Ah!” said Aramis. “So, this is the nephew, the monk, and Milady’s son—that’s him, is it?”
“Alas, yes,” murmured Winter.
“All right, then,” said Aramis. And he picked up, with that terrible sangfroid he displayed in extremity, one of Tony’s muskets, loaded it, and took aim at the man standing on the rock like an angel of malediction.
“Fire!” cried Grimaud, beside himself.
Athos knocked aside the musket barrel before Aramis could shoot. “The devil take you!” Aramis exclaimed. “You ruined my shot just when I was about to put a ball into his chest.”
“It’s quite enough to have killed the mother,” said Athos gruffly.
“The mother was a monster who hurt us and those dear to us.”
“Yes, but the son has done us no harm.”
Grimaud, who had risen when Aramis took up the musket, fell back discouraged, wringing his hands.
The young man burst out laughing. “Ah, it is you, for sure—and now I know you.” His harsh and menacing laughter rang out over the water, fading as the boat rowed on into the darkness.
Aramis shuddered. “Calm down,” said Athos. “What the devil! Are we men, or aren’t we?”
“We are,” said Aramis, “but him—he’s a demon. Just ask the uncle if he thinks I’d have done wrong to rid him of his nephew.”
Winter’s only response was a sigh.
“I could have finished this,” Aramis went on. “Agh! I’m afraid, Athos, that your restraint has led you into folly.”
Athos took Winter’s hand and said, changing the subject, “How long will it take to reach England?” But Winter wasn’t listening and didn’t answer.
“Look, Athos,” said Aramis, “maybe it isn’t too late. Look, he’s still in the same place.”
Athos turned with an effort, as the sight of the young man seemed painful to him. Indeed, he still stood on the rock, the glow from the lighthouse making a halo around him. “But what is he doing in Boulogne?” asked Athos, who, being reason incarnate, sought the cause for everything, little caring for the effect.
“He followed me, he followed me,” said Winter, who this time had heard Athos, since the words echoed his own thoughts.
“To follow you, my friend,” said Athos, “he would have had to know we were leaving; and besides, it seems probable he was here ahead of us.”
“Then I can’t understand it!” said the Englishman, shaking his head like a man who sees no use in battling the supernatural.
“Decidedly, Aramis,” said Athos, “I think I was wrong not to let you do it.”
“Oh, hold your tongue,” Aramis replied. “You’d make me weep, if I was the sort of man who could weep.”
Grimaud just uttered a deep, mournful groan.
At that moment, a voice hailed them from the sloop. The pilot, who was seated at the rudder, answered the call, and the boat approached the vessel. Within minutes, the gentlemen, their servants, and baggage were all aboard. The captain waited only for the porters to return to the boat; as soon as they were clear, he set a course for Hastings, where they were to land.
Meanwhile the three friends, anxious despite themselves, peered back toward the breakwater, where, on the boulder at the end, the menacing shadow that pursued them was still visible.
A voice echoed across the water with a final threat: “We’ll meet again, Messieurs—in England!”
~ The Story Continues in Book Four, The Son of Milady ~
Dramatis Personae: Historical Characters
ANNE: Anne of Austria, “Anne d’Autriche,” Queen of France (1601–66). Eldest daughter of King Philip III of Spain and sister to King Philip IV, Anne was wed to King Louis XIII of France in a political marriage at the age of fourteen. A Spaniard among the French, unloved by the king, proud but intimidated, and vulnerable to manipulation by her friends, she wielded very little influence until she finally gave birth to a royal heir, the future Louis XIV, in 1638. After Louis XIII died in 1643, with his heir still a child, Anne was declared Queen Regent and thereafter came into her own, holding France together against threats both internal and external until Louis XIV was old enough to rule. Anne was intelligent and strong-willed but not a skilled politician; in that she was aided by her close association with her prime minister, Cardinal Mazarin. Were they lovers? Anne’s level of intimacy with Mazarin is a matter of conjecture; Dumas the novelist prefers the juiciest possible interpretation.
ARAMIS: Aramis, Chevalier/Abbé René d’Herblay, is based loosely on Henri, Seigneur d’Aramitz (1620?–1655 or 1674), as filtered through Courtilz de Sandras’s fictionalized Memoirs of Monsieur d’Artagnan. Though Sandras had made Aramis the brother of Athos and Porthos, the historical d’Aramitz was a Gascon petty nobleman, an abbot who spent at least the first half of the 1640s serving under his uncle, Captain de Tréville, in the King’s Musketeers. Sources disagree as to the date of his death.
Artagnan see D’ARTAGNAN
ATHOS: Athos, Comte de La Fère, is based loosely on Armand, Seigneur de Sillègue, d’Athos, et d’Autevielle (c. 1615–1643), as filtered through Courtilz de Sandras’s fictionalized Memoirs of Monsieur d’Artagnan. Though Sandras had made Athos the brother of Aramis and Porthos, the historical d’Athos was a Gascon petty nobleman who joined his cousins, Captain de Tréville and Isaac de Portau (Porthos) in the King’s Musketeers in 1640. Little is known of his life; he was killed in a duel in December 1643.
BEAUFORT: François de Vendôme, Duc de Beaufort (1616–69). Beaufort was the grandson of King Henri IV and his mistress Gabrielle d’Estrées, which made him a Prince of the Blood because his father, César de Vendôme, though illegitimate, was an acknowledged royal bastard. After the death of Louis XIII, the popular Beaufort expected to be a leading member of the Regent’s Court, but when his rivalry with Mazarin came to a head the queen sided with the cardinal, and Beaufort was imprisoned in the royal Château de Vincennes. After his dramatic escape from Vincennes in 1648, he cast his lot with the Fronde, but rejoined the Court in 1653 after the Fronde sputtered out, and thereafter behaved as a loyal subject of Louis XIV.
BERNOUIN: Monsieur Bernouin or Barnouin. Little is known about Mazarin’s premier valet de chambre Bernouin, except that he may have been a Provençal who came north to Paris with his master when Mazarin became a protégé of Richelieu’s.
BRAGELONNE: Raoul, Vicomte de Bragelonne. The young viscount is almost entirely Dumas’s invention, based solely on a single reference in Madame de La Fayette’s memoir of Henriette d’Angleterre, which mentions that in Louise de La Vallière’s youth in Blois she had once loved a young man named Bragelonne. Raoul’s relationship with Louise—and her relationship with King Louis XIV—will be central to all the volumes of the Musketeers Cycle that follow Twenty Years After.
BROUSSEL: Councilor Pierre Broussel (1575?–1654). A popular and influential councilor in the Parlement de Paris during the Fronde, Broussel was a persistent voice opposed to the steep rise in royal taxes, leading to his arrest on Mazarin’s orders on August 26, 1648, an act that precipitated the Day of the Barricades. Released two days later, he was hailed as a hero by the Parisians, and continued to lead the anti-Mazarin faction in parliament as long as the Fronde continued. He was a canny politician, and if Dumas portrays him as a bit of a fool, this was probably due to Broussel’s depiction in the memoirs of his rival Cardinal de Retz (the former coadjutor), who called him “senile.”
Cardinal see MAZARIN or RICHELIEU
CHARLES I: Charles Stuart, King Charles I of England (1600–1649). Charles was a complex man who led an eventful life, not easily summarized. Born in Scotland, his father inherited the throne of England in 1603, and thereafter Charles was raised as an Englishman. But he wasn’t trained to wear the crown, as he had an elder brother, Prince Henry, who was the heir to King James. When Charles was twelve Henry unexpectedly died, and suddenly Charles was the heir. He came under the influence of a royal favorite, the first Duke of Buckingham, who was an appalling role model, arrogant and authoritarian. By the time Charles assumed the throne in 1625 he was determined to rule by divine right, an attractive program to a monarch who just wasn’t very good at politics. He was almost immediately married to the sister of Louis XIII, Princess Henriette of France, a controversial match because of her ardent Catholicism. It was a stormy marriage at first, but after Buckingham was assassinated in 1628 Charles seems to have reassigned his affections to his wife, who thereafter bore him nine children. Charles’s preference for direct rule led him into protracted conflict with the English Parliament, which led to open warfare in 1642. The king was detained or placed under arrest several times, the last in November 1648; he was tried in January 1649 in London under Cromwell’s military control, and beheaded on January 30. For the purposes of his story Dumas depicts Charles as noble and sympathetic, even sentimental, but this is a grave oversimplification.
CHAVIGNY: Leon Le Bouthillier, Comte de Chavigny (1608–1652). Like Mazarin a protégé of Richelieu, and a minister of state for foreign diplomacy late in the reign of Louis XIII. When Louis died Chavigny, like Mazarin, continued as a member of the King’s Council under the regency of Queen Anne. Chavigny and Mazarin were rivals on the council, but Chavigny was outmaneuvered by the cardinal and forced out, though he retained his role as the governor of the Royal Château of Vincennes. Loyal to the Court during the first half of the Fronde, he later allied himself with the Prince de Condé and was himself arrested on the orders of Cardinal Mazarin.
CHEVREUSE: Marie-Aimée de Rohan-Montbazon, Duchesse de Chevreuse, “Marie Michon” (1600–79). One of the most remarkable French women in a century that abounded in remarkable French women, Marie de Rohan was a vector of chaos who challenged every social convention of her time with wit, cheer, charm, and unshakable self-confidence. Throughout the reign of Louis XIII, she was a steadfast friend and ally to Anne of Austria when the queen had few of either. Brilliant, beautiful, free-spirited, mischievous, adored, and adorable, she had a long list of lovers on both sides of the English Channel, many of whom ended up dead or in prison thanks to her habit of involving them in plots and conspiracies against the French Crown. She first came to prominence in 1617 when she married Albert de Luynes, Louis’s former falconer and first favorite; when Luynes fell from favor in 1621 and almost immediately died, Marie avoided obscurity by marrying the Duc de Chevreuse, a wealthy Lorraine noble and perennial ornament of the French Court. Marie and her second husband had what nowadays would be called an “open marriage,” leaving Madame de Chevreuse free to pursue her own interests, which were romance and treason in equal measure, mixing the two whenever possible. She was involved in every notable conspiracy of the reign of Louis XIII, was an inveterate enemy of Cardinal Richelieu, continued to make trouble for his successor Cardinal Mazarin during the Fronde, and will continue to play a prominent part in the rest of Dumas’s Musketeers Cycle.
COADJUTOR: Jean-François Paul de Gondy or Gondi, Bishop Coadjutor of Paris (and later Cardinal de Retz) (1613–1679). The Gondis were a family of Florentine bankers who were introduced to France in 1573 by Queen Catherine de Médicis and had quickly associated themselves with the high nobility. As a third son Jean-François was destined for the military, but the death of his elder brother meant he had to change his uniform for a cassock and go i
nto the Church to maintain the family’s hold on their clerical appanages, which included part of the Bishopric of Paris. A thorough Parisian, Gondy was educated at the Sorbonne and tutored in religion by St. Vincent de Paul. During the reign of Louis XIII, he was ambitious for appointment to the position of Bishop Coadjutor of Paris, but in his youth he had written some political essays with republican leanings that probably caused Cardinal Richelieu to suppress his advancement. After Louis XIII died, Queen Anne finally granted him the appointment; he immediately began currying favor with the citizens of Paris, speaking up on their behalf when it seemed in his interest to do so, and when the Fronde broke out in 1648 he seized the opportunity to put himself at its forefront. During the chaotic ending of the civil war in 1652 he was finally awarded a cardinal’s hat, but then arrested shortly thereafter and imprisoned for two years before he escaped and left the country. In 1662 the young Louis XIV restored him to favor; he returned to France, where he was active in Church politics and diplomacy, and once more took up writing. His lively but not entirely dependable memoirs, which had been reprinted in France in 1837, were one of Dumas’s primary sources. They’re a good read, even today: Retz was nearly as snarky and caustic as his great rival La Rochefoucald (see Marcillac below).
COMMINGES: Gaston-Jean-Baptiste, Comte de Comminges, lieutenant (later captain) of the Queen’s Guard (1613–1670). Comminges was brought up at Court, and served in the Queen’s Guard under his uncle, the Sieur de Guitaut (see below), eventually replacing him upon his retirement. He was far more loyal to Mazarin than Dumas makes out: Comminges arrested the Duc de Beaufort in 1643, and was named a Marshal of France in 1649 and Lieutenant-General of the King’s Armies just two years after that. The wars over, he was appointed French Ambassador to England after the Restoration of Charles II, serving in London from 1662–1665.
CONDÉ: Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, “Monsieur le Prince,” later “The Grand Condé” (1621–1686). One of the most celebrated military commanders of his time, when he was still the Duc d’Enghien he won two signature victories in the long war against Spain, those of Rocroi in 1643 and Nordlingen in 1644. Upon the death of his father in 1646 Louis became Prince de Condé, First Prince of the Blood and third in line for the throne, but he continued his role as France’s leading general, further cementing his military reputation with the victory at Lens in 1648. This was followed by his successful leadership of the royal troops in the first half of the Fronde, when he commanded at the Battle of Charenton. After that he appeared to resent deferring to Cardinal Mazarin, and in 1650 seemed to be preparing to claim a broader role in the government, possibly even the regency, when Mazarin had Condé, his brother Conti, and his sister the Duchesse de Longueville arrested, which triggered the Second Fronde. In the confusion that followed, Anne was forced to release Condé and his siblings, but Monsieur le Prince was now her sworn enemy, and after the Fronde ended he actually left France to fight for Spain. After the long Franco-Spanish war finally ended in 1659, Condé was rehabilitated by Louis XIV and welcomed back to France, where he served with distinction until his death.
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