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Excerpt from
by
Sarah D'Almeida
Where The Musketeers Are Good Samaritans; Springing His Eminence’s Trap; An Unwelcome Summons
The Responsibilities Of Friendship; Why An Agreed Upon Plan is Not Always Agreed Upon; For Lack Of A Horse
How Not To Wake A Musketeer; A Little Perfidy In The Right Place
hg
“En garde,” Monsieur Henri D’Artagnan said, as he
danced back to a defensive position, and lifted his own sword. “Unsheathe your
swords.”
Facing him, under the pale yellow sun of early
Autumn, outraging him with their presence on the outskirts of Paris, just
outside the convent of the Barefoot Carmelites, three guards of Cardinal
Richelieu pointedly did not
unsheathe.
Instead, the lead one – a middle-aged blond – looked
from D’Artagnan to – behind the young guard – the three musketeers who stood,
staring at the scene with varying expressions of amusement.
“But, Monsieur,” the guard of the Cardinal said,
lifting his hat and scratching at the sparse blond hair beneath. “All I did
was remind you of the edicts against dueling. How would this justify dueling
with you?”
D’Artagnan hesitated, his internal conflict visible
only in a straightening of his shoulders and a sharp look up. Seventeen years
old, with the lank dark hair and bright, dark eyes of his native Gascony,
D’Artagnan was muscular and lean like a fine horse. And as in a fine horse,
every one of his thoughts was obvious in movement, in stance, in a tossing of
the head or a quick glance. He knew this. He was aware of his body’s
betraying his impatience.
“It seems to me,” a mannered, cultivated voice said
from behind D’Artagnan. “That you have offered our friend a great insult,
monsieur guard.”
It was a voice that would have sounded very well
coming out of a pulpit and explaining in rounded phrases some obscure point of
theology. The gentleman who spoke, so far from looking like a priest, was a
tall, well built blond, whose blond hair falling in waves to his waist shone
from brushing.
His clothes, in the last cry of fashion, boasted a
doublet that was only vaguely that of the musketeer’s uniform. Though blue, it
was made of patterned satin and criss-crossed with enough ribbon to adorn
several court dresses. More ribbons adorned sleeves and hung in fetching knots
from wrist closures. A profusion of silver buttons shone like the ice that
sparkled from the ground on this cold November morning.
His name was Aramis and despite the languid speech
and the intent gaze he now bent upon his perfectly manicured nails, he was
known as one of the most dangerous blades in the King’s musketeers and a
breaker of ladies’ hearts. It was said he was pursued by princesses, courted
by duchesses, and that a foreign queen had sent him the expensive jewel that
dazzled from his exquisitely plumed hat.
D’Artagnan knew Aramis well enough that he did not
need to turn to know that his friend’s bright green eyes shone with mischief.
Aramis was enjoying this. His enjoyment did not help D’Artagnan calm down.
“Indeed,” another of the musketeers said. He was as
tall as Aramis, but of quite a different type. His clothes were in the fashion
of decades ago – a tightly laced doublet and old-fashioned knee breeches that
displayed, below the knee, a muscular leg encased in mended stockings.
This musketeer’s curly hair – a black so dark as to
appear blue in certain lights – was tightly pulled back and tied roughly with a
scrap of leather. His pale skin betrayed the slight creasing around the eyes,
the lines around the mouth that showed him the oldest one of those present –
and as not having lived an easy life.
Looking back over his shoulder, D’Artagnan saw that
his friend’s smile was guarded, but that his dark blue eyes sparkled with as
much mischief as those of Aramis. His name was Athos, though D’Artagnan had
found that in another life – before he’d joined the musketeers to expiate what
he considered his unforgivable crime – he’d been the Count de La Fere, scion of
one of the oldest families in the realm.
His nobility showed now, as he advanced a foot and
tossed back his head. Despite his mended clothes, he was very much the grand
seigneur as he said, “I think these gentlemen owe you an apology, D’Artagnan.”
“What I don’t understand,” the third musketeer said,
his voice booming over the landscape and making the guards jump. “Is why they
assume we were dueling, I mean...” He paused struggling for words.
This enmity with language was the trademark of
Porthos and despite his present anger D’Artagnan couldn’t help smiling slightly
at hearing it. It often made people think Porthos stupid, but very few would
tell it to his face, because Porthos looked like a Norse god. Much taller than
his companions – or indeed than anyone else – with broad shoulders and a
muscular body capable of feats of strength to rival those of mythology, Porthos
could not be made more splendid by wrapping himself in finery. This didn’t stop
him trying.
Norsemen had dreamed of such as him in the guise of
Thor, beating an eternal forge. They probably had failed to imagine his gilded
baldric, the rope of gold that surrounded the brim of his hat, or the multiple
jewels that flashed from each of his powerful fingers. Most of them glass, if
D’Artagnan knew his friend, but splendid-looking nonetheless.
Porthos shook his head, giving the impression of
utter bewilderment, as he asked the guards, “Mort dieu, can’t four friends meet
to go to a dinner without bringing you down on them with your edicts and
your... your... dents dieu, I know not what to say... Your regulations? The
precious orders of your... Cardinal?”
“But, monsieurs,” the guard pointed out reasonably.
“Surely...” He shrugged, not in a show of lack of knowledge, so much as in
total bewilderment. His bewilderment, his meek pose were an affront to
D’Artagnan’s mind and heart. “Monsieurs, surely–” He looked around at the
immediate surroundings, where the scuffed ground, two broken swords, and a
trail of blood leading, tellingly, to the door of the convent, all spoke a
recent fray. “Surely you see... There’s been a duel here.”
“Oh, and if there’s been a duel, we must be to
blame, eh? Very pretty reasoning that,” Porthos boomed. “That’s the
musketeers. Always dueling. Easy thought. And wrong. We were going to
dinner.”
D’Artagnan, who found none of this funny, and whose
blood lust was rising at the guards’ refusal to face him, spoke only through
clenched teeth, to repeat yet again, “En garde.”
“But–” the guard said, and opened his hands in a
show of desperation. His companions, two smaller, darker men, stood with hands
on the hilt of their swords, but did not draw.
Aramis sighed, heavily – the sort of world-weary
sigh that could be expected from a man who claimed that he was wearing the
uniform of a musketeer only temporarily, until he could attain his ambition of
becoming a priest. Hearing it, no one could guess that his seminary education
had been interrupted years ago when a gentleman had found Aramis reading the
lives of saints – at least that was what he swore he’d been doing – to the
gentleman’s wellborn sister and challenged Aramis to a duel, thereby forcing
Aramis to kill him.
“If you must know,” he said, looking up from an
intent examination of his nails and speaking in a voice that implied that no
well bred person would push the point so far. “We heard the moans of the
injured and we stopped to render assistance. I am, as you have probably heard,
all but in orders, and I thought perhaps I could give some comfort to the
dying.”
The guards looked from one to the other. “You’re
telling us that you came to help these other men?”
“Very good of us, it was,” Porthos boomed. “In fact
we behaved like true Philistines.”
The guards looked up at him with disbelief, and even
D’Artagnan was forced to look over his shoulder at his giant, redheaded friend.
“I believe you mean Samaritans, Porthos,” Aramis
said, and coughed.
“Do I?” Porthos said, then waved airily. “All the
same, I say. All those people were the same, anyway. Always giving their
aunt’s wife’s donkey in marriage to each other.” And with such a cryptic
pronouncement, he said, “D’Artagnan, if they apologize, will you let them go?”
D’Artagnan shook his head. No. No and no and no.
Their very apologies would only enrage him. The truth was that the guards had
come – of course – just at the conclusion of a duel arranged by the musketeers
the day before. They’d arrived just after the musketeers had dispatched their
opponents and helped the wounded carry the dead to the convent.
And now they persisted in their nonsensical quest to
arrest the musketeers – without drawing sword, without raising their voices,
without in fact, even calling attention to Porthos’ blood-smeared sleeve or the
noticeable tear that rent the sleeve of Athos’ doublet on the right side.
They not only had found out that the musketeers were going to duel – in itself
this was not a great mystery, since the duel had been called in a tavern over a
handful of noblemen’s refusal to drink the king’s health – but they refused to
fight.
D’Artagnan’s scornful gaze accessed the guards’ middle-aged countenances,
their pasty faces, the fact that each of them carried the sort of extra weight
that a few duels a month burned off. He judged them to be nobodies. The type
of nobodies given a post in the guards to appease some family connection or
some powerful nobleman.
They wouldn’t fight because they couldn’t. And if
D’Artagnan slaughtered them all, the best to be hoped for would be that he
would become everywhere known as a killer of the defenseless. There was no
honor in a killing such as this. There would only be shame in winning; but
losing was unthinkable.
Sending these men to arrest musketeers was, in fact,
not only an insult, but a cunning ploy of the Cardinal’s. The sort of ploy
that the snake who ruled behind the throne of France was well known for. And
D’Artagnan’s friends didn’t even see it.
D’Artagnan stamped his foot, in hatred of the
Cardinal and in fury and frustration at his friends. “Draw, or I slaughter you
where you stand,” he said, knowing only that to back out would be shame and to
continue forward would be disaster. He was caught in the Cardinal’s trap.
The sound of running feet didn’t intrude into his
mind. He did not look until a well known voice called, breathlessly, from the
side, “Monsieur, Monsieur.”
D’Artagnan turned. Planchet had been left safely in D’Artagnan’s lodging, at
the Rue des Fossoyers. Planchet would not come here, like this, much less
think of interrupting a duel without very grave reason. Reason so grave that
D’Artagnan couldn’t even imagine it.
All this was in his mind, not in full thoughts – not
fully in words – as he turned, sword still in hand, still lifted, to see his
servant – his bright red hair standing on end, his dark suit dusty and stained
as if he’d run the whole way here – leaning forward, hands on knees, a
respectful distance from him. “Planchet, what is it?”
And the guards attacked. D’Artagnan heard the sound
of swords sliding from their sheathes and turned. He was barely in time to
meet head-on the clumsy rush of the blond guard.
“Ah, coward,” he said, only vaguely aware that
Porthos and Aramis had joined the fray on either side of him, taking on the
blond’s assistants. D’Artagnan parried a thrust and made a very accurate
thrust of his own, slitting the man’s doublet from top to bottom and ending by
flipping his hat off his head. “Would you duel with a real man?” he said.
The blond had a moment to look aghast at his torn
clothing, cut with such precision as not to touch the flesh beneath, and to
bend upon D’Artagnan a gaze of the purest horror. His lips worked, but no
sound emerged.
And D’Artagnan, his mind viewing the man and his fear as only a move in his
chess game with the Cardinal, thought he glimpsed an opening, a way out of the
trap of honor in which he found himself. He lunged forward, saying, “You think
you can stand up against the musketeers? Don’t you think it will take more
than that to face the men who have so often proved superior to his Eminence’s
best guards?”
“That’s right,” Porthos said. He had, with easy
bluster, inflicted a minor wound on his opponent’s arm, and was grinning, as he
prepared to parry a counter attack that might very well never come. “That’s
right. We’d rather die. Be cut to pieces right here, than allow you to arrest
us.”
“At any rate, Monsieurs,” Aramis said, from
D’Artagnan’s right. “It would be a more merciful and quicker way to die to
allow ourselves to be killed here than to face the wrath of Monsieur de
Treville.” There was still a tremolo of amusement to his voice, and D’Artagnan
wondered if Aramis had begun to glimpse both the trap and the way out. Or if
he, cunning as he was, had seen it all along, and before D’Artagnan did. “So
we die here, Monsieurs, but you cannot arrest us.”
And in that second something broke in the leader’s
eyes. He looked down at his torn doublet that showed a dubiously clean linen
shirt beneath, then he looked quickly up at D’Artagnan. And then his sword
clattered to the ground and, before D’Artagnan could gracefully accept his
surrender, the man had taken to his heels, running fast over the ice-crusted
fields, slipping and standing and slipping again.
His men, clearly treasuring following their leader
over valor, dropped their swords so fast they seemed like echoes of his, and
did their best to catch up with him.
“Well played, D’Artagnan,” Aramis said. “I was
wondering when you’d see their surrender or preferably their flight was the
only way out of this for us. At least the only way with honor.” His lazy
smile, the paternal tone of his words, implied that he’d seen this all along.
D’Artagnan wondered if it was true. With Aramis it wasn’t easy to say. Aramis
himself might not know.
“Poor devils,” Porthos said, looking after the fleeing men. “They
were as set up for this as we were. And the wrath they face from the Cardinal
makes what we’d face at Monsieur de Treville’s hands seem almost gentle.” He
took a deep breath, straining the expanse of his broad chest. “The affront is
the Cardinal’s. I wish it were possible to challenge him for a duel.”
“He was a good enough duelist in his youth,” Aramis
said, his tone deceptively light.
And D’Artagnan wondered if his mad friends, who
hated the Cardinal for many good reasons as well as many foolish ones, would
suddenly decide to challenge the Cardinal.
He opened his mouth to remind them that men such as
his Eminence didn’t fight with their swords but with the might of the kingdom,
when Athos spoke, “D’Artagnan, attend. This is grave business.” He held a
letter in his hand – its seal broken – and waved it slightly in D’Artagnan’s
direction.
“Grave?” D’Artagnan asked. He sheathed his sword
and stepped towards Athos. “What is it? From whom? And for whom?”
But the words died on his lips. He’d got close
enough to recognize his mother’s hand, the rounded, convent hand that she’d
been taught as a younger girl. His mother? Writing to him? Normally his
father did.
And Athos was alarmed, as doubtless had been Planchet to run all the way
over here. With shaking hand, D’Artagnan plucked the sheet of paper from
Athos’ unresisting fingers and brought it up in front of his eyes, focusing on
the writing.
“Dear son,” the letter started primly. “I regret
the necessity of it, but I must call you back from Paris at a very short
notice. You see, there is no one else to claim the name or the domain. There
is no one else to take up the care of the lands, or even to look after me.”
D’Artagnan blinked in confusion at the words, wondering what his mother could
mean, and almost had to force himself to read on. “Your father departed this
world on Monday, a week ago. Today is the first time I’ve had the time and
solitude,” solitude was heavily underscored, “to write this letter to
you. For you must know that though they say it was a duel, I cannot be easy
about your father’s death. He had, after all, been looking into your uncle’s
affairs and I think he was doing it at the behest of that great man, Cardinal
Richelieu. Of course, no one else knew this, either that he was looking into
things or about the Cardinal, but a woman knows these things.” Knows
was, again, deeply underscored. “You know how your father valued you and
trusted you. I can’t tell this to anyone else. Please, hurry home, son, and
take up your rightful place in this household.” It was signed in a tremulous
hand with what read like Mauvais D’Aortoise but D’Artagnan could guess to be
his mother’s signature – Marie D’Artagnan – distorted by emotion.
But... what emotion? D’Artagnan could bare absorb
the contents of the letter.
His father dead? From a duel? Impossible.
Monsieur D’Artagnan pere had taught his son to such effect that even the most
famous fighters in Paris could not best him.
A murder disguised as a duel? Impossible again.
D’Artagnan’s mind ran over the place of his childhood, those domains that he’d
described often as smaller than the Cemetery des Innocents in Paris.
D’Artagnan’s father had grown there and, save for
the brief time at war, lived there, in those villages and fields. There was no
one there who’d raise a hand against him. It would never happen.
And yet... His father was dead. And his father had
been working for the Cardinal?
Every feeling revolted, and the print seemed stark
and cold upon the page. D’Artagnan felt a sob trying to tear through his
throat, and fought it back with all his might, with greater strength than he’d
ever had to employ against a human enemy.
He took a deep breath. His voice came out
reasonably controlled. “You are right, Athos. This is grave. I’d best attend
to it.”
“Of course,” Athos said. “When do the four of us
leave for Gascony?”
Top
hg
“You will arrange my luggage, Planchet,” D’Artagnan
said, as he entered his home.
It was late afternoon and the long twilight shadows
of fall fell brownish grey into the sparsely furnished rooms. The yellowish
light coming through the windows barely allowed the eye to distinguish a broad
polished table with four chairs around it, and, beyond, the door to
D’Artagnan’s bedroom.
D’Artagnan walked all the way into his bedroom,
speaking, “I did not intend to be so delayed, but it is just as well. I must
pack. We must leave tonight. And if we leave at night, we’re less likely to
be found. Porthos and Aramis are on guard at the Palais Royale tonight, are
they not?”
As he entered his bedroom, he realized that Planchet
hadn’t followed him. He turned to see the young man standing in the middle of
the entrance room, his hand on the polished table. “Leave?” he said.
“Tonight? But Monsieur, your friends...”
“Ah, yes, my friends. They presume they’ll go with
me, do they not?” Indeed they did and had consumed the best part of the
afternoon in plans for how long they could get leave to accompany their friend,
how long that leave should be and how to ask Monsieur Treville for it.
D’Artagnan had listened to it all, feeling uncomfortable, but it wasn’t till
the way home, by Planchet’s side, that he’d realized why he could never take
his friends with him. And that he must leave without them. “ But they don’t
understand, you see, Planchet. I am the only son of my father’s house.
Granted, my father is only a second son, and his estate, inherited from his
mother, is not very big. But still I am his only heir, and as his only heir, I
must stay there and look after my father’s lands and tenants.”
“Monsieur_” Planchet said, his tone shocked. Standing in the
middle of the living room, he looked very pale, his red hair seeming to
contrast unnaturally with his skin. The hand he rested on the table tightened.
D’Artagnan sighed. He couldn’t begin to understand
why his decision should distress his servant so. After all, what did this have
to do with Planchet? It was D’Artagnan whose life had just been blighted.
He’d been in Paris only six months, but in fact, between meeting Athos, Porthos
and Aramis and falling into easy friendship with them, between duels and murder
investigations, he felt like his life in the capital was at least as long – and
twice as rich – as his life before that, amid the drowsing fields, the bucolic
landscapes of Gascony.
“I don’t want to go, Planchet, but I see no other
choice. Now, if you’ll help me pack, we can be out of here in a couple of
hours. We can stop and get some food on the way. I have some money. And we
can ride through most of the night, then sleep somewhere by the way side
tomorrow. We won’t need an inn during the day and that will make us harder to
find. Just in case my friends...”
“Monsieur,” Planchet said. “Monsieur.” He was
clearly in some distress and D’Artagnan could see that he was struggling for
words as much as Porthos normally did. “Monsieur, only... Only think of Madame
Bonacieux.”
D’Artagnan groaned before Planchet had fully
finished pronouncing her name. Madame Bonacieux, his Constance, was
technically the wife of D’Artagnan’s landlord. Technically, since hers was a
marriage of convenience and she seemed extremely artful in avoiding performing
those duties that the church said a wife owed a husband.
She was the goddaughter of the Queen’s steward, and
she served in the palace as a maid to Queen Anne of Austria. This meant, in
truth, that she rarely came home and when she did it was even more rarely at
such hours as might encourage propinquity. She came at noon, or in the
morning, visited her husband and was gone, claiming urgent work for the queen.
Only... only of late, for the last couple of months,
she’d been coming at night, now and then. Her husband knew nothing of it. In
the darkness of night, Madame Constance Bonacieux would discretely open the
door that led up the stairs and to her tenant’s room.
It was D’Artagnan’s first love affair, and his heart
and soul had become possessed by the beguiling blonde, court bred, cosmopolite
woman. He loved her laughter. He loved her voice, cultivated and sounding
perfectly rounded, much clearer than his own enunciation, which would always
owe something to his native Gascon dialect. He loved the clothes she wore –
those delicate, exquisite court gowns, made of the most flawless silk, and
designed to push and reveal just the right things.
But most of all he loved her without her clothes
on.
He groaned again.
He didn’t know when next Constance would have a
night off. Those happened not at her pleasure, but at the whim of her
mistress, the Queen. Like all royal caprice, such favors were erratic.
Normally D’Artagnan knew about it only as he felt her slipping into bed beside
him.
He supposed he would never see her again. He
supposed, too, that in three months, maybe less, his mother would ask him to
marry some local girl. Not too noble – no one would push high nobility at a
man of D’Artagnan’s possessions. In his younger days, he had conceived a
desperate passion for Irene, his girl cousin – a passion that his uncle had put
an end to quickly enough. Since his uncle had inherited the majority of the
estate, his nephew was not nearly rich enough to aspire to a girl of the elder branch
of his family.
So she would probably be a girl of the low nobility
– well born but not titled. The daughter of some other small manor holder.
She would speak Gascon, and she would never have been outside her native land.
She would never have seen a court gown, and she would be nothing like
Constance.
Of a sudden, D’Artagnan realized that the worst
thing that could happen was not his leaving without seeing Constance again.
No, the worst thing that could happen was his seeing her again and having to say
goodbye to her, knowing it was the last time he beheld her gold-and-rose
loveliness.
“Mort dieu,” he said. “Come, Planchet. No time to
lose. We must be out of here before she would come, supposing she comes
tonight. We have no time to lose. We must– ” He stumbled into his room, in
the growing darkness, and started haphazardly throwing his clothes into a
saddle bag. He didn’t have many clothes. Two spare shirts and a spare uniform
in the color of the guards of Monsieur des Essarts, the brother in law of
Monsieur de Treville.
Tossing the blue-grey tunics into the saddle bag, he
sighed. He’d have to wear them out, of course. There was nothing for it. His
family was not so wealthy that it could afford new suits of clothes on a whim. And
in Gascony no one would know what these meant. Only he would. Only he would
mourn that, having served his apprenticeship for musketeer amid the guards of
Monsieur des Essarts, he would now have to leave without becoming a musketeer.
Frowning, he thought that he would have to write a
letter, to leave here, with other letters addressed to his friends. One of his
friends would have to convey D’Artagnan’s formal resignation to Monsieur des
Essarts. Perhaps not the best way to do it, but D’Artagnan knew he wouldn’t –
couldn’t – be coming back, and all of a sudden couldn’t bear the thought of
having to take leave of any of his friends and acquaintances in person.
“We must hurry,” he said.
Planchet, still looking distressed, had taken time
to light a candle, which he now brought into the room. “I don’t understand
your determination to leave before you see your friends again,” he said, in
measured tones.
“Oh, them most of all I do not wish to see,”
D’Artagnan said. “Their circumstances are so different from mine, that they’d
try to convince me to return from Gascony after organizing my affairs. They’d
try to convince me to leave someone else in charge and come back with them.
Only imagine Aramis’ dismay at the thought that I’ll go to a place where fashion
doesn’t penetrate. And Athos, who abandoned his own domains, won’t understand
that I have no convenient family to take over mine. And Porthos... Well...
Porthos just won’t understand. There’s nothing outside of Paris for him.” He
shook his head. “I don’t know how to explain it to them, and it’s easier to
present them with the fact of my departure and leave letters explaining. I
will of course invite them to visit and of course they won’t, but... Easier
that way.”
“And myself, monsieur?” Planchet asked. He set the
candle down and opened his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“You’ll come with me. I’ll need a servant on the
way, in case I meet with some mishap. Someone to go call for help, at any
rate. And besides, you’ll need to bring the horses back.”
“The horses?” Planchet asked, as if he’d never heard
of such a creature.
“Of course.” Why was the young man so slow-witted
today? Normally his mind raced close enough to D’Artagnan’s, or, truth be
told, if it involved numbers, from the counting out of money to the planning of
a leave, raced ahead of D’Artagnan’s. So, why so slow today? The news of
D’Artagnan’s father’s death could not have distressed Planchet. It must be
that he didn’t like the idea of that long a journey. “We’ll have to borrow
horses from Monsieur de Treville, and – since I won’t be coming back – you’ll
have to bring them back to him.”
“But... what about me?”
“You? What do you mean?”
“You mean to send me back to Paris,” Planchet said.
“How am I to make my way back to Gascony, afterwards?”
D’Artagnan frowned, suddenly understanding, and
confused. He hadn’t given it any thought. Planchet was just Planchet. He’d
been D’Artagnan’s servant from D’Artagnan’s first week in Paris. He’d
accompanied D’Artagnan on all adventures. D’Artagnan hadn’t thought...
Now he looked at Planchet as the horrifying
realization dawned on him that he couldn’t really support Planchet as a servant
in Gascony. For one, the house already had servants – an elderly couple.
They’d been with D’Artagnan’s parents forever. In fact, the man had been
D’Artagnan’s father’s servant in the wars.
It wasn’t that the house couldn’t afford one more
servant – D’Artagnan cast a critical gaze over Planchet’s scrawny frame – or at
least it could easily afford a servant well used to starving. But D’Artagnan
thought, for the first time, on what Planchet would think of Gascony. He’d
worked as a clerk at an accountant’s before hiring on with D’Artagnan, and he’d
complained of the boredom. Surely, a rural house in Gascony could be no
better.
What D’Artagnan could offer him would be a menial
life working for a poor house. “I am sure,” he said, not feeling sure at all,
but hoping. “That Monsieur Porthos or Athos or Aramis will find you a position
and–”
“Monsieur_” Planchet said. “Monsieur_” He
dropped to sitting on D’Artagnan’s bed. In a low voice that seemed to come
from the other side of the grave, he said, “You can’t mean it. You can’t. I’ll
end up as a clerk again. Most gentlemen don’t want intelligent servants. Most
gentlemen would not tolerate my correcting them or... Monsieur_”
D’Artagnan could not bear it. Through his mind,
still -- stark -- ran his mother’s words. His father had been working for the
Cardinal. And now his father was dead. Supposedly, he’d died in a duel. But
D’Artagnan’s father could not have been killed in a duel, fairly fought. So
that must mean...
His heart was full of images of all he was about to
lose – Athos, Porthos, Aramis. Their hours of easy camaraderie, the duels in
which they all served as seconds for each other, the nights spent on guard –
all would be gone, and no more than a fleeting receding light to warm the
darkness of his future years in Gascony.
Constance would be gone too. She would go back to
being just Madame Bonacieux, a beautiful woman trapped in a loveless marriage.
A beautiful woman he’d known all too briefly.
He managed not to sigh, but it took an effort.
There was no room in his mind for Planchet. Planchet would accompany him to
Gascony, and then he’d come back with the horses. And then one or the other of
the musketeers would provide for the young servant. Surely, they would find
him something. “I’m sure,” he said. “They’ll look after you. I’ve leave a
note for Monsieur Athos.”
He’d thrown all his possessions into the saddlebag,
not a hard feat even if he now possessed more clothing than he had when first
arriving in town. At the top he put the jar of the ointment made according to
his mother’s recipe, an ointment so miraculous that, by its use, every wound
that had not reached vital organs would be cured in three days. After all, it
was a long journey south to Gascony, and who knew what perils he’d encounter.
Particularly if his father had been murdered.
“I’ll write notes, now, while you go borrow two
horses from Monsieur de Treville’s stables. Tell them you will return them in
no more than ten days. Tell them I require the horses on a matter of great
urgency, but pledge my honor for their return.”
As he spoke, he was heading towards the table where
he kept some sheets of paper and an inkwell and quill. He must write to Athos
and Porthos and Aramis. Separate letters as his friends had very different
natures. And he must write yet another note to Constance – which he’d enclose
inside Aramis’ note for delivery, as otherwise her husband might read it first.
He barely heard as Planchet eased his way out of the
house into the evening outside.
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Athos woke up with someone climbing in through his
window. Or rather, he woke up with the window slowly creaking open and then
scuffing sounds, as though someone were dragging himself up through the window.
It was so impossible, so patently impossible for
anyone to be insane enough to break into a Musketeer’s room – much less the
room of one of the most dangerous of that band of barely disciplined ruffians –
that Athos knew he had to be dreaming. Asleep on the massive, curtained bed
that he’d brought with him from his estate, wearing only his shirt, he turned
in bed, trying to find a more comfortable position.
This turn caused the linen sheet and the blanket to
slip aside. He felt a cold current of air. Cold. As if someone had opened
the window, prior to climbing in. The scuffing sounds were followed by two
light thumps, like the sound of a not very heavy someone jumping into the room.
Athos rose. He rose before waking, tearing aside
the linen sheet. His hand grabbed for the sword that he kept always by the
side of the bed. By the time he opened his eyes fully, he was standing, sword
in hand, bearing down on a slim figure by the window.
The figure – little more than an indistinct darker
patch in the surrounding gloom, was that of a tall young man, or perhaps a
woman. Tall, almost as tall as Athos himself, but much, much slimmer, with no
sign of the muscles that made the musketeer a dangerous foe in combat. It made
a bleating sound and pressed itself against the wall, arms splayed against it,
as if it were trying to crawl into the wall.
“Ruffian,” Athos said. “You thought you could come
through my window and kill me while I slept. Do you go about robbing innocent
men in their sleep?”
And to scare the creature – who Athos could tell
wasn’t armed, and whom he merely wished to terrify away from a criminal life –
Athos thrust his sword forward, stopping a hair’s-breadth from the intruder’s
chest.
“Monsieur,” the creature bleated. And, on a deep
breath, drawn in with force, like that of a drowning man, he added, “Monsieur
Athos, it is I.”
Athos blinked. That someone would break into his
room was impossible enough. That someone who knew him not only by reputation
but by name was unbelievable. No one, not a single one of his friends would
presume that far upon their friendship as to startle Athos out of a sound sleep
and count on escaping unscathed before the musketeer even regained his senses.
This was not one of his friends. Athos blinked
again. “Who–”
“Monsieur, it’s Planchet. You must help me with my
master.”
“D’Artagnan,” Athos said, his voice filled with
alarm. The young guard, almost young enough to be his son had become somewhat
Athos’ adopted son in these last six months. By virtue of being the oldest of
the musketeers, the erstwhile Count de la Fere had made it his business to keep
the youngest of his friends out of trouble. Which, given D’Artagnan’s nature,
often proved a fraught and slippery business. “What has happened to
D’Artagnan? Speak. Is he wounded?”
But Planchet only bleated again, “Monsieur,” and Athos
realized that he was still holding his blade in close proximity to Planchet’s
heart, and that there was a good chance the youth was scared.
He withdrew the blade and, by touch, made his way to
the mantel in his room, from which he grabbed a candle in its pewter
candlestick. He lit it from an ember in the banked fire in his hearth.
The wick, flaring to life, revealed a very pale
Planchet still knit with the wall, as though fearing another bout of homicidal
madness from Athos.
“Don’t be a fool,” Athos said, and, setting the
candle on the mantel, started casting about for his breeches and doublet.
“What of your master. With what do you need my help? Is he wounded? Surely
not. We left him hale. Did he– ”
“He’s mad,” Planchet said.
Athos looked over his shoulder, as the young servant
took a step away from the window. “If by mad you mean wandering in his wits, I
doubt it. D’Artagnan is one of the shrewdest men I know. Granted, the shock
and grief over his father’s death,” Athos said, remembering the contents of the
letter he’d taken from Planchet’s hand and read before passing it on to
D’Artagnan. “Might cause him to act a little distraught. But... mad?”
Planchet leaned against the wall again, this time as
if he needed support. His skin was ashen grey, in shocking contrast with his
hair. “He’s getting ready to leave for Gascony now,” he said. “Even as we
speak, there are two horses tied at your door. They belong to Monsieur de
Treville, and they will be used to carry my master and myself to Gascony. From
whence I am to come back and return the horses.”
“You are to come back?” Athos asked. “But we’d
said– We’d agreed– ” he controlled himself and pressed his lips together, as
though grimly accepting the inevitable. “I see,” he said. “And your master?”
“He stays in Gascony, monsieur. He says he’s his
father’s only son and that he must fulfill his duty. He says– ”
“Doubtless a great deal of nonsense,” Athos said
pulling his doublet laces so tight that they were just short of impeding
respiration. “His father was killed, and we don’t know why, so he would go and
brave Gascony on his own?”
“Yes,” Planchet said. “He says he doesn’t want to
drag you into this, since he can never return with you to Paris, and that– ”
“As you say,” Athos said, strapping on his sword
belt. “Mad. You did well to come to me, even if you could have used a more
orthodox way of gaining entry.”
“I knocked,” Planchet said. “And knocked. But I
can’t delay too long or my master will suspect...”
“Indeed. So you took your life in your hands. A
brave man, Planchet.”
Planchet didn’t look particularly brave. He looked
like he might lose consciousness at any minute, after the shocks of the last
few moments.
“Perhaps you can leave through the front door this
time, though,” Athos said. “I told Grimaud not to open to anyone, you see,
which is why you had no answer. I thought we’d be traveling in the morning. I
see D’Artagnan has changed this.”
“Monsieur, you can’t let him go alone. He– ”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. You go to your master. I
will go to Porthos and Aramis at the Palais Royale.”
“But Monsieur, you’ll never catch up with us.”
“Don’t worry about that. I know shortcuts. Trust
me. We would not let your master face possible murder alone.”
“But I don’t know which road we’re taking, and I...”
“Worry not. We’ll find out. Your master is not the
first man we’ve followed.” He allowed a small smile to tug on his lips
remembering all the mad adventures they’d engaged in, even just since D’Artagnan
had joined them. The people they’d followed. The mysteries they’d solved.
“But you see, I must get Aramis and Porthos and then I must speak to Monsieur
de Treville, or at least leave a note. And find someone else to take our
places in the guard roster. It is a duty we can’t simply walk away from.”
“Monsieur, Monsieur,” Planchet said, alarmed by this
long list of things to do. “But my master will leave as soon as I arrive. I
know it. It will be hard to ever find us.”
“Don’t worry,” Athos said. “Don’t worry. We will
catch you before you’re too far gone.”
He followed the boy down the stairs to the street,
his mind efficiently organizing things and listing what he must do like any
general marshaling troops for a difficult campaign. He had no doubts they’d
catch D’Artagnan. Though the Gascon was as cunning and twisty minded as Aramis
at his worst, he was not likely to be using his cunning fully to escape his
friends. He was more likely – being modest and placing a low value on his own
company and friendship – to think as soon as they were gone they would utterly
forget him. The fool.
They would follow him and they would go to Gascony
with him. But what madness had the boy’s father got into? What could he have
been doing for the Cardinal? What tangle would they find in Gascony?
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