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Excerpt from
by
Sarah D'Almeida
Prologue, or How I came by the other Diaries Of Monsieur D'Artagnan
The Duel that Wasn't; Where the Cardinal's Guards are Taught a Lesson; A Handy Guide to the Taverns of Paris
The Many Complications of a Dead Musketeer; Where the Corpses of Queens are Different From the Corpses of Commoners; What One Owes the Dead
A Musketeer's Servant; the Many Guises of a Seamstress; a Little Desecration in the Proper Place
hg My first encounter with the gentlemen known to all the world as Athos, Porthos, Aramis and -- of course -- D'Artagnan came at a young age when, searching through the shelves of my grandfather's library, I was called by several leather bound volumes bearing the name Dumas on the spine.
I hardly need tell anyone who had the good fortune of reading Monsieur Dumas' works at an early age with what rapt attention I followed the actions of the brash young man from Gascony and his three daring companions.
Over the years, I've returned to the same book -- and its companions Twenty Years After, and Viscount de Bragelone -- every winter, when the snow first fell. I re-read the adventures of the four charming rogues, again and again, by my cozy fireside. But I knew I'd never encounter them in any other writing.
I was wrong. This winter, when snowflakes first danced on the thin mountain air of Colorado and while my slippers and my hot chocolate waited with a leather bound book by my comfortable chair, a delivery service dropped an unpromising battered cardboard box on my front porch.
Inside it was a brief note from my father-in-law, some of whose ancestors immigrated to the New World at the end of the seventeenth century.
Not a French speaker, he said he thought it best if I were given these papers, found in the estate of an elderly relation.
I confess I perused them, at first, with some distaste. The pages had mildewed to an unappetizing shade of greyish yellow and I had to turn them with the greatest care to prevent their falling apart. I picked a word here and a word there, amid decay and mildew. The spelling was quite the oddest I'd ever encountered.
However, on page two I encountered the name D'Artagnan, on page five the name Athos and on page ten the names Porthos and Aramis together. By page fifteen I realized these diaries referred to murders investigated, solved and often avenged by the three musketeers plus one. I was hooked.
After that, I devoured the twenty mildewed diaries with the eagerness of one too long separated from a childhood friend. Woven around the events that Dumas told the world of in his books, the diaries started with the fateful duel at the Barefoot Carmelites. However, they very quickly turned into a series of murder mysteries often involving the highest nobility of France.
The main of it was written in ink that had faded to brown, and in an assured, angular handwriting that marched across the pages with the certainty of a military officer on campaign.
However, over it all, there were notes in other hands, squeezed in the margins and scribbled between the lines. I soon learned to identify the small, sharp, inclined hand with Athos, the round, well formed ecclesiastical one -- still with a hint of violet to its tints -- with Aramis and the laborious printing with Porthos. The notes gave details that the writer of the main diaries -- certainly D'Artagnan -- couldn't have known at the time he wrote them.
I do not know how his friends came to editorialize D'Artagnan's diaries. And I have no idea how or by what crooked lines of descent and inheritance or happenstance and luck those diaries passed into the hands of my family.
The only thing certain is that those diaries, which I edited for coherence and adapted to our modern storytelling mode, reveal murders as intricate and fiendish as any writer could dream, and that these crimes could only be solved by Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D'Artagnan.
To whose spirit, nobility and courage I hope my retelling will do justice.
Sarah D’Almeida
January 2004, Colorado Springs
Top
hg D'Artagnan knew he was going to die.
It was April 1625 and the spring sun, fierce and blazing, shone like an unblinking eye over the bustling city of Paris. Henri D'Artagnan, aged seventeen, a slim, muscular young man with olive skin, dark hair and piercing black eyes, had arrived in town just the day before.
Now, under the noon sun, he stood outside the convent of the Barefoot Carmelites, a religious house situated in a conveniently deserted spot on the outskirts of town.
Around him spread fields of green wheat. The wind being still and no breeze stirring the sheaves, the only sound was the drowsy droning of insects, drunk with midday languor and heat.
And D'Artagnan thought this was the last day of his life.
If D'Artagnan weren't himself, if he were not the only son of nobleman Francois D'Artagnan, a hardened veteran soldier, D'Artagnan could have turned and taken off running through those fields, relying on his young, agile legs to get him away from death.
His mind cringed away from such an unworthy thought.
His opponent, with whom his sword was crossed, scraped the sword lightly along the length of D'Artagnan's. Just enough to call the young man's attention.
And D'Artagnan turned towards him, at the same time that his opponent's second, who served as their judge in this case, dropped the white handkerchief signaling the beginning of combat.
D'Artagnan's opponent came at D'Artagnan like a tiger, his sword pressing D'Artagnan close and demanding all of the young man's concentration.
The man was called Athos, and he fought like a veteran duelist. Which he was, being one of the older and more experienced and -- as far as D'Artagnan could determine -- one of the most feared members of his majesty Louis XIII's corps of musketeers. Other things D'Artagnan had heard, once he'd given himself the trouble of checking: That the man had the personal friendship of Monsieur de Treville. That he was of noble birth. That Athos was a nom-de-guerre, picked up to hide disgrace or guilt.
Athos attacked, driving the young man back and back and back, till D’Artagnan’s shoulders were solidly against the white-washed wall of the convent and only his quick wit and quicker reflexes permitted him to step sideways and avoid being skewered.
D'Artagnan flitted and skipped, danced away from trouble and contorted away from tight spots, but his mind became oddly detached.
His body moved and seemed to think with a reasoning of its own, while it parried and thrust, and made Athos back away. Meanwhile D'Artagnan's mind -- what his mother used to call his quick and lively mind -- had gone away, to some place at the back of himself. Some place away from the battle field, where it could do its thinking.
When Henri D'Artagnan had left the paternal abode, his father had given him only one substantive piece of advice. And that was that he fight often, that he fight well and that he never tolerate any insult from anyone but the king or the Cardinal who was, truth be told, as powerful as any king.
Henri had tried to follow his father's advice and, on the road to Paris, in the small town of Meung, had challenged a nobleman who laughed at his attire and horse. This had cost him dearly, as his opponent had his servants hit Henri from behind. While Henri was unconscious, the stranger had stolen Henri's letter of recommendation to Monsieur de Treville. The letter that would have got him into the musketeers this very day.
But I don't learn, do I? D'Artagnan thought to himself, as he pushed hard with his sword arm forcing Athos' sword away, shoving the musketeer back at the same time.
Athos fell away and tripped and bent down upon his knee.
I had to challenge three musketeers for a duel today. Three. Musketeers. Today, D'Artagnan thought, as he jumped nimbly back, ready to parry Athos' next thrust.
No, he didn't learn. He'd continued following his father's advice, until he'd managed to challenge the three men that the rest of the corps called the three inseparables. Athos, Porthos and Aramis. One of whom would kill him today.
D'Artagnan's mind was so preoccupied with its gloomy thoughts that he didn't at first realize that Athos hadn't got up from his position, half-bent over his knee.
"Monsieur," he said, when he did notice it. "Monsieur, if it would suit you to adjourn our appointment to another time..."
He noticed Athos' hand pressed hard at his right side, and he remembered the scene, that very morning, in Monsieur de Treville's office, where an obviously wounded and ill Athos had come in to present himself to his captain and to deflect Monsieur de Treville's anger at all of the three musketeers who'd been bested in a skirmish with the Cardinal's guards.
"Monsieur, if you are in too great a pain..." D'Artagnan said. He'd got in this duel with Athos by careening against the musketeer and making him bleed. And failing to apologize sufficiently for the hurt he'd caused.
But Athos only shook his head. He took a deep breath, audible in the midday stillness, and he rose slowly from his knee. "It’s nothing," he said, his face ashen. "It is nothing. I didn't want to distress you with the sight of blood you haven't drawn." A red stain showed on the side of his doublet. He changed his sword to his left hand. "If you don't mind, I will fight with my left hand, though. It will not put me at a disadvantage, as I can use either hand to equal effect. But it might be harder for you to defend yourself."
D'Artagnan nodded. He knew he would die anyway. And if he was going to die, perhaps it would be best if it was at Athos' hands. Of his three potential opponents, he liked and admired Athos more than the other two. It was no dishonor to be killed by such a man.
Athos straightened and pulled back a stray lock of pitch black hair, which contrasted glaringly with his alabaster-pale complexion.
D'Artagnan had heard that Athos was considered handsome by many men and even more women in Paris. This opinion baffled D'Artagnan.
Athos' face was spare, with high cheekbones and intense, zeal-burned eyes. The rest of his features, precisely drawn and finely sculpted, made the man look less like a living being and more like those caryatides of Greece and Rome -- columns given human form and forever holding aloft the white marble roof of a temple or palace.
Athos' character, like his appearance, seemed as spare, as certain, as controlled as those columns. Rightly or not, he gave the impression of a man who served a cause greater than his own whims, purer than his own advancement.
And this, D'Artagnan thought as Athos raised his sword, was what D'Artagnan would have liked to be -- if he ever got to live beyond his present seventeen years.
Aramis, Athos' second and D'Artagnan's next arranged opponent, stepped up. He was a blonde man, so dainty-looking that one might fail to notice he was almost as tall as Athos and as muscular. Accounted a gallant by all who knew him, he was said to be popular with the ladies and rumored to be entertaining duchesses and princesses by the score.
D'Artagnan, who had challenged him to a duel over an argument started on a point of honor, had at first thought him just a dandy and nothing more. But Aramis' bright green eyes showed such a keen appreciation for the irony of D'Artagnan's situation, that perhaps there was more to him.
As he stepped up, picking up his white handkerchief from the ground where it had lain, he said, "You must restart the duel."
D'Artagnan, noticing that Athos was very pale still, his skin tinged with the grey of a man fighting extreme pain and realizing that Athos’ old fashioned Spanish-style doublet was laced tightly over his musketeer’s tunic. "I would not object if you undo the ties on your doublet, since the sun is so devilishly hot."
But Athos shook his head. "I thank you for your courtesy," he said. "But really, I'm afraid if I do it will restart the bleeding. The wound is bothering me."
"Do not misunderstand me, I am eager to cross swords with you," D'Artagnan said. "But if you wish to wait and perhaps drink something for your present comfort..."
Athos smiled, a flash of genuine amusement. "Your sentiment does you credit, but I believe in collecting my debts promptly and drinking afterwards. And then, it is not the first time I've fought while wounded." He shifted his feet and tilted the upper half of his body forward, baring his teeth slightly, as if allowing the animal to peer out of his noble features.
"Come, come," Porthos spoke, from where he stood by the white wall of the convent, hands the size of hams folded over the guard of a very substantial sword. A redheaded giant, he dwarfed other men with the size of his lean, muscular body. Each of his arms looked to be the size of D'Artagnan's thigh, each of his legs like an oak tree trunk. And yet he gave the impression of suppleness, of not a wasted ounce on his huge frame. "You are all talk. Less talk and more fighting. Remember, Athos, he owes me satisfaction after you and Aramis have your turns. He offended me most horribly on a matter of fashion."
Did D'Artagnan fancy that a smile crossed Aramis' and Athos' lips, when Porthos spoke?
Aramis raised his eyebrows and, still holding his handkerchief aloft, turned towards Porthos. "When you wish to be so rude, you should speak for yourself only, Porthos. I have no objection to the noble and proper sentiments these gentlemen express. Indeed, I will gladly listen to them for as long as necessary, before they feel it fit to cross swords."
And now another flinch of remorse came to join D'Artagnan's regret that he would die so early, leaving so much untasted of life's joys: that he would never get to know these men better. There was such an easy comradery between the three of them, so devoid of the formality of most friendships, that he imagined they could have been his friends.
"Only," Porthos said, pulling a large red handkerchief from his sleeve and mopping at his forehead with it. "It's too blazing hot."
"It doesn't matter," Athos said, and leaned forward, displaying his teeth, again, in that expression that was more animal threat than human smile. "For we are ready." He pushed his sword against D'Artagnan's and said, "En garde," between clenched teeth.
Aramis dropped the scarf.
A throat was cleared, nearby, neither by Aramis nor Porthos.
Their swords still crossed, D'Artagnan and Athos turned to look. Five men stood near them -- so near that they could only have approached unnoticed while the musketeers and D'Artagnan were distracted with talk and worry for Athos' wound. All of them wore uniforms similar to those of the musketeers, but where the musketeers wore blue, their knee breeches, tunics and plumed hats were bright red, like freshly spilled blood.
They were guards of the Cardinal, sworn rivals of the Musketeers, their enemies in a thousand brawls, a million street skirmishes.
"Well, well," said the leading guard, who had a suntanned face and a Roman nose. "What have we here? Dueling Musketeers? What? In open and defiant contravention of all the edicts against dueling?" He smiled unpleasantly revealing a wealth of very large, yellowed teeth. "I'm afraid we'll have to arrest the lot of you."
"Leave us alone, Jussac," Athos said, without turning to look, his sword still crossed with D'Artagnan's. "I promise you if we found you in the like amusement we’d sit back and let you proceed. Enjoy and amuse yourselves, have the profit of our injuries with none of the pain."
Jussac smiled wider. "That’s as it may be, Monsieur Athos. But the thing is there is an edict against dueling and our master, the Cardinal, wants laws obeyed."
Athos lowered his sword. He turned to Jussac and, with an air of strained patience, said, "Nothing would please me more than to oblige you. But, you see, our captain, Monsieur de Treville, has forbidden us from being arrested."
Jussac sighed, in turn. He lifted his hat and scratched under it at his sweat-soaked hair. "Think about it," he said. "There are only three of you, one of you wounded. Three of you and a child who was dueling you. If you force us to fight you, they will say it’s murder."
The three musketeers formed a circle, from within which their worried voices reached D'Artagnan's ears.
"I’m afraid he’s right, you know," Aramis said. "There are only three of us, one of us wounded. And there’s five of them: Jussac, Brisac and Cahusac, the three fiercest fighters in the Guards, and two of their companions. They will slaughter us."
Athos paled yet further and glared, his zeal-burned blue eyes seeming to flame. His features hardened into a harsher pose of dignity. "I would rather die than appear before Monsieur de Treville defeated again."
"Me too," Porthos said.
D’Artagnan remembered the scouring reproach that Monsieur de Treville had inflicted on the three musketeers that morning. Everyone waiting in the captain's antechamber had heard it. He didn’t blame the three for not wishing to face such humiliation again.
"Very well, then," Aramis said. He straightened a little and squared his shoulders. "We’ll die here."
"You, the child," Jussac said, pointing at D’Artagnan. "Save yourself. We’ll allow you to go."
D’Artagnan looked at the three musketeers who were so calm, so resigned, gallantly preparing themselves for death rather than face dishonor. He looked over at Jussac, who smiled benevolently at him, showing long yellow teeth.
He pushed himself into the musketeers’ circle, shoving his sweaty face between Aramis’ and Porthos’ shoulders. "You are wrong," he said. "When you say there are only three of you. I count four of us."
They looked back at him and for a moment it looked as though Porthos were on the verge of asking who the fourth one might be. But, before he could, Athos smiled. "You’re a child," he said. "And someday you’ll be a man I’d be proud to call a friend. But right now you’re a boy. And this is suicide. Our chosen death. Save yourself."
"No," D’Artagnan said, his certainty growing with the rebuff. "No. I’ll stay and fight by your side."
"But, you’re not a musketeer," Aramis said. "Why would you want to die with us?"
"Though I don’t wear a musketeer uniform," D’Artagnan said. "In my heart I am a musketeer. And though I might only be able to give you very little help, if I leave and save my life, I’ll never be able to live with myself."
For a moment Aramis stared at him, Porthos frowned at him, and Athos furrowed his brow as if in deep thought.
And then Athos smiled. "You’re right," he said. "There are indeed four of us. Athos, Porthos, Aramis and– Your name, my friend?"
"D’Artagnan," D’Artagnan answered, as his heart hammered faster and faster in his chest, and once more he was sure he was going to die.
This time he knew he was going to die at the end of the guards’ swords. But he would die next to musketeers. He would die almost a musketeer. His father would be proud.
"Well, then, Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan. One for all and all for one. If death is to come for us, let us not keep her waiting. Let us go out and meet her halfway, like gallants, and receive her kiss proudly."
"We grow impatient," Jussac thundered, outside their circle. "Will you save yourself or not, boy? Because if not, we're coming to get you."
The circle broke apart as though they had rehearsed, and the four of them faced the five guards.
"We’ve made a decision," Athos said, his voice steady and calm.
"Oh," Jussac said. "I hope it’s a sensible decision."
"Very," Athos said, and removed his hat, and bowed with a deep flourish. "We’re going to have the pleasure of charging you."
Before the guard could snap shut the mouth that he’d let drop open in his astonishment, Athos’ hat was back on his head, and Porthos and Aramis had unsheathed their swords.
"One for all and all for one," they shouted, as they fell on the guards.
By the rational odds of combat and war, they should have lost. There were but four of them, one of whom was severely wounded, and the other little more than a child.
D’Artagnan’s only experience of dueling had been his mock duels with his father, in the field behind their house, in the calm Gascon countryside.
If that duel had been decided on body count, or on experience, or even on the relative size of the opponents, surely the guards of the Cardinal would have won.
But wars and duels are fought with the mind, the heart, and that other thing – that thing that is neither loyalty nor comradery, but which has hints of both.
That thing allowed D’Artagnan to know and come to the rescue when Athos’ breathing grew too labored. That thing allowed him to go away when Athos had recovered enough to resume his own battle.
And duels are also fought with pride and fear. The three musketeers were too proud to surrender, too fearful of Monsieur de Treville’s wrath to allow themselves to be arrested. They fought like fury unleashed.
Porthos fought and defeated two enemies at once.
And so, fifteen minutes later, the only one left standing of the small army of Cardinal Guards was de Brissac – like D’Artagnan, a Gascon, and like D’Artagnan, ill-suited to surrender. Surrounded by all the musketeers, he broke his own sword upon his knee to avoid losing it.
But then he gave up. He helped the musketeers and D’Artagnan take the wounded and dead to the convent’s door. And stayed behind with them, while the musketeers and D’Artagnan rang the bell and walked away.
Years later, D’Artagnan would try to recall the rest of the afternoon. All he would remember was Athos’ promising that he would show D’Artagnan the best taverns in Paris.
And then they’d gone to the Louis, where there were ten musketeers and where, when Porthos had told their story, people had rushed to buy them strong, sweet, fiery liquor. From there, they’d walked a block to The Maiden’s Head, where the seven musketeers present had listened to their story with awe. And then to The Head and Bucket, where, at the telling of their tale, musketeers and sympathizers had bought them a sparkling white wine.
D’Artagnan remembered there had been a pause between The Grinning Corpse and The Coup de Grace, while he leaned against a wall in an alley and lost most of the wine he’d drunk in the preceding hours.
But then they’d taken him to the Drinking Fish for a few mugs of house special, and from there to The Drunken Lord for something that tasted like molten fire.
Night had fallen when D’Artagnan found himself stumbling along the back alleys and narrow staircases of the working-class neighborhoods of Paris, one arm thrown over Aramis’ shoulder, Porthos' huge hand on his other shoulder, singing softly a song about the Queen, the King and the Musketeers which would surely be treason if they weren’t all drunk and all so loyal that they’d just risked their lives to ensure the King’s own musketeers suffered no defeat.
"We should take the boy home first," Athos said. He had to be drunk. He’d drunk more of all the various liquors than all of them combined. He had to be dead drunk. But he walked steadily and his voice sounded, if anything, a little slower and calmer and more controlled.
Porthos giggled. "‘s right," he said. "It is past the time schoolboys should be asleep."
"Where do you live, D’Artagnan?" Aramis asked.
"Rue des Fossoyers," D’Artagnan said, glad he’d rented lodgings before going in search of his fate outside the Barefoot Carmelites. Looking back it had been presumptuous to think he’d survive three duels. But, at least, he’d have a place to sleep tonight.
"Good," Athos said. "That’s just around–"
He turned, as if to get his bearings, and as he turned, and they with him, they all saw a figure in the uniform of a musketeer cross the alley right in front of them.
"Oh, I say, wait," Athos said. "Wait, friend. King's Musketeer, hold. Have you heard that we defeated Jussac outside the Barefoot–"
The musketeer jumped, as if touched with hot iron, and took off running, the sound of his steps echoing and reverberating through the maze of narrow streets.
The musketeers stopped and frowned at the space where the unknown musketeer had been.
"That’s abominably rude," Aramis said.
"Musketeer or no, someone should teach him some manners," Porthos said.
"He should buy us a drink to make up for it," Athos said. "After all, there must be a place still open."
As one man, they ran, pursuing the fugitive. D’Artagnan followed the sound of their steps.
They ran down so many blind alleys, careened precipitously down so many worn staircases that D’Artagnan was sure they’d never find the runaway musketeer. He’d be lucky if he didn’t get separated from his friends.
But at last, they all surged into an alley. And there, on the ground, the musketeer lay.
The three musketeers had been calling and jeering and laughing, but now all their noises stopped.
It was suddenly very quiet, in that alley. Far away, an owl hooted, chasing prey in some attic. D’Artagnan drew a deep breath that sounded too loud in the silence.
"It can’t be," Aramis said, under his breath.
But though D’Artagnan had never seen a dead body, he knew the musketeer lying on the muddy, smelly ground of the alley was dead.
If asked, he could have given no more justification than a certain angle of the arm protruding from under the body and the stillness, the eery stillness of whole body.
"He’s dead," he said.
Aramis crossed himself and Athos stepped forward, towards the corpse.
Top
hg Athos was suddenly, startlingly sober.
One moment he'd been laughing and running with his friends, his head muddled, his vision blurring scenes and places.
The next breath he was stone cold sober, standing in a narrow alley, his nose full of the stink of mud and the human waste that housewives daily emptied from their windows into the common street. His head hurt a little, with something that was not so much a hangover as the distant echo of a hangover. His shirt and hose stuck to him with dried sweat and felt prickly and cold against his skin. His tightly-laced doublet made his shoulder wound throb.
He lifted his hand and wiped his forehead. His side hurt with burning, insistent pain. The wound he'd received from Jussac the night before was still bleeding and perhaps starting to become infected.
Surely Athos’ reactions showed a touch of fever. Because he'd seen death many times. Death, in the battle field or in private brawl meant very little to French noblemen, used to and encouraged to quarrel over matters of honor, over matters of the heart, even over trivial matters.
It had been a long time since Athos had learned how quickly the flame of life could be extinguished in combat.
But it had been even longer since he'd seen the body of one killed dishonorably. A murdered corpse.
And, without being able to point to anything specifically, he was sure this man had indeed been murdered. There had hardly been time for him to challenge anyone, to engage in a duel with anyone.
Athos stepped forward, a prickle of uneasiness at the back of his neck. He knelt by the body, ignoring the smells that accompanied death.
The dead man must be very young -- there was so little breadth to his shoulders. Short too, shorter than their new friend, D'Artagnan. The hair that escaped from the broad brimmed musketeer hat was as pale-white as moonlight.
And the light of the lantern hanging at the door to a tavern three doors down was enough to see that the left hand, extended to the side of the body -- palm up as if in supplication -- was white and pale and unmarred by calluses.
This meant that not only was the man young and, undoubtedly, had led such a sheltered life as only certain wealthy families could afford, but also that he'd been a musketeer for a very little time.
Because the wielding of the sword, the gripping of the oft ornamented pommel, the force necessary to parry and thrust with the blade, soon turned the hands of those sons of the nobility who made the sword their profession as callused, as blistered and as rough as the hands of any farmer's son.
From beneath the neck, on the right side, a little pool of thick liquid -- dark under the insufficient lighting -- spread sluggishly on the muddy ground.
Athos put his hand on the back of the boy's head. It felt warm still.
"Help me turn him," Athos said.
Porthos stepped forward, put a hand on each of the boy's shoulders and easily, like a boy turning a rag doll, flipped the body so it was face up.
In the effort, the hat went flying. Athos flinched as the corpse's blue eyes appeared to stare at him.
It was not a boy, but a young woman.
She could be any age between sixteen and twenty, but Athos did not need to notice the gentle swell of breasts beneath the musketeer's tunic to know that it was no man.
Her forehead was too smooth, her nose too small, slightly tilted up. Her eyes were too wide. Her lips too soft and pliable. Lips that would have made many a suitor tremble.
Her eyes looked puzzled, as if she couldn't quite understand what had happened, and there was a small crease of worry on her white forehead.
Without thinking, Athos brought out his handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped the mud and blood from the side of her face. Then he gasped, in turn.
She looked like-- It was--
He jumped back, unconsciously tracing the sign of the cross over his own forehead -- not in the carefully deliberate way Aramis did it, but in the frantic way of a child warding off evil.
From either side of him, in Porthos' booming tones and Aramis' half-sighed ones, he heard the words his mind whispered. "The Queen. It is the Queen."
Athos shook his head, reflexively. D'Artagnan pushed forward and stopped at the feet of the corpse, looking hesitant.
"It can't be the Queen," Athos said. "It would never be the Queen. What would our Queen be doing here, in Musketeer attire, in the dark street?"
A half groan from Aramis answered him, a wordless crescendo of worry. It stopped fast and, without turning, Athos was sure his friend had bit his own tongue to stop the sound.
And then in a fearful whisper, because this wasn't an antechamber or a salon where such things could be said and bandied as a joke, Aramis said, "It is said Buckingham is in town."
"Aramis!" Porthos said.
Athos didn't say anything. He hadn't heard the rumors of Buckingham's visit. But then he wouldn't. Other than his two friends who knew better than to gossip to him, he spoke to very few people. Most of his days were spent in silence. Even his servant, Grimaud, had been taught to answer a gesture or an expression, which saved Athos the trouble of talking.
He'd joined the musketeers as other men would join a cloistered order. In fact, it was only the consciousness of being the last one of his noble line that had kept him from donning some russet habit and hiding forever in the dark bowels of a monastery. That, and the memory of his sin.
Looking at this dead woman now, brought his sin to mind again. The thought of another woman he'd seen dead. His wife. His... wife.
He ran his hand over his forehead and eyes, as if by doing so he could remove the veil of the past and the thoughts he didn't want to think.
"I only say what I have heard," Aramis said defensively.
"Yes, but there are things that shouldn't be said," Porthos answered, his booming voice trying to control itself into a hiss and therefore hissing and booming, both uncontrollably.
Athos knew that if he didn't intervene, his two friends, so close despite being diametrical opposites, would engage in an endless round of bickering. He often ignored such behavior while the three of them were out drinking.
He could not ignore it now. Aramis' certainty and Porthos' censure grated on his nerves like fingernails drawn, shrieking, down a blackboard.
"Well, she might be the Queen," Aramis said. "But she is also human. We are all fallen creatures and it is said that the king avoids her."
They were standing in front of a corpse that might be that of the Queen of France. They were standing at the feet of someone dead by violence and stealth. And yet Aramis and Porthos would bicker as usual.
"Well, a fallen creature she might be, but she's also a Queen and as a Queen and at that the--"
"Silence," Athos removed his hat, held it at his chest, an insufficient but needed gesture of respect for these remains. "Silence."
At his words, the others fell silent and removed their hats also.
Athos struggled for words. As a child, he'd been outspoken, fluent. Often he'd filled his afternoons with poetry.
But in the last ten years he'd tried to silence all his words -- internal as well as external. The fewer the words, the less they would reproach him and the less he would think of the crime that had sent him fleeing his earldom, his nobility, his responsibilities as a lord to don a musketeer's uniform and an assumed name. The less he spoke, the less he would think.
Or at least, that had been the theory. In fact, the things he refused to name and speak of often visited him in blood-soaked dreams that woke him, sweat-drenched and screaming, in the middle of the night.
Yet, silence had now become an habit, a turn of mind, a form of thought. It took him several moments to collect his words.
When they came, they came slowly to his tongue, like children who, once chased from a garden, hesitate to return and play there. "It matters not," he said. "Why the Queen would be abroad in this attire, if this is the Queen. There are reasons..." He hesitated and his eloquence floundered. "We don't need to know why, nor do we need to speak about it. Things said in jest are excusable. The same things said in earnest are treason."
Around him, his friends were so quiet that he could hear, streets away, the solitary footsteps of lone passerby.
"But if it is the Queen," D'Artagnan said, in a whisper. "If it is the Queen, then treason is the least of our worries."
Athos looked to the young man and met with a keen understanding and deep worry in the observant gaze.
He nodded, in response. "Yes," he said.
"I don't have the pleasure of understanding either of you," Aramis cut in. "You speak in riddles."
Athos turned towards his blond friend. Aramis was not a stupid man. Neither was Porthos, though often the way they reasoned could give the impression of stupidity. Athos could not be bothered with stupid people, and he'd chosen friends he thought his intellectual equals.
But Aramis' intellect was so bound up with his upbringing -- by a widowed, elderly mother who wanted only to get him into the church -- that he thought as theologians argued: in circles and whorls, through labyrinths and twisting paths that arrived at the truth by a totally circuitous route. Aramis often had trouble seeing what hadn't been stated several times over, in different ways and half of it in Latin.
Porthos too, a man who reasoned with his huge hands and his overdeveloped senses, would not immediately leap from the idea of this dead body in an alley to the trouble that would ensue in the world at large if this were, indeed, the Queen of France.
Porthos, the direct man of action, found words a slippery adversary who wouldn't meet him openly.
Athos sighed. Again he rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. Sober, he might be. Startlingly and suddenly sober. But the alcohol he'd drunk remained with him -- a dull ache behind the eyes, a confusion of the tongue. "I meant that if this is the Queen and she is dead, the world will tremble for this. Our king will say she was out for unknown motives, probably dishonorable, and that no one can ever find out who killed her. Her relatives abroad, though -- her very powerful relatives, the Hapsburg Emperor, her brother, and her cousins and siblings, in the various thrones of Europe -- will not be satisfied. They'll say our own king contrived her death." Athos shook his head, unwilling to speak further of all the things that could be said in this regard. "And then there is, as Aramis mentioned, Buckingham. He too is unlikely to believe the Queen's death was a murder committed by a mere footpad. He will want revenge. All of them will. There will be war."
"Let them make war, then," Porthos growled. "They will break their teeth on the nut of France."
"Shhhh," Aramis said.
And Athos looked around, at the still closed windows of the upper floors, at the deserted street, the lantern burning out the last of its oil in front of the tavern two doors down. Aramis was right. All the merchants in the street might be asleep, snug in their beds over their shops. But make enough noise and they would wake. And if they wakened... If they wakened, the scandal would be out in the open.
"She looks younger than the Queen," D'Artagnan said. He blushed furiously as Athos looked back at him. "I know all I've seen of the Queen are woodcuts and a portrait, once. But this woman looks like she can't be twenty, yet."
Athos grunted. He knelt and examined, as closely as the tavern light allowed, the small, white, flawless hands, and the corners of the eyes of the corpse.
He rose, shaking his head. "I can't tell for sure," he said. "She looks somewhat younger than our Queen, that is true. But then, our Queen has led a sheltered life. And she has no children. Both of these can make a woman look younger than she truly is. And then, I've never been that close to her Majesty though I've often seen her at court."
Porthos sighed. "Well, well," he said. "I'll go alert the guard then, right? No use us going on like this."
Aramis gasped. "Porthos, I've said it before, but I'll say it again. You can be a fool."
"A fool? I? How?"
And there, they would be off on another round of the endless bickering that they enjoyed as much as other men enjoyed chess games.
"He's not a fool," Athos cut. "He's simply not seeing the whole thing. If the murder of Anne of Austria leads to an invasion of our country, what are we as men of honor and musketeers to do?"
"Defend France," Porthos said.
"Exactly. But, Porthos, by the time the armies of Europe converge on us it might be a little late to defend our country."
There was a silence. "Er..." Porthos said. "Er... how are we supposed to defend France, then?"
"By stealth," the young man, D'Artagnan, said. "By not telling anyone who this woman is, or that we found her, or that she's been murdered. By hiding the murder."
"That's despicable," Porthos said. "To hide a murder and let the murderer go free?"
"Hush, Porthos," Athos said. "No one said anything about letting the murderer go free, but our friend the Gascon seems to know my mind better than I do, so I'll let him speak."
D'Artagnan looked up at him, and he met the gaze with a half smile. The small man straightened himself in response, and turned away from the corpse, to face the other two musketeers. His hat, carefully clutched to his chest, was of an uncertain color between blue and black -- as if the fabric had suffered one too many colorings. The two plumes were broken and half-bald, as if they had been played with by countless generations of toddlers.
"The thing is, if we say nothing and investigate the murder, then when we know who the murderer is, we can present it to someone -- Monsieur de Treville, for example -- who will then present it to the king. With proof and a well-reasoned explanation. So that when the king announces her majesty's death to the crowned heads of Europe, he will be in a position to prove he did not cause her demise."
"Exactly," Athos said, relieved he didn't have to find the words to explain it. "Exactly what I was thinking."
Porthos sighed. "But we'll have to hide the body. For... days."
Aramis sighed. "I know a man," he said.
Athos smiled, but managed not to say that this was strange as, in fact, Aramis normally knew women.
Aramis glared at Athos, as if he knew the thought that had crossed his friends' mind. "He is a curate in a little church near here, in the street of the Holy Martyrs. He has a cellar... Where he often keeps the bodies of people who die in Paris and whose relatives will come from the provinces to fetch them for burial. Or people whose names and relatives no one knows. He keeps them a while and if they're not claimed, he pays for their burial himself. I suppose if the curate were another person, of different means, his basement would be a wine cellar, for it keeps amazingly cold even in this heat. And he keeps the bodies in coffins. All that could be holy and proper. It is his ministry, his vocation. Just as I feel that mine is to preach to those too comfortable in their sphere and with their wealth..."
Athos nodded, forbearing to say anything about the methods Aramis used for that preaching. Aramis seemed to first demonstrate the sin so he could more easily bring the lady -- it was always a lady -- to repentance. "That would do," he said. "Yes, that would do, handsomely."
"But we'd share a dreadful secret," Porthos said.
"And have we not in the past?" Athos asked. His friends nodded. D'Artagnan, their new acquaintance, looked wide eyed at them, but said nothing.
"Well, then," Aramis said. "I live close by. I'll go home and send my servant, Bazin, with a message for my friend, the curate, to come with his wheelbarrow to collect the corpse, shall I?"
"Yes," Athos said. "That would be--"
"No." It was D'Artagnan, his voice full of urgency. "No," he continued as all of them turned to look at him.
"You don't want us to solve this murder?" Athos asked.
"You don't want us to hide the body?" Aramis asked.
"You are too cowardly to aid in this?" Porthos asked.
D'Artagnan shook his head. He looked from one to the other of them but, at last, he faced Athos.
Athos felt as if the young man wanted to talk to him alone, as though having decided that Athos was the most likely to understand him. Or perhaps the least likely to shout him into silence or cast aspersions on his courage.
Athos smiled a little, in encouragement, and the young man took a deep breath.
"What I meant," D'Artagnan said. "Is that before we do this, there is something else we must decide. What if this isn't the Queen? What if she's just someone who died because she resembled the Queen? Or someone who was killed by a jealous lover, or a controlling husband, or a refused suitor?" He took another deep breath, and looked around at them.
Athos, confused as to why this mattered, was sure that D'Artagnan met with equally blank expressions from Aramis and Porthos.
D'Artagnan sighed. "Like this," he said. "If this woman was murdered for some reason that has nothing to do with the king or the security of France, we're doing her a disservice by hiding her body. It might be some time before her murder is revealed to the guard and even a few hours might allow the murderer to get away."
"But..." Athos hesitated, not knowing how to explain it to the youth. "Surely the security of France--"
"Yes," D'Artagnan said, impatiently. "Yes, but... There is this woman too. If she's neither the Queen, nor murdered because she looks like the Queen, then we should let the law catch her murderer. If we don't, we're wronging this woman." He gestured broadly towards the corpse.
"Oh," Athos said, understanding it. Into his mind crept the memory of another unavenged murder -- a countess of France left swinging from a low branch in the forest, her murderer unpunished. "Oh," he said. "I think I see your meaning. If we hide this body, we're committing ourselves to solving this murder, whoever the victim is."
He looked around at Aramis and Porthos. "Do you understand?"
Surprisingly Porthos nodded, one second before Aramis.
He swallowed, audibly. "It would be damnable," he said. "To leave this woman's murderer free and unpunished."
"Yes," Aramis said.
"Yes," Athos said, wondering if her ghost would join the other by his bed, in the middle of the night. "Assuredly, D'Artagnan. You have the right of it. We will investigate this murder, no matter who the victim is."
"Or the murderer," Porthos said.
Athos looked towards him, wondering what was in his friends' mind. But Porthos' blue-grey eyes were unreadable. Athos inclined his head. A half nod. "Or the murderer," he said.
Before he quite knew what he was about, he pulled his sword out and extended it over the corpse. A salute of sorts.
The Gascon seemed to understand what Athos was doing and pulled out his sword, holding it so that the tip just touched Athos'. Aramis was next. And then Porthos.
"On our honor as gentlemen and musketeers," Athos said. "We will find this woman's murderer. Whether the woman be a Queen or a beggar, we will see justice done," he said.
"One for all,"Aramis said.
"And all for one," the others completed in a chorus.
Top
hg Aramis sheathed his sword. He wasn't sure why they'd done that, but he was the first one to admit that Man -- a fallen and fallible creature -- often had need of ritual to steel his weak self to great decisions.
Look how even God had condescended to create ritual with which mere mortals could worship him. Surely it wasn't because God needed the ritual but because humans needed it.
Aramis knew better than to give voice to these thoughts. He knew that his friends would just stand astounded looking at him. Or worse, Porthos would laugh and Athos would let that little ironical smile -- more insulting than any laughter -- slide across his lips. As for the boy, Athos wasn't sure. But Gascons had a reputation that preceded them, and it was neither for piousness nor for quietly listening to pieties.
The problem was that no one, save his servant Bazin, believed Aramis was sincere in his devotion and anxious for the day when he could lay his sword aside and take on the habit.
"I'll go for Bazin, then," Aramis told Athos, keeping his voice even and soft. His mother had told him early on that a good cleric never lets his voice rise and fall with his emotions.
Shouting displeased God and scared the faithful. And besides, Aramis had found that women preferred soft-spoken men. Although he doubted his mother meant to teach him the best way to attract women, considering his own father had died in an affair of honor when a lady’s inconvenient husband had surprised him in showing the new court dances to the lady.
Aramis shook the thought from his mind. "And I'll come back here, so I'll be with you when my friend arrives to collect the body."
"We'll wait," Athos said. "And keep guard and scare away anyone who might see the resemblance."
D'Artagnan picked up the hat from the ground, and gently set it over the corpse's face. He looked up and flashed Aramis a smile. "No one will mind," he said. "If musketeers keep watch over a dead musketeer. Probably a duel, you know, or an accident."
Aramis nodded. He would have to watch the boy. Until now, he'd been the only one in his group of friends capable of cunning or willing to employ deception. Athos disdained it and Porthos couldn't understand it.
But this Gascon bore watching. He was young, yet, and it was sometimes hard to tell from the seed what the fruit would be. Yet Porthos and Athos had accepted him, and both Porthos and Athos were good at accessing character.
Aramis turned and walked down the narrow alley to the left, and then down another, southward and under an arch, where two houses, on each side of the street, had become one by linking to each other with a little enclosed corridor-bridge.
Down three houses to his own austere residence, where he lived as quietly and Spartanly as the monk he hoped to become.
Up two flights of stairs, he opened the door. And was greeted by the steady drone of the rosary being muttered just under one's breath. Beads clicked. The only light burning was a tiny candle at the foot of a vast, ornate iron crucifix that took up most of the wall of the narrow entranceway.
At the foot of the cross, kneeling on a padded knee rest that, like the crucifix, had belonged to Aramis' mother, was Aramis' servant, Bazin.
Bazin had been born into the household of Aramis' father, and had, from early childhood, showed the kind of easy and unquestioning piety that Aramis envied. When Madame D'Herblay, Aramis' widowed mother, had decided that her two year old son would go into the church, Bazin had been overjoyed. He had immediately attached himself as personal servant to the young man, ten years his junior, and vowed to go along and become a lay brother in whatever order the Chevalier D'Herblay graced with his vows.
Now, twenty years later, Bazin outweighed his youthful master two to one. He wasn't so much fat as spherical -- a short man as broad as he was tall. He had, in fact, the ideal build for a monk. And his hair had started falling out in such a way that it gave the impression of a tonsure.
Disappointed with the sudden change in their fortunes, shocked at the affair of honor that had chased Aramis from his novitiate and into a musketeer's uniform, Bazin refused to admit he was now the servant of a musketeer. He dressed all in black, spoke in a small voice well suited to monastery halls and spent most of his time on his knees and praying.
Aramis suspected that Bazin, still clinking his beads and whispering frantically the words of the Ave Maria, was either praying for his master to have a change of heart and finally return to his vocation, or for God to forgive Aramis his many sins.
Probably both.
"Oh, Bazin," Aramis said.
The beads clinked more ferociously and the whispering became slightly louder.
"Bazin, I have need of you," Aramis said, this time more firmly, as he closed the door behind himself.
The beads fell, with a clinking sound, and Bazin turned around, crossing himself as he did. "You're not wounded, are you?" he asked, as he stared at his master, widening his eyes to see more clearly by the light of the small candle.
Aramis reached for the candle at the foot of the crucifix. He removed the glass that shielded the lantern on the wall, and lit the wick. Then he replaced the glass, blew out the candle and set it back down.
Bazin blinked in the sudden light, like a mouse coming out of a dark hole into the noonday sun. "Monsieur--" he started.
"No," Aramis said. "Listen. I'm not wounded, nor is either of my friends wounded, if you were going to ask."
"Them? I don't care about them. Sinners all, leading you astray. The Bible says--"
"Yes, Bazin, I know the testament quite as well as you do. But right now I need your help. I need you to go to Father Bellamie and ask him to come with his wheelbarrow. There is a body for him to take care of."
Bazin crossed himself again. His mouth, which normally was small and puckered anyway, now puckered further, into an expression of extreme displeasure. "You killed your opponent at the duel today." He opened his hands, palm up, then clasped them together theatrically. "I knew it. And it will be some provincial Lord, whose relatives will make a lot of noise, and it will be years -- years yet -- before any decent order will take you."
Aramis shook his head. His irreverent mind insisted on asking what Bazin disapproved of the most in his imagined scenario. Was it the fact that Aramis would have tainted his soul with yet another killing? Or merely the fact that this inconvenient killing would delay their entrance into orders?
"I did not kill the person who's dead and in fact I'd never met... um... the person. It is a matter of some secret and--"
"The person," Bazin echoed disdainfully. "The person." He raised his hands to heaven. "Don't you think I know if it were a man you'd say so? Clearly, it's a woman who's dead." Bazin raised his hands to his head. "It was some woman who killed herself for love of you, wasn't it? Oh, the women you've condemned to eternal--"
"None that I know of," Aramis said hurriedly. And that was true. His abominable sin of lust which he couldn't seem to control might have stained souls, but not with the sin of self-murder. His mistresses usually continued to love him long after he'd tired of them, but not one of them had been so foolish as to kill herself. "And look, I truly don't know this woman. Bazin, this is a matter of the highest secrecy, a matter on which the fate of nations might hang. So, not a word. Not one word. Tell Ettiene Bellamie only that there's a corpse for him to pick up and we'll tell him the rest when he arrives. As much as he needs to know. Tell him to meet me and my friends where the Street of St. Antoine meets St. Catherine Alley. If he's at the crossroads and looks around, he'll see us easily enough. We're two doors down from The Pistol."
Bazin opened his mouth once or twice. Bazin's abiding sin was his love of scolding, as though his piousness liked best to display itself against the background of others' sins. But this time, even he couldn't make too much reply. He bowed once, and let the stiff way he held himself serve to reproach Aramis.
And then he turned and headed out the door, closing it behind him, and leaving Aramis alone in his rooms.
He crossed quickly through Bazin's room -- a spare cell, bare of all save a thin mattress and the blanket on the floor, a wooden cross on the wall and a suit hanging from a peg on the wall -- and entered his own, which was little different save that his mattress was set upon a very spare wooden frame and that, instead of the peg on the wall, Aramis had a wardrobe filled with his fifteen or sixteen spare breeches, tunics, cloaks and doublets. Also, he had a narrow desk, at which he worked at his Biblical study and his correspondence.
From a secret place at the bottom of his wardrobe, a compartment he was sure that even Bazin hadn't found, he retrieved blue linen paper of the best quality, quite different from the white paper he used for his everyday correspondence.
The top of the page was graced by Aramis’ coat of arms which he'd relinquished when he'd become a musketeer and taken on the name of Aramis.
He picked up the ink and the quill from his desk, and wrote quickly, in the hand of one trained to the church from childhood, "Madam, a matter of the greatest importance requires that I visit you tonight. Could you make the usual arrangements?" He signed it Aramis, though this woman knew his true name.
She was no passing lust and he knew not how to rid himself of the spell she cast over his body, heart, and soul. He could not enter an order while his whole being was permeated by desire for her.
She was just older enough than Aramis for him to be interesting, exotic and seductive to her. And just young enough to still look like a woman in the prime of her life. Her hair was as golden blond as his own, and her eyes just as sparkling blue.
Were it not for the inconvenient matters of a husband and a high-born title which she had and he lacked, they would have made a very pretty couple. But she had her duty and he had ... the church.
Aramis sighed heavily, as he swung out of his door and ran down the two flights of stairs to the front hall of the house. There were two doors there. One led to the stairs and to his own apartment and the other, to the right, led to the bottom floor where the landlord’s family lived.
Aramis knocked on that door with perhaps more force than could be expected of an apprentice priest, even one turned musketeer.
The response was surprisingly fast, as if they always listened for him. Which they might well do. Aramis had some vague idea that the family was happy to have him living with them. He was a musketeer and therefore he kept them safe. And he would one day be a priest or monk, so he certainly wouldn't dally with their two very pretty teenage daughters.
The youngest of whom, Yolande, now opened the door. The girl was maybe seventeen, and wore her chestnut brown hair free over a threadbare white nightshirt just worn enough to allow a glimpse of her pink flesh beneath.
Aramis felt his knees go weak and bucked up against the demon of lust, as he looked at the girl's steadily redder face, and said, "Yolande, please, if you'd call your brother."
Yolande curtseyed and went inside. Her brother Pierre came out shortly, fully dressed except that he was still fastening his ratty red velvet doublet.
Even if Aramis had not had a vocation and weren't keeping his eyes steady on the prize of ordination, Pierre would have made an excellent argument against Aramis' having any amorous intents towards the landlord's daughters.
Pierre was shorter than Porthos. Also, smaller. But Porthos was probably the only person who could claim that distinction.
Broad of shoulder, with huge arms and legs like columns, Pierre towered over Aramis by a good head. He wore a red velvet jacket and bright blue breeches, which went very well with the gold hoop in his ear and quite badly with his blunt features, greasy black hair and droopy moustache. A scent of spices and sweat rolled off him, as he lowered his head towards Aramis and said, "Yes?"
"I would like you to run an errand for me, Pierre."
"What?" Pierre asked. "The usual?"
"The usual. If you'd take my note to the royal palace and ask for Monsieur LaPlace of the royal guards. He will take the letter where it belongs."
Pierre blinked. One of the reasons Pierre was so eminently suitable to this duty was that he could not read. The mysteries of letters, the idea of words written upon the paper, remained closed books to the brave Pierre. More, he would probably be afraid that if he learned or tried to decipher the writing, he would become instantly emasculated. Aramis had long ago told him these letters were to a seamstress to whom Aramis gave spiritual advice.
"I find it odd," he said. "That a seamstress lives in the palace. And even odder," he said. "That she would need spiritual advice at this hour."
Aramis sighed and smiled, the ineffable smile of a saint who can divine the mysteries of heaven. "Yes," he said. "But you're not instructed in religion. A crisis of faith can happen at any time."
Pierre looked at Aramis and raised an eyebrow, but then, probably remembering the reputation of the musketeers, he shrugged his massive shoulders and said. "I'll do it."
Aramis, obligingly handed over the small silver coin that was Pierre's usual fee for this service.
And then he returned to St. Catherine Alley as fast as his feet would carry him. Just in time. Father Bellamy had arrived with his wagon and looked a little puzzled, finding only two unknown musketeers, a bellicose-looking young man, and a corpse.
At Aramis' arrival the priest turned to him with an expression of relief. "Ah, Monsieur, I'm glad you're here. I was afraid I had the wrong place altogether."
Aramis glanced at the corpse and almost asked how it could be the wrong place when there was a corpse right there. But then he remembered that corpses would be quite usual in this priest’s life since he made it his duty to care for all the anonymous corpses of the dead in Paris. And often paid for burial out of his own pocket, if no family claimed the body.
It was an odd vocation, and yet Aramis felt a sudden stab of envy. He would have liked to be engaged in that kind of work, doing good with no doubts and none of the tormenting demons of lust.
Bazin appeared, behind the little priest. They couldn't be more of a study in contrasts. Where Basin was rotund, the little priest was thin to the point of looking ill. Where Basin's face was red and florid and -- right then -- covered in perspiration, the little priest was wax-yellow, had only a few hairs clinging to the top of his scalp and seemed quite untired by his journey. He now looked at the corpse, and crossed himself. "The poor thing," he said. "A musketeer?"
Athos nodded. His look cautioned all the others against saying anything else.
Aramis said, "Bazin, that will be all. You may return to my lodgings and resume your devotions. I know you hate your prayers to be interrupted."
Bazin bowed. His mouth twitched, as though he longed to protest, but he couldn't quite bring himself to saying anything. He walked away as slowly as possible.
He was the greatest gossip alive, but gossiping was a sin and Bazin would never admit to sinful impulses. And it befit Aramis, a caring master, to keep Bazin from corrupting his soul.
Porthos and Athos set the corpse in the wheelbarrow, with such care that even if it jostled, the hat would not fall off the face.
The priest put his arms to the posts of the wheelbarrow and started to lift.
"Father, I'll do that," Porthos said.
The priest looked myopically at Porthos, as if the very large musketeer had appeared out of nowhere. "Bless you son," he said. "Very kind of you."
He stepped aside and let the giant push the wheelbarrow, while he walked alongside.
"I live just up ten blocks and to the left," he said. "Beside the church of St. Peter the Fisherman."
Porthos nodded as if he knew the way.
Aramis doubted it. It would be more Porthos' style to attend mass at a cathedral, where he could see the great ones of the land and be seen and admired by them. Of course, perhaps some maid, some laundress, some seamstress Porthos was courting attended mass at the Fisherman's.
Though Porthos often bragged about bedding with Duchesses and being disputed over by Princesses, Aramis was sure that his friend’s lovers lived lower in the order of society. Principally because those who truly had lovers at the highest levels didn't ever, ever, talk about them. Powerful husbands had powerful henchmen. Why risk one's life for bragging rights?
They walked a while in silence, and then the priest spoke, "This ... body, it is not of your making, is it?"
"No," Aramis said, firmly.
The priest nodded. "Good. You know what the Lord says about those who live by the sword."
"Yes, father," the four of them said, automatically.
Aramis wondered if it was true. For years now, he'd fought and dueled. Ever since an enraged husband had found him explaining the lives of the saints to his wife, and challenged Aramis to a duel; ever since Aramis had taken lessons from Porthos and learned enough to kill the man -- ever since he'd taken a musketeer's uniform to escape the consequences of what the law would view as a crime -- he'd been living a violent life.
Just this morning, he'd been ready to kill D'Artagnan because the man had been stupid about picking up a monogrammed handkerchief and giving it back to Aramis.
Did that mean Aramis would one day die by the sword?
Soon they arrived at the tiny church, the sort of church where the poor people in Paris worshiped. It was small and dank, and whitewashed, with a little tower that didn't climb any higher than two floors.
However, Aramis, touched by the true devotion of the priest, had often come to rosary or mass there, and he knew how the thin, reedy tolling of the bell in that tower called everyone from the hovels and narrow rental rooms hereabout.
Shoemakers and apprentices, printers and lace makers and embroiderers. They packed the pews and bowed their heads to the little priest's words.
The priest turned sharply to the house to the left of the church, and motioned for them to help him carry the corpse down a narrow flight of stairs to a basement.
But Porthos and Athos anticipated him and carried the girl's body down, the hat still over her face.
The priest opened the door and lit an oil lamp, whose light revealed a large, square space where a bank of coffins stood arrayed against the wall.
"There's one there they fished from the Seine," he said, speaking conversationally, as a man might discuss his neighbors. "I might have to pay for that burial myself. Even if the poor man's relatives are looking for him, they'll never recognize him after what the water has done to him."
A smell of must and spoiled meat stung Aramis' nostrils, as he hastened forward. The sooner they got the body into a coffin, the sooner they could be out of here.
"That coffin there is empty," the priest said, pointing to a coffin a little while away from the others. It was a simple pine box.
Aramis opened the coffin and found D'Artagnan helping him.
The other two laid the corpse within it, the hat still over her face.
The priest crossed himself. "I notice you keep the face covered," he said. "Is there some great treason here?"
Aramis felt a warm tide of blood climb up his cheeks. "There might be," he said. "It is something we cannot tell."
The priest looked as if about to admonish them. But D'Artagnan hastened forward. "Could you leave us alone a moment?" he asked, taking the lantern from the priest's fingers. "There is something we must do."
"You can't--" the priest started
"That is abominably rude, D'Artagnan," Aramis said.
"No, listen," D'Artagnan said. "No disrespect for either you or the dead is intended, but we haven't searched the corpse yet."
"You can't mean to rob from the dead," the priest and Athos said, in perfect unison.
D'Artagnan shook his head. "No. Only--" To the priest, "We also don't know who this is. There might be something on the corpse, a note, a letter that might allow us to find his relatives."
The priest raised his head, as if to nod, but looked doubtful.
"However, we think he might have been killed as the result of some treason," D'Artagnan said. "We don't know for sure, but we don't want to expose you to any trouble, if there is trouble. So we'd rather do this alone."
The priest stared at D’Artagnan a while, then crossed himself. "Well, I'll trust you, my son, may the Lord illuminate your judgment."
As soon as the priest had closed the door behind himself, Athos said, "I must agree with the priest. This is not decent. We cannot search the body."
"Even if it means it's the only way we find the murderer?" Aramis asked.
"Not you too, Aramis. I thought you were pious," Athos said.
"Pious but not stupid. Let's suppose -- just suppose -- this is not the... not Anne. Then who can it be? We’ll only discover that through a distinctive piece of jewelry, a note, something that tells us who she is."
Athos stared at Aramis. Aramis held his head up, staring back into his friend’s stern gaze. Truth was Aramis knew he often allowed servants and people like Pierre to talk back to him and to carry on as if they were his peers. The same people would never dare raise their voices to Athos, who could silence them with a single look of disdain. And they would be in mortal fear of Porthos' size and girth.
But they would talk back to the mild-mannered future-priest. And Aramis allowed them to. Life was too short to impose discipline and demand respect from people who did not matter to you.
However, in things that mattered, Aramis knew he could scare even Athos. He now engaged in scaring Athos -- by staring back at him steadily and allowing his features to harden into expressionless. "I know it's right, Athos. I know it's moral. It is stupid to swear to find this girl's murderer and then not to follow through."
Athos sighed. He groaned, a groan of defeat. He stepped back and took the lantern. "Fine, but be quick about it, and no disrespect."
Aramis was not absolutely sure what Athos meant by disrespect. Did Athos think Aramis’ lustful blood burned so fiercely that he would nurture an interest in even a dead woman?
He knelt and started going through the places where someone might hide possessions -- inside the boots, and within the sleeve of the uniform. D'Artagnan knelt opposite him and lifted the corpse now this way, now that, making it easier for Aramis to search.
Aramis flashed the young man a smile, which helped distract him from the grim task at hand. He'd never touched a dead woman before and the cooling flesh felt unpleasant to his hands. It reminded him all too clearly of the end to which all of them were hastening, even Aramis and his fair seamstress.
Around the neck of the corpse, he found two things -- a chain and a leather strap.
Undoing both of them he brought forth -- first a gold chain, from which hung the medal of a saint. Saints coined into the face of a medal looked all alike. The profile looked like a man's and there might be a halo, but Aramis could not be sure. Tilting the medal to catch the light of the lantern Athos held, Aramis read the inscription. "St. Jerome Emiliani," he said. "An Italian saint."
"Does this mean she's Italian?" Porthos asked.
"I don't know what it means yet," Aramis said. "I can't remember where I heard the name. I'll have to ask someone."
"And this," he said. Lifting the leather strap, he pulled out the purse that hung from it. It was almost empty, but he poured its contents out onto his hand.
There were two things inside – a letter, which he passed to D'Artagnan -- and a small braided silver ring with a pinkish stone, an inconsequential bauble that would only fit the finger of a child or a very small woman. Even this girl's fingers were too thick for it.
He showed it to the others. They shook their heads. It seemed to Aramis that Athos hesitated a moment, but Athos was over thirty years old and perhaps his vision was not so keen as to discern the jewel in the semi-gloom. It didn't bear questioning Athos, who would take offense at being doubted. Aramis slipped the jewel into his own pocket. "It might be of use in finding who she is," he said, at Athos' indignant glare. And added, "We'll return it to her family as soon as we know who they are."
Meanwhile D'Artagnan had opened the letter and looked puzzled. "It is all strange words and cyphers," he said. "But it seems to be in a foreign language, only neither Spanish nor English as I know some of both." He unfolded the letter and showed it to Athos. "But this I can’t make sense of at all."
Athos glanced over. "That's because it's in cipher, D'Artagnan. Meant to say something that only those who know the cipher can read."
"Well," D'Artagnan said. "How in damnation are we to decipher it?"
Porthos' huge hand shot out of nowhere and grabbed at the paper. "I know a duchess," he said, putting the folded paper in his sleeve. "Whose secretary is most wondrous with ciphers. I'll take it there now and it will be solved."
"Now?" Athos asked. "In the middle of the night?"
Porthos shrugged. "She's mad about me. She'll see me at any time."
"But..." Athos said. "We are in the midst of an affair that could maybe plunge our country into war. Who knows what conspiracy we've been caught up in? Who knows who might be following us? Porthos, it would be madness for you to go alone. I shall go with you."
"But--" Porthos said.
Athos smiled, his superior smile. "Ah, Porthos, you know I'm the soul of discretion."
Aramis felt uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. What Athos said was true. Aramis should not go to the royal palace without someone to watch his back.
If he had to have company, he would have chosen Athos. Who else could he ask?
He cleared his throat again. "I meant to go see a seamstress I know," he said. "Who probably can tell us whether the Queen is alive or dead."
"A seamstress?" Athos asked, with his cursed ironical smile. "Who knows the Queen?"
"She often works for the Queen," Aramis said, but felt himself blush. "She lives at the palace."
"Would this be," Porthos asked, "The same seamstress who writes on perfumed violet paper and seals her letters with a ducal crown?"
Aramis shrugged, telling himself that with such friends he truly didn't need enemies. Nonetheless, D'Artagnan's wide-eyed, amazed look made Aramis smile. Ah, the boy had a lot to learn about life in Paris.
"Look, she knows the Queen," Aramis said. "Personally. It will remove one of our doubts at least. But I meant to ask Athos to come with me. If he's going with you, Porthos, we won't be able to check with the seamstress till tomorrow."
"Take D'Artagnan," Athos said.
Aramis looked doubtfully at the young man so recently arrived from Pau or Bearn or some other godforsaken town in Gascony, which was, of itself, godforsaken. He was dark and silent, with little fashion sense and those disturbingly keen dark eyes.
"I too," the young man said. "Can be discreet. And silent as the tomb."
For a moment Aramis hesitated but, after all, the young man needed watching. And who better to watch him than Aramis who understood cunning and its workings?
He nodded. "Fine, you may come with me. But keep your eyes open and your mouth closed."
The young man smiled, a smile disturbingly like Athos'.
As they set the coffin lid back on, Porthos said, "We should find out where she got that uniform."
"Good idea, Porthos. We'll find out among our comrades."
And with that, they sealed the coffin and left, up the narrow stairs, where they found the priest waiting in his garden.
"Please, Father," Athos said. "There might be treason in this case and there might be danger if anyone else knows this corpse is here. I beg you not to show it to anyone. Even if someone comes looking for a dead musketeer."
"But--" Father Bellamie said.
"Please, Father, trust us," Aramis said. "On my faith we’re only trying to find out who killed this person and return the body to the family."
The priest looked long and hard at Aramis then, as if having read truth in the musketeer’s gaze, nodded. "I will keep silent for now and show him to no one. And what you're doing is for good," the priest said. "May God help you."
They bowed their heads as if for a blessing, and left, Athos and Porthos to the North, Aramis and D'Artagnan to the South, headed towards the Royal palace and a seamstress who called the Queen her sister.
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