Read Dying by the sword Online
Authors: Sarah d'Almeida
Dying by the sword (39 page)
“But you want him to marry your sister,” Aramis said. “Wouldn’t that be the same situation?”
“Not at all,” Jean said. “As your musketeerness knows, or you would not have come to us, would you? With us, as long as Marie marries him, she’s all right, as far as her reputation is concerned. What happens afterward . . .” He shrugged. “In fact, if Pierre is the sort to go about murdering people, I’d much rather he doesn’t stay around, after he marries Marie. What if he decided he could use my money too? I could be mortal in a tomb, before I knew what hit me. No, your musketeerness, you can count on our help.”
“We’ll bring him over,” Marc said. “To discuss the details of the wedding, we’ll say. And the settlements. Of course,” he said, “we’d best have the priest on hand to marry them before you take him off to face justice. That of a certainty we must do.”
Where Athos Courts Danger; And a Lady Takes Up Arms
ATHOS intercepted the lady as she came out of her carriage. He’d managed to do it by telling Aramis that he, more subtle and experienced at the nuances of such things, should keep an eye on the discussions within, with Pierre Langelier, who looked like a rather coarser Aramis, sitting at the table and arguing that he needed far more money to take the hapless Marie for his wife.
Besides, Athos had told Aramis, quite mendaciously and remorselessly, Aramis was needed on hand in case one of the two farmers needed reassurance and came through the door from the kitchen into the little pantry, where the musketeers hid behind vast jars that Athos presumed contained butter, but might very well contain wine.
And so, while Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan stayed in the pantry and followed the negotiations that were little more than delay tactics, Athos—whose anxious ears had picked up the faintest sound of wheels in the yard—went out to receive the lady.
She had driven in very quietly, so that the sound of her horse’s hooves, the noise of the wheels, could be mistaken for nothing more than a carriage going by on the nearby road. But it was her carriage, with the De Chevreuse arms on the door. She descended from it, heavily cloaked, but in a cloak of cream satin, and when she threw the hood back from her head, her blond hair glimmered under the moonlight.
He bowed to her. “He is a murderer,” he whispered. “But we will be in the pantry and ready to come to your rescue. I hope you’re not afraid.”
She turned her head up to look at him, her eyes glimmering insolently and shimmering with excitement. “If I told you I was afraid, would you kiss me for courage, Monsieur le Comte?”
He felt like a knot at his throat and managed a quickly stifled chuckle. “I’m not that brave,” he said.
He escorted her to the door to the kitchen—not the door to the pantry, to which he hurried, to rejoin his friends.
When he got into the darkened pantry again, she had knocked and been admitted, and Marc was saying, “But I’m not sure I want you to marry our sister, at all. Not unless this lady is mistaken in her report.”
“What report, what?” Pierre said, half rising from the table.
“That I saw you kill Hermengarde in the palace gardens,” Marie Michon—for Athos could not doubt it was her, and not the more proper, or at least more socially conscious duchess that stood there—said. “You asked her to meet you and then you ran her through with the sword.”
“Bah,” Pierre said, and an ugly flush came to his cheeks, and made him look very much not like Aramis. “And who will listen to you?”
“I think everyone,” Marie Michon said, drawing herself up, and supplementing her scant inches with the force of her personality. “Do you know who I am?”
“A busybody?”
“No. I’ll have you know I’m the Duchess de Chevreuse.”
“Oh, I still say you are a fool of a woman, and that you saw wrong. Everyone knows it was the blond musketeer.”
“No. Of a certainty it wasn’t. The blond musketeer is a good friend of mine, and I’ll be willing to swear to any magistrate that he was with me at the time.”
Before she’d finished pronouncing the words, Aramis had leapt forward and towards the kitchen and Athos, who had seen the same ugly glimmer in Pierre Langelier’s eyes was racing him towards the man. But it was too late.
He wore a dagger. There had been no way of removing his dagger without making him suspicious. And now he’d grabbed the duchess around the chest, and he had the dagger to her neck. “Very pretty, milady.” He looked towards the musketeers. “But who will believe any of this, if you are dead?”
“There is Monsieur le Cure,” Marc said, pointing towards the door, where a grey-haired man stood, looking rather shocked. “He has seen it, and people will perforce believe him.”
Langelier looked wild, and stared around at the musketeers and at the priest. “Very well, but you’ll never take me alive. Come with me, pretty lady. We’re going to take a long ride through the country.” And with a sneer, at the musketeers said, “Put up your swords, or I slit her throat.”
Athos, who had been watching De Chevreuse’s face as it flushed, and as her eyes shone with the unmistakable light of battle, wondered what she meant to do. Courting danger was not always a good characteristic. Sometimes danger might court back. He looked at the blade near the pale throat, and wished very much he was in her place.
And with a Moo and a Cackle and an Oink Oink There
ARAMIS saw Marie Michon—his Marie—looking defiant and madcap. Unfortunately Aramis knew his Marie well. He knew she looked like that when the dice were down and the play definitely against her.
He wanted to rise. He wanted to go to her rescue. She wasn’t Violette. He wasn’t madly in love with her, as he’d been with Violette. But she was a gallant and brave soul, and he’d brought her into this. It seemed ridiculous that after all her intrigues, all her adventures, she should succumb here, at the hands of a brutish murderer.
And then, looking around, to see if anyone else was in a position to help her, he realized that Marc was gone.
The Devil,
he thought.
I wonder where he has gone?
The Devil,
he thought.
I wonder where he has gone?
And then he heard a confused noise from behind him, in the yard, and realized that the door of the kitchen, into the outside yard, stood fully open. He had barely the time to look over his shoulder, as the noise grew deafening, and he was hit, full in the back, by a charging pig, and, as he fell, a confused chicken hopped up on his head.
Around him bedlam reigned. It took him a moment to locate Marie Michon, but when he found her, he realized in the confusion she had somehow managed to overturn the situation and had a small, dainty knife firmly held to Pierre’s throat. She’d somehow managed to make him drop his knife, and from the way his wrist hung, Aramis didn’t think she’d done it with kindness. Now she told him in a stern voice, “And where were you going to take me, pig? You might enjoy going there, yourself.”
Aramis smiled despite himself. Looking up, he met Athos’s eyes, and was surprised to see him smiling as well.
Of course, their grins were nothing to Marc’s and Jean’s, whose expressions bordered on sheer, manic glee.
A Surfeit of Roasted Chicken; A Letter from a Lady
ATHOS looked down the expanse of his dining room table. Very rarely was Grimaud’s insistence that they eat in the dining room justified as it was now. The table was, in fact, almost too crowded. In addition to his four friends, all four of their servants were present and sitting at the table. Though after Grimaud’s arguments, they had decided to allow the servants to sit at the foot of the table.
And from Grimaud’s glare, he would keep the others in place if it killed him.
The top of the table itself was entirely covered in roast chicken, ham, and a multitude of bottles of wine. The chicken and the ham were from the farmers. Jean and Marc had sworn that the chickens—about a dozen of them—had got badly trampled or burned in the hearth after being stampeded into the kitchen, and so, the only thing for them was to kill them, roast them and send them to the musketeers as a gift.
No one had explained why they’d also sent the ham—since it was cured and therefore at least weeks old—and the bread, but Athos, who had listened to the two of them go on, guessed they were quite likely to tell them that these had gotten trampled in the stampede, as well, and therefore must be put out of their misery. They lied with the same glib ease as Mousqueton, on whom the news of Hermengarde’s death had fallen like a lead weight. He still looked teary and had that expression of a man whose hopes had come crashing around his head.
All he’d told Athos was, “You were always right, monsieur, women are the devil. I don’t know which hurts more, that Langelier had to kill her so she wouldn’t insist he marry her or . . . Or that she is dead. But it hurts all the same.”
And Athos, knowing himself at risk, could do nothing but silently sympathize.
“It was a lovely wedding, though,” Porthos said. “Even if the groom was tied up.”
“And gagged,” Aramis said. “Don’t forget gagged. I had to reassure the
bon cure
that the man meant, indeed, to say yes.”
bon cure
that the man meant, indeed, to say yes.”
“Well, he scarcely had any other choice,” D’Artagnan said, as he disposed of a full chicken, heaped on plate. “You pulled his hair so his head must perforce nod.”
“I was only doing my duty, to preserve a poor lady from sin,” Aramis said, piously.
“And the ways of the Lord are inscrutable,” Porthos said.
“Besides,” Aramis said, totally ignoring the proffered bait, “you have to agree there was something in the way of poetic justice, to bringing him back to Paris in a box and presenting him to the Cardinal all tied up.”
Athos was about to open his mouth, to say that he wondered if the Cardinal still thought that Athos was working on his behalf, even now, and to remind them there was a good chance he’d already agreed to let Charlotte have her way with him, and that she would be an adversary to reckon with in the future. In fact, for all their present joy at having Mousqueton back, Athos wasn’t sure that all—or any of them—could survive long enough to defeat the woman who had briefly been Countess de la Fere.
Before he could speak, there was a loud pounding on the door.
Grimaud, who got up to go answer, came back almost immediately, looking baffled and holding up a sheet of expensive cream paper, from which a delicate perfume wafted.
“Ah, that will be for me,” Aramis said.
But Grimaud only directed a glare at him, then a glare at the letter, and finally a glare at Athos, in whose lap he dropped it.
The letter said only, “To Monsieur le Comte de—”
The seal was blank and Athos lifted it impatiently. Inside, a well-formed hand said, “There is a public feast given by the court in a week. Marie Michon would like to meet the count at it. Will he meet her there? She shall be wearing a cream dress, with a blue hat, and a rose at her bosom.”
Athos felt as though his hand went nerveless. He dropped the note in his lap.
“What is wrong?” Porthos asked. “Is it from milady?” Athos shook his head. “No, no. It is nothing, just a silly dare.”
And in his heart of hearts, he wondered if he did dare.
1
The Musketeer’s Seamstress.
2
A Death in Gascony.
3
The Musketeer’s Seamstress.
4
We now come across M. Aramis’s seamstress, as depicted in Dumas. We don’t know if M. Dumas lacked knowledge of Aramis’s earlier affair with Violette, Duchess de Dreux, or if, for the sake of a more popular narrative, he chose to focus on the Duchess de Chevreuse, whom historians have called Richelieu’s most voluptuous adversary.
5
Though it is clear from Dumas that a fleur-de-lis meant the criminal was intended for the gallows, though the manuscript explicitly says it, the compiler of this account has not been able to find confirmation on this point. As far as Ms. D’Almeida can determine, the only criminals to be branded were those whose crime fell very short of death. While one can understand Athos’s rage at being duped, his killing of his wife upon finding the brand on her shoulder would be seen as overreaction, when merely divorcing her and having her immured in a convent would serve the purpose. And though Athos is remorseful, it is because he thinks the brand might not have been legitimate and never because he doubts the brand is worthy of death. It is one of those instances in which one must bow to the material of the time, and even M. Dumas’s—flawed though we’ve seen it to be—interpretation of events, and assume there was more to this than was recorded or at least than was recorded and survived to the twenty-first century.
6
The Musketeer’s Seamstress
.
.
7
We know from both Monsieur Dumas and from the rest of these diaries—despite extensive water damage—that indeed Athos gratified this ambition during one of Marie Michon’s precipitate flights from court that coincided with one of his travels on behalf of the King. The result of that wayside night was Raoul, Viscount de Bragelone.
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