The musketeer's apprentice (19 page)
Read The musketeer's apprentice Online
Authors: Sarah d' Almeida
“Would you escort me, then?” Madame Bonacieux said. “On my errand?”
“With the best will in the world, madam,” D’Artagnan said, offering her his arm. She accepted it, and slipped her hand upon it.
“You are so brave, monsieur,” she said. “I perceive with you, there will not be the slightest cause for alarm.”
In fact, D’Artagnan found no cause for alarm, at any rate. As they walked along the deserted, darkened streets, everything was quiet. It seemed to him, for a long while, that he heard steps behind him, but after a while he was sure it was just the disordered beat of his own heart.
He was so far in this dream of love and romance that he didn’t realize for a long while that they were going towards the Rue Ferou, where Athos lived. It was only as they stopped in front of a house, and Madame Bonacieux said, “Only go back now. I will get someone else to escort me on the way back,” that he realized he was just across the street from Athos’s home.
Bowing slightly, he turned away from her obediently. Some part of him reproached himself for leaving her without being absolutely sure she would be safely escorted on the way back, but the rest of him insisted he must obey her. This was, after all, the Queen’s business and bigger than both of them.
He turned away and had gone only a few steps, when he heard, behind him, running feet. Turning he saw Madame Bonacieux at the door, raising her hand to knock, and six guards of the Cardinal bearing down on her, swords out.
“Ah, villains,” D’Artagnan called out. “You’d attack an unprotected woman?”
He turned, sword in hand, and rushed back. “To me, villains. ”
The men instantly turned to accept his challenge and D’Artagnan, perceiving that he was far outnumbered and that these were old hands at the game of duel, called out in turn, “Athos, Athos, help me.”
A window opened above, and presently Athos’s front door was flung open and two men rushed out. Athos who joined the fray with ready sword and Grimaud who rushed away into the night.
Considerably relieved, but still hard pressed, D’Artagnan called out, “To me, musketeers, for the King.”
Just at that moment—Grimaud doubtlessly having gone, providentially, to the nearest tavern, a crowd of musketeers appeared, following Grimaud. They fell onto the guards and the fight was joined with such enthusiasm, that D’Artagnan found himself on the periphery of it, looking at Athos.
“How came this to be?” Athos asked.
D’Artagnan shook his head. He knew if he talked of Madame Bonacieux Athos would call him a fool. He said, instead, “I was walking around, thinking, and I found myself here, and they fell on me.” Even as he spoke, he made sure his beautiful landlady was nowhere in sight.
“How came you to be here? Near my house?”
D’Artagnan shrugged. “I don’t even know. I was walking. I lost track of where I was.”
From Athos’s disdainful smile, D’Artagnan perceived that Athos thought he’d been thinking of Madame Bonacieux, anyway. And let him think that, for D’Artagnan had.
Leaving the still furious fight behind him, D’Artagnan started towards his house, feeling for her embroidered handkerchief within his sleeve.
An Odd Avocation; Poison in the World; Belladonna
IT
was cool morning as Aramis headed for Friar Laurence’s workshop. It was in fact one of those beautiful mornings where the world appears newly minted or recreated. The normal stink of Paris seemed muted, as a cool breeze blowing from the river brought with it freshness and untainted air.
was cool morning as Aramis headed for Friar Laurence’s workshop. It was in fact one of those beautiful mornings where the world appears newly minted or recreated. The normal stink of Paris seemed muted, as a cool breeze blowing from the river brought with it freshness and untainted air.
Early morning, the city looked like a woman just awakened, Aramis thought, and not yet having put on her makeup or her public attire. Most windows were shuttered. From far off came the sound of a horse’s hooves on cobbles. From somewhere else, in the nearer distance, the sounds of a woman calling out something, and of a child crying. Other than that, it was stillness, punctuated with birdsong, here and there.
If you closed your eyes, it would be possible to imagine that you were in a small village, somewhere, surrounded by bucolic solitude.
Only Aramis didn’t close his eyes. He looked around, instead, at the tall buildings around him, at the shutters opening, here and there. Down the street, a woman threw open her door and walked out to sweep the street. Elsewhere, a man’s voice rose in round, full singing.
It was this Paris that Aramis loved. Or perhaps, truth be told, it was one of the parts of Paris he loved, for he loved the evening Paris, too, shrouded in darkness and full of secret alleys and fraught encounters in the streets. And he loved Paris in the afternoon, languid under the sun, the streets filled with passersby.
The city was like a woman, and like any woman she exerted an hypnotic fascination over Aramis. In his heart of hearts he had to admit that was part of what held him away from the church, to which he always said he was destined. The truth was he could no more leave Paris than he could be truly celibate. Not yet.
He hastened away from the center of town and towards the suburbs, where there were more people awake and signs of life in the workshops and forges. Farther still, down beaten-dirt streets, he found himself standing in front of the Benedictine monastery—an imposing stone facade with small, deep windows that would allow the light in, but not the prurient curiosity of a glance out at the street to see who might be passing.
Again, as always when he approached such places, Aramis asked himself what it would be like to live within, in the sacred silence, with ordered days and specified times for every task. Oh, obedience didn’t frighten him. He had to obey now. He obeyed Monsieur de Treville. He stood guard when he must and he went on travel for the captain when he must. He came when bid, and he fought whomever the King ordered. No, obedience was not a problem.
And poverty . . . well . . . Despite his lace and velvet, the well-cut clothes upon which he spent much of his money, the truth was that no musketeer was truly rich. The wolf of famine often rounded the musketeer’s door and very, very often was admitted in.
No—of all the three it was only chastity that bothered Aramis. And not just the vow of chastity that would prevent him from touching female flesh again, but the vow of chastity that would bar him from looking at women, from taking a material interest in the day-to-day life of the city and of his neighbors and of the court too.
Chastity stood before the door of the monastery as a stumbling block stopping Aramis on his way to taking vows. And yet . . . He sighed and knocked at the heavy oak door.
It was presently opened by a cowled monk in a black habit. Upon seeing Aramis, he bowed and mumbled his welcome, as Aramis had been known at this house since he was just a young seminarian newly sent to Paris to be educated.
“I have come to see Brother Laurence,” Aramis said, and was waved through, his presence here being customary and so well known that they wouldn’t bother even to escort him down the long, cool hallways, the shadow-filled darkness of the monastery.
An ancient building, constructed of massive stone blocks, it seemed designed to keep the world out, though the Benedictines were not a cloistered order and indeed often worked within the world as teachers, physicians and other avocations. But within here, it was all fresh and silent and Aramis once more felt the tug to leave the world behind and consign himself to unvarying holiness. Only, he remembered the call of the streets outside too well to obey.
He hastened faster down the hallways, towards the back of the building where they’d set up Brother Laurence’s workshop. The figures who met him on his way nodded to him and he nodded in response. That none of them remarked upon his presence nor even seemed to notice his rather gaudy—today a deep blue—velvet attire, nor the discrete bits of golden ornamentation upon it, which contrasted as much with their black habits as a bird of paradise’s plumage would contrast with a crow’s, only told how accustomed a presence he had become within.
Brother Laurence’s workshop was open, and Aramis went in—into a labyrinth of shadows and shelves, of strange materials bubbling in glass apparatuses, and other, more difficult to understand vessels. Metal and clay and little contained flames were all around. From the ceiling of the workshop hung dried bunches of herbs and also a stuffed crocodile whose purpose Aramis was loath to enquire. On shelves, distributed more or less haphazardly, sat jars filled with odd fluids, or else with bits of animal and plant. Again, Aramis didn’t ask about them unless they came up in some conversation or brought up in some discussion. He had a vague idea that most of them were unpleasant or at least unsavory.
“Ah, D’Herblay,” Father Laurence said. He popped up around a set of shelves with every appearance of a jack-in-the-box coming forth from the confined space. Truth be told, he looked more than anything like one of those trained monkeys that court ladies kept around for show, only slightly bigger and slightly less hairy. His features were almost entirely simian, his nose just slightly more prominent than that of a monkey. And his eyes, like a monkey’s, peered dark and preternaturally intelligent from deep sockets. The black cowl around his face made the whole look incongruous, like a child’s prank or a lady’s idea of a joke.
That he was grinning inanely with pleasure at Aramis’s visit would have alarmed a man who knew him less well. But Aramis only smiled and said, “You know very well, Brother Laurence, that I have laid that name by and will not resume it until I think myself purged of my sin and capable—”
“You’ll not resume it until you’re done playing the musketeer, ” the little man said, waving the rest of Aramis’s intended speech away. “Come, come, I am no fool. Aramis, then, if you insist on being Aramis. Glad to see you. It’s been at least two weeks, and I haven’t told you any of my new experiments. I’m almost sure I’ve found an herb to suppress cough. You know, in winter it is often the cough and the tiredness of it that kill our aged ones.”
Aramis had never been able to understand why Brother Laurence assumed that Aramis had the same interest in his herbal medicines that he himself possessed, save that, he supposed, the little man got to speak with precious few people. His brothers, doubtless, not being fools, avoided the workshop if they could. Aramis always thought that had been the reason to locate it at the back of the house, facing the still sizeable backyard.
Oh, doubtless, it also made it convenient for Brother Laurence to tend to the herbs and trees and cultivate the odd plants that were part of his materials. But at the same time, it took him out of the main flow of the house, so that no one need pass by the workshop unless he meant to go there.
Like all lonely people, Brother Laurence talked a great deal. And yet, while being led from bubbling pot to deep, clay keeping jar, to yet another interesting concoction of macerated herbs at the bottom of some mortar vase, Aramis thought of how useful Laurence was to his community. He’d come here in winter, sometimes in search of medicines for Bazin who was as likely as not to suffer from a weak chest, and he’d seen the little man bring relief to many suffering from colds or other infections of the head and chest.
Brother Laurence brought him, with a flourish, towards a bench and handed him a little container of some pomade, saying, “And that should hasten the healing of any wounds you get in your duels. I had the recipe from a Gascon monk who visited.”
Aramis took the salve, wondering if it was the same not so secret Gascon recipe that D’Artagnan swore by.
“I thank you, Brother Laurence,” Aramis said, holding the salve in his hand and contemplating what to do with it, since he wore no capacious waist-pouch which would ruin the lines of his elegant attire, and he surely had not enough space for this jar of salve within his sleeves. So he held the smooth ceramic pot in his hand, and turned it round and round as he said, “But what I’ve come to you for is . . . a little different.”
Brother Laurence turned around and fixed Aramis with an intent look of his simian-like eyes. “Different?” he said, his voice seeming to echo itself in various tones of worry.
“It is . . .” Aramis said. “A child. A friend of mine . . .”
The Benedictine’s eyebrows rose. “My dear D’Her— Aramis. You probably know more of foundling homes than I do. You could not—”
“It is not a foundling. It is—”
“Oh, that. You must know my friend, that while there are herbal remedies that stop the life within the woman there are none that do not endanger the mother also, and you—”
Aramis shook his head. “Not that, Brother. Not that. I’m well aware of my sins of propinquity and unchastity.” He raised his hand as he saw the little Benedictine open his lips to speak. “But it is not that. At any rate I’ve never had to face that trouble. If things had been different . . .” He shook his head. “As it is the matter concerns not me, but a good friend of mine, and the child involved is not his, but only a boy to whom he agreed to teach the art of fencing.”
The little benedictine remained mercifully silent, possibly surprised by such an unusual problem for a musketeer, while Aramis poured out the entire tale of woe involving Guillaume, and the symptoms of the boy’s death.
“Nightshade,” the Benedictine said, rubbing his chin. “Aye, it might very well be that, for look here, the berries ripen around now. Yes, it might very well be that. And many householders grow nightshade beside their doors, as an ornamental plant. But . . .” He chewed the side of his lip. “All you tell me, so far, makes sense, as far as sense goes. The boy had a dry mouth, was red and dreaming awake, as it were. Yes, it sounds like nightshade poisoning right enough.” He opened his arms, palm outward. “I don’t understand what you want me to do in the matter though?”
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