Dying by the sword (24 page)
Read Dying by the sword Online
Authors: Sarah d'Almeida
“You’ll see,” the man said. “And soon enough. Let’s just say you’ll be put in a safe place, from which you’ll never get out, not in a thousand years.”
The image of the hole in the ground, and dirt being shoveled in on top of him made Aramis shiver. “There are no places safe enough,” he said. “My friends will come for you, you’ll see.”
“Oh, don’t be going on about your friends. Rest assured they will be taken care of, and they won’t be coming for nobody when we’re done with them.”
Aramis, despite himself, heard a moan escape between his lips. “You’ll find them harder to deal with than you think,” he said, in a low voice, from which he could barely keep the sting of fear. Oh, sure, Athos, Porthos, D’Artagnan were all able men and capable of turning the world upside down at sword point. They were, however, as vulnerable as all other men to being taken in, fooled, cajoled and/or destroyed by a woman’s wiles.
Unless he much mistook his understanding of the man, and Aramis was not in the habit of misunderstanding anyone, Athos was still in love with the frightening creature. And as for D’Artagnan and Porthos, he would not give them a chance in a hundred of withstanding the charms of any female who approached them the right way and played the victim. They were even quite likely to overlook the fact that she looked uncommonly like Athos’s lost and found wife.
The response to his threat was a chuckle. “Oh, good with a sword, your friends are,” the man said. “But they are not very good with their minds. Trying to find you would require that they think and that, I fear, between drinking and wenching, they won’t find much time to do.”
Aramis considered shouting back that they didn’t drink that much, but then again, he’d left two of them behind in a profound drunken stupor, so that would not work. And as for wenching . . . well . . .
He thought of the wench most likely responsible for this—for it wasn’t to be supposed that Athos’s wife by herself would come up with the brilliant idea of capturing and boxing up Aramis. Not for a moment. It was more likely that she would think of boxing up Athos. And probably setting fire to the box afterwards. He rolled his eyes. So the person responsible for this would more than likely be De Chevreuse, who wanted Aramis out of her affairs. Did she truly intend to have her henchmen drive him to the countryside and bury him alive?
Shallow and frantic though their connection was, Aramis could not help but think that he could not possibly mean so little to her that she would want him to die such a horrible death. Perhaps she didn’t know. He knocked on the top of the box, this time more politely. “Pardon me, but does Marie know what you mean to do to me? Did she give you orders?”
“What?” the man said, and banged what seemed like a gigantic fist atop the box. “You dare use her name? All while you’re intending to marry your highfalutin hussy, you dare use my sister’s name? Let me tell you, my boy, that though she gave us no orders, as you presume, she will be more than happy to know you will not return to the world and the society of men until you do right by her. And pay back what you owe.”
“Beg your pardon?” Aramis said, hearing his voice squeak with alarm. “Your . . . sister?” He wasn’t aware of Marie Michon, aka De Chevreuse, having brothers who concerned themselves in her affairs. Truth be told, if they did, they would be the busiest swords in France, just keeping her name from being stained by rumors.
“Beg my pardon all you want. It is Marie’s pardon you’ll be begging in the end, and on your knees too. And don’t think you’ll convince us to let you out by using that well-bred voice, Pierre. We know where you come from. We know how you grew up. You’re not going to impress us by dressing all in fashionable velvets and by speaking as though you were born to rule a kingdom.”
Pierre! Aramis might be many things, but Pierre certainly he was not. Porthos’s given name was Pierre, but Aramis would need to be insane to think anyone had mistaken him for Porthos, even on a dark night and while his face was obscured.
No. He’d been between the armory and the house, as he would have been if he’d been coming out of the inside, and about to go into the armory. As if he were the new owner of the armory, the son of the murdered armorer. A vague memory of D’Artagnan’s account of the gentleman emerged. Something to do with his being in love with Hermengarde, doubtless the highfalutin hussy.
This being that way, and these men obviously intent on making Pierre marry someone by the name of Marie, this meant . . . That they weren’t going to bury Aramis. In fact, they were hardly likely to hurt him. And when they opened the box and saw his face in the full light of day, they would have to let him go.
But when would they open the box? He put his eye to the keyhole again, in time to see a swath of trees go by, at creeping speed, on the other side of what appeared to be a country road. From the daylight it would be nearly noon. If they’d come away this slowly, it was possible he wasn’t that far away from Paris. But how far away did he need to be to make it devilishly difficult for him to get back?
And he must get back. He absolutely must. His friends must be warned that the Cardinal had a new minion, and one who would be looking for their blood.
Where D’Artagnan Wakes Up in a Strange Bed; The Doubts of a Loving Heart; A Woman of Dazzling Beauty
D’ARTAGNAN woke up with his hand on a mound of silken-soft hair. He tugged at it, experimentally, and was answered with a low grunt that brought his eyes fully open and showed him someone who was most definitely not his Constance. For one, the person in his bed had dark hair. For another, from the width of the shoulders and the doublet stretched across them, he was male. He was also, as D’Artagnan realized, once he’d blinked the sleep from his eyes, Athos.
A glance above showed him he was in Athos’s bed, in Athos’s lodgings. And that Athos was asleep, curled entirely away from him, save for his loosened curls. Athos was still wearing his full day attire, including his sword, in its sheath strapped at his waist, which bespoke his either having collapsed on the bed, dead tired, or his having been carried to the bed by Porthos and Aramis, who probably had carried D’Artagnan to bed also.
D’Artagnan sat up, experimentally, to a chorus of what sounded like bells, and a pull of nausea from his stomach. His eyes hurt with the light. His arm hurt too, but he wasn’t so confused he did not remember he’d got wounded the day before in a duel. He’d been about to go see Constance. He remembered that. And then there had been men in black cloaks who fought as if possessed by the devil. And he had got wounded. After that, Porthos and Aramis had brought him to Athos’s place, and they’d proceeded to make him drink more alcohol than he’d ever drunk before. And since he’d met the three musketeers, he’d drank quite a bit of liquor in almost painfully strange combinations.
He glared at Athos. Athos had given him brandy and wine, he remembered. What he couldn’t remember was why. He was sure Athos had been angry, or at least at that edge of anger to which he allowed himself to go without ever tipping over. And he was sure, angry as he’d been, Athos had felt a need to get drunk. It had been a deliberate effort. One doesn’t order up six bottles of burgundy all at once unless one means to get most seriously and intently drunk.
“Athos?” he said, slurring the word. But his comrade only grunted again, and curled yet tighter upon himself. “I see,” D’Artagnan said.
What D’Artagnan needed was a good pail of cold water over the head, and then to find breakfast in the nearest tavern. He’d lost blood, and he’d never taken more than wine. That was a recipe for disaster.
He swung his feet off the bed, picked up his sword which—at least in this case—his friends had been kind enough to remove and prop against the wall, and sheathed it. Then, he stood up. They’d never removed his boots, which was fortuitous, as he did not wish to struggle with them.
Porthos was asleep on the floor, next to a chair, all rolled up in his cloak. D’Artagnan wondered if Porthos too had gotten drunk, and decided it truly wasn’t worth his while to look for Aramis. For all he knew, he was perhaps on the other side of the bed, between bed and window, or maybe under the bed.
Instead, D’Artagnan opened the door, tiptoed out of the bedroom, and stepped over Planchet who was asleep in the hallway. He stared at his servant for just a moment. Planchet could not have been drunk, could he? There was no saying. Perhaps they’d finished up whatever wine their masters had left. Should D’Artagnan wake Planchet up? That was very doubtful. After all the young Picard had a worse head for wine than anyone that D’Artagnan knew, Bazin—who could get drunk off communion wine—included. If he had been drinking, he would be irascible and also sullen. And D’Artagnan was in no mood to drag a sullen, dismal servant behind himself.
So, he would go without Planchet. And joining action to word, D’Artagnan tiptoed down the stairs—avoiding waking anyone else who might be suffering from hangover in some other place in the house—and into the front hall, then opened the front door and slipped out into the bright morning.
He hadn’t lived in Paris so long that he had learned to be indifferent to the city in the early morning hours. Perhaps because he rarely woke up this early—though sometimes he went to bed this early—he loved the look of the buildings under the early dawn light, enjoyed the pealing of morning bells that called various monastic orders and convents to matins, and enjoyed seeing people with their morning faces, still fresh and surprised by the daylight.
He enjoyed it so much, in fact, that before he had gone more than one block his sour mood and his frown had vanished, and he was thinking clearly, as he breathed in the cool, clear air.
Constance had sent him a note to meet her at the palace. Of this he was sure. She had sent him the note in some distress, and this was not normal, because when Constance was in distress, she came to see him—she did not send him notes. That meant the situation must have been unusual, and, as such, she must have needed him more than ever. And he had failed her.
So, he was willing to concede that he’d been attacked and wounded and finally made very thoroughly drunk by his very misguided friends. But did this excuse him? Would Constance forgive him?
And suddenly he was not hungry at all. He just wished to go and see Constance as soon as possible. He took the shortest route possible for that purpose, and got to the royal palace before the sun was fully up in the sky. The man on guard, he noticed, was De Jacinthe, one of his friends from the musketeers. He was a little confused when D’Artagnan told him he needed to speak to someone—a lady—within. It wasn’t until he was on the point of giving his Constance’s name, that his mind caught up with his racing mouth.
Yes, yes, Aramis had his affairs with married women. Countesses and duchesses and the occasional foreign princess, at least to believe gossip. But the thing was, gossip there was, and aplenty, and only the fact that most of the husbands of these illustrious beauties had their own amusements and could not care less what their wives did in their spare time, kept it from being a problem, leading possibly to a duel or worse, to the setting aside of the lady.
Porthos, whose lover, Athenais Coquenard, was married to a mere accountant, had to be far more circumspect with his behavior, because Athenais could and would suffer, should it be discovered that she had a gallant. How much more so would Constance suffer, whose husband was twenty years older than her and besotted and far more alert and capable of obtaining revenge than Monsieur Coquenard. Let alone that he could turn D’Artagnan out, or demand that D’Artagnan pay him back the several months his rent was in arrears, there was the very real possibility he would divorce Constance. And much as D’Artagnan longed to marry his ladylove, he much doubted that anyone who had a say in it, including her godfather who was steward to the Queen’s household, would allow her to marry a penniless eighteen-year-old guard with not a pistol to his credit.
He sighed. No. He must be discreet. And being discreet, he cast about for the name of a lady whom he could claim to be courting without in any way being compromising. The only name that came to mind was that of Mousqueton’s inamorata, Hermengarde, and her name D’Artagnan gave with no remorse.
De Jacinthe sent word for her to come receive him, and when Hermengarde appeared at the door, her blushes and confusion on seeing D’Artagnan lent a credence to his story that the musketeer could not possibly have anticipated. She led him into the palace, and it was only once inside that she turned to him and smiled. “You’ve come to see your lady, have you not, Monsieur?”
It occurred to him, belatedly, that she might take it amiss that he’d given her name when it was another he wanted to see. He looked at her, somewhat fearful of incurring her wrath, but found her smiling at him and shaking her head, indulgently. “She was very worried about you, yesterday, and she confided in me and asked me if there was any chance perhaps that you were out and working on behalf of my Mousqueton.”
D’Artagnan shook his head. “I was . . . I think I was.” He told her, rapidly, everything that the baker’s family had said.
Hermengarde smiled. “Oh, that is so much nonsense. His daughter, Faustine, is a true fright, and Mousqueton would never marry her, if she were the only woman in the world. Though you know, it is his fault that the Langeliers entertained such thoughts, because he was so jealous of young Langelier that he used to go to the armorer’s simply to be around and make sure he wasn’t saying anything about me or that I . . . that I wasn’t visiting. So he had to justify it and he pretended he was courting Faustine. But for all the money Monsieur Langelier would have given her, Mousqueton has too much sense to want to be married to a cross-eyed shrew. And as for me . . .” She shrugged. “It is said that Pierre Langelier spends as much money as he makes—and he makes a lot, for he was his father’s best apprentice—upon the gambling tables. I don’t think being married to me would have made him any better and, anyway, you see, I am probably carrying Mousqueton’s child, so it is all to naught.” She smiled hopefully at D’Artagnan. “Have you heard anything of Mousqueton? How does he fare? Is he in health? He has not . . .” She crossed both her hands at her chest. “. . . been tortured? Has he?”
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