Sarah D'Almeida - Dying by the Sword

“Perhaps not, but we know how attached our King is to Richelieu.”

“Or how attached he pretends to be,” Athos said, remembering more than a few times when Louis XIII had shown himself overjoyed at his musketeers thwarting some plot of the Cardinal’s.

Rochefort bowed. “But you must see,” he said, “that it would be the worst for the Queen if the King’s brother were to have children before… the royal marriage is fruitful. It would be a reproach to her, and, doubtless, lead to her loss of importance. So you must see…”

“That she would lose by it, yes. That she would conspire against her husband and her kingdom thereby, no, I do not need to see that.”

“Perhaps not,” Rochefort said. “But the Cardinal and I would very much like it if you should investigate in that direction, shall we say.”

Athos all but paled. Through one of their previous adventures, they had managed to keep the crown on the head of Anne of Austria, despite the Cardinal’s best efforts to unseat it. Was he truly fated to remove it this time? The Cardinal, with his fine lessons on the theory of chess, should understand that the knight was more often used to protect the queen than the pawn. If it came to that, Athos would have to resign himself to the loss of Mousqueton.

Or perhaps, he thought, ensure his freedom by other means.

But what could he do if the Queen, herself, was part of a play for the King? The horrible prospect put a shiver up his spine.

D’ARTAGNAN hurried to the palace with a confused and worried mind. Oh, he did not doubt Constance, whose nature was as her name, nor did he fear that she might entangle him in some plot. But he did fear that a plot was already in place and might entangle himself and Constance without mercy.

On the way to the palace, he responded to Porthos’s questions as to what D’Artagnan had been doing near the armorer’s, with half syllables, which not only led Porthos to believe that D’Artagnan had been seeking additional work, but to heartily approve of it, because, as he put it, the pay in the guards seemed to be as bad as in the musketeers, and that was as irregular as the very irregular finances of their sovereign.

D’Artagnan didn’t bother arguing how unfit it would be for him to take a position as an assistant baker, or even an armorer. Porthos was, after all, the only one of them who had ever done work for pay. He’d been employed as a dance and fencing master upon first coming to Paris. And he was a proud man-or at least, he liked to wear clothes resplendent enough to put the royalty to shame, and he told a great many innocent falsehoods about his familiarity with princesses and duchesses. Yet, he could consider with equanimity a course of action-becoming employed as a servant, under an assumed name-which would have made Aramis speechless, caused Athos to challenge someone to a duel for accusing him of it and which, had D’Artagnan given the idea his full attention, would have made D’Artagnan blush.

There was absolutely no reason to argue with Porthos, and D’Artagnan was concerned with far weightier worries. The note from Constance worried him, after what might have been the deliberate entrapment of Mousqueton. If they were right and if the Cardinal were so desperate to get leverage against Anne of Austria and to make Anne of Austria confess to some plot that he would stoop to entrapping Mousqueton, would he not prefer to entrap one of them?

He’d looked at her letter, and it did look like her handwriting, but would not the Cardinal, in all but name and honor the King of France, be able to command someone to imitate the hand of a woman who lived at court and who had, doubtless, written notes to various people living there?

He felt a shiver down his spine, even as he gave his password to Monsieur de la Porte and got admitted into the palace-or at least into the dark gardens adjoining the palace. Because his eyes were sharpened by his awareness of danger, his mind prying the edges of every dark corner, every lengthening shadow, he was alert and ready, and dropped his hand to his hip at the sight of a man walking towards them.

The words, “Who goes-” were on his lips-the training of years as a guard in the long watches of the night. But he got no further than that because his eyes had recognized the tall, slim figure, the glimmering blond hair, the fashionable attire of his friend Aramis.

“Aramis,” he said, at the same time that Aramis’s voice echoed back, “D’Artagnan.”

The two stood in the winter garden, surrounded by bare trees, looking at each other. D’Artagnan was surprised to see something very much like hostility in his friend’s eyes.

It was only when Aramis said, “He made you come after me, did he not?” that he understood the mute resentment in the green eyes.

“Athos?” he said, and, to Aramis’s nodding, “No. I convinced Athos that you-and I too-must be allowed to investigate this by… having freedom of movement. I am here because I got a letter.” He felt himself blush. “From Madame Bonacieux,” he added, with reluctance that came not only from laying open his affairs to his friend, but also from his consciousness that Aramis’s lovers were of a much higher level in society.

But Aramis didn’t seem to catch the implication, nor to be inclined to deride D’Artagnan’s choice of society. Instead he leaned in close to his friend and said, worriedly, “Madame Bonacieux? She has sent you a note? What did she say?”

“Nothing, except for asking me to meet her.”

Aramis gave him a curious look. “Is this normal, then?” he asked. “For her to send you a note ordering you to come to her at the royal palace?”

D’Artagnan shook his head. “No,” he said, and blushed a little. “Normally she comes to see me. She has the keys to my lodging, and she will come in any time of day or night that she can get away. I assumed…” He cleared his throat. “I assumed she did so today, coming into my lodging and leaving me her note, since I was not there and neither was Planchet. Unless, of course, she sent the note earlier, while Planchet was still there. Why are you looking at me with such an expression of reproach, Aramis?”

Aramis’s expression of reproach did not abate, but he frowned harder at D’Artagnan. “My friend, sometimes I am reminded of how young you are and that you are, in fact, far younger than I, myself, am or remember being. How can you, at such a time as this, come to a summons written on a note, without any warranty that it is from someone who means you well? Did you at least take the precaution of not coming in the way she told you to? Or the way she expected you to come?”

D’Artagnan frowned. “I came the way she asked me to, and gave word to Monsieur de la Porte.”

Porthos said, “Surely you can’t think that Monsieur de la Porte is betraying us? He has always been on the side of the Queen. His-”

“Porthos,” Aramis said. “We are now in such territory that I’m not absolutely sure the Queen means us well. And I know the Cardinal means us ill.”

“What do you mean you don’t think the Queen means us well? We have always been her devoted servants, and in fact, we have allowed her to remain on the throne and we-”

Aramis’s finger darted out, and stopped D’Artagnan’s lips. “Shh,” he said. “Shhh. Do not be foolish. Doesn’t even the Bible exhort you not to put your faith in princes?”

“But-”

“No,” Aramis said. “The devil. I’m starting to suspect, with Athos, that this whole thing is deeper than we thought. Where is Athos, speaking of him? What is he doing?”

D’Artagnan shook his head. “I presume he is back at his lodgings, with the servants. He did not tell me he intended to do anything else. At least…”