Sarah D'Almeida - Dying by the Sword

But he knew that servants found out as much or more about their masters, as did their best-trusted secretaries and their guards. Sometimes more. It was, after all, highly unlikely that even the Cardinal had a personal secretary wash his underwear. So he’d started coming here, night after night, when he could spare the time from more urgent pursuits. And now, after all this time, he could come into the darkness, illuminated by sputtering candles made of bacon grease, with hardly a flinch and without actually attempting to avoid the touch of his fellow customers.

He made his way between tables packed with drinkers, to the one table at the back where he usually sat and listened to the conversations, while doing his best to dispense spiritual advice.

He’d no more sat down, and asked his server-the burly son of the tavern keeper-for a pint of their best wine, when a woman emerged from the shadows and sat across from him, giving him a brilliant smile.

She was very young-maybe no more than sixteen or so-which in this environment was the only explanation for her still possessing all her teeth. She was also somewhat pretty, or would be, with her little round face washed, her blondish hair properly combed, and wearing something other than a formless grey sack. Her name was Huguette, or at least that’s what they called her, when they weren’t calling her “pretty” and “sweet” and other such names.

Aramis had heard that she worked in the Cardinal’s kitchens, and he suspected that she engaged in a bit of prostitution on the side, just for the fun of it. Whether this was true or not, she was clearly unchaperoned, unguarded, and quite, quite determined to make the conquest of the fine-looking gentleman who consented to sit among them.

Today was no different, as she sat on the bench across from him, and pulled up her legs, so that the sack fell, and her legs were displayed from the thigh down. She wasn’t to know that those thighs, with their bony knees and the almost too thin legs, excited nothing in Aramis but a profound sense of pity. In fact, long as it had been since he’d seen D’Artagnan’s bare legs, and unexciting as he’d found the occasion, he would probably say that D’Artagnan’s legs-hair and all-were far more luscious. All Huguette made him wish to do was buy her a loaf of bread and a slice of meat. But he’d tried that at first and found that she considered it payment in advance and became, therefore, even harder to evade.

So he’d taken a sip of his wine-more to prove friendly than because he had any wish to drink it, since the vintage here was vinegary and quite a few steps below Athos’s excellent burgundy, of which Aramis had not drunk more than a few sips. In fact, faced with how incapable of self-defense the wine had made his comrades back at Athos’s house, Aramis felt not at all like drinking. He said to Huguette in his softest, most clerical voice, “Good evening my daughter.”

She gave him a look full of mischievous fun. “Your daughter, am I? Coo. I knew you gentlemen were strange, but not that strange. Even Rochefort is not that odd.”

Aramis refused to rise to the bait, either of pretending to believe her misunderstanding, or wishing to explore Rochefort’s strangeness. The idea of what Rochefort might or might not want to do in the privacy of his chamber left Aramis completely uninterested. It was what Rochefort did to France, in full light of day, and with the Cardinal’s orders to back it up, that made Aramis’s heart beat faster. Usually with fear. He took another sip of his wine, to disguise his confusion, and Huguette laughed softly.

None of the other women were coming near today, which, probably, meant none of the other women were in the tavern. Aramis would have preferred to get his gossip from a more informed source or, at least, since he didn’t think that Huguette was ill-informed, from a more stable source. But if Huguette was all there was, he would have to cater to her topics, and he would have to approach the subject, he judged, via Rochefort. Though he refused to ask about Rochefort’s habits, in general.

“So,” he said. “Is the blond lady one of Rochefort’s friends?”

“What blond lady?” she asked. “There are so many.”

“The one who came in earlier,” Aramis said, and relayed what he remembered of Athos’s description without the superlatives, which he was sure were only how Athos saw her, and in no way connected to reality-or only very little.

Huguette raised her knees a little, bringing her grimy bare feet closer to her body, on the bench. “Are you in love with her too?” she asked.

“Too? And of course I’m not in love with her. I’ve never seen her.”

Huguette looked wishful. She had eyes somewhere between green and brown, and large, all out of proportion to her face. She stared at him a long time, then sighed. “You’ll be in love with her,” she said. “As soon as you see her.”

“Doubtful,” Aramis said, thinking of the only woman who had ever commanded his love, though he’d had a continuous stream of beauties grace his bed. Violette had not been branded with a fleur-de-lis. “And who has fallen in love with her, that you should say I’ll fall in love with her too?”

“Oh, everyone,” she said and sighed. “Everyone who sees her. But you shouldn’t fall in love with her, you know? Because she’s not very nice. I’ve heard her talk to the Cardinal, and she says that she has… killed people.” The huge eyes stared out at him, with what seemed to be very sincere shock.

“Lots of the Cardinal’s people kill other people,” Aramis said, and shrugged.

The girl sighed. “Yes, I guess they do. But not, normally, with poison. Or not while they’re in bed with them.”

Aramis raised his eyebrows. He was so completely taken aback, he was surprised into blurting, “I’ll take care never to be in bed with her.”

“See that you do,” Huguette said, very seriously. “I’ve heard that she has killed three husbands and a lover.”

“And does she have a name,” Aramis asked. “This sinner?”

“Why do you want to know? Do you want to meet her?”

Aramis shook his head. “No. But I think it will be easier to stay away from her if I know her name, and where she’s likely to be.”

“Most people just call her milady,” the girl said. “You know, in English. The last husband she killed with slow poison is said to have been an English earl. So she gets the title, you know. But his family was very suspicious and as soon as he died, they set about investigating his death, and she found things too hot for her in England, and so she came here.”

She hugged her bony knees, in a curiously unselfconscious and childish gesture. “I bet you no one else could tell you her name, but I can, because I heard her talking to Rochefort, and Rochefort was calling her Charlotte.”

Aramis felt as though an icy finger had run down his spine beneath his clothes. Whatever else was said, he was sure that Athos had referred to his wife as Charlotte. “Was she… was one of her husbands a count? A French count?”

The tavern waif shook her head, then shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “He might have been. But… You know they’re all dead, so what does it matter. There is a guard, in the palace, who calls her the black spider. He’s sensible at least, but most of the others aren’t. They say she’s so pretty that she must most certainly be as good as an angel.” She sighed. “I find that men can be very stupid.”

Agreeing with her, and counting out his money to pay the server, Aramis was about to say his farewells when he heard the next words tumbling out of the young woman’s mouth. “It is all very well, you know, but I heard her price for working for the Cardinal. I know that you’re a musketeer, which is why I feel a little naughty talking to you, and I know that you and your friends are forever fighting the guards of the Cardinal. But I also know that you look so kind, and I know you speak so sweetly, that it can’t probably be provoked by you.” She shrugged, completely unconscious of the irony of her words. “But I also know that when you do fight the guards, it is in duels, and it is all fair and correct. But milady is not like that. And I heard her tell the Cardinal that there was a musketeer she wanted dead. It appears he has done something to her, some time ago. Only I guess he wasn’t a musketeer then.”