Sarah D'Almeida - Dying by the Sword

TURNING towards the royal palace-the so called hôtel de ville-brought an already familiar bittersweet ache to Aramis’s heart. Last winter, when he turned this way, he’d been on his way to see his seamstress, Violette, Duchess de Dreux, one of the noblest women in the land and, in Aramis’s eyes, the most beautiful woman in the world.

She’d been a friend of Anne of Austria’s, come with her at the time of the Queen’s marriage and forcibly married to a French nobleman who spurned his new wife’s charms, charms that Aramis had been more than happy to enjoy. It seemed to him, these many months after she’d been cruelly murdered, that he’d only realized how much he loved her and how much he’d miss her after she was lost to him forever.

Her face haunted his dreams. He’d wake in the middle of the night and swear he’d just heard the tinkle of her musical laughter. His hand would stretch to find only cold bed, and no Violette, and he’d come awake in stark loss, as though it had just happened, as if she’d just been taken from him.

And he’d find himself, at a duel, or a game, a night of drinking or in the middle of a conversation with his friends, thinking “I must tell Violette of this,” only to realize he’d never tell Violette anything at all, because she was gone forever. And it was all he could do, at such moments, to turn his face and hide the tears that prickled at his eyes.

He couldn’t have brought D’Artagnan with him now. Because while he was alone and walking towards the palace, he could pretend that he was going to see Violette, and that she would be there, in her startlingly pink room, waiting for him with a smile. And walking through the streets, he walked as if in a revery, dreaming of her soft hair beneath his face, of those lips that, on kissing, felt like animated velvet.

Only at the entrance to the royal palace did he wake. He had to, because he was not going to the entrance nearest Violette’s room, nor would instructions have been left with the musketeers on guard duty to let him pass. Instead, he approached an entrance a friend of his was guarding, and bowed slightly. “D’Armaud,” he said. “I have some business within.”

D’Armaud, a young musketeer who aped Aramis, but with the greatest of admirations, looked at him doubtfully. “I don’t think it will do you any good, my friend, to try to plead the case of Porthos’s servant with the King yourself. Or even with the Queen. You know they don’t receive-”

Aramis laughed, and shook his head. “No, that is not it. I must go tell Mousqueton’s girl what happened to him. She is a maid within. I wouldn’t bother with it, but, you know, Porthos likes the boy, and he thinks, you know… the girl should know.”

“Oh,” D’Armaud said, looking doubtful. But he stepped aside and let Aramis through.

Aramis knew the palace as well as he knew his own quarters. For years now, he’d stood guard at the palace door and, long before he’d become Violette’s lover, he’d taken his pleasure with many of the ladies in the palace. And given, he hoped, pleasure in return.

He crossed a courtyard, ran up a staircase, wound around a hallway, until he came to a place where a door stood ajar. At this door he knocked, ever so lightly.

A formidable white-haired matron emerged, and looked surprised at seeing Aramis. “You’re on guard tonight, monsieur? I’m sure her grace-”

“No, no. None of that,” Aramis said, smiling through what felt like frozen lips. Had he been so obvious? Did everyone know of his latest flirtation? He could have sworn he’d played it dark and deep. He could have sworn it was all hidden. By the Mass, he was a fool. “I’m here to speak to Hermengarde. I believe she is a maid here?”

The matron raised her eyebrow at him, as she would at any gentleman, he supposed, who asked to speak to one of her maids. Her hard, dark eyes implied that she knew how these affairs ended.

Aramis shook his head. “She’s friends with the servant of my friend Porthos and he-”

“Oh, the poor boy who was taken for murder,” the matron said, taking her hands to her chest. “Do you know when he’ll be hanged? Have they announced it, yet?”

“We’re hoping never, madam,” Aramis said, stiffly. “We’re sure Mousqueton didn’t do it.”

The matron patted him on the arm. “And much credit it does you too. But there, you wait here, I’ll have Hermengarde fetched to you.”

She walked down the hallway and he heard her talking to someone, then she came back, nodding to him as she passed him and returned to her lair, leaving him to wait in the hallway, outside her door, like a petitioner before royalty.

After a while, he heard light, fast steps, and, in moments, Hermengarde appeared. She was a little, blondish slip of a thing, and always managed to look to him more like a waif than a full-grown woman. She stopped awkwardly in front of him, and made him a very tottering curtsey, before looking up to show a face ravaged by tears.

“Monsieur,” she said, and her lips trembled. “Monsieur. I’m sure you have bad news of Mousqueton and, oh, monsieur, I wish this hadn’t happened.”

“But no, my little one. Not bad news,” Aramis said, finding himself speaking in the tone he would use for a little kitten or a frightened horse. “I’m sure you know he was arrested, but we’ve been told that nothing bad will happen to him and-”

“Nothing bad!” Hermengarde said. “But… he’s in the Bastille! They torture people in the Bastille.”

To this Aramis could counter with nothing but a bow. Searching frantically in his sleeves, he found a lace-edged handkerchief, and handed it to her, and looked away as she wiped her cheeks. “I’d like to talk to you, Hermengarde,” he said while she did so. “Perhaps you can tell me something that will help us free Mousqueton?”

“Oh no,” she said. “At least I don’t know of anything…” She shook her head.

“Well,” Aramis said. “You’ve helped us with these things before, and surely you know many times people don’t even realize what they know, and are all innocently keeping the secret, which if known would set their loved one free.”

“I… I don’t think I know any secrets,” Hermengarde said, looking up, and her lip started trembling again, doubtless heralding another flood of tears.

“No. But the point of those secrets is that one never knows,” Aramis said, and offered his arm to her. “I know you to be a brave girl, and surely you will help us to free Mousqueton.”

She took his arm and he led her, almost by instinct, to a small garden, in what used to be the part of the palace where Violette lived. If anyone of the many people who crossed paths with them thought it odd for a musketeer to walk arm in arm with a crying maid, no one said so. Not even the occasional musketeer who saluted Aramis as an equal.

It wasn’t till they exited through an arched gateway into the tiny walled garden where in summer the fragrance of roses was almost overpowering and where now, in late February, only the skeletal twigs of the bushes stood, their arms raised to a lowering sky from which all light had fled, did Aramis realize where his feet had brought him. He sighed, remembering the many times he’d sat with Violette upon the marble bench under the tree. And how many times he’d kissed her, in the rose-scented nights that were now irretrievably gone.

Startled at his sigh, Hermengarde looked up. She looked surprised and blushed as if she’d caught something indecent in his gaze. “Oh. You miss her,” she said. “The Duchess.”

Aramis nodded, gravely. What he couldn’t tell his friends, what he couldn’t tell the many women who courted his favors and with whom he could not become involved because none of them could ever hold the place in his heart that Violette had held, he could tell this little waif of a maid. The words tripped from his tongue. “I’ll miss her the rest of my life,” he said, factually. “We used to come here, on summer nights. It is a little-used garden. And we used to sit on that bench there, under the tree, and face the entrance of the garden. Because if we saw no one else come in, we knew that no one was close enough to hear our conversation.”