Death in Gascony (29 page)
Authors: Sarah d'Almeida
B
EFORE
leaving, D’Artagnan visited his father’s grave, outside the main church of the bastide.
He stood silently a long time, looking at the stone slab that overlaid the tomb. He felt nothing.
His father was not here. Oh, his body was, surely, but not his spirit. The same way that his body might not be D’Artagnan’s father, but the spirit certainly was.
That spirit, wild and free as always, would be drinking and dueling in some heavenly tavern.
“Good-bye father,” D’Artagnan whispered, putting his hat back on his head. “I’ve arranged for mother to be well looked after, and I’m on my way to Paris, again.”
“B
UT
she won’t be living with Edmond after all,” D’Artagnan said, as he and his friends had dinner at a hostelry on the way to Paris. “Monsieur de Bilh’s wife is dead, and it is now sure he won’t have any other children, so he chose to take
Maman
in, and announce their relationship before the world. I believe he will make it sound so she will seem to be the daughter of an early and unequal marriage that he’s kept hidden from the world since. As it was, he only married his wife after his mistress’s death, so it matters not.”
“And was he happy to have her?” Porthos asked, interested.
D’Artagnan shrugged. Who was he to judge his grandfather’s moods? “He looked to be. And she also. She’ll nag him halfway to the grave, but it will do her good to have someone to look after her.
Maman
never did very well without a man to support her.”
“It remains to see,” Porthos said, hoisting his flagon of wine, “why those men first wanted to kill you, and why they had a safe-conduct from the Cardinal.”
“For that matter,” D’Artagnan said, “it remains to find out why my father had one too.”
“How do you propose to find out?” Aramis asked.
D’Artagnan grinned at his friend’s worried face. “I intend to ask him.”
But he did not feel nearly as sanguine, a week later, as he found himself in the antechamber to the Cardinal’s office. Surrounded by guards of the Cardinal, he had the hardest time staying out of quarrels, and it was all he could do to wait until the Cardinal’s secretary said, “His eminence will see you now.”
“W
HAT
did Richelieu say, monsieur?” Planchet asked, as D’Artagnan returned home.
D’Artagnan supposed that he shouldn’t have disclosed the whole to his servant, but given everything the servants observed in Gascony, secrecy was a lost hope. He looked at Planchet’s cat eyes which showed decidedly feline curiosity, and grinned. “He said that I’ve done him a bad turn by killing Sever de Comminges, who bid fair to be a good ally for him.”
“But you didn’t kill him,” Planchet protested.
“No. And I told him so. In what his eminence did not say, it transpired that he tried to have me killed so that I would not interfere with Sever de Comminges, who had proved to be of service to him.”
“I see,” Planchet said. And given the nature of his brain, he probably did. “So that was why he sent ruffians to kill you. But what about the safe-conduct your father had?”
“It seems,” D’Artagnan said, “that he wanted my father to dispatch de Comminges père. That my father refused to commit murder says a lot for him. Of course there was the matter of blackmailing Sever, but I would say he did it more to even the score with the family.”
“I am sure, monsieur,” Planchet said. “I’m sure he thought only of you and your inheritance.”
D’Artagnan nodded. He was sure of that too. “Ah, little did he know he’d already given me a father I could look up to. The best inheritance of all.”
“What should we do, then, about this letter?” Planchet said. “It arrived, you see, while we were gone. It was sent consigned to the kind offices of some Gascon acquaintance who, upon entering town, was too busy with drinking and dueling to remember the letter for a few weeks. The landlord said it was delayed with much apology.”
D’Artagnan picked up the letter. It was addressed to him in his father’s hand. Once having broken the seal, though, he found two sheets of paper inside. One written by his father, saying, “Henri, keep this safe for me,” and another. The other he opened.
After the date and the usual salutations, it said, “This testifies that I performed a marriage ceremony uniting Marie Ravelet and Adrien de Comminges.” It was signed by Father Bellamie
6
and D’Artagnan sighed. No wonder they hadn’t found the priest who had performed the ceremony. No one would think to look in such a humble parish for the man who had performed a lord’s marriage. At any rate, Father Bellamie was now beyond the reach of their curiosity.
D’Artagnan turned towards the roaring fireplace and dropped the paper in, just as a soft voice called from the stairs, “Henri?”
Smiling, D’Artagnan called to Planchet. “
Hola
, Planchet, go visit Monsieur Porthos. And don’t hurry back.” He tossed the boy a coin so he could buy wine with his friend, Mousqueton, and turned to welcome his mistress.
He had come home.
1
Monsieur D’Artagnan père was referred to, exclusively, in the previous manuscripts as Françios, but in this one he is referred to, almost exclusively, as Charles. As a mere compiler/translator of these adventures, I chose to leave the seemingly contradictory appellation as given in the originals. This single line might hold the key to the difficulty and the dual name might well be the result of one name being the legal one and the other the preferred.
2
The Musketeer’s Seamstress.
3
De Bigorre could not possibly be the real name of the elder branch of D’Artagnan’s family. In fact, all the family and town names in this portion of the diaries of Monsieur D’Artagnan seem to be vague allusions to the geography of the area or to families long vanished from the annals of Gascon nobility.
We have long known that Dumas had used fictitious names for his heros and attributed fictitious domains to them. It is now apparent that this obfuscation dates back to the diaries of Monsieur D’Artagnan. Given the revelations about their families—and others—contained in this portion of the diaries one can hardly marvel at it.
4
This too is clearly a made up name. In fact, this is perhaps as good a place as any to dismiss the now popular fantasy that D’Artagnan was based on Charles de Batz and his cousins who accompanied him into the musketeers.
Though those musketeers had some points in common with our heroes, it is clear to anyone who examines the records with a clear-eyed, dispassionate interest that they were in truth quite different people. For one, we are sure that Dumas’s Athos could not possibly be a Gascon. We’re equally sure that there are no blood ties between Dumas’s musketeers.
While some of the exploits of Monsieur de Batz and his friends sound like those of D’Artagnan, one can’t help suspecting that given the spirit of the times these were exploits common—more or less—to all musketeers.
The diaries found by the author of these chronicles show clearly that we are dealing with quite a different group of gallant musketeers.
5
The Musketeer’s Seamstress.
6
Death Of A Musketeer.