Read Dying by the sword Online
Authors: Sarah d'Almeida
Dying by the sword (14 page)
She tilted her head sideways and regarded him curiously. It was very much the expression of a cat studying a small animal squeaking past. “How odd,” she said. “I believed you quite recovered from that incident, if indeed you had ever felt it.”
“What you believed matters not,” he said, and turned his back on her, walking to the wall and pretending to be allencompassingly absorbed in the portrait of a small child on that wall. Probably one of Marie’s daughters, he thought, as there was some resemblance to the mouth and the eyes.
He heard her get up and come towards him from behind. He felt her hand resting so half her fingers touched his neck and half his shoulder. “I could give you a child, you know?”
His head turned around so fast that it felt as if he’d dislocated something, and his normal suave manner deserted him. “What?”
She smiled at him, a contented smile. “To be sure I can. I can conceive very easily and I’ve had . . . bearing is easy. I’ve had more children than the obvious, you know? It’s not so bad—a trip to the country, and later, you send the baby to the father who can then do with him or her as he pleases.” She gave him an understanding look. “Someone bound to be a cleric could always claim it was a nephew of his and have him—”
“I am an only child.”
“Oh, that hardly matters. It’s only a polite fiction. The popes themselves have done. Everyone knew the nephews and nieces were truly—”
“No.”
“But yes, I tell you it would be the easiest thing. All society really would care for, of course, was knowing the child was of the first blood. And my children are always lovely.” She looked at him speculatively. “And if I have one with you, then he can’t help but be lovely. I feel sure the Lady your Mother would approve. Just because she means you for the church, it doesn’t mean—”
“Maman!”
Aramis said, his mouth gone dry with feelings he couldn’t even describe. “Oh, yes, everything I do in life must be with the object of pleasing
Maman
.”
Aramis said, his mouth gone dry with feelings he couldn’t even describe. “Oh, yes, everything I do in life must be with the object of pleasing
Maman
.”
This got him an odd look and then a small nod as though De Chevreuse had decided he could not possibly but be telling the truth. “I thought,” she said smugly, “that was the origin of your great grief, for everyone knows the Duchess de Dreux was carrying her lover’s child. I never thought that lover would be you, though I knew you were one of her—” She stopped, abruptly, and Aramis was shocked to realize the reason she had stopped was probably because he’d strode towards her, and was now holding her small face in the vise grip of his large hands.
He didn’t know what his eyes showed, but he was sure they were intent. And, since he’d not meant to come here and hold her face; since, in fact, he had never thought of doing it; indeed since he couldn’t make himself let go of her, he must assume there was something very scary about his expression.
The impression was confirmed by a little squeal escaping De Chevreuse and then her hand coming up to cover her mouth. He looked intently at her a while longer, before his mouth found its own way to the words he must pronounce. “Do not ever pronounce the name of Violette again,” he said. “Not in my presence. Not if you live a thousand years and see me every day. I am a sinful man, despite my best intentions. I’ve had many lovers and will probably have many more, whether I take orders or not.” He paused. There was something in her eyes that told him only the fact that his gaze was still intent, his hands still immobilizing her face, kept her from giggling. “Violette was not one of those lovers, taken to satisfy a human lust. Something happened between us. Though we were never married, it was the first time I understood the biblical order to leave your mother and father and cleave to your wife.
“Violette and I were like that, one body, one blood, one flesh. As long as I live, though what you might call grief might die down—will die down, I daresay, since human memory does—I will be half a creature, a half of me having been ripped away and sent to an early grave. I will never know wholeness again till, God granting it, I meet her again in the ever after and we can be one once more. A child . . .” His mouth went dry again, and he had to stop, while his eyes filled with unaccountable moisture. “Should there have been a child from her, I would have moved heaven and Earth to have him by my side and to make him my heir. Other than that, a child is of no consequence to me. I’ve lived since I can remember in the expectation of being a priest one day, and of leaving no descendants. My lands and title will devolve on a distant cousin with a numerous family, and I wish him joy of them.”
Now his body allowed him to pry his fingers away from De Chevreuse’s face—as though he were prying them away against their will. She looked at him, her mouth half-open, like a startled child. And Aramis thought that he’d ruined it, now. He would be leaving here never to return, the one palliative he’d found for his pain over Violette’s death gone forever.
He stepped away and bowed correctly. “My apologies, your grace. I regret having upset you or scared you. It was scarcely my wish to do so. I beg you will forgive me and that when we meet again, you will show no signs of your anger at me.”
“Oh, but I’m not angry at you,” she said, suddenly. “And you’ll come see me the day after tomorrow, of course.”
He raised his eyebrows. “After my . . . insufferable behavior?”
She grinned at him, raising an ingratiating dimple on her cheek. “Your behavior,” she said, “insufferable though it might be, shows you to be a man of deep passions and sudden anger.” She shrugged. “It is in my nature, you know, to embrace danger. Much of my life has been lived in seeking it out and following it wherever it may lead.”
“Oh,” Aramis said, and stopped, remembering the rumor, more or less confirmed by Monsieur de Treville. “Your grace wouldn’t be happening, right now, to be involved in a conspiracy?”
She flicked her fingers, casually. “I am always involved in a conspiracy,” she said.
“To murder the Cardinal?” he said.
She looked surprised, her eyes wide. “Oh, I’d devoutly love a conspiracy that does that, or even attempts it,” she said, eagerly. “Is there one? And can I join it?”
“Unlike you,” Aramis said. “I don’t court danger for the love of it.” And then, with punctilious exactitude, “Unless it’s in duel where I must, of course, defend my honor.”
“We women do not have that choice,” she said. “All the swords we have must be borrowed.”
“Those,” he said, thinking of his fingers grasping her face while fury ran like a grief-dark river through his mind, “must be danger enough.”
She shrugged. “But I do not know of this conspiracy you speak. If someone wants to murder the monster, I must, of course, support them. I’ve found no one brave enough to try it yet, though.” As she spoke, she darted the smallest of looks at the folded missive on her writing table, and then quickly away.
Aramis was almost absolutely sure that she was lying about knowing nothing of a conspiracy. And yet, he was also almost sure he had seen something like surprise quickly followed by relief in her eyes when he’d mentioned the conspiracy. Surprise because he knew it? Relief because he didn’t know her part in it?
“I’d take care, milady,” he said. “Your correspondence with the Queen has been intercepted, and the Cardinal is sure it betrays a conspiracy against him.”
“His eminence thinks that the fact I still breathe, never mind my being in the same city as her Majesty, is a conspiracy against himself. It is all very silly.”
“Perhaps so, but remember he has the power to separate your head from your neck, and that’s a danger too large to court. Take care, my lady.”
“I always take care. I will see you the day after tomorrow, D’Herblay, since you anticipated our meeting today.”
It was so clearly a dismissal, he could not help but take it. On his way out, passing the table, he managed to cast a glance on the name on that missive, and was startled to find the name and styling of her Majesty’s illegitimate half-brother, Cesar.
The Spider’s Web; Where Old Enemies Are Much Like Old Friends; The Loyalty of a Worthy Man
“SIT down, Monsieur le Comte,” Rochefort said. He had led him into an office that was the exact, if poorer, replica, of his master’s. Where Richelieu’s study was surrounded by a profusion of bookcases, each filled with leather bound volumes with gilded edges and covers, this one had only two bookcases. And where Richelieu’s chairs were majestically carved and ornamented, Rochefort’s—while looking quite comfortable—were undeniably utilitarian affairs. His office also lacked a writing desk. What it had in its place was a sword, mounted on the wall, a sword that looked much like Athos’s ancestral sword, mounted on his own wall.
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” Athos said. “You might know it, and the Cardinal might know it, but other than courting my vengeance if you reveal it, there is nothing you can earn by letting me know you have my secret. I don’t use the name. What I have done has darkened it forever. Perhaps some yet unborn La Fere can resume it with pride, but I can never. So long as I live, that name must remain unknown.”
“Or at least until the crown has forgotten the small matter of your wife,” Rochefort said, casually, shrugging. “That’s normally why people take the uniform, isn’t it? To serve a while until one’s crimes are forgotten and the King owes one enough he’d never dream of punishing them. And then one can return to one’s former life, untouched.”
Athos felt a muscle work on the side of his jaw. “Do not mention . . . the lady. I committed no crime,” he said. “But as for returning . . .” He shrugged. “There are events and . . . and decisions that alter one forever. I don’t think I would be the best custodian for my lands or my people.”
Rochefort said nothing to this, simply sat down and joined his hands on his lap. “You’re not going to require,” he said, “that I call you Athos, are you? It is a demmed silly name. A demon, wasn’t he?”
“A mountain,” Athos said. “A mountain in Armenia on which a famous monastery is set.”
“A monastery!” Rochefort said, with every sign of alarm. “Are you then, like your friend who calls himself Aramis, merely wearing the uniform of the King’s musketeers until you can exchange it for the habit of a priest or a monk?”
“I?” Athos said, almost in shock. “Heaven forbid. I hope I have as much faith as the next man, but if I find myself inadequate to care for my lands or my people, how much more inadequate am I to look after God’s affairs? No. I’ll remain myself. The name is just . . . what it is.”
Rochefort shrugged. “Those of us who serve the Cardinal,” he said, “are not ashamed to do it under our own names.”
“Perhaps,” Athos said, “because you had nothing left to lose.” And let the idea sink in, seeing the sting of it at the back of Rochefort’s eye, even as the man looked away. Rochefort was, as Athos knew, as noble as himself—a man from an ancient family.
They’d been on the opposite sides of the secret war between King and Cardinal for so many years that the two of them knew each other as well as old friends might. Two things divided them beyond their opposing loyalties—which either considered inexplicable—that Rochefort was willing to stoop to the most dishonorable actions in pursuit of his master’s aim; and that Athos had no expectations, ever, of regaining the honors he had lost, while Rochefort was hoping to rebuild his domain and the fortune his ancestors had squandered.
“His eminence says you have agreed to work for him on this matter of the . . . conspiracy,” Rochefort said, politely.
“On this matter only and only because he’s holding Mousqueton, Monsieur Porthos’s servant, as a hostage to this.”
“I understood you offered,” Rochefort said, drily.
“One offers, when one is compelled,” Athos answered with equal dryness. “I do not want the boy harmed. You know Porthos. He took to the boy as though he were his own son.” He held back from saying that Porthos had already lost one son. Not that he wasn’t sure Richelieu knew this. There were very few things in France that escaped the attention of the éminence grise. But either Rochefort knew it and it didn’t bear mentioning—or he didn’t know it, and Athos would spare Porthos’s pride. “It would be devastating to lose him.”
Rochefort raised an eyebrow, “Is he perhaps, in fact—?”
“Not that I know, or Porthos knows,” Athos said.
“Or find it necessary to tell me?”
Athos shrugged. No use making Rochefort and Richelieu think that their hostage was, in fact, more important than he was. “That I know,” he said, “Porthos met him when he came to Paris. I understand Mousqueton tried to relieve Porthos of some of his possessions and . . . Well, you know Porthos.”
“Mostly I know his prowess in duel, but yes. I have heard rumors about Monsieur Porthos’s soft heart.”
Athos inclined his head. He supposed that there were rumors about all of them and that somewhere, if not actually written down, in the Cardinal’s hand, there was a list of their weaknesses—Porthos’s soft heart and his vanity; Aramis’s faith and his inability to stay away from the fair sex; D’Artagnan’s tendency to leap before he looked and his romanticism and Athos’s—he paused. He knew himself well enough to realize he had faults aplenty. But he was at a loss to choose which of them would be the fatal one. His drinking? His reluctance to deal with any women at all? Or his shattered and embittered heart, forever burdened with the sense of guilt for having killed his wife. She might have been a criminal and her death an execution, but in the dark of night, Athos stared dry-eyed into the darkness and suspected very much that he’d made a mistake and slain the only woman he’d ever love, the woman whose memory still haunted his every moment.
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