Death in Gascony Read online

  D’Artagnan stamped his foot, in hatred of the Cardinal and in fury and frustration at his friends. “Draw, or I slaughter you where you stand,” he said, knowing only that to back out would be shame and to continue forward would be disaster. He was caught in the Cardinal’s trap.

  The sound of running feet didn’t intrude into his mind. He did not look until a well known voice called, breathlessly, from the side, “Monsieur, monsieur.”

  D’Artagnan turned. Planchet had been left safely in D’Artagnan’s lodging, at the Rue des Fossoyers. Planchet would not come here, like this, much less think of interrupting a duel without very grave reason. Reason so grave that D’Artagnan couldn’t even imagine it.

  All this was in his mind, not in full thoughts—not fully in words—as he turned, sword still in hand, still lifted, to see his servant—his bright red hair standing on end, his dark suit dusty and stained as if he’d run the whole way here—leaning forward, hands on knees, a respectful distance from him. “Planchet, what is it?”

  And the guards attacked. D’Artagnan heard the sound of swords sliding from their sheathes and turned. He was barely in time to meet head-on the clumsy rush of the blond guard.

  “Ah, coward,” he said, only vaguely aware that Porthos and Aramis had joined the fray on either side of him, taking on the blond’s assistants. D’Artagnan parried a thrust and made a very accurate thrust of his own, slitting the man’s doublet from top to bottom and ending by flipping his hat off his head. “Would you duel with a real man?” he said.

  The blond had a moment to look aghast at his torn clothing, cut with such precision as not to touch the flesh beneath, and to bend upon D’Artagnan a gaze of the purest horror. His lips worked, but no sound emerged.

  And D’Artagnan, his mind viewing the man and his fear as only a move in his chess game with the Cardinal, thought he glimpsed an opening, a way out of the trap of honor in which he found himself. He lunged forward, saying, “You think you can stand up against the musketeers? Don’t you think it will take more than that to face the men who have so often proved superior to his eminence’s best guards?”

  “That’s right,” Porthos said. He had, with easy bluster, inflicted a minor wound on his opponent’s arm, and was grinning, as he prepared to parry a counterattack that might very well never come. “That’s right. We’d rather die. Be cut to pieces right here, than allow you to arrest us.”

  “At any rate, monsieurs,” Aramis said, from D’Artagnan’s right. “It would be a more merciful and quicker way to die to allow ourselves to be killed here than to face the wrath of Monsieur de Treville.” There was still a tremolo of amusement to his voice, and D’Artagnan wondered if Aramis had begun to glimpse both the trap and the way out. Or if he, cunning as he was, had seen it all along, and before D’Artagnan did. “So we die here, monsieurs, but you cannot arrest us.”

  And in that second something broke in the leader’s eyes. He looked down at his torn doublet that showed a dubiously clean linen shirt beneath, then he looked quickly up at D’Artagnan. And then his sword clattered to the ground and, before D’Artagnan could gracefully accept his surrender, the man had taken to his heels, running fast over the ice-crusted fields, slipping and standing and slipping again.

  His men, clearly treasuring following their leader over valor, dropped their swords, so fast they seemed like echoes of his, and did their best to catch up with him.

  “Well played, D’Artagnan,” Aramis said. “I was wondering when you’d see their surrender, or preferably their flight, was the only way out of this for us. At least the only way with honor.” His lazy smile, the paternal tone of his words, implied that he’d seen this all along. D’Artagnan wondered if it was true. With Aramis it wasn’t easy to say. Aramis himself might not know.

  “Poor devils,” Porthos said, looking after the fleeing men. “They were as set up for this as we were. And the wrath they face from the Cardinal makes what we’d face at Monsieur de Treville’s hands seem almost gentle.” He took a deep breath, straining the expanse of his broad chest. “The affront is the Cardinal’s. I wish it were possible to challenge him for a duel.”

  “He was a good enough duelist in his youth,” Aramis said, his tone deceptively light.

  And D’Artagnan wondered if his mad friends, who hated the Cardinal for many good reasons as well as many foolish ones, would suddenly decide to challenge the Cardinal.

  He opened his mouth to remind them that men such as his eminence didn’t fight with their swords but with the might of the kingdom, when Athos spoke, “D’Artagnan, attend. This is grave business.” He held a letter in his hand—its seal broken—and waved it slightly in D’Artagnan’s direction.

  “Grave?” D’Artagnan asked. He sheathed his sword and stepped towards Athos. “What is it? From whom? And for whom?”

  But the words died on his lips. He’d got close enough to recognize his mother’s hand, the rounded convent hand that she’d been taught as a young girl. His mother? Writing to him? Normally his father did.

  And Athos was alarmed, as doubtless had been Planchet to run all the way over here.

  With shaking hand, D’Artagnan plucked the sheet of paper from Athos’s unresisting fingers and brought it up in front of his eyes, focusing on the writing.

  “Dear son,” the letter started primly. “I regret the necessity of it, but I must call you back from Paris at a very short notice. You see, there is no one else to claim the name or the domain. There is no one else to take up the care of the lands, or even to look after me.” D’Artagnan blinked in confusion at the words, wondering what his mother could mean, and almost had to force himself to read on. “Your father departed this world on Monday, a week ago. Today is the first time I’ve had the time and solitude,” solitude was heavily underscored, “to write this letter to you. For you must know that though they say it was a duel, I cannot be easy about your father’s death. He had, after all, been looking into your uncle’s affairs and I think he was doing it at the behest of that great man, Cardinal Richelieu. Of course, no one else knew this, either that he was looking into things or about the Cardinal, but a woman knows these things.” Knows was, again, deeply underscored. “You know how your father valued you and trusted you. I can’t tell this to anyone else. Please, hurry home, son, and take up your rightful place in this household.” It was signed in a tremulous hand with what read like Mauvais D’Aortoise but D’Artagnan could guess to be his mother’s signature—Marie D’Artagnan—distorted by emotion.

  But…what emotion? D’Artagnan could barely absorb the contents of the letter.

  His father dead? From a duel? Impossible. Monsieur Françios Charles D’Artagnan1 père had taught his son to such effect that even the most famous fighters in Paris could not best him.

  A murder disguised as a duel? Impossible again. D’Artagnan’s mind ran over the place of his childhood, those domains that he’d described often as smaller than the Cemetery des Innocents in Paris.

  D’Artagnan’s father had grown up there and, save for the brief time at war, lived there, in those villages and fields. There was no one there who’d raise a hand against him. It would never happen.

  And yet…His father was dead. And his father had been working for the Cardinal?

  Every feeling revolted, and the print seemed stark and cold upon the page. D’Artagnan felt a sob trying to tear through his throat, and fought it back with all his might, with greater strength than he’d ever had to employ against a human enemy.

  He took a deep breath. His voice came out reasonably controlled. “You are right, Athos. This is grave. I’d best attend to it.”

  “Of course,” Athos said. “When do the four of us leave for Gascony?”

  The Responsibilities of Friendship;

  Why an Agreed Upon Plan Is Not Always Agreed Upon;

  For Lack of a Horse

  “YOU will arrange my luggage, Planchet,” D’Artagnan said, as he entered his home.

  It was late afternoon and the long
twilight shadows of fall fell brownish grey into the sparsely furnished rooms. The yellowish light coming through the windows barely allowed the eye to distinguish a broad polished table with four chairs around it, and beyond, the door to D’Artagnan’s bedroom.

  D’Artagnan walked all the way into his bedroom, speaking, “I did not intend to be so delayed, but it is just as well. I must pack. We must leave tonight. And if we leave at night, we’re less likely to be found. Porthos and Aramis are on guard at the Palais Royale tonight, are they not?”

  As he entered his bedroom, he realized that Planchet hadn’t followed him. He turned to see the young man standing in the middle of the entrance room, his hand on the polished table. “Leave?” he said. “Tonight? But monsieur, your friends…”

  “Ah, yes, my friends. They presume they’ll go with me, do they not?” Indeed they did and had consumed the best part of the afternoon in plans for how long until they could get leave to accompany their friend, how long that leave should be and how to ask Monsieur de Treville for it. D’Artagnan had listened to it all, feeling uncomfortable, but it wasn’t till the way home, by Planchet’s side, that he’d realized why he could never take his friends with him. And that he must leave without them. “But they don’t understand, you see, Planchet. I am the only son of my father’s house. Granted, my father is only a second son, and his estate, inherited from his mother, is not very big. But still I am his only heir, and as his only heir, I must stay there and look after my father’s lands and tenants.”

  “Monsieur!” Planchet said, his tone shocked. Standing in the middle of the living room, he looked very pale, his red hair seeming to contrast unnaturally with his skin. The hand he rested on the table tightened.

  D’Artagnan sighed. He couldn’t begin to understand why his decision should distress his servant so. After all, what did this have to do with Planchet? It was D’Artagnan whose life had just been blighted. He’d been in Paris only six months, but in fact, between meeting Athos, Porthos and Aramis and falling into easy friendship with them, between duels and murder investigations, he felt like his life in the capital was at least as long—and twice as rich—as his life before that, amid the drowsing fields, the bucolic landscapes of Gascony.

  “I don’t want to go, Planchet, but I see no other choice. Now, if you’ll help me pack, we can be out of here in a couple of hours. We can stop and get some food on the way. I have some money. And we can ride through most of the night, then sleep somewhere on the wayside tomorrow. We won’t need an inn during the day and that will make us harder to find. Just in case my friends…”

  “Monsieur,” Planchet said. “Monsieur.” He was clearly in some distress and D’Artagnan could see that he was struggling for words as much as Porthos normally did. “Monsieur, only…Only think of Madame Bonacieux.”

  D’Artagnan groaned before Planchet had fully finished pronouncing her name. Madame Bonacieux, his Constance, was technically the wife of D’Artagnan’s landlord. Technically, since hers was a marriage of convenience and she seemed extremely artful in avoiding performing those duties that the church said a wife owed a husband.

  She was the goddaughter of the Queen’s steward, and she served in the palace as a maid to Queen Anne of Austria. This meant, in truth, that she rarely came home and when she did it was even more rarely at such hours as might encourage propinquity. She came at noon, or in the morning, visited her husband and was gone, claiming urgent work for the Queen.

  Only…only of late, for the last couple of months, she’d been coming at night, now and then. Her husband knew nothing of it. In the darkness of night, Madame Constance Bonacieux would discreetly open the door that led up the stairs and to her tenant’s room.

  It was D’Artagnan’s first love affair, and his heart and soul had become possessed by the beguiling, blond, court-bred, cosmopolitan woman. He loved her laughter. He loved her voice, cultivated and sounding perfectly rounded, much clearer than his own enunciation, which would always owe something to his native Gascon dialect. He loved the clothes she wore—those delicate, exquisite court gowns, made of the most flawless silk, and designed to push and reveal just the right things.

  But most of all he loved her without her clothes on.

  He groaned again.

  He didn’t know when next Constance would have a night off. Those happened not at her pleasure, but at the whim of her mistress, the Queen. Like all royal caprice, such favors were erratic. Normally D’Artagnan knew about it only as he felt her slipping into bed beside him.

  He supposed he would never see her again. He supposed, too, that in three months, maybe less, his mother would ask him to marry some local girl. Not too noble—no one would push high nobility at a man of D’Artagnan’s possessions. In his younger days, he had conceived a desperate passion for Irene, his girl cousin—a passion that his uncle had put an end to quickly enough. Since his uncle had inherited the majority of the estate, his nephew was not nearly rich enough to aspire to a girl of the elder branch of his family.

  So she would probably be a girl of the low nobility—well born but not titled. The daughter of some other small manor holder. She would speak Gascon, and she would never have been outside her native land. She would never have seen a court gown, and she would be nothing like Constance.

  Of a sudden, D’Artagnan realized that the worst thing that could happen was not his leaving without seeing Constance again. No, the worst thing that could happen was his seeing her again and having to say good-bye to her, knowing it was the last time he beheld her gold and rose loveliness.

  “Mort Dieu,” he said. “Come, Planchet. No time to lose. We must be out of here before she would come, supposing she comes tonight. We have no time to lose. We must—” He stumbled into his room, in the growing darkness, and started haphazardly throwing his clothes into a saddlebag. He didn’t have many clothes. Two spare shirts and a spare uniform in the color of the guards of Monsieur des Essarts, the brother-in-law of Monsieur de Treville.

  Tossing the blue grey tunics into the saddlebag, he sighed. He’d have to wear them out, of course. There was nothing for it. His family was not so wealthy that it could afford new suits of clothes on a whim. And in Gascony no one would know what these meant. Only he would. Only he would mourn that, having served his apprenticeship for musketeer amid the guards of Monsieur des Essarts, he would now have to leave without becoming a musketeer.

  Frowning, he thought that he would have to write a letter, to leave here, with other letters addressed to his friends. One of his friends would have to convey D’Artagnan’s formal resignation to Monsieur des Essarts. Perhaps not the best way to do it, but D’Artagnan knew he wouldn’t—couldn’t—be coming back, and all of a sudden couldn’t bear the thought of having to take leave of any of his friends and acquaintances in person.

  “We must hurry,” he said.

  Planchet, still looking distressed, had taken time to light a candle, which he now brought into the room. “I don’t understand your determination to leave before you see your friends again,” he said, in measured tones.

  “Oh, them most of all I do not wish to see,” D’Artagnan said. “Their circumstances are so different from mine, that they’d try to convince me to return from Gascony after organizing my affairs. They’d try to convince me to leave someone else in charge and come back with them. Only imagine Aramis’s dismay at the thought that I’ll go to a place where fashion doesn’t penetrate. And Athos, who abandoned his own domains, won’t understand that I have no convenient family to take over mine. And Porthos…Well…Porthos just won’t understand. There’s nothing outside of Paris for him.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to explain it to them, and it’s easier to present them with the fact of my departure and leave letters explaining. I will of course invite them to visit and of course they won’t, but…Easier that way.”

  “And myself, monsieur?” Planchet asked. He set the candle down and opened his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  “You’ll come
with me. I’ll need a servant on the way, in case I meet with some mishap. Someone to go call for help, at any rate. And besides, you’ll need to bring the horses back.”

  “The horses?” Planchet asked, as if he’d never heard of such a creature.

  “Of course.” Why was the young man so slow-witted today? Normally his mind raced close enough to D’Artagnan’s, or, truth be told, if it involved numbers, from the counting out of money to the planning of a leave, raced ahead of D’Artagnan’s. So, why so slow today? The news of D’Artagnan’s father’s death could not have distressed Planchet. It must be that he didn’t like the idea of that long a journey. “We’ll have to borrow horses from Monsieur de Treville, and—since I won’t be coming back—you’ll have to bring them back to him.”

  “But…what about me?”

  “You? What do you mean?”

  “You mean to send me back to Paris,” Planchet said. “How am I to make my way back to Gascony, afterwards?”

  D’Artagnan frowned, suddenly understanding, but confused. He hadn’t given it any thought. Planchet was just Planchet. He’d been D’Artagnan’s servant from D’Artagnan’s first week in Paris. He’d accompanied D’Artagnan on all adventures. D’Artagnan hadn’t thought…

  Now he looked at Planchet as the horrifying realization dawned on him that he couldn’t really support Planchet as a servant in Gascony. For one, the house already had servants—an elderly couple. They’d been with D’Artagnan’s parents forever. In fact, the man had been D’Artagnan’s father’s servant in the wars.

  It wasn’t that the house couldn’t afford one more servant—D’Artagnan cast a critical gaze over Planchet’s scrawny frame—or at least it could easily afford a servant well used to starving. But D’Artagnan thought, for the first time, on what Planchet would think of Gascony. He’d worked as a clerk at an accountant’s before hiring on with D’Artagnan, and he’d complained of the boredom. Surely, a rural house in Gascony could be no better.