Death in Gascony Read online

“It’s possible,” Athos said. “Very possible, considering the man was a thief. But…” Deep breath. “One thing I don’t think is worth arguing anymore after these attacks…”

  “What?” D’Artagnan prompted, knowing what the answer was likely to be, but hoping for any other.

  “We can no longer delude ourselves that your father died a normal death in a normal duel.”

  “It is possible,” D’Artagnan said. And then bit his lip. “But I always thought it unlikely given my father’s skill with a sword.”

  “That and two groups of people trying to kill you before you reach your destination must perforce mean that we have to investigate your father’s death. And consider it murder till proven otherwise.”

  “I’m very afraid,” D’Artagnan said, “that you are right.”

  “The thing is,” Athos said. “The first set had a safe-conduct from the Cardinal. This one didn’t—or at least not on the dead man.”

  “Was it the Cardinal who sent them? Or someone using the Cardinal as a cat’s-paw?”

  “Whoever it was,” D’Artagnan said “doesn’t want me in Gascony.”

  The Dogs of Gascony; A Widow’s Grief; Athos’s Fears

  “WE are near your house, then?” Athos asked.

  They were riding down the slopes of rolling hills that led in turn to a comparatively flat land, covered in scrubby pine forests. The road, a beaten dirt track, wound between these pines and was therefore green shaded and fragrant even in bleak late fall.

  “Just around the next turn, we should be able to see my domain,” D’Artagnan said, and blushed.

  Athos smiled. It was a peculiar obsession of D’Artagnan’s that his friends would despise him for the meager extent of his lands. As though they’d befriended him for the nobility of his line; as though they were all grand seigneurs living from their lands.

  The truth was they’d developed a friendship for the young Gascon based on nothing more than his bravery, his nobility of spirit and his willingness to throw his lot in with theirs when theirs seemed wholly doomed.

  That and, if Athos were honest, Athos’s own forlorn wonder at finding himself past his midthirties and with no son to take up his name. Oh, his mind knew well enough the young Gascon was not his son. So did anyone who saw them, as the two could not be more different in appearance—Athos being tall and spare and looking as he was, the result of centuries of noble ancestry; while D’Artagnan was short and muscular and had the agile bearing of a Gascon seigneur. But Athos’s emotions had attached to the young man as though he were the son that Athos had always expected to have. And in spirit, cunning, bright, fast-moving D’Artagnan was the son Athos’s heart would have longed to father. A worthy heir to Athos’s ancient lineage.

  He now spied anxiously, with a father’s eye, for signs of fatigue or a look of illness to the young man. However, since they’d taken the three days to rest in the tavern, the miraculous ointment of Gascony, provided this time by the hosteler, seemed to have taken the desired effect.

  D’Artagnan was still paler than normal, to be sure. His olive skin showed an ashen grey tinge. But his eyes shone with excitement and perhaps apprehension at the approach of his paternal abode. And he sat effortlessly in the saddle.

  “There, there,” D’Artagnan said. As he lifted his arm to point, it was clear that the movement didn’t pain him, and Athos felt free to look towards where that arm was pointing.

  Though the land was relatively flat, showing only rolling hills, they were at a slightly elevated point, looking down on an array of well-ordered fields and denuded vineyards, and the tall stone walls of an enclosed city. They were high enough above the city that they could see within its well-laid streets.

  “You live in a fortress,” Aramis said, in a tone of surprise.

  D’Artagnan laughed. “It’s a bastide,” he said. And turning around to look first at Athos and then at Aramis, he laughed slightly at what must have been a look of total astonishment on their faces. “I suppose it is a Gascon thing?” He laughed again, a little. “They were new towns, built centuries ago, on the land that noblemen hadn’t claimed. Free towns, where the bourgeoisie could hold their own and do their trading in any way they wished, without…rulers.” He laughed, as though amused at the idea. “The fishing was free, they could marry their children to whomever they wished, and they had the right to a market or fair. Oh, and they were exempt from military service.”

  Athos caught the tinge of irony behind D’Artagnan’s voice, and he looked curiously at his friend. “This is not, then, part of your domains?” he asked. “Since I assume that whatever domains your father ruled accept D’Artagnan suzerainty?”

  D’Artagnan shrugged. He looked back at Athos, his eyes dancing as though at a joke. “Ah, no, my friend. Those are my domains. Those and the surrounding fields and vineyards. You see, the bastides were also, initially, built without a wall. There was peace, you see, and the merchants and farmers did not need seigneurs. But then…” He gave a sigh that held more than a bit of the dramatic and more than a touch of humor. “But then the wars came. English and French and the wars of religion. And, you see, they found they needed a wall and seigneurs after all. And they came, hat in hand, and gave up some of their privileges, in return for my family’s protection.”

  “Ah,” Athos said, remembering the blood-soaked history of Gascony, disputed between two countries, torn between two religions. Interesting that at any time the people of this region had thought they were done with war and needed no more protection. And yet, looking at the rolling hills, he could see the attraction of the fantasy, and he almost wished he could believe it himself.

  “It was inherited by my father, as second son, from his mother’s family,” he said. “And it is nothing to the domains of my uncle de Bigorre.3 They are the great lords of this region. But, enfin, it is enough to support me and mine.”

  “You were mistaken,” Porthos said, in a low rumble.

  Athos turned back to look at him at the same time D’Artagnan did, and found Porthos frowning, with an intent expression in his eyes, under his unruly reddish eyebrows. “Your domains, if they include the bastide, are, perforce, much larger than the Cemetery des Innocents.”

  D’Artagnan laughed, a low gurgle in his throat, and instead of attempting to explain metaphors to the giant redhead—an enterprise all of Porthos’s friends knew to be perilous and possibly fruitless—he said, “Perhaps they are. A little.” He looked at each of them in turn. “Come, my friends. Let me lead you to my home.”

  But before they could move, a horseman approached at a gallop. He was singular looking, as he dressed all in black and rode a pitch-black mount. He approached at full gallop, and as he approached raised his whip, as though he meant to clear the road of them by force of his whip. Which was ridiculous, because they were not obstructing the road, but to the side of it.

  At his lifting the whip, all of their hands went to their swords, and he seemed to think better of it, and rode by.

  “Relative of yours?” Porthos asked, as the horseman’s hoofbeats distanced themselves.

  “No, prie a Dieu,” D’Artagnan said. “It is Sever de Comminges. The de Comminges are great noblemen in this area. They own ten times more land and more wealth than I do. And I envy them not at all if they have to claim relationship to Sever.”

  With those words, he took his horse at a gallop down the path, which became increasingly more winding, till they left behind them the last of the scrubby pines and were hastening down the path between fields and vineyards.

  Even at a gallop, Athos could pick up the signs of the approaching city—the smell of fires, the sounds of human voices.

  Before the gate of the city they slowed a little. The gate was open to all and Athos wondered if it was always so—these being peaceful times—or whether it closed at night.

  D’Artagnan paused just long enough to say, “Welcome to Tournon sur l’Adour.”4

  Inside the gate, the streets were paved with broad
paving stones and wide enough for a carriage to pass by without crushing pedestrians. In that, it was perhaps better than most Paris streets. In fact, pedestrians walked out of their way without undue haste, as they took the streets at a moderate speed, climbing slowly as they rode, until they found themselves before another wall with gates—these also open.

  The gates led directly into the expansive courtyard of what was a large house and also, clearly, a working farmhouse. There were carts in the yard, one of them loaded with barrels, another stacked high with hay. A patient ox tied to one of the carts chewed its cud wonderingly looking at them. The men working at various tasks in the yard looked too, without surprise and, for a moment, with no reaction.

  Then one of them—an older man who held a pitchfork, with which he’d been loading the hay cart—gasped. “Monsieur D’Artagnan,” he said, and swept his cap from his head. “Monsieur D’Artagnan, you are returned.”

  As though this were a signal, all the other men in the yard removed their hats, and an elderly woman came out of the shadows, hurrying towards them. “You are back, monsieur,” she said. “Why I scarcely recognize you, so tall and finely dressed.”

  D’Artagnan laughed. In all their time in Paris, Athos had never seen him laugh so much. He thought, with a pang, that perhaps, for D’Artagnan’s own sake, they should allow him—nay, encourage him—to stay in Gascony. It was clear something about his ancestral abode cheered him up. Never mind that his leaving Paris would sensibly add to Athos’s loneliness and his knowledge of being on a path to nowhere, a path far removed from that he’d once thought to follow.

  Vaulting off his horse, he heard D’Artagnan tell the woman, “No, Marguerite. I might be more finely dressed, but taller I am not. It is a long time since I stopped growing and, besides, I’ve only been gone six months.”

  “Ah, but you look taller to my eyes. And I think you’re mistaken. It can’t be only six months. Seems like years, why, with your mother crying every day for missing you and your father—” She stopped, as though only then remembering that Monsieur D’Artagnan père was no longer among the living. “Ah, monsieur, your poor father. You’ve heard, have you?”

  It wasn’t quite a question, and D’Artagnan didn’t quite answer it. His features went all sober, and he nodded and swallowed, then turned to introduce the elderly woman to them. “This, gentlemen, is Marguerite, who was my nurse, once upon a time, and who is almost a second mother to me.”

  The woman protested, “Oh, monsieur,” but blushed and her eyes shone with pride.

  “And Marguerite, you’ve doubtless heard of the King’s Musketeers and how fierce they are. And how noble. Well, these are the three fiercest and noblest of them all—Monsieur Porthos, Monsieur Athos and Monsieur Aramis.”

  The three removed their hats and bowed. Marguerite blushed and giggled a little, as though she were a young girl. Perhaps as a young girl she had dreamed of musketeers and, as such, she now found herself transported to that girlhood. She curtseyed towards them and said, “Any friend of Monsieur D’Artagnan will always be received with respect in this house. I am deeply honored to meet you, monsieurs.” Then to D’Artagnan, “I’m afraid your mother is in the praying room. She’s been in there the whole while. I’ll get Rafael to see to your horses. You go inside.”

  At her gesture, a strapping young man came from the shadows to take charge of the horses, even as their servants hastened to help.

  “Marguerite will have taken charge of our servants in no time at all,” D’Artagnan said. “She’ll make sure they have a place to sleep and are well fed. She is the cook for my family too, as well as supervising those of the village women who come to help with the housework. You see, her husband, Bayard, was my father’s servant in the war. And they both came and settled here afterwards. Their son, who is my age, is one of the soldiers in the employ of my uncle de Bigorre.”

  He spoke hastily, hurriedly, as though trying to evade his own thoughts by racing ahead of them with his voice. Athos would wager that part of D’Artagnan was refusing to think of his father’s death—of his father as being dead.

  In fact, D’Artagnan rushed ahead, under a stone balcony, to a narrow door, calling out, “Maman!”

  A sudden furious barking answered him, and from inside the house a small mutt came who looked like nothing on Earth. Combed, bathed and perfumed, he might have resembled those lap dogs that some ladies at court affected and which were pampered past human endurance. However, this dog’s long brown hair was matted to the point of almost obscuring his eyes; his tail looked like a mat of its own, and one of its ears flopped down all on its own.

  “Angel,” D’Artagnan screamed, with certain joy, though the dog had stopped some steps away and started barking furiously. “Angel, you fool!”

  He reached towards the snarling, barking creature and picked it up bodily. “It is I, you ridiculous creature.”

  The dog stopped mid snarl, and made a sound that Athos had never heard from a canine throat. He was sure it was a snarl turned mid sound into a joyous bark. However, as it emerged, it had almost the tone of a human exclamation of surprise. Little mad eyes peering amid the tangled hair regarded D’Artagnan with joy.

  “Yes, yes, you fool. See. It is I,” D’Artagnan said, enduring mad licking from the happy beast. “This, gentlemen, is Angel, who started out as my mother’s pampered dog, and whom I wholly subverted in my wild childhood, till he followed me everywhere and often went hunting with me. He has no notion of his true size and as such he will charge a stag and bring him to ground as though he were a hound.”

  Athos had a sudden impulse to tell D’Artagnan that the dog was like the master, but instead, bit his tongue and said, “You know, when I was young and I read the Odyssey, I was moved almost to tears by Ulysses’s return to his home, as a beggar, when no one recognized him, save his old and faithful dog. But I see in Gascony this is reversed. Everyone recognizes the returning master save the faithful dog.”

  D’Artagnan looked at him with a furtive grin. “Ah, in Gascony even dogs don’t like to believe they have masters,” he said. Then shrugged. “Angel is very old. Almost blind and almost deaf. He sees mostly with his nose. He needed to catch my scent to recognize me.”

  He set the dog down, and the dog followed him, with wagging tail.

  “Maman,” D’Artagnan called again, to what was a long, dark corridor that smelled faintly of grapes. Then to them, “She will be in the room at the end of this hallway, if she’s still in her praying room.”

  “Do you wish us to leave you to meet her in privacy?” Aramis asked.

  D’Artagnan shot him a puzzled look. “No. Oh, no. The sooner she learns she has guests, the better. And there is really nothing I need to tell her in private upon first meeting her.”

  Which was how the three of them came to follow him, down the long, cool hallway, to a small door at the end. At this door, D’Artagnan knocked and, obtaining an answer none of his friends could hear, opened the door.

  And Athos received a shock. However he’d imagined Madame D’Artagnan, the mother of that fierce duelist, his friend, D’Artagnan, this was not it.

  It was clear from the way D’Artagnan hugged her, shouting “Maman,” and the way the woman clung to him, crying a little, that she was, indeed, D’Artagnan’s mother. It was, however, a puzzle how this could be since she looked scarcely older than D’Artagnan and almost certainly younger than Athos himself.

  In fact, the woman looked hardly out of her childhood. Small, with a round face and honey blond hair, she had the kind of very pale, even complexion that seems to belong to a doll and not a living human. Her eyes, huge and blue and round, added to the impression of youth and guileless innocence.

  Her midnight black dress—modest by court standards, since it wholly covered her bosom and revealed her girlish, plump arms only from the elbow down—and her black headdress only added to the impression of frail innocence.

  She looked, Athos thought, like a postulant in a strict conv
ent—all youth and innocence submerged in darkness and discipline. Though he could tell on second glance, by the light of day coming through a thick-paned window, that she had faint wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and lips, none of this detracted from the impression that she’d just moments ago left her playfellows to come pray in front of grim saint statues.

  And now Athos looked at the saint statue and his mind stopped working altogether, because the statue showed a female saint holding her severed head in her hands. From the intent expression in the face, it was clear the head was alive and the lips speaking.

  The oddness of it confused him long enough that he was barely aware of D’Artagnan’s performing the introductions, though he bowed when his name was mentioned. And he hoped, in a flash, that Aramis wouldn’t find it necessary to exert his usual fatal charm upon his friend’s mother. He did not think D’Artagnan would accept that very well.

  And then he realized that D’Artagnan was talking of his father.

  “Maman, how did it happen? How could it happen? He was the best duelist ever.”

  “Everyone has a bad day, my son,” she said with a resigned expression.

  “But, Maman, my Father!”

  “Well, well…then, Henri, you know, your father was getting old. He was no longer the man you remember.”

  “But I’ve only been gone six months!” D’Artagnan protested, heatedly.

  “Six months are a long time when one is as old as your father was,” his mother said, soothingly. And as she spoke, her eyes turned towards Athos, as if in silent appeal.

  Athos wasn’t sure why he was being appealed to, and felt his cheeks color. Why did the woman keep emphasizing how old her husband had been?

  A horrible thought crossed his mind that Marie D’Artagnan, still beautiful and clearly far younger than her husband, had seen it fit to get rid of the husband she disparaged. And was now making excuses.

  Did they know there had truly been a duel, beyond her witness? Did anyone know?

  Athos bit his lip and tried to banish these ridiculous fears. He could not and he would not allow himself to suspect D’Artagnan’s mother of being a murderess.