Aramis blinked. “Monsieur de Treville, I never thought this would cause a permanent interruption in my service.” This was not the reception he expected, and receiving it shocked him to the core, and made him shake. “I never intended to leave forever. Only till my innocence was proven, and then—”
“Innocence!” Monsieur de Treville said, making the word echo of blasphemy and lie. “Innocence.” His stare at Aramis became more suspicious and he frowned hard at the young man. “Did you come back because you were afraid that your guilt would be discovered and even your friends would turn against you? Did you come back because there was some evidence you must destroy?”
Aramis felt blood leave his face. He bowed, more to keep himself from saying anything he would regret, and to keep his expression from being seen, than to show respect. When he looked up again, he felt he had his expression under control, except for a nervous tic he could feel pulling at the corner of his mouth in rhythm with the pounding of blood through the veins at his temples.
His voice sounded slightly strangled, as he said, “Monsieur de Treville, it is neither fair nor honorable to insult an unharmed man and one, besides, who has sworn to defend you with his life and who, therefore, is barred from challenging you to a duel.”
Monsieur de Treville smirked, which was not—Aramis thought—a reasonable response to his words. He shook his head, and, bringing his hands up, clapped them together, slowly, in mock applause. “I must compliment you, Chevalier, on a performance worthy of the stage.”
“Monsieur,” Aramis said, feeling his blood vessels constrict. “Monsieur, there are things I cannot tolerate. Not of you, not of the King himself, not of the devil, if the devil should be so bold. Either tell me why you are so sure of my guilt or lend me a sword that I can defend my honor right now and right here.”
Monsieur de Treville said nothing. He stepped towards the desk, pulled up a letter, and handed it to the musketeer, who received it without comment. And then felt his vision dim and his knees buckle, as he recognized his Violette’s handwriting. A faint scent rose from the paper, and if he squinted he could almost imagine her standing beside him.
“Rene,” the letter started. “I am writing to let you know the most alarming news. For two months now I have found myself lacking that course of blood which all women got from the sin of Eve. Yesterday I consulted a woman who is experienced in these things, and she has confirmed that I am expecting a child.” Aramis blinked. The paper was Violette’s, and the handwriting hers, but the words seemed strange, alien. They were shaped as though Violette had been writing very slowly, immersed in thought. The pen bit more deeply into the paper than usual. Had Violette truly penned this, or was it a clever forgery. And if she had penned this . . . He swallowed hard.
“Hiding my state is not that difficult,” the letter continued. “There are gowns aplenty and frills of which I can make use to pretend I’m as svelte as ever, even as the time draws near. Disposing of the child is also not difficult. There are many ways ranging from anonymously leaving him or her on the doorstep of a holy house to delivering him or her to some place a little better where they will be cared for on a stipend we provide. However, considering your future intent of joining the church—an intent that even this will, I know, not damage—and that you are the last of your line, I thought you might want to make arrangements for his upbringing yourself. Particularly if it is indeed a boy. Then, in the fullness of time, the child can be called upon to inherit and no one the wiser.” The letter finished with, “Yours and only yours,” and the complex crisscrossing of lines that represented Violette’s many, crisscrossing names, and which was Violette’s official signature.
Aramis looked at the letter and swallowed. Looking up, he found Monsieur de Treville looking at him, attentively, examining Aramis for . . . signs of surprise? Signs of guilt?
Aramis shook his head. There were tears in his eyes, and he felt them fly, as he shook his head. “I never saw this,” he said. Then, “How odd that she would write to me, like this, when she saw me that very afternoon. How did you . . . How did you come by the letter?”
“De Berbigon,” Monsieur de Treville said, gesturing with his head towards the door. “The musketeer who was leaving before you made your entrance. He stole this letter from his eminence’s desk. He thought I should see it.”
“Any chance the Cardinal forged it?” Aramis asked.
“Not a one,” Monsieur de Treville said. “But it was this letter that absolutely sealed his belief in your culpability.” He took the letter from Aramis’s unresisting fingers and slapped the open sheet with the tips of the fingers of his other hand. “You must admit, Aramis, it is a damning letter.”
“I never saw it.” Aramis felt cold and distant. Had anyone told him, this morning, that his spirits could fall lower or that he could feel worse than he already did over Violette’s death, he would have dismissed them for fools. But . . . But now he felt as if a piece of his heart had been torn, bleeding, from his chest, and was now being burnt before his very eyes. “I never saw it.”
Violette had been pregnant. There had been a child growing within her, a babe with Aramis’s blood, Aramis’s inheritance. There had perhaps been a boy, who would have had Violette’s features, Aramis’s blond hair. A child he could—easily enough—have commended to his mother’s good care, never telling her who the mother was. A child who would have grown up climbing trees in the orchard of D’Herblay house, as his father had.
Oh, he could imagine why Violette hadn’t told him. She’d probably feared his reaction. Feared he’d say he had no interest in the child—women in such situations could be fools. He turned the letter and saw the date was the day before Violette’s last. The Cardinal had intercepted the letter. Sequestered it. Doubtless that last afternoon together Violette had been dismayed when Aramis made no mention of it.
Monsieur de Treville must have seen Aramis grow paler. For the first time in their interview, he reached over, and got hold of Aramis’s arm. He guided him to Monsieur de Treville’s own chair.
“Do you swear,” he asked, “on your hope of salvation that you didn’t kill the woman?”
Aramis nodded, but his sight had gone unaccountably dim and he felt as if his legs would never support him. Leaning forward, he put his head in his hands. He felt as though he were wounded, mortally wounded.
He’d sustained wounds, in combat and duel, and bled from them, without ever feeling as he did now, as if his heart were open and pouring out blood.
“Dents Dieu,”
Monsieur de Treville whispered. He stepped across the room and, for a moment, Aramis thought the captain was going to open the door to the antechamber and call on his valet and tell him to call the guard, because from Aramis’s reaction he could easily tell the musketeer was guilty.
But instead, he heard the clinking of glass on glass, and then the captain was standing by him, touching him on the shoulder.
Aramis looked up to see a glass held before his eyes. He took it, had time to smell the harsh edge of alcohol, and then opened his mouth and drank it all in a single gulp. It was brandy and tasted like liquid fire.
Setting the glass on the captain’s desk, Aramis wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and looked up at Monsieur de Treville, who was looking down at him, with a mix of horror and pity.
“D’Herblay,” Monsieur de Treville said. And then, tilting his head, as though he’d reached an internal point of decision. “Aramis. What am I going to do with you? Do you have any idea what the devil of a danger you’ve put both of us in? And your friends too?”
Where Locked Doors Aren’t Always Impassible; Secret Passages and the Jealousy of Kings
A
THOS and D’Artagnan walked away from the palace alone. Porthos, who seemed to have some sort of a bee in his bonnet, had parted from them, mumbling something about street performers. What that might be, Athos didn’t know nor did he care to enquire.
After all, Porthos now seemed prepared to act as both Aramis and Porthos. And though Athos missed Aramis and thought their group was not the same without the young theologian and philosopher, he was not yet prepared for nonsense about ghosts and repentance to come flying out of the lips of his sensible, down-to-earth friend.
A while out of the palace, walking towards Paris, D’Artagnan said. “Perhaps Porthos craved a rematch with the cook?”
Athos allowed himself a slight smile. “I’ faith, he didn’t sound interested when he told us the story. But Porthos’s taste in women has always been unfathomable to me.”
As he said it, he remembered that his own taste in women could be said to be less than exemplary. And on the heels of that, Raoul’s words, his teasing on the subjects of what he called Athos’s drama, flew through Athos’s mind, and Athos sighed.
By the corner of his eye, he saw D’Artagnan give him a sharp, evaluating look, and half dreaded what the young man would say.
They were halfway between the palace and the city, in that portion where noblemen had built well-spaced houses, to bask near the glow of royalty. There was no one on the street, in these early evening hours, not even a servant. And Athos stared at D’Artagnan. He shook his head. “Do you know where the girl got the key?”
“Porthos said she told Mousqueton that she got it from one of his eminence’s maids, by special arrangement, and that it will have to be returned to him by nighttime. Now, I’d suppose.”
Athos swallowed. “His eminence. Why would he have the key?”
“Because he took it after the door was broken down,” D’Artagnan said.
“I’ve wondered . . .” Athos said. “Why did he want the room sealed with Aramis’s uniform in it? He seems to have altogether a too active interest in this case. And if he wanted a door opened, somehow, wouldn’t the Cardinal be able to have it open? But he can’t be the killer. Surely you see that, D’Artagnan. As with the body of the murdered woman we found before, if he wanted the Duchess de Dreux killed or taken out of the way, he could have paid any of a thousand minions to do it. He wouldn’t need . . .”
D’Artagnan took a deep breath. “No,” he said. “And you are right. He would have no need of it. But think, Athos. You are not thinking. Beyond the death of the Duchess, what else happened?”
Athos stared at D’Artagnan. “Raoul is free, but I really can’t believe—”
“No, Athos, no. Please. Think of the other person most affected by the news.”
“Aramis.”
“Exactly. And if he wanted Aramis killed, taken out of the way, how easy was that?”
Athos shook his head. A smile crossed his lips despite himself. “He would need to go through us. He would need to go through Monsieur de Treville. He might have had to set himself against the King himself, if Monsieur de Treville got to him first. His only other hope was to kill Aramis in an arranged duel, in a dark alley, by an assassin with a dagger.”
“And it’s not as if he’s not tried that, dozens of times already,” D’Artagnan said. “Only, it’s never worked.”
“While by making it seem as if Aramis was guilty of murder, he managed to get Aramis out of Paris easily enough,” Athos said.
“Not only that,” D’Artagnan said. “But you see . . . by having it look as if he’d killed his lover, he had Aramis leave Paris in disgrace. That means, as you saw by our interview with Monsieur de Treville, that even Monsieur de Treville, who would normally defend our friend, now thinks that our friend is guilty.”
“But why would he want to get rid of Aramis?” Athos asked.
D’Artagnan shrugged. “I’m sure there is a reason,” D’Artagnan said. “If only we look for it.”
Athos nodded. They walked for a while in silence.
“But if it is his eminence,” Athos said, at last. “If he’s guilty, how do we prove it? For we must prove it, else we’re but the small wave breaking against the shore.”
D’Artagnan nodded, frowning. “That dagger. The dagger Aramis handed you . . . I presume the dagger that killed the Duchess. Do you still have it, Athos?”
Athos nodded. “Yes,” he said, and could not believe he had forgotten it so long. He had put it in his sheath, alongside his sword and then, afraid to leave it in his lodgings, he’d transferred it to its own sheath, one he often added to his sword belt, to carry a dagger.
“Is there anything unusual about it?”
Athos shrugged. He’d taken the dagger from Aramis in the dark of night, and then later he’d transferred it to the sheath without thinking anything but that it belonged to Aramis and was Aramis’s business. And then, all these days, he’d removed his belt at night and put it back on in the morning, without giving the dagger in its sheath any thought. “I assumed it was Aramis’s. Though I didn’t know it, unless it was his I could not imagine why he’d brought it with him,” he said, but as he spoke, he drew the weapon from his belt. He had a dim memory that the first glimpse of it had startled him, that it didn’t look like something that Aramis had ever owned.
Now he lifted it into the light of the moon. And D’Artagnan whistled softly.
“Seems like someone took a lot of trouble over that handle.”
Athos focused on the handle, and blushed. He’d never remembered to clean it, so there was still blood in the crevices, highlighting the carving on the pale ivory. And the carving was . . . A couple, entwined in lovemaking. Man and woman were amazingly detailed and well done for such small figures. Her breasts were visible, and the tiny, pointed nipples. At least the right nipple, the other one being hid by his back. And his buttocks and waist, and each individual leg. Even their faces, united in a kiss were visible, and Athos would swear he could almost recognize them.