Death in Gascony (15 page)

“No. I’m sure I’m not. You used to pull his tail to make the poor creature cry.”

D’Artagnan, who had never wished to make anyone or anything cry in his whole life, had to content himself with being silent. Against Irene’s memory, no matter how erroneous, there was no defense.

“Sever is cruel too. He rides his horses till they fall, and he whips his hunting dogs,” she said. “He is a horrible man.” And suddenly, with an unexpected tone of urgency and truthfulness in her voice, “I don’t want to marry him.” She stopped and looked at D’Artagnan, her gaze intense. “Henri, don’t make me marry him.”

D’Artagnan stopped too, and turned to her, bewildered. “I don’t know what you think I can do in the matter,” he said.

She reached for his hands and took them in hers. He was wearing gloves and she was not. Even through his gloves he could feel the hard, very cold tips of her fingers. “Marry me,” she said. And, in response to what must have been his genuine look of surprise, “Marry me, Henri. You used to love me. We can ride together, tonight or tomorrow, to Spain, where no one will know us, and we can find a priest to marry us. Against that, what can Sever do? What can my father?”

“A lot, Irene. For one, they can separate us, demand that the marriage be annulled, or say it never happened. And if they don’t…” He looked up, searching her eyes, wondering where the sincerity came from suddenly. He would wager she was not in love with him any more than he was in love with her. They had both playacted at love when they were very young, but now they both knew better, and he could not imagine why she was so determined to tie their fortunes together. “If they don’t, you’ll have to live the rest of your life married to me.”

She nodded eagerly. “Gladly, cousin. Gladly.”

“Irene,” he said, seriously. “Don’t be a fool. This is no time to playact. I don’t love you, and I know you do not love me. What we had was no more than a plaything, the way boys play at being kings and fighting great battles. We played at being in love.”

Her lips trembled, “Oh, no, no. It’s not true, you know, I…”

“You’re not going to say you love me, because you can’t. You couldn’t bring yourself to utter it, and you know it.”

She sighed. Again it was a genuine sigh, with no trace of the overwrought or dramatic. “Perhaps not love,” she said. “But I do like you a lot. You know marriages are made on less. The church says that all you need is a strong friendship, a holy bond, which the Lord…”

“Irene, please. I do not wish to learn my catechism from you.” D’Artagnan felt he was on the verge of bursting into laughter, and he didn’t wish to insult her that much. He could too well imagine what the effect of laughter would be. Irene would exclaim and cry and then run.

Knowing Irene there were good odds she would then try to exert her revenge by denouncing him to her father—telling him that D’Artagnan had offered her insult or attempted to kiss her or who knew what. And her father was quite likely to then become unpleasant, perhaps even challenging D’Artagnan to a duel.

There had been enough dueling done in this family and besides…and besides, D’Artagnan desperately wanted to know what Irene found so enticing about his small house and his barely recognizable name.

“Let’s sit,” he said, and led her, studiously, to a place where the ground rose ever so slightly and a stone bench stood where they both could sit down. And where he could see eavesdroppers approach long before they were close enough to overhear them. “Now suppose you tell me why you’d ever wish to marry me. Wait.” He raised his hand. “Before you protest undying friendship, or that you ever had a marked partiality for me, or any of that, let me remind you that I know better. In spring when you said your farewells to me, you explained that as much as you liked me, you didn’t believe you could live within the income my title could provide; and that you didn’t wish to take second place to my mother in a house that was, at any rate, too small for you.

“My house has not grown, nor has my title. While I intended to go to Paris to make my fortune, I was called back far before I could attempt it. In fact, I was not even yet a musketeer, but merely served in the corps of Monsieur des Essarts, which is sort of a cadet or training corps for the musketeers. So, you see, though I’ve been to Paris, I have no great name to give you and the entire fortune I acquired in my sojourn near the royal court is a few new tunics, a couple of new pairs of breeches and this hat, with a new plume.” He touched it as he spoke. “None of which is enough to pay for your clothes or keep you in the style due to your birth station and beauty.”

“Oh, it matters not,” she said, and burst in sudden tears, while fumbling blindly at her sleeve for a handkerchief. “It matters not. You don’t know. You don’t understand.”

He found his own handkerchief and gave it to her. “I am willing to learn and understand,” he said. “If only you will tell me.”

“It’s Sever. Henri, I’m
afraid
of him.”

“Oh, nonsense,” D’Artagnan said, as he thought back on his few encounters with de Comminges. There weren’t many, since they moved in quite different circles. But over seventeen years of living in the same region, he’d crossed paths with Sever de Comminges, the de Comminges heir, half a dozen times. He was a dark-haired, dark-eyed man with olive skin, and uncommonly tall. Though he never went out of his way to be sociable, usually sitting slightly apart at any feast or meeting to show he knew what was due to his birth, he had piercing eyes that seemed to catch on every nuance and turn of the conversation, every expression of those around him. He limped a little, on his left leg, from some injury sustained at his birth. D’Artagnan didn’t know if that was why he always acted—playacted. As much as Irene—like the hero in a tragic play, or if he was perhaps shy and the act bolstered his confidence.

He tended to dress in black, and kept such a dignified and private persona that, though he was only D’Artagnan’s age—in fact a few months younger—D’Artagnan could understand why locals would think he was sinister, or at least unapproachable. But he could not understand why Irene would feel that way.

But she shook her head to his exclamation, brassy blond hair flying. “Not nonsense. Oh, no, Henri. It is not nonsense. His father, the old Monsieur Adrien de Comminges died, did you know that? Just a week before your father. He died suddenly, and people say…” She lowered her voice, though patently there was no one around to overhear them. “People say that he died of poison, and that he was poisoned by his son, who couldn’t wait to come into his inheritance.”

She looked at D’Artagnan with huge, tragic eyes. “What if he marries me and then decides he doesn’t want me around either? What if he uses the same poison on me?”

Her white hand, with its long, cold fingers, touched her own throat, as though she already felt, there, the constriction caused by the poison. “I don’t want to die.”

He didn’t laugh. He knew all too well that around here this type of rumor attached to anyone who held himself aloof from the common society. Also, frankly, it would probably attach to Sever de Comminges, with his dark hair, his dark clothes. A man who didn’t speak much and left others to imagine what might move him.

Instead, he very gently took Irene’s hand away from her throat and held it in his. “Irene, is Sever pressing his engagement to you now?”

“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes. After all these years, when his parents were content to let him wait and me, until we were of a proper age to marry, he’s come into his domain and he wants to marry this coming summer’s eve. He says it’s the only thing we can do, the only thing we must do to…” Her lips trembled. “To give heirs to his house.”

D’Artagnan squeezed Irene’s hand in his. “I think you are scared,” he said, softly.

“What?” she asked, surprised. “Of course I’m scared. I’ve been telling you I am scared. I—”

“No,” he said. “Not of that. Though you might have persuaded yourself of it, allowed yourself to believe that you are scared of Sever, and of his intentions towards you…I think you know as well as I do a man doesn’t press a suit on his intended wife and attempt to speed their marriage if he truly doesn’t wish to marry her.”

“But what if he marries me and then changes his mind?” she asked, her hand pulling away from his and flying to her throat again. “What if I don’t give him the heir he wants? What if something happens and he decides I’m not the bride he wants, after all?”

He frowned at her. “I don’t think that’s your fear, Irene. I think you fear changing. For all these years, you’ve lived in your father’s house and been protected. And now you must take your place as the lady of your own house—in fact the lady of the largest house in this region, and you don’t wish to. You’re afraid of the change it will wreak in your life.”

“How dare you?” she asked, indignation flying. “How dare you? If I were afraid of marriage by itself, why would I wish to marry you?”

“Because my house is nothing like that of de Comminges. Because you know while my mother lives, she would never let you have control of anything, from the kitchen to the yard. Because you know you’d still be a child, just in a different house.”

She shook her head. “Oh, you wrong me,” she said. “It is not that at all. If I were marrying anyone else, anyone else at all—even Sever’s younger brother, Geoffroi—I would not mind it. I would be happy, rather, to be moving out, to have my own place. But Sever scares me, Henri. And I believe I have cause.”

“And I believe you only think you’d be more willing to marry anyone else because there’s no danger of that. In fact, if I had a house of my own and if I were to agree to your scheme, you’d soon find reason enough to be scared of me, as well.”

Irene looked like she couldn’t decide whether to be insulted or saddened. She bit her lip, then sighed deeply. “You won’t help me, then?” she asked.

“Not if helping you means marrying you, no,” D’Artagnan said.

“Well, then,” she said, and stood up, and bobbed a small and correct curtsey. “Well, then, I hope you’ll think of me and of this conversation when you receive news of my death.”

And on that, she turned and ran, through the garden path towards the house, leaving D’Artagnan more bewildered than ever.

A
RAMIS
watched D’Artagnan ride away, then turned back towards the sacristy. The priest was still there, apparently lost in prayer, or at least in thought.

“Father,” Aramis said. “I would like to ask you a few questions, without my friend listening to them.”

The priest inclined his head. “I thought as much,” he said. “I noticed you came to the Mass separately, Monsieur…”

“Aramis,” he said. “Just Aramis.”

Father Urtou shook his head, in a slightly disapproving manner. “Not a man’s name.”

“No,” Aramis said. “But the name a man would take, having killed a man in a duel when he was yet in seminary and on his way to the priesthood. After the killing, and with dueling being banned and therefore a crime, how could he present himself to any worthy bishop and ask for ordination? And if he had a bend for communal life, how could he, in clean conscience, ask any congregation to accept him?”

“So you relinquished your name as penance?” the priest asked and ran a jaundiced gaze across Aramis’s elegant figure in his tunic which, despite embellishments of lace and ribbon, was unmistakably a musketeer’s uniform. “And entered the musketeers? What kind of penance was that last?”

“The sort of penance that the King said would earn me pardon,” he said, and opened his hands palm out, in the sort of gesture that meant he couldn’t help himself. “Or at least, the King never said it, but it is known…”

The priest shook his head again. “One wonders at the sort of penance that consists of more killing.”

“You sound like my servant, Bazin,” Aramis said, and stopped, immediately, afraid he had insulted the priest. “I’m sorry. I am usually more polite.”

The priest shook his head. “I do not take it as impolite to compare me to someone who is, obviously, a pious and worthy man. Do not fret.” He looked at Aramis again, consideringly. “You were a seminarian once? Do you still intend to take orders?”

“I was intended for the church from the earliest childhood,” Aramis said.

“Ah, but that doesn’t answer my question.”

Aramis inclined his head. “You are correct. It doesn’t. For many years, my mother said I was meant for the church, and I followed the course set for me because I thought that would be for the best, and because I did not wish to do anything else. And then…” He shrugged. “And then a few months ago I was faced with the reason my mother had intended me for the church—”
5

“What was it?” the priest asked, with real curiosity.

Aramis shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It does not apply. She wanted me for the church for a reason that isn’t even…for fear of something that didn’t come to pass.”

“And so you’ve decided to give it up,” Father Urtou said, crossing his hands in his lap.

“Oh, no,” Aramis said. “Suddenly, faced with the fact that my mother no longer cared if I went into the church or not, I found that I truly wanted to become a priest. I’m not sure it’s a vocation.” He hesitated. “I’ve never heard a voice calling in the night.”

The priest laughed. “Very few of us do.” His eyes shone, as though he were privy to a good joke. “And yet we manage, somehow.”

“That’s what I thought,” Aramis said. “Unworthy though I am, I am willing to lend my hands to the work in the…in the vineyard. If He will have me.”

The priest looked at him again, once more, from head to toe. “Oh, I imagine He will. He’s taken worse. So, my son,” he lifted his hand, as if in a position of absolution. “Why did you come back without your friend? If you wish to confess we can go and…”

Aramis shook his head. “It’s not a confession,” he said. “It’s…I’d like to ask you some questions, about the death of my friend’s father.”

The priest nodded. “I see. Well, then, pull up that stool there, and sit, and we shall talk like civilized people. It makes my neck hurt to sit here and look up to talk to you, but I’m too old to stand for a long interview.”

Aramis nodded and pulled up a three-legged stool from the corner. It looked rickety, the wood blackened, but as he sat down on it, he found it would take his weight, even though it shrieked madly every time he moved.

“It’s the children,” the priest said, at the shrieking. “They sit in it for their catechism lessons, and they find nothing better to do when they get bored than to rock back and forth. It wears at the wood and makes the whole shriek. But it’s sturdy enough, never you fear.” His eyes shone, with sudden amusement. “Provided you don’t rock back and forth on it.”

Aramis smiled a little and shook his head to signify his willingness to not do any such thing. “I wanted to ask you about the wars of religion.”

“Ask me?” the priest said. “Why me? You’re a musketeer. You know as much about it as I do. Why, if I read the signs aright, before much more time passes you and your comrades will be laying siege to that Protestant stronghold, La Rochelle.”

“Yes, but…” Aramis shook his head. “No. What I want to know is about the wars of religion in this place—around this region. Hereabouts. Who was on which side, and why, and what…what bad feelings there might be.”

The priest frowned. “Why? What can this mean to you?”

“My friend’s father was killed. He fought for Henry IV. It is hard to believe that there wouldn’t be some religion wrapped up in that.”

The priest tilted his head sideways, a little. “Hard to believe, perhaps, but I don’t think it was true. You see, both de Bilh and D’Artagnan were good Catholics, and besides, you forgot I saw the fight. As I told your friend, I was there all along, and I saw everything that transpired. There was nothing covert, or murderous to it…”

“Except that the way you said D’Artagnan was acting…often comes from a blow to the head.” As he spoke, Aramis remembered that other blood that Porthos had talked about. What if it had come from just such a blow? What if someone had hit Monsieur D’Artagnan hard upon the head, and caused him to bleed just a little?

“Often it comes from nothing, my son,” the priest said, compassionately. “You see, we, human creatures, are more frail than we think ourselves to be, and as we get older…things happen, within and around us. Our inner works decay—like a beautiful machine, once wound, will over time lose force. And sometimes, men of Charles D’Artagnan’s age…Something breaks in the brain and has much the same effect as a blow to the head.”

“Perhaps,” Aramis said. “And then again, perhaps not.”

“Why are you and your friends so sure that there was foul play?” he asked, looking intently at Aramis.

“There are…reasons.”

“If you forgive me saying so,” the old priest said. “I don’t know of any reasons that would be…”

“Father, on the way here we were attacked twice.”

“Unfortunately in these sad times we live in…” The priest shrugged. “That’s neither rare nor unexpected. Gascony…and all of France are sadly fraught with evildoers.”

Aramis sighed. “Yes, Father, but these evildoers were intent on avoiding the rest of us and did not seem interested in money or valuables, but only in killing D’Artagnan.” He hesitated, considering whether he should tell him that there were other complications, like the note from the Cardinal found on the highwayman. He decided to avoid it, so he didn’t have to tell him, also, about Monsieur D’Artagnan working for the Cardinal, at least according to his wife’s letter.

The priest was looking at him, anxiously, as though trying to gage the truth of his words by look alone. “I see,” he said, but his look showed plainly that he did not, in fact, see. “That is grave indeed, that someone would try to kill young Henri, but…my son, it might have nothing to do with his father’s death. Or at least…You must know there is bad blood there. His parents’ marriage…”

“His parents’ marriage was opposed?” D’Artagnan asked. “By his family? Or hers?”

The priest shrugged. “By both I imagine. She…well…with the irregularity of your friend’s birth…” He shook his head, perhaps at the surprise he read in Aramis’s eyes. “But forgive me, about that I’d best be still. Others have sinned in larger ways. It doesn’t matter anymore, and he’s dead at any rate. And she’s a good woman and a good mother.”

Puzzled, Aramis could instinctively tell that there would be no prodding there. But what could be irregular about D’Artagnan’s birth? Save perhaps that he had anticipated the marriage by a few months, he couldn’t imagine what it would be. D’Artagnan’s parents were married, and he was their recognized son. So it would be that. D’Artagnan’s parents would have married while she was expecting D’Artagnan. Or perhaps D’Artagnan was already born and a babe in arms.

It had to be that, and that would explain the comment about others having committed greater sins. In fact, to own the truth, France was full of bastards, some of them from the greatest families in the kingdom.

But what about that kind of birth could justify someone’s trying to kill D’Artagnan on the way to claim his inheritance?

“Did you marry them?” he asked. “Did they marry here?”

The priest nodded. “I found it odd that they didn’t go to Paris, since her family was there, but—”

“Paris?” Aramis asked.

“Well, it’s where she was raised.”

“Were both of my friend’s parents from Catholic families?” he asked, sure that this was the crux of the matter.

The man frowned at him. “Yes, yes. The de Bigorres have always been Catholic, though Monsieur D’Artagnan’s mother, Henri’s grandmother, came from a Protestant family. But she converted before marriage. Indeed I baptized her myself.”

“So, I was right,” Aramis said. “That house was, once upon a time, Protestant and that was a Calvinist chapel, devoid of all ornament.”

The priest smiled. “Indeed. Do they still have the chapel, then?”

“It is madam’s praying room, with a fine old statue of Saint Quitterie, holding her head in her hands. It must have come from the de Bigorre house.” He paused a moment. “Would the rest of my friend’s grandmother’s family oppose, those who gave them the title of D’Artagnan, having a Catholic like my friend inherit it?”

The priest shook his head. “There’s no one left of that family. She was an only daughter…or the only surviving one. Her brothers died in the war, you see. Only she was left, and the title and lands were all hers. There is no one to dispute it.”

“Not even a hidden heir?”

“Son,” the priest answered gravely. “Such things exist only in fables.”

“But…if she was from a Protestant family, and her brothers died in the war against the Catholics, surely there must be some relative, no matter how distant, who would resent her marrying into a Catholic family.”

The priest looked at the musketeer and something very like a shadow passed before his eyes. It was as though he were remembering things he wished to forget, the sort of things no one’s memory should be burdened with. “Ah. But the war wasn’t that clear cut in Gascony, you see. There were enough armies, trampling the land and fighting each other, each of them in the proper uniforms, and all that you think of as war. The kind of war you and your friends would wage.”

He sighed. “In these small towns, though, the small towns and cities of Gascony, the war was both more confusing and more personal. Like the gospel says about families where one will be taken and one will be left, it was the same thing, in this land. Half of a family would be Protestant and half Catholic, and in the families where they were well disposed towards each other, they continued well disposed, while in the ones where they wanted an excuse to fight and kill, then they seized on religion as an excuse. Take de Comminges. The father was a Protestant who converted to Catholicism but who might have reverted to Protestantism at his death. However, his sons are both good Catholics. So, you see…they might say it was religious if anyone wanted to take issue with the marriage of Henri’s grandmother. But no one would resent her marriage just because her new husband was a Catholic.”

“Oh,” Aramis said. “You are telling me, then, that religion had no bearing in this? That they were trying to kill my friend for reasons not related to religion? But then, you must see, it must mean that it is related to his father’s death. That someone is afraid of what he might discover about his father’s death.”

The priest frowned. “Well, I don’t know what about Charles D’Artagnan’s death there was to warrant killing anyone else for it, much less his son, Henri. But…this is a sad land, my son. A very sad land. And once men start shedding blood, they tend to forget what the beginning of it all was.”

He shook his head, sadly, and shortly thereafter dismissed Aramis, who left feeling like he’d discovered more questions, but no more answers.

What if, despite what the priest said, there was a hidden heir to the D’Artagnan fortune? He would want both D’Artagnan and his father out of the way.