out of their misery. They lied with the same glib ease as Mousqueton, on whom the news of Hermengarde’s death had fallen like a lead weight. He still looked teary and had that expression of a man whose hopes had come crashing around his head.
All he’d told Athos was, “You were always right, monsieur, women are the devil. I don’t know which hurts more, that Langelier had to kill her so she wouldn’t insist he marry her or . . . Or that she is dead. But it hurts all the same.”
And Athos, knowing himself at risk, could do nothing but silently sympathize.
“It was a lovely wedding, though,” Porthos said. “Even if the groom was tied up.”
“And gagged,” Aramis said. “Don’t forget gagged. I had to reassure the bon cure that the man meant, indeed, to say yes.”
“Well, he scarcely had any other choice,” D’Artagnan said, as he disposed of a full chicken, heaped on plate. “You pulled his hair so his head must perforce nod.”
“I was only doing my duty, to preserve a poor lady from sin,” Aramis said, piously.
“And the ways of the Lord are inscrutable,” Porthos said.
“Besides,” Aramis said, totally ignoring the proffered bait, “you have to agree there was something in the way of poetic justice, to bringing him back to Paris in a box and presenting him to the Cardinal all tied up.”
Athos was about to open his mouth, to say that he wondered if the Cardinal still thought that Athos was working on his behalf, even now, and to remind them there was a good chance he’d already agreed to let Charlotte have her way with him, and that she would be an adversary to reckon with in the future. In fact, for all their present joy at having Mousqueton back, Athos wasn’t sure that all—or any of them—could survive long enough to defeat the woman who had briefly been Countess de la Fere.
Before he could speak, there was a loud pounding on the door.
Grimaud, who got up to go answer, came back almost immediately, looking baffled and holding up a sheet of expensive cream paper, from which a delicate perfume wafted.
“Ah, that will be for me,” Aramis said.
But Grimaud only directed a glare at him, then a glare at the letter, and finally a glare at Athos, in whose lap he dropped it.
The letter said only, “To Monsieur le Comte de—”
The seal was blank and Athos lifted it impatiently. Inside, a well-formed hand said, “There is a public feast given by the court in a week. Marie Michon would like to meet the count at it. Will he meet her there? She shall be wearing a cream dress, with a blue hat, and a rose at her bosom.”
Athos felt as though his hand went nerveless. He dropped the note in his lap.
“What is wrong?” Porthos asked. “Is it from milady?” Athos shook his head. “No, no. It is nothing, just a silly dare.”
And in his heart of hearts, he wondered if he did dare.
1 The Musketeer’s Seamstress.
2 A Death in Gascony.
3 The Musketeer’s Seamstress.
4 We now come across M. Aramis’s seamstress, as depicted in Dumas. We don’t know if M. Dumas lacked knowledge of Aramis’s earlier affair with Violette, Duchess de Dreux, or if, for the sake of a more popular narrative, he chose to focus on the Duchess de Chevreuse, whom historians have called Richelieu’s most voluptuous adversary.
5 Though it is clear from Dumas that a fleur-de-lis meant the criminal was intended for the gallows, though the manuscript explicitly says it, the compiler of this account has not been able to find confirmation on this point. As far as Ms. D’Almeida can determine, the only criminals to be branded were those whose crime fell very short of death. While one can understand Athos’s rage at being duped, his killing of his wife upon finding the brand on her shoulder would be seen as overreaction, when merely divorcing her and having her immured in a convent would serve the purpose. And though Athos is remorseful, it is because he thinks the brand might not have been legitimate and never because he doubts the brand is worthy of death. It is one of those instances in which one must bow to the material of the time, and even M. Dumas’s—flawed though we’ve seen it to be—interpretation of events, and assume there was more to this than was recorded or at least than was recorded and survived to the twenty-first century.
6 The Musketeer’s Seamstress.
7 We know from both Monsieur Dumas and from the rest of these diaries—despite extensive water damage—that indeed Athos gratified this ambition during one of Marie Michon’s precipitate flights from court that coincided with one of his travels on behalf of the King. The result of that wayside night was Raoul, Viscount de Bragelone.
8 He repeats this trick later on, in the quite different circumstances that Monsieur Dumas related. It must have seemed incredible to Monsieur Dumas, who perhaps lacked the access to these documents, because he found it necessary to explain such a brilliant piece of deductive theft by relating it to the customs of the North American continent.
9 Some will note that in Monsieur Dumas’ Three Musketeers the whole “affaire milady” was rather more complex and drawn out, and while the scene at the end of it was roughly similar, it involved the complicity of a little maid named Kitty. I trust I don’t need to explain to the readers who have been faithfully following these chronicles how unlikely it would be that young, romantic D’Artagnan would be involved not only with one woman but with three. Indeed, it would be somewhat wrenching to think of him betraying Constance—whom even in Monsieur Dumas’s embellished chronicle, he mourned lifelong—with the seductive but brittle milady, who might be experienced but cannot help but appear non-genuine.
We’ll leave Monsieur Dumas’s account, enjoyable and well crafted as it is, in the realm of a pleasant fiction concocted to accord to the morals and manners of his time and the idea that a brave and strong man must, of course, also be promiscuous.