The Musketeer's Seamstress - By Sarah D'Almeida Page 0,122
we be sure she won’t kill again?” he asked.
Aramis sank to his knees in front of the woman, and delicately tilted her head upwards. “Listen, Ysabella, for that is your name, that you will be called by at the final trumpet. Your only hope is to go back to your convent and live a holy life and expiate your sin, do you understand?”
She moaned in his direction. “I am damned,” she said. “I have killed my sister. The sin of Cain is upon me.”
“No, not damned. Look, didn’t the Lord say those who repent will be saved? Trust me, he did. I studied to be a priest. If you confess your sin.” He looked over his shoulder. “D’Artagnan, get paper and ink from the hosteller.” Then he turned back to the woman. “If you confess your sin, and you live a holy life, you will yet be redeemed. But you must never leave your convent, you understand. Because if you do, then we’ll find out. And if we find out, we’ll kill you, and then you’ll die unshriven and unprepared with your sins upon you. Do you understand?”
She nodded, with tears in her eyes.
D’Artagnan came back in and set the ink and the paper on the table.
“Now, get up and write your confession and everything will be forgiven. When I am a priest—for you must know I intend to become a priest—I’ll read it and I’ll give you absolution.”
She got up, very composed and sat on the chair and wrote, rapidly, in excellent French. She seemed not to trust Aramis to read Spanish. D’Artagnan read over her shoulder and the confession seemed complete. At the end she signed with both names, Ysabell and Violeta and a string of names, and she handed the paper to Aramis.
“You will become a priest, then?” she asked him.
“Yes,” Aramis said. “I promise you.”
He unlocked the door and let her go then.
He found his mind turning to Violette’s blood, soaking, black, onto the floorboards. When Ysabella talked of the blood it had made Aramis think of his father’s study, of the black stain on the floor. Could it be blood? His father’s blood? But how?
Porthos’s Doubts; Aramis’s Appeasement
“WHAT if she doesn’t return to the convent?” Porthos asked. The idea of letting a murderess go seemed insane to him.
Aramis smiled, a sweet smile all the more unnerving for his still wearing a dress. “She will. She is a little crazy. It’s a type of madness I understand. She will go to the convent. She will live out her penance. She would be too afraid not to.”
It seemed to Porthos that the woman was more than a little crazy. But then, now that he thought of it, so was Aramis. He nodded. “But Aramis, what if the Cardinal doesn’t believe that paper. For he’s not likely to.”
“We’ll leave Paris together,” Athos said. “My friend Raoul might have need of a small band of armed men. We can—”
Aramis shook his head. He looked . . . like a man who has had a revelation that has turned his world upside down. He retrieved his hat, put it back on his head and pulled the veil down, daintily. “I have a plan,” he said.
“You know a man?” Porthos asked, smiling a little.
“No, Porthos. I know a woman.”
Sins and Atonements; Where Aramis Refuses to Bend
ARAMIS hadn’t brought Bazin. Until he was sure the Cardinal was not searching for him anymore, he saw no reason to get his servant from his safe place.
As for his friends, he’d left them all lodging together at Treville house, as safe a place as they could find.
And Aramis, having shed his green dress, had donned again the black suit, and the black hat that hid his hair. And he’d ridden a fast horse through most of the day without incident, till, after nightfall, he fetched up at the D’Herblay estate.
Dismounting in front of the main door, he tied his horse to a pillar, and he ran up the stairs, two steps at a time.
A satisfying few minutes of pounding on the door brought three alarmed maids and a footman holding a very thick walking stick. Which was dropped when Aramis removed his hat and was recognized.
“Chevalier!” the footman said, while the women curtseyed.
“Get me Madame D’Herblay,” Aramis said, walking past them, hat in hand. “Tell her I will be in the study and I must see her right away.”
The footman stared at him. “She won’t like being awakened in the middle of the night.”