The Musketeer's Seamstress - By Sarah D'Almeida Page 0,30
prying eyes which might peer from the upper stories of the house, he’d beheld his first naked . . . Well, girl. No one could call Yvette a woman, considering that at the time neither she nor Aramis had passed the magical age of ten. She was the daughter of one of his mother’s friends and, truth be told, he’d found the whole experience rather unexciting. Her body, naked, looked just like his—skinny and muscular, the legs scratched by tree climbing and the mishaps of childhood. She’d looked at his naked body—his undressing, too, being the payment she’d demanded for her lack of modesty—and made a rude comment about that part of his anatomy which differed from hers. And Aramis had been so shocked and offended that he’d taken off running, out of the clearing, quite forgetting he was in fact naked. Which transgression had earned him his mother’s disapproval and, at her order, a thrashing from Bazin.
Aramis smiled at the memory and at the one that came on the heels of it. The same Yvette, five years later, when her body had been not at all like his own and when she hadn’t found so much to laugh at in his anatomy.
“Rene!” said a person that had been bent over in a clump of flowers and grass to the left of the road—while Aramis’s fond memories held his gaze pinned to the right.
“Maman,” Rene D’Herblay said. Indeed it was the only word that would come to his lips. The Chevalier’s mother, Madame D’Herblay, was still a beautiful woman. She’d been born in Spain and from hence came her obsessive religion and her taste for ornate crucifixes.
However, her hair was that Titian gold that was known to fascinate painters and she’d been brought up in France, having early on been summoned by the D’Herblay family, so she could be brought up by her prospective mother-in-law in all the habits of the house. As such, her voice betrayed no taint of a Spanish accent as she said, “Rene, here? Without warning?”
“Maman,” D’Herblay said again, his mouth going dry. His mother had always dressed with severe modesty. At least since Rene could remember. Of course, since D’Herblay’s father had died when the Chevalier was still a toddler, that meant he didn’t remember his mother in anything but the severest black.
In the five years he’d been away, he’d expected some change. He wasn’t sure he expected it in this direction, though. Madame D’Herblay had augmented her normal mourning by adopting all but a nun’s habit. And not the habit of those nuns that lived near enough the court for their convents to hold soirees and salons.
No. Madame D’Herblay would not cater to such fripperies. Instead, she’d enveloped her head in a voluminous black cloth, from beneath which only a few straggles of reddish blond hair peeked. And her figure, which had still been quite youthful enough five years ago, had been wrapped in a formless black dress. The only jewelry she wore was a silver cross, the smaller replica of the one that D’Herblay had left behind at his lodgings.
She’d been bent, and weeding amid her roses—a pastime of which she’d always been fond. She stood, a bunch of weeds in each hand, their roots thick and tangled with dirt. “Rene,” she said again, and this time D’Herblay managed not to answer. She took a deep breath. “We thought you dead.”
To this, the Chevalier could only shake his head, because how could it be true? His mother had surely received the twice annual letters he sent her. He knew that sometimes she sent money, though she sent it to Bazin to dispense as needed and only to those needs she’d recognize—food, not wine, plain shirts, not embroidered ones, rosaries, not jewelry.
But he could not protest. Madame D’Herblay wiped her hands on her black dress, leaving streaks of brown across the black surface. “But no matter. You’re here now and we shall rejoice.”
She came near his horse, and waited while he dismounted, and offered her cheek to his kissing lips. Her cheek felt dry and powdery, not like human flesh at all, but more like the relic of some saint. The Chevalier felt the reverence he always did near his mother and, as always, was surprised anew that she was shorter than himself by a good head. In his memory she always grew to towering proportions and stood there, majestic and impassive, disapproving of all his choices and decisions.