his mother.
His mother had led him inside and to Mass, as if whatever had driven him from Paris had necessitated immediate shriving. She hadn’t even asked what had happened.
He rubbed his fingertips upon the center of his forehead, as though trying to unknot the pain there. His mother had never asked. She’d never shown the slightest surprise that her only and prodigal son should show up like this, upon a fine spring afternoon.
She’d treated Aramis exactly as if he’d been fourteen and home from seminary on vacation. A Mass of thanks-giving for his safe arrival—said by his mother’s tottering priest, who must be over a hundred, or at least looked it. And then dinner. Thin soup, bread and some boiled vegetables, because it was Friday and therefore a day of abstinence and mortification.
All through the meal one of the servants—or possibly one of his mother’s hired companions—had stood and read passages from the lives of saints.
And at the end of the meal, at a movement or a gesture from Aramis’s mother, Bazin had emerged from the shadows and escorted Aramis here.
And now . . . And now, Aramis became aware of heavy breathing from near the foot of his bed, by the window. He realized the heavy shutters on the window had just been pulled open to let daylight in.
Aramis sat up. Bazin, dressed in his clerical black, stood by the window. “Blessed be our Lord Jesus Christ,” Bazin said, in the tone he had said it throughout all of Aramis’s childhood, to wake him up.
“Oh, leave off, Bazin,” Aramis said.
“Blessed be our Lord Jesus Christ,” Bazin repeated, frowning.
“Bazin, I am warning you. I am not in the mood for this.” Aramis pawed at his hair which, during the night, had lost the bit of ribbon with which he normally bound it. It had knotted upon itself and stood in clumps and whirls around his face, obscuring his vision.
“Blessed be—”
Aramis picked up his pillow and threw it at Bazin’s pious face, before resuming combing through the tangled mess of his hair with his fingers.
“Monsieur, the lady your mother told me I was to wake you as I always did. She said that the rules of the house were to be followed, and Chevalier, this is her house.”
“Don’t. Call. Me. That.” Aramis pawed through his hair and bit his lip at the sudden pain as he tugged on a knot. “And where are my hairbrushes?”
“What else am I to call you, Chevalier?” Bazin said. “We are at your mother’s house and you—”
And he had foolishly come back into prison for asylum. Oh, he needed to be safe and he was safe enough. No one could penetrate this house and wrest Aramis from his loving mother’s arms. But then, neither could Aramis escape. The first time, he’d managed it by going to Paris to study theology. And then by killing a man, by disappearing, by . . .
And he’d come back because Violette was dead. And in his heart of hearts he wasn’t even sure he hadn’t killed Violette. Oh, he didn’t think he had, but . . .
He groaned aloud, let go of his hair and covered his face.
“Blessed be our Lord Jesus Christ,” Bazin said, again.
“And forever blessed his mother, the Virgin Mary,” Aramis moaned from behind the hands clasped on his face. The hands that, somehow, could not block the recalled image of Violette. Cold, waxen Violette with blood—
“As it was in the beginning,” Bazin prompted.
“Be it now and forever.”
“Secolum secolorum.”
“Amen.”
Aramis realized he was rocking back and forth, sitting on his childhood bed, with Bazin standing at the foot and, from the sound of his breathing, fairly alarmed.
He removed his hands from his face with an effort. Violette was dead. Nothing could be done about that. Aramis was sure he hadn’t killed her. He couldn’t have killed her. If he had killed her he would remember, wouldn’t he?
And at any rate, what could be gained by coming back to his mother’s house? Was safety worth this? “Where are my hairbrushes, Bazin?”
“Your mother said I was not to give you anything that reminded you of your intemperate life in Paris, nor of your vanity, nor—”
“Bazin!”
“Chevalier, you know better.”
“My hairbrushes, now, Bazin. Or I shall run through the house in my small clothes, looking for them.”
The servant huffed. He left the room at what tried to be a stately pace but bore the hallmarks of a hurried retreat.
Aramis waited, counting till a hundred, then started to get out of the bed.