The Musketeer's Seamstress - By Sarah D'Almeida Page 0,51
could a son have such thoughts about his mother? Oh, he was the worst of sinners.
He walked after her, all the more determinedly because he was so sure he was sinning against her in his mind.
She locked the door again, then hurried out of the house, keeping two steps ahead of him, despite his walking fast on his long legs that often allowed him to keep up with Porthos effortlessly and made D’Artagnan, and even Athos, run to catch up. But then he thought he’d probably inherited his legs from his mother, as he had inherited her blond hair, her blue eyes, and her ability to seem innocent and in-approachable even while ruling the house with an iron fist. At least, he could rule everyone but her.
“Maman, wait,” he said. But she didn’t stop and he had to run down the front steps to catch up with her . . . at least only two steps behind.
He remained two steps behind her as they reached the family cemetery north of the park. This was not a place that the little Rene D’Herblay had visited often. Oh, he was brought here for Masses on the anniversary of his father’s death, and for certain solemn occasions in which the life of the departed Chevalier D’Herblay was celebrated. But he had never had that morbid turn of mind that brought some adolescent boys to brood upon family cemetery stones.
And, of course, it had been many years since he passed through the ivy-choked gate in the half-ruined stone walls surmounted by rusty ironwork.
Within the cemetery, Madame D’Herblay stopped so suddenly that Aramis almost collided with her. He managed to arrest his movement just short of it, and go around to stand beside her.
She was looking around at a panorama of headstones and statues. The statues were few. The estate while wealthy when compared to the surrounding countryside, was, after all not a ducal estate, not even a count’s portion. Most of the statues were very old, their features erased by sun and rain, by succeeding winter and summers till you could not tell if it was an angel’s face or an old Roman goddess at which you were staring. In fact Aramis had often suspected that some of his ancestors had stolen the statues from nearby pagan temples.
Needless to say this was not an opinion that could be shared with his mother, who was looking around, her blue eyes lightly covered in trembling tears.
“So many graves,” she said. “Your family has been here since the time of Charlemagne, you know?”
Aramis knew. Or at least he’d been told so. If he were asked his true, honest opinion he’d have said his family or someone else who’d succeeded to the same name had been here a long time and left it at that. But now he contented himself with nodding.
“Do you know what I think when I come here?” his mother asked.
Did she come here often? Aramis had left the maternal abode for seminary in Paris when he was just fifteen. He’d been away, now, almost ten years. His mother looked very different to this older Aramis than she had looked to the dutiful and shy seminarian. Did his mother walk the cemetery at night? Or during the day for her afternoon stroll? And why?
He realized she was waiting for an answer from him. “What do you think of, maman?” he asked, though fairly sure he didn’t want to know.
“I think that families share a lot more than coats of arms,” she said and nodded, sadly. “Yes.”
Aramis looked upward at the darkening sky and wondered what in heaven’s name that meant.
“A lot more,” Madame D’Herblay said, as if speaking out of her own thoughts. Then she looked back over her shoulder, her countenance suddenly animated. “Rene, do you know where your father lies?”
“Maman?”
“Oh, come, surely you know where your father’s tomb is.”
Aramis did. He thought. “Down this lane,” he said, pointing. “And around that cluster of cypresses.” He called to mind the memory of the last time he’d come into the cemetery, at his mother’s instigation, to lay flowers on the paternal tomb before leaving for the seminary. “It is a white marble tomb, I think.”
His mother nodded and led him the right way through it. “Here,” she said, stopping in front of the tomb he’d described. “Can you read to me what the words say, Rene?”
“Maman, I’ve known how to read since the age of three. And Latin since the age of five.”