the musketeer's seamstress (40 page)
Read the musketeer's seamstress Online
Authors: Sarah d'Almeida
She spoke French well, with a slight accent, and her words seemed to make some sense to Aramis, who bit his lower lip and looked moist eyed. But they made no sense at all to Porthos. “Her first vows?” he boomed.
“When we were children,” the woman said, looking now at Porthos with the sort of resignation the musketeer had only seen before in a deer at bay and surrounded by dogs. “Our parents decided that one of us would have a dowry and a marriage. While the other would be a nun. I was the older, so the dowry was mine. But Violeta didn’t have a vocation. She was bored in the convent.” The woman was crying now, with tears running down her face. “I got to visit her. Sometimes for weeks at a time. Our parents would let me spend time with her.” She blinked at Porthos. “When she was ten Violeta took her first vows. But she really didn’t want to stay. And I did. I’d listened to the sermons, and I’d listened to the nuns. I wanted to be a nun. Not her. We’d . . . Our parents couldn’t tell us apart. We changed. We switched. I stayed in the convent, she went back. Then she got married.”
“I thought it would be fine. I thought marriage was a holy vocation too. But as I became more . . . holy, and I thought about it, it didn’t seem acceptable. She had taken her first vows. She had promised chastity. And she kept sending me these letters telling of her . . . fornication.”
The woman looked towards Aramis. “So I ran away from the convent. I ran away with an acrobat troupe. I practiced . . . Walking on rope. And I ran away. I thought I’d come here to France, and I’d preach to Violeta and she’d either go back to her husband and live as a holy married woman should, or she would give up her . . .” She looked at Aramis again. “Fancy man.” She shook her head and two tears ran down her face. “I tried. She wouldn’t. She told me to go back to the convent. She told me I was crazy. She told me she didn’t believe. What was I supposed to do?” She shrugged and opened her hands, in front of her thighs, as though to signify her inability to control the situation. “What could I do? She wouldn’t listen, but she was my sister. So I came back. Many times I came back. And then I thought if I caught her in the act, and preached to her, and exorcized her, the evil spirits would come out.”
She looked at each of them in turn. “But then, I used my little rope. It’s weighted and you can throw it in such a way that little hooks fasten on the balcony railing. We’ve done that when we’re not given permission to enter the house to hook the rope. And I used my little rope from the tree to the balcony, and walked across it, and looked at the window. Many times. Finally I caught her in bed with him.” She pointed at Aramis who blushed. “Then he went away and I went in, and I tried to exorcize her.” The beautiful face showed total disbelief. “She laughed at me. She . . . laughed. At me. I couldn’t let her go on mocking and sinning. There was a very sinful knife on a nearby table. It had a woman and man, fornicating. I . . . I stabbed her with it.” Her jaw went slack. “So much blood. I must confess. I shall never be cleansed.”
“And the cross?” Porthos asked.
The woman shrugged. “I thought if I got the little cross she’d received when she took her first vows, it would be as if I’d taken my first vows. And then everything would be well again. It would be as if we were the same person, then.”
Having finished speaking she knelt there, looking at all of them, and seeming regretful and sad, but not in the way of a murderess. Rather in the way of a child who has committed a minor offense.
Silence reigned for a while. Athos was looking at his hands, and D’Artagnan had removed his hat, as if he were at a funeral.
“Her name really was Violette?” Aramis asked. “She said her legal name was Ysabella.”
The woman on the floor shook her head. “I am Ysabella. She was Violeta. We changed names when we changed places. We went by the other’s name. But my true name is Ysabella.”
“She told me her true name,” Aramis said.
It sounded like an epitaph, Porthos thought. And then realized his friends would go on sitting here, forever, looking at the woman, unless he made a decision.
“I told you it was all a matter of finding who could have got in that way,” he said. And then, “Now we must take her to Richelieu. He can talk to her and she can confess. And then he can stop trying to capture Aramis and trying to kill us. And it all can be as it was.”
“No,”Aramis yelled. “No.”
“No?” Porthos said.
Aramis’s Guilt; The Confession; The Plan
“
P
LEASE don’t deliver her to the Cardinal,” Aramis said. “He will kill her.”
P
LEASE don’t deliver her to the Cardinal,” Aramis said. “He will kill her.”
He realized how odd that sounded when all their eyes turned to him. He opened his own hands, by the side of his body. “Please, understand. She looks like Violette. If she were executed, it would be like watching Violette be killed all over again.”
They all looked at him as if he were insane, except Athos, who nodded. “But how can 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
“
W
HAT if she doesn’t return to the convent?” Porthos asked. The idea of letting a murderess go seemed insane to him.
W
HAT 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
A
RAMIS 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.
RAMIS 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.”
Aramis smiled, conscious that it was not a pleasant smile. “And I won’t like to be kept waiting. Kindly remember I’ve attained my majority, and I’m my father’s heir. This is my house. Now get the lady my mother and tell her to hurry.”
He walked past them to the study that had been his father’s and that his mother kept locked. He took his dagger out and forced the lock.
He then took the candle and candlestick that one of the maids was holding, opened the door wide and entered.
There . . . Right where he stood, on the floor he kicked dust around, to reveal a stain much larger than he’d guessed it to be before. Blood. He had been in enough duels to know a place where a man’s blood had flooded out taking his life with it.
When his mother arrived—and she did make him wait a little, though not as much as he’d expected—he was sitting behind the desk. He had done a cursory search of the drawers, which confirmed what he expected.
“Rene,” his mother said from the doorway. “You should have told us you were coming. I would have had your room prepared. I—”
He smiled, his not-nice smile. “Don’t trouble yourself, madame. I won’t stay long. I just came for your confession. Now sit down and write it.” He extended to her a piece of paper, a quill and an inkwell.
“My confession?” Madame D’Herblay asked, taking her still beautiful hand to her still beautiful breast.
“About my father’s death.”
“I did not kill your father.”
“No, madame, you did not. Your lover did,” he spoke calmly, factually. “That spot where you stand is soaked with my father’s blood. Because I look like him, I am going to assume I am truly his son, but the only way the duel over the woman both he and Richelieu loved would have been fought in this room is if my father came home and interrupted you and your lover. They fought their way down the stairs, and my father backed in here, perhaps because it was his room and therefore he felt safe here. But it didn’t protect him, and here your lover stabbed him through the heart, judging by the profusion of blood on the floor.”
“How dare you?” Madame D’Herblay said. “How dare you accuse me of adultery?”
“Very easily, madame,” Aramis said. “In your husband’s desk, in a secret compartment I suspect you knew existed but couldn’t figure out how to open, I found a packet of letters I’d wager he removed from your room. The letters are addressed to you. Signed by your Armand. With a note from my father about how he’d removed them from your room and if he should be found dead . . .” Aramis grinned. “I’d guess this is why you kept this room locked and everyone out of it. Because you didn’t know where those letters were. These desks are a common design. It is a common secret, madame, with a common spring. If you’d lived more in the world, you’d have found the letters.”
Madame D’Herblay was trembling now. She sat in a chair, trembling, and turned her tear-filled eyes to her son. “Don’t judge me so harshly. I was so young. All my life, I’d been brought up here. All the life I remembered. I thought of your father more as a brother than as a husband. Armand was . . . exciting. And he told me he loved me.” She swallowed, then rallied a little. “And, you must know, it wasn’t a murder. It was a duel. Your father was killed in a clean duel. If you ask me to say he was murdered, I can’t for that will be a lie.”
“Oh, no, you can say it was a duel. You should write it exactly as it happened. You see, it will embarrass your lover that much more, to have his youthful indiscretions revealed and to have it known he was once a lethal duelist.” He glared at her. “Now sit down and write, madame, or by the blood, I shall take these letters to the local magistrate and tell him I suspect you of having killed my father. By the time you’re proven innocent—and that’s if anyone subsists in the house who’s willing to testify against your former lover, now the most powerful man in France—everyone will know what is behind your facade of piety.”
Madame D’Herblay sat down and wrote.
Other books
Take Me There by Susane Colasanti
Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow by Faïza Guène
By the Sword by Flower, Sara
THIEF: Part 6 by Kimberly Malone
Tuppence To Spend by Lilian Harry
Blood Moon by Graeme Reynolds
Date With Death (Welcome To Hell) by Langlais, Eve
The Border Vixen by Bertrice Small
Wild Cards [07] Dead Man's Hand by George R.R. Martin
Imperfect Justice by Olivia Jaymes