by Sarah Hoyt
Putting force into his strokes, he managed to distance himself from her, getting just slightly ahead, and felt ready to swim the rest of the length of the Seine, upstream, until he came to the origins of the mighty river when he felt her hand touch him, and saw her point toward . . .
A thicket of boats. There were, moored across the Seine, several boats. Some of them were permanently anchored or near enough, and in fact—for a fee—provided accommodation for such homely needs and occupations as clothes washing and for the water carriers to come and draw the water that they sold to the bourgeois in the city.
Suddenly it all made sense to him—though these boats were guarded surely they could show the guards they were not vampires!—and they could hide there until the morning sunlight made it possible for them to reach a safer destination.
He followed Madame Bonacieux willingly, but she never got to the boat. Instead, she veered toward a floating cluster of tree trunks. The people who cut down trees farther up the course of the Seine let them float to the city unfettered. They were marked and those who took them out of the river for milling or firewood then paid the originators of the logs a fee. At any time there were many of these trunks floating alongside the boats. Smaller boats sometimes took damage from the larger logs, and swimmers had to watch for them. Madame Bonacieux swam so that her head just peeked above the water between two of the trunks and then—presumably using her feet to propel herself—she pushed those logs and a few others ahead of her, as she moved, slowly, against the current.
It would be noticeable, d’Artagnan thought, logs floating against the current, but he imitated her. The river went around rocks, and there were eddies and whirls in the current, that pulled the floating logs now this way and now that, but not for long. They couldn’t go far this way.
She took a course toward the edge of the river. He, pushing six logs ahead and around him, following. He heard noises from the laundry boats and other boats anchored near them—screams and fighting. The vampires had assumed they’d boarded the boats. They must have gone over the bridge to the road—and along the road to the boats at incredible speed. There would be no safe place there.
The lady, however, swam to the riverbank, and, looking around cautiously, pulled herself up out of the water and onto the paved road, then turned to offer him a hand. He resisted an impulse to laugh at the small proffered hand. Young, he might be, and he knew well that he had not gained the weight of muscle and bone he would have in adulthood—he imagined he would be like his father had been, short but solid. But the lady was shorter than he, couldn’t weigh nearly as much.
He spurned her extended hand, held on to a sort of parapet that presumably protected the city from the river’s flood, and pulled himself up beside her.
“They’re looking for us,” she said. Her teeth chattered. No surprise, since all she was wearing was a soaked petticoat and an upper garment which, to d’Artagnan’s hastily averted eyes, was not substantial enough to hide the rosy glow of her flesh beneath. He wrung his hair and then pulled the soggy mess away from his face, and nodded once. No use denying it. This had been a purposeful—and masterful—ambush. They couldn’t have sent that many of the strange vampires to cover the underside of Pont Neuf to capture just anyone. That would make no sense. Surely there was hunting aplenty in alleyways and corners of the deserted night city, and no use risking fighting at least one musketeer, and maybe two.
“So we should remain as hidden as we can,” she said. “I know that they all share mind and memory, but these were sent with the intention to catch us. Surely it is not the mission of every other vampire in the city, only these.”
“Yes,” he said. “We must get away from the river and these vampires.” He still heard sounds from the boats, as though the vampires were now ripping boards and tearing into any space where d’Artagnan and the lady might be hidden.
He extended his hand to her, and got the impression she hesitated before taking it. Together, slightly bent forward, they ran as fast as they could to the protection of a low wall, then ran hunched along it, so their shadows didn’t show. But d’Artagnan heard the sound of steps closing in, surrounding them, and the same dry, rubbing sounds he’d heard on the bridge. The sound of long-dead, dried limbs moving. He couldn’t think, he could only feel, the approaching mass of vampires. They were going to be taken. They were going to be captured. They were going to be . . . turned?
Aramis’ voice echoed in his mind. The lady is more important than any of us. Get her away.
D’Artagnan pulled his sword out, but he could not possibly fight them all. He and Aramis had been unsuccessful. How could he, alone, win against this? He knew he couldn’t. And yet he must get the lady away and free. He must save her at all costs.
I’ve never kissed a woman; I’ve never tamed a horse; I’ve never . . .
He leaned over to Madame Bonacieux, put his lips near her ear—her white and pink ear, framed in dark blond hair. “Lady,” he said, “when I give you the word, run. I want you to run straight ahead, paying no attention to anything, till you reach the nearest street. Then run along the nearest street till you find a safe house. I presume you have places you know are safe?”
She gave him a dark look and whispered back, fiercely, “I am not a child! I have many duties and I—”
“Good. Then you know about duties. And my duty is to protect you. When I give the word, Madame.”
Suddenly her expression went from threatening to worried. “I don’t want you to sacrifice yourself for me,” she said.
He laughed a little, at the idea that she could escape without his sacrifice, and said, “I don’t want to sacrifice myself.” But he could hear the vampires moving closer, ever closer.
And so could she, but before he could pull away and execute his plan, Madame Bonacieux seized his head, her hands at the back of it, and she pulled his face down to hers, and kissed him—a long, passionate kiss.
D’Artagnan was taken so wholly by surprise that he did very little at all as her tongue plunged between his lips and darted, daringly, into his mouth. For a moment—for an eternity—their mouths were joined. Though he knew she’d been in the same bracken river as he, he smelled roses, and seemed surrounded by the scent of rose petals. Her mouth tasted like distilled honey, like the sweetness of flowers on a summer meadow, like the first apple of the season. He moaned and, hearing himself moan, pulled back, startled, touching his lips with the tips of his fingers, as though to make sure those were indeed his lips and his fingers.
Then he shook himself. I have kissed a woman, not that it made him feel any better about what he had to do. Now to die with honor.
He whispered, “Stay here. When you hear me shout, run.” D’Artagnan then tiptoed away from Madame Bonacieux, barely hearing her whisper something about “her rose and his spear” whatever that meant.
D’Artagnan crept with all the stealth he could muster through the dark streets. The vampires were coming from the river, that black swarm having crossed the bridge and moved on along the bank. They advanced blindly, and they certainly didn’t know where the young man and Madame Bonacieux were. It reminded d’Artagnan of the way bats homed in on prey, seeming to feel for it out of the ether.
Thus the vampires were approaching, hesitating and rounding on them, slowly, slowly, but ever closer. Infallibly. Given enough time they’d find them. They’d surround them.
Merging with the shadows of the narrow streets, running from doorway to doorway, d’Artagnan went as far away as he could from where he judged the lady needed to go—toward the Palais Royale or some other safe house on this side of the Île de la Cité.
As far from known streets as d’Artagnan could go. And then, when he judged his distance as adequate, he stopped, his back against a wall, his sword in his hand. Knowing it was a futile thing, but knowing he must shout and that his words must be plausible enough that the vampires were fooled and that they might as well be a cry for help, he screamed, “To me, musketeers! To me!”
In the dark shadows he could hear hundreds—thousands?—of footsteps shift and change direction toward him, and he more imagined than heard a single set of footsteps running away.
He held his sword and prepared to sell his life dearly.
Casting Lots
“GRIMAUD!” Athos said, as he saw his servant starting toward the stairs. “Let me do the honors.” He was thinking that if someone had come, intent on killing or arresting him, perhaps he could give the others time to run. Certainly Grimaud could not buy them that time, not if faced with several of the cardinal’s guards.
But as Athos tripped lightly down the stairs, he became aware he was followed. Porthos, not Grimaud, walked steps behind him.
“Porthos, my friend,” Athos said. “I would wait at the top of the stairs. That way, if it should chance to be His Eminence’s guards, you can escape with the others while I hold them back.”
“Very funny,” Porthos said. “But Grimaud is quite competent to lead a rout. I’m not so good at it.”
Athos opened the door a crack, with his foot behind it, ready to close it and tell Porthos to run if it should be, as he expected, Richelieu’s men. Instead, he found himself looking out . . .
For a moment, he couldn’t make sense of what he saw, and when he did, laughter tried to make its way up his throat to his lips. It was Aramis, but he looked as though he’d been dipped, head first, in an unholy baptismal fountain. Unholy because the smell floating from him mingled the odors of everything the city discarded.
Athos’ amusement stopped short as he noticed that, beneath the grime and the stained clothes, Aramis was bleeding. He couldn’t see the stains of blood, but he could smell it, like honey beneath the foul stench. He stepped aside from his door, afraid of getting too near that smell or thinking too closely about it. But now he could see Aramis was too pale and that he trembled slightly. Easily attributable to being soaked to the skin, but loss of blood did the same. “My dear Aramis,” he said, his voice—to his own ears—thick. “What—?”
“I jumped in the river,” Aramis said, and his trembling increased. “After I managed to escape a multitude of old ones.”
“Old . . . vampires?” Athos asked, pressing himself flat against the wall and motioning Aramis in past him. Aramis went in, and up the stairs, while Athos locked the door and followed him, willing his fangs to retract. He stayed behind enough that he didn’t have to smell the all-enticing scent of blood, until they got to the top of the stairs, where Aramis turned and answered Athos’ question. “Yes. Very old. I think older even than the ones we fought at des Fossoyeurs. They seemed . . . scarcely like animated creatures. More like . . . walking skeletons.
Athos shivered, imagining himself in that state, but aloud he said only, “Please, if you’d come to the kitchen? Everyone else is there.”
“Not everyone else,” Aramis said and sighed. “At least . . . d’Artagnan and Madame Bonacieux haven’t come here, have they?”
Athos shook his head, as he took the lead down the back stairs to the kitchen. “No. Did you lose them?”
“I regret to say I may have done so,” Aramis said. “At least, I told d’Artagnan and the lady to escape. I stayed behind to . . . to distract the attackers. I didn’t know . . . That is, the vampires seemed to follow them, leaving me with so few adversaries that I escaped easily.” He seemed to hesitate, just before they reached the kitchen. His steps stopped behind Athos, and as Athos turned to look at him, he saw Aramis swallow and shake his head. “I was in the river when I heard d’Artagnan cry, ‘To me, musketeers.’ But when I made it to the place from whence his voice came . . . there was no one there. Only—”
“Only?”
“His sword. Broken. Shreds off his doublet.”
Athos wanted to ask if there were any churches nearby where the boy might have been taken, but he couldn’t and didn’t wish to tempt Aramis—who, from his scent, was bleeding freely—to go on a dangerous search.
Athos, himself would go as soon as he could. He doubted ancient ones were performing a blood mass. At least he’d never heard of their doing so. Their feeding seemed to be less orchestrated and more of a frenzy. So it would take time to summon younger vampires to the feeding. If there were a hope, Athos would find the boy.
He escorted Aramis to the kitchen, where the younger musketeer was met with distressed sounds from both Grimaud and Bazin. Grimaud wanted to bring forth the hip bath, but Aramis was as adamantly against it as Athos had been. Much to Grimaud’s consternation, Aramis also stood by the sink’s drainage hole and used water—at least this time from the well—to pour over himself and wash away the filth of the river, while he told in detail how they’d been ambushed on the Pont Neuf and how the boy and Madame Bonacieux might be gone forever.
“So the boy has a special sense for vampires, it seems,” Aramis said, and then, “Thank you, Grimaud,” as Athos’ servant offered a towel. Already the servants, who were as much comrades-at-arms as the musketeers, had managed to find one of Athos’ suits that was a little smaller and tighter than the others for Aramis to wear.
While Aramis dressed, he said, “Or he is a very well-briefed Judas goat.”
“A Judas goat?” Porthos asked. “But he killed vampires.”
“Old vampires. Well, other than the guards of the cardinal, but for all we know Jussac and the rest had offended his touchy eminence in some way and were due to die,” Aramis said. He frowned. “What I can’t stop thinking is that both his ability in the fights against the vampires, his courage in offering to enter the chapel, and his escaping with Madame all of them are, after all, simple to explain if he is a Judas goat.”
“But why would he warn you of the attack?” Athos asked, following Aramis’ reasoning and wishing he didn’t. Aramis’ mind usually wended down the dark paths of the human soul and Athos’ mind was dark enough without it.
Aramis gave a low mirthless laugh. His cuts, revealed while bathing, were all shallow defensive cuts on arms and hands. He bandaged his own left hand as he spoke. “Because he knew I wouldn’t believe him, and this ensured I wouldn’t suspect him. Afterwards—” He let go the cloth bandages and dropped onto a stool, covering his face with his hands. “—I let them capture her, Athos. She who was far more valuable than my wretched self.”
Athos opened his mouth to say Aramis undervalued himself, but never finished, as there was a pounding on the front door. The same sort of urgent pounding he’d heard from Aramis.
Athos ran up the stairs and across the top floor and then down the stairs again. He was almost at the door when he noticed Grimaud behind him, and waved him away. Hoping that it was d’Artagnan and the priestess of nature at the door, he flung it open, though—prudently—keeping his hand on his rapier.
He was half right. Just outside his door, trembling, as soaked as Aramis but considerably less well attired was Madame Bonacieux.
Her blond hair was so saturated with water as to appear greenish, and she had somehow lost all her clothes but her innermost—at least he hoped it was the innermost, else how she ended up in only it was a puzzle—petticoat and a translucent chemise.
Athos flung himself against the wall and said, “Madame, you do me great honor. The chevalier was just ahead of you. Please do come in.”
She came in silently, her quick tongue for once stilled. As she walked by Athos, he smelled no blood but only a healthy human female drenched in river water. He couldn’t help noticing, as he followed her up the stairs that he could see the creamy pink of her thighs through the soaked petticoat. Why this should bring up the same desire to feed as the smell of blood did, Athos did not know, but he knew that it disturbed him.
“It must seem quite strange to you, my coming here like this,” she said, in a breath of voice, as she turned around. Her blush climbed from around her navel, visible through the soaked fabric
Athos looked away, “Madame, nothing that happens tonight seems strange to me.”
She hesitated and tried to run he
r fingers through her draggled, matted hair, before giving up and sighing. “I know what I said, and the doubts I entertained on . . . on your behalf. But d’Herblay was so sure you were trustworthy that I . . . ”.” She shrugged. “Well, the truth is, I find myself in the Île de la Cité, and I suspect my access to the Palais Royale will be blocked by vampires, therefore . . . ”
“Therefore,” Athos said, finding unexpected amusement in the midst of his worry for the young Gascon—surely her escape proved d’Artagnan was no adherent of the vampires—who might be, even now, the subject of a blood mass. “You thought you’d drop in on a secret and possibly dangerous vampire. Don’t worry, Madame, it all makes perfect sense to me.”
“You mock me!” she said, managing to sound shocked.
Athos shook his head. “Not so much you as the madness that life has become.” He bowed to the semi-clad, soaked woman, as he might have at court. “Madame, you do me great honor. Greater than you know, trusting me with your life and your soul. Greater than I would perhaps do myself. If you forgive me, d’Herblay, Porthos, their servants, my servant, and the young man we rescued are all in the kitchen.”
She hesitated then. “I . . . I am not decent.”
And Athos, realizing the madness of asking her to bathe from a drawn water bucket in front of the sink, said. “Forgive me. It seemed less important than what might have happened to d’Artagnan. Unless he’s likely to knock at the door in a few minutes?”
A sob tore through Madame Bonacieux’ lips, leaving her looking surprised at the sound, as though not sure where it had come from. “No,” she said. And then again, with a despairing tone, “No. He was . . . He drew the vampires away so that I could escape and there were so many of them. They swarmed past me, as if they didn’t see me . . . I fear. I very much fear that he’s . . . that he’s been taken or killed or . . . or worse.”
He nodded. “I fear so too. I was on the point of leaving in hopes of rescuing him from . . . worse . . . but . . . ” He shook his head. “But I will make sure you are made comfortable first.”
