A Candle For d'Artagnan

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  Charles was waiting for her in the bath as she had expected, his chestnut hair wet and shining. “I have started already,” he said, watching her slip out of her robe de chambre. “I wanted a chance to wash before you—” He did not go on as she sank into the large tub across from him.

  “Yes?” she said to his silence.

  He stared at her, his eyes enormous. It was as if he had never seen her before. “It would be my death to lose you, Olivia. Without you there is no life for me.” His voice was husky with the emotion that seized him.

  She looked at him through the steam. “What a strange thing, to think I am life. You know what I am, Charles.”

  “Life,” he insisted, and moved toward her.

  “Life,” she repeated, wishing once more that she had the ability to weep. As their hands touched she gave a tiny cry.

  Immediately he took her in his arms, his face against her hair. “What is it? What is this sorrow you feel, Olivia? Have I caused it?”

  She shook her head. “Not you. Never you. Possibly it is my fear for you.” Her lips were against his shoulder; she could taste his skin. “Charles, Charles.”

  He bent his head and kissed the lids of her eyes. “You are my love and my life, Olivia.”

  Her need for him was acute within her. Her hands quivered with the force of her need. She touched his nipples, and felt his flesh awaken under her fingers. As his hand moved to cup her breast, she shivered, shaken to her core. She tried to speak, but words failed her.

  Charles felt her tremble, and drew her close to him. “Have I hurt you? Olivia? Have I done something to—”

  “No,” she whispered as she found her voice at last. “No. You have done nothing to hurt me.” She answered his kisses with her own, her esurience growing as she opened her soul to him. “Your life is my life, Charles.”

  “As your blood is my blood,” he answered, the urgency of his arousal suddenly unbearable. “It is too soon, but I must,” he murmured, lifting her in the water so that she could fasten her legs around him. He clamped his jaw shut so that he would not shout for the joy of it as he went smoothly and deeply into her, ecstasy making him weak and powerful at once.

  Olivia could not stop trembling. She was like one suffering a fevered delirium, the frenzy of rapture that seemed too great for mere flesh to contain. Her thoughts scattered before a passion more encompassing than reason; she gave herself up to it, a reverent visionary at worship. She clung to him, hardly aware of how they moved together so great was their union. When she felt him shudder and clasp her more closely she strove to sustain their gratification as she bent her head to his neck, her ardor turning to glorious serenity with his fulfillment.

  The water was cooler when they finally left the bath. Both moved with easy languor, finding excuses to touch each other, to kiss, to laugh softly.

  “Here,” said Charles, tossing a drying sheet to Olivia. “Your hair—”

  “No worse than yours,” she replied as she started to rub the wetness from her hair.

  “I’ll have to find a comb,” he said in mock complaint as he shook his head vigorously, sending spray over Olivia and the walls. “No wonder dogs do this when it rains.”

  “You’re being foolish,” she said, but it was not a criticism of him. She took two steps toward him and put her arms around his neck. “I hope with all my soul you will never regret loving me.”

  “If I regret loving you, then put me in a madhouse, where I belong. I would be a lunatic to regret loving you, Olivia.” He held her near, but without the hectic desire he had felt earlier.

  “It would kill me, I think, having you repudiate me.” She let their kiss linger this time, and as they drew apart, she added quick, feathery kisses to the corner of his mouth and the edge of his jaw.

  “You have nothing to fear,” he promised her, his words so deep and still that at last she believed him. “I will love you until the day I die and all the days after that I am un-dead with you.” He placed his right hand over his heart. “Before God and His Angels and the Hosts of Hell.”

  “Ah,” she said, as if seconding him, unable to make light of his vow. In that moment she wondered how she had ever been able to doubt him, how she could have thought his youth was a barrier to their intimacy.

  He looked down at her face and slowly, marveling, he smiled. “At last,” he said, reading her thoughts in her eyes.

  “There is a bond with the blood,” she said very quietly.

  “Yes, there is,” he answered. He took the ends of her drying sheet in his hands and tied them behind his back. “There is a bond in the flesh, as well.”

  She laughed, too happy to cavil. “Come. Minette will be bringing me hot wine and a biscuit—”

  “But you never eat,” he objected.

  “Then you can have the hot wine and biscuit,” she said as she loosened the drying sheet. “But since she is new to my service, I do not want her thinking I am too strange. If she brings me hot wine and biscuits, she pays less attention to the meals I do not eat.” Olivia started toward the door that led to her private apartments.

  “Will this new maid be shocked if she finds me in your bed?” Charles asked, hesitating.

  “She would probably be more shocked if she did not. She has been listening to the tales the other servants tell about us, and I believe she has been looking forward to your visit.” She bent to pick up her robe de chambre from the bench, then opened the door. “Do not tease her, Charles. She has a squint and cannot help it; her eyes are weak.”

  “And she’s a lady’s maid?” Charles said skeptically as he followed her, making sure that his drying sheet was securely wrapped around him.

  “There is nothing wrong with her close work, it is only a question of seeing things at a distance. Her sewing is remarkable and she tends clothes to perfection. And she does not ask too many questions about what I do for the Cardinal.” She closed the door as Charles came up beside her. “She may have retired already.”

  “Or she may be in your bedroom, waiting to catch us,” he said, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Shall we give her something to see?”

  Olivia returned his kiss but shook her head. “You are incorrigible,” she said with pleasure. “Let me go in first, just in case you’re right.”

  He shrugged but allowed Olivia to open the door. As she gasped, he came hastily to her side, his easy delight gone at the sound. “God and the Martyrs, what is it?” he asked.

  She pointed; a biscuit lay on the floor at the foot of her bed, and beside it an empty wineglass had fallen. Next to them there was a hand, the nails a dusky blue. “Minette,” Olivia said quietly, and went slowly toward the body.

  “Jesu et Marie,” muttered Charles as he crossed himself.

  The maid was lying as if she had fallen off the bed, a rumpled heap of petticoats and linen fichu, her cap askew, her eyes open and staring, her lips the same blue as her nails.

  “She was poisoned,” said Olivia with quiet certainty.

  “How do you know?” Charles asked, his mind reeling: while he and Olivia had been locked together in their exultation, this poor creature had been dying.

  “Look at her hands. Nails that color mean poison. Her mouth, too.” She reached out and took Charles’ hand again. “We had best summon help and prepare another note for Mazarin,” she said, resignation coming over her. The world was intruding again, leeching the bliss from her life, separating her and Charles. It was strange how much his nearness had come to mean to her, and how alone she felt when he was not with her.

  “Tonight?” Charles pleaded, feeling his jubilation slip away from him as he stared at the corpse.

  Olivia nodded, knowing that they both had duties to fulfill. “But you need not leave until morning. I will have the servants tend to her, and we can sleep in your chamber. That will give us a little more time. There is nothing we can do before morning, except move her body. The magistrate will not come until then.” She bent and picked up the wineglass. “Poor Minette.
”

  Charles spoke sharply, saying the thing he dreaded. “That was your wine she drank.”

  “Yes,” Olivia said as she turned the glass in her fingers. “I know.”

  Text of a letter from Gennaro Colonna to his second cousin Jules Mazarin, written in Italian.

  To my esteemed relative, the First Minister of France, Jules, Cardinal Mazarin, my greetings and much-belated thanks for the interest you have taken in my welfare. I have only now come to appreciate your efforts on my behalf, and I wish to inform you of my gratitude for all you have done.

  Let me tell you how this comes about: the company of fighting men in which I was enrolled was ordered into the coastal mountains on the west side of the southern Americas, to the place where the Incas live. During our journey here—partly by sea, partly overland—I took a fever. It was severe, and it did not improve. The physician of the company feared for my life and my companions were ready to dig my grave by the time we reached our destination. I remember little of the travel, for the illness had me in its grip and I was often not wholly in my right mind. Oftentimes I was taken with chills that left me palsied and weak as a sick puppy; other times I burned with fever and raged. It is not remarkable that my comrades despaired of my life and were more willing to send for a priest than another physician.

  Yet, to my everlasting thankfulness, a physician came. He was with another party of soldiers and priests, and he had been in these mountains for almost ten years. He was identified as a tertiary Brother of the Carmelite Order, serving religious and soldiers with equal deliberation. Being a tertiary, he is not bound by monkish vows, but lives with the Carmelites and follows their Rule as far as he is able, as he was not born Catholic. He travels with the monks and treats those whose wounds or illness require his skills. He recognized my malady and at once set about to procure cinchona bark. He told me that Pedro Barba had used this bark to cure la Condessa de Chinchon, and as it returned her to health so it would return me. It mattered little to me, for I was certain that I would die and that God had numbered me with the goats bound for Hell. I tried to resign myself to death and damnation, but took the elixir given me by this tertiary Brother. Either from his skill as a physician or the Grace of God, or both, I began to recover.

  It is now two months since I made my first improvement. I am not yet strong enough to fight with my company, but I am able to aid my physician in his treating others, and I have found great solace in this. San Germanno—for that is the name of the physician who has cured me—tells me I have some ability as a physician and has suggested that I take up the study. I have given him my word to consider this. Before I was taken with fever, I might have dismissed the notion—to be candid, it would have seemed ridiculous to me—but now, having come so near death, I find I cannot ignore what I have survived, or the suffering it gave me. In six months I have sworn to give San Germanno my answer, and while I am weighing my decision, I have promised to continue to assist him, to learn from him, although I know I will never attain his degree of ability. Daily I am amazed at the capabilities of this man, whose genius exceeds all physicians I have known of before now. I have asked him where he came by this extraordinary skill and he has said that he learned it in Egypt.

  I mention this man not only because he has saved my life and shown me another way to live, but because he claims to know one of your embassy, the Roman widow Bondama Clemens. He has informed me he knew her when she was much younger and that he has maintained an occasional correspondence with her over the years. From what he tells me, they are relatives of one sort or another, for he has said that he and she share the bond of blood. I ask that you commend me to Bondama Clemens and convey my admiration for her relative to her. Surely one such as San Germanno is a credit to any family, and she must know that she is blessed to be of the same blood as he.

  That brings me to my last observation of this letter: in the past I have regarded your instruction as unwelcome and ludicrous, and I have been inclined to dismiss everything you were kind enough to impart to me. Now I am aware that I have been worse than lax in my behavior and my thinking. You have not been a bothersome intruder, but a pardoning sage, willing to try to pull me back from the brink I was so determined to cast myself over. I wish you to know that I truly value all that you have striven to do for me, and in future you will find me an attentive and grateful student, eager for instruction.

  This letter will be carried by Frey Estanislao on the ship Los Sacramentos, bound for Spain in ten days. I pray passage will be swift and the seas quiet, so that you may receive this before the start of Lent next spring.

  It is presently my intention, should I be able to progress as a physician, to take my mentor as my example and become a tertiary Brother of the Carmelites. I will not be beyond the reach of my family that way, and will have no monkish vows to uphold if the family makes other plans for me. In time, that may change, but for now, I believe that I was saved for more reason than whim, and I know I have turned away from all that was worthy in my life and endangered my body and the salvation of my soul. No more need you or any others of our family fear for me. I have seen the danger at last, and I have drawn back from it as I would from the fires of Hell itself. Your prayers have been heard, cousin, and I hope with all my heart that my previous abuse had not made me odious to you so that my awakening has come too late for friendship between us.

  Every night and every morning I number your name in my prayers. I beg you not to shut me out of your heart, but to accept me, penitent, as one who seeks your guidance. If you continue to pray for me, then petition Madre Maria and San Lucca to aid my learning so that I may, in time, be a capable physician.

  Your cousin, in contrition,

  Gennaro Colonna

  On the first day of November, 1646.

  3

  There was a pelting rain slanting in on the north wind that turned the whole world dark grey; Paris looked like a charcoal sketch by the time Montlezun de Besmaux and d’Artagnan answered the summons to meet with Mazarin in his palace.

  “Do you know why we have been sent for?” Montlezun de Besmaux demanded of Charles as they presented themselves to the chief lackey.

  “His Eminence does not confide in me,” said the chief lackey in tones intended to stop all speculation. He indicated a small antechamber where two branches of candles burned and a bottle of wine stood open. “If you will wait here until I come for you?”

  Charles nodded his acknowledgement and led the way into the little room. “At least it’s warm,” he said, going to stand by the hearth. “I was thinking of asking for my cloak back.”

  “But it’s wet,” said Montlezun de Besmaux, sounding offended.

  “True. But it is also dry,” said Charles as he went to pour the wine. “You’ll have some?”

  Montlezun de Besmaux gave a nervous gesture of acceptance. “How long will he keep us waiting, do you think? Very long?”

  “As long as he wishes,” said Charles, holding out one of the glasses to Montlezun de Besmaux.

  After two quick sips of wine, Montlezun de Besmaux began to pace, his free hand moving restlessly over his mantle, the hilt of his sword, the lace at his wrists. “I wish I knew why we are here. I don’t like this. Why should he send for both of us like this, and then keep us waiting? Are you sure you do not know what the Cardinal wants?”

  “I have told you before,” Charles said with no attempt to disguise his irritation, “I have no more idea than you do.”

  “But it is so unusual,” objected Montlezun de Besmaux. “He has not called both of us with so little notice before.” He tugged at his mantle again, then twitched the lace at his neck. “I did not have time to dress properly.”

  “Saint Etienne give me patience,” said Charles. “You are presentable. You are wearing your mantle. Your hat is wet, but it is raining. You need nothing more than this for a correct appearance. The Cardinal does not employ us because of our clothes.” As he spoke, he hoped that Mazarin would finally pay the bonus he had
promised his couriers at Christmas; a month had gone by and still he had seen no gold.

  “I do not like this,” Montlezun de Besmaux said in an undervoice. “Why both of us?”

  Charles rounded on him. “I know no more now that I did when the message arrived. We are the Cardinal’s couriers. We are at his disposal. We serve him at his pleasure. If His Eminence wishes us to sit here for the next two days, it is what we will do.” He looked up as the chief lackey returned to the antechamber.

  After a grave bow of just the right mixture of superiority and servility, the chief lackey said, “Cardinal Mazarin begs you will excuse the delay, but he is currently entertaining the suite of the Dutch Ambassador and cannot absent himself quite yet. I will return when he is ready to speak with you.” He glanced at the bottle of wine. “I am to see you have refreshments and drink. I will have another bottle sent, and a plate of meat pastries.” He lowered his head without any loss of dignity, and left them alone again.

  “You see?” Charles said when the chief lackey had departed. “We are here at the Cardinal’s convenience, not our own. We might as well enjoy the fire and the wine.”

  “And the meat pastries, if they send any,” said Montlezun de Besmaux. “I hope that Mazarin is not all night with the Dutch Ambassador and his suite. What need has he to speak with them, in any case?”

  “He is First Minister of France,” Charles said as if addressing a wayward child. “Would you rather leave the task to one of the Dues? You know what would happen then—there would be war tomorrow.” He took a long drink. “And perhaps then we could be Musqueteers again.”

  “Musqueteers!” Montlezun de Besmaux exclaimed derisively. “Oh, yes. No doubt you long for another campaign, with treks that last for days in dust and mud, and bad food and water, with guns and wounds and death waiting for us.”