Book 3: The Queen's Musketeers, #3

by R. A. Steffan

  Chapter XIV: October 15th, 1631

  “THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS!” de La Porte said in a high, wheezing voice. His face was pale and gray with obvious terror. “I have been a loyal servant of Your Majesty’s for years!”

  Isabella looked down at him, her cheeks flushed with two high circles of red. Her own voice was shrill as she leaned forward in her throne. “Yes, and before that, you were a loyal servant to my treacherous cousin! So we all see what value you put on loyalty, M. de La Porte! And, you—girl,” she said, pointing at Milady with a trembling finger. “What have you to say for yourself?”

  D’Artagnan winced slightly at the almost bored expression in Milady’s green, catlike eyes.

  “Well, Your Majesty, I'm afraid I haven't been a girl for many years, but M. de La Porte and I were merely discussing my accommodations,” she said. “My mattress is lumpy, so I asked him for a new one.”

  It was clear that Milady held out no hope of being able to talk her way out of the situation, and therefore couldn’t be bothered to even make an effort. At the insolent tone, Isabella began to tremble with rage, and whipped around to confront Cardinal Richelieu.

  “Cardinal—this woman is under your patronage. Explain yourself!” she snapped.

  The Cardinal did not even hesitate before throwing Milady under the proverbial wheels of the carriage. “Clearly this woman is a spy who lied her way into my good graces as a means to gain access to court, Your Majesty,” he said smoothly. “My deepest apologies for falling for such a ruse; it was an inexcusable oversight on my part.”

  D’Artagnan choked on his breath. The Cardinal was selling them out. Any hope they had of a relatively bloodless coup was evaporating before his eyes.

  Richelieu snapped his fingers at the guards, who straightened to attention. “Take these two to the Bastille and put them in chains until Her Majesty decides what to do with them.”

  Milady raised an eyebrow at the Cardinal, throwing him a look that d’Artagnan could not decipher. As she was manhandled back toward the doors, she caught his eye for the briefest of moments and silently mouthed something at him that looked like kitchens. A moment later, she and de La Porte were gone, leaving the small crowd in the throne room buzzing in their wake.

  Kitchens? D’Artagnan stood frozen for a moment, completely at a loss. When realization hit him, it was with the weight of heavy brick. Constance. She was Milady’s private maid. As soon as someone remembered that, she’d be arrested right along with her mistress and put in chains. Milady must have sent her to the kitchens to avoid detection. He had to get to her before anyone else did.

  In the confusion of raised voices and milling guests, he grabbed the tray of empty goblets and made his way out of the throne room. Fortunately, the tray gave him a reasonable excuse to go to the kitchens, and he forced himself not to hurry any more than he normally would. His thoughts were whirling; his stomach sick with worry.

  He passed through the main kitchen to the scullery, making a quick inventory of those present in the room. At this time of day, there was only the cook and a single servant, in addition to the young, mousy scullery maid who took the dirty goblets from him. The hallway outside had been deserted when he arrived. As he returned with the empty tray, a shadow moved at the edge of his vision, and he released a breath he hadn’t even been aware he was holding as Constance stepped cautiously from an alcove. Dizzy with relief, he motioned her to wait for him in the corridor and returned the tray to the stack on a wooden trestle table off to the side of the large room.

  It was still quiet and empty in the hallway when he joined her outside, and he wrapped his hands around her shoulders in relief.

  “Constance,” he breathed, closing his eyes for a moment.

  Her hand gripped his wrist convulsively for a moment. “They’ve arrested my godfather and Milady,” she said.

  “I know,” he replied, and took a deep breath to steady himself. “They’re being taken to the Bastille. We have to get you out of here before they decide to arrest you as well. I need you to take a message to Porthos for me.”

  Constance frowned, her face pale. “I can’t leave; the Louvre is locked down. None of us can leave. Not unless we’re under guard and being taken to gaol, anyway,” she added.

  D’Artagnan shook his head, and let go of her shoulders to reach inside his doublet. “Find Dupré,” he told her. “He’s on guard duty at the goods entrance today, and he likes you. Give him this; he’ll let you through.”

  He handed her the small leather purse that held all of their remaining money. She took it, but looked up at him fearfully.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “I can’t leave. I have to be here when our forces arrive to make sure Francis doesn’t escape—there’s no backup plan.” He fumbled in the other side of his doublet for a moment, pulling out a folded square of blank parchment and giving that to her, as well. “Invisible ink,” he lied, when she looked down at it in confusion. “Please, it’s vitally important that Porthos gets this message. You have to go right now.”

  “I don’t want to leave you,” Constance said, looking up at him with wet eyes.

  “And I don’t want to be without you, either,” he said, giving into impulse and letting his hands cradle her pale cheeks. “But it’s not for long. The others will be here tomorrow, and we’ll all be reunited once we take the palace.” If I’m still alive, he carefully didn’t add.

  She surged up to kiss him, and he had never loved her as much as he did in the moment when she pulled back, took his face in her hands, and breathed, “We can do this,” against his lips. He forced himself to smile down at her confidently. Forced himself to let her go.

  “Of course we can,” he told her. “Now, hurry—I don’t know how long it will be until they think to start looking for you.”

  She swallowed visibly and nodded, gazing into his eyes for one final, endless moment before releasing him and hurrying away. D’Artagnan let himself sag against the wall for the space of a few breaths, feeling everything spiraling out of control around him. Drawing himself upright once more through force of will, he glanced back into the kitchens to make sure no one inside had noticed anything amiss. It appeared not—cook was slicing vegetables with a knife, and the maid was sorting silverware.

  He froze. Cook was slicing vegetables with a knife. A knife. Oh, he was an idiot. He looked around until he saw a wooden storage block on the counter with more knives sticking out of it in neat rows. He re-entered, coughing to catch the cook’s attention.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “Cardinal Richelieu requested better wine for the guests. Could you choose a couple of bottles for me? I’m afraid my knowledge is not up to the standards of His Eminence.”

  The cook grumbled something uncharitable about uneducated country bumpkins, but left for the wine cellar. D’Artagnan wandered around the echoing space with apparent aimlessness, watching the maid from the corner of his eye. She quickly lost interest in him and returned to her silverware, allowing d’Artagnan to palm a couple of the wicked-looking knives from the counter and stuff them up his sleeves. When Cook returned with the wine, he was waiting innocently by the doorway; tray and fresh goblets in hand.

  He left and dropped the tray on the first table he could find where it would not look particularly out of place, before making his way to the permanent servants’ quarters. The idea of carrying out the next step in his nascent plan made d’Artagnan feel physically ill, but he could think of nothing else that would even give him a chance to maintain his freedom in the coming hours—once someone thought to arrest Constance, it wouldn’t take long for them to come after her husband as well.

  Inquiring as to the whereabouts of M. Delacruz, he went to the room where the man was working that afternoon, took a deep, fortifying breath, and knocked on the door.

  “What?” snapped an impatient voice from within.

  Schooling his features and posture into a vision of worry, he opened the door and entered, rubbing his hands to
gether as if with nervousness.

  “Monsieur,” he said, “something terrible has happened. If it is at all possible, I need to speak to the Cardinal. I believe my wife has betrayed the Queen and run away.”

  * * *

  After listening to several minutes’ worth of cursing and hurled abuse from Delacruz, d’Artagnan explained the connection with the arrest of Milady and M. de La Porte. He feared at first that the Spaniard would succumb to a fit of apoplexy, forcing him to find someone else to whom to spin his sad tale of betrayal and abandonment. Eventually, though, Delacruz dragged him to one of the Cardinal’s secretaries who, in turn, dragged him to the hallway outside the throne room and bade him wait.

  A short time later, Richelieu himself emerged into the hallway, closing the door behind him.

  “What is all this about?” he asked, eyeing d’Artagnan as if he was some sort of mildly interesting insect.

  “Your Eminence,” d’Artagnan said, dropping into a low bow, “I came to you as soon as I realized what had happened... it’s my wife, sir. Constance d’Artagnan.”

  “Your wife,” the Cardinal echoed flatly. “How could a servant’s wife possibly be of interest to me?”

  “She was the personal maid of the Comtesse de la Fére, Your Grace. I went to find her after the Comtesse was arrested, but she appears to have taken all of my money and disappeared.”

  “Indeed?” Richelieu asked. “How terribly unfortunate for you.”

  D’Artagnan took a breath and continued. “She has been unhappy in the marriage for some time, sir. It is possible that she knows something of whatever conspiracy the Comtesse was concocting with M. de La Porte, who is her godfather. I thought you might wish to send guards to search our rooms on the Rue Férou—perhaps if they are quick, they will find her there. If not, she is almost certainly fleeing to her relatives, the Bonacieux family, in Montigny-le-Bretonneux,” he finished, throwing out the name of the first town that popped into his head.

  Richelieu pinned d’Artagnan with his pale, piercing gaze. “You seem very eager to see your wife captured and arrested.”

  “She has betrayed our marriage vows and ruined me financially,” he said, feeling bile rise in his throat as the lies slipped free. “I wish only to show that I am a loyal servant to Her Majesty, Queen Isabella. I have been cruelly wronged by a deceitful woman.”

  The Cardinal’s sharp, unblinking eyes seemed to peel back d’Artagnan’s skin and examine what lay beneath. He maintained his cowed and nervous demeanor with difficulty through the nerve-wracking silence that followed, only to heave a quiet, nearly invisible sigh of relief when Richelieu said, “Very well. Your willingness to step forward in this matter does you credit. I will send guards to Rue Férou and see what can be found there. Return to your duties.”

  D’Artagnan bowed again, not honestly having expected the half-baked plan to work and feeling, as a consequence, rather light-headed. He returned to M. Delacruz and endured the additional vitriol heaped upon him with a lighter heart, since it meant he was still in the position he needed to be on the eve of Queen Anne’s arrival. He spent the rest of the day in the menial, back-breaking tasks assigned to him as punishment by Isabella’s Spanish lackey, the stolen knives under his sleeves a reassuring weight against his forearms.

  After little sleep the previous night, followed by a day of hard work and emotional tension, d’Artagnan was more than ready to fall into bed, even without Constance’s reassuring presence at his side. After a few minutes staring at the damaged ceiling above him and feeling his back muscles throbbing and his head pounding, he slipped into sleep, only to be awakened in the middle of the night by confused noises outside.

  The rioting in Paris had finally reached the Louvre.

  Nervous, drowsy servants milled in the disused wing, a few holding candles that threw a dim, wavering light over the scene. Unsure of what exactly was happening, d’Artagnan quickly dressed in his own breeches and boots rather than his footman’s uniform. He drew his stolen knives out from under the pillow and concealed one in his waistband and the other in his right boot, just in case.

  “What’s happening?” he asked as he joined the growing crowd of frightened staff.

  “There’s a mob outside the palace,” said an older servant d’Artagnan knew by the name of Hébert. “Richelieu has sent most of the palace guard out to try and contain them.”

  D’Artagnan felt his heart speed up, jolting his body into full wakefulness. Had Richelieu really sent out all of the troops, leaving the inside of the palace nearly unguarded? Could this be his best chance to get at Francis? But... even if he could reach the boy, what then? It was possible that Porthos was somehow involved in the rioting, but even so, he could hardly run out of the palace and into the middle of an angry mob with the two-year-old pretender to the throne hoisted over his shoulder.

  No. He needed to wait until Queen Anne's troops got here—he needed to have somewhere to run. And at least with the crowd outside, Isabella would likely think it too dangerous to try to smuggle Francis out of the Louvre. Nodding acknowledgement to Hébert, d’Artagnan reluctantly retreated back to his room, and settled down in the darkness to wait for morning. Of course, it was distinctly possible that before then, the angry crowd outside would overwhelm the guards, gain entrance to the palace, kill everyone inside, and make his mission a moot one.

  He only hoped that Porthos and Constance were safe.

  * * *

  The night was long and nerve-wracking. D’Artagnan managed a bit of light dozing thanks only to his deep fatigue, but he was still tired and aching when dawn finally came. The other servants had apparently returned to their rooms at some point, and few people were stirring around the temporary servants’ quarters.

  After a bit of internal debate, d’Artagnan dressed with a sigh of disgust in his ridiculous footman’s uniform rather than in his own worn, familiar clothes. On the one hand, it would be tight and uncomfortable for fighting, and the pointy shoes would slow his escape. On the other hand, though, a servant would have much more chance of gaining entrance to Francis’ nursery than a man dressed in battered traveling clothes, and d’Artagnan could only deal with one barrier to the success of his mission at a time.

  Once he was uniformed and be-wigged, he slid the two knives back into his sleeves, arranged in such a way that he could easily grab the haft of each with the opposite hand. Again, they were less than ideal tools for the job—poorly balanced for fighting and lacking any sort of cross guard to protect his hand against an opponent’s blade. Still, he told himself, it was more in the way of weaponry than he’d had this time yesterday morning. And, perhaps as importantly, no one would expect him to have weaponry at all.

  Upstairs, there was a sort of brittle nervousness in the atmosphere. D’Artagnan made a point of passing close by the nursery to reassure himself that Francis was in fact still there, before walking around the north and east perimeter of the palace, looking out of windows that faced the city whenever he could. It didn’t look good. Smoke rose from burning buildings at intervals in every direction, and crowds of people ran to and fro through the streets around the Louvre. It was only when he gained a view of the Jardin des Tuileries to the west that he grasped the true scope of the mob—people packed the huge space like ants swarming over a trampled piece of fruit.

  He could see the ragged ranks of guardsmen in their crimson cloaks, arrayed against the angry citizens beyond in an uneasy standoff. The mob was currently held at bay by the soldiers’ superior weaponry, but showed no signs of dispersing and every sign of surging forward at the first glimpse of an opening.

  M. Delacruz was nowhere to be found, so d’Artagnan assigned himself to duty in the throne room, where he hoped he would be best placed to follow the course of events outside. His tentative plan was to bide his time until reports of the Queen and de Tréville’s arrival reached Isabella, then fight his way into Francis’ rooms, grab the child, and fight his way out to rejoin his allies.

  As pla
ns went, it was truly horrible and he was painfully aware of the fact.

  Delacruz, as it turned out, was already in the throne room when he arrived. From his place behind Isabella’s left shoulder, the Spaniard glared at d’Artagnan but said nothing aloud when he merely took up his accustomed place by the door. Both Isabella and the Cardinal were also present, along with the usual cadre of hangers-on. D’Artagnan was disheartened to see extra guards arrayed around the room; it would be foolish to expect that there would be less of an armed presence around his target.

  Most of the courtiers in the room were subdued and nervous, flinching at every unusual noise, but Isabella herself sat upon her throne as if she had not a care in the world. He wondered if she was truly that deluded, or merely an excellent actress. She turned to Richelieu—a grim, hawk-like presence at her right hand.

  “When this tiresome business is over, we should see about raising the taxes in Paris, Cardinal,” she said in an airy voice. “If the people have time for this sort of nonsense, they obviously aren’t working hard enough.”

  Deluded, then, d’Artagnan thought cynically, holding his expression neutral and distant with effort.

  “I’m sure you are right, Your Majesty,” Richelieu murmured in response, his own face giving nothing away.

  To d’Artagnan’s mild surprise, Delacruz cleared his throat and spoke from behind the throne. “Perhaps Your Majesty would consider retiring from the palace with your son to someplace a bit better protected until the fighting is over?”

  No, d’Artagnan willed silently. No, Isabella, that’s a terrible idea—you don’t want to do that...

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Cesár,” Isabella said promptly, and d’Artagnan felt his sudden tension ease down a notch. “The guards will protect the palace, and when my hateful cousin arrives, the mob will tear her and her followers apart. Isn’t that right, Cardinal?”

  “God willing, Your Majesty,” Richelieu replied, dipping his head in the hint of a bow.