Book 3: The Queen's Musketeers, #3

by R. A. Steffan

  D’Artagnan and the others carried the coffin to the catafalque in front of the high altar and carefully placed it onto the wooden supports, while the pallbearers removed the rich cloth covering and folded it into a manageable square without letting it brush the ground. Duties completed, all of them except Cardinal Richelieu walked slowly to the seats that had been reserved for them, in pride of place, at the front near the Queen and her son.

  Richelieu, who was leading the service, stepped forward and raised his hands for silence. The echoing space fell instantly quiet. Several altar boys appeared and lit candles all around the coffin, which cast a flickering, yellow glow over the wax effigy resting on top. When they had retreated, the Cardinal raised his mellifluous voice in prayer. Though his Latin barely extended beyond unus pro omnibus, d’Artagnan thought he recognized the form of the Office of the Dead as Aramis quietly echoed the words beside him, his crucifix held to his lips.

  After the final Requiem aeternam, Richelieu moved to the foot of the coffin. Two acolytes stepped forward to remove the scarlet chasuble from his shoulders and replace it with a black cope for the prayers of Absolution of the dead. The Cardinal was joined by a sub-deacon carrying the processional cross and two more acolytes standing at the head of the coffin. Richelieu continued the litany of Latin prayer as he slowly circled the catafalque, blessing it with holy water from a vial.

  The Absolution completed, Richelieu addressed the congregation in French, causing a murmur to ripple through those gathered.

  “The just perish,

  and no one takes it to heart;

  men of good faith are swept away, but no one cares,

  the righteous are carried away before the onset of evil,

  but they enter into peace;

  they have run a straight course

  and rest in their last beds.”

  “Isaiah fifty-seven, verses one and two,” Aramis murmured next to him. “A surprising choice of passage from one such as His Eminence, but a good one nonetheless.”

  The ceremony continued, using prayers and forms with which d’Artagnan was unfamiliar. Aramis tried to keep up a whispered running commentary, but d’Artagnan was ashamed to find that he was becoming bored, even though the others around him appeared engaged and attentive. Finally, the acolytes moved forward to lift the coffin onto their shoulders, and a richly dressed man d’Artagnan did not recognize rose from a seat near them and strode forward, holding a staff topped with gold.

  “The Duc d’Uzès,” Aramis murmured. “He’s barely one step removed from being a prince of the royal blood.”

  D’Artagnan remembered that Queen Anne had mentioned writing to the Duc. He took this to mean that the religious part of the ceremony was concluded, and they would now be moving to secular matters. Interest rekindled, he straightened in his seat.

  “The throne of France is never empty,” said the Duc in a deep, booming voice. “A king is both a man and a monarch. Upon his death, the life of the man is ended. The monarchy, however, is never-ending and eternal, passing instantaneously to his heir.”

  The acolytes bore the coffin solemnly toward the north transept, where a stone staircase descended to the crypt of kings, flanked by a dozen men dressed in purple, each holding a staff identical to the Duc’s.

  “Upon the descent of the coffin into the vault of Saint-Denis,” the Duc d’Uzès continued, “we mourn the death of a man, but celebrate the birth of a new king.”

  The coffin descended the staircase, borne by the acolytes. At the very moment it disappeared from sight, the wailing cry of a baby echoed around the near-silent church. D’Artagnan tore his eyes away from the entrance to the crypt, looking instead at Henry in his mother’s arms. The baby's voice rose in another cry, as if in grief over his father’s passing, and d’Artagnan heard Constance sniffle softly beside him.

  The sudden crack of thirteen staves hitting the stone floor in unison jerked his attention back to the Duc and his retinue.

  “The king is dead!” he proclaimed, and the staves hit the floor again. He indicated the crying babe with the sweep of one long arm. “Long live the king!”

  “Long live the king!” echoed the congregation, in time with the rhythmic crack of the staves. D’Artagnan grasped Constance’s hand tightly as they raised their voices to join with their friends’, even as the cry was taken up by the crowds outside the church, where it would eventually echo throughout all of Paris and across France itself.

  “Long live the king! Long live the king!”

  fin

  D'Artagnan's adventures continue in the full-length novel, The Queen’s Musketeers: Book 4. Want a sneak peek at the first chapter? Keep reading!

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  The Queen’s Musketeers: Book 4

  By R. A. Steffan

  Copyright 2015 by R. A. Steffan

  SAMPLE CHAPTER

  Chapter I: November 15th, 1640

  Teach us, good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest:

  To give and not to count the cost;

  To fight and not to heed the wounds;

  To toil and not to seek for rest;

  To labor and not to ask for any reward

  Save that of knowing that we do Thy will.

  ~St. Ignatius Loyola, “Prayer for Generosity," 1548

  THE RAIN FELL IN FREEZING SHEETS, soaking Milady’s stolen cloak and plastering it to her aching head and shoulders. Beneath it, her flesh chilled slowly from violent shivering into clammy immobility. The heavy weight of sopping clothing and outerwear threatened to drag her sideways from the saddle as her vision wavered in and out in unsteady waves. Rue d’Assas was almost completely dark at this hour, the lamp lighters having lost their battle against the elements earlier in the night. Weak, flickering light from the occasional candle or fireplace shone through the windows of those Parisians with nocturnal inclinations, providing just enough illumination for Milady to keep the feet of the exhausted nag she was riding moving in roughly the right direction.

  Only an idiot would be out on a night like this.

  An idiot, or someone whose desperation outweighed their self-preservation. Milady definitely belonged in one of those two categories right now, though the devil alone knew which. She swayed, her chin sagging toward her chest as her awareness once again narrowed to a cold, grayish tunnel, only to rush back when movement set her injured head pounding with renewed urgency.

  The door on her right was familiar, part of a humble set of rooms attached to the end of a stable block. Light leaked through the slats of the shuttered window, proclaiming it to be the home of an insomniac. With a groan of relief, Milady let the reins drop, her weary mount coming to a stop of its own accord. She slid from the saddle with something considerably less than her usual grace, nearly collapsing in a heap into the filthy slop covering the street, as the jolt of her feet hitting the ground sent a new stab of pain through her temples.

  Somehow, she managed to steady herself against the horse’s shoulder until she could push away, staggering the few steps to the door. Left to its own devices, the animal wandered away listlessly into the downpour, reins hanging loose. Milady pounded on the rough wood of the entrance, the rhythmic noise piercing her skull as if someone were driving a metal spike through the bone with a hammer.

  A moment later, the door opened, revealing a pale, sharp-featured figure with dark, tousled hair. A fashionable, meticulously trimmed beard and mustache graced his attractively chiseled face, appearing somewhat incongruous when paired with the dowdy robes of a priest. Upon seeing her, the man’s expression transformed into blank shock.

  “Aramis,” Milady said, and collapsed forward into his arms in a dead faint.

  * * *

  The throbbing of her head was the first thing she noticed when awareness gradually returned, some unknown amount of time later. The secon
d thing she noticed was that she was warm and dry, lying on an unfamiliar bed with several blankets wrapped around her naked form. A roaring fire in the hearth nearby radiated welcome heat against one side of her face and body.

  She groaned, freeing a hand from the blankets and raising it to her head, vaguely noting the bandage wrapped around her wrist. The flesh underneath was raw and painful. The rustle of clothing from nearby immediately had her wrenching open sticky eyelids despite the additional discomfort it promised, as she searched her surroundings for threats.

  “If you’d sent word ahead that you were coming, I could have had a meal prepared,” Aramis said mildly from his seat in a chair next to the bed. “As it is, I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for bread and cheese.”

  Milady relaxed minutely. “What... happened, exactly?” she asked, squinting in the low light.

  “I was rather hoping you’d be able to tell me,” Aramis said, leaning forward to dab gently at her face and eyes with a damp rag. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  Milady batted him away with an irritable hiss. Bracing her sore head with one hand, she gingerly raised herself to an elbow as she cast her mind back. Everything was fuzzy and blank at first, until—

  She lunged upright in a panic, the world tilting hard to the right as dizziness overtook her and threatened to send her straight back down into unconsciousness. Strong hands steadied her shoulders, and dark eyes, wide with concern, swam in her vision.

  “Charlotte,” she choked out, trying to look past Aramis and see the rest of the room.

  “She’s not here,” Aramis said, his grip the only thing keeping her from tumbling off the bed to land in a tangle on the floor. “I’m sorry—you arrived alone.”

  Milady raised her other hand to her head, as if she could keep her brains from pounding their way out of her skull by physically holding them in place. “I don’t... I can’t...”

  “Lie back on the bed, Milady, please,” Aramis urged, easing her down by the shoulders and tugging the blankets back up to protect her modesty.

  As if she gave a tinker’s damn about her modesty right now.

  “Aramis,” she asked, hating the neediness audible in her voice, “where is my daughter?”

  “I am sorry,” he repeated, “but I’m afraid I know even less than you. How much do you remember? Do you remember the dinner party last week? The attack?”

  “It was... the Flemish ambassador? Yes. And his aides,” she said hesitantly. “I remember... Olivier was irritated that we were hosting them at the house. He couldn’t stand the man, always talking non-stop and never saying anything of consequence.”

  “And then?” Aramis prodded.

  She shook her head, trying to jar the thoughts loose, but only succeeding in making her headache worse. “There was... a disturbance. Fighting.” A horrible doubt assailed her. “Is Olivier—“

  “He sustained a broken leg,” Aramis said. “Worse than the time in Villerbon, I’m afraid, but it should heal eventually.”

  “Where is he?” she asked. She needed to see him—she needed to—so he could fill in the missing chunks of her memory help her figure out what had happened. When the silence dragged on for more than a few seconds, she looked up suspiciously. Aramis enjoyed the sound of his own voice far too much to hesitate so unless there was good reason.

  Indeed, his expression was uncertain in the low light. “I’m afraid he is currently residing in the Bastille,” he said.

  “What? Why?” Milady asked sharply, ignoring the way her raised voice seemed to echo painfully between her ears.

  Aramis sighed. “Cardinal Richelieu insisted, and under the circumstances the Queen could not refuse him. For some incomprehensible reason, your idiot of a husband is proclaiming loudly and at length to anyone who will listen that he masterminded the murders of the Flemish delegation and sent you and Charlotte away to safety so that the blame would fall on him alone. It’s all complete rubbish, of course.”

  Milady felt the blood drain from her face alarmingly.

  “Forgive me. I shouldn’t have said anything—not while you are still so weak,” Aramis said, berating himself. “Milady, you need to rest some more and regain your strength.”

  “I’m not some blushing maiden to fall into a faint after every shock,” Milady snapped, forcing herself under control.

  “No, you’re not. But you do have two separate head wounds from heavy blows. One appears to be several days old, and the other, fairly recent,” Aramis said. “Either one could have been enough to addle your wits; with both in such close succession, it’s amazing that you were able to make your way here at all, let alone in such vile weather. You could easily have died.”

  “That isn’t important! I must know what happened to Charlotte,” she said.

  “Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing that at the present moment,” Aramis said. “Now, the best thing you can do is try to take a bit of wine and bread, and sleep some more to give yourself time to heal. I will wake you periodically to ensure that the head injury does not pull you too deep into insensibility, and perhaps when you are rested, your memory will begin to return.”

  Already, weakness was dragging at her once more, making it difficult to keep Aramis’ face in focus. She had only survived for all of these years due to an unusually high degree of hardened practicality, and though it pained her worse than any wound to sleep while her child was missing, she replied, “I don’t want food. It will only come back up. Give me wine, though.”

  Aramis nodded and handed her a cup, supporting her head and shoulders so she could drink. She sipped at the weak liquid until her parched throat was soothed and her stomach started to rebel. Aramis took the cup back and eased her down to lie flat once more. Within moments, she was drifting. While she would not have put it past the slippery man on whose bed she now lay to have laced her wine with a sleeping draught in order to force her to rest, she acknowledged as her breath evened into a slow, deep rhythm, that at this point, it was probably wholly unnecessary.

  * * *

  As promised, Aramis roused her at intervals, waking her every couple of hours to check that she could, in fact, be woken. It was vexing enough that she snapped at him crossly each time he asked if she knew where she was, or who he was, or what year it was, but—being Aramis—he merely apologized for the necessity and continued to prod until she answered his damned stupid questions.

  When she next woke naturally, the slanting light of evening was stabbing into her eyes from a western window, and there were muffled voices coming through the door from the front room. Experimentally, she rolled onto her side, levering herself up into a sitting position by slow, wincing degrees. When her head merely threatened to roll free from her shoulders rather than actually falling off, she looked around the small room.

  Locating, in order of importance, first the chamber pot and then her clothes, she rose unsteadily to relieve herself and get dressed. Her wrists were still bandaged; she unwrapped them, revealing livid bruising and red marks in the pattern of a rope. After donning her camisole, she picked up the dark blue dress and stared at it. It had been one of her finest, but was now torn and stained with filth. As she held it in her hands, a flash of memory assailed her.

  “Anne!” called Olivier in a sharp tone of warning, barely keeping two swordsmen at bay with the fireplace poker that was his only weapon. His opponents continued to herd him inexorably toward the top of the grand staircase leading down to the main level of the sprawling old house.

  She whirled just as the man approaching her from behind her grabbed her arm, the delicate material of her sleeve tearing under his fingers. The dagger she always kept hidden in her skirts was already in her other hand, but her assailant deflected the feint with startling force, sending the small blade flying and leaving her unarmed. She tried to knee him in the groin, silently cursing her heavy skirts and impractical shoes. The man twisted; the blow landed off center and with less force than she’d hoped. He grunted in surprise, b
ut only tightened his grip on her as he cursed in Spanish.

  She jerked back hard in an attempt to take advantage of his distraction, but the fingers clamped around her arm were like claws. The pair spun around each other in a twisted parody of a dance, giving her a clear view of her husband just as one of the men he was fighting charged under his guard, sending them both crashing down the staircase.

  “Olivier!” she cried, as the pair tumbled out of sight.

  In her moment of inattention, she barely saw the flash of a gloved fist before it came crashing into the side of her head.

  Milady came back to herself when her knees hit the unforgiving stone floor of Aramis’ bedroom. There was a clatter as the chair she’d knocked over on her way down hit the floor an instant after she did. The voices in the other room paused, and a knock came at the door.

  “Milady?” Aramis called. When she was unable to answer immediately, he added, “I’m coming in.”

  The door opened only enough for him to slip in before he closed it behind him.

  “Ah. You’re up,” he observed unnecessarily. “Or, at least, you were up briefly before falling over and breaking a perfectly good chair. That’s progress of a sort, I suppose.”

  His hands were gentle as he helped her regain a seated position on the edge of the bed, the ruined dress still clutched in her hands.

  “I’ve remembered something,” she told him.

  “I’m pleased to hear it,” he replied. “Will you allow me to assist you in dressing and help you to the other room, where there is a chair with all four legs still attached? You can sit down and tell us about it.”

  She nodded very carefully, not wanting to set off her pounding head any more than necessary.

  “Who else is here?” she asked.