Book 4: The Queen's Musketeers, #4

by R. A. Steffan

  “Your Majesties. Secretary de Tréville,” Olivier said. “Forgive me for not rising.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Athos,” said the Queen. “It is I who must beg your forgiveness.”

  “Not at all, Your Majesty,” Athos replied, frowning. “You were trying to prevent a war, and I had already confessed to the crime. What else were you to do?”

  Henry tugged on the Queen’s hand, pulling her attention away. The young king was a studious boy, and quiet. Even at the age of nine, he took his duties seriously, and his mother and tutors encouraged his early interest in the affairs of government.

  “Mother, don’t leave them waiting. Tell them the news about Charlotte,” he said.

  “Yes, of course, my dear,” the Queen said immediately. “The Cardinal received word back from his English contact this morning. They have agreed to an exchange.”

  Milady could not help the small sound that escaped her lips. Olivier was silent next to her, but his hand squeezed hers until the knuckles turned white.

  De Tréville cleared his throat. “The exchange is to take place in ten days’ time at Le Havre. Porthos has volunteered to oversee the meeting, and I’m sure you can guess who will be accompanying him to guard the prisoner.”

  D’Artagnan, no doubt, Milady thought.

  “In addition, Father d’Herblay has somehow convinced the Cardinal that he would be the ideal person to go along and represent His Eminence’s interests during the exchange, as his envoy,” the Queen added—and mustn’t that have been an interesting meeting. Her Majesty continued, “As ever, your old comrades have rallied around their own in a time of need. I wish that none of this had ever befallen you, but you can rest assured that your daughter will be in the best possible hands.”

  Olivier’s fingers were still wrapped tightly in hers. “We will both be going, as well,” he said, stating it as unequivocal fact.

  A small furrow appeared between the Queen’s delicate brows. “But surely, your injuries...” she began.

  Henry interrupted before either she or Olivier could. “Charlotte will be frightened, Mother. She will want her parents nearby,” he said, with far more wisdom and authority than should have been possessed by a child his age.

  “Quite right,” de Tréville agreed. “And she shall have them, along with all the uncles she could wish for. I, too, will be accompanying the delegation. My deputy can oversee matters here in my absence, now that the immediate threat of war has abated.”

  Both she and Olivier were momentarily struck silent. She knew, intellectually, that their unusual cadre of friends had all adored Charlotte since birth. Their little girl had been the playmate of the King of France since before she could walk, and had more unofficial godfathers than a single child could ever need. Though Milady’s own relationship with de Tréville had been strained for many years now, it should, perhaps, have come as no surprise that the old soldier would also support Olivier and his family in their time of need.

  However, Milady had never been good at asking for, or accepting, support.

  “Thank you, sir,” Olivier replied into the stretching silence, falling back on their old relationship as lieutenant and captain. “We can be ready to leave in the morning.”

  “We will make sure that you are supplied with a carriage, along with anything else you need,” said the Queen. “I’m sure the others will be in touch this afternoon to coordinate the details.”

  “And to try to talk us out of coming, no doubt,” Milady added with a tiny flash of wry humor.

  * * *

  She was surprisingly mistaken.

  “Well, of course you’re coming with us!” Porthos exclaimed. “Poor Charlotte is likely to be traumatized enough without being subjected to Aramis for eight days straight immediately afterward.”

  The dig would have been more effective if its target had been present to be properly offended in person, but Milady appreciated the sentiment regardless.

  “Mind you,” Porthos continued, “this way you’ll all be subjected to his hovering—not just her.”

  “Because, of course, you and d’Artagnan would never behave in such a manner,” Olivier observed, dry as dust.

  “’Course we wouldn’t,” Porthos said. Immediately belying his initial words, he continued, “Seriously, though. How are you both doing? Using the carriage will help a lot, but it won’t be a picnic traveling with those injuries.”

  Milady shrugged. “I am quite recovered. Olivier is not, but the bone is at least starting to knit as it should.”

  Quite recovered was perhaps an exaggeration. Her right hand was still essentially useless, but pus had stopped draining from the wound two days ago and it no longer made her dizzy with pain whenever she accidentally brushed it against something. The graze on her hip had contracted into a puckered red scab that would doubtless leave behind an impressive scar. Her head no longer ached constantly, and the bruises ringing her neck were starting to fade. Most importantly, though, the opium had released its grip. While sleep wouldn’t come properly until Charlotte was safe in her arms, she could at least eat normally again and hold a relatively civil conversation without having to fight the urge to scratch someone’s eyes out.

  It would be weeks yet before Olivier was able to put weight on his leg, but he could move his ankle and toes, and there did not appear to be any complications. Riding in a carriage for days would be uncomfortable, even painful, but this was a man who had once ridden almost four leagues on horseback with an unset, fractured tibia merely to deliver a letter for the Queen. Discomfort would not stop him from going to Le Havre to get their daughter back.

  Even Aramis was confoundingly practical about things.

  “I assumed you would both insist on coming once you heard the news,” he said, “so I took the liberty of visiting an herbalist to acquire something for the inevitable discomfort. Not opium,” he added with a pointed look at her. “I have willow bark, and something he imported recently from Morocco called Devil’s Claw.”

  “Perhaps they should find a better name for that second one,” she said with a raised eyebrow.

  “Nobody cares what it’s called as long as it works,” he retorted.

  “And does it work?” Olivier asked.

  “You’ll have to tell me,” Aramis said with a faintly wolfish smile.

  It was d’Artagnan who actually provided the details of the meeting.

  “It’s not clear if Charlotte is actually being held in Le Havre, or if they will be traveling from elsewhere to the meeting,” he told them, his finger tracing over a map of the port city. “Whatever the case, it is apparent that they will be taking possession of de Castres and embarking immediately onto a ship bound for England—presumably to prevent us following and capturing the whole lot of them.”

  “How much of the Vicomte is even left after Richelieu’s interrogators finished with him?” Milady asked, thinking of the man’s vileness, and wondering if de Castres’ English keepers would care in what sort of state he was returned to them.

  D’Artagnan answered carefully. “I don’t gather that he has any physical wounds worth noting. However, he is somewhat of a... changed man. I understand from Porthos that he became suddenly quite religious, toward the end. Babbles a lot about angels and demons now, that sort of thing.”

  “How charming,” Milady said.

  * * *

  The port city of Le Havre was some sixty leagues removed from Paris. With their party traveling in a modestly sized convoy including one carriage, the trip could be expected to take seven or eight days, leaving them with a day or two to spare before the meeting. All of Milady’s cold practicality seemed to have deserted her, however. She fretted endlessly during the journey over the possibility of inclement weather delaying them, or the horses going lame, or the carriage breaking an axle.

  Finally, Olivier reached across the seat and gathered her uninjured hand in both of his, forcing her to look at him.

  “If Porthos has to ride through three feet of
snow on our last horse, pulling de Castres tied to a sledge behind him in order to reach the meeting place on time, he will do so,” Olivier said. “Do not forget what these men around us are capable of—we overthrew a monarchy and rebuilt a government together. We will reach Le Havre on time.”

  She might almost have taken it to heart, were his own gray eyes not hiding a father’s worry and fear.

  The others were all on horseback—even de Castres, with his wrists bound to the pommel of the saddle, his mount unbridled and tethered to d’Artagnan’s large bay gelding by means of a simple halter and rope. As d’Artagnan had warned, it appeared that the Vicomte’s mind had snapped under whatever treatment he had received at the hands of Richelieu’s minions. Milady cared little for the details, and not at all about the loss of the man’s wits, such as they had been. As far as she was concerned, de Castres could rot in a dark hole somewhere while rats fed slowly on his dying flesh.

  For the most part, their traveling companions left the two of them in solitude, knowing that she and Olivier were both too preoccupied to be good company. However, now and again one of the others would join them in the carriage for an hour or so, ostensibly to rest his horse. Unsurprisingly, Aramis was most frequently guilty of the tactic, additionally using the excuse of quizzing Olivier on the effectiveness of the Devil’s Claw preparation compared to the willow bark. For her part, Milady had refused anything to combat the soreness from her wounds, preferring to deal with the discomfort unaided unless it became overwhelming. The poppy tea had left her feeling more sensitive to pain, and she knew Aramis’ remedies would be a poor substitute that would only leave her longing for the dangerous cure promised by opium.

  Olivier had scarcely regained any of his strength after his stint in the Bastille. As the days of travel wore on, he grew even more gaunt and pale, giving Milady’s treacherous mind another avenue for worry. Based on long acquaintance, the others couched their frequent short breaks for rest and food as being for the benefit of the prisoner, or even, on occasion, for Milady herself. She tried to take consolation from the idea that others were also looking after her husband, for all that Olivier would deny the necessity of it.

  Finally, around mid-morning on the eighth day, they arrived at the outskirts of Le Havre, laying at least some of Milady’s nagging fears to rest. It was a Saturday, and the exchange would take place at the docks at noon on the following day. The cold December drizzle exactly mirrored her bleak mood as her emotions spun from worry to impatience to anger and back again.

  Porthos handed her down from the carriage, and coordinated with Aramis to help Olivier out of the conveyance and into the inn where they would stay until tomorrow morning. D’Artagnan and de Tréville helped de Castres down from his horse and took charge of him. So far, though, the broken man had not offered a single dram of resistance during the journey.

  Their motley collection of uniformed, injured, and imprisoned men traveling with a pale, sharp-eyed woman drew strange looks, as it had every place they’d stopped. However, Porthos, d’Artagnan, and de Tréville all bristled with weapons and exuded authority, which seemed to be enough to ensure their group remained largely unmolested. The citizens of Le Havre were accustomed to seeing all sorts of comings and goings; no doubt this would just be one more story to tell over drinks later on.

  Milady forced herself to dine despite the butterflies fluttering unpleasantly in her stomach. Aramis cajoled Athos to eat as well—a mostly unsuccessful venture until de Tréville eventually growled, “Athos, you look like two-day-old shit. Stop glowering and just eat the damned food, son.”

  Olivier flushed, and grudgingly picked up a fork.

  “What do we know about these English we’ll be meeting?” Milady asked, desperate for anything to distract her from her own circling thoughts.

  “Very little,” de Tréville said.

  “The Cardinal’s contact will not be appearing in person,” Aramis added. “Too important to get his hands dirty with such things, one supposes. It will probably just be a small group of lackeys with orders to make the exchange and leave afterward, post haste.”

  Milady nodded. She was generally fond of England. She knew the language and had traveled there on occasion. Now, she found herself wracking her brains for detailed memories of every encounter she’d ever had with an English soldier, trying to decide if they would be disposed to treat a little French girl kindly or cruelly. She clenched her eyes closed and made herself stop.

  The rest of the day dragged interminably. She and Olivier tried to rest, but mostly ended up clinging to each other on the cramped bed behind the closed doors of their tiny room. Aramis came in as the light was fading into evening to ply them with valerian tea, palpating her husband’s leg until Olivier snapped, “Aramis. Enough. Don’t make me shove this cup down your gullet—it would be a terrible waste of a perfectly good drinking vessel.”

  The priest only grunted in disgust and turned his attention to changing the bandage on Milady’s hand. She still couldn’t feel anything when he pinched the tips of her last three fingers, but for the first time since the injury, she was able to produce a tiny twitch of movement in her middle and ring finger at his urging.

  “That’s excellent progress,” he exclaimed. “Do that as many times a day as you can remember to, and start stretching the hand gently in the morning and evening. I don’t want your fingers to contract from the lack of use.”

  She nodded, feeling a distant sense of relief that she might eventually regain more normal use of that hand after all. After Aramis left and Porthos poked his head in to report that de Castres was secure and everything was quiet, she and Olivier settled down to an early—and more or less sleepless—night.

  The morning of the exchange dawned with the same sort of heavy, slate-gray clouds that had hovered oppressively over her when she had escaped from her Spanish guard, and she shivered. The thought of Charlotte being dragged unprotected through the kind of cold, driving rain she had endured on that endless ride to Aramis’ doorstep made her feel positively ill, and she prayed it would not storm until after the exchange was successfully completed. Their small company rose early and left for the docks, intending to reach the meeting place several hours ahead of the appointed time and wait for the English to arrive.

  Their driver—a quiet, pale lad from Her Majesty’s stables—maneuvered the carriage to the very end of the road leading onto the wooden docks and carefully turned it around, ready for a brisk exit in case one was needed. Milady tried very hard not to think of all the reasons it might be needed.

  A sharp whistle of warning from Porthos had her lunging for the carriage window, Olivier angling his body awkwardly to do the same beside her. The dock had not been completely deserted when they arrived, with a few dockhands moving to and fro from a mid-sized, square-sailed merchantman tethered there. Now, however, a group of more than a dozen men emerged with purposeful strides from a storage building nearby.

  One of the men near the middle of the group held a small figure by the arm.

  The breath fled Milady’s chest explosively, and it took all of her willpower not to slam open the carriage door and charge across the short distance separating her from Charlotte. Beside her, she could feel Olivier trembling with the same need to move... to act.

  The men did not wear uniforms, but their clothing was in the English style and they had the bearing of soldiers. But why were there so many?

  Around the carriage, the others were dismounting, keeping their hands cautiously near their pistol butts. The handful of workers who had been loading cargo on the ship took one look at the two groups of armed men and melted away within moments, disappearing either onto the craft or into the other buildings nearby.

  Porthos stepped forward, taking the lead as d’Artagnan untied the Vicomte and got him off his horse.

  “We have de Castres here, as was agreed!” the musketeer captain called in French.

  There was a moment of murmured conversation among the English, before
one of them stepped forward and replied, “Bring! I look him closer!” in fractured French.

  Milady was out of the carriage and onto the dock almost without thought, not at all sanguine with the idea of the exchange taking place when there was such a serious language barrier between the two parties. The English contingent tensed at her sudden appearance, several of them reaching for guns or swords, but they relaxed when they saw she was a woman.

  “You can speak English,” she called in their native tongue. “De Castres is right here. We will let you see him. Let us see the little girl in return!”

  Neither Porthos nor d’Artagnan spoke English, but de Tréville had a smattering, and Olivier, enough to gather the gist of her words. She wasn’t sure about Aramis.

  “Bring him forward,” the apparent leader said again, but he also gestured to the man holding Charlotte to do the same. Milady passed on the message, and Porthos nodded his understanding, shoving the Vicomte in front of him.

  “Maman!” Charlotte cried excitedly.

  “Your father and I are here, ma petite,” Milady replied, maintaining her composure with difficulty.

  As Porthos steered him forward, de Castres resisted for the first time since they began the journey, looking with fear between the two groups and trying to plant his feet. When that didn’t work, the Vicomte whimpered and hid his face in his arms, crouched over as if to ward off their collective eyes on him and babbling nonsense in a high, wavering voice.

  Across the dock, one of the English who had been at the back of the group pushed his way forward, his young face twisted in anger.

  “Look at him, they’ve tortured him!” he cried, pointing with a shaking hand. “French pigs! This is an outrage—they’ve broken his mind!”

  The leader barked at him to stand down, but the young soldier—barely more than a boy—ignored him and pulled a pistol from his belt. He cocked it, aiming at their party, and chaos erupted. D’Artagnan, Porthos, and de Tréville drew their own firearms in return, prompting more of the English to draw theirs. An instant later, Olivier was out of the carriage, balancing on one leg and pressing Milady behind him. He steadied himself with his left hand against the side of the carriage, a pistol held in his right. Only Aramis was unarmed, having once again forsaken the trappings of a soldier for those of a priest. He had a hand on de Castres’ arm, keeping the terrified man from fleeing.