Between Two Kings

by Lawrence Ellsworth

  The king laughed again like the jolliest Cockney in his kingdom. “You must come back and see me again before you go, Chevalier,” he said. “I need to lay by a supply of cheer before my Frenchmen leave me.”

  “Ah, Sire! Unlike the duke’s sword, I’ll give you the cheer for free,” replied d’Artagnan, whose feet scarcely touched the ground.

  “And you, Count,” added Charles, turning to Athos, “come back as well, for I have an important message to confide to you. Duke, your hand.” Monck shook hands with the king. “Adieu, Messieurs,” said Charles, extending a hand to each of the Frenchmen, who touched them to their lips.

  “Well, then!” said Athos when they were outside. “Are you satisfied?”

  “Hush!” said d’Artagnan, grinning with joy. “I haven’t been to see the treasurer yet, and the roof could still fall on my head.”

  XXXIV The Embarrassment of Riches

  D’Artagnan didn’t waste any time: as soon as it was convenient and opportune, he paid a visit to His Majesty’s Treasurer. There he had the great satisfaction of exchanging a bit of paper covered with an ugly scrawl for a prodigious quantity of crowns, all newly struck with the image of His Most Gracious Majesty Charles II.

  D’Artagnan had long ago learned to master his emotions, but on this occasion he couldn’t help expressing a joy the readers may forgive, if they deign to be indulgent toward a man who, since his birth, had never seen so many coins and rolls of coins laid out before him in a pattern truly pleasing to the eye. The treasurer enclosed these rolls in sturdy sacks and sealed each bag with the arms of England, a favor that treasurers do not grant to everybody.

  Then, impassive and just as polite as he ought to be to a man honored by the friendship of the king, he said to d’Artagnan, “Take your money, Sir.”

  Your money. Those words made a thousand strings thrum in d’Artagnan’s heart where he’d never felt them before. He had the sacks loaded on a small cart and returned home, thinking deeply. A man who possesses three hundred thousand livres can no longer have an unlined brow; a wrinkle for every hundred thousand livres is the least he can expect.

  D’Artagnan locked himself in, refused to open the door to anyone, wouldn’t eat, just sat with the lamp burning, a pistol cocked on the table, watching his fortune all night, considering how to keep those lovely crowns, which had passed from the royal coffers to his own, from somehow passing out of his coffers and into the pockets of a thief. The best means the Gascon could devise was to box his treasure up under locks so strong no tool could break them, and so clever no ordinary key could open them.

  D’Artagnan remembered that the English are masters of mechanisms of security, and resolved to go the next day to find a mechanic who could sell him a safe. He didn’t have to go far: Mister Will Jobson, residing in Piccadilly, listened to his propositions, understood his needs, and promised to construct a lock for him so secure he would be freed from all fear of the future.

  “I will make for you a mechanism totally new,” he said. “At the first serious attempt to crack your lock, a hidden aperture will open, and a miniature gun will shoot out a lovely copper bullet the weight of a mark, which will discommode your thief while making a resounding report. What do you think?”

  “I think it sounds ingenious!” said d’Artagnan. “I particularly like the lovely copper bullet. So, Mister Mechanic, your terms?”

  “Two weeks to make it, and fifteen thousand livres payable on delivery,” replied the artisan.

  D’Artagnan grimaced. Two weeks were enough time for every thief in London to have their way with his fortune, and then he wouldn’t need a safe. As for the fifteen thousand livres, it was a high price to pay for what his vigilance could do for nothing. “I’ll… think about it,” he said. “Thank you, Sir.”

  And he returned home at a run—but no one had disturbed his treasure.

  That same day, Athos came to visit his friend and found him so anxious he confessed to being surprised. “What! Here you are rich but not happy?” he said. “You who always wanted wealth…”

  “My friend, the pleasures we aren’t used to are worse than the sorrows we’re familiar with. You’ve always had money; can you give me some advice? When one has money, what does one do with it?”

  “That depends.”

  “What did you do with yours so as not to end up either a miser or a spendthrift? ‘For greed withers the heart, and prodigality wastes it’—isn’t that how it goes?”

  “Even Fabricius88 couldn’t say it better. But, in truth, having money never troubled me.”

  “Come, do you invest it in annuities?”

  “No; you know I have a pretty good country house, and this house comprises the majority of my wealth.”

  “Yes, so you’ve said.”

  “Well, you can be as rich as I am, even richer if you like, by the same means.”

  “But your income from rent—do you save it?”

  “No.”

  “What would you think of a hidden wall cache?”

  “I’ve never used such a thing.”

  “Then you have some confidential partner, some reliable businessman who manages your funds and pays a decent interest?”

  “Not at all.”

  “My God! What do you do, then?”

  “I spend whatever I have and no more than that, my dear d’Artagnan.”

  “Well, there! But you’re a sort of lesser prince, with fifteen or sixteen thousand livres of revenue to fritter away, plus expenses to keep up appearances.”

  “But I don’t see that you’re much less noble than I am, my friend, and your fortune should be quite enough for you.”

  “Three hundred thousand livres! It should be three times enough.”

  “Your pardon, but it seems to me you told me… or I thought I understood… that is, you also have a partner…”

  “Ah, mordioux! That’s right!” cried d’Artagnan, coloring. “There’s Planchet! I forgot about Planchet, upon my life. Well! There’s my three hundred thousand broken into… such a shame, it was a nice round figure. But it’s true, Athos, I’m not rich at all, really. What a memory you have!”

  “Good enough, yes, God be praised.”

  “The worthy Planchet,” groaned d’Artagnan. “His golden dreams come true. What an investment, peste! Well, what was said is said.”

  “How much will you give him?”

  “Oh, he’s not a bad lad,” said d’Artagnan. “I’ll do right by him. But I was put to considerable trouble, you see, had expenses, and all that must be taken into account.”

  “I know you can be trusted, mon cher,” said Athos serenely, “and I don’t worry about the good Planchet; his interests are better off in your hands than in his. But now that we have no more to do here, we can go whenever you’re ready. You just need to take your leave of His Majesty, ask him if he has any orders, and we can see the towers of Notre Dame within a week.”

  “Frankly, my friend, I’m burning to leave, so I’ll go and pay my respects to the king.”

  “While I’m just going to meet a few people in the city,” said Athos, “and then I’m yours.”

  “Will you lend me Grimaud?”

  “With all my heart. What do you need him for?”

  “A simple task that won’t wear him out—I just need to ask him to sit by this table with my pistols and keep an eye on my coffers of coins.”

  “Very well,” Athos replied imperturbably.

  “He won’t go off on his own?”

  “No more than the pistols would.”

  “Then I’ll go to see His Majesty. Au revoir.”

  D’Artagnan hastened to Saint James’s Palace, where Charles II, who was writing his correspondence, kept him in the antechamber a full hour. As d’Artagnan walked back and forth across the gallery, from the doors to the windows and the windows to the doors, he thought he saw someone with a cloak like Athos’s leaving through the outer vestibule, but just as he was about to go see for himself the usher summoned him in to
see His Majesty.

  Charles II rubbed his hands while receiving our musketeer’s thanks. “Chevalier,” he said, “you’re wrong to think you owe me any gratitude, because I haven’t paid even a quarter of the worth of the story of the box in which you encased our brave general… or rather the excellent Duke of Albemarle.” And the king burst out laughing.

  D’Artagnan thought it would be impolite to interrupt His Majesty and looked away modestly.

  “By the way,” continued Charles, “has my dear Monck really forgiven you?”

  “Forgiven me! I certainly hope so, Sire.”

  “Heh! It must have been a cruel passage. Odds fish! To jug the leading personage of the English Revolution like a herring! I wouldn’t trust him if I were in your place, Chevalier.”

  “But, Sire…”

  “Yes, I’m well aware that Monck calls you his friend… but he has too calculating an eye not to have a sharp memory behind it, and a forehead that tall indicates great pride—you know, grande supercilium.”

  “I really must learn some Latin,” d’Artagnan said to himself.

  “Here, you must let me arrange your reconciliation,” said the king, enchanted with the idea. “I know just how to do it…”

  D’Artagnan gnawed his mustache. “Would Your Majesty permit me to speak the truth?”

  “Speak, Chevalier, speak.”

  “Well, Sire, you’re starting to frighten me! If Your Majesty tries to manage my affairs, as he seems to wish, I’m a doomed man—the duke will have me assassinated.”

  The king burst out laughing again, which made d’Artagnan genuinely alarmed. “Sire, I beg, promise me you’ll let me handle this matter myself. And now, if you have no further need of my services…”

  “Not yet, Chevalier. You don’t really want to leave?” laughed Charles with increasingly disturbing hilarity.

  “If Your Majesty has nothing more to ask of me.”

  Charles grew more serious. “One more thing. Go see my sister, Princess Henrietta.* Does she know you?”

  “No, Sire… but an old soldier like me won’t find favor with a young and cheerful princess.”

  “And I say to you that I wish my sister to know you. I want her to know that she can count on you at need.”

  “Sire, everything dear to Your Majesty is sacred to me.”

  “Quite so… Parry! Come here, good Parry.”

  The side door opened, and Parry came in, his face lighting up when he saw the chevalier.

  “What’s Rochester* doing?” asked the king.

  “He’s on the canal with the ladies.”

  “And Buckingham?”*

  “The same.”

  “Perfect. Bring the chevalier to Villiers—that’s the Duke of Buckingham, Chevalier—and ask the duke to introduce Monsieur d’Artagnan to Milady Henrietta.”

  Parry bowed and smiled at d’Artagnan.

  “Chevalier,” continued the king, “this is your final audience, and you may take your leave whenever you please.”

  “Thank you, Sire!”

  “But make your peace with Monck.”

  “Oh! Sire…”

  “You know that one of my vessels is at your disposal?”

  “Sire, you overwhelm me! I couldn’t think of putting Your Majesty’s officers to such trouble for me.”

  The king clapped d’Artagnan on the shoulder. “It’s not just for you, Chevalier, but also for an ambassador I’m sending to France—one you’ll be happy to have for a companion, I think, for you know him.”

  D’Artagnan looked at the king in surprise.

  “It’s a certain Comte de La Fère, whom you call Athos,” added the king, ending the conversation as he’d begun it, with a burst of laughter. “Adieu, Chevalier, adieu! Love me as I love you.”

  And with that, making a gesture to Parry to inquire if anyone awaited him in the adjacent study, the king disappeared into that room, leaving the audience chamber to the chevalier, still stunned by this unusual interview.

  The old man took him amicably by the arm and led him into the gardens.

  XXXV On the Canal

  On the green waters of the canal, bordered by marble stonework that time had marred with black spots and grassy tufts, majestically glided a long, flat barge, blazoned with the arms of England, surmounted by a canopy and hung with long damask curtains that trailed golden fringe into the water. Eight rowers, loosely plying their oars, made her move along the canal with the languid grace of the swans, who, disturbed in their aquatic territory by the barge’s wake, glared from a distance as it passed in its splendor and clamor. We say clamor because the barge contained four guitar and lute players, two singers, and several courtiers glittering with gold and precious stones, all showing their white teeth at each other in an effort to please Milady Stuart, granddaughter of Henri IV, daughter of Charles I, and sister of Charles II, who sat on the barge’s dais in the place of honor. We know this young princess, having seen her in the Louvre with her mother, bereft of firewood, bereft of bread, kept alive by the Coadjutor and the Parliament of Paris. She’d had, like her brothers, a hard youth, but now she’d suddenly awakened from that long, horrible dream to find herself seated at the foot of a throne, surrounded by courtiers and flatterers. And like Mary Stuart upon leaving her prison, she aspired to life and liberty, and moreover, to power and wealth.

  Princess Henrietta had grown up to become a remarkable beauty, and her prominence in the recent restoration had already made that beauty famous. Misfortune had humbled her pride, but prosperity had restored it to her. She glowed with the joy of her youth, like those hothouse flowers that, wilted for a night by the first frost of autumn, recover in the warmth of the next day and bloom more splendidly than ever. George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, the son of he who played such a celebrated role in the first volume of this history—Villiers of Buckingham, a handsome cavalier, melancholy with women and merry with men, and Wilmot, Lord Rochester, merry with both sexes, were at that moment standing before Lady Henrietta, vying for the privilege of making her smile.

  As for that young and beautiful princess, lying back on a velvet cushion embroidered with gold, trailing a languid hand in the water, she listened nonchalantly to the musicians without really hearing them, and heard every word of the courtiers without appearing to listen to them. For Lady Henrietta, this charming creature who combined the feminine graces of France and England, had never yet loved, and thus was cruel in her coquetry. So, the smile, that naïve favor of young ladies, never lit up her face, and if she raised her eyes, it was to fasten them so directly upon one or the other of the cavaliers that their gallantry, usually so bold, was abashed and made timid.

  Meanwhile, the barge slid along, the musicians played frantically, and the courtiers, like the singers, began to run out of breath. It must have seemed all too monotonous to the princess, for she suddenly shook her head impatiently and said, “Come, that’s quite enough, Gentlemen. Let’s go ashore.”

  “Ah, Milady, how unfortunate we are,” said Buckingham. “Our canal excursion has failed to please Your Highness.”

  “My mother’s waiting for me,” replied Lady Henrietta, “and I must tell you candidly, Gentlemen, that I’m bored.”

  But upon saying that cruel word, the princess tried with a glance at each to console the two young men, who seemed dismayed by such frankness. The looks produced their effects and the two faces brightened—but immediately, as if the royal coquette thought she might have offered too much to mere mortals, she turned her back on her two orators and fell into a reverie that evidently had nothing to do with them. Buckingham bit his lip in anger, for he was truly in love with Lady Henrietta, and as a result took everything seriously. Rochester bit his lip as well, but his mind always dominated his heart, and he was merely suppressing a malicious laugh.

  The princess was allowing the eyes she’d turned away from the young men to gaze across the banks to the gardens and lawns when she saw Parry and d’Artagnan approaching in the distance. “Wh
o’s coming over there?” she asked.

  The two young men instantly spun about. “It’s Parry,” replied Buckingham, “no one but Parry.”

  “Beg pardon,” said Rochester, “but it seems to me he has a companion.”

  “Yes, I see,” replied the princess languidly, then added more sharply, “but what did you mean by ‘no one but Parry,’ Milord?”

  “I meant, Milady,” replied Buckinham, piqued, “that the loyal Parry, the ubiquitous Parry, the wandering Parry, seems to me quite insignificant.”

  “You are mistaken, Your Grace: Parry, the wandering Parry, as you call him, has always wandered in service to my family, and so to see this old man is always a pleasure for me.”

  Lady Henrietta followed the usual routine of pretty women when toying with men of passing from capricious to contrary; her gallant had submitted to her caprice and now must suffer her contradiction. Buckingham bowed but said nothing.

  “It’s true, Milady,” said Rochester, bowing in his turn, “that Parry is a model servant—but he’s no longer young, Milady, and we laugh only with the lighthearted. Is he lighthearted, this old man?”

  “Enough, Milord,” said Lady Henrietta drily. “The subject of this conversation irritates me.” Then, as if speaking to herself, “It’s truly incredible how little regard my brother’s friends have for his servants!”

  “Ah, Milady!” cried Buckingham. “Your Highness pierces my heart with a dagger forged by your own hands.”

  “What is the meaning of this speech, Duke? It has the sound of bad poetry.”

  “It means, Milady, that you yourself, so good, so charming, so sensitive, have laughed sometimes, or at least smiled, at the random maunderings of the ancient Parry, for whom Your Highness today has such a marvelous fondness.”

  “Well, Milord!” said Lady Henrietta. “If I forgot my manners so far as to do that, it’s ill-mannered of you to remind me of it.” She made an impatient gesture. “The good Parry wants to speak to me, I think. Lord Rochester, have them put in to the bank, if you please.”