This is the third and final installment of my Beginnings trilogy: Resurrection, Reckoning and now, Redemption.
While the first two parts take place before the start of the show, a few months after the massacre of Savoy, this last part take us right to the very end of season 1, after the announcement of the Royal pregnancy.
Most of this story was written a looooong time ago, but I had it stored away in some forgotten drawer, waiting to see the light of day once more. But now, dusty and all, here it is!
The lovely Laura Barnette was kind enough to look this over for mistakes, but if you do happen to find some, it's probably because I messed up something at some point.
Enjoy!
Redemption
The Cardinal peered through his office window. Outside, the palace gardens were flushed with life and colour, as winter finally gave way to spring.
Beyond the furthest fountain, close to the east gates, four horses stood in wait with three men by their side. Even though the distance was far too great for his eyes to discern faces, there was no mistaking the distinct blue shade of their capes that identified the men as Musketeers.
Richelieu could even go as far as to guess who they were: Athos, Porthos and the Gascon, d'Artagnan, three of the foursome of nuisances who repeatedly insisted on meddling with his affairs.
They were one man short, but the Cardinal knew all too well of the whereabouts of the forth member of their band of ruffians. After all, Richelieu had just caught him in an oddly compromising position with the Queen.
Aramis.
While France could do well without the lot of the Musketeers' regiment, those four had proven to be a major inconvenience at the worse of occasions.
First, there was Savoy . A brilliantly conceived plan that, in one fell swipe had managed to capture a Spanish agent and secure the King's sister position beside the Duke of Savoy. The plan had been perfectly executed, if not for the cumbersome refusal of one Musketeer to die like the rest of his companions.
Then, in his quest to discover the truth about the survivors of the attack and tie any loose ends, Richelieu had seen matters further complicated by the overzealous actions of his own agent, Rochefort, as the foolish man decided to bow up an entire garrison in order to conceal his actions.
That agent had been lost to him, as the Cardinal had been forced to bow to the King's wishes as it became clear that the Comte had become unstable and unreliable. Last he had hear, Rochefort had been taken prisoner by the Spanish and, God willing, was already dead.
After all the trouble he had gone through to discover the name of the sole survivor of Savoy, fate had delivered the answer in his hands and ensured that the matter was closed forever. Marsac, Treville had called him, a Musketeer traitor who had returned with murderous intentions towards the Duke of Savoy and the Musketeers' Captain. With him finally dead, the Cardinal could rest assured that no one else could disclosure his involvement with the whole sordid affair.
Milady, another of his agents, had been lost as well, her whereabouts unknown ever since the Musketeers had tried to arrest her in the aftermath of his failed plot to murder the Queen.
The Cardinal would not forget –most certainly not forgive- the smug look on both of those Musketeers' faces as they dared to play him, him, the First Minister of France and a man of God. And while it was true that Aramis and the others had fooled him, going as far as pretend to bury one of their own, the Cardinal could not see those actions as a sign of a higher intellect, but more as a fluke of the moment. Even a simpleton worm kills a fish every so often.
Having just witness the overly familiarity in which the Musketeer Aramis stood in the Queen's presence, a vile thought had begun to form inside the Cardinal's sharp mind, a thought so despicable and horrifying that he could not suppress the chill that possessed his body.
For years, the Queen's womb had been barren, or as close to such, as it seemed unwilling to bear life after her first pregnancy had ended in tears. Then, all of a sudden, she was with child.
To a simpler mind, the sudden turn of events certainly seemed miraculous, a blessing from the Lord upon an heirless France . The Cardinal's mind, however, was anything but simple.
He alone could read between the lines, could grasp at seemingly unrelated matters, whispered secrets and random occurrences and weave them all into something truly unthinkable and unholy.
Like the possibility that the heir to the throne of France had been fathered by someone other than the King.
Inside the palace, there was little room for the Queen's treachery and prevarications. But Anne had left those walls; she had been alone a few months past, in the wilderness, with no one else to attest her honour but four meddling Musketeers. Anything could have happened. Something had certainly happened.
And if Louis was not the child's true father…
The Queen would not risk going forward with a pregnancy if her treason had involved the dark skinned Musketeer, Porthos. If the child were to take after the father, it would result in the immediate death of the three of them.
It could not have been the former Comte either. Athos, according to Milady, had grown weary of women and his feeling towards them remained biter, to say the least.
So, it could only be either the Gascon or Aramis. And of those two, there was only one who the Cardinal had just witness acting in the most suspicious way with the Queen, both escaping the boundaries of their individual stances like it was a practiced action. Like two people who had consorted before.
Aramis. Always that accursed name, haunting him everywhere, even Adele's dying lips.
"It ends now," the Cardinal growled, no one but God to hear his fervent promise.
Richelieu was no fool. He was more than well aware that not all of royal lineage had been conceived in the royal bed.
There were rumours aplenty of kings and queens throughout the kingdoms who invited others to their royal beds. Some through sheer depravity, others in desperate hope of providing the kingdom with an heir and save the people from civil war and chaos.
No, the child was not what troubled him. No matter his origins, the fruit of the Queen's womb would be the next ruler of France . But the mere possibility that others could reach the same conclusions as the Cardinal had, the mere thought that this child's bloodline could ever be questioned, that was something that Richelieu could not contemplate.
There was only one way to assure that the child's siring would never be questioned, for the heir to throne could have one father alone, the King.
Once more he was the one left with the hard decisions. Even if, at least this once, the decision wasn't all that hard to make. May God forgive him.
For the sake of France 's security and prosperity, for the protection of the people, there was only one course of action to take.
The Musketeer Aramis had to die.
TBC