An Honorable Heart
Chapter One: Beginnings
It was raining hard on the road to Paris. The ground had turned to muck and the deluge from the skies was relentless. Still, the horses kept their heads bowed and trudged forward, the wagon wheels bumping and rattling steadily over the soft earth.
Jacqueline's breath steamed in the air as she let out a sad sniff and she pulled her woolen cloak tighter around her shoulders. The material was wet enough to stick to her like a second skin and afforded next to nothing by way of warmth, but the hood kept her face hidden from her father. It was better that he did not see. Gaspar always used to say that her expressions could not hold any secrets because it was always obvious to know how she was feeling.
He also used to say she had one of those angry faces that made it too irresistible to tease.
'It doesn't make you any prettier,' he had said once when he playfully felled her in a duel and she'd given him a look of simmering ire. 'We already know you're capable of beating the village boys bloody. Now you just look like you don't have anything to lose.'
'I have no intention of courting my opponents, dear brother,' she shot back hotly. 'If they're fool enough to make me angry, they needn't worry about a pleasant countenance. They need to worry about the point of my sword.'
'Such anger from the supposedly gentler sex." Gaspar shook his head, extending his hand to help her to her feet. "Father already thinks that in teaching you to fence, I've interrupted the development of your natural talents.'
'What? Sewing and domestic drudgery?" Jacqueline rolled her eyes. She stubbornly refused his offer to help and stood up on her own, affecting the look of a distressed young maiden, all clasped hands and fluttering eyelashes. "Oh, how will I ever find a husband now?"
'Oh, there, there," her brother grinned, playing along. "Don't you look so put out, Mademoiselle d'Artagnan. Boyish good looks or not, someone will make a Madame of you yet!'
He then laughed when she swiped at him, putting up his sword and as she jumped to charge, their game begun anew.
Now that same sword lay across her lap, sheathed and wrapped in a sodden cloth that could have been a burial shroud. Jacqueline touched the end of the pommel and followed the lines of the curved handle with reverent fingers. How strange to see the weapon so lifeless when it had once been so animated in his hands.
"It has not passed my notice of what today is," her father said beside her. Over the rain and the rattling of the wagon, he had to raise his voice a little, like a half-shout. "I miss him very much too. If he were here, we probably would've been riding to Paris to see Monsieur Treville. It had always been Gaspar's dream to enlist in the King's Musketeers."
"Yes," Jacqueline replied bitterly, "but instead of the garrison, we are riding to see the Mother Superior at the Abbaye-aux-Bois when it has never been my dream to enroll in a convent." She looked out into the woodlands rolling by and tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. "If he were here, he would protest most severely."
"It was your brother who recommended you see the inside of a nunnery," her father pointed out. "He suggested you'd tire of it eventually and realize the virtue in motherhood."
"More than likely he said it in jest and you took it as gospel."
It was exactly the sort of thing Gaspar would joke about. He had a very dry wit and delighted in making people think he was serious when he wasn't, often putting him at odds with the other boys in the village who weren't so fond of being made to look foolish. Few people understood him like Jacqueline did. She had been his constant companion ever since he saw her pick up a sword and discovered that she made for a far livelier sparring partner than the family's creaky old valet.
No matter how much he joked and teased her for being a young spinster and hoyden, she knew for a fact that Gaspar would have dreaded anything that would have made his sister unhappy.
"Jacqueline," Alexander d'Artagnan told his daughter tiredly. "I am getting old, and your brother is dead. Who will take care of you when I too am in the ground?"
"I can care for myself. You know I can."
"In a duel, I have no doubt." Her father shook his head. "You would make a finer soldier than most, I admit, but a woman's place is not on the battlefield. You would have done better with more female influences, I think. The good sisters will give you that. Teach you to be gentler. God knows, I could not."
"I should have been born a man."
"And I should have been born rich. Then I would not have a poor man's reasons to give his daughter away."
Pushing her hood to one side, Jacqueline stole a glance at her father. Water was dripping down the brim of his hat, his long silver hair hanging in thick, dark grey tendrils around his face. He looked very sad and defeated and nothing like the proud man she remembered from her youth.
Her heart squeezed in her chest. It was easy to forget that this was hard for him too. She may have lost a brother, but he lost a son and now he was about to lose his only daughter. He was only doing what he truly believed was right.
Up ahead, they were coming upon an inn by the road. It was a modest looking cottage, but smoke was curling out of the chimney and there was a stable for the horses. The idea of drying off in front of a fire and bedding down for the night with warm stew in their bellies suddenly became an inviting one to Jacqueline. They could stay up and talk and he could regale her with stories of adventure and his military exploits just like he had done when she and Gaspar were children.
"We should stop to rest, father," Jacqueline said, putting a hand on his forearm. "You are tired."
"But Paris is only a few hours away," he protested, never a man to admit to needing a break even if he was about to fall off his horse.
"Paris will still be there in the morning. Are you really so eager to see me off so soon?"
Sheepishly, he relinquished the reins and Jacqueline gave him a daughter's smile in return. She let her him off in front of the drive while she went to shelter the horses from the downpour.
The groom's boy was snoring loudly in the corner when Jacqueline walked into the stable. Seeing that he had apparently been deep in his cups, she set to work on unhitching the horses by herself.
In truth, there was no reason why they took the wagon for the journey. Most of her belongings could comfortably fit into a small valise. Jacqueline didn't need much nor have much in the way of clothing. She was much taller than her mother had been, wider in the shoulders and thicker in the waist, but smaller in the hips and chest so that the late Madame's dresses never fit properly. Everything was either too tight, too loose, too big or too small. Most days, Jacqueline had simply took to wearing Gaspar's old clothes.
But in Paris, they apparently had a strict decorum about these sorts of things. If Madame Planchet was to be believed, a woman would need permission from the Pope himself before she could wear trousers; it was illegal otherwise, upon charge of heresy. Jacqueline thought it stupid and said so, but her father, ever happy for any opportunity to see his daughter attract a good husband, insisted on her packing an appropriate wardrobe. Jacqueline had no idea how he expected her to do that from behind the walls of a convent, but her father was always known to be more of an optimist than a realist.
Still, it had not stopped Jacqueline from secretly packing a pair of breeches and her brother's old beat up leather tunic. She didn't expect to wear them, but just like the blade, they were both a familiar comfort and a small particle of defiance.
She wished she could put them on now. Skirts were terribly uncomfortable and heavy when wet and most impractical for travel in the country.
They were even worse for maneuvering around a dirty stable.
Grumbling a little to herself, she finished removing the bridle off Alphonse, his father's favorite dark bay gelding, and was about to move on to her dappled mare when she heard the click of a pistol behind her.
"Hands up," said a gruff voice.
Jacqueline's back went rigid as a plank and she did as she was bid. She turned on the spot, staring down the barrel of a gun. The man pointing the weapon at her wore a mask that covered the bottom half of his face. Her gaze dropped from the pistol and his face and her brows furrowed in confusion. Displayed prominently on the breast of his tunic was the fleur-de-lis, the stylized symbol of the King.
"You look like a drowned rat," he growled. "Unlace your bodice." He shoved her with the gun. "Quickly."
The blood rushed to Jacqueline's cheeks in a wave of heat and surprised fury as two other men in uniform crowded around her.
"I was always told the Musketeers were honorable men," she said, jutting out her chin and keeping her hands firmly at her sides.
She and Gaspar used to pretend they were part of the regiment, chasing bandits in the woods, fighting Spaniards, rescuing maidens and defending the humble and the innocent. They were always loyal, heroic and very, very brave, just like in father's stories.
"You were misinformed," one of them spat. "Do as he says!"
If she screamed, they'd shoot her. Or her father would come running and then they'd shoot him. She'd have to bide her time, she could handle this. Gaspar taught her well.
Reluctantly, Jacqueline's fingers drifted to her fastenings and she furiously yanked at the first string, keeping her gaze fixed on the men, who, despite their masks, wore expressions that made it perfectly clear what they were thinking.
All she needed was an opening, a distraction.
Like a gift from God, a crack of gunfire suddenly exploded somewhere outside and the men and the horses startled.
But not Jacqueline.
Taking advantage of the momentary diversion, she side-stepped her would-be assailant and re-aimed the pistol at one of the men behind her. The man with the gun fired in surprise and his companion dropped dead to the ground. Jacqueline, meanwhile, was still moving. She smashed her elbow into the gunman's face and as he collapsed backward from the blow, she used her free hand to draw his sword and rounded on the last man standing.
He stepped back hesitantly. Evidently, he had been expecting an easy mark.
Jacqueline, however, was anything but easy.
"Well?" she demanded, giving her weapon a playful flick in the air. "Don't you want to ask a lady to dance?"
More gun-fire sounded outside. The whinny of horses, the gallop of hooves, whoops, hollers and shouts and then the rattle of a stage coach. The musketeer glanced at the door, then at her holding the sword and made up his mind. He turned and made a sudden break for the door.
Dropping a curse, Jacqueline chased after him.
If it were even possible, it was raining harder than before. Almost losing her footing through the mud as she ran, Jacqueline rounded the corner of the cottage with sword and pistol still in hand, but skidded to a stop when she reached the main road. There, she watched, panting hard with her hair plastered to her head, as the entire carriage and company turned into the next fork and galloped back safely into the woods.
"Argh," she swiped the air in frustration and whirled around to see her father coming up the path. "They got away," she shouted to him. And then, anticipating his next question, she added: "Don't worry, I'm not hurt."
She saw him mouth something, but no sound came out.
Her brows knitted together. "Father?"
Something was wrong. He was clutching his hand to his chest and dragging his feet. There was a strange, stammering look on his face.
Jacqueline's eyes widened.
"Father!" she yelled again, this time in a panic. She sprinted towards him at once and caught him before he could keel forward and together they sank to the muddy ground. She looked down at her open palm in horror, seeing red even as the rain hurried to wash it away. "Oh dear God in heaven, you're bleeding."
"Athos," he rasped in response. "Athos."
"What is that? What does it mean?" With quaking hands, Jacqueline framed her father's face and tried to coax him to look up at her. His eyes were fluttering open and shut and there was so much blood, so much blood everywhere and there was nothing she could do, no one she could call for help."Is that the name of the man who did this? Tell me his name, father! Father?!"
"Athos," Alexander d'Artagnan said again.
And then he said no more.
Thank you for reading. I have a couple of chapters written and will be posting them every one or two days. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments.