Translations
Junge - young one
vieille dame - elderly woman
Mesdames - ladies
Mademoiselles - girls
adieu - goodbye
mon ami - my friend
atelier - studio/shop
Chapter Two
Athos and d'Artagnan handed over their mounts to the tiger, the quartet tied on their masks and stepped beyond the sheltering carriage to be instantly swept into the throng.
Without being told, d'Artagnan stuck like glue to Athos' right shoulder, matching the Musketeer step for step. Aramis was on their heels, with Porthos bringing up the rear as the crowd drew them along like a line of ducklings caught in the undertow.
Torches, ensconced in holders affixed to columns between stone arches, lit the tableau as it shifted like a living tapestry, the rollicking ribbon of humanity splitting to accommodate a lively allemande already in progress, promenading down the center of the square with Venner Joos and his wife leading the column of dancers. Above the noise of the crowd one could occasionally catch the drift of a tune capably rendered by an ensemble of woodwinds and strings.
Athos stepped out of the flow, d'Artagnan and Aramis sliding out right beside him, to stand beneath a shadowed archway and watch.
Porthos peacocked right up to the Venner's lady, bowing with suave sophistication as he claimed the right to cut in. Her laughing spouse gracefully ceded his spot, still smiling broadly as he joined the remainder of the French negotiating party beneath the portico.
"Your wife is in looks this evening, sir," Aramis remarked with just the right balance of respect and subtle masculine envy. They had met her twice; first at the opening ball she had hosted at the abode of she and her spouse, the evening the negotiations had commenced, and again the next day, at an impromptu outdoor picnic when she'd brought lunch on the second day of haggling.
"She is always in good looks, Herr Aramis! Always! I am the most fortunate of men."
The lady was well above average height, her posture such that a princess would envy it, her exquisitely formed bosom jutting like the prow of a Viking ship. Tonight she wore a rose gold gown flattering a figure a Valkyrie might envy as she swayed and swooped to the duple metre of the dance. Her ensemble included a gold demi-mask in the shape of a butterfly, its jeweled wings glittering with smaller gems that gleamed as bright as her necklace, though the mask was mere convention, since all who beheld her would recognize her instantly. Her husband's attire was a match for his wife, a dashing costume cut to show off the fact that he remained a fine figure of man, though on the downhill side of his prime.
"Is Porthos allowed to do that?" d'Artagnan inquired artlessly, his social polish having extended only to village dances.
"Of course, Junge, he is a guest. Come!" Venner Joos waved his hands invitingly. "Join the dancing!" He snatched up the hand of a nearby maiden, grinned challengingly at the Frenchmen, and fell in at the end of the line that was now the head of the line again.
"Go." Athos shooed his companions in like manner, urging the pair standing next to him into the fray. Aramis was not behind in following orders, d'Artagnan, however, was not ready to make the leap.
He sidled a bit closer to Athos to whisper, "What did he just call me?"
"Junge," Athos repeated, keeping the smile out of his voice.
"Translated?"
"Literally, it means young one, but he does not mean it as an insult. Rather, he uses is much like our own use of youngling."
d'Artagnan sighed. "It's universal."
"Of course it is, you are young, experience has not yet marked you. Do not hurry to collect it, d'Artagnan. As you likely reckoned from our trip to Calais, it will not always use you lightly." Athos felt the youth's involuntary shudder.
d'Artagnan's recovery from their Calais adventure had taken considerably more time than the youth had been willing to give it, thus lengthening his convalescence. Consequentially their baby Musketeer had developed quite an interesting relationship with his landlady. Athos wondered if that was why he hung back instead of joining the festivities.
Madam Joos, on the arm of Aramis now, waved gaily as the opening bars of a galliard began. The dance was intricately patterned, requiring an athleticism usually reserved for the young. Porthos danced by, his partner, an amply endowed grandmotherly armful, keeping pace without missing a beat or a breath.
Jesters and potentates, kings and queens, even a costumed Musketeer or two wrapped in blue cloaks and plumed hats danced past. They saw a woman in a silver mask, wrapped in a voluminous magenta cloak carrying a lap dog wearing a mask in the shape of a cat's face. Clowns in parti-colored tights sporting tutus trailing long streamers that looked like tails passed by. Another female wore the mask of a peacock and bore a train of iridescent feathers in her wake.
"Poor bird," d'Artagnan murmured, his foot tapping in time to the music.
Athos gave the youngster's shoulder a friendly shove. "Go, find a partner, any of those young women would give their best garter to dance with you."
The youth shrugged diffidently. "I don't know this one."
Athos crossed his arms over his chest and gave his companion the canted-hat look. "Aramis would tell you to take one aside and ask her to teach you the patterns."
"And you?" d'Artagnan inquired.
"I would tell you to stay away from women."
"Too late."
"Beware the sniveling husband." Athos' flat delivery did not detract from the warning in the least.
When again d'Artagnan grew restive at his shoulder, he took the youth's arm and moved back into the deeper shadows. "It's not hard and it will likely come up again this evening; it goes like this. Right left, right left, and make a sort of hop-jump so you land on both feet." He demonstrated in time to the beat. "Listen to the music, it's a five count, do you hear it? Right left right left cadence - which is what the hop step is called. The landing is a called a posture. It isn't that hard once you can hear the steps in the music."
He drew d'Artagnan's arm through his elbow. "Come, follow my lead." He walked the youngster through the steps at half time for several measures then sped up to the match the beat of the music." When d'Artagnan had the steps down, he clapped him on the back, giving both permission and encouragement with the affectionate gesture. "Go give the young women of Berne pleasant dreams."
"But ..."
"d'Artagnan, go break hearts!"
"I am not Aramis."
"I am fully cognizant of the small mercies God grants in my life." If there is a God. "And while I'm not letting any of you out of my sight tonight, that does not mean you have to keep me company."
"Of course he does not, come Junge!" Madam Joos swept into their obscure sanctuary on Aramis' arm and swept out on d'Artagnan's without missing a beat of the music, though she was leading as they departed. "The next dance is the Black Almain, I will back for you, my lord!" she flirted over her shoulder at Athos.
"I do not dance."
"Everyone dances!" Madam trilled as she tucked herself, one-handed, back into her low-cut bodice on the bounce step.
d'Artagnan threw a helpless look over his shoulder and disappeared into the crowd with his hostess.
Aramis and Athos waited until the pair was far enough away not to hear, and burst into gales of laughter. Porthos found them propping one another up, still wiping tears from their eyes.
"Wha'sa funny?" He unhooked his cloak, borrowing an empty torch holder for a convenient hook to hang it from, then fanned himself. "Well?"
"d'Artagnan," Aramis hiccupped.
Porthos chuckled. "Saw 'em wiv the Joos woman. She's a right armful, that one."
"She shed me for d'Artagnan and popped out of her bodice on the very first jump, right in his face."
Even Athos was still laughing. "It was priceless," he said, shaking his head. "I thought she was going to flip the hat right off his head."
Porthos, having a very fine imagination indeed, doubled over his knees roaring with mirth.
"d'Artagnan's eyes about popped out of his head." Aramis stripped off his mask, doffed his hat and stuffed the piece of silk inside the crown before donning it again. "Gentlemen." He essayed a courtly bow. "While the pleasure of your company has been both enlightening and enjoyable, I'm off to see what other ladies I may charm. The evening is yet young."
"Do not make me order you to be back in your own bed tonight, Aramis." Athos was still smiling, his tone reasonable, but implacable. "And both of you, keep an eye on d'Artagnan." He resumed his leaning posture, melting into the stone as though he was part and parcel of its solidity.
"We'll make sure he stays out of trouble," Porthos rumbled, following Aramis back out into the crowd.
d'Artagnan and his partner were nearing the head of the line of dancers again; he'd clearly gotten the hang of it for he was firmly in the lead this time and appeared to be enjoying himself immensely. The smile was genuine and he touched his hat brim as they circled past Athos, who returned the greeting affably.
As soon as they were out of sight, though, Athos collected the cloak Porthos had left behind and slipped deeper into the recessed well of darkness, gliding away beneath the archways like a silent ghost. Surely there were a few citizens of Berne who preferred drinking to dancing, there had to be some establishment nearby catering to those who had no desire to spend the night in useless flummery.
A rainbow of colors swirled past, the women in every possible hue nature painted, jewels catching the torch light to flash fire and ice, their husbands and brothers, uncles and sons equally brilliantly attired. There were elaborate head dresses of feathers, total face masks of ceramic variously coquettish, bizarre, and outlandish.
Women had bird cages with live birds woven into high hairdos and set into headdresses. Pashas carried silver lamps burning a sweet smelling incense, wearing little more than oil and loin cloths.
He caught a glimpse of d'Artagnan, having followed Porthos' example, guiding a tiny elderly woman through a turn, then ducking to spin beneath her high held hand. The sight was as absurd as it was heartwarming, the tall would-be Musketeer's knees bent nearly to the ground to accommodate their difference in height, but d'Artagnan made it look perfectly normal. The vieille dame's seamed face was alight with pleasure.
Among the dancing couples, Athos had been watching a pair dressed uniformly from head to toe in silver, he in balloon britches and hose topped by a tabard of patterned silver silk, the cloak attached at the shoulders by bridges of stiffened leather studded with silver pearls. The female was likewise dressed, though she wore a skirt of the same silver silk, overlaid with sparkling silver tulle. But it was their headdresses that fascinated him. Huge swathes of tucks and braided material bunched inside extravagantly molded foundations covered in lace and beads and trailing long, shimmering waterfalls of veils.
Three years ago, in his solitary to-ing and fro-ing of the continent, he had been in Venice during carnival. While Berne's rendition was less elaborate in scope and imagination, it lacked only the risqué application of paint to the body - and nothing else - as costume.
"Ahhhh, I have found you at last. Why do you make it so difficult to do my duty, sir?" Madam Joos brushed his shoulder with her ivory feather fan flirtatiously. "The Venner will be displeased with me if I fail in my responsibilities, comte."
Athos diplomatically checked the unwary groan. He had stayed in one place too long. "Madam." He bowed, Porthos' cloak dragging on the ground with the genuflection. There was something familiar about her he could not quite place. Her direct gaze, the way she tilted her head, even her scent nagged like a distant warning bell. The gaiety was merely a veneer, though he did not know why or how he knew this.
She held out her hand, the golden mask tilted inquiringly and waited.
"I do not dance, madam," he repeated, taking her hand. He kissed the air above the gloved fingers with appropriate finesse.
Eyes blue as Lake Geneva glittered behind the mask. In their secluded little spot, the noise of the crowd absorbed by the massive stone arches and columns, he could hear the long artfully darkened eyelashes flutter against the inside of the mask. Her fingers tightened around his extended hand. Slowly, deliberately, head swiveling to keep eye contact, she raised his hand and swirled gracefully beneath it. "You lie," she whispered, lips pursed in a moue of displeasure. "You are the most graceful dancer here, and yet you hide your light under a bushel."
"Biblical pummeling, ma'am? Were you a man, you would be lying dead at my feet."
She spoke as if she had intimate knowledge of Athos' capabilities. And this was not the first time she'd importuned him; she'd attached herself to his side at the picnic as well, and made sure to serve him luncheon personally. Athos did not quite know what to make of her apparent pursuit.
"I know." The words were drawn out on a shivery breath, the Viking's ship prow heaving with pleasure at this duel of words. "I heard that in Venice you donned the costume of the Angel of Death and dispensed justice at the point of your sword."
For a moment, he was taken aback, but he did not deny the delicate accusation. "Did you." It was not a question.
She waited again, but Athos was an authority on silence, he had mastered its subliminal subtleties long ago. He waited her out.
On a blatantly false little laugh she tucked her hand through his elbow, drawing him forward. "If you will not dance, then you will promenade with me so that my lord and master sees that I have done my duty. Do you wish to appear a flunky?" Madam Joos relieved him of Porthos' cloak, flinging the mass of white velvet carelessly over a bench they passed.
There it was, that edge beneath the charm; he could not decide if she disliked him personally based on his reputation, or his role as leader of the negotiations. He was attuned these days to a woman's malice and felt it humming along his nerve endings like a rasping file. Yet there was also, beneath that hum, a hungry desire sighing in measured counterpoint to the antagonism.
"What have I done to earn your enmity, madam?"
Her head, level with his, turned sharply. He saw a flash of anger in those eyes - or at least he thought that's what he'd seen - though it was masked so quickly he doubted its veracity. "La, sir, whatever have I done to give you such an impression?" She leaned into him, pressing her voluptuousness seductively against his arm. "I have heard many things about you, but one should always be wary of extremes." She directed their steps so they skirted the edge of the dancing throng. "For instance, I have heard also that you support many small charities that would not survive without your aid."
Athos remained silent as a stick. He followed smoothly where she led, pliant beneath her fingertips, lest he give away his surprise at the extent of her knowledge.
"I have also heard that you hung your wife and it broke your heart."
He'd been expectantly prepared for another barb, but it still required a monumental effort of will not to flinch. Madam Joos was a veritable fount of knowledge. He supposed he should be grateful she'd given a nod to the possibility he might not be a complete bounder.
"You deny nothing?"
"Clearly it would be a waste of words, and I rarely waste words, madam."
"Yes, I have heard that about you too." She sighed plaintively. "And I had so hoped to learn the truth of you. But you do not even ask how I know such things." There followed a rap of her knuckles on his forearm. "You are vexing in the extreme, sir. You do not dance, you do not talk, is there no curiosity in you at all?"
"None." The declamation was delivered in a flat monotone.
"Fine then, I will not tell you, though I know you are dying to know." This was delivered with a little flounce that nearly bounced her out of her bodice again, though Athos suspected this time is was purposeful. "Tell me only this, then, is your heart broken?"
At this he turned his head to look her directly in the eye. "I do not have a heart to break." He deliberately left off the courtesy of her title. She reminded him of his wife; this woman had courage to spare for she did not look away, searching his eyes as though she might ferret out some grain of truth he refused to speak.
"I thought perhaps we might commiserate, my lord." She had stopped their forward progress, but resumed it now. "I once had three fine sons. They are all dead by my hand for I stood by and watched as they marched off to war, the bravest of the brave in our land, the fairest of the fair. I cheered them on as each one joined a Berne regiment. They were a sight to behold in their regimental gear, row up on row of blue and gold clad boys, their halberds glinting in the sun."
Again, Athos waited out the long pause without a murmur.
"You do have the gift of silence. You must know they each returned to me, those beautiful boys, laid upon wooden biers if they were lucky. Slung over the back of a horse if they were not. Those immaculate uniforms smeared with the long-dried blood of their veins. The blood of my womb covering their hands and faces." She leaned into his shoulder with calculated intimacy. "I thought perhaps shared loss might give us a basis for conversation."
"Alas, I am capable only of acknowledging your loss and offering my condolences."
"You are a hard man, comte."
Athos bowed his acknowledgement of this and disengaged his arm, carrying her gloved hand to his lips again. "It has been a pleasure, madam." He could lie suavely as well.
"No, no, the pleasure has been entirely mine, good sir." She curtsied deeply enough to give him a particularly fine view of her décolletage. There was in her eyes, as she rose, the touch of a sad smile that perceptibly darkened the blue. "You have been a worthy adversary, my lord." Her fingers grazed his temple lightly. "You perspire? I had heard you have been ill. Perhaps you should take that fever to bed." The hand dropped to hover for a moment over his heart. "And I am not convinced you were born heartless."
He did not react, waiting with a stillness few could match until she stepped back, then he touched his hat, twisted on a boot heel, and melted into the crowd. It required every ounce of control he possessed not to shiver under the gimlet stare he knew followed his progress across the square. An enfleshed Valkyrie indeed. Athos was not a fanciful man, but he felt the need to bathe in icy water to rid himself of the talonish feel of her fingers marking him.
He had not been so deeply disturbed since his wife had murdered his brother. His jaw ached with the effort of keeping it unclenched, but he would not give her the satisfaction of chasing him away. She had shattered the rules of hospitality, he would repay her in kind; let her explain to her lord and master how and why she had angered an honored guest.
Bowing before the first female his external vision finally noticed, he extended an invitation that was immediately accepted, led her over to the group forming closest to them and gave himself over fully to charming his audience. He did not miss one dance the rest of the evening and kept the rest of his contingent at it until Porthos literally cornered him where he was chatting amiably with a delegation of mothers and daughters.
"Mesdames, mademoiselles." Porthos slung a friendly arm around Athos' shoulders. "I've been deputized by the rest of our troop to corral the comte. My apologies for stealing him away, but we must be up and ready for church on time tomorrow." His diction was a match for any lord of the realm. "It has been our very great pleasure to spend this evening amongst such fair companions." Hand to his heart, the Musketeer bowed deeply, his glittering ensemble a brilliant foil for his dark skin. The genuflection had all the ladies cooing and trilling.
"Mesdames, mademoiselles," Athos repeated, offering his own polished bow. " I can only echo my good friend, Porthos. I am humbly grateful you chose to spend time in my company this evening. But now I must bid you all adieu. Your genuine hospitality has warmed my heart, I will take away the memory as a souvenir when our negotiations are complete."
They bowed their way out of the group, Porthos, making excellent use of the twittering that rose like a cloud as soon as their backs were turned, muttering out of the side of his mouth, "What is wrong with you?"
Athos, still on display as they strode through the thinning crowd to join Aramis and d'Artagnan, kept a smile pasted on his face. "None of your business."
"Wrong." Porthos' teeth gleamed as bright as his habiliments. "That one for all 'n all for one ain't worth squat when one is playin' off the field without botherin' to tell his teammates. Your little affront sets off the Venner an you've just ended the negotiations."
"Are you insane?" Aramis demanded without so much as moving a muscle in his pleasantly arranged features. He could flay the proverbial skin off an individual and no one out of hearing range would be the wiser. He fell in step on the other side of Athos.
"Is this helpful?" d'Artagnan, looking wearily troubled, asked quietly. "Even in the short time I've been with you, I know Athos does nothing without reason."
The canniness of the observation only served to spike the temper Aramis rarely displayed. "Your input is not required in this matter," he snapped, shepherding their quartet past the astronomical clock striking the hour of two.
d'Artagnan shrugged and turned his gaze to the ground, missing the keen glance Porthos shot him as he trudged alongside the big Musketeer.
"You're a better marksman than that, mon ami. d'Artagnan was merely doing what we have consistently asked him to do since he joined us," Porthos stated unequivocally. "Move your sights to the proper target."
Athos swiped his sleeve across his forehead and kept his feet moving toward his patient steed. He broke his silence only when he was mounted next to d'Artagnan and Porthos was about to contort himself to enter the carriage. "The situation is entirely of my doing, my apologies to all of you for my lapse in judgment. I will make it right."
"How?" Aramis demanded. "That woman wants you in her bed and instead of finessing it, you let her goad you into making it a game of one-upmanship."
Porthos shoved through the carriage door, snagged Aramis by an arm and yanked him inside as well, then slammed the door. "We'll see you shortly at the Rathaus." He banged the grip of his dress sword on the ceiling, signaling their readiness, and the coach rolled forward.
"I need to go back and collect Porthos' cloak from where I left it."
d'Artagnan swung down before Athos could dismount. "Where is it?"
Athos closed his eyes. "A bench near the bootmaker's atelier." The youth was back before he could get his eyes open again. "My thanks." In the heat of the battle he had carelessly burnt through his reserves; it was all he could do to stay in the saddle.
"For what it's worth, the Venner did not look particularly upset any time I saw him this evening and we spoke several times." d'Artagnan tossed the trailing velvet over his horse's withers, settled his hat on his head and swung back into the saddle to rein around. He eyed Athos critically. "You need the cloak?"
"No." Athos reined around, too, so they fell in behind the lumbering coach. Now that he was still, his sweaty clothes were turning clammy and cold, chills chasing up and down his spine. Nor could he control the fine tremors coursing through his body. He was in a great deal of trouble.
TBC 2/20