Ch9 pt2 (about the criminal)
After that strange morning, D'Artagnan had come home to Paris alone, vaguely worried about the fate of Constance and the haste with which the musketeers had dismissed him.
He could not get out of his head that perhaps something strange had happened at Corte during that day.
He noticed Planchet busy with something, the papers hurriedly placed on the table, rather than the money, which he was anxiously counting. He walked away to the bubbling of a pot on the hearth and the shouting of someone climbing the stairs outside the house.
Porthos and Athos kicked the door open, brandishing at least two bottles each, uncorking more wine and sliding those cards to the side of the table, sitting on the old rough wooden benches. At first glance it seemed almost as if nothing had happened, the years had never passed.
"By Jupiter!" - shouted the first, swallowing his wine directly from the bottle.
"By Diana!" - shouted the other, using a mug as big as a vase of flowers, filled to the brim and looking down, towards those cards.
"Y-You here?" - the boy lingered, observing them with surprise.
The two exchanged the same look with him and offered him one of the bottles they carried with them, only half open and full.
"Lightning of Jupiter! Be damned! "- the two men shouted to the boy, without showing grudge in their voices.
"Gentlemen, it is not yet sunset and have you already lost the light of reason?" - asked D'Artagnan, trying in some way to bring them back to themselves.
The two lowered their drinks and looked at each other, trying to resume the demeanor lost by all the events that happened during that day.
"Partner of fortune, but above all, of misfortune: we never revealed our business to you at Chatelet this morning" - explained Porthos, putting a hand on his shoulder, taking a breath in a long pause.
"Only yesterday, when the sun went down, did we deliver the Iron Mask there! My hand still suffers from that fight. Yet today we have been called to hand over a second prisoner: Richelieu! "- continued the musketeer in a deep voice.
D'Artagnan gulped down the bottle, staring at the large brown eyes of what was once his fellow soldier, with thick frowning eyebrows.
"And that's not all!" - continued the man, pointing his index finger at Athos - "The mandate, issued on behalf of the King, bore the name of ... Er" - Porthos hesitated.
Athos filled another full glass and rolled up his sleeves in the same way he usually saw his taller partner do. He clenched his fists, holding back the temptation to pounce violently on the young man, but looked into the void of the dining room without acting.
"Milady" - he said before drinking his glass in one breath.
"By Jupiter!" - exclaimed D'Artagnan in amazement.
"The man behind the iron mask says he is the King of France, the King of France does not remember our names and Renèe has betrayed us, becoming the new Captain of the Royal Guards" - Athos explained, seriously fixing him with the last glimmer of reason left.
"For Diana! May I be damned! "- the boy answered in reply.
The three looked perplexed, silently, without a plan of action.
Porthos returned to those papers, slipped on the bench and lifted them back to Athos. They looked like the old files of Amboise, once belonging to him and Renée.
Instead, observed better, the two men remembered a time when they had traveled across the Alps to obtain them, but that Milady had stolen: they were the documents of Venice, Leonardo's secret plan to build a flying ship.
In the haze of the fumes of too many bad wines, in an attempt to drown worries, the three men dozed off in the darkness of a home without candles and without fire, hoping for a sunny morning.
"Holy gods! After all the years in prison, the mice really ate Philippe's brain! "-Aramis thought as he drew the documents Athos was reading from the table before falling asleep with the rapier.
They had never been on the battlefield for a long time, but the abuse of weapons in the royal barracks had created in the two sleeping men a sort of sixth sense for the rapier's blade, the rattling of spurs or the lighting of fuses.
Athos and Porthos woke up simultaneously, finding on them the figure of Aramis full armed and in high uniform. D'Artagnan had already left.
"Eh?" - exclaimed Athos vaguely surprised by her presence.
"What are these files?" - she asked the two men. She was followed by a group of armed guards in official uniform, ready to stop them already at that moment, but she hesitated to give the order.
Porthos looked briefly at those sheets and immediately stood up.
"What are they, you ask?! Are you crazy? You know very well what they are! Don't you remember Venice anymore? "- he said getting closer than necessary.
He would have gladly taken her by the neck of her shirt and shouted all his discontent on her face.
"Who did you think you were?" - He thought.
"I've never seen them before!" - Aramis lied with a flat and numb look.
"You took these documents to deliver them to Spain. Traitors. You are under arrest for espionage, come with me!" - she recited immediately, without placing any type of emphasis in the sentences she was saying.
"Aramis ?! Are you kidding? "- Porthos asked, amazed by those words.
She closed her eyes and let out a deep sigh.
With the rapier in hand, she should have just made a simple gesture. She had to convince Philippe to put her utmost trust in her, but to ask her to arrest her companions, with that stupid stratagem, seemed completely foolish to her. Her friends wouldn't have believed her, the guards would have scoffed at her if she hadn't immediately given that order.
"Of course I'm kidding! I am surprised at you and the fact that, unlike Philippe, you don't even have to excuse mice for your stupid answer! And you, Athos ... "- she thought, but her voice moved quite differently.
"Athos, Porthos: you are two frondeurs! I declare you under arrest." - was all she managed to say at that moment.
The two stood up in an attempt to get away, but she followed them with uncertainty.
"You can't run away ... You are surrounded ..." - Aramis looked up and said those words in a vague, exasperated tone, while she turned back in an attempt to call other men who were also unsure of seeing who had been their Captain until recently, being arrested.
Athos and Porthos moved only a few steps, almost without haste, towards the internal courtyard of the house.
Only then did Athos turn back to the exit cloister and meet Renée's gaze: it was sad and hardly decipherable. She was wasting time without really trying to arrest them, she was not advancing, and was preventing his men from doing so. Taken from an idea, albeit extravagant, he said:
"Porthos, you have to go" - again in his footsteps, trying to return to the group of guards.
"But ... How?!" - asked Porthos surprised.
"Something doesn't add up in all this, you must remain free to communicate with D'Artagnan! Tell him that I have been arrested!" - exclaimed his companion, with a strange conviction.
"Athos?" - asked the other, believing for a moment of still dreaming.
"Go! Quickly ..." - he urged him, making a brief nod of greeting.
Aramis and his men broke into the courtyard, her gaze was particularly indecisive, she was surprised to find Athos stopped, waiting to be arrested.
"Porthos! Stop!" - she shouted without intention and swung her arm forward, while with the other she put the rapier in the scabbard.
Athos did not turn around, but said: "Oh ... Aramis ... Porthos has escaped ..." - he lingered for a few moments, in the hope that his companion would believe those strange apologies.
She stopped. Her shoulders gave up for a moment at the weight of those forced actions. She could not afford to be Ovid's Eurydice: she did not want to give up returning to the surface, to light, to life.
"I ... I declare you under arrest!" - said Aramis with extreme indecision.
"Eh ... Of course, of course ... I'm your prisoner ..." - he confirmed taking off the rapier and shoulder strap and offering it to him with took it just as gently.
"... I've always been" - he managed to murmur in her ear when the two came closer.
"Come with me: you will be taken immediately to Châtelet!" - she said, looking him in the eyes and making him blocked by the men who accompanied her.
"With great pleasure! You know what is said around: it houses the Cardinal and perhaps even the King himself. The Châtelet has now become a luxury inn!" - he insinuated aloud, posing offended and flattered at the same time.
She did not reply and gave the men the order to proceed further towards the horses and the carriage.
"I received the order from the King to arrest traitors like you and bring them to justice!" - she declared.
"From the King Louis himself, Aramis?" Athos asked.
"What nonsense you say! The King sits on his-on his ... Er ... His throne, where he r-rules with ... The Spaniards must have really promised you a lot of money to say similar f-nonsense! "- stammered Aramis, white in the face and with her gaze completely empty, turned towards the guards who accompanied her, pretending to know nothing of what her companion was saying.
The carriage arrived quickly at Chatelet, Aramis motioned for the guards to wait outside and accompanied the man arrested to his cell, following the jailers. Along the path that led Athos to his prisons, the man continued his speech:
"I thought about what you said. You know! You know what's going on! You are not betraying our friendship!" - he whispered so that the Chatelet guards could not hear him.
"Not all enemies compare in the same way, Athos"
"Not all enemies can be faced without help! Aramis"
"Of course, but I repeat that from your position alone you won't get anything" - she murmured observing the guards.
"And what will you get from yours?" - pressed Athos, she hesitated before giving an answer to that question.
Moving a little further away from the jailers, who continued to keep an eye on them, he put his hand on his friend's arm and said:
"Maybe someone else, unaware of the facts, would have given you a fool or a traitor, but I believe you. I am not sure where King Louis is at the moment, but in all probability, I can give you reason when you say that the man who spoke to you is His Majesty the King. Yet it seems that the King still sits on the throne, without anything having changed since the arrest of Iron Mask ... Realize that no one will believe it if we cannot prove with the facts what you are saying! ".
"There would be a way: I noticed how the mechanism of the Iron Mask, on the prisoner in the basement, has a lock. Someone must have a key to open it "- he said with conviction.
"By removing the mask from that prisoner, we could prove his identity to everyone ..." - Aramis hesitated, contrasted between Philippe's orders and the sworn loyalty to the King and his companions.
"If so it means that the real criminal behind the Iron Mask is still free! You will have to be on guard ..." - replied Athos.
"I will do my best to find that key. But you still have to be patient!" - she exclaimed.
"Wait for my news!" - he said with a nod.
"I will", she replied, taking her shoulders and, immediately leaving him with a light push, gave him to the jailers in a sort of cold greeting.
Almost instinctively and in memory of his brief moments as a court lady, Reneè returned to the palace, bypassing the barracks and, leaving his men, went to the Queen's rooms, the same ones where she had stayed no more than some time before.
Coming down from her horse, she noticed something that caught her curiosity, a light coming from the queen's rooms, the same ones that at that moment should have been deserted, given that Philippe had removed her from Court.
Approaching, she noticed the unnatural silence for those rooms, which usually swarmed with busy ladies and servants, but also the absence of someone on guard, ready to block the path for attackers. She walked a short section of the corridor where heavy curtains covered the windows, until the lantern's still burning flame.
From a more shady area, the silhouette of a tall, robust man rose, jingled some bottles, putting on a heavy hat. She looked at him in amazement and the man did not start with surprise when he noticed her.
He placed a hand on his hips and confidently turned to her. It was at that moment that Aramis could notice the metallic mask on his face reflecting the light.
"I suspected your presence at the Court. Milady had been following your company for some time, I was wondering where she kept you hidden. I should have inspected these rooms first ..."- she said, without showing fear.
"Go away" - ordered the man in a deep and resolute voice.
"Not before you gave me the key to the mask" - replied Aramis.
The man laughed.
"Give me the key of your own free will, or ..." - she continued.
"What are you going to do? Now you are alone against all of us ... "- he said, not at all frightened by his warnings.
"The things most dear to us are guarded with jealousy, hidden from everything and protected so that no one can see or touch them anymore ..." - Aramis seemed to reflect aloud on herself, while her gaze went around the room set up for the convenience of that criminal. Although she had not been invited, she took a few steps inside the hidden room.
"Can you keep a secret?" - she asked, trying to provoke it.
The man covered in the iron mask squeezed the rapier's grip, without answering.
"I think your silence is already a good sign" - she continued to that silence.
"You should definitely be an important man to sit on these chairs, lie down on these beds. Your English accent suggests to me how you already know several things about Milady. Then I think it is necessary for you to know about certain events that only me and my companions are aware of... "- said Aramis.
"The events of the past do not concern me!" - he replied resolutely.
"Not even when they intertwine with those of your most heinous enemy?" - she asked provocatively.
The masked criminal unsheathed the rapier and held the blade between his fingers, without fear of being cut.
"Everyone tries to keep everything they hold dear by their side. And you, of course, do not differ from this reality "- he replied briefly.
With a quick gesture, the man sank the tip of the sword into a wooden chest of drawers that decorated the wall by his side and opened it, showing the brass key hidden inside.
Aramis lowered her guard, distracted by the object she was looking for. She immediately aimed the rapier at her, who stopped her step and raised her hands, apparently defenseless.
"What are your interests?" - he asked, taking the key with his other hand and carrying it around his neck.
Aramis' eyes focused on the chiseled slits of the mask, to notice part of his gaze. She knew nothing of him, but a terrible suspicion poisoned her from the first moment she saw him. Maybe that petty character was right. What could she have done against him without the help of her companions? Maybe nothing, but an idea illuminated her mind. Still with her hands raised, she began to speak.
"Yet you will surely have noticed. You have noticed her empty gaze, her long sighs ... Something is missing from her life of wealth and power, once so coveted. Anyone in her place would be happy with all this, yet she ... "- Renée stopped.
In those words she found a part of herself, a part of Athos, in a time when his sighs, his thoughts were really full of the melancholy of a broken heart.
The young woman took on the presumption of knowing what was going on in that criminal's head and without thinking too much about what she was saying, she remembered a phrase that had once hurt her deeply, but that had made her think for a long time.
"Her eyes and ears will surely be yours. For all the gods that you have prayed to have her back, yours will be her lips, her body. But you will know it by yourself without me telling you, her heart belongs to someone else ... "- she stated, with determination.
"W-What?" - the criminal looked at her lowering the rapier and, with the same rapidity, Aramis grabbed the key and with a quick gesture tore it from his chest, and then immediately jumped out of the window, without looking back.
N/a:
The papers that describe the flying ship are inspired from the movies and from the previous stories. The anime ones are for a submarine.
In a chapter of "The man in the iron mask" it is Aramis that says to Philippe a phrase similar to "You will be my crown and I will be your tiara"