Matthew 25:36
by Blue Fenix
I've been here before. Not this corridor, this particular cell, but times and places just like it. The royal prison far out on the coast, where I left a sixteen-year-old boy in a cage. And other rooms here in the Bastille, the wild night we put Philippe on the throne at last. The stone passage where we fought our last battle together was just like this one, long and narrow. At least three levels closer to the sunlight than this, and farther to the west. If I raised my eyes I feel I might see through the stone to the exact spot where D'Artagnan died. We couldn't save him. We could only hold him, Athos and Porthos and I. Walking through the same corridors, smelling the same dank prison air, the loss is fresh and agonizing. I don't really want it to heal. He doesn't deserve to be forgotten, not this soon. And I, I don't deserve the relief.
The Chief Warder of the prison is helpful to the point of self-abnegation, calling me "Father" and "Your Grace" at every other word. What a difference a few months can make in a political career. He would have happily killed us all, last time, if King Louis had even hinted. He reviews the security arrangements with me. I helped create them. Our special prisoner has an entire hallway to himself, many cells locked and left empty to create a buffer between him and the world. The corridor is broken by three locked doors that only one man, a deaf-mute, is allowed to pass through; he sees the prisoner twice a day, feeding him and cleaning up after him. No other human contact at all. I will be his first visitor, his only visitor.
The warder checks my royal writ, anxious to show how thoroughly he does his job. "I'm afraid we'll have to search you, Father Aramis, both before and after you visit the prisoner," he says. "The instructions were very specific, even priests cannot be excepted."
"Very good. I've brought him some books." I lay the bundle on the guardroom table. "You'll search the package, of course. Religious works." That's literally true. I can't remember now which fool optimist had the idea; myself, Queen Anne, or the young king we still call Louis except in complete privacy. As if the real Louis would ever learn goodness, or penitence, by example. "I will offer the prisoner the Sacrament of Confession." Like his brother before him. "You will not admit anyone else, including any priest, whatever reason is given. And you will not admit me without royal permission."
After they search me, they give me the deaf-mute's keys. I let myself through one door after another, locking them behind me, until I stand outside the only occupied cell. I don't knock. Servants don't knock to announce themselves to a king. Servants are nothing, no more than pieces of furniture until the king chooses to notice them. Jailers don't knock on a prisoner's door either; the prisoner, there, is nothing.
The room is large enough for several men, and clean. Bed, chair, table, even candles. He stands in the center of the room, watching me. I'd forgotten how hideous the mask is. Massive as armor, obliterating his whole head; even his eyes are shadowed by the narrow slits in the iron. I can't see his face but his posture is a mixture of hate and fear. Mostly hate. I give him his baptismal name, no more. "Louis. I've brought you some books." I set them on the table.
"You bastard." He's shaking with rage, but he can't find the courage to charge me unarmed. I'm bigger than he is. "You lying Jesuit bastard."
"You left me little choice, when you ordered me to kill the secret Jesuit general. Suicide is still a mortal sin." I move in closer to him. Louis backs away an inch or two. "Sit down. I'm to report on your condition. I may be the only human being who will ever speak to you again. Don't waste the chance. This interview could go much worse. I don't need a weapon to hurt you."
He gives in. He sits. He never learned to defend himself, never wanted to; he had guards and servants for that. But Louis still has a spark of defiance, if only in words. "And you call yourself a priest."
I smile at him like a wolf. "Once a musketeer, always a musketeer. You said so yourself."
His fists clench on the top of the table. "My musketeers."
"We were not yours personally, like lap dogs or toy soldiers. The King's Musketeers, and France's. But you never understood that distinction, did you?" He still doesn't. I study him, looking for insight. "That was what made you a king no honorable man could serve. D'Artagnan broke his heart trying."
Louis' head turns toward the light a little. I can see his eyes behind the mask, flat and icy. No reaction to the name. None, when D'Artagnan served him from the cradle, when he died still trying to serve him ... I want Louis' blood. I want to break his bones with my own hands. I keep to words. "You created enemies by your tyranny. If it hadn't been us, it would have been someone else. The nobles, the Fronde, a starving mob -- you are at least alive, and better treated than Philippe was."
I'm not the only one who wants a more direct confrontation. His hands, so much like Philippe's, are clenched and shaking on the edge of the table. "Thank you so much." Each word is precise, regal, razor-edged with sarcasm.
Whatever I think of him, I have my instructions. I look around the room. It's high noon outside, but the barred ventilation shaft brings in only weak and indirect sunlight. "We can probably find you a cell with a window, when the political situation gets quieter. More books. Eventually, some alternative to the mask itself. Understand, we can't ever let you walk free. We can't trust you enough. But we can offer you some kindness." I bring out my best offer, the only thing he's likely to want besides freedom and murderous revenge. "Your mother could come and see you."
"Bitch." I flinch from the obscenity. I was prepared for the smooth cold Louis of the palace days, or the disintegration of madness. This raw hatred is worse than either. "She knew you would do this to me. You are all traitors, and you know it. God ordained me king. When you fight me, you fight Him."
"The Lord taught us that whoever leads must also serve, like the shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep." My answer is automatic. For the first time I'm a little afraid of the boy. He is a beast, the more so for being caged like one. "You had a duty to France as surely as any soldier. When you violated that ..."
He waves my objections away. "Your Jesuits talked about feeding the peasants, but what they really wanted was power. What does your puppet king offer, when you pull his strings? A Cardinal's hat? The Pope's crown? I knew what the Jesuit general wanted, long before I knew his name."
A beast with a brain. I'm startled enough to give him an honest answer. "Philippe is no puppet. He's as intelligent as you were -- more so, because he listens to people. He'll be king long after I'm gone."
Louis makes an ugly sound, like a laugh. "I'm sure he expresses his gratitude most wholeheartedly."
I was right to come alone. Athos would have long since broken his neck. I pretend I don't catch the innuendo, to stop from breaking it myself. "I never denied that I was ambitious. Someone has to be the next Pope. But it matters how and why I reach a goal."
"He'll never get you to that goal. He's ignorant." A short chopping gesture with one hand, dismissing his twin. "No matter how much you advise him, the Cardinals would outmaneuver him. But I could do it." Louis' voice grows smoother, more civilized. He sounded this way when he sent me to imprison Philippe years ago, for the good of France. "I always meant to choose the next Pope. I had plans, useful secrets that were never written down. Only here." He touches the iron, at his temple. "Give me back my crown, keep the oath you took at my coronation, and you can have it all."
The sheer audacity takes my breath away. I feel a little admiration, one politician to another. "Oh, well spoken. The appeal to honor is a nice touch. But honor was always only a word to you. If you ever once had power again, you'd kill us all by inches. Including me." I call up the memory on purpose, blood on a stone floor, and lash him with the pain of it. "I know you, Louis. I've seen how you keep your promises. No one on God's earth wants you back on the throne. You took your last free breath the night you killed D'Artagnan."
It reaches him this time. His head dips in the heavy mask, at least. He rocks back and forth a little, like an animal half aware of an injury. "I didn't want him dead. The other one, the impostor, not him." His voice blurs with misery the longer he speaks. "He always protected me. All of a sudden he was protecting the other one instead, and moving so fast ... I didn't mean to." I can't see his eyes. I doubt he can see me either, but the front of the mask turns toward me. "How long is it? You can tell me that, at least. I lost count." Louis' fingers move over a set of scratches in the table top. I recognize them as tally marks.
"Yes, I can tell you." In spite of everything, I'm embarrassed for him. The boy is graceless to the end, lacking even courage. I'd much rather fight grown men. There's no satisfaction in this kind of victory. "Two months and seventeen days. It's October seventh, out there."
"Thank you." His voice is liquid, half-choked. He sounds like Philippe in the old days, except that Philippe never whined at us. He wipes at the eye and nose openings of the mask with his fingers. "Nobody ever. Ever talks to me."
"For God's sake, boy." I have a handkerchief somewhere. "Show a little dignity." I find the piece of linen and press it into one of his hands. "Louis. If you want, you can make confession and take Holy Communion. I have everything here. Even Philippe was allowed that much."
"Sorry ..." His voice dies down into a mumble. I lean in closer, face to face with him alongside the wooden table. As I'm still moving an old soldier's instinct stabs at me. His posture isn't right for the words. His feet are drawn up under the chair, balanced, his spine compressed like a spring.
No more warning than that. As I recognize the instinct he moves, both hands clutching at my coat collar. Louis pulls me forward with all his strength, butting me in the face with ten pounds of wrought iron. Nothing saves me but my height, and leverage. I'm pulling away as he moves, and so my skull stays unbroken. Not, unfortunately, my nose. I feel the small bones shatter there, gushing blood and blinding me with pain. Louis is still moving, screaming hate at me. He butts at me again. I catch the mask in my two hands, barely. I can't grasp the rounded surface and he slips away. My fingers claw over the mask but his face, his eyes, everything is protected. Again. I can't see him coming but I can hear him. I grip below the mask, the softness of his throat. He lets go of my clothes. He tries for the same grip on my throat but that's what I want, my arms are longer. I force him back, spilling him out of the chair, hands closed on his windpipe. He's on the floor, his life between my hands. Everything constricted, no blood flow to the brain, no air to the lungs. I have leverage, skill, all the air I want; I only have to wait.
Before his heart stops, before his lungs stop laboring for air I let him breathe again. The small mercy is one of the hardest things I've ever done, and one of the most distasteful. I can see again by then, though blood drips into my eyes. Some flange or edge on the mask cut across the front of my scalp, along with everything else. I leave him on the floor and dab at my bloody face with my handkerchief.
"Nicely played. You were most convincing. I should have remembered. Philippe killed a guard that way, here in the Bastille, the night you caught him." I've held back the urge to be cruel to him. I see no reason to continue that restraint. "You never would have gotten out even if you'd killed me. Only the guards outside have keys to the last set of doors. I'm the one who freed Philippe; I made very sure you'd never escape the same way. What was it you said to him? Live in the mask you hate. Until you love it, until you die in it."
He crouches, hating me but not liking his chances in a second fight. "I am the king."
I don't resist the vicious impulse for a second. "You are a soldier's bastard." He stares as if I'm speaking in tongues. I wait, watching him, until he absorbs the idea. "It's a better blood line than Louis of Bourbon, to my mind, but not one with any link to the throne. You have no more lawful claim than Philippe does; the only difference is that he can rule without bloodshed."
"You're lying." He spits the words at me.
"Not at all. I would never lie to D'Artagnan's son."
He believes me then. I see the defiance drain out of him. The crown was all he ever had, the only thing that kept him from being a common bully. Even after we took the literal crown from him, and the power that went with it. He still had the image of himself as a true prince, betrayed by usurpers. Until now. "No." The tremor in Louis' voice is real this time. "No. He was loyal to me, to the crown. He was ... almost my friend. Even against you. The legendary friendship, the four who are one, but he broke it when I told him to."
"Even against us." I won't deny him that one shred of comfort. "Until he had another son to fight for. He couldn't save you both. You forced the choice on him. You forced every choice he made, all of us made, until there was no solution but the mask." Insight strikes, bringing a sharper pain than my injuries from the fight. "My God. Was that it all along? Christine, Raoul's fiancée. Did you want her for herself? Or did you want Raoul and Athos hurt so your favorite toy would have to choose between them and you?"
"No. I don't know. I don't have to explain myself to you." He shrinks back, realizing afresh how alone he is. "She was the prettiest one, yes. But the soldier was so smug. A commoner without even a family name, but he acted like it was his garden, his party ..."
"A young man in love always feels like a king. You wouldn't know." I can't stand to look at him. The cell is cleaner than most houses, but the spiritual stench overwhelms me. "As petty as that? A suicide and two murders, because you weren't getting enough attention?"
"I am the ..." Louis' lifelong self-justification fails him at last. "Leave me alone."
I make my voice as light and hard as fine steel. "Believe me, that is exactly the plan." I get a lot of pleasure, seeing that realization hit him. If only I could see his face, too. He sinks to the straw-covered floor, sagging like a half-empty sack. I leave the religious books on the table. He'll need them. "You might want to know that you come from a very healthy family. Your natural grandfather is eighty and still breaking horses. Live a long time, Louis. Live a very long time."
"Sorry ..." It's the same noise he made before, luring me into ambush. Louis has no energy left to lie with, now. I don't care.
"You're sorry you got caught." I could grind his face into the floor. Words are easier. "I'm going to pray for you, Louis. If any man ever damned himself, it's surely you." I unlock the cell door with the deaf-mute's keys. He doesn't try to stop me, he doesn't even stand. I lock the door behind me. I can still see him through the small barred window in the door. He flinches at the clash of metal on metal, as if the sounds are whip blows falling on his back.
First gate in the corridor. The keys aren't numbered, I fumble for the right one. I hear Louis start crying, behind me, through the door. The filthy little murderer. He's probably faking it again. My broken nose still drips blood, and the new shirt is a complete loss. He's crying not like a grown man or a child but like a baby, in racking hopeless sobs without a shred of dignity. Good. He's had more mercy than he deserves. I should have given him to Athos. Athos will think I'm a fool for coming here at all. I lock the first gate behind me. Let him go mad all alone.
Second gate. How can the keys be this confusing, there are only three of them. The crying still goes on behind me. Unnerving. I remember Philippe's cries of fear when I broke the lock on his mask with a hammer and chisel. The panic in his eyes, later, when I told him I was the one who had brought him to that hell in the first place. I can hear my own voice telling him. I told him I'd done it, I told him I was damned for it. Like Louis. Louis gave the order, I obeyed it, and see which one of us is walking free now. I hear my own voice on another day, too, telling Porthos that forgiveness is the best thing on earth. I get the gate open and lock it behind me. I put the chain of keys away. The last gate is an iron grating between the main corridor and this one. No key here. I'll have to call a guard to open it from the outside.
Another memory, D'Artagnan's voice. Some problems can't be solved with a sword. Any man can be better, even Louis. It's so clear, so real that I look around expecting to see his ghost at my shoulder. I don't believe in ghosts. No more do I believe in pursuing hopeless causes. Louis is an unpleasant, treacherous creature. Barring a miracle, he always will be. And I told him the truth. Miracle or not, we can't ever let him go. We can't ever let him see anyone or talk to anyone beyond the few of us who already know his secrets. And we few are sick of him. We won. He lost. We shouldn't have to be responsible for him, any more than if we had killed him when we beat him.
We nearly did kill him. We all wanted to. Athos and Porthos and I with D'Artagnan's blood on us. Lieutenant Andre in a rage over the murder of his lifelong hero, all the young musketeers D'Artagnan had led and trained and taught. Philippe most of all; Philippe would have killed Louis on the spot. He started to, he had his hands on him. But D'Artagnan raised up and shouted, no, he's your brother. It cost all the strength he had left. The blood gushed out of him when he moved. He should have known better, should have lived longer. He was an idealist; I'm not.
I'm no idealist. I'm a tarnished priest and a renegade musketeer and a Royal Advisor under very odd circumstances. My expensive clothes are ruined. My face is bloody, throbbing. I'll be a mass of bruises tomorrow. I would be very happy, overjoyed, if I never had to see Louis or the iron mask again.
Oh, hell.
He doesn't hear me coming back. The choking, gasping sobs only stop when I open the door of the cell itself. He's curled up in a lump on the bed, his face to the corner. It's a long minute before he sits up and faces me. Louis probably thinks I've come to kill him. Heaven knows it would make more sense. When I don't move away from the door he gets up, meeting his fate on his feet. It's a beginning.
"If you expect to stay sane you'll have to keep your mind occupied," I say roughly. "Everyone knows that. I think I'd better teach you Latin."
"I ... know Latin." He seems to be considering the word 'sir.' "Father."
"I doubt that very much. No royal tutor ever made you work for anything in your life. Remember, I was in the palace too. Besides, that was church Latin." I have another book with me, one of my own. I weigh the chances of getting it back intact, and leave the small volume on the table. "Cicero. See what you can make of it. I can come back in a week or so and see how you're doing."
"I ... yes." He's startled. No facial expression through the mask, but body language is just as revealing with a bit of practice. Louis decides, clearly, not to press his luck. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me. I'm not your friend." If he makes the first move toward the half-open door, I'll be happy to prove it. "I owe a debt, but not to you."
Louis doesn't understand. He never did. D'Artagnan poured his heart out, trying to teach him honor, without making any change in the boy. But I'm the only outside contact Louis has now, or can hope for. He can't fight me, and he doesn't dare ignore me. He searches for some formula, some way of behaving besides imperious king to degraded commoner. He picks up the book, weighing it in his hand as if it might explode. "I will read this."
"Do that." It will be a long time before I turn my back on Louis. Especially when he seems most penitent, most human. He's tried that trick before. But someday it may not be a trick. If there's any honesty in this deceitful creature, I am the deceitful creature who can find it. In a place like this, I betrayed D'Artagnan's son. In a place like this, I saved him. If Philippe, who was betrayed, can be saved there may be mercy left over for the two of us who betrayed him. I nod curtly to him -- a fragment of old court manners, in spite of myself -- and open the cell door.
"Aramis." I tense, ready for another fight. He's still by the table. Staring at the floor, not even facing me. "I know it doesn't matter. But it ... I meant it, some of it. I didn't want D'Artagnan to die. Out of everyone I've even known, I didn't want him to die."
"It does matter." Because he forgave you. Someday I may even tell you so. I shut the door and lock Louis in with his ghosts.
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