Upon the Queen
Blue Fenix
Anne of Austria, Queen Mother of France, moved quietly through the formal garden within the palace walls. The stiff, dove-gray silk of her full skirts rustled against the finely trimmed hedges as she passed them. Anne had spent most of her life in this palace, and French palaces like it, yet this was one of the few times she'd been completely alone. No guards, no spies, no attending gentlewomen; not even the elderly nun who was more confidante than chaperone. She'd outlived her cold, jealous husband. She'd outlasted her son Louis' near-mad whims. She'd seen her son Philippe's secret triumph, escaping a hellish prison of Louis' devising to take his twin's place and name on the throne.
Philippe's freedom had given her her own. Anne had nothing to fear any more from royal spies or royal wrath. That freedom meant nothing now. In the same hour they'd won, she had lost the only person who taught her to hope for freedom in the first place. Anne automatically followed the narrow gravel path past the chapel, to the little square of hallowed ground behind it. One grave, smooth slabs of fine white marble fitted close to the turf. She didn't need to read the inscription. No dates, no ranks, no list of achievements, no pious or sentimental epitaphs. Not even his full name. The simplicity had almost an arrogance about it. This one word, D'Artagnan, should tell you all that he was. If the world forgets the legend that went with the man, so much the worse for the world.
He wasn't alone. Anne hadn't expected he would be. His oldest friend stood at the foot of the grave. Athos, in the old-fashioned black uniform he wore whenever he came to the palace. A breeze stirred his long, graying hair. He came to attention automatically on seeing the Queen. She gestured with one hand, preventing him from following the military courtesy with a full court bow. Anne stopped beside him, in the grass a few feet below the grave. "I thought I'd find you here. Were you praying?"
"Just talking, your majesty. I haven't found it wise to attract God's attention." His voice was light, quiet but with an almost metallic edge to it. Not bitter, or not actively so. He'd worn bitterness, and cynicism, until he'd worn them out; now Athos only said what he thought. Anne had known of him, as one of D'Artagnan's friends, for all the years they had served at the palace. She'd exchanged perhaps ten words with the man in those decades. Athos moved one hand, a gesture taking in the whole glade, and a softer note crept into his voice. "This is a beautiful place you've given him. Thank you."
The small courtesy brought her sorrow back full force. Almost anything could, these days. She lived among so many treacherous reminders of him. Anne kept her face frozen, with a lifetime of self-discipline. If Athos noticed, he respected her need for distance. In a moment, Anne could speak again. "Philippe hasn't noticed you missing yet. He's meeting with the Fronde and the nobles."
Athos smiled, with genuine pride for his protégé. "Philippe will have them eating out of his hand. He has a great deal of charm, and he's developing the judgment to go with it. I don't think even Aramis realizes yet what he's unleashed."
Her opportunity, sooner than she'd hoped. "No, Father Aramis doesn't know everything," the Queen said. "I asked him to find something for me. The dagger Louis was carrying, that night." The night he'd tried to kill his twin and killed his most loyal follower instead. His father. "I asked Lieutenant Andre to find it, then I asked Aramis. Neither of them could. It's an odd thing to lose. Unless you have it."
Athos only looked at her. Anne had the impression of depth behind his eyes, like dark corridors lined with room after room. But all the doors were locked and barred against her. It occurred to her how gaunt he was. He always had been thin, and the loose over-cloak of his uniform hid any changes, but the sunken, gray look of his face was new and unsettling. "I forbid you," Anne said.
The tone of command reached him and disappeared without effect, a stone sinking into water. His own voice was bland. "Forbid what, your majesty?"
"I forbid you to ... slip away. For Philippe's sake. He still needs you." The only argument likely to mean anything to him. She held out her hand, as if lecturing a child for some petty theft. "Give it to me."
All his barriers were gone for a moment. He looked fragile without them, beaten down by a grief as intense as her own. "I hadn't decided," he said. "Elementary tactics, always have a line of retreat. As you say, I had no right. My word, then." Athos took a long, parchment-wrapped shape out from under his cloak.
He unwrapped it for her. A ten-inch blade, narrow and clean and glittering sharp. The Queen had seen such things all her life; every man of any rank carried a sword or other weapon as routinely as he wore shoes. But this had killed D'Artagnan. She couldn't make herself touch it. She could barely look at it. Anne closed her eyes. Tears flowed down her unmoving face, and brought as little relief as if they'd belonged to someone else.
A steady hand supported her under one elbow. "You should sit down, your majesty."
The Queen opened her eyes. "No. I've borne other things, I can bear this."
He laid the naked knife at the foot of the sheet of marble. "It wasn't as bad as you're imagining," Athos said quietly. "He wasn't in pain. I've been wounded. It never hurts until afterward." Anne met his eyes, searching. After a lifetime of royal politics, she knew every half-step and fine distinction between truth and lies. He was being honest with her. Almost.
She shook her head slightly. Athos, caught, retreated to the truth. "I've seen natural deaths that were far worse. The important thing ... D'Artagnan wasn't afraid, my lady. He'd saved Philippe, saved all of us, and he knew it. He was even happy. If any man ever died well ..." Athos' voice broke. He stopped, momentarily powerless to speak.
The Queen moved forward, this time, and laid cool fingers on his arm. "At least he had you with him. You three. I feel as if I know you. He told me so many stories, over the years. Especially you. He loved you very much, you know." A faint tremor went through Athos, felt rather than seen. His pain made Anne honest in turn. "I was a little jealous sometimes. You were able to share so much of his life, openly, and I could only steal a little time."
Athos nodded, accepting the candor and what it had cost. "Near the end, when we were all getting ready to die, he told Philippe he had always loved you. That was all he wanted his son to know, in the few minutes they had together. You weren't there physically -- D'Artagnan would never have let you into that kind of danger -- but you were in his heart."
"Thank you." Anne found herself calmer again. Perhaps it was the words, like a last message from the man she'd loved. Perhaps it was feeling a concern for someone other than herself. She put her hand out again for the dagger.
Athos looked startled. "Your majesty ..."
"Let me keep it a while, instead of you." This moment of clarity, of insulation from her own pain, was intoxicating by comparison after the weeks of solitary mourning. Anne meant to make full use of it. She could deal with Athos now. At the moment, she could deal with an army. "You promised Philippe to live and be as a father to him. I don't say you would intentionally break that vow. But alone in the middle of the night, the silence can be too much. I have lost a son too. I have lost D'Artagnan. I know." He yielded under the force of her odd, icy serenity, and handed over the long silver knife. Anne held it awkwardly, but safely, down at her left side. "Thank you, my lord Comte."
The title froze Athos where he stood. "The Comte de la Fere has been dead for thirty years. Justly dead. No need to dig up those bones, your majesty."
"I can't just leave you like this." The Queen found she genuinely wanted to honor this man in some way. She could afford that luxury now. "D'Artagnan would never let me help him, or his friends, with royal favor. It wasn't safe, while Louis or my husband reigned. But we owe you so much. Philippe owes you so much. I know he will agree with me. If not a title ..."
"Royal Advisor is title enough. And a public pardon for trying to kill the King is impressive in itself." Athos smoothed the folds of his uniform and looked thoughtful. "It will build a pretty legend for Philippe, or rather Philippe under Louis' name. His sheer personal charm turned an assassin into a devoted courtier. Perhaps I can still be of some use after all."
"The Musketeers need a new captain," she said.
He shook his head decisively. "They do not need me. I half-killed some of them trying to get to Louis. That sort of thing is bad for morale. They don't need any of us. Aramis is doing at least two men's work already, between his Jesuits and helping Philippe. And Porthos was never officer material. No, Andre has earned the job. It was his loyalty to D'Artagnan, and the men's loyalty to him, that saved us. Confirm him as Captain, that's my advice as a royal advisor."
"Then I accept it, as a royal." Anne nearly smiled; she bowed her head briefly in tribute. The flash of humor was quickly gone, winter-killed. "Will you take nothing from us?"
Athos' soft voice grew even softer. "I had a request ready to make, once. Five minutes alone with young Louis." The darkness lived in his eyes again, with something not quite human lurking in back of them.
It was gone before Anne could flinch away. He looked down, and he was only an aging man in an old uniform. "I had to give that up. I could never have faced Philippe afterward. Or him." He was looking at D'Artagnan's grave, talking more to it than to the woman beside him. "I promised to stay by Philippe. That's all I really want, now. And one other thing." He paced out a rectangle in the grass, the length and width of the marble-topped grave, at his friend's right.
"You can surely have it." Queen Anne held out her hand to him. "You can all be with him; I only wish I could. But let it be many years, Monsieur Athos."
He took it, his cool dry fingers barely touching her. "Whatever time God demands." He bowed over it, the formality of kissing her hand without the actual contact.
Anne had another moment of understanding. "You don't like me."
Athos' eyes showed nothing now. "That would be presumptuous even for a royal advisor."
She thought better of him for his coldness. He could say nothing she hadn't already said to herself. She felt more kinship with Athos right now than with Aramis and his easy absolution. "Say it, then. I should have kept to my husband, or no one."
Athos watched her, impassive. "I had very little regard for Louis XIII. I knew too much about him. But D'Artagnan was ... damaged, by what happened." There was no cruelty in his voice, but also no more mercy than he would have given himself. "D'Artagnan was naturally honest. When he was young he could no more plot and intrigue than fly to the moon. He had to learn secrecy, even secrecy from us. We didn't know why. He never let us guess. But that distance grew over time." Anger crossed Athos' face, aimed as much at himself as at the Queen. "Before the end, that trust was so completely broken that I nearly killed him."
"It's true enough. I did hurt him." She wore a red rose at the waist of her gown. She took the flower up in her free hand, and studied its petals closely for flaws. "I had to choose between fidelity and barrenness. I'm sure you've heard what my marriage was like. The beggars were chanting it in the streets at the time." The Queen looked up; Athos did not meet her eyes. "I had to have an heir. I had to take a lover. Someone who would never use the affair against me or France. Someone strong and intelligent, for the child's sake. Someone gentle, for my own sake. And there he was, the best and bravest man I'd ever met, already in love with me. What could I do?"
"Did you love him?" Athos' flat, calm voice took all the insult out of the question.
She owed that answer too, and Athos as his friend had the best right to hear it. "Not as much as I should have. Not at first. If I'd loved him then, I would not have put him in danger. I used him. But he never cared." She cradled the rose in her right hand, close to her chest. "D'Artagnan liked me, as well as loving me. Not my face, not my crown, just Anne. He talked to me like an ordinary woman -- more than that, like a friend. Almost as if I were one of you. I did love him in the end, with all my heart." Anne laid the rose down on the polished marble. "I loved him as much as you did."
They stood facing each other, gazes locked like rival duelists. Then Athos looked down. "Gentleness would be like him. D'Artagnan must have made you very happy."
"The only real happiness I ever had. I thought that my child would be a comfort too. Perhaps Philippe would have been. But instead ..." Twenty years of bitterness rose in her throat. Queen Anne fought it down until she had control of her voice. "You mustn't blame D'Artagnan for what Louis became. He was my husband's child in everything but blood. The King didn't care whose blood, since I was distasteful to him, but he wanted an heir in his own image. He took Louis from me too, though we all lived under the same roof."
Her fingers tightened around the steel in her other hand. "The King chose the nurses, tutors, servants ... I was never alone with my child for more than a few minutes. Everyone else Louis saw, every day, taught him that a king was second only to God. God loved only him, and so he owed nothing to anyone. D'Artagnan could see him from a distance, but no more." She saw that reach Athos. "Louis was ten before they ever spoke to each other. He was King himself, and almost a grown man, before his real father was any part of his life. By then ..." Anne opened her empty hand, opportunity falling away.
"I never thought what it was like for you. As a parent." Athos' eyes had warmed.
His sympathy, now, was harder to bear than his disdain. The Queen straightened her spine a little more. "I have never said how sorry I was. For your son. The two of you were a comfort to D'Artagnan, you know. He couldn't talk to his own child, or play with him, but he could with yours. He would come back sometimes and tell me about Raoul."
Athos was shaken again, hearing his son's name spoken out loud. "They were fond of each other. I used to say to D'Artagnan -- when I knew nothing about his secrets -- that he would be a good father."
"He always hoped Louis would grow up like your son, and he was always disappointed. He would be very happy to see you protecting Philippe now."
Athos nodded heavily. "I hope that he is. Thank you, your majesty."
Anne wavered where she stood. She had discharged her last debt, gratitude. The release was like the removal of a physical burden. She felt light, floating like a woman in a fever dream. "I believe I will sit down. I would like to stay here a little while."
"Of course," Athos said. If she had known nothing about him, Anne would have known him for a nobleman in hiding by the quality of his manners. There were no benches or seats in the little glade, nothing but the flat-topped tomb itself. He spread his black uniform cloak over the crisp, moist grass and helped her sit. The Queen settled down gracefully, her silk skirts pooling around her.
"Thank you, sir." She reached up with her right hand and let him touch it to his lips. "I need nothing else." Anne spoke warmly, but it was a dismissal with all the royal blood of Spain and Austria behind it. Athos bowed formally and left her. She sat unmoving and watched him across the top of D'Artagnan's grave until he disappeared from sight among the trees and hedges.
She let her shoulders slump, laying down the mask of regal serenity. For a few moments Anne only watched straight ahead of her, the sun on her face. Now that she had the freedom to cry, the tears would not come. Surely freedom was over-rated. She spoke, in a voice unclouded by weeping. "Forgive me, beloved."
Anne brought up her left hand, freeing the long steel dagger from its concealment in her skirts. With the knife in her lap she undid the jeweled buttons on her sleeves one by one. The calm ceremony of her own movements pleased her. This was right, appropriate, balancing the scales of justice. She picked up the weapon her son had murdered with and laid her other wrist palm up across her lap.
Something dark, looming near. A bigger hand closed over hers. "No." Athos, stooping down behind her.
A sound she'd never imagined started far down in her throat and climbed the scale. Anne flung herself away from the Musketeer, pulling free of his too-loose grasp. She lashed back with a lifetime of rage. She swung the knife sideways, felt its tip snag and come free again. She flailed at him, but Athos caught her wrists and this time his grip was stone.
"Please, my lady." He twisted one hand with calculated force, and the dagger dropped. Athos sank to his knees in the grass, eye to eye with her. Blood pooled in a shallow scratch on the side of his face. He released one of her hands and investigated the cut with a fingertip. "That hurt," Athos said mildly.
Queen Anne stared at him with loathing. "Let me go."
Athos released her other wrist. In the same motion, he scooped the dagger off the ground. He held it off to the side, pointed away from both of them. "Let me call your ladies for you. You need someone ..."
"I need nothing." She clung to her anger, her hate like a lifeline. "Let me alone."
"I can't do that, your majesty." Athos spoke gently, as if to a lover or a child. She didn't want his compassion. It took her rage away, and left only the grief. "Not for D'Artagnan, not for Philippe, and not for you. You haven't done anything worth dying for."
"I ruined D'Artagnan's life, and then I didn't save him." Anne let her hands lie empty, helpless in her lap. "When you brought Philippe in Louis' place. I should have known he'd protect the only son he knew about."
Athos laid one hand on top of hers. "I could have kept Raoul and his girl away from Louis' garden party. They'd both be alive, and none of us would be here." He let out a breath. "Our own blunders are the hardest to forgive, even harder than conscious sins. I know. I've made more than anyone." He regarded the long, thin knife in his other hand. "Keeping this was a mistake."
He brought the steel around and down in one fluid, expert movement. The tip of the blade found the widest seam between the slabs of marble. It grated against the sides but slid into the grave marker haft-deep. Athos wrenched it sideways with sudden violence, and the weapon shattered in his hand.
Anne sobbed out loud. It was too much like her nightmares of D'Artagnan's murder. The tears flowed freely, burning hot, far beyond her power to control them. She shook with weeping. The deep, wrenching sobs hurt the muscles in her chest and stomach. She crouched on the grass, all her regal composure broken, unable to care.
She felt arms around her, supporting her. A voice choked with its own tears whispered close to her ear. The words were lost in the roaring inside her head. Only the tone mattered, human comfort in her agony. She clung to Athos, and he held her. His touch demanded nothing in return. He held Anne until sheer physical exhaustion quieted her crying, until her breathing slowed close to normal. Her fatigue felt like relief, after that storm of emotion. When his arms loosened around her she sat up, red-eyed, scrubbing her face with the back of her hand like a beggar's child.
"Allow me." Athos reached into his coat sleeve and presented a handkerchief with an ornate gesture. "Your majesty."
She laughed, shaky but with a flash of real humor, and took it. The Queen wiped at her eyes. "Under the circumstances, I think you might call me Anne."
"You may not want me to." Athos' eyes were kinder, but somber. "You made me give you my word of honor. I'll have to ask the same of you."
She looked at the grassy path, at the chapel visible through the trees, anywhere but at those cool insistent eyes. No use. He could wait forever. "I heard one of the generals say, honor and D'Artagnan are wrapped in the same shroud." Anne shivered. "He got great credit for the poetry, and the noble sentiment. I had to sit there, listening, and not let anyone know ..." She raised her hands to her face, palms pressed flat against her eyes.
"Aramis said we could make everything whole again, sweep all the masks away. He forgot about yours," Athos said. "I can't comfort you. I can't even comfort myself. But we all have to go on somehow."
"For Philippe's sake." In that moment, Anne nearly hated her remaining son for being alive and free. She let her hands sink into her lap again.
"Not only for Philippe," Athos said. "For our own sakes, if we can bear it. I knew D'Artagnan more than twenty-five years. That was a great gift. This pain now is what the gift costs."
His voice grew rougher. He swallowed, eyes closed, and hesitated a moment before going on. "If I refuse it, if I say the price is too high, then in some part I'm refusing the gift too." Athos shook his head. "As I say, it's no great comfort. It's only how I explain things to myself."
Queen Anne watched him, kneeling in the wet grass beside his best friend. "I will go on living." She spoke each word clearly, making a vow of it. "You've helped me once today. I think I need more help."
Anne held out her right hand, palm up. Athos took it cautiously, once again barely touching her. "I don't ask you to be D'Artagnan. That would insult you both, no matter how good my intentions were. But would you, Athos, be my friend?"
His eyes were shuttered, looking past her, hiding his thoughts. Then he focused back on her. Athos' hand closed warmly on hers. For the first time she saw his real smile -- thin, uneven, but sweet enough to charm angels. "I believe I will."
Athos stood, moving smoothly for all his age, and drew her to her feet by their clasped hands. "Getting you inside and comfortable would be a friendly act, I think. Philippe will be out of the council meeting in a while. He'll probably want to see at least one of us." Athos scooped up the black cloak, folding it over his arm. Louis' broken dagger, he left lying in the grass to rust.
Queen Anne resisted, her eyes still on the marble-covered grave. "Wait."
"Anne." She looked up. He held her eyes. "D'Artagnan isn't here."
She bowed her head once more, as much a salute as a prayer. When she opened her eyes again they were clear and composed. "Thank you, my friend." Athos offered his arm. She took it.
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It well may be that in some difficult hour
Pinned down by pain, and moaning for release
Or nagged by want past resolutions' power
I might be driven to sell your love for peace
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay