Make A Way
Disclaimer: Jacqueline does not belong to me. The priest does. That said, my knowledge of Roman Catholicism has been gleaned sporadically from books and movies. So, if any Catholics out there notice mistakes I've made in portraying their faith, please tell me, and I will make changes. I strive for accuracy in all things. (/)
Sometimes life reaches that desperate point where the wrong thing to do has to be the right thing to do. Jacqueline Roget had killed a man. It doesn't matter which direction you go: sometimes you just have to go. She had gone to Paris. And now she slumped against a Parisian wall and cried, leaning against the fetid stone as sobs racked her body.
'I could have sold the horse,' she thought, fighting down hysterics. She had let the lathered animal go just outside the city, and walked, stinking of its sweat and her own, into the greatest city in Europe, noticing little of the fabled beauty around her, hiding in the bustle of market day. 'Your father is dead.' The words jeered at her in the Cardinal's aristocratic sneer. 'Your brother is taken. You are alone.'
Just that morning she had wished for independence, freedom to fight for her ideals. Now she would be lucky to survive the night, a hunted fugitive and a woman alone in a strange city.
'I must do something. I must do something to help Gerard before I am captured or ravished or killed myself.' She stood, though forcing her spine upright was like forcing a bent poker straight, and stemming the tears that welled up from her heart like damming that Red Sea without divine intervention. Wiping her eyes and blowing her nose, Jacqueline stepped out into the avenue, aware that she must look like a prostitute, or worse.
'I must get rid of this dress.' It stank of horse, and the style marked her a country bumpkin, an easy mark for footpads. And, in the dress, she was a woman. Pulling her scattered thoughts up from the depths of sorrow, she began to form a plan.
With the bundle of still-warm garments in her arms and the sound of frantic, disappearing footsteps in her ears, Jacqueline slumped once more in an alley, shaking at the thought of what she'd just done. The man had seemed almost grateful when she'd tossed his purse away into the darkness. He'd run one way after it, comical, barefoot, and in his underclothes; and she, juggling shoes, doublet, and other items that had been his, had run the other. 'I didn't know gentlemen wore so many clothes,' she thought, trying to sort them out without dropping any. 'With this, and a uniform on top, I don't know how Musketeers manage to move, much less duel.'
Something scuffled in the darkness behind her, and she whirled, nearly dropping the pile. An animal? Or a two-legged predator? Jacqueline did not wait to see. She ran, wrapping the clothes in her skirt, into the warm pool of light from one of the newly lit street lamps. Looking around frantically for a haven, she noticed a shop, an apothecary's, and a glover's, both with shutters drawn for the night. No help. But on the corner, buttresses flying, nothing like the tiny chapel at home, stood a church. Not one of Paris's famous cathedrals, but a sanctuary, as houses of its kind have been since time began.
Three steps, and Jacqueline was inside, panting more from fear than exertion. Before a priest could accost her, she ducked into a confessional, yanked the curtain across, and, tossing the bundle onto the wooden seat, began to strip.
A scrape at the grille froze her with her skirt over her head. 'Surely there can't be…' But no, a soft voice spoke from the other side of the partition. "Have you something to confess, my child?"
She didn't think the priest could see her state of undress through the lattice in the darkness. "Father, I-" The response was instinctive, though the voice sounded nothing like Pére Henri, the village priest back in Rochefoucald, but more like…. 'Papa.' Forcing the words past the lump in her throat, and her dress over her head, Jacqueline answered. "Father, I—I don't know. I killed a man today."
Silence. She sank down, shivering, in her chemise. "He'd killed my father. It was self defense, not revenge." 'Not yet.'
"Then no absolution is needed. Say an Act of Contrition, and pray for his soul before you sleep. Your father was a good Catholic?"
Jacqueline nodded, and then realized he couldn't see her. "Yes," she choked.
"Then he rests tonight in the arms of God." He seemed to be waiting for something more from her. To fill the stillness, Jacqueline bent and kicked off her muddy clogs, replacing them with the stolen silk stockings.
"And I stole a man's clothes," she muttered. "But I left him his purse, father. He was rich; he had more clothes, or could buy more." She tugged on the doeskin knee breeches and adjusted the buckles over the garters.
"You've been busy today, child. Five decades of the rosary."
"And I-" She faltered, fumbling with the shirt laces in the gloom. "I don't know what to do, father, or where to go." Tucking in the yards of linen, Jacqueline stood, trying to button the waistcoat and tie the cravat at the same time, while the priest thought.
"Stay here tonight. In the morning, God will show you. Te absolvo." And the grate slid shut before Jacqueline could say she didn't have a rosary, only her mother's crucifix, and she heard the priest shuffle away.
Jacqueline began to pray, though her voice drifted to a mumble as the night wore on, and then to a sigh, until, at something like peace, she fell asleep, curled awkwardly in the cubicle, covered by the stolen frock coat. The tocsins woke her at dawn, and she shrugged into the coat and stumbled out into the street, leaving her horsy dress in the confessional.
Blinking sleep from her eyes, she tied her hair back into a queue with a lace from her bodice and looked around, wondering what to do next. Her pockets, like her stomach, were empty, but she stood wearing a new life. No longer a farm girl who dreamed of becoming a Musketeer, she was a gentleman who could actually be a Musketeer. All she lacked was a sword.
Jacqueline nearly whooped with pleasure as the idea came to her from out of her bones. Here was her way to Gerard's freedom, practically a passport into the dungeons…and back out again. 'I won't be Jacqueline Roget anymore,' she thought. 'I'll be Jacques, Jacques—' A street sign caught her eye: Rue Lepont. 'Jacques Lepont.' She whispered the name to herself a few times while she looked about for someone to ask directions of.
A servant, broom in hand, had stepped out of the glover's and begun to sweep the cobbles in front of the shop. Jacqueline stepped up behind the hunched figure and cleared her throat. "Excuse me, my good woman. Can you direct me to Musketeer Headquarters?"
The girl jumped, and Jacqueline nearly giggled, both at the response and at her own voice, a few octaves too low, nearly missing the whispered directions. Trying to remember them, she took herself off, striding like the aristocrat she was meant to be. Several times the swagger nearly tripped her as she stopped short to check a turn or an unmarked intersection of tiny Parisian streets.
'I will never understand this city.' But no one took any notice of the eccentric 'gentleman', and soon what she had thought was a wrong turn brought her up in front of a high stone façade. 'This must be it.'
The door was ajar, so Jacqueline pushed through it, stepping over the high threshold into a long room filled mostly with table. Two men-boys, really- sat at it, one eating, one fiddling with something made of paper. Another pair lounged around them. All four wore Musketeer uniforms and swords. They looked up insouciantly at the clip of her shoe on the hay strewn floor.
Jacqueline cleared her throat. "Excuse me. I'm interested in enlisting in the Musketeers."
The beginning