Author's Notes: Thanks a lot for the reviews. I appreciate them. :-)
"Charles Lehmann. He is Swiss."
At a moment's notice, Aramis felt relief flood him. He looked warily at the soldiers and was careful not to let his alleviation be too obvious. More calm now, he turned back to the dying man and bent forward.
"Are you ready to confess your sins?" He tried to speak as clearly as possible and for a second, even considered using his command of German in order to get through to the Swiss. A whispered "yes" reached his ears.
A knock at the door interrupted only the lieutenant's concentration, while neither the priest nor the captaine took any notice. The door opened a moment later and Michel entered. To the lieutenant, a stranger who carried an armful of unidentified objects and inquired stutteringly: „May I? I brought the things you asked for, Father."
Without turning, Aramis replied calmly: „You may leave the oil, there isn't enough time for anything else."
Michel stared down at his arms perplexed. He nodded at the lieutenant to take the oil before turning rather abruptly and leaving.
After passing the oil on to the priest, the lieutenant resumed his position at the bed's end. He would have liked to leave too but he knew he had to stay.
Charles was his comrade and more importantly, his friend. They had known each other since the outbreak of war and had been friends since that fateful day when they had been ambushed by enemy soldiers and had sought shelter in a wine cellar. Now, it sounded too good to be true, too surreal to actually have happened.
He remembered a lot of things that had been happening over the last years. Only a few didn't include his friend, the Swiss.
With one hand he reached up to brush through his hair which looked as though he had risen just a little while ago.
Ah, yes. A bed. What he wouldn't give to go looking for a bed in this tavern and lie down, if only for a minute. He longed to get off his feet and take a moment to relax. But they weren't here for pleasure.
He threw a tired glance at the priest's face whose words were nearly indistinguishable. But it didn't matter, he had witnessed too many scenes like this to not know exactly what was being said. The lieutenant had memorized the words long ago.
So had Aramis. He knew what he had to say and when. He didn't need to think about any of it. Therefore he let his mind wander. Again, the memory of d'Artagnan appeared in his thoughts. Where could he be now? The dying man was a musketeer too, yet Aramis was shy of inquiring about his friend. Why, he couldn't say. He was reluctant to display his concern for d'Artagnan's whereabout so openly. He couldn't even ask the capitaine who was so much like the man from Gascony. If he knew d'Artagnan, they surely were best friends.
"Have mercy, Lord ..." , Charles whispered and Aramis permitted a smile to graze his lips. He stole a glance at the captain whose eyes hadn't left him since he had first sat down.
The man held his gaze fixed upon the priest's face. A silent accusal was apparent in his eyes. Perhaps he had recognized the far away look Aramis had worn a mere second ago. Yet he said nothing though for whose sake the padre wasn't sure. Maybe the young man's who stood on Aramis' other side, surely not for that of the dying Swiss.
A smile still grazed his lips, an engrossed look an his face displayed state of mind. Though it was still possible for Charles to experience a lucidum intervallum, a clear moment where his senses were not blurred, he was not experiencing one now. He was confessing his sins in a monotone voice as if he were reading them off some inner list only he could see. Still, there was no doubt that M. Lehmann wanted to confess his sins, that he wished to have his soul cleanse before stepping in front of his Creator.
Meanwhile, something in the captain's eyes made Aramis shiver. After spending dozens of years as God's humble servant, the man would have thought to have grown accustomed to constant observation. Yet, that look left Aramis uneasy, as if the captain knew exactly who he was. More so as the padre could not say the same about the officer. He had no idea what to expect of the man. Maybe that was another thing that disturbed him. Hadn't he been able to tell who stood before him when he was still younger?
"You know your words well", the captain observed quietly when the padre raised his head to meet his gaze. It had taken him a mere second to realize the father wasn't paying too much attention to Charles' ramblings.
Something within him rebelled against the thought that Charles was just ‚someone'. Some dying man whose name would be soon forgotten, whose rank didn't hold any meaning now. The captain knew that the very same fate befell hundreds of other men each day the war continued raging. But it should not befall Charles Lehmann. Because he was not merely a soldier, he was a friend.
"Why do say that?" The priest frowned at his words, yet he didn't contradict them.
Once again, the officer wished he were still a simple lieutenant. He'd be able to curse when he wanted to and even, yell at the padre to make him see why exactly he had chosen to say something. As it were, he had to lower his voice.
"You know your text well enough. You need not listen to what your penitent tells you, Father."
At first, the padre didn't seem to understand. Then he got angry.
"Are you saying I do not care?" Contrary to the officer, the priest's voice had grown louder. He stared hard at the captain, as though daring him to repeat his words. But he didn't need to. While stealing a glance at the lieutenant who had started to come over and shaking his head at him, he replied: "No."
The captain was not ready to fight over this, there were other things to attend to first. He knew he should never have started talking to the priest but for a moment, he had forgotten about everything else when he had met the padre's vacant gaze.
Now, the father seemed to consider his words for a moment, ere he turned back to the penitent and smiled down at him. Maybe it was luck that Charles had stopped talking only a mere second ago or perhaps, it was that he really did know what he was doing.
The fourth man who had so far neither spoken nor moved, let out a low sigh. With Charles' vitality slowly slipping away, he found himself looking in the other men's direction more frequently.
He knew what both his captain and the priest had said. They both thought that it was already too late to save the Swiss' life. He himself had not taken that close a look at the wound to judge its degree. And then, he had not yet seen many wounds in his time that had not been clearly mortal or just skin-deep. Above all, he was no doctor. Neither was his superior.
Was it not possible that he was mistaken? That there was still time left to save Charles' life? Perhaps, if he told the captain - respectfully - about his doubts, he'd let him go? There had to be a doctor to be found in this place!
"Where do you think you're going?"
He had not even moved but somehow the captain had read his expression well and sneaked up behind him.
"I would like to go looking for a doctor, mon capitaine."
"Permission denied. You stay."
The captain fastened his hard gaze on the other man. He understood the other's need to do something but he could not let him harbour doubts. Not with the lieutenant around who had been looking for an excuse to leave the whole time, although he had to know that he could not just leave. Charles needed him, after all.
The younger man opened his mouth as if to reply but contented himself with nodding. Sighing, the captain turned and motioned for his subordinate to do the same.
"Look at him", he ordered quietly. "It takes longer than I had anticipated but that's because he's resting. Were he to move, he would be dead already. The wound is too deep and too severe, there is nothing anyone could do."
"And half an hour ago?"
Charles was visibly paling and his wound had not yet stopped bleeding. It was possible, the other man did not see this or did not want to see it. Still, the captain winced slightly. He took another look at the wounded and shook his head. "There was never a chance for his survival", he replied aggrieved.
„And in Paris?" The ensign knew, he had to know, that this was not leading anywhere. Reluctantly the captain snarled: "Don't ask questions for question's sake! In Paris none of this would have happened. There is no sense in thinking about it in this fashion. Fact is: Charles is going to die and there is nothing we can now do or could have done to prevent it."
For a moment, he considered gripping the other's hand in a mute gesture of encouragement but he found he couldn't. It would not be appropriate this time. So he contented himself with nodding to the ensign before going back to the father and his penitent.
