War Heroes

6

Twin Sons of Different Mothers

...I couldn't live with what we'd done ... so I searched for them for years - without success. Then ... call it fate, chance... God ... what you will ... he came to me. - S2:E01

"Porthos!" Tréville called, lengthening his gait as he caught sight of the big Musketeer striding down the corridor toward the stairs at the front of the Louvre.

Porthos turned, saw Tréville stretch his pace and waited, admiring the blue brocade on the minister's new uniform. Well, not new, he observed, as Tréville caught up with him. "Minister," he genuflected slightly in deference to the not-so-new title. "Nice togs, blue suits you."

The former Captain of the Musketeers made a harried sound as he took Porthos by the elbow. "The queen's doing," he said briefly. "I'm headed to the dining hall, join me?"

"The palace dining hall?" Porthos inquired, eyebrows lifting. "They let the likes 'o me in there?"

"If you're with me."

"Ya don't gotta be dressed all niffy naffy?"

Treville's suppressed a rare smile. "Royal protocol takes too much time, I dine with the staff during the day and court dress is not required," he said, trotting down the stairs.

Porthos followed.

"You should have told Tanguy to inform me you were here. I would have been happy for a decent excuse to be shed of the meeting I was in. Politics," Tréville spat the word like a curse, though quietly. "Not only useless, a dead bore as well."

Porthos snorted at the rare honesty. Arnaud-Jean du Preyer - formerly known as Captain, now styled Minster Tréville - was closer than the Comte de le Fère with his thoughts. "I was here on business for the queen." He did not react to the sharp glance cast in his direction. "But I never turn down an invitation to eat."

The stairs were empty at the moment, though Tréville darted a look back over his shoulder as he urged Porthos down the second set of marble steps, the clatter of their boots covering his low-voiced question. "Can you sum it up quickly?"

"Two words," Porthos said out of the side of his mouth, "the dauphin."

The minister's lips flattened into a thin line. "I hope you made no rash promises."

"She didn't giv'me a whole lot'a wiggle room ... sir," he tacked on just a shade belligerently.

"She's frightened. Louis has ostracized ..." Tréville clamped his teeth together as he steered Porthos left off the stairs and down a long corridor where the chatter of the filled-to-capacity dining hall drifted to them even before they turned the last corner into the kitchen wing. "Never mind. This is neither the place nor the time."

The king's secret felt like an elephant's ponderous behind sitting squarely on his chest, making it difficult to breath. Paris needed to be prepared. That decrepit beetle, Feron, was preparing to pounce, Tréville knew it in the very depths of his soul, but the king continued to turn a deaf ear to any word against his bastard brother. Louis was dying, he wanted family around him - and that was the most charitable twist the minister could put on it. He had loved the boy like a son; the whims of the man had him chasing his tail constantly.

Thankfully the Inseparables had his back again, but they were five against innumerable odds, since Tréville was certain Feron was plotting treason with Gaston. But that was a headache for another day. He must remember to ask Athos to put one of the boys watching the Bastille; if Feron was coming and going, he needed to know.

"Bring us two plates of whatever's hot, and quickly, please, Annette." Tréville had chosen a table off in the corner, a little apart from the general hustle and bustle.

"I know, Minister. You're in a hurry." The serving maid, who'd appeared as if she'd been waiting for him, smiled flirtatiously. "And who might this fine-looking specimen be?" she asked, giving Porthos the once over and an audacious wink. "A Musketeer?" Her mouth rounded in an O as the big brown eyes caught sight of his pauldron. "One of the War Heroes?"

The tick at the corner of the minister's mouth could not be mistaken for anything other than amusement. Feron's mocking comment on the returned war heroes had obviously been heard and transformed. How it had gotten around so fast, Tréville had no idea, though his sources had informed him it was already all over Paris.

Minister Tréville had a handful of favorites among the staff, folk who'd gone out of their way to ease his difficult transition to palace life. In addition to helping to serve meals in both the staff and the royal dining room, Annette kept his rooms spotless, without one piece of paper moved from where he'd laid it down. He liked that a great deal, especially as the first maid assigned to his room had moved his papers around will-nil-you, so he had been in constant search of anything he laid down for more than five seconds. These days, in addition to just mopped floors, fresh towels and bed linens, and not one speck of dust in sight, he often came back to his chambers to find fresh flowers arranged before the window, or placed beside his bed, a luxury he had at first barely deigned to notice.

When he'd causally suggested to Annette that he did not require flowers in his rooms, nor did she need the extra work, she had pertly informed him everyone needed flowers in their life, they made a splash of cheerful color in otherwise sober rooms and soothed weary minds with their delightful scents.

He'd begun to pay attention after that, and found the carefully chosen blossoms made him smile at the end of a long day. Every now and then she would leave him a little note - violets represent faithfulness, nasturtium is for patriotism, if you want to court a lady, give her yellow tulips, denoting hopeless adoration.

Annette was one of his favorites.

"Annette, this is Porthos of the king's Musketeers. Porthos, Annette has worked in the Louvre since she was a child. If you ever need to find your way around the back ways of the palace, she knows every nook and cranny."

"Porthos!" she exclaimed, before Tréville had finished. "You are one of the war heros! I peeked at the ceremony the other day," the girl dimpled shyly, "but 'twas so crowded I didn't get much of a view. I bet the Spanish turned tail and ran when they saw you comin'." She winked again. "Going! I'm going, Minster!" And whisked herself away with a laugh.

Porthos turned to watch her go, shaking his head as he turned back to Tréville. "A ripe little arm full ya got there, Minister."

The man's frosty blue eyes softened, crinkling at the corners. "If I were twenty years younger," he said ruefully and adroitly changed the subject. "How's Aramis?"

Porthos wrinkled his nose. "I dunno. Ask Aramis."

Tréville's eyebrows rose like twin camel humps before scrunching together. "What's going on with the two of you?"

"Nothin'."

"Have you had a falling out?" Tréville asked, going straight for the heart of the matter. There'd been enough deception between them to last a life time, he knew to deal straight or not at all.

Nearly twenty years ago, give or take a few months, Porthos had appeared on his proverbial doorstep. A young man with a league-wide grin and an inimitable, in-bred swagger that could only have been inherited from his father. He'd been drug into the office by the ear, by one of the washer women, screeching about theft at the top of her lungs. Though she'd produced not one shred of evidence.

The child Tréville and de Foix had abandoned in the slums, along with his mother, had been hardly more than a baby. He'd had his mother's hair and his father's eyes at three. At thirteen, he'd had his mother's hair and, already, the promise of his father's height and build, along with his eyes. Tréville had known him instantly.

The captain had kept the secret for more years than he cared to think about now, and as a result, he had firsthand knowledge of just how long Porthos could hold a grudge. Thankfully the foundation of their relationship had been strong enough to weather Porthos' justifiable resentment.

Porthos scowled. "What's it to you?"

"You well know one does not throw away something of value simply because - for a time - it does not suit. Put the past behind you, Porthos, like you've done so many other times."

"Why should I?" The belligerence was back, considerably more on display. "You think I should just forget that he abandoned us; walked away from his commission like it was somethin' to be sold at the junk shop." Porthos heeded the unspoken warning in those blue eyes and lowered his voice. "You of all people oughta understand how angry I am with him."

"I do. But you understand better than most how superfluous resentment is, especially under the circumstances."

The dark head canted as the eyes narrowed. "You tryin' to make some comparison with m'father?"

"Hardly. What Belgard did was an act of depravity. Aramis' choices were made from a very different place."

"I know that."

Tréville watched the play of emotions Porthos never bothered to mask. "I noticed you haven't returned his sash."

Porthos' big hand involuntarily caressed the blue sash belted around his waist even as he started to growl. It was cut off by the reappearance of Annette with a tray bearing plates and tankards.

"There's trifle for dessert today, I'll bring some extra," she whispered confidentially, sliding the food off the tray, then balancing it on the edge of the table to move the tankards.

"Thank you, Annette."

She dimpled again, prettily. "My pleasure, Minister."

"So you think I should just get over it?" Porthos demanded, hardly missing a beat as the girl sashayed away.

"You mean to tell me four years negates all those years the two of you were as close as twin sons of different mothers?"

Porthos' tankard thunked against the table top. "He walked away from us without a backwards glance. Left us standing in the road as though we were a steamin' pile of horse shite. An' what happens when he waltzes back into the fold? He gets feted like the Prodigal Son, 'n Athos hands over a new pauldron like they're a dime a dozen."

Tréville ignored the plate steaming gently before him. "Has he lost his aim?"

"N'ah, he's as good as ever with a musket."

"Can't hold a sword anymore?"

"What is this?" the Musketeer stirred the hard shells swimming in butter, steaming gently, on his plate.

"Escargot."

"Snails?" Porthos sniffed the garlic-flavored mist rising from the large plate. "His sword arm is fine. Never had snails before." He watched Tréville deftly spoon up a mollusk and fork out the ... creature ... inside. He picked up his own spoon, though he wasn't certain even he was up to snails. "Why's everybody askin' me about Aramis, anyway? Make him haul his ass over here'n ask him yer'self."

Treville's spoon was suspended over his plate, but he did not look up as he said quietly, "I understand better than you think. It felt like I'd left behind a limb when I had to part with your father and de Foix." He lifted his head then. "It irks me no end that I was so wrong about Belgard's character, but the kinship was as real as it was for the four of you." He and his friends had been equally young and brash and sure of themselves. For a time.

"Three of us," the heir to the marquisate of Belgard muttered under his breath.

"He's a good man, Porthos, who made some bad choices."

"M'father?" Porthos interjected innocently.

Tréville shot the Musketeer a quelling look, though Porthos just grinned and forked out another snail. A little slimy, but if ya swallowed without chewing, they went down smoothly, leaving a buttery garlic taste lingering on the tongue. "Well, yeah, then if you're talking 'bout Aramis. Monumentally bad choices."

The word treasonous crackled like lightning between them, though it remained unvoiced.

"Athos has certainly returned a different man from the one I saw off to war four years ago. I heard he's quit drinking." Tréville tacitly changed the subject again.

If this was an invitation to expound on those changes, Porthos ignored it, though he could easily have filled the minister's ears with any number of untold tales. "So are you," he countered, stuffing his mouth full of baguette, "a different man that is."

Tréville could not remember the last time he'd had a decent night's sleep, or even time to empty his bladder completely. He pissed on the run these days - he'd learned to keep a chamber pot hidden behind his office door - and fell into bed at night exhausted, yet unable to sleep. "I suppose I am," he replied.

A bit fatalistically from Porthos' point of view. "Guess we all are. Though mabbe we would'a been anyway, even if the war had never happened." The Musketeer shrugged. "Four years older at least, 'n hopefully wiser."

"So, if you can't - or won't..." there was the faintest hint of a question mark after the 'won't' before Tréville continued, "tell me about the others, how are you faring?" The minister sat back and lifted his wine glass, having consumed his plate of food even quicker than Porthos.

"Nothin' different 'bout me, I am what I am 'n always will be. Big, mean and surly." Porthos lifted his gaze to the minister, open, honest and steady. "Mabbe a little bit meaner. We seen and done some things none of us're proud of. Took a toll on d'Artagnan'n Athos. Wasn' nothing I ain't done before 'n likely to do again do I stay with soldiering. Which is likely as well, since I don't got a lotta options in the way of earning a livin', 'less'n I go back to thievin' and whorin'. " He picked up his napkin and wiped at his mouth politely. As if wiping away the stain of his deliberate word choice before adding, "That don't appeal to me so much anymore."

Across the short width of the table, Tréville studied the man he'd commissioned as his first Musketeer. Belgard had been promoted to Captain of the king's guard shortly after that night's atrocity and both he and de Foix had been transferred out of Paris. They'd lost touch and while it had pained him, Tréville had also been relieved. He'd had no choice but to go looking for the mother and son when he'd been re-assigned to the Paris army post. He'd made a thorough search of it, his conscience allowing him to do nothing less, but the pair appeared to have been swallowed whole by the slums of Paris, he had found nary a trace of them.

Until Porthos had been dragged into his office by an ear. Tréville had never believed in fate, but he'd recognized an opportunity to right an old wrong, an offered the youth options: the magistrate or the army. Possible imprisonment or deportation on the one hand; on the other, a full belly, clean clothes and his own bed to sleep in every night.

Porthos had chosen the army, though he had been too young to warrant a soldier's wage. Tréville had first put him to work in the stables under the care of the master sergeant in charge of the equine cavalry. Porthos, never one to dawdle, had been so quick and efficient with his chores, he'd been hanging over Treville's desk looking for something else to do long before sun high. In desperation, the captain had started using him to run errands, and discovered he'd gained a powerful countermeasure to Richelieu's constant poking and prying into Musketeer affairs. All he had to do was hand the lad a missive, send him off to gallivant about the city and the cardinal's spies would hare after him like hounds after old Reynaud. It had given both of them immense pleasure to outfox the Red Guard. And Tréville the opportunity to do his business in private when needed.

It had been Porthos who'd brought Tréville the first vague warnings of a plot to snatch the French throne in 1619. Without any recognition of the enormity of the news he'd so casually reported at the end of the day, the youngster had noted he'd seen the Orléans mansion being aired and cleaned. Rugs beaten, furniture uncovered, because of course his curiosity had been piqued by all the activity and he'd had a look in the windows. He'd found it strange that Louis' maman had been supervising the operations, did she not have servants to oversee such goings on?

Porthos was looking askance across the table, that court jester eyebrow raised in query.

"To old times." Tréville lifted his wine glass in salute. "I was just thinking of your misspent youth. And all the headaches you saved me." They'd gone out together, a pair of raggedy beggars, the elder leaning on the younger in the oldest of ploys. Eavesdropping in covert corners, listening for the telltale hush of voices plotting treason until Tréville had had enough substantiation to take to the cardinal.

The signature grin appeared, flashing white, as Porthos lifted his own glass. "You taught me most of what I know, sir." There was no grudging pause this time, before the honorific. "I'll drink to old times."

"You forgave me, Porthos."

"Son of a bitch, you circled us back here on purpose."

The minister lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. "Couldn't help myself. I'm worried about both of you. A rift like this could rip apart the whole unit."

"Well that ain't gonna happen." Porthos blew out a breath. "He's s'tied up in knots worrying about them kids, he ain't spent a moment worrying about our mad. My mad," he appended after a moment's hesitation. Athos and d'Artagnan had welcomed the Prodigal with open arms. They'd tried to make it like he'd never been away, like there hadn't been a gaping hole in their midst. Well there hadn't, at least not for very long, because they'd learned to move as a trio instead of a quartet, learned to compensate for Aramis' absence pretty quickly, as it had been adapt or die.

Sure there'd been moments of the old camaraderie since Aramis' annunciation. Or was that renunciation? Porthos had never been a hairsplitter, he did not care whether God's messenger had visited Aramis or the sharpshooter had broken his vows of his own accord. The result was the same, they were four again, instead of three, but the missing piece of Porthos' heart no longer fit snugly in its usual place.

Aramis had been marked by his time away, too, though in a very different way from his companions. Sometimes he was too big for the spot, other times he shrank so much he was too small to plug the hole. Once in awhile, for a moment or two, he fit just right. Laughing as they lay in the dirt together, falling naturally into their unique brand of interrogation, even the occasional opportunity to fleece some unsuspecting pigeons with pebbles in a bottle. Yeah, sometimes he fit just right. Sometimes it felt like he'd never left.

That wasn't what had Porthos guarding his heart. It was the conflict he saw in Aramis' eyes when traveling monks came through, or they passed a monastery, or heard the bells of Notre Dame. The way the marksman's gaze turned inward even as his eyes followed the pilgrims or turned to survey a church. The way his head titled when the full-throated bells began to toll.

"'Member how it was when he first arrived at the garrison? Out'a place, uncomfortable and too cocky for his own good."

"I remember."

"I get the feelin' it was the same at Douai. He would'a done better in the last century when there were more warrior priests, or mabbe he should'a taken himself clear to Rome and volunteered his services directly to the pope."

"He wasn't happy then?"

"I thought that was pretty clear. Athos said he found Aramis in the choir loft talkin' to God. I wasn't privy to that conversation."

"He did come back, Porthos."

"Yeah, he ditched those kids and came back with us, though that's killin' him from the inside out now. Can't seem to make up his mind about anything. Ain't no guarantee he won't just walk away from us again." What had Porthos guarding his heart was the fear that Aramis' compulsion to serve his God was greater even than the recently rediscovered ties that bound him to his companions. And he knew damn well Aramis was feeling guilty about abandoning his orphan charges.

"How about we take it one day at a time?"

"Yeah." Porthos stirred the shells grown cold in the soup beginning to gel on his plate. "That's all we got anyway. May as well stop being angry and take what I got." He set his jaw and glared across at the Minister. "You know damn well it don't work that way." The chair scraped back as the big Musketeer rose. "I'm gonna pass on the trifle. Don' ask me 'ta lunch again when its snails."

Tréville tossed his napkin on the table and leaned back, watching the tall figure thread his way neatly through the close-set tables and benches. The shoulders were back, tendons taut, jaw clenched, as Porthos strode out the doubles doors without looking back.

The Minister sighed. Clearly, he'd struck a nerve; a deep one. He did not see Annette's gaze following him as he pushed back from the table and rose as well, though there was a fresh bowl of trifle waiting on ice for him, when he got back to his office.


This has been a work of transformative fan fiction. The characters and settings in this story are the property of the British Broadcasting Company, its successors and assigns; the story itself is the intellectual property of the author. No copyright infringement has been perpetrated for financial gain.