Good evening, all.

It has been 19 months since I last updated anything on this site: I cannot quite believe that it has been so long and a lot has been happening. Firstly, apologies that 'Reliquary' is, as yet, incomplete. I will get back to it, I promise. Will they find the Templar treasure?

In the meantime, this has been festering for a long while and it seems only fitting to be posting it on the tenth anniversary of 'The Musketeers' bursting onto UK television screens. It's a challenge in that I am experimenting with writing in the present tense and the first person so, please, do check chapter headings as there are multiple narrators, each taking responsibility for relating the events in specific chapters. The intention is to upload chapters once or twice a week. It's great to be back and I hope you think so too; I'd love to hear from you, from old and new friends, as a new adventure for the Musketeers unfolds.

It is set shortly before the events of Season 1.

CHAPTER 1 The present

Tréville

What causes a man to break?

I've asked myself that question so many times and have decided that there is no one definitive answer for it all depends upon the man, the circumstances and the manner in which he is broken, whether it is in the body or the mind.

Unfortunately, in my years as a soldier, I have borne witness to both. The most obvious is the broken body, the damage done by the path of a cannon ball: limbs blown apart, a torso mangled when someone is in the wrong place at the wrong time, men mutilated so that they are rendered unrecognisable, even to their mothers.

Then there are the life-changing wounds caused by a lucky musket shot. The ball shattering bone beyond repair and resulting all too often in a hasty amputation by an impatient chirurgeon. I see them in Paris today; ex-soldiers begging on the streets, a sleeve or a leg of the breeches pinned out of the way and empty, as empty as the expressions on the faces of the limbless men.

I have to harden myself to the sight, but it is always a feat. As Captain of the regiment that is the King's élite Musketeers, I have known men who have, quite literally, sacrificed life or limb in dedicated service to their king, country … and me. I know what it is to have searched for and counted the dead on a battlefield; sat with a dying man as he dictated a letter to a loved one with his last breath; held another in my arms as he has shamelessly wept with pain and terror at the prospect of death; closed their eyes at the last, said a prayer and shed my own tears in private at the passing of each one.

Then I have had to be strong for the men who are left, the friends and brothers who grieve for their departed companions and, in the middle of the night when sleep eludes me, I cannot help but wonder if each loss is as a tool, slowly chipping away at my own resolve, breaking me gradually with the passing of each precious life.

But I am the Captain, answerable to the King of France himself and commander to some hundred men who look to me daily with trust and loyalty. I have to be strong for their sakes. It is my duty, my responsibility, but it cannot stop me from feeling or protect me from instances of emotional weakness. I should never let anyone see that vulnerability.

But I know that the moment I stop being affected by the loss of one of my men, that is the day that I resign my commission, for I believe that I will have ceased to be a man and I dare not think of what would remain within the shell that once claimed its humanity.

That brings me to the mind. That part of a man that is so unpredictable, potentially so fragile that it can be broken in many ways and to men I have least expected to fall victim to a fracture like that.

Yes, there are the young soldiers on the eve of their first battle who experience fear and apprehension. I would not trust any man, raw or seasoned, who did not feel some qualms about what lay ahead, because the over-confident one is signing his own death warrant, for he is far from invincible and likely to be reckless. It is rare but I have seen it when a man is so struck by terror that he is broken by his own nightmarish imaginings, reduced to a gibbering wreck and beyond functioning' a soldier's career over before it has even begun.

Then there are the few whose minds are so affected by the sounds and sights of the battle itself that they are never the same afterwards: the clash of armour, the clamour of blows traded in combat; the roar of the cannon; the shouts of fury; the screams of the dying men and horses, and the rivers of blood.

On those cases, the incipient cracks are hard to see, but they spread, creeping through the brain like the fracture lines in a looking glass until they are both rendered useless, incapable of performing even the most rudimentary of heir original tasks.

You can dispose of a ruined looking glass, but what are you to do with the ruined man?

I have known men endure incalculable suffering in their private lives or at the hands of others whose intent is to bring the victim to his knees, or worse. Some have endured their pain with an admirable patience and silence, whilst others have cried out under duress, weakened by their treatment to the extent that they can no longer function like men. They wither like the rotten grape on the vine and, if fortunate, they die. When they don't … they can become like a canker, putting those near them at risk. Unpredictable. Unreliable. Untrustworthy.

And what of the men who enjoy doing the breaking? Some, like the Cardinal Richelieu, employ others to act on their behalf, claiming that they do it out of necessity, to elicit valuable information to protect the many, to protect France and her King.

Some, like the nobleman Charles Bircann and ally to Marie de Medici, the King's mother, break men because they can and because they derive great pleasure in the abuse of their power.

He is my nemesis, the thorn in my side these past ten years, the man who captured me and delighted in my incarceration, revelled in my humiliation and who fled on my release.

Bircann has returned, embroiled in another attempt by the embittered woman to seize her son's throne. Only my men and I stopped her, her supporters … and him.

But the cost of that success has been high. Dare I even say too high?