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August 1623, Hôtel de Chevreuse
"May I help you, Madame?"
Aramis, twenty-one years of age and proudly wearing his brand new musketeer's pauldron, gave the lady in question his most charming smile, which she returned in kind.
Marie de Rohan, formerly the Duchesse de Luynes and now the Duchesse de Chevreuse, was not more than three or four years his senior and a true beauty to behold, radiant with her blonde curls and bright blue eyes. It was no wonder that she had charmed the royal court and conquered their hearts by storm.
Aramis knew that she had three kids, that she had been the Duke's mistress before she became his wife, and that next to her marriages she was close to one Henry Rich of Holland.
At the moment.
Aramis also knew, since he kept his eyes and ears open at all times, that she picked her friends and foes with care and had been at the centre of an intrigue or two ever since her loyalty and close friendship to the Queen had tipped her against everyone who insulted or belittled Anne of Austria.
She was a fascinating figure, and thus Aramis could not resist taking the chance to talk to her, in offering his assistance.
"I believe you may, Monsieur. We have finished building the townhouse, as you can see, and I am in want of a few able hands to help move the furniture. For an afternoon of honest work, I will reward you with supper, if you please."
"If I please!", the boy exclaimed, delighted. "It's you who lives there, in that splendid hôtel particulier? I am your servant, for you must be none other than the Duchesse de Chevreuse herself."
"You are quick in your observations", said the Duchesse with a smirk, and in a tone which suggested to Aramis that she wasn't fooled; like him, she was observant and had perceived at once that he had known perfectly well who she was before he approached her.
"And you have an honest face– it is well, since the Duke is currently away and cannot supervise the proceedings himself."
"I will get to work presently, your ladyship", returned Aramis with a bow, pulling his hat. He discarded the accessory soon after, in the entrance hall of the Hôtel, tied his long hair back in a low ponytail and, with the promise of dinner and conversation at hand, merrily put himself to good use.
His charm, as well as this following display of his more physical qualities, earned him more than one appreciative glance from the Duchesse as he distinguished himself in her eyes even from the servants and paid volunteers that worked by his side.
It was a grand townhouse indeed, furnished with riches and exquisite furniture of the latest fashion, but Aramis wasn't drawn to luxuries. That is to say, he did not wish to own them, considering himself very much a stand-up citizen and good soldier who drank and laughed and celebrated with his peers in good solidarity. But he knew how to mingle with high society and showcase his elegance and refined manners, thus elevating his own status and receiving invitations to events he would otherwise be excluded from.
And so, just as promised, when the work was done and the afternoon passed, the Duchesse kindly repeated her offer, which Aramis gracefully accepted; remarking only that he wished to first clean off the dust and change his wardrobe. An appointment was made for him to return in an hour, and Aramis walked home to the garrison with a spring in his step and whistling a merry tune.
He took great care to wash off the dust and dirt and sweat of the day before he changed into his best shirt (that is to say, one without tears and holes in it) and brushed his doublet clean. He looked at himself in the mirror to fix his hair before he donned his hat, and to turn his head this way and that to scrutinize his beard. He didn't have enough growth for the desired goatee, but fancied himself as looking venturous rather than unkempt.
He was positively prancing as he walked down the street towards the townhouse de Chevreuse, but dropped a good portion of that pretense when he was received by a servant girl who asked him who to announce.
"Aramis," he said, having left the name René d'Herblay behind upon joining the military, "of the King's musketeers." It was a fine title to replace the missing surname with, he'd decided.
Where he had been squaring his shoulders and raising himself up to his full height earlier, he now let his natural slenderness work for him and settled into a natural sense of elegance that worked well with the ladies – as evident in the servant girls smile and coquettish little bow as she went to announce him to her lady.
The Duchesse was already seated at the table when he entered, and the first thing Aramis noticed was that she had undergone a change of wardrobe as well. Where he had dressed up, she had dressed down, from her stately skirts and jewelry to a plainer dress and a simple braid.
This could mean one of two things: Either she wanted to make a statement and not give him the wrong ideas, which he dared to doubt since she had been the one to invite him – and because she was Marie de Chevreuse – or, and that was the choice he would settle on, she had perceived his status and did not want to shame him by reminding him of it in all her splendour. If that was the case, Aramis' anxious curiosity had just tipped over into grateful appreciation.
"Bonsoir, Madame," he said with a bow – without lowering his gaze, as was his custom –, "And thank you again for the invitation."
"Bonsoir, Monsieur Aramis," she replied, with a gesture that bade him to take a seat across her, "And I thank you for accepting it, now that I have learned your name and you no longer have the advantage, which," and at this she smirked, not very ladylike at all , "I assume you have had from the beginning."
"I confess, Madame," said Aramis, who would have coloured had he felt any sense of shame at being called out thus. He straightened and sat down, knowing her smirk mirrored in his eyes, hiding in the corners of his mouth.
"You have seen right through me. I hope that you will forgive my impertinence and that I haven't earned your disdain; believe me when I say that I wanted to meet you, and that is the sole reason for my dishonesty."
"I believe it, and that's why I will forgive it,” Marie de Chevreuse replied graciously, taking her cup once it had been filled with wine by her girl and holding it up to him. "I only hope I will meet your expectations, or not meet them, depending on what they are."
Aramis raised his own and this time he did feel a blush creep into his cheeks. "I drink to your health, Madame, and to your beauty, so that you may see that I hold you in the highest esteem."
She responded with a chuckle which set Aramis' young heart ablaze, and they drank.
"You are among precious few who will state that so openly," the Duchesse then continued, thoughtful, "But then perhaps it is owed to the circumstance that you say it only in the presence of one."
"Would you sell yourself short in this way, Madame?", Aramis asked, genuinely taken aback. "Are you not well-loved by the Queen, and the court, and your husband?" Perhaps he should not have added the latter as last; at least he had abstained from adding a certain dutch Earl to the list. There was something sad in her smile now, and Aramis watched her attentively to find out how much of it was an act.
"Ah, that may well be, but the King, the Cardinal and a few other persons of consequence not so much. Are you not aware that I was blamed for her Majesty's tragic loss? Well, it is no secret that the Queen herself has not risen in favour since she lost the potential heir."
Aramis was surprised at this direct answer given to a complete stranger, so surprised that he soon recognised it as the test that it was. Are you a royalist, or a cardinalist?
"I am glad that the Queen has a close friend in you, and that the loss of her child has not separated you, even though many have tried. I'm certain you took part in her grief and if anything, blamed yourself the most."
He met her eyes with compassion and a frankness he had been born with, other than many of his comrades who had been taught to keep their true thoughts and feelings to themselves and treat every conversation like a game of chess. He wanted to know this woman, not play her.
"As for the King and the Cardinal, why, they hardly agree with each other, so I may make no judgment as to their opinion of you. I will say that I have tried to keep up with the visits of the Duke of Buckingham, and what his presence here might mean for our relations with England, but I am first and foremost a musketeer, and I will follow my orders no matter where they lead."
Marie de Chevreuse smiled another time, though not in amusement at his antics which many found endearing at best. No, hers was one of pleasant surprise, and Aramis could observe her attitude change, the way she straightened a little more in her chair, leaned forward just a fraction. He'd had her curiosity; Now he had her attention.
"And would you go beyond orders if you learned something worth reporting to your superior? Could you keep a secret, Monsieur?" the playfulness had returned to her voice, conspiratorial, drawing him in.
Aramis could see where this led: She would perhaps entrust him with a less important piece of information, wait and see whether or not it made its rounds, then gradually increase the risk until she was satisfied he would keep his piece.
But Aramis was impatient by nature.
"Are you asking me whether or not I would report to my Captain that we have met, or to the Cardinal that you have correspondence with one Earl of Holland, or to the King that Buckingham's adoration for the Queen did not go unnoticed by her close friend, who has lent a helping hand once or twice?"
Aramis said all this in his soft and melodious voice, watching the Duchesse grow pale.
"Because these are secrets of the kind I will take to the grave, on my honour."
What followed were a few beats of silence, in which Aramis feared that he had screwed up too badly, but then he allowed his lips to relax into a slow smile, one of the kind that made most people he'd wronged or annoyed unable to stay mad at him for long.
Marie de Chevreuse huffed a laugh.
"You're a dangerous man, Monsieur Aramis."
"Just Aramis.", he corrected, before he could stop himself. "It's– it's not a surname." He smiled, and leaned back in his seat. "And I am not. Just a very observant one."
"A useful man, then."
"That, I would dare to agree with."
He watched her. She examined him.
"A good actor. With connections. Smart enough to work all those things out by yourself despite my precautions."
"It's a gift.
"All that, and handsome, too."
Aramis' eyes lit up with a thrill of anticipation, and he kept smiling without giving her an answer.
She held his gaze for a little while longer before she sighed, and he watched her push back her chair and get to her feet.
"I'm not hungry anymore.", she said, passing by his chair and placing a delicate hand on his shoulder.
"Let's have dinner."
And that was how it started.
People argue that business should not be mixed with pleasure, but to Aramis the two things were one and the same. He visited her, under a pretense or in the dead of night, always discreet, sometimes they had dinner, sometimes they had dinner, and Aramis told her what he'd learned. Bits and pieces of gossip. A warning, when a rumour got too close to the truth. Sometimes she already knew, but she appreciated the confirmation.
She did not ask him to do anything dangerous for her– did not drag him into her intrigues. He was her confidante, nothing more. A consultant. A friend.
Aramis realised this in the second consecutive visit where they did not talk politics at all.
She was young and beautiful, he was pleasant company, he did not always share her views but he listened to them, he allowed them. She did the same in turn. She asked about his scars, and he told her. He asked about her children, and she told him. She asked about his faith, and he was forced to think about it, to put it into words for the first time. She made him consider, forced him to be self-aware, and they were not in love, but they were good for each other and that was all that either of them needed.
August 1625, Hôtel de Chevreuse
"You are well aware that my discretion extends beyond our intimacy, my dear Aramis," said Marie de Chevreuse, who, propped up on her elbow, let her fingertips trail over the young musketeer's chest. Despite her playful gesture, her voice was soft and her eyes were kind.
"We have both entrusted each other with secrets pertaining to our nation and society; permit me now to listen to those personal troubles which you keep close to your heart."
The duchesse looked angelic with her long blonde hair cascading over her shoulders, Aramis, whom their tryst had left with a singular ease of mind, thought to himself. Those looks were deceiving, for this woman was full of intrigue and cunning, but that was precisely what he treasured about her. Both of them knew to keep their affair a superficial one, despite the affection they felt for one another, and to open up to her now would mean to bare an open wound, to make himself vulnerable in a way that would predispose him to fall in love. He could not afford to fall in love with Marie de Chevreuse, and yet, Aramis found that he wanted to tell her about the events of Easter that haunted him still.
"The reason I have not been available to you," he started hesitantly, raising a hand to tuck a strand of her hair back behind her ear with a faint smile, "is that I have not been much available to anyone. I have spent these past few months confined to my room at the garrison after witnessing an event so gruesome that I have not been myself for a long time."
Marie must have seen the flash of pain and apprehension in his eyes, for she settled down by his side and rested her hand on his chest in a comforting manner, rather than a teasing one. "I apologise for making you recall what you're trying to forget," she said with a trace of regret in her voice, the genuity of which urged Aramis to carry on with what he had begun.
"It is for the better that I talk about it now; for the more I talk about it, the better prepared I will be for when those memories spring at me out of nowhere to confront me." He placed a hand over hers, the other arm tucked under his head, and looked up at the ceiling with a sigh.
"We were camping near the French border in Savoy. It was a training exercise, we had no need to be on our guard." He swallowed thickly and allowed his eyes to fall close, only to reopen them shortly after for fear of the images that might project themselves onto his closed lids.
"At night, we were attacked. We had made our camp in peace, merry, and gone to sleep soundly. Most of our men never woke up. Those who did fought and died where they had lain."
Aramis shuddered despite the warmth of the summer when the frozen forest of Savoy overtook his reality, and Marie closed her fingers tightly around his, a tether to the present.
"How frightful!", she whispered in horror, underlined by a deep sympathy which Aramis could appreciate, unlike the pity he faced from his brothers. "How did you survive?"
Aramis minutely clenched his jaw, forcefully pushing down the memories as he had taught himself while he clawed his way back to sanity with the help of Porthos and Captain Trèville.
"I was wounded, stunned, by a blow to the head." He pointed to a scar in his hairline, which Marie perceived and lightly touched with her fingertips before sliding her hand into his hair, cut short in order to allow the wound to heal but already at a sufficient length again to form the curls she so loved. Aramis allowed himself to lean into her touch, shielding himself against the trauma with the comfort it provided.
"One of my brothers, his name was Marsac, dragged me to safety. I passed out between the trees, far enough away from the battle to not be found, and woke up in the morning. Marsac was there, too, just him and me, and the bodies."
"What happened then?", prompted the duchesse softly after Aramis fell quiet for some time.
"Marsac was overcome with grief and shame. He ... he ripped off his uniform and rode away", Aramis continued in a small voice.
"He just left you there?", Marie asked, incredulous. "Alone and wounded?"
"He was beside himself, shell-shocked as I was, I doubt he was thinking clearly. Still, I should have stopped him. He saved my life, he did not deserve to see himself as a deserter." For the hundredth time in the span of four months, Aramis wondered what had become of him. Had he left the country? Did he start a new life somewhere else or did he die on the road?
"So you defend him," Marie observed, placing a kiss on his cheek that pulled him out of his thoughts in a graceful manner.
"He was my best friend," Aramis responded quietly, turning on his side to look at her and, finding her lips curled into a soft smile, he leaned in to kiss them. Marie humoured him for a while, but pulled away when he moved in closer, meeting his eyes with a hand on his chest.
"There's more, I think, which you are not telling me," she said with a tone too firm and finite for Aramis to misunderstand.
"There is," he conceded, brow furrowing. "Only I'm not certain whether either of us will profit from my admitting to it."
"Stop thinking in terms of merit," Marie chided gently, cupping his cheek. "I believe I could see in your eyes, for just a moment, a greater depth to your feelings when you said this man's name."
Despite himself, Aramis coloured. "Do you really wish for me to elaborate on this topic while we are–"
He was silenced with a finger to his lips, as firm as Marie's voice and as imperative as the spark in her eye.
"I will not condemn you, my handsome soldier, for appreciating your own qualities in someone else, should that be the case."
She removed her finger only once she saw and felt Aramis relax.
"It was not like that with Marsac," he begun, quickly continuing upon watching her raise a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, "That is to say, we did not get that far." He fell silent, pursing his lips, searching for a more eloquent way of explanation. "Your ... suspicions about me are correct, to a point. I would not be disinclined to continue what we have if you happened to be a Duke." His lips twitched upon perceiving her smirk, now grateful for this change of topic, and he felt warmth bloom in his chest, knowing too well that he was done for, that she had wrapped him around her little finger through and through.
"But I fall much faster and much easier for the fairer sex. I am not distracted by any handsome soldier, and I have not felt for anyone the way I had begun to feel for Marsac."
Marie listened; her clear blue gaze watching his expressions closely and without judgment. "I see, or so I believe," she eventually said, shifting closer. "It was an emotional attachment first, and whatever else followed suit, followed at length. Much like the face of a person grows more beautiful the more you get to know the character beneath."
Aramis met her eyes, marveling at the simplicity with which she summarised how he felt, while managing to turn it into a compliment, if not a confession, towards his own person and her feelings for him. "That it precisely how I felt," he said with a nod, reaching out to embrace her again. "And it is precisely how I feel about you."
Marie moved into his arms with a bright, angelic laugh, and just like that, the matter was closed for her.
"I met the Comte de la Fère once," Aramis later told Marie, watching her comb her hair in front of her looking glass, dressed in nothing but a light silk robe, since it was unbearably hot in the bedroom to which Aramis so frequently and happily invited himself. He picked up a conversation they had started some time ago, incited by the Comte's mysterious disappearance.
"It was five years ago, I had just joined the military, when we met him and his young wife on the road. They seemed a beautiful and happy couple, though there was a hint of melancholy to the Comte's features, which someone explained to me later. I hadn't known he had married a commoner, and that his family shunned him for it; of course, that made me think even more highly of them."
"Ever the romantic," Marie commented from her chair, glancing at him where he lay sprawled on her sheets, stretching languidly.
"And appreciative of men and women who act out of spite," he shot back with a grin, which she received with another soft laugh. "I should know."
"I hadn't thought much about him until the rumours started, and I was wondering about your version of those rumours, for your versions often carry more truth than what I pick up in the streets and taverns of Paris."
"You gossip! You never cease to fish for anything you can get, do you?", she chided him without any malice, while her slender fingers worked to skillfully shape her hair into a braid. By the time she was finished her chambermaid would not be able to tell the difference between her mistress' handiwork and her own, which Aramis had so thoroughly disorganised.
"Alas, I admit it." He sat up, reluctantly beginning to dress himself; he had promised Porthos to get drinks with him and that new recruit, who seemed like he could use some cheering up.
With a sigh, and much pretense of sharing this story unwillingly, Marie pulled tight the knot of the last ribbon to secure her braid, turned, and watched her musketeer.
"This is what I know. For five years, the Comte de la Fère, his wife and brother lived at Pinon, whereto they had withdrawn to distance themselves from the disapproval of the Montmorency. Two years ago in the summertime, his younger brother Thomas died under uncertain circumstances. He left behind a fiancée, who hasn't been seen herself for some time, and that same day, the Comte and his wife disappeared."
"Is it true that the man was murdered?", Aramis inquired, watching Marie's face intently to determine whether what she told him was the whole truth.
"That is what's being said", came the hesitant reply. "Common folk and authorities alike searched for the Comte and his wife in vain. After a month they were declared dead, and the mansion has been abandoned ever since."
"What a mystery!", hummed Aramis, trying to recall the couple's faces from memory, but it had been too long ago. All he remembered was that the Comte had been very handsome, and too noble and honourable ever to commit such a crime.
August 1626, Hôtel de Chevreuse
"The noose tightens around Henri," Marie whispered, "and I leave tonight for Lorraine."
Confiding in one lover while losing another, she wrapped her arms tightly around Aramis, who in turn pulled her close to his chest. They embraced one last time in that bedchamber Aramis had always known he was not the only one to share with her, but also knowing he was at once the youngest and the most beloved, for there was little advantage she gained through him. Like many others, he was a pastime, but he was not solely a means to an end. Unlike many others, he did not get drawn into conspiracies of the kind that would make a man lose his head after thirty blows by the hand of an unskilled axman.
"If I shall never see you again I would much regret it," Aramis said with a heavy heart, taking her hands in his. "But my only concern is for your safety." and he raised them to his lips to tenderly kiss her fingers. "Will you not give me something to remember you by?"
"Yes, my dearest, I have something for you," Marie said with a nod, withdrawing her hands from his only after placing a kiss on his cheek. She walked over to a small wooden chest on a shelf and opened it, producing a simple necklace without a pendant. "I know you have never seen me wear this, but that is precisely why I can give it to you without risk. It has belonged to my mother and has been mine since she died, two years after my birth. No, don't shake your head, Aramis, I am packing light and I want you to have it, my handsome soldier."
Aramis stood still while she fastened it around his neck, overcome by affection and grief at the loss of her. "I too am to leave very soon," he said, and she drew back a little, her hands on his shoulders, the curved line of her full lips thinning by a fraction. "I know it; the Cardinal sends your regiment to La Rochelle," she pronounced with more than a hint of disdain which Aramis, as always, took great care to ignore.
"Stay alive," he said at length, and she cupped his face with a sad smile which he returned.
"Stay alive," she replied, and they both closed their eyes as they kissed goodbye, wrapped up in their own entangled thoughts of how every good thing must, inevitably, be ruined by politics.