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“I can’t find my riding boots, Maman,” complains Helene, stomping into her parents’ bedroom with her outdoor cape half on, half dragging along the floor.
“Did you put them away yesterday?” asks Anne. She addresses the child’s reflection in the dressing table mirror while putting the finishing touches to her own complicated hairstyle.
They are, belatedly, trying to teach their daughter tidiness, but she was raised around men who put away their outdoor hats by flinging them into a corner and put down their swords with more care for the weapon’s edge than the soft furnishings. And it isn’t as if Anne has been any neater for most of her life, relying on servants when fortune has provided them and otherwise reveling in the chaos of her own heaped possessions, because that was better than to own nothing.
Still, Helene seems unaware of her parents’ hypocrisy and pulls a moderately contrite face towards the mirror. “I left them under the table,” she says. “They’re not there now.”
“That’s no doubt because Horace has stolen them,” says Athos, who is still sprawled, barely half-dressed, across their bed. “If they’re covered in tooth marks and slobber, you’ll still have to wear them.”
“Ew!” squeals Helene, and runs off, presumably to search Horace’s known hiding places. The puppy is the newest addition to their household and is prone to disappearing with or chewing things at the least convenient times.
Athos rolls over to peer under the bed. “I think he may have made off with my belt too,” he says ruefully, then sneezes. “Dusty under there.”
“This apartment doesn’t clean itself you know, Monsieur “Servants Make Me Uncomfortable”.”
He smiles at her. “Indeed, but you needn’t play the put-upon housewife over that my dear. We both know Suzette will sneak in here and start polishing the furniture the moment after we leave for the day.”
Their day maid is indeed a gem, her almost invisible presence a fine compromise that makes their home far more comfortable for both of them. But even if she does little of the daily labour, Anne still finds that she is far more houseproud than she ever expected to be. Certainly she’s prouder of this bright, high-windowed little apartment than she ever was of the mansion where she was once mistress and Athos master. That only ever felt like a stage on which she played a role.
This feels like home, and she loves it.
**
Her private secretary is not at his desk when she arrives at the Palais, but the appointments diary is there, open at the correct page. It’s a promising looking day.
As soon as she pushes open the door to her own opulent, book-lined office, she has no doubts as to the whereabouts of her absent staff member.
The secret cabinet she had built into the shelving is more sentimental than useful - she had always envied Richelieu’s, even before she had certain memories attached to it. Nothing truly secret is kept in there. If it were she would be beyond furious with Alexandre for breaching security to satisfy his lust. However, it’s really more of an emergency supply wardrobe, where she keeps a clean, dry change of clothing, a fine silk court dress, a spare dark velvet cloak, a gentlewoman’s riding clothes, a scruffy boy’s riding clothes and a nun’s habit - just in case.
She twists the small statue of St Joshua to release the door mechanism and rolls her eyes at the couple who are revealed. “Gentlemen,” she says, light and unconcerned, as if she had encountered them fully dressed at a formal reception. Alexandre looks unabashed.
“M,” he answers in kind. He is exasperating, but he is also undeniably brilliant at his job. France and her king will never know how much they owe to this man’s record-keeping and organisation.
“Get out of there.”
She would leave it at that, but the other young man - a red guard to judge by the disheveled uniform - looks absolutely sick with terror. She rests a hand on his arm for a moment. “Everything that happens in this room is secret,” she says. “Everything.”
He nods and flees. Alexandre at least has the grace to mumble his thanks as he returns to his own desk. Only moments later, he pops his head back around the door with an incorrigible grin. “Your scotsman is here, M.”
“Send him in.”
The man who enters is smartly dressed, his clothing expensive and well-cut enough to suggest he is a gentleman, but not flashily fashionable. His features are handsome, if a little weather-beaten and his eyes sparkle. If he can live up to his reputation for capability, and that’s a big if, she thinks she’ll like him.
“James, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It’s just M to those under my command. I have a task for you. I understand that underwater sabotage is one of your many talents.”
He raises an eyebrow. Well, she supposes, from the invitation, he’d have only been expecting an interview, not a briefing.
“I find there’s no better way to find out whether someone is worth employing, Monsieur. There’s a ship moored at Dieppe. It mustn’t leave.”
“You want it sunk?”
“Ideally still floating, but facing time-consuming repairs. There’s no need to ruin the captain, but it’s imperative that he not be able to set sail this month.”
It’s not really as vital as she makes it sound. She would hardly trust the safety of France to a new recruit, even one with such a sterling reputation. She would probably still find it difficult to trust anyone with a truly essential task besides herself -- maybe Constance at a push, she makes it a policy never to underestimate that woman.
With Athos, or any of the musketeers, there was always the risk they would be waylaid by happening on something they considered more honourable than carrying out their orders. She does her best to find this endearing, while striving to avoid ever including her husband and his men in her strategies.
Her Scottish recruit is attentive as she provides the details of the vessel and of her contact in the harbour master’s office who can supply further assistance, if needed. She gives him the necessary passwords, then sends him to Monsieur Boucher for equipment.
“He’s a touch eccentric,” she warns of the elderly Huguenot weaponsmith. “But he still makes the finest small weapons in Paris and he can build almost anything you ask him for.”
She has a reasonable degree of confidence that the ship moored in Dieppe isn’t going anywhere for a while.
She turns back to the freshly deciphered reports on her desk. A meeting with the ministers is scheduled for the afternoon and she needs to be prepared for their questions. Before that, however, there is lunch with one of her most useful contacts. Once the reports are in order she grabs her most modishly feathery hat and calls out to Alexandre to fetch a carriage.
**
The shop is something of a fashionable novelty, but they can both pass for grand ladies about town when they want to. In many ways, given their lines of work, it’s more anonymous than a disreputable tavern, not to mention more agreeable.
The proprietor has set out a select few elegant tables and chairs where customers can sit over a glass of sweet wine and sample a selection of his unusual wares -- while enjoying a cosy tete-a-tete.
“This is incredible,” says Flea holding up the small morsel of cocoa and ginger between her thumb and forefinger. “You are paying, right?”
Anne laughs and reaches for a tiny pink cube speckled with red, which turns out to taste of roses and raspberries.
“You information had better be worth it,” she says, although there’s no menace behind the words. An hour of tasting fancy confections and talking shop with Flea is always worth the cost.
They devour another dozen of the sublime tiny shapes while Flea outlines some of the movements in the criminal underworld that may be of interest. She never gives away information about an impending job, but Anne’s not there to catch petty criminals unless they threaten the state. However, the Court of Miracles is no friend to any foreign interlopers cutting in on fleecing unwary members of France’s ruling elite.
“How’s Mlle La Porte?” asks Flea after she’s finished detailing the patterns of nefarious new arrivals in the city. The pretty young pickpocket’s recruitment into the relative safety of the intelligencers’ headquarters staff is, in some ways, the true price of this information exchange. Anne knows Flea doesn’t forget a favour like that.
“Useful,” says Anne, then gives the question further consideration. “And happy, I think. The deciphering girls have rather taken her under their wings. I believe she’s already reading two languages.”
“Reading?” Flea sounds incredulous. “I thought you’d use her skills as a thief.”
“A woman can never have too many skills,” says Anne, with a laugh, although it is not entirely mirthful. When she had first set out to recruit intelligent young women with ruined prospects to work on decoding her confidential messages, it was depressing how quickly she had managed to fill the posts.
“I must take some of these home for Helene,” she says, signalling to the shopkeeper that they have finished.
**
In the carriage back to the Palais, she tries to concentrate on the information she needs to report to her seniors, but her mind keeps creeping back to the encounter in the secret cabinet. Not this morning’s -- Alexandre’s affairs are his own business -- but the one more than a decade ago.
She is content nowadays, more so than she ever thought she could be. She makes love in a comfortable bed with clean sheets and Athos is a considerate lover. So why, she wonders, this sudden pang for that ridiculous, confusing, passionate moment in the midst of peril?
Still, for some reason the thought of dragging her husband into a cupboard makes her feel positively giddy with desire right now. So much so that she has the carriage drop her at the end of the drive, so that any flush in her cheeks will be attributed to the walk rather than giving away her thoughts.
Of course, the walk only gives her more time to think about it. Their apartment lacks small enclosed spaces and hiding from a six year old and a puppy hardly offers the same thrill as hiding from Rochefort at the height of his treasonous madness.
“Alexandre!” she calls out as she strides into the antechamber to her office. “Send a message to the musketeer garrison inviting Captain Athos to meet me here after his duty, if it should be convenient for him.”
**
He’s there when she gets back from briefing the ministers of France on the movements of foreign agents, carefully describing some complicated aspect of Di Grassi’s high ward to her private secretary. Alexandre has almost certainly never drawn a sword in earnest in his life, so she can only guess that he’s hoping to impress a certain guardsman with the knowledge. Fortunately for him, the red guard seems equally smitten.
“There’s a young man very assiduously guarding the north doors,” she says, interrupting the sword talk as she approaches. “Go on, you may leave.”
Alexandre doesn’t need telling twice, grabbing his hat and scarpering down the corridor.
“Is there some danger?” asks Athos once they’re alone. He’s obviously trying to sound purely concerned for her wellbeing, but there’s an underlying excitement in his voice that makes her almost wish there was.
“No more than usual in Paris, although an escort home is always pleasant.”
“Then what was your message about?”
“I realised you hadn’t seen my office since it was completed.” As she’s speaking, she tugs him into the room and kicks the door closed behind them.
“You sent for me to admire your decorations?” He looks around, frowning. “It’s very frilly.”
This is true. The Palais craftsmen went a little overboard with the fabric flounces when they heard that the room’s occupant was to be a woman, although there’s some advantage in quite how disconcerting the more rough and ready male agents seem to find it.
“I thought you might find one aspect in particular of interest,” she says and gives St Joshua a firm twist.
Luckily, her husband catches on quickly.
**
She deciphers the last of the day’s messages herself, by the golden glow of lamplight, disentangling meaning from the papers as she understands that other wives most likely untangle decorative needlework once the days’ other tasks are done. Sometimes the text is so small and crabbed, or perhaps her eyes are so tired, that she must resort to using an expensive hand lens, a gift from a grateful member of the exiled English aristocracy.
Helene is already tucked into bed, as Athos clearly ought to be, given the way that he’s snoring in his chair, with Horace curled up on his lap, also snoring.
Three pairs of boots, all different sizes, are piled underneath the table, on top of which lies an empty bag from the confectioner’s shop.
The papers in her hand tell of dangers and intrigues throughout the kingdom and far beyond its borders - and she knows that world is a part of who she is and always will be. But within this apartment, she is also someone else. She is someone at peace.
The End