No King’s Man

   Henri d’Aramitz sat upon a simple wooden stool, running a silver comb through lengths of silvering hair. Inside the floral bronze rim of a mirror, a wry smirk curled his lips. An oaken stool. A silver comb. An ornate mirror polished to a shimmer that might make the moon blush. At heart he had always been a simple man with a flare for the dramatic, and though his face bore more creases now than scars, though his hair had long since faded, it pleased him that the core of him remained quite the same as the bold young swordsman his uncle called to Paris all those years ago to become a black musketeer of the Maison du Roi.

   Over his shoulder the blue tabard slashed with a gleaming Catholic cross hung from a tarnished brass hook on a stone wall worn smooth. As a man of irony, a Huguenot most known for time spent wearing of a Catholic cross tickled his humors. Then, Jeanne was such a papist he might as well have been one himself. The finer points of religion, for all the talk of his devotion to the Good Book, never held importance to him more than that of being the best man one could be.

   Across from the uniform, that window from which he and Jeanne spent a lifetime peering at moonlight. She would lean and gaze in wonder, broad smile parting her olivine visage. Smokey eyes so near to shut as her cheeks rose in joy.

   Henri would fold her up in his arms, kiss her neck, and joke and whisper romance into her ear as he nibbled. More often than he did not, he would lift his wife’s dress right there at the window and take her. How she moaned and gasped and shivered as his hands crept over her skin, and his fingers tickled her most tender parts.

   Henri could not be certain of Clement, their oldest, but Amant and Adeline had certainly been sired right there at that very window, Jeanne’s throat and the bones of her collar awash in moonlight, more elegant than any dress the Queen had ever worn.

   The little window let the golden morning pour over the tabard. Like Christ’s corona in all those paintings it wreathed the old uniform. Holes from musket balls and dagger cuts scarcely noticeable. Jeanne stitched them all years ago with the deftness only her slender digits could. Slender and delicate, yet touched with a hint of darkness and mischief, those fingers. They burned with the very soul of her. Light and dark. All his years gallivanting and dueling and fighting the King’s battles should have been spent kissing and caressing them, but he made up for that as often as he could.

   They settled upon his shoulders.

   “Come, love,” she cooed. “We have company.”

   He raised her hand to his mouth. “Must we?”

   Jeanne shook her head, “If you had not spent so much time preening and reminiscing, you would know they are already here, and so, yes, we must.”

   He caught her, for just the briefest moment, fretting in the mirror, tugging at her own hair. He loved that hair. Those locks, once rich and sleek, now grayed like his own. He had tugged it in passion and run his fingers through it soft as a cool summer breeze. The scent of it still drove his heart hammering at his breast. Fiercer than any rise the sound of cannon ever brought. Purer than the ring of his steel against the foe.

Henri led her to the window and stood behind her, folding his arms about her waist. Outside, the spring shone bright over the little blue rivers and craggy gray stone and budding green trees of Bearn. The children were at play in Jeanne’s garden.

   The earliest of her flowers, the buttercup anemone she grew with him in mind, yellow Stars-of-Bethlehem, white-rock roses, and most of all her lustrous ranunculi, bloomed with the tender care of decades. Watered, pruned, and loved after as he had spent loving after her. Against the bronze and lavender backdrop of sunrise he could think of no beauty so glorious as their children traipsing about the paths through Jeanne’s garden.

   Except, of course, Jeanne’s face. He spun her round and stroked it with the back of his hand. “Every gray, mon amour, is but a hair that gave its color to one of your flowers.”

Even now she blushed. She kissed him, then, more passionate than any young and vigorous lover could dream. They made their way down the winding stairs, hand in hand, to greet their visitors.

   No sooner had they called back the children and set a table of soft cheeses and fresh breads, not an instant later than they poured out the wine and set a few eggs on plates, three men clambered through their door. Dusty from the road, but the picture of chivalry, they tapped their riding boots clean and swept off their grandiose feathered hats.

   Henri caught Adeline staring at the youngest. A strapping young Gascon, much as D’Artagnan had been when they first met. Strong jaw, broad shoulders, boyish charm. Henri understood the draw, as did Jeanne, taking note of the same and looking to Henri with a silent smile that pled and laughed and soothed all at once.

   Clement and Amant helped the other two, older men, and experienced soldiers, draw off their coats and hang them by the creaky old door. The elder of them was Jeanne’s cousin, Louis. He twiddled his waxed moustache to assure its perfection and bowed humbly before taking his seat. If it were not for the constant demanding of tales of adventure, Henri would have liked Louis’s company.

   Henri became stark in his certainty that he would not enjoy the company of the last. A dark and swarthy sort, built like a square block of granite, with a fluffy beard and the ruggedness of a career killer. There were plenty of these such soldiers in the king’s musketeers. They were not all heroes, for certain, but Henri despised them then, and the tell-tale smell of them remained forever seared into his mind.

   That fetid reek of violence filled Henri’s nostrils as surely as the pleasantness of Jeanne’s hair, or her flowers, or the lovely little breakfast upon their table.

   “Jeanne!” a gleeful shout from Louis boomed through the hall. “Aramitz! I cannot believe how big the children have gotten!”

   “Bon matin, Monsieur, Madame!” the dashing young one added. Adeline swooned at his courtesy.

   “Strong lads, you have here,” grunted the killer. “King could use ’em.”

   “The king has made enough use of this family,” Henri snarled behind a polite façade.

   “So it’s true then,” the killer pressed. “He’s the Aramitz who served with Isaac de Porthau and Armand D’Athos? With the Comte d’Artagnan?”

   “De Troiville’s own nephew!” Louis was overjoyed to add.

   Jeanne sensed Henri’s unease and laid those fingers of sweetness and mischief on his hand. “He most certainly is.”

   “Good then,” the killer’s face lit like a jackal’s eyes in starlight. “An honor to meet you, Aramitz.”

   Reluctant, Henri shook the rough, meaty paw. He looked the brute up and down, weighting and measuring him. “I assure you,” the next words he drove like a poignard, “the only honor is mine.”

   “Ah, haha, yes, well,” Louis chuckled nervously. “Aramitz, why do you not tell my companion of Rocroi, when you broke the Spanish Tercios? Or of one of the intrigues? A duel perhaps?”

   “Oui,” the young man’s stare widened impossibly large. “Tell us, Monsieur!”

   “Mm,” the killer grunted, “yes, tell us.”

   Henri pushed his plate away, suddenly lacking appetite. “Children,” he called, “split that amongst yourselves. Evenly, now, as Christ would have with the Apostles.”

   “Oh tell them your bloody stories, Henri,” Jeanne snorted.

   “Ask Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras,” Henri scoffed. “He’s writing a book about D’Artagnan.”

   “Henri,” Louis’s gaze darted between Henri and the killer, and Jeanne, and the food, and his own fat belly, like a mouse surrounded by cats. “I understand we arrived unexpected, but is this any way to treat a guest?”

   “Why are you here, Louis?” said Henri, sternly, though he suspected he already knew.

   The killer answered, “The Turks have invaded Austria. The King may have no love for the Habsburgs, but in the name of the True God, he is marshalling an army under de Souchez. Captain D’Artagnan has issued a summons, and we thought perhaps you, with such reputation, or… your sons…” he cast a deliberate glance at Clement, “… would do your duty to God and Country.”

   The thud of the pistol’s butt upon the table took everyone completely off guard. Even the killer seemed alarmed that the flintlock sprang into Henri’s grip primed and loaded and cocked so swiftly. Henri leveled it squarely at the brute’s chest. From his peripherals he kept careful watch of Louis and the Gascon boy, but his aim never strayed from the killer.

    Henri glowered. “You tell the king, and D’Artagnan, when you see them, that they can see me for supper or sport or reminiscing any time they wish, but that the chivalry of their messengers is vastly deteriorated from when last I saw them. No man of this household will fight some fool’s battle in Austria, and if I see you on my property once more, Monsieur, you will soon discover my age has not slowed my hand.

    “Lad, Louis, Godspeed and bless you in your endeavors,” he continued, demeanor shifting to sunny earnestness. “You,” he refocused on the killer, “get out of my house before the arthritis pulls my trigger finger to a clench.”