Proofreading and main editing completed on this one -- and YouTube happened to bestow upon me a rather nice still of Soviet Athos (Venjiamin Smekhov) at the end of an unrelated folksong video, which I might even try to make into an FFnet 'cover image', in honour of the actual nature of my fandom!)

Dumas states, in two quite separate contexts in two different books, first of all that Athos served five years under d'Artagnan's lieutenancy and resigned from the Musketeers in 1633, and secondly that the boy Raoul de Bragelonne was conceived in October 1633 (but that Athos was unaware of this until a year later, so the discovery that he had an illegitimate son cannot have been his motivation for leaving the service in the first place, even if he attributes to it his subsequent reformation of lifestyle).

Frankly Dumas quite possibly didn't intend this coincidence of dates to be significant, but it does raise the question of whether Athos was still serving as a musketeer as late as October of that year, or whether he was undertaking the 'mission' that took him fatefully south through Roche-l'Abeille in a private capacity -- the former seems more likely, but it doesn't leave a lot of time for him to subsequently receive an apparently-genuine inheritance and give up soldiering (or make a return to "la vie du monde", as d'Artagnan puts it). So I have suggested that Athos possibly knew of this potential inheritance in advance -- thus also attempting to explain how he managed to inherit anything while apparently presumed dead!

I also tried to come up with a reason why he very conveniently decided to return to that remote village almost twelve months to the day after spending a single night there; what I don't think I have managed to do, unfortunately, is convey the intended nature of Athos' 'revelation' that you could do the same thing -- for example, sleep with a woman -- and it wouldn't necessarily need to lead to the same outcome. The point is not that he suddenly goes out looking for love (because as we know, he doesn't) but that he finds himself in consequence able to risk starting again in other ways...

Unintentionally amusing typos: 'grander swelling' for 'grander dwelling' :-p

A Sword Outwears Its Sheath

Athos has an encounter that will change his life... if not quite in the way intended.

Athos resta mousquetaire sous les ordres de d’Artagnan jusqu’en 1633, époque à laquelle, en revenant d’un voyage qu’il fit en Roussillon, il quitta aussi le service...

The street door opened with a creak and a gust of chilly October wind. The small child hovering on the threshold, half-visible in the dusk beyond, was of indeterminate sex and dirty beyond belief. Athos, sprawled wearily in front of the fire with the mud beginning to dry on his cloak and boots, could not help but be aware that in addition the new arrival smelt strongly of goat. But his host for the night, the village curé, gave no sign of noticing the aroma that was beginning to fill the room, and courtesy demanded that Athos do likewise.

The priest, busy laying the table for supper, had looked up swiftly at the sound of the door. “Come in, child,” he said gently, setting down the lid of the tureen and brushing crumbs from his soutane. “Now, what is it? Let’s just wipe your nose... Is it old Mother Huillot again? I did hear she was in a poor way.”

The child sniffled and replied, so indistinctly that Athos by the fire could not catch a word of it. But the curé nodded gravely, and patted the small unkempt head. “Go now, and tell them I’ll be there presently.”

The lamps flickered again in the draught as the messenger vanished back out into the growing dark. The priest sighed, taking up his breviary and reaching for his broad-brimmed hat. Athos cast a questioning glance up at his host, who returned him a somewhat apologetic look.

“Forgive me, monsieur. A dying parishioner in one of the outlying farms, beyond the crossroads... I must leave you, I fear. But pray do not disturb yourself on that account: I bequeath to you the supper, and an undisputed use of my bed for the night. Consider the house as your own; I have every confidence in you, for you are a gentleman of good breeding, are you not?”

Athos rose from his seat to bow in acknowledgement, and busied himself with a napkin at the table. “But also, mon père, I am an old campaigner. And as such I commend to you a slice or two of this pie, and some fragments of broken meats besides. One should never go on a night sortie without provisions.”

Suiting the action to his words, he had wrapped up in the linen the items aforementioned, together with a fine red apple from the bowl, and now presented the package to the curé. The latter received it with a gesture of blessing, and departed.

Left thus alone in sole possession of the little house in which he had sought lodging — for the village was too impoverished to support so much as an inn, let alone any grander dwelling than the curé’s cottage, which was at least clean — Athos considered the remains of the supper without great appetite. The soup, which had only just been removed from the stove, was still hot, and that was something. He had been in the saddle for hours, with the prospect of as many leagues or more to ride in the morning, and was chilled and aching to the bone. He shed his cloak across a chair to finish drying, made a brief attempt at brushing the rest of the mud from his person, to little effect, and addressed himself dutifully to the victuals on the table.

The soup was tolerable. The local wine was thin and sour, and the pie consisted largely of gristly mutton. Presently, too tired to feel hungry, he abandoned the remains of the meal and took up the lamp from the table through to the other chamber where the priest’s bed awaited. At least for tonight he would not have to share, which was more than could be said for most inns in these parts, and certainly more than he had hoped for when they arrived.

Undressing, he spared a thought for Grimaud, doubtless asleep already in the straw of the stables with the horses munching peacefully below, and slipped with a shiver between clammy sheets. Limb by limb, with the discipline of long practice, he schooled himself to relax, resigning himself to uneasy dreams, and after ten minutes or so reached over to put out the lamp.

The movement was arrested by a sudden knocking on the door outside that jerked him on instinct instantly alert. But he was not in camp now, and it could scarcely be a summons sent to find him in this remote spot... Another member of the priest’s flock, perhaps. It was to be hoped no-one else stood in need of extreme unction tonight, for it came to him that he did not know which way the curé had gone.

He had left the door unbolted. It was the custom in these remote parts, just as it had been among the tenants on his own estate —Athos thrust that memory down along with the rest— and besides there was always the chance that his host might return before dawn.

But whoever was knocking at present, it was not the curé. More than likely it was some benighted traveller, arriving just as he himself had done, in which case the duty of hospitality had been bequeathed to the former guest.

Another flurry of knocks, too impatient to be a parishioner. He raised his voice. “Enter.”

He heard the front door open amid the sound of voices, and the sudden draught sent the light of the lamp flickering wildly. A moment later, as if to confirm his guess, the head of a young man appeared at the door of the bedchamber, travel-stained but well dressed.

“Mon père, we are weary from the road and need to beg shelter.”

The tone belied the words, being clear and high, as if used to command, and Athos did not trouble to disabuse the newcomer.

“By all means — if you can be content with what remains of supper on the table, and a share in this chamber, for there is nothing else.”

The head withdrew, and he rolled over and shut his eyes. Muffled laughter from the other room, and the sound of brief discussion. The voice returned.

“I thank you, monsieur le curé, and accept.”

He did not reopen his eyes. “In that case, I ask that you make your meal as quickly and quietly as possible, and come to bed with as little disturbance as you are able. For I, too, am weary”—he kept his tone to courtesy with an effort—“and had hoped for sleep.”

So he would be obliged to share the bed after all. Well, it was no more than he had expected for tonight, and if truth be told he was too tired to care.

He moved over to make room, and composed himself once more to slumber, aware only as at a great distance of the sounds of cutlery and stifled merriment from the chamber beyond. It was an unknown time later that he resurfaced briefly as the light went out, and the weight of another body settled beside him on the mattress.

Good. Now perhaps they could both get some rest. Athos turned his back, with a vague sound that might possibly have been interpreted as “Good night”, and let the depths once more come up to welcome him.

He was jerked back by the knowledge of a cold hand exploring across the bed. It found his shoulder, and he shook it off. “I’m here. Go to sleep.”

But the touch was joined by another, plucking at the sleeve of his shirt, and he pulled away, awake and annoyed. He would gladly have shared the warmth of his sheets with a comrade on campaign. He had no desire to lie any closer than he must with this chance-met young sprig of the court — least of all when he had only just managed at last to warm himself. The encroachment was unwelcome.

“What is it?”

In response there came the whisper of a laugh. A pair of arms slipped around his neck from behind, and the supple, yielding form that pressed itself against his own was quite unmistakably that of a woman.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned... but alas, sinning is such sweet pleasure!” She moved against him again, knowing, deliberate, every line of that ripe body all too clear through the worn threads of his shirt, and memory caught him by the throat and would not let him free.

She was dead and gone. She had been dead these five years past— Anne de Breuil, Clarice de Winter, Lady Sheffield, fiend in fair seeming, the last woman with whom he had been intimate; his wife, in that vanished existence, the former Comtesse de La Fère.

But then he had believed her dead, all those years before. It had not helped... with the memories. Wine had not helped, or reckless danger.

She was dead. It made no difference. Small hands insinuated themselves inside the throat of his garment, and he could not thrust them off. Could not move a muscle, frozen taut in something between panic and blind revulsion.

“You must realise, Madame”—he got the words out somehow as her caresses travelled lower, piqued perhaps by the lack of response—“that I have no intention of... taking advantage of you.”

Again the little chuckle, lilting and warm. It was not hers; was nothing like hers...

“Ah, but you mistake.” The laughing breath of a kiss against his neck, feather-light. “You see, it is I, the poor sinner, who have every intention of taking advantage of you.”

And a moment later her soft weight was upon him, pinning him down so that he could not pull away without using enough force to hurt her, nestling itself into his arms with a confiding intimacy that was less brazen than oddly maternal.

“Oh, my dear, my poor celibate”—there was a tenderness now to the laughter, and to the kisses that brushed across lips and brow—“it has been too long, has it not? Here, like this— hold me. Here, and here; yes— oh yes, like that...”

Beneath the blatant caresses of a tavern trollop, willing or not, he would have recoiled in violent disgust. But it was the most gentle and proficient of seductions, one that held out comfort and —after that first frozen reaction— did not any longer seek to intrude. Her hands across his shoulders soothed and eased tight muscles, but did not stray elsewhere, save to guide his own. Her body against his invited— offered— but did not insist. The kisses that drew him onward were not greedy, but almost chaste, even when, yielding to tenderness, he began almost hesitantly to return them.

Laughter was seldom far from those lips, it seemed; but it was not mockery, but shared delight. Mutual achievement, even, when his body quickened at last, and she slid down upon him with a gasp that sent a jolt of passion through them both.

Spiralling down into oblivion. Into blessed forgetfulness of past, and present, and everything save her soft, eager movements, and his own long-pent-up need.

“Such sweet pleasure,” she whispered afterwards on the breath of a laugh, leaning over to brush aside the long locks from his brow and drop one final kiss there, as if in benediction. Presently she was asleep, one of his hands held captured between her own, lying warm and quiescent upon her breast.

He retrieved it, gently. Set the salute of his lips on impulse across those slender fingers, desiring her no longer, but caught up in a sudden awareness of gratitude.

She had believed him still to be the curé, it occurred to him ruefully on the verge of slumber. But the most ascetic of saints could scarcely have resisted, and explanations, at such a juncture, would have been awkward at best... He took that half-formed twist of amusement with him over the threshold into a mercifully dreamless sleep.

~o~

Athos woke at dawn, as he had intended. He dressed quickly and quietly for the long road ahead, and stood for a moment looking down upon the unknown companion with whom he had shared the night. Despite all that had passed, he had glimpsed her only once by lamplight, and in the guise of a man.

She was undoubtedly charming, even in sleep. A mass of fair hair tumbled about her neck and reminded him, with a pang, of that other — but for a while at least, it seemed, the poison had been drawn from the old memories. Athos pulled the covers up softly across one pristine shoulder, and left without a sound.

He had hung his cloak across the back of the chair by the fire. Only the chair, like the bed he had just left, was not untenanted. There was a woman in it also, dressed likewise in man’s clothing; it was the plain, neat dress of a serving-man, the role that no doubt she had played to her mistress’ cavalier.

She too was undeniably attractive despite her present graceless posture, with head thrown back and drooping arms. But where her mistress had been entirely unknown to him, this face caught at his attention.

D’Artagnan— it was in the apartment of d’Artagnan, when the lieutenant had first come to Paris, that he had seen her. And it was Aramis who had found a place for her in service to a certain person at Tours — to that same Duchesse de Chevreuse whose madcap follies had been the talk of Paris, who had dabbled in politics and might now well find herself forced to flee, who had held dominion so long over the inconstant heart of Aramis, to the amused astonishment of his friends... an achievement which no longer surprised Athos in the least.

One did not, as he had learned last night, resist the vagaries of Madame de Chevreuse. One did not even resent them.

Still, it was as well, perhaps, for the peace of mind of the poor curé that he had not been at home to receive her. Smiling a little, Athos retrieved his cloak from the dust of the hearth, where it had clearly slipped from beneath the head of the fair sleeper, and took his leave without looking back.

Daybreak was past, and thoughts of d’Artagnan had reminded him that he had a mission to fulfil, and was under orders. Grimaud, silent as ever, had the horses saddled and already waiting outside the stable, and a few minutes later they had passed through the little village street and were making a good pace along the high road, towards Rousillon. The local notables of that border province, discontented under Spanish rule, had been making covert overtures of late towards the French Crown.

It was not, however, the misfortunes of the Catalans that preoccupied the musketeer Athos over the long days of riding, nor even those of Madame de Chevreuse, but a matter that years ago he would not have so much as considered but which returned to him now with increasing force. For the Inseparables of old were separated: Porthos had the riches he had always wanted, Aramis had returned to the vocation he had always professed to regret, and even d’Artagnan, as lieutenant of musketeers, was of necessity set apart from their old friendship. Athos, who had always admired the young man’s energy and ready wits, considered him a good officer and was content to obey promptly at his command; but the days of camaraderie, when the four of them had shared duties, danger and what little they had, were gone, as d’Artagnan himself had known they must.

In the beginning, the anonymity of the regiment had offered refuge. Perhaps, Athos considered, watching the endless road unroll between the ears of a weary horse, he was no longer young enough to relish dice and brawling as a distraction from the tedium of a soldier’s life. Perhaps it was simply that the burning pain of those first years, when he had sought to hide away forever the ruins of most ardent love and of his honour, had long since ebbed to an empty, bitter shell that was no longer enough reason to go on.

There was little that remained for him in the musketeers these days. Among the ranks he stood apart from the younger men, and there was no longer a great-hearted Porthos or a cultivated, charming Aramis to bridge that gap. And so, when he had learned by chance, this summer past, that an old kinsman of his —of that Comte de La Fère whom he had been— was slowly dying, leaving no heir, he had not entirely shrugged off the knowledge, as he would once have done.

If he were to visit the old Vicomte, whom he had not seen since he was sixteen, and make himself known, then the property would be his. It was not enough to arouse cupidity, little more than a pocket-handkerchief of a park, and a low white house notable neither for its fashion nor its antiquity. All the same, it was an independence upon which one could live, like the old man, the life of a quiet country gentleman.

There was a time when he would rather have killed or been killed than resurrect the pride of his race from the grave to which he had consigned it. But he had set aside that vow five years ago, in the name of vengeance. Athos the musketeer was a mask, but one which he had dropped before, and could, if he were to choose, drop again. He had toyed more and more, these last few months, with the thought of handing in his resignation and doing just that.

Only the past was dead, like himself a withered root from which nothing could grow. The lands and honours that had once been his belonged now to others, and the taint clung across them still of all that she had touched. An inheritance might provide an excuse to leave the service, but the years ahead lay arid all the same. The past was dead, and one could not go back.

So he had entertained the idea and set it aside, time and again, while the sands ran out on the old man’s life and his own grew more barren by the day. Nothing had changed. And yet—

And yet he had received a gift, one made in mischief but with a gentle kindness that had meant something, after all. It had made a difference. Things could be different. One fickle, fair-haired woman need not always be the same as another. What could not be mended could still be changed: one sword-hilt for another, one blade for another. One life for another, outworn.

It was not, perhaps, the knowledge the Duchesse de Chevreuse had intended to bestow upon a poor unworldly priest. Watching the ears of his horse, Athos smiled a little, despite the stiffness and aches of long leagues in the saddle. But it would scarcely be the first impulsive act to have unforeseen consequences... and he was not complaining. Maybe he would even make a pilgrimage back to the scene, to mark the anniversary.

The wry whimsy of that caught at his fancy, and drew from him a rare laugh that would no doubt greatly have puzzled Grimaud, riding behind, if he had heard. Athos turned in the saddle and signalled the servant, with a gesture to the sky against which the line of mountains was rising ahead. “Perpignan?”

Grimaud pointed forward, and made a swift pantomime of a setting and then a rising sun, by which his master understood clearly that in Grimaud’s opinion they would reach Perpignan tomorrow. Tomorrow, then, it would be time to sound out the rumours from Rousillon...

If all went well, when they returned to Paris there would be some days of leave. He would request permission to deal with family affairs — that would amuse the lieutenant, no doubt, but for once it would be the truth.

It was time for the Comte de La Fère to take his place once more among the living, in a small way at least. He would pay a quiet visit to his kinsman at Bragelonne, and set the old man’s mind at rest.

And presently he would tender his resignation to Monsieur d’Artagnan. He had not, as yet, any purpose for his life, but the chapter of Athos was ended.

One could not go back, but one could not, either, remain the same. There returned to him fleetingly and without regret the memory of a light-hearted lady in the dark.

~o~

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe
And love itself have rest...

~Lord Byron