If I Should Die

[igenlode]

The one-shot that was inspired by a slight mis-remembering of the farewells beneath the scaffold, and by a line that is for some reason omitted from the translation I had from Project Gutenberg... I have worked grit-covered ropes in bitterly cold weather; my pen-calluses weren't of much help. Athos probably has sword-calluses, but it's canon that those didn't help much either ;-)

(Aramis does in fact embrace both Porthos and d'Artagnan immediately afterwards on his own account before going off on what he has every reason to believe may be a suicide mission, another line which was left out of the English translation, which simply reads "Aramis again presented himself at the bishop’s" in lieu of "Aramis les quitta comme il avait quitté Athos, c’est-à-dire en les embrassant; puis il se rendit chez l’évêque Juxon".)

---

If I Should Die

At dawn on the day of the English king’s execution, Athos takes precautions for the future and contemplates those to whom his life is bound — both by love and hate.

---

“Donc Athos déchirait ses belles mains si blanches et si fines à lever les pierres arrachées de leur base par Porthos...” Vingt ans après, Chapitre LXX, “Les ouvriers”

The January wind stole across the stones of Whitehall, and fluttered the sombre drapes beneath the gaunt new structure that stood there. It had been a bitterly cold night, and Athos had worked without respite, under cover of the labour going on all around them to complete the King’s scaffold— a thing horrible and unheard of, not that a King should be murdered but that the deed should be carried out with this travesty of the forms of justice. But they had given their word, he and Aramis, to Madame Henriette of England. Given their word to guard her husband the King and to bring him safely back to her, even if it should cost both their lives.

And so, in this final desperate cast of the dice, with time running out, there had been no chance for warmth or rest. Porthos, who had been no part of their vow to that unhappy queen but, true heart that he was, loaned his strength out of pure and simple friendship, had worked like a Titan to complete the task before dawn could betray what they were at, and honour required —even if the urgency of the situation had not demanded it— that Athos, serving as his assistant, should do no less.

For his part it had been unskilled labour, unskilfully performed by hands unsuited to the task: pale, finely-moulded fingers bred to the sword-hilt or the pen, but nonetheless set with grim determination to lift and clear away the shattered rubble as fast as Porthos could drive the breach into the wall beneath the balcony above. His hands were stiff now with cold, scraped raw and filthy with stone-dust, but he spared no heed for that, save for the momentary thought that at least there was no longer any risk that, beneath his short-cropped hair and shabby disguise, they would betray the aristocrat.

The winter sun was beginning to gild the points of the roofs opposite, but daybreak no longer posed a danger. The unstinting efforts of Porthos through the hours of darkness had been crowned with success. Under the guise of cutting out a shallow socket in which to seat one of the main supporting beams of the scaffold, the giant had contrived to pierce right through the stonework and into the space beyond, a sort of dark void that lay directly beneath the floor of the rooms in which the King was being held. The gap had been enlarged enough in the course of this final hour for Athos to pass not only his head but now his shoulders and his entire body through into that cramped chamber, to continue the work whenever he should receive the signal from above that all was safe to proceed.

Porthos himself, whose mighty thews would have been invaluable in the task of shifting those last few slabs, could not hope to squeeze past the opening, and there was no time left in which to increase it; nor, perhaps, would it have been wise. He had passed up the crowbar to his companion, lying concealed, with a good grace, and d’Artagnan, who had made himself very busy with hammer and nails about the scaffold for some time, had taken the chance to pin up a fold of the draperies that lined the interior in such a way that it could hide both the hole and the man who lay within it from view.

Dear d’Artagnan! All the old affection welled up in Athos’ breast, joined now by a fresh admiration and gratitude, for this whole plan had been of d’Artagnan’s devising. In the name of a cause to which he held no allegiance, for the sake of their long friendship alone, he had disobeyed his orders, thrown away the chance of his promotion, and would at best risk his career of twenty years and at worst face a charge of treason on his return. But all the same he had set at Charles Stuart’s service not only the considerable skill of his sword-arm, but a gift far greater: his unmatched resource and imagination.

If the King were to be got safely away —and beyond all hope it was starting at last to seem that he might— then in very large measure it would be thanks to d’Artagnan; d’Artagnan, who had been conscripted into this quest against his own better judgement. And yet, the decision once taken, he had thrown himself into it heart and soul: most excellent, most brave of men.

He and Porthos had gone now to shed their workman’s clothing and take up their swords, ready to stand guard on the King’s escape if needs be. Aramis —poor Aramis, to whom the passing years had brought only cynicism and discontent, when to Athos himself they had taught a happiness far greater than the years of his youth— was the sole one among them who, in his rôle as a priest, had any hope of gaining admittance to the King’s chambers unsuspected, and that delicate task was to be his alone. There were messages that must be passed to the prisoner if at all possible, signals so that Athos’ tunnelling work should not be overheard by the guards and hence betrayed, and last-minute instructions for Aramis himself, whose duty it might be, in the final resort, to sell his life as dearly as he could in order to stave off pursuit.

From beyond the shrouded scaffold platform voices drifted back as the English workmen dispersed across the square, each man with coins in his pocket from a good night’s labour, going cheerfully home to breakfast on boiled mutton and beer before the spectacle that was to come. Beneath the timbers the two of them only remained, the one man lying concealed within the wall who had raised himself up on his elbow, and the other listening quietly with bent head. The fair penitents who had cast glances through their lashes at the elegant Abbé d’Herblay would scarcely have known him now, for Aramis too had made the ultimate sacrifice, and permitted the long love-locks of which he had always been so vain to be crudely shorn, in order that he could pass himself off among the Puritans.

He had left a life of luxury and idle intrigues to come to England at the behest of Madame Henriette, yet had found in this lost cause something in which he could believe once more, and, perhaps, a salvation of his own... and it seemed to Athos in this moment both fitting and right that it should be for the two of them at the last to take on the most danger. It was only to die a little sooner, that was all.

“It shall all be done as you have said, Athos,” Aramis murmured softly. He looked up, his face a pale blur in the swaying shadows, and their eyes met in the same mutual knowledge. “Your hand— for it may be that we shall not meet again.”

He held out a hand with the ghost of his old smile; but Athos, slipping down from his concealment, set both arms about his friend and embraced him mutely and with a full heart. Aramis likewise said nothing. But his clasp tightened about Athos in return, and when his head went down onto Athos’ shoulder, the rough-cut hair pressed for a moment against his cheek.

“For you,” Athos said simply, releasing him. “And this— if I should die, give this to d’Artagnan for me, and tell him I loved him always as if he were my own son.”

He reached out again with as much tenderness as if it had been d’Artagnan whom he held indeed; let himself believe for an instant that it was, for he had let the Gascon, dear to him as he was, go without a word of farewell, and this might be the closest now they would ever come again. He set a grave kiss on the younger man’s brow, and Aramis nodded and stepped back.

“I’ll give it to him, Athos.” His voice was barely a whisper.

Athos managed a smile. “And this for our brave Porthos.”

A bone-crushing hug with all the strength he could muster, the counterpart to one of Porthos’ most casual buffets. To the colossus it would have been barely a fleabite; Aramis endured without a flinch.

“I’ll give it to him, Athos, I swear.” There was an unaccustomed sheen of emotion in his eyes. “But we will succeed— I am sure of it, as sure now that we will save the King as that the hand I press is the most loyal—”

In his fervour he had caught up Athos’ hand in his own and wrung it indeed with some vigour. Taken unawares, despite his best efforts Athos could not forbear a swift intake of breath, and heard the sharp echo of Aramis’ inhalation in return.

“Dear God, your hands...!”

The tone was one of more indignation than anything else, though the grasp that turned Athos’ raw, stiffened fingers up to the light was gentle enough. Aramis, Athos remembered a little ruefully, had always taken the most exquisite care of his own person.

“They will serve.” He tried to wipe free the worst of the stone-dust from the fingers of his other hand on the coarse cloth of the jerkin he wore, and desisted with a wince. “I can handle the tools well enough, and the work is necessary.”

Aramis regarded him a moment longer, very steadily, then nodded and released his grasp.

“Here, then.” He produced a handkerchief —his own, of course, salvaged from their possessions; trust Aramis for that!— and passed it over, an incongruous flourish of white cambric in the half-light. But the fine fabric served well to ease away the painfully clinging grit. Dabbing at scratches, Athos made to return the gift to its owner, but Aramis shook his head.

“No, keep it; you may have need of it later.” He turned away a little too quickly. “Adieu.”

“Adieu,” Athos said quietly, and watched him go.

Be of good heart, Aramis, for whatever may become of us, the King shall this day go free. Be vigilant and brave, Porthos and d’Artagnan, for you will have the most precious cargo to guard on your flight back to France. A few more hours of labour in that confined space beneath the floor, and the way will be clear.

~o~

With the last farewells all made, the thought of Raoul crossed his mind with a pang: Raoul, who had come to him by a chance undreamed of, and who was all the best part of himself. But Raoul stood now on the brink of manhood and was facing a war of his own —a cleaner one, praise be to God, than this— and they had parted in that knowledge, and said all that was needful. D’Artagnan would take his, Athos’, place if need be, to guard and love the boy with all his native Gascon ardour, and one could ask nothing better for either of them.

Only thoughts of Raoul brought in their wake the cold shadow of Mordaunt, the stepson to whom Athos was bound by ties not of blood but of implacable hate... and by the twisted memory of the woman he had at last forgiven, but could not forget.

Mordaunt was her final victim, though the young man would never see that or acknowledge it. She had devoured him utterly; murdered the father and consumed the child through whom she meant to inherit. And the boy could so easily have been his: in the weeks past, he had not been able to forget it. If that brief false idyll had borne fruit, as he had once dreamed it might —if he had sired a son at twenty-two on the wife he had loved with blind passion, and not on a passing stranger when he was past thirty years of age— then doubtless Baron de Winter’s fate would have been his own. A brief, convenient illness that left the doctors bemused, and it would have been a child of his blood left behind at La Fère and at his mother’s mercy.

And maybe, Athos thought painfully, maybe those broad lands would have been enough to satisfy her ambition, and none of the rest of it need ever have happened... Whatever the truth, behind the pinched malice of Mordaunt he saw always the suffering ghost of that boy who might have been.

The Comte de La Fère had bastardised and disinherited Mordaunt at a single unthinking stroke when, years too late, he had revealed the bigamy of his wife’s second marriage. By his own choice, the world had believed him dead, even as he had believed her dead at his hand; and by that concealment —that cowardice— he had brought about incalculable harm. At the least, Athos told himself, at the very least they should have spared a thought for what would become of the child she left behind; a child who had meant nothing to her save as an extension of her own self, and who had been in those days entirely innocent in all save his birth. Mordaunt, who had become a thing entirely monstrous, could perhaps have been saved.

He did not regret the death of his wife, nor even his own part in it. Woman or no woman, she had been utterly without conscience and without mercy, and had to be stopped. But between him and Mordaunt there remained that horrible tie of kinship: kinship with a man from whom he recoiled, yet could not help but pity.

Mordaunt nursed a bitter hatred for the Comte de La Fère, and perhaps he had reason to do so. Blood calls out for blood. Charles Stuart had spilled the blood of loyal Strafford, and now stood himself on the brink of that same scaffold that had so long haunted his conscience. But him at least it should not claim; not if human strength and will could serve to prevent it.

Athos flexed stiff fingers. Judged again that they were adequate to the task, and tucked Aramis’ handkerchief away for future recourse, not without a flicker of gratitude and amusement both. Lifting aside the folds of serge that d’Artagnan had so carefully nailed in position, he slipped back into the breach in the wall and felt around for the crowbar Porthos had passed him there. The metal stung against his palm, but he wrapped his grasp around it more tightly and began the dusty crawl further into the darkness beyond. The years of his education, extensive as they had been, had lacked any practical study of the stonemason’s art... but ingenuity would have to suffice, as it had done for noble prisoners throughout the ages.

It was hard to gauge distance. When he had come, so far as he could judge, to a space somewhere beneath the chamber in which the royal captive was held, he lay quietly, resting, and composed himself to wait. Presently there would come a signal to tell him when and where it was safe to work. How Raoul’s eyes would sparkle if d’Artagnan ever told him of this exploit, as he had recounted that of the Bastion Saint-Gervais...

Alone and unseen, Athos allowed himself to dwell briefly once more on all whom he loved. Then he schooled himself to anticipation, and a clear mind. There would be hope... and perhaps expiation, of a sort.