“Yes,” said d’Artagnan, “yes, if it’s to avenge her, I’m ready to follow you!”
Athos took advantage of this moment of strength, which the hope of revenge had given to his unhappy friend, to make a sign to Porthos and Aramis to go find the superior.
They met her in the corridor, overwhelmed by dismay at the events of the past hour. She summoned some of the sisters who, against all monastic rules, found themselves in the presence of five men.
“Madame,” said Athos, taking d’Artagnan gently by the arm, “we leave in your pious care the body of that unfortunate woman. She was an angel on earth before becoming an angel in heaven. Treat her as one of your sisters. We will return one day to pray over her grave.”
D’Artagnan hid his face against Athos’s chest and broke into sobs.
“Weep,” said Athos, “weep, heart full of love, of youth and of life! Alas—I only wish I could weep as you do!”
And he led away his friend, as affectionate as a father, as consoling as a priest, as great as those are who have suffered greatly.
Followed by their lackeys, who led their horses, the five men walked into the town of Béthune, whose streets began just beyond the convent, and stopped before the first inn they came to.
“But,” said d’Artagnan, “aren’t we going after that woman?”
“Not yet,” said Athos. “First, I have measures to take.”
“She’ll escape us,” the young man replied. “She’ll escape us, Athos, and it will be your fault.”
“I will be responsible for her,” said Athos.
D’Artagnan had such confidence in his friend’s word that he simply bowed his head and entered the inn without reply.
Porthos and Aramis exchanged a look, unable to understand why Athos was so sure of himself. Lord Winter merely thought he spoke that way to soothe d’Artagnan’s grief.
“Now, Messieurs,” said Athos, after ascertaining that five rooms were available in the inn, “let’s go to our chambers. D’Artagnan needs solitude, to mourn and to sleep. Rest easy; I will take charge of everything.”
“I must say,” said Lord Winter, “that it seems to me that if any measures are to be taken against the countess, it’s my concern: she is my sister-in-law.”
“Your sister-in-law,” said Athos, “but my wife.”
D’Artagnan shuddered, for he understood that Athos must be certain of his revenge to reveal a secret like that. Porthos and Aramis looked at each other and paled. Lord Winter thought Athos must be mad.
“Retire, then,” said Athos, “and leave it to me. You must see that, as the husband, this is my concern. Just one thing, d’Artagnan: if you haven’t lost it, give me that paper that escaped from that man’s hat, on which is written the name of that village . . .”
“Ah!” said d’Artagnan. “Now I understand: that name—in her handwriting.”
“So you see,” said Athos, “that there is a God in heaven!”
LXIV
The Man in the Red Cloak
Athos’s former despair had been replaced by an intense grief, which rendered the brilliant mental faculties of this man all the more lucid. He was possessed by one single thought: that of the promise he had made, and the responsibility he had assumed.
He was the last to retire to his chamber, after having asked the host to find a map of the province for him. He bent over this map, examining its every line. Seeing that there were four possible routes from Béthune to Armentières, he summoned the lackeys.
Planchet, Grimaud, Mousqueton, and Bazin presented themselves, and received definite, clear, and exacting orders from Athos.
They were to set out the next morning at daybreak and make their way to Armentières, each by a different route. Planchet, the most intelligent of the four, was to follow that taken by the carriage upon which the four friends had fired—the carriage that had been accompanied, unbeknownst to them, by Rochefort’s servant.
Athos sent the lackeys on this initial campaign because, since these men had been in service to him and his friends, he had recognized that each had different and essential qualities.
Plus, nosy lackeys inspire less mistrust than inquisitive masters, and find more sympathy among those they ask. Also, Milady knew the masters, but not their valets—while the valets would have no trouble recognizing Milady.
The four were to meet the next day at eleven o’clock at a specified location. If they had discovered Milady’s retreat, three were to remain on guard, while the fourth returned to Béthune to inform Athos and serve as guide to the four friends.
These dispositions arranged, the lackeys retired in their turn.
By then it was nearly ten o’clock. Athos rose from his chair, belted on his sword, wrapped himself in a cloak, and left the inn. As everyone knows, in the provinces, by ten in the evening the streets are nearly deserted. Athos, however, was keen to find someone to whom he could address a question. Finally he met a late passerby, approached him, and spoke a few words. The man he addressed recoiled in fright and answered the musketeer’s words with only a gesture of direction. Athos offered the man a half-pistole to accompany him, but the man refused.
Athos followed the street the man had pointed out, but when he arrived at a crossroads he stopped again, visibly uncertain. However, since the crossroads was the spot that offered the best chance of encountering someone else, he stayed there. After a few minutes the night watchman came along. Athos repeated the question he had asked the first man he’d met, and the night watchman displayed the same terror. He refused in his turn to accompany Athos, but pointed out which road he should follow.
Athos marched in the direction indicated and came to the neighborhood at the opposite end of town from where the companions had entered. There he again appeared uneasy and uncertain, and stopped for the third time.
Fortunately a beggar came along and approached Athos to ask for alms. Athos offered him a silver crown to accompany him to where he was going. The beggar hesitated a moment, but at the sight of the piece of silver glittering in the gloom he agreed, and walked on ahead of Athos.
At a bend in the road the beggar pointed to a small house in the distance: isolated, lonely, and dismal. Athos approached it, while the beggar, who had received his fee, went off as fast as his legs could take him.
Athos went all around the house before he found the door, which was painted the same dull red as the walls. No light shone out between the slats of the shutters, and no noise indicated that the house was inhabited: it was as dark and silent as a tomb.
Three times Athos knocked without a reply. At the third knock, however, footsteps could be heard approaching inside. At length the door opened and a man appeared, tall, pale, and black of hair and beard.
Athos and he exchanged a few words in low voices, then the tall man made a sign to the musketeer that he might come in. Athos immediately accepted, and the door was shut behind him.
The man whom Athos had come so far and taken such trouble to find led him into his workshop, where he was engaged in wiring together the dry bones of a human skeleton. The entire body was complete except for the skull, which sat on a nearby table.
The other furnishings likewise indicated that the resident of this house had an interest in natural philosophy: there were bottles containing serpents, labeled according to their species; dried lizards glistening like emeralds, mounted on large squares of black wood; and bunches of aromatic wild herbs, endowed no doubt with virtues unknown to the common man, dangling from the ceiling and hanging down into the corners of the room.
But there was no family, and no servants; the tall man inhabited this house alone.
Athos cast a cold and indifferent glance over all these objects and, at the invitation of the man he had come to find, sat down near him.
Then he explained the reason for his visit, and the service he required from the man. But he had scarcely spoken before the stranger, who had remained standing before the musketeer, recoiled in terror and refused. Then Athos t
ook from his pocket a small piece of paper on which were written two lines, accompanied by a signature and a seal, and presented it to the man, who took it reluctantly. As soon as the tall man had read the note, seen the signature, and recognized the seal, he bowed to indicate that he had no more objections and was ready to obey.
Athos needed nothing more. He rose, bowed, left, and returned the way he’d come. He reentered the inn and went to his room.
At daybreak, d’Artagnan came into his chamber and asked Athos what was to be done next.
“Wait,” replied Athos.
Shortly thereafter, the superior of the convent sent to inform the musketeers that the burial of Milady’s victim would take place at noon. As to the poisoner herself, the abbess had no news, except that she must have fled through the garden, where her footprints were visible in the sand. The door of the garden had been found shut and the key had disappeared.
At the appointed hour, Lord Winter and the four friends went to the convent. The bells tolled their loudest and the chapel door was open, but the gate to the choir was closed. In the middle of the choir the body of the victim was laid out, dressed in the habit of a novice. Arrayed on either side of the choir and in the doorways that opened into the convent, where they were out of sight of their profane visitors, was the entire community of the Carmelites, who listened to the divine service and mingled their chants with those of the priests.
At the door of the chapel d’Artagnan felt his courage fail him and turned to look for Athos. But Athos had disappeared.
Committed to his mission of vengeance, Athos had asked to be conducted to the garden. There, across the sand, he followed the light footprints of that woman who had left a bloody trail wherever she had passed. The tracks led to the door that gave onto the wood; after having had it opened, Athos plunged into the forest.
On the other side, his suspicions were confirmed: the road down which the carriage had disappeared circled around the wood. Athos followed the road for a while, his eyes fixed on the ground; occasional drops of blood, from a wound taken by the outrider, or perhaps one of the horses, speckled the road. At the end of about three-quarters of a league, on the outskirts of Festubert, a much larger bloodstain appeared at a place where the ground had been trampled by horses. Between the forest and this telltale location, just beyond the torn-up ground, could be seen the same small footprints as in the garden. The carriage had stopped here—and at this spot, Milady had come out of the wood and gotten into the carriage.
Satisfied by this discovery, which confirmed all his suspicions, Athos returned to the inn, where he found Planchet impatiently awaiting him.
Everything was as Athos had foreseen. Planchet had followed the same road as Athos; like Athos, he had noticed the bloodstains and the place where the horses had stopped. But he had gone farther than Athos, into the village of Festubert. There, drinking in a tavern, without even having to ask a question, he had learned that the night before, at about half past eight, a wounded man, who accompanied a lady traveling in a post-chaise, had been obliged to stop, unable to go any farther. His wound was blamed on thieves who had stopped the chaise in the wood. The man had remained in the village, but the woman had ordered a relay of horses and had continued on her way.
Planchet had then gone in search of the postilion who had driven the chaise, and had found him. He had taken the lady as far as Fromelles, and from Fromelles she had headed for Armentières. Plan-chet took the same route, and by seven in the morning he was in Armentières.
There was only one traveler’s inn in the village, that of the postservice. Planchet had presented himself there as an out-of-work lackey in search of a job. He hadn’t chatted for more than ten minutes with the people of the inn before he’d learned that a woman, alone, had arrived at eleven o’clock the night before. She’d taken a room, sent for the innkeeper, and informed him that she planned to stay in the area for some time.
That was all Planchet needed to know. He ran to the rendezvous point, found the other three lackeys already there, and placed them as sentries at the exits of the inn. Then he’d gone to find Athos, and had just finished making his report when the other three friends returned.
Their expressions were somber and dejected, even the mild face of Aramis.
“What do we do now?” asked d’Artagnan.
“Wait,” replied Athos.
Each returned to his own room.
At eight in the evening Athos ordered the saddling of the horses, and sent to inform Lord Winter and his friends that they should prepare for an expedition.
In an instant all five were ready. Each checked to make sure his weapons were in order. Athos went down without delay and found d’Artagnan already at his horse, waiting impatiently.
“Patience,” said Athos. “We are still short one person.”
The four cavaliers looked around in astonishment, unable to think whom this person could be.
At that moment Planchet brought out Athos’s horse, and the musketeer vaulted lightly into the saddle.
“Wait for me,” he said. “I’ll be back shortly.” And he set off at a gallop.
A quarter of an hour later he returned, accompanied by a masked man enveloped in a great red cloak.
Lord Winter and the three musketeers looked at each other questioningly—without avail, for none of them knew who this man could be. However, they were willing to accept him, if Athos said they should.
At nine o’clock, guided by Planchet, the little troop took to the road, following the route taken by the carriage.
It was a melancholy sight, these six men riding in silence, each wrapped in his own thoughts, as dismal as despair, as grim as retribution.
LXV
Judgment
The night was stormy and somber, with great clouds racing across the sky, eclipsing the starlight; the moon wouldn’t rise until nearly midnight.
Sometimes, by a flash of the lightning that flickered on the horizon, they could see the road stretching out before them, pale and deserted; then, the flash extinguished, all returned to darkness.
Athos was constantly reining in d’Artagnan, who was always at the head of the little troop; he would return to his place in the ranks, but after a minute he was off once more. He had only one thought, which was to press forward, and he went.
They passed in silence through the village of Festubert, where the wounded servant slept, then skirted the wood of Richebourg. When they arrived at Herlies, Planchet, who led the column, took them to the left.
Several times Lord Winter, Porthos, or Aramis had tried addressing a few words to the man in the red cloak, but to everything said to him, he bowed but declined to reply. The travelers realized there must be some reason why the stranger maintained his silence and gave up trying to talk to him.
Besides, the storm was coming on. The lightning flashed more frequently, the thunder began to rumble, and the wind, precursor to the tempest, whistled across the fields, whipping the cavaliers’ plumes.
The cavalcade broke into a trot.
Just before they reached Fromelles the storm burst. They huddled under their cloaks; they still had three leagues to go, and had to do it through torrents of rain.
D’Artagnan took off his hat and refused to wear his cloak. It was good to feel the water running from his burning brow, draining the fever from his shivering form.
After the little troop passed Grenier and arrived at a crossroads, a man, who had been sheltering under a tree, detached himself from the trunk where he had been hidden by the darkness and strode out into the middle of the road, his finger to his lips.
Athos recognized Grimaud.
“What’s wrong?” cried d’Artagnan. “Has she left Armentières?”
Grimaud nodded. D’Artagnan ground his teeth.
“Silence, d’Artagnan!” said Athos. “I am in charge of this affair, and I will interrogate Grimaud.” Turning to his lackey, he demanded, “Where is she?”
Grimaud pointed in the direction of the Ly
s.
“Far from here?” asked Athos.
Grimaud held up his index finger, then bent it in half.
“Alone?” asked Athos.
Grimaud nodded.
“Messieurs,” said Athos, “she is alone, a half-league from here, in the direction of the river.”
“That’s good,” said d’Artagnan. “Lead us there, Grimaud.”
Grimaud, taking over as guide to the cavalcade, led them across country.
After about five hundred paces they came to a stream, which they forded.
By a flash of lightning, they could see the village of Erquinghem.
“Is she there?” d’Artagnan demanded.
Grimaud shook his head.
“Silence, there!” said Athos.
And the troop continued on their way.
Another flash lit the sky; Grimaud extended his arm, and by the blue light of the serpent of fire they could make out a little isolated house on the bank of the river, within a hundred paces of the ferry. There was a light in one of the windows.
“We are here,” said Athos.
At that moment, the figure of a man rose from a nearby ditch. It was Mousqueton; he pointed at the lamp-lit window.
“She’s there,” he said.
“And Bazin?” asked Athos.
“While I watched the window, he guarded the door.”
“Well done,” said Athos. “You are all loyal servants.” He jumped down from his horse, tossed the reins to Grimaud, and advanced toward the window, after having made a sign to the rest of the troop to go around to the door.
The little house was surrounded by a quickset hedge two or three feet high. Athos jumped the hedge and approached the window, which lacked shutters, but had a half-curtain within that was drawn shut.
He stepped up on the edge of the stone foundation so he could look in over the curtain.
By the light of a lamp, he saw a woman wrapped in a dark-colored cloak, seated on a stool near a hearth and its dying fire. Her elbows rested on a crude table and she leaned her head on her hands, which were white as ivory.