Fic: In Another Time (2/2)
“So, Aramis,” Athos said quietly, hoping to keep his voice steady by lowering the timbre, “Maybe I can go in there by myself and see if I can make some inquiries.” The stones of the parsonage of Roche-L’Abeille seemed to be laughing in his face. Father, you were magnificent. Athos shuddered.
“Oh right, like I’m going to let you enter the House of God alone?” Aramis laughed and dismounted.
“Are you afraid I’ll be struck down by lightning?”
“No! I’m afraid you’re going to be overcome with lust and ravage the first person you see in there, you deviant!”
Athos was sure that he was blushing the deepest red that he’s ever blushed in his entire life, and he was not particularly known to be the blushing kind. Aramis was already walking with careless steps towards the parsonage. I am doomed, Athos thought, and followed him in, with a wilted demeanor. Perhaps the priest will not recognize me, he prayed.
He knew his prayers would not be answered when the good-natured prelate, who had sheltered him so kindly about a year ago, greeted them both and veered towards Athos with an expression of pure bewilderment on his face, “Oh, Monsieur! The strangest thing!”
“I suppose now would be a good time for me to thank you for your hospitality,” Athos said to the man, avoiding Aramis and his poignant looks. “I see that despite a year having passed, you still have an excellent memory.”
“I have always had a great memory for faces, Monsieur, yes. And, either way, one does not get enough visitors of quality here for me to forget.” The priest looked from one man to the other with a curious twinkle in his eyes. “Perhaps you gentlemen can help me solve a mystery?”
“Solving mysteries is our specialty, Monsieur le Curé,” Aramis replied, politely, while shooting furtive daggers out of his eyes at his downcast friend.
“We at the parsonage,” the priest said, taking them each by the elbow and leading them further into the chapel at the center of the building structure, “are in receipt of an unusual package. The only note we found with it said ‘October 11, 1633’ and, as Monsieur very well knows, I spent that entire night at the side of a dying man.”
“Does the Monsieur?” Aramis hissed at Athos.
“Later,” the latter mouthed back. “Yes, I remember that night very well,” he added, loudly this time, addressing the priest. “What was in the package, Monsieur le Curé?”
“A baby boy.”
“A WHAT?” both Athos and Aramis gasped out simultaneously.
“A baby boy, Messieurs,” the priest repeated. “About three months born, by the looks of him.” He glanced from one man to the other again with a hopeful look, but seeing only expressions of various degrees of pure horror, he sighed. “I take it then, you know nothing about this?”
Aramis appeared to come to his senses first and turned to the priest, “What a mystery indeed, Monsieur! And might it be possible to see the note?”
“And the baby,” Athos added quickly.
“Of course, Messieurs,” the priest replied, “Right away, Messieurs, if you would care to wait right here.” He began to move away towards the sacristy door, and turned back, as if remembering something. “The strangest thing, Messieurs!” he exclaimed again. “And such fine linens.” And with these words, the honest fellow disappeared, leaving the two men quite alone in the chapel.
For a few moments, the two friends stood as they were, as if each had been nailed to the spot, neither one of them daring to make eye contact with the other. Finally, Aramis shook his head, as if literally trying to clear the cobwebs surrounding his mind.
“All right,” he spoke, gathering his thoughts. “The letter is making more sense now. But what I don’t understand is… what does this have to do with you???”
“In another time, it could have belonged as much to you as it does to me,” Athos responded, quoting the letter.
“Yes, adorable, but..,” Aramis composed himself again. “That baby is not mine, no matter what that letter insinuated.”
“Then it must be mine,” Athos sighed and walked over to the pews, plopping down into one of them.
“No, Athos, I am telling you. This baby cannot be mine.”
“I know. I heard you.”
“Then what are you talking about?” Aramis wanted very much to shake his friend, a desire he found to be pervasive and frequent with regards to Athos.
“I suppose there is no question as to who the mother is,” Athos mumbled in response.
“I hope you realize how little sense all of this is making to me right now,” Aramis threw up his hands and approached the altar. “Help me!” Aramis addressed the crucifix with extended arms.
“Now you know as well as I do, He never kisses and tells.” Athos could not prevent this latest bit of acrimony from escaping his lips.
“I swear to you on the Holy Virgin,” Aramis veered upon his companion, feeling himself go livid, “If you do not start speaking in words I can understand imminently, I am going to throttle you where you sit!”
“Here he is!” came the announcement from the priest, who could not have chosen a better moment for reappearance, carrying a small bundle in his arms, and followed by a woman, who would have presumably been the wet-nurse.
Athos jolted up from the pews and Aramis looked as if the threat to throttle would be misdirected towards the new arrivals. The bundle made a small squawking sound.
“He’s really a very lovely child,” the priest said, practically cooing at the baby in his arms. “Alas, we are quite bereft of any resources here to care for an infant. Especially an infant that came with such fine linens.” The priest paused and looked from one man to the other again. “Which of you would like to hold him?”
“He would,” Aramis snapped, pointing an angry finger at his friend. Athos looked, mouth agape, first at Aramis, then at the priest, and finally at the inexplicably present peasant woman, and finding no succor anywhere, finally cast his eyes towards the squirming bundle.
“Fine,” he said, “Hand it over.” He extended one arm towards the bundle as if it were a loaf of bread or the butt of a musket. The peasant woman nervously muttered something under her breath that sounded a bit like “Ye must s’port ‘is ‘ead.” Still using his one arm, Athos pressed the baby to his chest and looked curiously at the little scrunched face. “Don’t worry, I will not drop him.”
The boy was awake and looking up at him with surprisingly large dark eyes, not the piercing blues that he was half-expecting, knowing who the child’s mother was. Athos made a mental note to make sure the child was indeed male, then checked his thoughts, wondering whether it really made a difference. It wasn’t as if he was actually planning on raising the bastard. Was he?
“He’s really not that fussy,” the priest added, in passing, shaking Athos out of his contemplation of the facial features of the tiny creature balanced on his forearm.
“What’s his name?” Athos asked, still unable to tear his eyes away from the miniscule button of a nose, the slightly-opened bow of a mouth, the dark curls that stuck out from under the swaddling cloth.
“We don’t know, Monsieur,” the priest shrugged, and then turned towards Aramis with a small piece of paper in his hand, “This was the note we found with him, Monsieur.”
Without a word, Aramis took the piece of paper and, bestowing upon it only a momentary glance, made it disappear into his glove.
“Monsieur le Curé,” Aramis spoke, his voice having returned to its usual melodious, soothing tone, “Would you mind giving my companion and myself some time alone?”
“Of course, Messieurs,” the priest gave a small bow and extended his arms towards the child.
“Leave the baby,” Athos said, turning his body instinctively away and ending up face to face with Aramis, whose eyes got impossibly wider. The priest and the wet-nurse quietly disappeared from the chapel by the same door to the sacristy.
“Do I even need to say it?” Aramis started.
“That I am insane?” Athos completed his lover’s thought, his eyes still on the eyes of the miniature being in his arms. He partially unwrapped the swaddling cloth to reveal a tiny arm that shot out towards his face and made an abortive grab for his hair.
“No, I guess I do not need to say it then,” Aramis began to pace in front of the altar.
“Look at how tiny and perfect he is!”
“What is this? Love at first sight?” Aramis stopped pacing, and stood in front of his friend with his arms crossed menacingly in front of his heaving chest.
“I wasn’t asking for this, Aramis. I was looking for you.”
“For the last time, before I kill both you and the baby, will you tell me what is going on???”
“I don’t know how to tell you. I don’t even know where to begin.” Athos sighed. The baby made another squawking noise. Aramis walked over to the far corner of the chapel and hit his head against the wall. “All right, all right, don’t hurt yourself!” Athos called out, realizing that his inability to vocalize his thoughts was once again torturing everyone around him. Composing himself, he tried again, “You know I was looking for you. Everywhere. I don’t even know where anymore, but it did not matter at the time. I just… I kept going.”
“Well, I know Noisy-Le-Sec was not the first place you looked,” Aramis allowed, moving away from the wall.
“One night, I ended up here, at this very parsonage. I was exhausted. I had not slept for days and the only thing I ate was pretty much… um… all liquid.”
“None of this do I find shocking so far. Go on.”
“The priest was called away to a dying man, and he left me alone in the parsonage, with his dinner, bedroom, everything…”
“Go on,” Aramis pressed.
Athos groaned.
“What happened next?” Aramis walked up to his friend and stood within reach of him, but still casting suspicious glances towards the partially swaddled bundle of burgeoning humanity.
“Late at night, the parsonage received another visitor, a fellow traveler, as it were.”
“Who was it?”
“A woman, dressed as a man,” Athos raised his eyes to meet those of Aramis.
“Oh..,” Aramis emitted.
“I was half-asleep. I was drunk.” Athos averted his eyes and then shut them. “It was dark.”
“Oh….”
“I thought she was male.”
“Ohhhhhhh….”
“I did not know who she was.”
It was now Aramis’s turn to lower himself into the pews and hide his face in his hands, while shaking his head, and repeating only, “No, no, no, no, no.”
“The following morning, I recognized the mistress by her maid.”
“Kitty..,” Aramis whispered to himself, his thoughts becoming illuminated.
“And… then… I rode off as fast as I could. I ended up in Bracieux with Porthos, and you know the rest of the story.”
Aramis raised his eyes towards his friend and in them Athos saw something akin to both desperation and amusement, blending themselves into a special sort of madness.
“And you still question the existence of Divine Retribution?”
Athos was not sure how to respond to that.
“What were the chances of this happening?” Aramis asked, actually breaking out into a terrifying laughter. The baby started to cry, possibly voicing on the behalf of both of the adults present their unspoken sentiments.
“You’re right. I should have known we’d both get punished for this,” Athos responded, trying to rock the baby back into silence and submission.
“Oh God, please, make it stop,” Aramis whined, forcing the palms of his hands into his eye sockets.
“I’m trying to,” Athos snapped. “Should I attempt breast-feeding?”
“You want him! Oh dear God… you actually want him,” Aramis moaned and buried his face in his hands again.
“One day, Aramis, you were going to leave me anyway. And he might not. Him, I can actually keep.” Once again, Athos had surprised himself by this unexpected torrent of truth spilling out of him, so inconveniently, and against his better judgment.
“What is this? What are you doing?” Aramis exploded out of the pews and walked straight up within inches of Athos’s face.
“Every day, I wake up afraid to find you gone.” Athos saw his friend about to speak, but halted him with a gesture. “No, stop. I know you love me. I know you have given up everything to be with me. And, honestly, I am not sure that I can live with that.”
“So, you’d rather push me away yourself? You’d rather raise my former lover’s illegitimate child as your own than be with me?” The baby ceased his wailing, as if he knew that he was the topic of the discussion.
“She wanted you to come here and to make sure he was taken care of properly. Who better to take care of him than his father?”
“His putative father!”
“She was right - this child could very well have been yours!”
“And I would have left it in a nice orphanage and showered it with mysterious benefactor gold from the safety of anonymity and distance!”
“Aramis, I am taking the baby.”
“You intransigent asshole! What do you know of raising babies?”
“I have the means of hiring people who will know of raising babies.”
“Athos, not that you cared to even ask, but I do not want to raise a baby.”
Athos said nothing, only looked from the face of Aramis to the newly mollified face of the infant in his arms.
“I don’t want to leave. I don’t ever want to leave you again. I want to stay. Why are you pushing me away?” Aramis knew what he was saying was sounding dangerously close to begging. “Let’s take the child to a better place than this, but let us leave him somewhere else!”
“I know, Aramis, this is all self-fulfilling prophesy. But one day he will be the only reason I have for living.”
“Why are you talking to me as if I am no longer here? Why are you letting your deeply rooted insecurities ruin our actual present because of some fear of an imagined future?”
“Because I know you,” Athos responded. “And because I know myself.”
“You are making this choice, not I. I want you to remember that. This is your choice.” The baby was starting to whimper again, causing the hair on Aramis’s neck to prick up. He felt overwhelmed, there were a thousand daggers in his heart, and he was surrendering to their blows. He wanted to storm out, to get on his horse and ride away, but his legs felt leaden and he could have sworn that his very soul was aching. Suddenly, Aramis felt exhausted. His lover stood in front of him, his head hung low, the child pressed protectively into his chest. Taking a deep breath, Aramis took another step forward. “Ask me to stay, please,” he entreated, quietly.
“Stay,” Athos intoned, without a second’s passing. “Please,” he added. “I want you. I need you.”
The baby pressed between them, Aramis put his arms around the other man and held him so that their cheeks were touching. They were locked together like that, the Unholy Trinity, for some moments, as Aramis came to terms with the feeling in the pit of his stomach that he was helpless to deny Athos in this, just as he had been in everything else.
“Fine,” he whispered in his lover’s ear. “For now then,” and he quickly walked out of the chapel, leaving Athos alone, with the baby in his arms, to have his own Madonna moment in the presence of Their Lord. He had already begun to make lists in his head of everything they would need to arrange before being able to travel back to Bragelonne with an infant in tow. It was quickly occurring to him that there was a not-too-far-fetched possibility that one day he would be looked for, that he would be asked, that she might want to know. Where is my son? And Aramis also knew, with a bright burning fire of certainty, that when that day came, he would lie to her.
***
PART 1 was better?