(~(~)~)
“Aramis?”
Across the table, the older man’s lips slow, and then stop, and he looks up at his interrogator. “Hmm?”
D'Artagnan flushes slightly and drops his eyes. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized – that is, I did not mean to interrupt your prayers.”
At Aramis’s left, Porthos snorts. “There is no time you could not have done so, D'Artagnan – he is always praying.”
“Something you could stand to do more of,” Aramis says mildly, laying the crimson silk ribbon in his prayer book to mark his place.
“Why?” Porthos’s tankard hits the table with a thud, and his voice is edged with ice. “Why should I bother, when your Church decrees that my place in Hell is assured?”
Aramis’s lips tighten, but before he can retort, Athos, with the ease of a man long accustomed to breaking up this argument, places his hand on Porthos’s arm and says, “Peace, old friend. If you are bound for Hell, surely we are bound there with you.”
Scowling into his cup, Porthos mutters, “You had best. That would be the worst Hell imaginable: an eternity spent without the three of you.”
Smiling now, Aramis looks at D'Artagnan. “Was there something you wished to ask me?”
“I was merely wondering – you are a man of such great faith; why have you never returned to the priesthood?”
The three other men exchange startled looks. “You do not know?” Athos asks. “Has no one told you the tale?”
D'Artagnan shakes his head. “No one.”
Aramis chuckles and turns to Porthos. “Shall I tell him, or would you rather? You are the better storyteller.”
Porthos is still sulking. “It is not my tale,” he says.
“Porthos—“
Porthos shrugs. “I was there only for the middle and the very end. Everything else must be yours for the telling.”
Aramis rubs his cheek, regarding the young man across the table. “You know nothing of the story?” D'Artagnan shakes his head again. “Very well, then. I suppose I must begin with a letter that had to reach England.”
(~(~)~)
“Aramis!”
I turned at the sound of the bishop’s voice. “Father?”
The bishop held out a sealed letter. “I have a job for you, Aramis. This is a letter from the Cardinal. It must be in the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury by the end of the month. I am sending you.”
I paled, and my step faltered. “M-me, Father?”
His steely eyes bored into mine. “Will this be a problem?”
Drawing a deep breath, I said, “No, Father. I will be honored to carry out this mission for you.”
The bishop shook his head. “Not for me, my child. For the Church.”
“For the Church.” I nodded. “Of course, Father.”
“Excellent.” The bishop pressed the letter into my hand. If he noticed how profusely I was sweating, he did not show it. “You leave in four days. I trust this will give you adequate time to prepare.”
“Yes, Father.”
“Very well.” The bishop looked fondly at me. “I predict great things for you, Aramis. The Church is blessed to have you, and I see a great future for you in the service of our Lord.”
Now blushing, I stammered my thanks as the bishop turned on his heel and walked quickly up the hall.
“He’s sent you to England, has he?”
I jumped. At my side, Jean-Louis, a sanctimonious fop of a boy and a much despised fellow novitiate, had materialized as if from the air. “It’s a very important missive to the Archbishop of Canterbury,” I said defensively.
“Are you scared?” he asked. I clenched my jaw and didn’t answer. “I don’t blame you,” Jean-Louis confessed. “I’m afraid of drowning, too. But if we have faith enough, the Lord will protect us.”
“It’s not drowning I fear,” I said, the letter crinkling in my too-tight grasp. “It’s pirates.”
(~(~)~)
Aramis laughs. “You may call me superstitious, but I ought to have known better than to speak such a thing aloud.”
Athos and Porthos laugh as well, but D'Artagnan’s eyes are wide. “You were attacked by pirates?”
“Not on the way to England. That crossing was smooth, and I delivered the cardinal’s message to the archbishop without incident.” Aramis shrugs. “The journey home was a different matter entirely.”
(~(~)~)
I couldn’t say what had ripped me from slumber. It could have been the suddenly violent rocking of the ship. It could have been the shouting above decks. Or it could have been the cannon.
I hadn’t been awake for more than a handful of seconds when my cabin door was battered open. After one look at the sword-brandishing man in the doorway, I closed my eyes again, cursing. “Pirates.”
The laugh that reached my ears was surprisingly free of malice. My eyes slitted open and took in my would-be captor anew. I had had an image of pirates as old and grizzled, hardened men of the sea. This was a boy my own age, though of considerably larger frame, with long dark hair and the beginnings of a beard much like my own. I supposed even a pirate had to start somewhere.
“That we are, my friend,” the pirate said. “On your feet.”
I growled. “And if I refuse?”
The boy stepped into the room, raising his sword. “I was instructed to bring all passengers to the foredeck,” he said, “but if you cause me trouble, I doubt my captain will begrudge me for dispatching you here and now.”
“Very well.” Glaring at my captor, I threw back the covers and started looking for my clothes. I turned around to find the pirate staring at me unabashedly. My mind recoiled; my stomach rebelled. And yet...and yet...
“I’m glad you’re cooperating,” the boy said. “It would be a shame to destroy a body as beautiful as yours.” I swallowed hard. My hands fumbled with my trousers as my body burned from the inside. The pirate followed my every move. When I was dressed, the pirate’s gaze hardened and his smile took a sinister twist. “A priest,” he spat. “Well, Father, One-Eyed Gervase will take great pleasure in returning you to your god.”
My stomach clenched. I did not fear death, but neither was I looking forward to it.
Grabbing me by the shoulders, the pirate shoved me out of my cabin, up the ladder, and onto the foredeck. I bit down upon the cry that rose to my lips, but I could feel all color drain away from my face as I surveyed the devastation. A dozen bodies, passengers and crew, sprawled across the deck, bleeding from bloody sword cuts. Three women who had come aboard in England stood bound, gagged, and sobbing, held tightly in the cruel grasp of the pirate crew.
A thick, leathery man in high black boots and an eye patch looked up as we arrived. “Is he the last of them?”
“Yes, sir,” said my captor, suddenly deferent. “A priest.”
“A priest!” The man – One-Eyed Gervase, I assumed – laughed. The sound chilled me clear through. “Is this true?”
I tried to determine what I might achieve by lying but decided the gains were not likely to be worth the risk. “A priest in training.”
One-Eyed Gervase crossed the deck and stopped in front of me, his sharp blue eye calculating and cold. I kept my head up, focusing on the cloudless blue sky overhead and the sharp salt tang of the sea air. “A priest in training,” murmured One-Eyed Gervase. His hand rose to my cheek, but I did not flinch. My captor, I noted, did. “Do you think your Church would pay well for you?” I said nothing, and my reward was the sting of One-Eyed Gervase’s hand across my jaw. “Answer me, boy!”
“I don’t know,” I hissed through gritted teeth.
One-Eyed Gervase looked to the boy holding me. “What say you, Porthos? Would the Church pay a ransom for the safe return of one of their one that would make it worth our while to let him live?”
I knew, from the way my captor stiffened, that a game was being played between One-Eyed Gervase and this boy – Porthos – that had nothing to do with me but which might well decide my fate. “He would cost little enough to keep,” Porthos replied with an evenness I guessed he was far from feeling, “and he might prove...an amusement to us.” I shook at the tone of that word. “We could always kill him later, will Mother Church not pay.”
“That we could,” One-Eyed Gervase said cheerfully. “Very well, then, Porthos. Bring him.” He waved to the other pirates. “Bring the women, as well.”
“The ship, sir?” asked one of the men.
One-Eyed Gervase gave the same casual flick of his hand. “Burn her.”
I was hauled across the gangplank to the pirate ship, and the White Rose was set alight. I could only stand and watch in horror as she burned.
“Throw him in the hold, Porthos,” the captain commanded. Without a word, Porthos hauled me below decks and opened the door to a tiny, pitch-black pit of a room.
“Congratulations, Father,” he snarled as he shoved me inside. “It looks as though your god has saved you after all.”
He slammed the door, and I was plunged into darkness.
(~(~)~)
In time, my eyes adjusted to the darkness. I very much wished they had not. When the blackness was absolute, I only suspected that the scuttling noises I heard were roaches and rats, the vile odor an ancient pile of human excrement and vomit. After my eyes adjusted, I was certain of it. In absolute blackness, I could trick myself that this room was more than a six-foot by six-foot hole. After my eyes adjusted, it was not to be.
I knew my circumstances could have been worse. Twice a day, the door opened, and Porthos brought a hunk of stale bread and a dipperful of scummy water. I was allowed out of the hold to relieve myself and walk a bit. They had not bound me. They saw no reason; I was an unarmed priest on a shipful of pirates. Still, Porthos treated me as though I were a great danger.
“Eat, Father,” he said the first night, shoving the bread and water at me.
“My name is Aramis,” I said quietly.
“I don’t care what your name is.”
“Nevertheless, now you know it.” I smiled, and Porthos scowled at me.
“Eat, Father Aramis,” he said the next morning.
“I’m not a priest yet. Only a novitiate.”
“I don’t care.”
“But it is the truth.”
Porthos snorted. “Think you know something about truth, do you?” There was something so cold and disdainful in his voice that I recoiled as though slapped and said nothing more.
This became the pattern of our days. Porthos was the only member of the crew I saw. It became apparent to me that we were not returning directly to France. “A pirate’s only masters are the wind and the waves,” Porthos said grandly one morning when I questioned him. “The Carthage may sail all the way to the New World. What would you think of that, Father?”
“I would think it a very long way to travel for plunder,” I said softly. Porthos shrugged, but he looked uncomfortable.
As the weeks passed, we continued to talk. To argue, mostly. There were few topics on which we agreed, but we seemed to be gaining an affinity towards each other, despite our differences – and our situation.
On another day, however, we hit a sore point. Porthos, when he arrived with my meal, caught me in the middle of my prayers. He said nothing until I returned from relieving myself, although I could see in his eyes how he burned to speak. I raised my eyebrow at him. “You pray still?” he demanded. “Your god has abandoned you aboard a ship of pirates, in a strange land on a strange sea, and yet you pray to him still?”
“All the more reason to do so,” I returned calmly. “We must pray without ceasing and not turn our backs on God simply because we, in our limited understanding, believe He has turned his back on us – for He has plans that we cannot understand and vision that stretches further than we can comprehend.” I thought that somewhat eloquent, but Porthos snorted. “Do you not pray?”
He glared at me. “Why should I bother, when your church decrees that my place in Hell is assured?”
“In that case, you must pray!” I was horrified. “You must go down on your knees and plead for Christ’s mercy. It is all that stands between you and the fires of eternal damnation!”
Porthos looked at me incredulously. “Repentance, Father? Is this all you have to offer? Praying for intercession implies penitence. It implies that I feel remorse for what I have done – and that I intend not to do it again, in the future.” He shook his head. “None of these things is true.”
That was when I came to comprehend how deeply his hatred towards the Church ran. Not necessarily towards God, although he would never admit to being a believer, but towards His Church was Porthos most contemptuous.
One evening he snuck me above deck. It was the first fresh air I’d breathed in over a month, and I sucked it into my lungs in great gasping breaths. Realizing I had forgotten what my captor truly looked like, I snuck a glance at him in the fading light. I gasped, and my fingers moved of their own volition towards the hand-sized – and hand-shaped – bruise turning awful yellows and blacks on his cheek. Then I was crying out in pain as Porthos grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back. “Should I tell the captain to bind you?” he hissed. “Should I?”
“No!” I gasped. “I am sorry. I only—“
“Only what? What would you have done, Father? Prayed for me?”
“I do not know.” Tears began to form in my eyes from the pain. “I only thought to – it looks so painful.”
With a rough shove, Porthos released my arm, sending me careening into the railing. “The pain has passed,” he said, and I knew that he was lying.
“What happened?”
“What concern is that of yours?” The dark eyes flashed, but I would not back down.
“I thought we were friends,” I ventured hesitantly.
My statement was met with an ugly laugh. “Friends? Oh, no, Father Aramis, you are no friend to me. You are our hostage, nothing more.”
“Of course,” I said. I expected nothing more. I knew my situation. Why, then, did Porthos’s words sting so?
In the morning, Porthos was quiet and withdrawn until he was about to slam the door behind himself. He looked thoughtfully at me. I huddled in a corner to gnaw on my bread before the rats came for it, and he said quietly, “It was not true, yesterday. I do think of you as a friend. And that is dangerous.” He shut the door.
I pondered his words for the rest of the day. What danger could I possibly pose to him? By then I was little better than a rat myself. I had not bathed in weeks; I had eaten next to nothing; and, if not for my daily arguments with Porthos, I would surely have lost my ability to speak and think as a rational man. All that was available to me was to exercise and pray.
So that, by the time we were a month from France, I was in the best physical condition of my life, but my faith had reached its lowest ebb ever.
And that was when Porthos came to me with the truth.
(~(~)~)
“Don’t say it that way,” Porthos interrupts harshly.
D'Artagnan blinks and returns to the table as though from the farthest corners of the Earth. The tale Aramis is spinning is scarcely to be believed – Porthos as his captor for an entire journey across the ocean, yet they become companions, closest friends? It defies logic. D'Artagnan suspects a most elaborate hoax. And yet there is real anger – indignation, even – in Porthos’s protest.
Aramis blinks, too, out of confusion. “What way?”
“As though your crisis of faith led to – as though, had I come at any other time, the outcome would have been different.”
One of Aramis’s eyebrows rises. “You deny this?”
“I do.” Porthos nods vigorously. “What grew out of that night was planted the moment we met, and you well know it.”
For a moment, Aramis simply looks at his old friend, and to D'Artagnan it seems the most intimate moment he has witnessed between two people. Then Aramis smiles and nods, and the spell breaks. “Perhaps I do, at that,” he says.
(~(~)~)
Four weeks from France, although we did not know that at the time, a new bruise appeared – this one on the other cheek. I kept my hands well away from it, but my fingers itched to run along the stubbled skin – to will my touch, somehow, to ease Porthos’s pain. Instead I remarked, “An ugly bruise.”
Porthos’s fingers drifted to it automatically, wincing as they found their mark. “One-Eyed Gervase begins to mistrust me. He questions my allegiance.” His eyes slid to me and then away, and air seemed difficult to come by. “I fail to see when he thinks I could have forged these traitorous alliances; so short are the chains by which he binds me.” I drew back in horror, and Porthos began to laugh, great gasps of laughter that shook him until he could barely stand upright. “I meant in a figurative sense, Aramis,” he explained between gasps. “Although he has tried. God, he has tried.”
We stood as always at the end of the short passageway leading to the hold, where our chances of being noted were practically nonexistent. I studied him in the flickering lantern light – the thick, dark hair caught up in a red bandana like One-Eyed Gervase’s, the strong jaw with its new beard, the long dark eye-lashes against pale cheeks. Porthos was a handsome man, sharp-witted and wildly funny. Setting aside the raping and pillaging, any woman might consider him a great find.
A small light cracked my brain.
A thought, a suspicion, an impossibility quickly grew into an unshakable certainty. “His bed,” my mouth blurted before my brain had a chance to approve. “You speak of the chains he uses to keep you in his bed.”
There was a strange, strange glow in Porthos’s eyes as he turned to face me. “Well done, Aramis,” he said softly. “I had imagined that I would have to spell it out for you. What have you to say to me now?”
Eyes open very wide, I replied, “It is a great sin!”
Porthos snorted and pulled away. “As well is murder, theft of property, dishonoring thy father, and any number of other things I do every day.”
“But surely the captain has taken advantage of his authority over you to force you into these unholy acts—“
“He has forced me into nothing!” Porthos crossed his arms and leaned against the planks, scowling into the darkness. “I came to him, in the beginning of it.” His voice dropped thoughtfully. “Although I would not have done so, had I known how jealous and possessive he would be.”
“Who could blame him?” And there, again, my mouth would move without the consent of my brain.
Porthos’s eyes glinted with a wicked glee. “Have care, Father,” he taunted. I gulped; Porthos hadn’t called me that in weeks, and now the word resounded in the remotest corners of my soul. “That compliment was near to sinful. And surely you have never had such wicked thoughts.”
Stung once again by Porthos’s bitter words, I flushed and dropped my gaze. His cruelest laugh assaulted my ears. “O-ho! So our saintly novitiate has entertained lustful thoughts about the male flesh. How delicious.”
He had reduced me to inchoate rage. My face burned with humiliation; thoughts flew in and out of my head, too confused to hold. If only I could bring myself to look away from his burning dark eyes. “I said no such thing,” I managed at last, but my indignation was lost in the tremors of my voice.
“True,” Porthos agreed, “you did not. But neither did you deny it.”
“I choose not to dignify your ridiculous accusations with a response.”
Porthos found that funny. “That’s right. It would not do for a man of God to be caught speaking with a sodomite.” He grinned slyly. “We don’t have to talk.” He took a step in, and I took one away. Porthos only smiled more widely. “Too good for me now, are you?” His forward motion continued, as did my backward motion, but I quickly found my back against the side of the ship with nowhere to go. Porthos continued his advance. “Very well then, Father. I will let you be. Only, think on this.” He paused, dark eyes glinting.
“On what?” I whispered, not certain I wished to know.
“This.” And with no other warning, he leaned forward and kissed me.
I reeled. No brotherly brush of the lips, this; it was plunder and conquer as surely as the Carthage had conquered the White Rose. Porthos’s tongue demanded entrance into my mouth and would not be denied; still, I was stunned by how quickly I surrendered. Heedless of the rough planks scraping against my back, I gripped his arms, the hard coil of muscles beneath the weathered fabric of his shirt setting my fingertips aflame. Porthos’s tongue stroked over every inch of my mouth; his beard scratched against my face; his large, strong fingers knotted in my hair. I felt myself grow hard beneath my robes, and my hand slipped around to Porthos’s broad back to draw him closer. My need to have him pressed along me, body to body, was making breathing close to impossible.
At last he pulled away, gloating breathlessly. I staggered, my back slamming against the boards. I had kissed Porthos. Porthos! A pirate, an enemy of the Church – a man. I had kissed him – I had been hard for him. I felt filthy, nauseous. “Take me back to the hold,” I commanded, the iron in my voice far from my heart and mind.
Porthos laughed, unoffended. Indeed, he looked as though the kiss had affected him not at all. “Very well, Father.” He led me back to the hold, pausing at the door. “I’ll say no more on the subject.” And then my darkness returned – both the literal and the metaphorical.
True to his word, Porthos said nothing of the kiss, his relationship with One-Eyed Gervase, or the Church’s views on sodomy. His silence mattered little. Never was the kiss gone from my mind, and usually it stood squarely at the fore. Whenever the thought of it caught me unawares, my vision wove and my knees weakened, forcing me to the ground. In my dreams it haunted me – sweetly terrible, confused images of hard male bodies performing unspeakable acts upon each other, the fires of Hell indistinguishable from the fire smoldering in a pair of mocking brown eyes. Hour upon hour, day after day, I prayed that God take away my unclean thoughts and help me stave off temptation until I could remove myself from it.
Until the morning I awoke with the taste of Porthos’s lips on my own and knew it had been for naught. I wanted him, and no amount of praying was going to alter that.
And so, a mere week before we were to arrive in France, when Porthos arrived at the door of the hold, I was ready for him.
“Porthos,” I whispered as he put my cup of water on the floor.
My voice – I tried so hard to keep it neutral, but it gave away everything. Porthos’s head snapped up, his eyes sparkling in the dim light that spilled over the edges of the open door. He folded his hands in front of himself in a parody of monks in prayer. “Aramis.”
There were hundreds of things I could say at this moment. None would communicate as much as I needed them to, and certainly not as much as simply stepping forward, cradling Porthos’s face between my hands and kissing him as I’d dreamt of doing for three weeks.
Porthos melted into my kiss as I had into his, and I felt a surge of giddy pride that I was obviously doing something correctly. One hand at the base of his skull and one at the small of his back hauled him closer, but I needed him closer still. I needed to know whether the skin beneath his clothes felt the way I’d imagined it, and whether the need that had eaten at me since the instant our lips first met was eating at him, as well.
With great effort, I tore my mouth from his and pressed my lips to his ear, whispering, “I want you to show me, Porthos. I want you to teach me everything.”
(~(~)~)
Grinning triumphantly, Porthos sets him mug on the tabletop and drags his hand across his mouth. “And so I did,” he says with obvious pride.
“Still smug about that, are you?” Aramis mocks with great affection.
Porthos shrugs. “It is not often that one gets to teach a new lover everything. And all at once.” He leers at Aramis and shakes his head. “You are a very fast learner.”
Aramis blushes, but he raises his eyes to D'Artagnan who, for his part, is sitting beside Athos with the air of a man who has been blinded by a great light. “D'Artagnan?” Aramis asks, worried. “Is everything all right? Our story does not offend you, I hope.”
“No!” D'Artagnan shakes his head. “I merely wonder how I could have been so blind. All this time we have traveled together, and never did I suspect...how have you not told me?”
Aramis spreads his hands. “Perhaps we each assumed that one of the others would surely have told you by now.”
“I must say—“ D'Artagnan laughs. “I must say this causes me some concern for the supposed inviolability of our friendship.”
“Stop,” Porthos says with a snort. “We are telling you now, are we not?”
“Besides,” says Athos, “the story is not done yet.”
(~(~)~)
We had scarcely a week together, and we were determined that not a second of it be wasted. Forgoing our usual talks, we spent Porthos’s visits to the hold in communication of a more basic nature. Each knew the other’s body as well as our own – the contours of flesh, the taste of lips – even in the dark, dark Hell of the hold, we carved out a corner of something greater. The knowledge of the fleetingness of our time together made the short days even sweeter.
(~(~)~)
“Aramis,” Porthos says with a wry smile, “is a sentimentalist given to great bleatings of romanticism.”
“‘Bleatings’?” Aramis protests. “‘Bleatings’? I’ll show you bleatings, you curmudgeon!”
“The story, my friends!” Athos interjects, laughing.
“The story,” says Aramis. “Of course.”
(~(~)~)
Our time together sped by faster than we had expected. Two days before our arrival in France, Porthos appeared at the door of the hold, thrust bread and water into my hands, kissed me hastily, and whispered, “One-Eyed Gervase has need of me now. We are very close to Calais. A dispatch to your bishop has been sent. We will not wait long for a reply.” He turned to leave, his great hurry distracting him.
“Porthos!” I called, and he paused. “If they will not pay?”
He would not turn to face me. He stood in the doorway, his head bowed. “One-Eyed Gervase will insist that you be killed.”
I swallowed, but I felt no fear, only a sort of hollow numbness. “I see.”
His voice very quiet, Porthos added, “I will do what I can to intercede on your behalf, of course.”
And now the fear began. Fear not for my own life, but for his. Fear that an intercession for me would earn him One-Eyed Gervase’s jealousy. Yet I could not ask him not to speak for me. We would gladly risk our lives to save each other. The realization hit me as forcefully as any cannon shot, and by the time I could breathe well enough to speak again, Porthos was gone.
We hovered around the port for several days, waiting for word from the Church. Porthos came when he could, but the visits were seldom predictable and always short. I lived beneath a cloud of gnawing dread and creeping anxiety. But I should have realized that I was worth more to One-Eyed Gervase alive, with potential for ransom, than dead, with potential for retribution from the Church. The Carthage continued to drift outside Calais, and I continued to pray, to miss Porthos, and to sicken myself with worry.
On our tenth day, Porthos burst into the hold just after dawn, his eyes bright and his face so open that I knew he could not bring ill news. “They have agreed!” he said, catching my hands and swinging me around. “The man with the money may already be on his way.”
Comprehension came slowly. My ordeal had nearly ended. With a shout of joy, I loosed my hands and wrapped my arms around Porthos.
And then came the new comprehension. With the end of my ordeal came the end of my liaison with Porthos. I didn’t want it to end. I knew that as surely as I knew my name. And yet what choice did I have? To reject the Church’s ransom would assure my death; to leave the Church would attract One-Eyed Gervase’s suspicions, putting Porthos at risk. I had to walk away from the ship. Away from Porthos.
Perhaps it would have been better to have died here.
Two days later, without having seen Porthos once, I was summonsed to the deck by one of the hoary veteran pirates, a peg-legged man who looked at me far too knowingly, adding a leering wink when he growled, “One-Eyed Gervase is wanting you above.”
I was shoved along ahead of the old pirate, blinking and squinting when we came above deck. I was unaccustomed to light. As I was propelled along the deck, I looked to the end of the long gangplank, where the bishop himself waited in a skiff and called out to me, “Aramis! Are you unharmed?”
“Go on, Father,” One-Eyed Gervase urged before I had time to answer. “Tell him how well we’ve seen to ya here.” I thought I heard a leer in the captain’s voice, and my terror for Porthos returned in treble. Had he been forced to speak on my behalf? What would the consequences be? I looked around the deck, spying the familiar dark beard and wildly colored bandana. I tore my eyes away before I could be caught staring, calling to the bishop that all was well.
One-Eyed Gervase cradled a large sack of gold in his hand, fondled it, even. Another one waited, I suspected, to be transferred once I was aboard the skiff. The pirate grinned, pleased with himself. “This has been a most profitable venture. I may consider hostages more often in the future.” The assembled crew laughed uproariously – including Porthos. I felt no urge to smile. One-Eyed Gervase herded me to the gangplank. “Fare ye well, Father Aramis,” he said, his voice holding a note of menace I hadn’t heard since the day the White Rose was burned. “I cannot say I will miss you. But having you aboard has been...interesting.” He gave my shoulders a shove, and I stumbled onto the gangplank.
Without a backwards glance, I walked unsteadily to the skiff. As the oarsman hauled me aboard, the bishop fell on me, checking for bruises, inquiring after my health, offering praises to God for my safe return. Assured that I was of a piece, he walked halfway up the plank and hove the second gold sack to One-Eyed Gervase, who caught it deftly in his free hand, a shark-like grin on his face.
The bishop was saying that the archbishop wanted to see me upon my return. I scarcely heard the words. Off the pirate ship at last, my path away from Porthos irreversible, I could no longer keep myself from staring. There he stood, at the side of the deck, ahead of his crewmates. Eyes shadowed and haunted, Porthos gripped the railing – perhaps to keep himself from raising a hand in farewell. Even from this distance, the anguish in his face was so clear that I had to look away. The bishop was trying to fuss over me, and I finally accepted the distraction.
But had I only imagined that, just before I tore my gaze from the Carthage, Porthos had mouthed words that looked very much like, “Find me”?
(~(~)~)
There was much rejoicing when I was returned to the Church. Everywhere I went I felt the other priests and novitiates watching me. The priests treated me as a great miracle, to be kept behind glass and treated as carefully as any holy relic. My fellow students viewed me with awe, begging me to tell and retell my adventures aboard the Carthage. Most times I would tell them (an abridged version, naturally). But sometimes the constant badgering, their naïve thirst for tales of blood and plunder – God help me; they understood nothing of what a man endures when he is held as another man’s prisoner, kept alive by another man’s whims – no. Thinking about it would do me no good. It would not erase the memory of the fear I had felt, the fear that woke me in the night believing, for one disoriented moment that seemed to last for hours, that I was still in that stifling hold. It would not ease my skittishness in open spaces. It would not make my prayers easier to say; it would not make me believe them more.
Thinking about it would not bring Porthos back to me.
When I had been back in the arms of the Church for a month, the archbishop himself came to see the miracle-boy. The entire place was in a frenzy, all of the priests and novitiates, as well as the servants, working endlessly to bring the building and its inhabitants up to some strict and unknowable code. Every time anyone passed me they squeezed my shoulder and said, “The archbishop has his eye on you, boy. Make a good impression and when he is Cardinal, he will set aside a prized post for you.”
Each time they said it, a knife stabbed deep into my gut turned.
The morning of the archbishop’s arrival dawned bright and clear, which everyone took as a favorable sign. Sunlight streamed through the high windows, and the air held a crispness only found at this time of year, in the last hopeful days before the winter truly began. A restlessness permeated the building. Breakfast was a nervous affair.
At ten o'clock, after morning service, I was sent for. I had anticipated the summons; still, it prompted the sweating and shaking I found myself prone to since my captivity. Waiting until it had subsided enough to walk, I went slowly to the room where the archbishop waited. I was in no hurry for this audience.
The archbishop sat in a room richly appointed, a room filled with plush armchairs and ornate tapestries, with a great chandelier throwing patterns of light from its crystals across the thick carpeting. Despite his acetic appearance, the archbishop fit the room well. He was of the manner of men who would scold one for extravagance, accusing one of great sins of the flesh, but whose disapproval would be far more scathing were the extravagances absent. He was a man sharp of eye and even sharper of tongue, and I feared him greatly.
“Father,” I said, kneeling.
“Rise, my child,” he said, his rich basso voice unexpected from such a reedy body. As I rose, the archbishop looked me over appraisingly, and I half-expected that his gaze saw so much that he would know what Porthos and I had done and excommunicate me at once. He gestured towards the chair beside his own. “Sit, my child.”
I sat beside him, folded my hands in my lap, and waited. The archbishop sipped from a large cup on a low table beside his chair but offered me nothing. “God has given us a miracle, returning you to us. I hope you have given proper thanks to Him.”
I inclined my head deferentially. “I have, Father.”
“Good.” He nodded. “We have long said that great things were in store for you, Aramis, and many see this miracle as a sign that you are ready to begin the path to that greatness.”
I tried to look as modest as possible. “Yes, Father. My ordination is very near.”
“Yes, that is true.” The archbishop looked at me, and again I feared that, somehow, all had been revealed. “However, the timing is not what I speak of. I must admit: since your rescue, your continued place among us has been of concern to me.”
Feigning ignorance would fail here as surely as it would have on the deck of the White Rose. “I have had similar thoughts, Father,” I admitted.
“Aramis,” he began, smoothing bony, pallid fingers over his sumptuous red surplice, “I am releasing you from your obligations to the Church.”
“Archbishop!” I rose from my chair.
Chuckling, he motioned for me to sit again. “Calmly, Aramis. For the time being only. Six months, let us say. Perhaps a year. Go into the world again; regain the confidence in yourself and the trust in our Lord that the pirates took from you. Your place will be held for you. When you have had enough of the world, you will return to us.”
A thousand arguments rose in my mind, but I took one long look into the archbishop’s face and knew they would accomplish nothing. The man’s mind was made up, and I could not sway him. But as I returned to my chair and lowered my head respectfully, I found that I did not much care to try. “I understand, Father.”
“Good.” He smiled – a smile I didn’t care for. “I’ll not put a date upon your departure, but I would urge you not to delay; you will only bring yourself pain.”
The pain was already a part of me. One by one, the things I had relied upon were being ripped from me. I rose on unsteady legs, bowed to the archbishop, and exited.
I would not delay for a moment.
The very next morning found me standing with my back to the Church I was no longer sure I could call my own, with one bag slung over my shoulder and one thought in my head:
Find Porthos.
(~(~)~)
At first what seemed easiest was simply to drift. Despite my relatively sedentary life in the Church, I was a strong young man, and I took whatever work I could find – hard day labor whose pay was often no more than a hot meal and a night in a hay loft. A night in a hay loft was infinitely preferable to sleeping on the roadside, shivering in my cloak.
There was no shortage of lovely country lasses who batted their lashes in my direction as the months rolled past, and there was even a smaller but no less determined handful of fellow laborers who made their intentions unmistakable. Most times, I avoided the offers by pretending to be insensible to them, but sometimes I accepted. On those occasions, I was certain to be gone early the next day, lest anyone have time to get ideas.
As three months became four, and then five, I began in earnest to search for Porthos. I soon came to fear that I had set for myself an unattainable goal. People make a point of not noticing pirate ships, in hopes that the pirates will not notice them, and anyone who asks after them is greeted with suspicion and hostility.
I changed tactics but fared no better. Asking after a dark-haired, bearded boy wearing a bandana whose color I found I could no longer remember, I could have been describing half the young men of France – including myself. I continued to labor; I continued to travel and search; I began to despair. I was frequently ill.
Five months became nine, and I faced the most difficult decision of my life. After four months of searching, I was no closer to finding Porthos than when I began, and the Church expected my return at any time. But with each week that passed, I became more certain that I had no desire to return. And so, at ten months, three weeks, and four days, footsore and soul-weary, I staggered into Paris and walked to the hotel of M. de Treville, headquarters of the Musketeers. I had a half-formed notion, born in the delirium of fever, of joining them. Either glory or death accompanied service in the Musketeers, and while I secretly yearned for the latter, some part of me hoped that, in the unlikely case of the former, Porthos would hear of it and discover where to find me.
What a sight I must have looked to the young men who sat in Treville's waiting room. Barely better kempt than at the end of my captivity, I had the look of a man who has reached his bitterest end. Which I had. “I—“ I cleared my throat and begin again, my voice dusty from weeks of scant use. “I wish to join the Musketeers,” I announced.
One man raised his eyebrows and looked at someone behind me. “What is your name, friend?” he asked with the air of one humoring a lunatic.
“Aramis,” I said, proud of myself for remembering.
There was a flurry behind me, and someone lay a hand on my arm. Unthinking, I drew my sword and spun around, the weapon’s point at the throat of a young blond man a few years my senior. The man put up his hands. “Peace, friend,” he said carefully. “We are not your enemies here.”
Blushing, I lowered my sword and resheathed it. “My apologies,” I mumbled.
The blond man shrugged. “I ought not to have come upon you from behind. My name is Athos.”
“Aramis.”
He nodded. “So you said.” He looked back to the man at the table. “D'Artagnan, keep order here for a moment. I—"
(~(~)~)
“My father?” D'Artagnan demands.
“Yes,” says Athos. “Now, hush; you’ll miss the best part of the tale.”
(~(~)~)
“I must take our new arrival to see M. de Treville. There is someone here who has been waiting for him for quite some time.”
“For me?” I studied my guide with great confusion. “Surely you have mistaken me for someone else. I know no one in Paris – and certainly no one in the Musketeers.”
“We shall see,” Athos said cryptically before pushing open a heavy door which I now know to be directly opposite de Treville's. Clapping his hands, he called, “Your attention, men. We have a recruit. His name is Aramis, and he is near dead from fatigue, so let him alone for the time being.”
Most of the men in the room looked me over once and went back to their business. But one young man with short dark hair crept forward as though I were a mirage of water in the desert. He froze. “Aramis.”
I turned sharply. Surely my ears must be playing tricks. And my eyes as well. And yet— “Porthos?”
We were in each other’s arms, I gripping frantically at Porthos’s back; his hands at the base of my skull, pulling me close. But we remembered a roomful of men staring at us, and at the last instant we stopped ourselves from kissing. I pulled away enough to simply look at him. “It’s you,” I breathed. “I – I looked for you for a year, and you were here all along.”
“I knew you would find me.”
I raised my hand to his head. “You cut your hair.”
“It was in my way,” he said, shrugging self-consciously.
“Let it grow out again.”
He grinned. “Done.”
I couldn’t help myself. I pulled him in again. “You left your ship.”
“You left your Church.”
I slipped out of his arms. “I had to find you.”
Porthos touched my arm lightly. Even through my sleeve, my skin tingled. Very soon, we were going to have to get away from over-curious eyes and greet each other properly, but for now this would be enough.
We turned at the sound of a throat being cleared apologetically behind us. Athos stood at Porthos’s elbow, grinning like a fool. “Aramis needs sleep.”
“I’m fine!” I protested. How could I be otherwise, with Porthos within my reach again?
Athos shook his head. “You have had a very long day, and tomorrow will be far longer. Porthos, I believe you may know of a place where Aramis may sleep tonight?”
Porthos smiled at Athos, and I knew that this was a man I could trust implicitly. “I know of just the place.” Porthos pulled at my arm. I followed, and he led me home. My God, we had found each other. Wherever he went, from that moment, that was home.
I decided that this had been the best-spent year of my life.
(~(~)~)
“And that is the tale,” Aramis says, taking a drink of wine and returning his cup to the table.
“Of course, things were not simple at the first,” Porthos adds. “Some of the Musketeers suspected something ‘not right’ between us, although I am astounded that the number was not larger, the way we were around each other in those first days. But none could deny that Aramis could fight. And so they looked the other way in regards to our relationship. In time they came to see it as an advantage; we had a sense of each other in battle that others did not, and sending us together into a fight was often worth more than sending one of us with two of someone else. After Athos became a part of our circle, no one thought of sending any one of us without the other two.”
“I made up the tale of the woman who studied Judith, and I maintain the illusion that someday I will return to the Church,” Aramis says. “It is for the best. Were I to leave outright, too many questions would be raised. And many of my clerical bretheren still cannot comprehend that I am not the same man I was before my abduction.” A half-smile quirks the corners of his mouth. “For which change I did eventually forgive Porthos.”
“I was a pirate,” he returns. “What did you expect of me?”
The three older men look expectantly at D'Artagnan. “Well?” Athos asks gently. “What do you think of the telling?”
D'Artagnan shakes his head. “How I could have missed what is right before my eyes—“
Porthos pats his hand. “We have become adept at concealing this. There are no more men in the wide world who know of it than could fit at this table.” He grins. “Beyond we four, of course.”
“My father?” D'Artagnan’s voice is hoarse.
“Was a great keeper of secrets.” Aramis winks.
“And so, there you have it,” Porthos says, gesturing to Aramis. “The man to whom I have pledged my life, the man for whom I have accepted a most fiery position in the depths of the inferno – and he tells me I should pray God forgives me for loving him.” But now, now the telling is done, D'Artagnan hears that the bitterness in Porthos’s voice is underlain with years of tolerant exasperation. “If it is such a sin, Father, why do you not cast it from you? That is the proscribed action, is in not?”
His eyes glittering, Aramis fingers the ribbon in his prayer book and stares intently at Porthos. “I have already spent my eternity without you, Porthos, in the year I spent searching for you. I do not intend to do so ever again.”
In the silence that follows, Aramis and Porthos share a look so private that D'Artagnan must look away – and marvel at his oblivion. Athos clears his throat and raises his cup. “A toast, then. To our eternity in Hell – together.”
They all raise their glasses and echo, “To Hell.” A most unorthodox toast, to be sure, but somehow, around this unbreakable circle, they are the most fitting words imaginable.
An eternity in the fire, after all, seems a small price to pay for such friends as these.
END