He was still sweating and praying, when a lady’s voice said, from nearby, “Monsieur? Could you move? I cannot reach the holy water with you standing there.”
Porthos recognized the voice as Athenais’s and opened the eyes he’d closed to pray, to see her standing near him, in a very fetching brown dress, matched with a sort of brown veil which made her look paler and younger.
Immediately, with a feeling like his prayer had been answered and his faith in the gentleman renewed, he dipped his huge paw in the fountain, and brought out a handful of water, into which Athenais dipped her fingers, crossing herself. She left, with two attendants following her. One of her husband’s clerks and a maid. Porthos waited a few breaths, and crossed himself in turn, before going out, amid a throng of people leaving the church.
Outside, on the covered portico of the imposing building, Athenais was speaking sharply to her attendants.
“But Madame Coquenard,” the young and pimply clerk was saying, “the carriage is waiting. With the horses. You cannot mean to walk home.”
“No,” Athenais answered, imperious. “Not that it would be any concern of yours if I did, but I just recalled that my friend, Armandine, is ill and she lives just a few doors down. I will go and see if I can help her in any way. And then I will ask her husband to have a carriage take me home.”
“But madam,” the clerk said. “Why can’t we wait?”
“Because I have asked you not to wait,” Athenais said. “I don’t want Armandine to feel that she has exposed my people to inconvenience or that I have gone to great trouble to visit her. Go home, boy. You too Catherine.”
“But, Monsieur Coquenard-” the young man said.
“Is my business and not yours. My husband knows of my works of mercy. He has yet to object to them.”
Finally the two attendants left. Athenais turned and walked slowly down the steps, and then started down the street. Porthos waited to see the Coquenard carriage- unmarked and probably bought used, or else received in security for a debt-drive by, with the two befuddled attendants riding in front with the driver. And then he waited a little longer before taking off in pursuit of Athenais.
With his long stride, he caught up with her shortly enough, just as Athenais took a sudden turn into an alley. He went after her and, a little while in, in the darkness of evening, he caught up with her, clutched at her arm. “Athenais,” he said.
“Shh,” she said, without turning. “Just a little while farther on, Porthos.”
A little while farther on turned out to be five minutes of hard walking, after which Athenais stopped at the door of what looked like a very small, modest house. Fishing in her sleeve, she brought out a key, and opened the door. She went in and closed it, but not all the way.
Porthos followed. Inside it was a one-room dwelling, of the sort that most working men in Paris lived in, save that this one was freestanding and not a part of a larger room. Like many such dwellings-such as the one in which D’Artagnan lived-it was let furnished and therefore it contained a small wooden table and two chairs, and a bed with a thin mattress and a blanket. There was no fire in the hearth and the place smelled cold and unused, if also very clean.
Athenais turned, and removed her wrap. By the abated light of day coming through the single window which looked onto what seemed to be a small, walled garden, she appeared very beautiful and far younger than Porthos knew her to be. He felt as if he were looking at Athenais as she’d been when she’d married Monsieur Coquenard- seventeen-year-old Athenais, devoid of artifice or fear.
“Athenais,” he said, as he flung the door shut, and pushed the bolt to close it. He advanced towards her, and crushed her in his arms, feeling her blessedly warm and alive in his. He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her, his hunger for her body augmented by his feeling that he was living a life that was no life and that he needed… something he couldn’t even name. Warmth or nourishment or life itself.
They were carried on the wave of his hunger, Athenais letting him do as he pleased, until the wave crested and ebbed, and they found themselves on the thin mattress, almost naked-he was wearing only his shirt and she a sort of petticoat for which he didn’t know the proper name- and sated, in each other’s arms.
It was then that the little house and its furnishings bothered him. “Athenais,” he said. “Whose home is this?”
She sat up so slowly that she didn’t break his hold on her and started, composedly, as though this were the most logical thing to do, to comb through her disarrayed hair. She removed the pins, then rebraided her hair. Holding the hair pins in her mouth, she spoke nonetheless clearly enough. “Mine,” she said. And then. “Or Monsieur Coquenard’s. We acquired it in a deal some time ago, and it’s been leased, but the occupant moved out. I had the key with me, as I meant to inspect it before leasing it again. I didn’t mean to come here today, but I’d put the key in my sleeve-pouch and meant to come here maybe tomorrow. When I saw you in church, it seemed… providential.”
“Um…” he said, and leaned forward to kiss the neck she’d bared in pulling her hair up to braid.
She giggled at being tickled with his beard. “I’ll never get my hair braided properly this way,” she said. “And the servants will wonder how I got so disarrayed in looking after Armandine.”
“Is your friend truly ill?” Porthos asked.
“She gave birth this week,” Athenais said, her hands moving very rapidly and braiding her hair by touch more accurately than many a woman could do it in front of a mirror. “A boy.”
“Athenais…” Porthos said.
Athenais turned, concerned. One of the things that Porthos liked about her was that even when he couldn’t put what he felt, or what was bothering him, into words, she nonetheless seemed to catch the edge of his worry, the crux of his sadness. She turned to look at him, and she let go of her hair, as her gaze softened. She took the pins out of her mouth and kissed him, a quick, concerned peck on the cheek. “Porthos, we can’t. You know we can’t. How would I explain it to my husband? He no longer can…”
Porthos shook his head. “I know,” he said. “But I wish we could. I wish we could get ourselves… well…” He shook his head again, as if to clear it, but the images only came rushing into it more-the images of a life that could never be his. “I wish we could have our own home,” he said. “Even if it were as modest as this. And two boys and three girls.” He thought about it a minute. “No, too many girls. What would we do with them all? How would we find them all dowries. Four boys and a girl.”
Athenais giggled. “I see you’ve given the matter a great deal of thought,” she said, her eyes wishful and grave. “Pray tell, why must we have girls at all?”
“Well,” Porthos said. He chewed on his lip with concentration. Right then that imaginary family seemed the most important thing in his world, and it blocked out his thoughts of the dead boy. “I want at least one daughter who will be as beautiful as her mother.”
“Oh, Porthos,” she said, in the soft tone women use when they don’t believe a compliment, and yet know that the speaker means it. Her hair, which she’d never pinned, had flowed free of the braid and now covered her shoulders in red gold waves.
With the petticoat, which was a skirt only, leaving her top completely bare, the lose waves of her hair looked like the veil of a saint. No. Not a saint. A pagan goddess. No saint would go about bare breasted. “Not unless there were swords in it.”
Athenais blinked. “Swords?”
“On the saints’ breasts,” Porthos said. “It’s the only time bare breasts are allowed in church.”