“Milord de Winter,” continued Athos, “what penalty do you demand against this woman?”
“The penalty of death,” replied Winter.
“MM. Porthos and Aramis,” repeated Athos, “you who are her judges, what penalty do you pronounce on this woman?”
“The penalty of death,” replied the musketeers in a hollow voice.
Milady uttered a frightful shriek, and dragged herself along on her knees several paces toward her judges.
Athos stretched out his hand toward her.
“Charlotte Backson, Comtesse de la Fére, Milady de Winter,” said he, “your crimes have wearied men on earth and God in heaven. If you know any prayer, say it; for you are condemned, and you shall die.”
At these words, which left her no hope, milady rose to her full height and tried to speak, but her strength failed her. She felt that a powerful and implacable hand was seizing her by the hair, and was dragging her away as irrevocably as fate drags man. She did not, therefore, even attempt to make any resistance, and went out of the cottage.
Lord Winter, D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis followed her. The lackeys followed their masters, and the room was left desolate, with its broken window, its open door and its smoky lamp burning forlornly on the table.
Chapter 56 - Execution
It was almost midnight. The moon, hollowed by its waning, and red as blood under the last traces of the storm, was rising behind the little town of Armentières, which outlined against its pallid light the dark silhouette of its houses and the skeleton of its high carved belfry. In front of them the Lys was rolling its waters like a river of molten lead; while on the other bank could be seen a black mass of trees, outlined against a stormy sky, which was invaded by huge coppery clouds, creating a kind of twilight amid the night.
Two of the lackeys dragged milady along, each taking one of her arms. The executioner walked behind them, and Lord Winter,D’Artagnan, Porthos, and Aramis walked behind the executioner.
When they reached the banks of the river the executioner approached milady and bound her hands and her feet.
Athos took a step toward milady.
“I pardon you,” said he, “the ill you have done me; I pardon you for my blasted future, my lost honour, my defiled love, and my salvation for ever compromised by the despair into which you have cast me. Die in peace!”
Lord Winter advanced next.
“I pardon you,” said he, “the poisoning of my brother, the assassination of his Grace the Duke of Buckingham; I pardon you poor Felton’s death; I pardon you the attempts on me personally. Die in peace!”
“And I,” said D’Artagnan—“pardon me, madame, for having by deceit, unworthy of a gentleman, provoked your anger; and in exchange I pardon you the murder of my poor sweetheart and your cruel “I am lost!” murmured milady in English; “I must die!”
Then she rosa of her own accord, and cast around her one of those keen looks which seemed to dart from a flaming eye.
She saw nothing.
She listened; she heard nothing.
She had only enemies around her.
“Where am I to die?” she asked.
“On the other bank,” replied the executioner.
Then he made her enter the boat,
The boat moved off toward the left bank of the Lys, bearing the guilty woman and the executioner. All the others remained on the right bank, where they had fallen on their knees.
The boat glided along the ferry-rope under the gleam of a pale cloud which hung over the water at the moment.
It was seen reaching the opposite bank; the figures were outlined in black against the red-tinted horizon.
Milady during the passage had contrived to untie the cord which fastened her feet; on reaching the bank, she jumped lightly on shore and took to flight.
But the soil was moist. When she reached the top of the bank she slipped and fell on her knees.
A superstitious idea struck her: she realized that Heaven denied its aid, and she remained in the attitude in which she had fallen, with her head drooping and her hands clasped.
Then from the other bank the executioner was seen to raise both his arms slowly. A moonbeam fell on the blade of his broadsword. His two arms fell; they heard the hissing of the scimitar and the victim’s cry, then a truncated mass sank under the blow.
The executioner then took off his red cloak, spread it on the ground, laid the body in it, threw in the head, tied it by the four corners, lifted it on his shoulder, and got into the boat again.
In the middle of the stream he stopped the boat, and holding his burden over the water,
“Let the justice of God be done!” cried he, in a loud voice.
And he let the body drop into the depths of the waters, which closed over it.
Three days later the four musketeers were in Paris again. They had not exceeded their leave of absence, and that same evening went to pay their customary visit to M. de Trèville.
“Well, gentlemen,” asked the excellent captain, “have you enjoyed your excursion?”
“Prodigiously!” replied Athos for himself and his companions.
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Conclusion
On the sixth of the following month the king, in compliance with the promise he had made the cardinal to leave Paris and to return to Rochelle, departed from his capital, unable to recover from his amazement at the news which was just beginning to spread abroad that Buckingham had been assassinated.
The return to Rochelle was profoundly dull. Our four friends in particular astonished their comrades. They travelled together, side by side, with melancholy eyes and hanging heads. Athos alone from time to time raised his broad brow. A flash kindled in his eyes, a bitter smile passed over his lips. Then, like his comrades, he again resumed his reveries.
When the escort arrived in a city, as soon as they had escorted the king to his lodgings the four friends either retired to their own quarters or to some secluded tavern, where they neither drank nor played. They only conversed in a low voice, looking around attentively that no one overheard them.
One day, when the king had halted on the way to fly the magpie, and the four friends, according to their custom, instead of following the sport, had stopped at a tavern on the turnpike, a man, riding full speed from Rochelle, pulled up at the door to drink a glass of wine, and glanced into the room where the four musketeers were sitting at table.
“Hello, Monsieur d’Artagnan!” said he, “isn’t it you I see there?”
D’Artagnan raised his head and uttered a cry of joy. It was the man he had called his phantom; it was the stranger of Meung, of the Rue des Fossoyeurs, and of Arras.
D’Artagnan drew his sword and sprang toward the door.
But this time, instead of eluding him, the stranger leaped from his horse and advanced to meet D’Artagnan.
“Ah, sir!” said the young man, “I meet you, then, at last! This time you shall not escape me!”
“Neither is it my intention, sir, for this time I was seeking you. I arrest you in the name of the king. I tell you that you must surrender your sword to me, sir, and that without resistance. Your life depends upon it. I warn you.”
“But who are you?” demanded D’Artagnan, lowering the point of his sword, but without yet surrendering it.
“I am the Chevalier de Rochefort.” answered the stranger, “Cardinal Richelieu’s equerry, and I have orders to conduct you to his Eminence.”
“We are returning to his Eminence, chevalier,” said Athos, advancing; “and you will be good enough to accept M. d’Artagnan’s word that he will go straight to Rochelle.”
“I must place him in the hands of guards who will take him to camp.”
“We will serve as his guards, sir, on our word as gentlemen; but, on our word as gentlemen, likewise,” added Athos, “M. d’Artagnan shall not leave us.”
The Chevalier de Rochefort cast a glance backward, and saw that Porthos and Aramis had taken their places between him and the door. He perceived that he was completely at the mercy of these four men.
“Gentlemen,” said he, “if M. d’Artagnan will surrender his sword to me and join his word to yours, I shall be satisfied with your promise to convey M. d’Artagnan to the cardinal’s quarters.”
“You have my word, sir, and here is my sword.”
“This suits me all the better,” said Rochefort, “as I must continue my journey.”
“If it is to rejoin milady,” said Athos coolly, “it is useless. You will not find her.”
“What has become of her?” asked Rochefort eagerly.
“Come back with us to the camp and you shall know.”
Rochefort remained thoughtful for a moment; then, as they were only a day’s journey from Surgères, where the cardinal was coming to meet the king, he resolved to follow Athos’s advice and go back with them.
Besides, this return gave him the advantage of watching over his prisoner.
They resumed their route.
At three o’clock the next afternoon they reached Surgères. The cardinal, on returning in the evening to his headquarters at the bridge of La Pierre, found D’Artagnan, without his sword, and the three musketeers armed, standing before the door of the house which he was occupying.
This time, as he was well attended, he looked at them sternly, and made a sign with his eye and hand for D’Artagnan to follow him.
D’Artagnan obeyed.
“We shall wait for you, D’Artagnan,” said Athos, loud enough for the cardinal to hear him.
His Eminence kept on his way without uttering a single word.
D’Artagnan entered after the cardinal, and behind D’Artagnan the door was guarded.
His Eminence went to the room which served him as a study, and made a sign to Rochefort to bring in the young musketeer.
Rochefort obeyed and retired.
D’Artagnan remained alone before the cardinal. This was his second interview with Richelieu, and he afterwards confessed that he felt sure it would be his last.
Richelieu remained standing, leaning against the mantelpiece. A table was between him and D’Artagnan.
“Sir,” said the cardinal, “you have been arrested by my orders.”
“So I have been told, monseigneur.”
“Do you know why?”
“No, monseigneur, for the only thing for which I could be arrested is still unknown to your Eminence.”
Richelieu looked steadfastly at the young man.
“You are charged with having corresponded with the enemies of the kingdom. You are charged with having surprised state secrets. You are charged with having tried to thwart your general’s plans.”
“And who charges me with this, monseigneur?” said D’Artagnan, who suspected the accusation came from milady—“a woman branded by the law of the country; a woman who was married to one man in France and to another in England; a woman who poisoned her second husband, and who attempted to poison me!”
“What is all this, sir?” cried the cardinal, astonished; “and what woman are you speaking of thus?”
“Of Milady de Winter,” replied D’Artagnan—“yes, of Milady de Winter, of whose many crimes your Eminence was doubtless ignorant when you honoured her with your confidence.”
“Sir,” said the cardinal, “if Milady de Winter has committed the crimes which you say, she shall be punished.”
“She is punished, monseigneur.”
“And who has punished her?”
“We.”
“Is she in prison?”
“She is dead.”
“Dead!” repeated the cardinal, who could not believe what he heard. “Dead! Did you say she was dead?”
D’Artagnan then related the poisoning of Madame Bonacieux in the Carmelite convent of Béthune, the trial in the lonely house, and the execution on the banks of the Lys.
“So,” said the cardinal, in a tone the mildness of which contrasted with the severity of his words, “you have constituted yourselves judges, forgetting that they who punish without licence to punish are assassins?”
“Another might reply to your Eminence that he had his pardon in his pocket. I shall content myself with saying, Command, monseigneur; I am ready.”
“Your pardon?” said Richelieu, surprised.
“Yes, monseigneur,” said D’Artagnan.
“And signed by whom? By the king?”
And the cardinal pronounced these words with a singular expression of contempt.
“No; by your Eminence.”
“By me? You are mad, sir!”
“Monseigneur will doubtless recognize his own writing.”
And D’Artagnan presented to the cardinal the precious paper which Athos had forced from milady, and which he had given to D’Artagnan to serve him as a safeguard.
His Eminence took the paper and read in a slow voice, dwelling on every syllable:
“August 5, 1628.
“By my order, and for the good of the State, the bearer hereof has done what he has done.
“Richelieu.”
The cardinal, after reading these two lines, fell into deep thought, but he did not return the paper to D’Artagnan. At last he raised his head, fixed his eagle look upon D’Artagnan’s frank, loyal, intelligent face, and reflected for the third or fourth time what a future this young man had before him, and what resources his activity, his courage, and his understanding could devote to a good master.
On the other hand, milady’s crimes, her strength of mind, and her infernal genius had more than once terrified him. He felt something like a secret joy at being for ever rid of such a dangerous accomplice.
The cardinal went to the table, and without sitting down, wrote a few lines on a parchment, two-thirds of which was already filled up, and affixed his seal to it.
“Here, sir,” said the cardinal to the young man; “I have taken from you one signed blank, and I give you another. The name is wanting in this commission, and you yourself will write it in.”
D’Artagnan took the paper hesitatingly, and cast his eyes over it.
It was a lieutenant’s commission in the musketeers.
D’Artagnan fell at the cardinal’s feet.
“Monseigneur,” said he, “my life is yours! Henceforward dispose of it. But I do not deserve this favour which you bestow on me. I have three friends who are more meritorious and more worthy—”
“You are an honest fellow, D’Artagnan,” interrupted the cardinal, tapping him familiarly on the shoulder, charmed at having subdued this rebellious nature. “Do with this commission what you will. Only remember that though the name is left blank I give it to you.”
“I shall never forget it,” replied D’Artagnan. “Your Eminence may be certain of that.”
The cardinal turned round and said in a loud voice,
“Rochefort!”
The chevalier, who doubtless was behind the door, entered immediately.
