Pairing: Athos/Milady, bookverse.

Summary: A reworking of a certain chapter in the original novel, and what could have happened in it.

DISCLAIMER: Dumas is not mine. Nor are Athos or Milady (unfortunately). Enjoy!!

Chapter VIII

August 10th, 1844

Paris

My dear friend,

I do not know if there is any use in writing this letter to you, but my conscience has been enough disturbed in these past weeks to persuade me that I must speak my mind.

You will be aware, I am sure, of the very great success which has been accorded my colleague – I'm afraid I still have difficulty calling him friend – Alexandre Dumas. The serialization and publication of his – our – tale The Three Musketeers in the past several weeks has made him a household name all over our belle France, and I must admit that I have enjoyed the fame as much as he, even if I am not first on the list of those congratulated.

But something has been weighing heavily on me. I know that I am spoken of merely as Alexandre's collaborator, the man who pores through old manuscripts for the greater writer. But I am not. I am more. Indeed, I wrote large portions of this novel which has become so famous. I am a modest man – I would never take credit for pulling the novel together as a whole, for only Alexandre's indefatigable energy was enough to make sure the book got published in the first place. No, what troubles me is his decision to alter one scene in particular so much that it became unrecognizable, tame, almost meaningless compared to the original chapter which I set down. I speak of the confrontation between Athos and Milady at the Red Dovecot Inn, in which I attempted to breathe real life and complexity into the characters Dumas and I created together – complexity which I feel was completely stripped away.

What follows is the original version of the cavalier's encounter with his former wife in its entirety – no, not the entire chapter, but the pertinent section which Dumas changed; I am sure, having read the published version yourself, you will understand where it lies. I do not know if it will ever be restored to its rightful place in print, especially as my esteemed colleague seems to have the final word on all such matters now – but nevertheless I feel it must be recorded. I leave the decision of which tale is the more truthful to the reader.

Your fondest companion,

Auguste Maquet

"Who are you? What do you want?" she cried.

Athos muttered to himself:

"Yes, it's her."

Then he let his cloak fall open, took off his hat and walked up to her.

"Do you recognize me?" he asked.

Milady looked at him for a moment in silence. Then her beautiful eyes widened, and her whole countenance became a portrait of horror and shock.

"I see you do recognize me," Athos said in a very quiet voice, removing his cloak and placing it over the back of a chair which stood near the wall of the room. "Good. Now we can talk."

Milady, stumbling back towards the wall, was a picture of fear. Her features, however, slowly transformed themselves into something altogether different. The reader would no doubt be startled to hear that there were even the beginnings of tears coming to the corners of her eyes and rolling softly down her deathly pale cheeks.

"Comte de la Fère!" she murmured.

Athos shot her a glance, standing very still. His own, noble face was no less pale than hers.

"Yes," he replied. "Comte de la Fère, returned from the past on a matter of vital importance. Sit down!"

Milady, struck dumb with shock, sat down without a word. The tears continued to fall from her shining eyes.

"You thought I was dead, didn't you?" Athos said softly. "And I thought you were dead. I took the name of Athos to hide the identity of the Comte de la Fère, just as you took the name of Lady de Winter to hide the identity of Anne de Breuil. Wasn't that the name you went by when your worthy brother married us?"

He smiled grimly, his eyes darkening at the sound of her shaking sobs, and continued:

"Our position's very strange. You and I have both managed to exist since then only because each believed the other dead; memories can be less painful than facts."

"Much less painful," Milady interrupted him, her voice trembling. She looked up at him; her rosy lips parted, and then stood up from her chair before him. "Why have you come here tonight?"

Athos looked at her, his gaze inscrutable. "I came to tell you that though you haven't seen me since those far-off days I haven't lost sight of you."

Milady's breath hitched in her slim throat.

"It was you who cut the diamond tags off the Duke of Buckingham's shoulder," Athos said abruptly, and Milady flinched backwards as though she had been struck. "It was you who had Madame Bonacieux kidnapped. You were in love – in love with the Comte de Wardes and allowed my friend d'Artagnan to make love to you in the belief that he was de Wardes."

Milady looked down at the floor, holding a hand to her pale forehead in exhaustion. Athos regarded her a moment, then continued on.

"You then tried to kill de Wardes, to avenge an imagined slight. You sent d'Artagnan poisoned wine with a forged letter which was supposed to come from his friends. In this very room, you arranged with the Cardinal to have the Duke of Buckingham murderer, and he gave you in exchange an authority to kill d'Artagnan."

Milady's cheeks were slowly flushing with anger. "Are you Satan himself?" she whispered, gazing in alarm on Athos's dark features.

"Possibly," Athos replied even more quietly.

"If I am," he continued, before Milady had a chance to speak, "I hope it'll help to impress on you what I'm going to say. I don't care if you do murder the Duke of Buckingham or get someone else to murder him. I don't know him and his life's nothing to me. In any case he's France's enemy. But d'Artagnan's my friend. If you so much as lay a finger on him then I swear on my father's head that, whether you succeed or fail, it'll be the very last act of your life.

"Now," Athos said calmly, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the ground at Milady's feet, not daring to look her in the eyes. He reached slowly to his belt, pulled out his pistol, and cocked it, pointing it directly at Milady's white forehead. "You will give me the paper the Cardinal wrote for you just now, Madam, or I will be forced to kill you."

Had it been anyone but Athos Milady might have doubted his carrying out his threat. But she knew Athos, and she trembled with sorrow and frustration, fast turning to anger. And yet she made no move.

"I'll give you one second to decide," he said.

Milady saw from the contraction of his muscles that he was about to pull the trigger. She quickly put her hand to her bodice. Athos watched her hand as it moved, his finger stilling on the gun. She pulled out a scroll of paper and handed it to him.

"Here, take it," she said, drawing her arms close about herself once he had relieved her of the carte-blanche. "Curse you," she said quietly, the venom quite gone from her voice, as though she was unsure of what it was she said.

Athos took it. He seemed not to have heard what she had said, but his eyes were dark with regret. He then replaced the pistol in his belt and, to make sure that what he held was really the Cardinal's order, took the paper to the lamp, unrolled it and read as follows:

It is by my order and for the benefit of the State that the bearer of this note has done what he has done.

3 December, 1627

Richelieu

"You shall pay for this insult," Milady said as he finished reading, regaining some of her strength.

Athos replied with a sneer:

"Is it possible to insult a creature like you?"

Milady shook with rage. "You have insulted me, as has Monsieur D'Artagnan. You must die – D'Artagnan must die."

"He's insulted you and must die. Is that it?" Athos asked incredulously.

"Yes!" Milady shrieked, her pretty voice rising to an inhuman pitch. "They must both die, she first and then he! All of you – all of you will die!"

At this Athos suddenly felt a wave of fierce anger surge up in him. As he looked at this inhuman, yet somehow so frail creature, to outward semblance a woman but with a man's soul, a terrible picture flashed across his mind; the memory of a day many years ago when, alone with her in a situation less critical than now, he had not hesitated to commit a heinous crime which had haunted him ever since.

He now felt a wild return of his murderous impulse of that long-forgotten day. Dropping the paper he had taken from Milady, he turned so quickly she had not even the time to cry out, and with his hands on her white shoulders pushed her forcibly backwards until she came into sharp contact with the wall, bearing down on her with all the violence and fury of a man cruelly wronged.

Milady stood as though transfixed. Against the background of the dark tapestry, her eyes wide and staring, her hair disheveled and her grasping hands clawing futilely for a few breathless moments to free herself before relenting into violent trembling, she looked the very personification of terror. She was certain now of death, and closed her eyes briefly before looking at him again, waiting for his judgment.

And yet, a strange transformation was coming over Athos. This noble man, this stolid cavalier, found his feelings assailed by past memories so affecting that he was unable to repress them any longer, and the presence of the woman before him was too much to bear. With her before him, looking so lovely despite her tears and her terror, he found himself imagining times long gone when he had been as happy as a man could ever expect to be. She, too, seemed to be under the influence of such feelings, as the fear gradually drained from her face, and her bright eyes glistened as she turned her red lips up to his.

Athos was uncertain, but she was fierce in her emotion, clutching him close to her with trembling hands, seizing his collar to bring him closer. The gentleman's emotional struggle seemed to end in resignation, as he reciprocated her kiss with a passion equal to hers.

Milady, in this act of love – or, perhaps one should say of desperation – found herself unaware of her motives. Despite her dreadful memories of that day when she and Athos had been parted, and the pain of those memories, she found herself unable to summon up even the smallest amount of hatred for him in her normally frigid heart. Instead, she found herself relaxing into a state of contentment she had known only in the early days of her first marriage, when she adored and was adored.

But it was not to last, for Athos was slowly emerging out of the haze which had come to cloud his normally clear vision. A great sadness stole slowly over him, and with a sudden, sharp movement he moved his hands from the wall to Milady's white shoulders and forced her back, separating his lips from hers. She looked at him, fear and panic returning to her expression, her bosom heaving with emotion.

But to her great surprise, he neither spoke nor pushed her away. He merely looked at her silently for a moment, and then –

Milson épaule ses yeux Athos, avec sa bouche ouve

Without another word, the musketeer took two paces back and picked up the carte-blanche to where it had fallen on the floor, tucking it securely into his jacket. Milady watched him in trembling silence, having to support her weak body against the wood behind her.

Athos now drew his cloak round him and put on his hat. Then, looking at Milady with a glance now of hatred, now of sorrow, he said:

"Now I've drawn your viper's fangs, strike if you can."

With that he turned and left the room. The sun was rising, casting shadows into the room where Milady stood, weeping.

Addendum: To the publishers of Le Monde

I received this package and its contents late in the summer of 1844, but was unsure about what exactly to do with them once they were in my possession. Though I felt deeply for the sentiments of the author, I, too, hesitated to interrupt the fervor that was sweeping France in those heady days when a seemingly insignificant, badly-written novel serialized in the common newspapers was transforming the nation.

My dear friend August Maquet having passed away barely a day ago, I feel that the time has at last come to show his neglected work to the world. I hope that you will find somewhere to display this piece of work in your publication.

And yet, still it is not complete – for the sake of discretion and decency, I myself took up the editor's knife and removed (and, at the urging of my closest associates whom I have consulted on this matter, destroyed) a certain section which, with its explicit description of carnal acts concerning the two characters involved, would surely not be allowed in any newspaper today (except perhaps in the very lowest of societies). My heart was uneasy as I thus changed my old companion's long-lost words, but I felt it was necessary to ensure the chapter as a whole was not taken for naught. I look forward to seeing the work of A. Maquet, the unsung hero of our national treasure, restored someday to its intended place alongside the petty work of his undeserving debtor.

I am, sirs, your most humble servant,

Charles de Bertrain, January 9th, 1888

FIN

NOTE: Auguste Maquet (1813-Jan 9th, 1888) was a French author and collaborator who worked with Alexandre Dumas on The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, among others. Although he was at first thought of as a mere fact-gatherer and researcher for Dumas (he found the original Memoirs of M. D'Artagnan on which The Three Musketeers is based), scholars today believe that large sections of Dumas's works may have been written entirely by Maquet, making him an equal partner in the literary achievement of the D'Artagnan Romances. His name was never put on the title page of any of Dumas's works at the insistence of various publishers, and was instead paid authors fees. He is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.