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Aramis has always believed in God, and always had the air of slight unearthliness about him. Even back home before the war he was known for being lost in a state of dreamy contemplation more times than not, and the girls (and some of the boys) of the village couldn’t help but stare at him in church on Sundays, the way the light from the modest stained glass windows would hit him and make him almost seem to glow.
When he joined the Royal Welsh, his uncanny knack of hitting a bullseye made his pals regard Aramis as something of a miracle worker. It never made any difference if it was a tin can or a hare or a German soldier he was shooting at: Aramis just seemed to relax all of himself into a kind of quiet serenity. He never really missed.
And then Marsac left, and then d’Artagnan died, and most of the time even Aramis can sense the distance between himself and Porthos and Athos. Between himself and reality. It isn’t the quiet serenity of prayer, but neither is it the raging, quivering terror of shell shock. Aramis just started…going somewhere else, and sometimes it is quite hard for him to find his way back.
Porthos jokes that it’s a war full of rain seeped into his head, and Aramis can almost believe him because for the last year he’s heard an incessant, barely perceptible whisper in his ear, which accounts for his now almost constant state of distraction.
They both know that the last time Aramis fired his gun it was to shoot the sniper who killed d’Artagnan, but Porthos has also impressed on Aramis how important it is that he pretend at least to be firing it, lest anyone cart him off for cowardice. It isn’t that, Aramis thinks, it isn’t a matter of bravery: it’s just that every time he goes to squeeze the trigger his mind wanders, momentarily, and the whisper in his head seems to grow louder, and his heart flutters and he forget what exactly it was he is supposed to be doing.
He remembers how angry Porthos had been when he’d noticed, how he’d shaken Aramis and said he had to be careful and didn’t he want to live anymore? And Aramis had felt his mind slip sideways, just a little, and had smiled up at Porthos and said it was all alright because an angel was protecting him.
It had seemed true at the time, seemed wonderful, but now Aramis can’t think why he would have said such a thing. Still, the bullets stayed away - and there were plenty of miraculous near-misses. But war is just like that sometimes.
*
The weather is dreadful - the rain that seems to have followed them the entire war is reluctant to leave now that peace has come. It’s late, and Aramis, with two hours to wait for his train, seeks shelter in the little waiting room on the platform. He sits down in the only other seat, opposite a familiar hunched figure.
“Thought I’d finally got rid of you,” Porthos says, looking up from the newspaper he doesn’t appear to have been paying much attention to.
“What can I say?” Aramis smiles, “I’ve never known when to take a hint.” Porthos flashes a grin, and Aramis knows full well that the other man would have come searching for him if he hadn’t turned up, anyway. He’d made him repeat it back to him over and over again: meet on the platform going to London and don’t leave without Porthos.
It should have been a simple command but things like that don’t come so easily to Aramis anymore. “Oi,” Porthos says, throwing the newspaper at Aramis’ head. He snaps his fingers, a familiar sound now, “Back with me, yeah? None of that.”
“Sorry,” Aramis smiles, “You know…”
“I know,” Porthos says. “But it’s gonna be better now. Now that it’s all over. We’re gonna be better.”
“Yeah,” Aramis says.
“Any sign of him?” he asks after a while. Porthos blinks, quickly, and rolls his shoulders as though shrugging off a coat. “Nope.” They sit in silence for a while, just the drumming of rain on the roof. Aramis stretches out his legs and wiggles his toes in his boots. “Probably off downing some rubbing alcohol,” Porthos says, and his voice is a study of nonchalance.
“Don’t say that, Porthos,” Aramis chides, quietly. “He’s not….I mean, he’s…”
Porthos huffs. “He’s not here, is what he is. And he’s not our problem any more.”
Aramis isn’t sure when Athos became their problem, but he does know that soon after d’Artagnan died everything began to change. They became unmoored, without his presence, Aramis supposes, their own ties not enough to bind them. Aramis disappeared periodically into some kind of foggy blankness and Athos disappeared perpetually into bottle after bottle, and even Porthos couldn’t figure out where it was all coming from.
Sometimes the smell of Athos - acid and sharp with alcohol - would make Aramis wince. He’d last seen him back in the Infantry Base Depot near Calais and the sight of him - eyes bloodshot and hazed, skin paper-pale - made Aramis’ stomach leaden. He couldn’t bring himself to walk up to him, to even say hello, despite the voice blaring in the back of his head demanding that he do just that.
Anyway, it’s too late now. It’s been hard enough this last year, watching it all fracturing, watching Athos slip away and Porthos calcify with anger, and all the while trying to stay sane enough to keep from the bullets and the bombs and the gas.
Sometimes Aramis feels like he’s carrying the weight of another man around on his own back. His feet sink deeper into the mud that they should, his shoulders feel perpetually slumped, his head bowed.
“Where are we going again, Porthos?”
“London, Aramis.”
*
It’s late by the time the train pulls in to Waterloo station, so they make the decision to sleep slumped against each other for warmth on a bench near the ticket office at Waterloo until they’re woken by the porters coming and going as the morning rush begins.
“You have anywhere for us to stay?” Aramis says, as they stretch out cramped limbs and light up cigarettes.
“Nope,” Porthos says, with a bitter laugh. “You?”
“Well, we could stay with my mam’s cousin, in Aberdyfi. Don’t think we’d go down too well there though,” Aramis smiles, exhaling a stream of blue smoke into the early morning air.
“Don’t much fancy being the circus freak in a small Welsh town, thanks,” Porthos says.
“Well then. London it is.”
They head to Stockwell, on the advice of a porter at the station who tells them there’re lots of boarding houses in Lambeth, quickly filling up with returned servicemen. They walk all morning along the snaking streets lined with crumbling brick houses until they find a tall, bleak looking boarding house that will agree to take them both. Aramis risks a sideways look at Porthos, but the man takes in the glances and muttered words about as much as he did in the army - London may not be a small Welsh town, but there aren’t many boarding houses that will accept a black man.
Their landlady is a scowling, sour thing, as tall and bleak as the house she owns. She has one room left at the back of the boarding house, with one old iron-framed bed and a slumping kit-bed in the wardrobe - which promptly collapses under Porthos’ weight the moment he tries to lie on it. They sleep top-to-tail in the lone bed, apart from the nights when the London fog is thick and horrid and creeping the streets outside their grubby soot-stained window like poison gas, while Porthos marches back and forth across the tiny space of their room and Aramis sits shivering in the corner, swatting at the whispering in his ear.
They find work, here and there on the docks and warehouses in Southwark, but there are thousands of returned soldiers flooding the city, work is hard to find, and a decent wage even more so.
It’s March when everything changes. Aramis is jittery with annoyance, because they use their spare change for bus journeys only very occasionally and the cold sleety night had been deemed a good use of their money, but they’d both fallen into an exhausted asleep and missed their stop and ended up having to walk back from Green Park anyway.
Collars pulled up around their necks and breath huffing out into the cold damp night, it’s somewhere near Victoria that Aramis distinctly hears the words “magic beans”. Well, he’s not sure if he hears them exactly, only that the whispering in his ear parts for a moment to allow the words to unfurl inside his head like banners. “You what?” Porthos says over his shoulder, when Aramis stops walking. “Magic…beans?” Aramis says again, frowning. He searches the other man’s face in hope that the words might mean more to Porthos than they do to him.
“No idea mate,” Porthos sighs, jogging back to him and looping his arm around his shoulders. Aramis looks up at him, feels his own face etched with confusion, wishing it wasn’t. “It’s alright, Aramis,” Porthos says, so gently that it’s like a hot knife under Aramis’ ribs. He doesn’t know why he’s like this.
“Long day,” Porthos says, rubbing briskly at Aramis’ arm. ”Cold night. Let’s get you home.”
It’s then that something catches Aramis’ eye. The only words in his mouth are “magic beans” again so he just sort of mumbles and points.
“Jesus, is that…?” Porthos says.
There’s a low figure in the doorway outside a nearby public house, huddled in on itself on the cold wet ground.
“Bloody hell. Athos?” he says, gently, squatting down in front of him, “Lieutenant?” The huddled man moves at that, an animal sort of jerk away from the sound. The dull glow of streetlamps slides from his face, tight and pale, red-rimmed eyes.
“You,” Athos mumbles, “What’re you…”
“What are we?! What are you!” Aramis drops to his knees next to the two men, but Athos shrinks away from their outstretched hands.
“I’m alright, I’m alright,” Athos says, casting about as if to steady himself.
“Bollocks,” Porthos huffs, “You smell like you tried to drink a distillery dry.”
“Yes,” Athos agrees, a little faintly. “No. Just, let me….”
Aramis puts out his hands again to help, but Athos flinches back so violently he almost knocks his head against the brick wall at his back. “I’m alright, I’m...just don’t, don’t touch me please.”
“Can you get up?” Porthos asks, after a moment, and his voice is curiously flat.
“Yes,” Athos says, the word a heave of foggy breath out into the cold night. “Give me a moment.”
They stand dutifully by as he climbs the brick wall, until he’s standing upright, listing a little as his knees lock and steady themselves.
“Where are you staying, then?” Aramis asks.
*
Athos works with them at the warehouse, but he seems disinterested in any sustenance that doesn’t come from a bottle, and contributes only the barest to their shared funds that go towards rent. Some days he is simply too drunk to get up. They try to talk to him, to reason, to beg, but it becomes apparent that Athos is far too far gone for that. Aramis knows he should be angry but he can’t bring himself to be so, most of the time, because it takes so much energy these days to remember even the simplest of things and he can’t afford to waste effort on anything else.
The spring eases almost imperceptibly into a dreary summer and a cool, dry autumn. Aramis knows that Porthos is desperate for some sort of rhythm to their days, but finds it impossible with the combined unpredictability of Aramis and Athos. Sometimes it’s only Porthos who is well enough to get up and out to work in the morning, and Aramis can almost feel the building rage in the other man, rage that has no outlet other than the physical exertion of loading boxes and sacks and pallets at the docks.
It was supposed to be easier, now. All those nights sitting in five inches of slipping mud at the bottom of a trench, the smell of rot all around them. Days marching endlessly nowhere through fields that were already stained crimson with the blood of other men. Peace was supposed to be better, but they have returned to a new world - one they fought for with blood and the very viscera inside them - only to find that there is no longer a place for men like them. Aramis can’t imagine going back to Wales, the small village, the small people. Like cramming his toes into boots a size too small. But London - the sort of London that the returning soldiers inhabit - is ragged and desperate, and would not even remember them if they dropped off the face of the earth.
But the thing is, Aramis cannot even feel angry about it. He doesn’t feel sad, or wronged, or furious in the way he knows Porthos does. He feels just…loose. There’s a curious sort of peace to it, even though he knows his utter lack of control - like a child’s kite surrendered to the mercy of the winds - is only peaceful because Porthos takes up the slack, points him in the right direction, makes him eat and drink when he forgets. And he should feel guilty about that but…he’s not sure he’s able to, anymore.
One night, Aramis lies awake, his brain wandering. The moon is full. He isn’t sure how he knows, but he does. He can feel it up there. He can’t see the moon so he just stares at the ceiling, through the water-stained paint, through the ragged floorboards of the upstairs room, through the attic and beyond the roof slates. There it is: a beautiful glowing pool of benediction. He is overcome with the urge to see it. When was the last time you saw the full moon? the whispers say.
Outside it is just as beautiful as Aramis thought it would be. He’s quite content to stand on the pavement and stare at it, and so he does. For a while he closes his eyes, feels the cool light sliding across his eyelids. But mostly he just stares, till his eyes are full and watering with it. The whispers have quietened to almost nothing.
“Aramis?”
Porthos puts out a hand, gently lays it on his shoulder. Aramis allows himself to be turned. “The moon, Porthos. Have you seen it?”
“Yeah,” Porthos says, glancing upwards, “Beautiful. Look, I think we should go inside now, yeah?”
“Why?”
“Because you’re in your underthings, Aramis. You’ll get cold.”
Aramis looks down, wiggles his bare toes. He is indeed dressed only in his underwear and a short sleeved shirt. “Oh,” he says. “Thought I’d give the good people of Stockwell a treat.”
“That’s right,” Porthos says, guiding Aramis back inside. When they’re upstairs and nearing the door to their room, where Athos lies passed out in the bed by the window, Porthos turns to Aramis. “We need to have an understanding, you and me. You have to do something for me.”
“Anything,” Aramis says. It might come out like a joke but he means it, completely.
“You have to tell me, right, if you’re going anywhere. If I’m not with you I have to know where you are, all the time. Just so you don’t...you know... you could hurt yourself.”
Aramis can tell Porthos looks worried, but it makes perfect sense to him.
“I will. Tell you, I mean,” Aramis says. And then “I know. You don’t have to be…careful, talking to me about it. I know I’m not alright.”
“You’re alright,” Porthos says at once, fiercely. “You’re fine. You’re just tired, that’s all. We just need to get some money and proper food and all that, okay?”
“Okay, Porthos.”
*
But the work gets scarcer, and the wages with it. One day Athos staggers in to find Aramis and Porthos deep in a conversation that halts the minute he crosses the threshold into their room. Aramis glances at Porthos, whose face is tight with anger, so he pulls at the threads of his mind enough to get the right words in place. “Athos,” he says, carefully. “We were just talking about your family, wondering if you had anyone you could write to…perhaps ask for…some help?”
“Yeah,” Porthos adds. “They said your old man was some kind of Lord. Gotta be some spare cash lying around somewhere.”
Athos hasn’t moved from where he stands, over by the door.
“No,” he says simply, after a while.
“What do you mean no?” Porthos questions, “No you don’t have family or no you won’t ask them for help?”
“Just, no,” Athos mumbles, and crosses over to the bed before crumpling down into it.
“You’re pathetic,” Porthos says, quietly, and Athos raises his bottle in agreement.
“Now, Porthos, we-” Aramis is cut off as Porthos pushes past him and leaves the room, slamming the door behind him. Aramis waits to hear the creaking of the stairs as Porthos stamps down them but it doesn’t come, so after a moment he slips out the door and finds the other man slumped in the hallway.
“Want to leave. Want to just…fucking…break something,” Porthos seethes.
“I know,” Aramis replies. He sits down next to him, shuffles until his shoulder is pressed up against the other man’s.
“And I know what you do for us, every day. And I know we would probably both be dead if it wasn’t for you.”
“Yeah well we’ll all be dead before long,” Porthos huffs. “Survived the fucking war, for this.” He laughs, cold. “I’ve seen how this goes. This ain’t new to me. I grew up four miles from here. I grew up in rooms like this, with the filth and the scraping for money.”
“You could, you know,” Aramis says, and when Porthos frowns at him he elaborates, “Leave.” And he really means it. “You could go. Things would be better for you.”
But Porthos just shakes his head, sharp and hard. “No. Not gonna do that.”
Later, Aramis sits with his back against the wall, wrapped in a blanket. He doesn’t sleep much anymore but when he does he sees young, dark eyes staring at him. He sees them when he’s awake, too, in the crowds of men waiting at the soup kitchen or trudging from the docks at dusk and dawn. Dark eyed, and a flash of dark hair, a familiar shape.
Porthos is slumped on the camp bed mattress, snoring slightly, and Athos is out cold on the bed. And yet, Aramis feels as though he’s being watched.
*
It’s only natural, Aramis supposes, that the three of them together would only remind him of a fourth who was not there, even strained as things are between them all. Sometimes he feels like D’Artagnan has grown to fill the spaces between them since the war ended. Sometimes he feels as if d’Artagnan is still with them, the presence weighing on him. But Aramis doesn’t understand why it would feel this way: so heavy and pressing. D’Artagnan had been light and quick laughter and smiles that could lift even the heaviest of rain-soaked gloomy days in trenches and marches across muddy fields. Why this pushing at Aramis’ soul? Why the weight of presence, the insistence?
He knows his grasp has been tenuous these days, but he cannot afford to lose his mind completely. Not now, with Athos so low, and Porthos barely able to keep them both going. Everything feels as though it is tied together with frayed and rotting string.
*
The winter is long and cruel and stretches far into 1920. In mid-February Porthos and Aramis realise that Athos’ refusing to get out of bed is more than his customary black mood. A cough begins to rattle through his chest, and two red splotches appear high on the cheekbones of his feverish, pale face.
Porthos and Aramis sit side by side in the corridor, knees drawn up, as Athos’ coughing reverberates through the thin clapboard wall at their backs. Porthos lights a cigarette and hands it to Aramis with a shaky grip. “Spanish flu,” Aramis says, “They had it bad here last year.”
“Can we afford the doctor?”
Aramis just shakes his head.
“Will he die?” Porthos asks, his voice a careful monotone.
“It’s not so bad as it has been. Fewer people dying.”
“But will he die?” Porthos asks, a little more colour in his voice now. His fists are clenched tight in his lap.
“I think that might be up to him.”
Porthos screws his eyes shut. “What do we do?”
They barely have enough money for the one room so there’s no question of the two of them keeping their distance from Athos in an attempt to stop the infection spreading. All they can do is drag the mattress from the broken camp-bed, push it to the corner furthest from the bed and Athos’ fevered coughing, and take turns in sleeping and caring for the sick man.
Porthos decides for them all that he should be the one who continues to work, since Aramis has always been the better doctor. Aramis is relieved because he’s not sure he’d even remember the way to the Southwark docks anymore, and can’t say for sure that he wouldn’t just wander off mid-way through the day in any case, so their wages halve overnight. There’s no money for medicine, or a doctor.
And then they wait. Aramis prays harder than ever: for Athos to live, for the two of them not to fall sick, for more work, more pay, more food. For winter to end, and a miracle, and when he has any prayers left over he prays for his own slipping sanity.
Sometimes Aramis finds himself praying to d’Artagnan. He’d once mistook the boy for an angel, after all.
But it becomes apparent, if it ever needed to be, that Athos is not particularly keen on living. There is no longer any fight in him, and the influenza rages through his body. Aramis notices how thin he is, and is surprised when he realises that Porthos too is looking drawn, his cheekbones sharper, the hollows of his eyes darker. Aramis feels as though he hasn’t slept in days, and when he manages to convince his aching, jittery body to lie down each laboured breath from Athos sets his heart anxiously skittering. Inside his own shirt he can feel his ribs, too sharp and prominent against his rough fingertips.
Sometimes he thinks he can hear the whisper of d’Artagnan’s breath, the sense of him as though he is in the next room, just out of sight.
One night Aramis wakes with a start from where he has drifted off next to Athos’ bed, and feels as though someone just kicked him in the stomach. When he opens his shirt there is a bruise like a footprint on his abdomen and the word “enough” clangs around in his head as if someone had shouted it into his ear. He lies for a moment, brain racing at the same pace as the shivers that wrack his freezing body. Magic beans, he thinks. Sometimes you have to gamble on magic beans.
Porthos is curled in on himself for warmth on the thin mattress, and Athos’ eyes race back and forth beneath his closed eyelids in a feverish dream.
Aramis shouldn’t leave. He shouldn’t take Porthos’ big coat and the last of their money from the old biscuit tin on the mantelpiece above the fireplace they can’t afford to keep lit. He shouldn’t creep quietly to the door, slip down the stairs and out onto the street.
But he does.
*
Porthos’ fist slams hard into Aramis’ left eye socket. He staggers backwards and hits the door he’s just walked through, slamming it closed with his body before slipping into a boneless heap on the bare floor. Porthos can really punch.
“You bastard,” Porthos spits, “You utter fucking bastard I carried you on my fucking back across no-man’s-land and he faced the firing squad for it and you fucking left.” The big man twists a fist in Aramis’ jacket and heaves him up, pulling back a fist to punch again.
“I didn’t leave,” Aramis says, a little slurred. Porthos is a blur in front of him and his head is ringing painfully. Porthos can really punch. “I’m back. I had to go.”
“You took the money,” Porthos says shakily. “The last of our money. And my coat and you were...gone...without a word. You’re supposed to tell me where you’re going! You could have just wandered in front of an omnibus or something. ”
“I’m back,” Aramis says, his voice low and soothing. He tries to catch Porthos’ eye. “I wouldn’t do that to you, either of you.”
“You don’t know what you would do,” Porthos says plainly, and the worst part is that it’s true.
“Put the money back in the tin, then.” Porthos says, after a moment. His voice is calmer now but Aramis can feel the anger he’s trying to hold back quivering through the grip that holds him pinned in place.
“I spent it but-”
Porthos slams Aramis back against the door, knocking the air from his lungs.
“I can explain, let me explain,” Aramis wheezes.
“Start explainin’ then,” Porthos hisses.
“Magic beans,” Aramis says because his mind is still racing from that punch and his tongue feels loose and disconnected from his brain. His body meets the door with another angry shove from Porthos, as if the other man were trying to push him right through the hard wood. “Aramis,” Porthos hisses in warning. “I cannot deal with your shit right now.”
Aramis takes a deep breath. “Athos is going to die and then we probably will too. No one gives a damn about us here, we can’t make enough money. The landlady is about to throw us out and I’m losing my mind and we both know it. It can’t go on, Porthos. It can’t.”
The other man lets go of Aramis’ jacket and crosses the room to sit on the camp bed mattress. There are no chairs in the room. They’d broken them up for firewood long ago.
“What have you done, Aramis,” Porthos says, though it’s less a question than a hopeless exhalation.
“I’ve saved us,” Aramis whispers, as his knees give way and he slides down the door until he’s sat slumped against it. “There’s a telephone, at the Old Bell pub, the one on the corner. I paid that sour-faced old barmaid to let me use it. That’s where the money’s gone.”
“Who in the hell would you possibly need to telephone?” Porthos asks, disbelieving. “And why haven’t you called them before now?”
Aramis smiles, weakly. “Treville.”
There’s a pause for a moment, Athos’ laboured breathing the only sound. “You can’t just telephone a lord.”
“No, but the son of an earl can. I told his valet the Honourable Oliver Fairbourne wanted to speak to Lord Treville.”
“And he believed you?” Porthos asks in disbelief.
“Probably not, but it worked.” Aramis shoots a glance at Athos, and wonders again that the thin, sick man in the bed could be a member of the aristocracy.
Porthos sits back against the wall, thinking. “So, why would you call Treville?”
“He told me once that if I...if we ever needed anything…” Aramis scrubs a hand heavily through his hair, suddenly feeling very old. “He said to ask if I needed help, that he owed me that at least. A long time ago. Off-hand. I thought nothing of it.”
“Why would he owe you?” Porthos asks, after a minute.
“I have no idea, Porthos, and I don’t care. He’s offered us a job. At his home in Cornwall. They have grounds, big gardens, they need men to work them.”
“Gardeners?!” Porthos hisses, “Fucking… Aramis! What do we know about gardening?” He exhales a bitter laugh, “You know for a moment I actually believed that you’d got us out of this mess. There’s no such thing as magic beans, you fool.”
“We can do it, Porthos. After this we can do anything, and I really really will do anything. I don’t want to die here and I don’t want to see you three die either.”
“Two,” Porthos says, and his voice is quiet.
“What?”
“You said you couldn’t see us three die. It’s just me and Athos, besides you.”
“That’s what I meant,” Aramis says, and shakes his head sharply.
“Well then,” Porthos says, after a while.
*
Two days later, the landlady brings them a letter and notice of their eviction. “You’ve not paid the rent in two weeks and that one’s coughing is bothering the rest of the boarders.”
“He’s sick,” Porthos says, in disbelief.
“He was trouble before,” the landlady says stubbornly. “The amount of complaints I get about you lot. Him drunk on the stairs, shouts and noise at all hours. This is a respectable establishment.”
Aramis puts a hand on Porthos’ shoulder before he can say anything contradictory. The letter is open in his other hand. “Mrs Hughes, we need a little extra time and then we’ll leave. We can pay you up-front,” he says, cutting the landlady’s protest off.
“You have an hour to get me the money.”
Once the door is closed, Aramis shows Porthos the contents of the envelope: three train tickets to Truro and a five pound note.
And, already paid for and waiting in Hatchards booksellers on Piccadilly, a pile of books on gardening.
*
It might have been luck, or Aramis’ praying, or Porthos’ bull-headed determination, but Athos begins to make a recovery in the two weeks that they remain in the little boarding house in Lambeth. The five pound note goes towards rent, and food, and firewood enough to see the little fireplace lit cheerfully day and night. The flickering light and its resulting warmth seems to ease through Aramis’ bones, while he and Porthos sit and read aloud from the gardening books to Athos, who lies bundled in extra blankets, blinking palely at them.
Aramis has explained the plan to Athos, but the man barely shrugged in reply. He seems utterly content now to be told where to go and what to do, having seemingly given up all will and independence. Well, content is not quite the right word, Aramis thinks, looking at his friend. Maybe compliant.
Porthos’ reading skills being as they are mean that his study of the books they’ve acquired is slow, but steady. Aramis helps him with the more difficult words, and every now and then Athos helps both Porthos and Aramis with the even more complicated ones. The specific terminology is hard to get their heads around, but of course Athos has a first class education and seems to know what it all means, even the latin. Once or twice his voice, grown thin from lack of use and the hacking cough that still ravages his lungs, wheezes out some piece of obscure gardening knowledge from the bed where they had thought him asleep, and on pressing him he replies, briefly, that he overheard gardeners and groundskeepers “on the estate” as a child.
Once their two weeks of frantic study and convalescence is up, they leave for the train station early so as not to have to see their awful landlady one last time. Aramis is determined that this will be a new beginning, that this will be the answer to all the many, many prayers he has uttered in dark and terrible moments since the war ended, and perhaps even earlier than that. His cheerfulness is not forced, his optimism utter and transcending. There is a lightness running through him these days, a feeling of happiness like being sat next to someone joyful and laughing, and it makes him think of d’Artagnan, whose presence has never left them but feels softer now, like a light touch on Aramis’ back, guiding him forwards.
They wait at the train station with their few belongings packed in kit-bags still stamped with their names and regiments, but bulky now with books. Porthos thinks out loud, turning over the knowledge in his head. He has taken an interest in fruit trees and the grafting of branches, seems to find a kind of magic in it that Aramis is unable to see through all the tedious detail. His research has taken him instead towards the exotic beautiful painted-ladies of flowers that he has only read about, or seen dull black and white illustrations of. Treville mentioned the existence of some kind of hot-house, which Aramis is fairly aching to discover. In his dreams he conjures beautiful flowers in every shade of every color, perfumed air that’s warm and earthy and sinks deep into his bones, breathing hot, beautiful life back into what has become parched and cold through the winter, and the war.
Aramis is aware, of course, that two weeks of studying a handful of books does not a gardener make. But Treville has faith in them - or pity. Either way, it’s a straw that a drowning man would be a fool not to clutch. Besides, they had about as much training before going to war; If a few weeks can make soldiers of them, then it can do the same for gardening, which in Aramis’ limited knowledge appears much more forgiving when it comes to learning on the job.
Athos is silent as the train whisks them south and west to Cornwall. He doesn’t look out the window, or at the other passengers, choosing instead to stare blankly into space like a simpleton, and Aramis feels the frustration beginning to niggle at his patience. Porthos has stopped with his chatter of fruit trees and grafting, of scions and budstocks and cultivars, which is a blessed relief, though the silence lies heavy around them now. Porthos frowns out of the window at the blustery day, where the shadows of clouds chase themselves across the patchwork fields of Wiltshire.
*
Treville’s letter had mentioned a car that would be waiting for them at the little station in the tiny village of Porthellion, but an hour of waiting proves fruitless, and no cars, trucks or buses appear. After a while Porthos goes to find the stationmaster, but comes back seething from the gruff unhelpful response his questions had earned.
Aramis can’t really blame the stationmaster: they are three strange, starved-looking men in now too-big and threadbare overcoats. Athos is continuing to stare vacantly into the middle distance and smells quite strongly of alcohol, Porthos has the air of a man who might start throwing punches at any moment, and Aramis is jittering and wide-eyed in a way that scared even himself, when he caught his reflection in the train window earlier that day.
You can practically see the fog of desperation around them, and though that’s not particularly uncommon for returned soldiers these days he can see why people would learn to leave well alone. Besides, he is acutely aware that they serve now only as a reminder of all the men who didn’t come home, who are even now being spoken of as heroes with memorials planned in their honour. Men who went away young and healthy and full of fire and optimism, men who were never seen by their families and communities at the end, when they were desperate and ragged and animal. These men were loved, and unlike he and Porthos and Athos they have people who miss them. And they’re replaced now by…what? Hoards of hollow men, dead-eyed and angry and inexplicably still alive. Not exactly a fair trade.
“I had a look on the map, before,” Aramis says, “We could try walking? I don’t think it would take more than thirty, forty minutes maybe?”
Porthos looks at him through narrowed eyes.
“I promise, it’s…” Aramis doesn’t know the right words to say. True? Real? Not imagined, not some flight borne of his fanciful brain. “It’s west of here. And it’s a great big fucking house so we should be able to spot it.”
The sun is beginning to lower - it must be gone 3pm at least, and the dark will be coming on soon. Porthos huffs a sigh and picks up his kit bag. “Alright then, lead the way.” He takes Athos’ arm and gives him a none too gentle shove. “Quick march, Captain.”
They take the little road that meanders west out of the village, and as the last few houses disappear and the bare branched hedges grow thicker either side of them Aramis begins to feel the panic, flitting at the edges of his mind. He understands that he is on thin ice with Porthos, that his talk of magic beans and angels and wild escape plans paints him as yet another liability, a burden to Porthos, who seems to be the only sane one left of the three. Of course, Athos’ particular flavour of insanity comes mainly from the bottom of a bottle, or five, but he could still sober up given half the chance and an equal amount of effort. Aramis, on the other hand, may very well be a lost cause. No one knows better than him that something is cracked inside his head, and there are some wounds - the invisible ones - that cannot truly be healed.
It’s not like he’s the only one. He’s heard of these men too, the soldiers now sitting in bath chairs in sanatoriums, drooling onto their dressing gowns and screaming every time a bedpan drops to the floor or a door slams too loudly. Aramis thinks perhaps he has more in common with them than he does with Porthos and Athos, but the thought of being sent to rot like that is too unbearable.
Once Aramis has started thinking about the possibility of being locked up in a place like that he finds it hard to stop, and it’s not long before his breath is beginning to hitch and stutter oddly. He quickens his pace, getting out in front of Porthos and Athos, who trails a little behind them, so that the sudden pinch of fear on his face might not be recognised, so it’s he that notices the big gates first. There are two huge stone pillars almost entirely swallowed up by heavy rambles of ivy and slick with damp moss, flanking a gravel drive that snakes off through an area of parkland. Behind some trees in the distance Aramis thinks he can make out the chimneys of a big house.
“Think this might be it?” Porthos asks.
“It is,” Athos says, surprising them all with his voice, clipped and hoarse from lack of use and the tail end of influenza. He walks past them, boots a crunching swivel on the gravel. “I’ve been here before.”
“You’ve…you’ve been here before,” Porthos says in disbelief. “He’s been here before,” he says to Aramis, who has already moved off and is following Athos down the drive. “That would have been handy information, oh, I don’t know, half a fucking hour ago.”
The path continues through the broad parkland, dotted with the winter skeletons of huge trees which Porthos takes great joy in trying to identify as they pass - oak, horse-chestnut, elm, the high evergreen canopies of scot’s pine - and once or twice they startle a bird from a rhododendron bush as big as a house, or catch the flit of a deer startled by their approach along the crunching drive.
It’s after walking for maybe ten minutes that the big house comes into view, a huge ramble of wings and windows, topped with innumerable chimneys and constructed of a warm grey-yellow stone. The drive ends in a sweeping curve in front of the big carved wooden doors, which the three of them stop in front of, silent. After a while Porthos says “We should probably go in the servant’s door or something, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Aramis says, “I think so?”
“Where is it?” Porthos asks after a while, turning to Athos, who shrugs unhelpfully. “Of course,” Porthos says, “You came in through the front the last time you were here.”
“Yes,” Athos says, his tone completely level. “And the time before that.”
“Let’s try around here,” Aramis says, pushing Athos along in front of him and heading around the side of the house before Porthos can take a swing at Athos.
As they round the side of the building the stonework becomes a little less fine, and a courtyard opens up before them with garages and storerooms, as well as a small doorway with a bell outside that Porthos rings perhaps a little too vigorously. After a while the door opens and a boy of about seventeen stands there gawping at them until Aramis clears his throat and says “We’re the new gardeners. Um, Treville sent for us. Lieutenant-Colonel Treville. I mean Lord Treville. Er….” He trails off, uncertain, but the boy swallows visibly and nods quickly in response.
“Wait here then,” he says over his shoulder, and they do.
Aramis isn’t sure who he’s expecting to greet them - surely not Treville himself, who he’s pretty sure wouldn’t waltz down to the servant’s hall just to welcome the new gardeners, but he surely isn’t expecting the woman who steps out into the courtyard with a business-like air. “Hello,” she says, and her accent is decidedly not Cornish. West Midlands? Aramis thinks. She is petite and pretty, with red-brown hair pinned up in a practical style. Her dress is the sort that was fashionable a year or two ago, and has the air of something cast off or handed down from another, now kept carefully. “I’m Constance, she says. “Things are a bit, well, unorthodox around here, so I’ll show you around.”
“Hello. You’re, the…housekeeper?” Porthos hedges.
“Sort of, but not really. I help out his Lordship and Ninon - I mean, Lady Grace.”
“Ni..Grace?” Aramis can’t stop himself from asking, confused already.
“Treville’s niece,” Athos says.
“Yes,” Constance says, eyes narrowing a little at Athos over Aramis’ shoulder. “Or, well, not really a niece, but close enough. It’s complicated. As I said: unorthodox,” Constance replies, smiling tightly. “Harry here will take your bags and have them brought to the Folly for you. I thought I’d take you on a quick tour before it gets dark.”
“What’s a folly when it’s at home?” Porthos asks Aramis in a low voice as Constance sweeps past them, pulling them along in her wake.
“Not a clue,” Aramis supplies with a shrug, “But I hope it has beds in it.”
“Ooh, and a bath,” Porthos adds with glee.
“Oh yes, a bath,” Aramis sighs.
*
For the next hour, while the light still holds, Constance takes them on a brisk tour of the gardens, which are grander and more expansive than Aramis could possibly have imagined. Things have clearly been untended, and the last six of years of neglect have left them rambling and overgrown, visibly so even now in winter. There’s an air of sadness, a quiet sort of waiting to the place which only makes Aramis want to charge in and see to. He grew up around nature, in a sort of rhythm with the seasons that Porthos and Athos - both from very different ends of the social spectrum - could never understand, but even so this desire to feel his hands dark and wet with earth, to tend carefully and coaxingly to small growing things is a surprise to him. They trail around formal box gardens, wisteria walks, kitchen and rose gardens. There is a pavilion and a huge old Edwardian iron-framed hot-house, at least a handful of fountains, a dark shadow of wild wooded area, and then, at the end of the sweeping lawns a long snaking stone wall that seems to mark the boundary between the grounds and the sky. There is simply nothing beyond it.
“Aramis,” Porthos says quietly, and it’s not quite a hiss but it holds the careful threat, and he knows he must have faded out again because the quiet stillness in his head is blissful, standing here and staring out at where the sun is staining the blue clouds a sort of peach-coloured gold in its setting.
“What’s there, Miss?” Aramis asks, ignoring Porthos and pointing out towards the wall, and the sky.
“Um, the sea?” Constance replies, slightly confused. “Is that what you meant? Beyond the wall there’s cliff tops - rather steep, so you should be careful - and then a path down to the beach.”
“Oh,” Aramis says, like a sigh. “He’ll like that. He misses the sea.”
“Does….he?” Constance says, shooting a startled little look at Porthos, who puts an arm around Aramis to chivvy him along. For once Athos actually seems to decide to step up and help out, and engages Constance in a slightly hoarse and stiltedly formal conversation about a large bank of rhododendrons nearby, while Porthos mutters to Aramis that it might be best for him not to speak for a while.
Not far from the sea wall, Constance takes a right along a path through a wooded area. The trees above them are mainly deciduous and so bare branched, and Aramis can’t help but feel his heart jump a little at the rattle of dead leaves at their feet, reminding him sharply of snipers and bullets and endings. But he takes a deep breath, feels the presence of Porthos behind him, the shadow of the other man’s hand ready to press into the small of his back.
Soon the trees and shrubs open up to reveal a curious building, a tall round tower of stone with a straight, crumbled wall to one side as if it were a watch tower on the outer walls of a large castle. There are a couple of arched windows, glowing warmly with an amber light from within.
“I sent one of the hall boys to get a fire going for you earlier this afternoon, it might need seeing to now but it should be fairly warm in there,” Constance says, opening a creaking wooden door and gesturing them inside.
Porthos has to duck his head to fit through the low door-frame. Inside is a large room filled with what looks like odds and ends of furniture borrowed from various places: a threadbare sofa piled with patched and darned blankets, a couple of armchairs, rugs that are clean but perhaps a little singed from stray coals from fires past. On one wall there is a crackling open fire in an incongruously ornate stone fireplace, not large but looking like something from a medieval castle, and opposite is the opening to a spiral staircase that disappears off into the darkness of the floors above. There is a worn farmhouse table, scrubbed almost blonde with use, a handful of mismatched dining chairs and, in a little knook to the right a small but serviceable stove clustered around with pantry cupboards.
“Bathroom and bedrooms up there,” Constance says, pointing at the staircase. “And you can take your meals in the servants hall at the big house or here, if you’d prefer, just let Mrs Hammett know with plenty of time.”
Aramis stands looking around, feeling the warmth of the place soak into his bones. The armchair nearest to the fire is looking particularly welcoming right now. Athos is examining the row of shelves in the inset space to the left of the chimney breast, bare but for a couple of books. Constance notices him and says “Just a few on gardening for now, but Treville says you’re welcome to borrow anything from his library.”
Athos nods once but seems lost in a slight daze, and Aramis hopes she can’t see the shaking of his hands as they turn the thin pages of a small leather-bound book. Or smell the alcohol on him for that matter.
“Of course before the war the other gardeners were all locals from Porthhellion but…well…” Constance drifts off. “Now there’s you,” She continues brightly. “And we weren’t sure where to put you. There’s no electricity I’m afraid but it is plumbed for gas. No one’s lived here for…well I’m not sure anyone has ever actually lived here. It’s a folly. I think it was built for picnics, or parties, or something.”
“Picnics,” Porthos repeats, looking around, slightly dazed. “It’s like something from a storybook,” he says, and Constance obviously mistakes the tone of his voice for something incredulous and mocking, because she blushes and smooths her dress, mouth tight. Aramis understands then that she has been responsible for this, all the mis-matched scavenged furniture carefully placed, the floors clean and swept, the rows of chipped but cheerful tea mugs and the basket by the fire filled with logs.
“Well,” she says, “There aren’t any estate cottages free, and I didn’t have much time. And…”
“It’s…,” Porthos says, shaking his head. “...wonderful. I could kiss you.” And then he seems to realise what he’s said and flushes darkly, clearing his throat.
Constance smiles, pleased. “Well, we’re happy to have you. I mean, the gardens are a complete mess. And they really could be beautiful if only someone would take the time to see beyond the neglect and show them a little love.”
Aramis is swept suddenly with a great rush of something like sadness, a knowing that hums in him and makes his knees wobble. He lets himself fold into the armchair with a bitten off sort of sound.
“Ah, thank you, Miss,” Porthos says noticing now Aramis’ bleary state, the fact that Athos appears to be swaying slightly over by the bookcase.
“Constance, please,” she insists, firmly. “There’s no need for formality with me.”
“But you’re not staff.”
“No,” Constance says, “But I’m not exactly…well…it’s…”
“Unorthodox?” Athos offers from the corner of the room.
“Yes. I suggest you get used to that, if you’re planning on staying at Caerhellion for any length of time,” she says with a small smile, “It’s truly the best place on earth.”
“Thank you,” Aramis says softly, and he’s not sure he’s ever meant anything more in his life.
*
Their bedrooms are also a little unorthodox, it turns out: three alcoves on different levels of the staircase, barely room enough for a bed wedged sideways in front of a tiny square of diamond-paned window, a tall skinny dresser to one side topped with a bowl and pitcher, below a little shaving mirror. Beside each bed is a small shelf with a candle, on the wall opposite is a hook for clothes, and the whole thing is cut off from the stairs only by a pair of heavy, fraying brocade curtains that span almost from floor to ceiling. It is the most perfect thing that Aramis has ever seen.
Athos immediately claims the one at the top of the staircase, which is also the coldest but he doesn’t seem to care. The workhorse of a stove and the fire below do a surprising job of warming the staircase and its little alcove bedrooms, but even so Aramis can tell it will be flannel pyjamas and woolen socks for the lot of them, at least until winter has passed and quite possibly beyond. Porthos states quickly that he will take the middle room, and Aramis knows without having to ask that it’s because he can be between Athos and Aramis and there quickly for whoever might need him in the night.
His heart cramps a little at the thought, but he is so tired, so otherwise content, filled with a feeling of utter belonging. Aramis has just enough energy to take off his boots before crawling fully clothed under the fresh-smelling feather duvet on the bed, and sinking deeply into a dreamless sleep.
