#handkerchief action 😰😰😰

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The Handkerchief(s) of Aramis (M)

In the 1978 musical movie adaptation of The Three Musketeers, Aramis complains about going to England and says (and I quote) “It’s damp in London, and I only have twelve handkerchiefs.” Naturally I went insane (see this post for evidence).  Unfortunately, given the events of the book and therefore the movie, Aramis never makes it to London to put these handkerchiefs to use. So here I am, changing the plot around a bit to remedy that :) 

Title taken from the actual title of one of the chapters in the book that punched me directly in the k!nk.  

******

Waving the bundle of letters he had just received from Captain Treville, D’Artagnan swaggered into the stable yards where Aramis and Porthos were, reclining against the wall and munching on apples that belonged to the horses. Athos was absent from the scene, though it was just as well; he was recovering from a slight infection to his shoulder wound, and as such, the road was not the place for him. 

“I must go to London to deliver these letters to the Captain’s brother-in-law,” D’Artagnan told the two. Upon seeing their eyebrows raise appraisingly, D’Artagnan added. “Congratulations on his graduation from the academy, nothing interesting.” 

He unhooked his horse from its post, narrowing his eyes when his two friends were slow to do the same. “I trust you two will accompany me?”

“London?” Aramis clicked his tongue and shook his head, letting the apple fall to the ground. “It’s damp in London, and I only have twelve handkerchiefs on my person.”

“Twelve?” D’Artagnan repeated incredulously with a shake of his own head. “We’ll only be gone a week. I should say that number would more than hold you over.”

“Not quite so, Gascon,” Porthos added. “Our Aramis has all the constitution of a delicate flower. Get him a bit too wet and he’ll be out of sorts for weeks.”

This was all news to D’Artagnan, for Aramis seemed far from frail and sickly. The man wielded a sword with prowess and could shoot a fly from the hair of a horse; in fact, D’Artagnan suspected that, after himself, Aramis was the fittest of their coterie. Doubtful, he looked to the man in question for confirmation, waiting for the other shoe to drop and for his two friends to begin laughing at him. 

But Aramis just nodded sadly. “Alas, I cannot even venture too far into Normandy in the autumn.”

“Put him in Bretagne in December, and he’ll come down with pneumonia.”

Aramis pretended to faint against his horse, his dainty hand covering his eyes as he swooned. “Oh Porthos, don’t remind me!”

D’Artagnan tapped his foot impatiently, still unable to shake his initial suspicion that the two men were having him on, or at the very least, trying to malinger. “So will you accompany me or not?”

“Of course,” Aramis said decisively, before swinging himself into the saddle with a flourish. “I am only warning you that your handkerchief may need to be sacrificed for my efforts.” He clamped a hand to his heart, looking suddenly stricken. “Tell me at least, D’Artagnan, that there are no women who await us in London. I could not bear the thought of any fine English ladies seeing me so indisposed.”

D’Artagnan rolled his eyes as he mounted his own horse, hearing Porthos do the same behind him. “There are no women unless you count Treville’s brother-in-law among them.”

Aramis surveyed D’Artagnan critically. “Is he a bachelor?”

D’Artagnan blinked. “I believe so?”

Aramis considered the answer for a moment, face inscrutable, before nodding, apparently satisfied. “Very well, then.” He kicked his horse forward and raised his hat in the air. “To London!”

Porthos followed suit. “To London!”

D’Artagnan urged his own horse to a gallop and followed after the two Musketeers, still feeling distinctly like he was caught in the middle of some elaborate joke. He gave himself a shake and resolved to deal with it later; for now he would focus on the road that lead them outside Paris and beyond, into the countryside and later to the sea. 

********

“Eh’KESHHH’uhh! Ach, this damn rain. Snf! ITCHIEW!” Aramis massaged at his head with a pale hand, the rings on his fingers glinting as the movement made them catch the candlelight in the tavern. The first wrenching sneeze, after riding just half a day in the misty English air, could have been a joke, but the seeming thousands that followed certainly were not. They reached London as Aramis was doing naught more than alternating between shivering and sneezing, and Porthos had given up his own riding cloak to drape around the man’s shoulders. 

It had been drizzling, even raining, since they set foot on the island, much to the chagrin of the poor, suffering Aramis, for they had no choice but to ride on. They three could waste an entire month waiting for the London sun to shine. Papers delivered, they turned back at once, eager to get Aramis back home and to bed, but the foul weather had turned even fouler, and now they were hunkered down in an inn some miles still inland from the port that would take them back to Boulogne, awaiting a break in the downpour. D’Artagnan leaned his head on his hand, listening to the sounds around him: the low hum of the other travelers who were presently seeking solace from the storm, the fierce lashing of the rain against the window panes, Aramis’s completely waterlogged sniffling. 

Porthos returned to the table with a mug and slid it across the table. “Here’s another hot wine for you, Aramis.”

With a grateful inclination of the head, Aramis pulled the mug closer. “Th-heh-thank you, Por–Heh’KSHIEW! Por–heh’ih’HISHH’ooo!” He buried his nose in the folds of his handkerchief, shutting his eyes as he paused a moment, as though too tired to do anything but wait for gravity to drain it and do the work for him. “Ugh, snf!” He blinked rapidly and lowered the handkerchief. “Porthos.”

D’Artagnan’s cheeks colored; it was, for all intents and purposes, his fault that Aramis was feeling this terrible in the first place. He tried to hide his disgusted wince as Aramis emptied what must have been every liquid in his body into the handkerchief. He forced what he hoped was a sympathetic slant to his visage. “How are you feeling?”

“HESHH’uhhh!” The cloth did not move from his nose as he spoke; Aramis merely regarded D’Artagnan with bleary, tired eyes over the top of it. “Snf! Need you even ask?”

D’Artagnan reasoned he deserved such a snappy reply to what had been a rather foolish question. It was plain to see how Aramis was faring, from the way he buried his head in his hands with a soft moan whenever he glimpsed a reprieve from his nose, to the way his voice was low and thick with congestion. That was, of course, to say nothing of the wet sneezes and drippy sniffles that assaulted him with a dogged regularity, leaving his nose a terribly sore and chapped mess. 

D’Artagnan turned his attention to the water splashing against the windowpane with a muttered curse. “If only this rain would let up a bit, we could continue on our way back to Paris.” Aramis coughed and Porthos rubbed his shoulders. D’Artagnan felt himself soften. “At least get you to France where you can be ill in a place with a civilized language.” 

On account of one of Porthos’s old mistresses being a cloth merchant’s wife from Dover, he was the only one of them with any knowledge of English, however rudimentary. Between fragments and hand signals (and Aramis’s quite noticeable ailment which transcended both language and culture), he was able to get Aramis a few things to ease his symptoms, but the going had not been easy. Porthos had nearly got the three of them kicked out when he slammed his fist on a counter hard enough to crack it in his frustration at the innkeeper’s inability to understand his request for “wine with miel… you know, from bzz bzz” and the associated insect-related gesticulations. 

Aramis scoffed, the sound scraping at his throat. “A bit! Ahh’TSHIEW! Snf! Oh… Hihhh’TSHHH!” He mopped his nose miserably. “If it lets up only a bit then I am back in the a-a-ccursed–Ahhh’KSHIEW!--accursed damp that got me in this–snf–situation in the first place! HESHHIEWW! Ehh’KSHHH’uhh! HEPTSHIEW! Oh…” He pinched at the bridge of his nose, his eyes fluttering shut, though he kept the sodden handkerchief close at hand. “Better this way, as I am at least warm and d-dry–Ihh’SHHH!”

Aramis folded the cloth a few different ways, turning it this way and that in search of a dry patch, before dropping it to his lap with a scowl. “Pff, it is no use, this one is completely–Eh’KSHH’oo!”

“Take another,” Porthos said kindly, tapping the satchel in which the cloths were kept.

“Ahh’KSHHH’uhh!” He caught the sneeze in a cupped hand, his other outstretched and waiting for Porthos to place a fresh one within it. “Four days yet, at least, from–snf!--from Paris, and I am already on number…Eh…Snf! Hehhhh… eleven. Snf! HITSHIEW!!” He blew his nose again, muffling a moan into the folds of the cloth at the simple pleasure of its dryness.  

Once finished, he fixed the Gascon with a watery approximation of his usual cheeky grin. “We did warn you, D’Artagnan.”

Porthos merely shrugged and nodded in agreement as Aramis continued sniffling and snuffling into his penultimate handkerchief. For his part, D’Artagnan was slightly chagrined that he had not taken the warning seriously, for all that now stood between the one handkerchief he owned being well and truly sacrificed was the twelfth handkerchief of Aramis and that of Porthos. 

“Heh’TCHOO!”

And at the current rate, D’Artagnan knew the two articles would not be able to withstand the siege for long. This time, he could not altogether hold back his wince as Aramis made prodigious use of the handkerchief to clear his nose, for all D’Artagnan could imagine was his one lone handkerchief in its place. No matter how many washes it was subjected to, given the sheer ferocity of Aramis’s cold, D’Artagnan would never, ever be able to accept the defiled piece of cloth back should Aramis attempt to return it. So he resigned himself, as he listened to Aramis sneeze and sneeze, to buying himself a new handkerchief immediately upon their arrival back in Paris and, if money allowed, perhaps a couple more to fortify Aramis to avoid this sort of situation should they ever be required to go back to England in the future.

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good christ almighty 😰