“Your mind cannot know something you don’t know,” Aramis said, giving up the examination of his nails. He sounded irritated, which-D’Artagnan thought-was the way Aramis normally sounded around Porthos. “Your mind is yourself.”
Porthos shook his head. “No, Aramis,” he said. “Your mind is yourself. My mind… Well… Sometimes I think I do half my thinking with my elbows or perhaps my toe-nails. And they don’t always talk to my mind, you see?”
“Nonsense. No one can think except with their mind and-”
“Well, Aramis,” Porthos said. “Sometimes I know things my mind can’t put into words. And sometimes I’m not even sure what I know until I have talked it over with someone.”
“So you went to speak to Athenais,” D’Artagnan said.
“Yes.”
“And what did the incomparable Athenais reveal?” Athos asked.
Porthos turned towards Athos quickly, as if suspicious of irony in the older musketeer’s tone, but on looking at Athos, and, apparently, finding only honest curiosity in his gaze, he sighed and shook his head. “The incomparable- and she is that, Athos-” he said, as Athos nodded, “Athenais told me that we’d been overlooking a very important chance that the boy might have lied to us.”
“Nonsense,” Aramis said. “You’re losing your wits. I told you from the beginning that it was possible he was lying to us. That was why I thought I should do a drawing of him. So that we were not dependant on the name Guillaume Jaucourt to find him. I thought there was a good chance the name was false.”
“Yes, but none of us thought of looking beyond the name,” Porthos said.
“What do you mean?” Aramis asked. “You speak in riddles.”
“It is plain.”
“I don’t see how,” Athos said.
“Really, Porthos,” D’Artagnan said, trying to sound more reasonable than his two aggrieved and older friends. “You’ve told us nothing except that we should look beyond the name. In what way do you mean?”
“Well,” Porthos said. “What else could be false?”
“I knew it,” Aramis said. “He was a plant by the Cardinal. ”
“No,” Porthos said. “Or at least… I don’t know so yet. But he was not what he said he was. Athenais said that any plebeian boy can learn to act noble with a little wit and a little practice. And that started me thinking… And she said I should go and ask near where I found him. Just ask people in the neighborhood. That they were more likely to give me an answer than anyone else was.”
“So, what was the boy’s real name?” Aramis asked.
Porthos shrugged. “Guillaume. Just… Guillaume. No one seems to know a family name for him. He doesn’t seem to have a family. He lived with his sister in the tavern down the street, the tavern against whose wall he was leaning. The Hangman. We rarely go there because-”
“The wine is overpriced,” Athos said.
“And the proprietress could glare a hole in a stone wall,” Aramis said.
Porthos nodded. “That. And that’s why we failed to know the boy. Apparently he and his sister help at the tavern. Fetching and carrying and picking up things… you know, as young people do.”
“So he was in fact a street urchin,” Aramis said.
Porthos shrugged. “Something like it, though the tavern keeper seemed to give them a place in his stables to sleep and at least some food.” He frowned. “Everyone seemed to think they worked too hard, everyone told me how hard they worked.” He looked disturbed by the thought.
D’Artagnan nodded. Of course, work was the normal state of childhood. In his own father’s domain, the farmer’s children started helping in the fields as soon as they could. And he, himself, though it couldn’t be called exactly working, had been taught to hunt as early as he could be trusted to sit astride a horse and hold a bow. And in a way, that was a nobleman’s work. At least the part of it that involved keeping beasts from the fields his peasants tended. And he knew girls learned to cook and tend house from the moment they learned to walk.
He’d grown up with all that and it seemed to him quite normal, but it wasn’t till he’d come to Paris that he’d seen true work among children. Children who rose early and worked all day and were only allowed a respite from the work late at night and for a few hours, till dawn brought another round of work.
He saw them everywhere, stoking the fires at forges and holding horses for people, and running errands for various masters through the streets of town. He saw them, seemingly, always working. Never resting. And all of them had a hungry, restless look. But hungry most of all.
He’d heard from Porthos that Mousqueton had been one of those children-a skinny street brat, driven by hunger to try to steal from the then fencing master. Looking at the large young man it was hard to believe. And Mousqueton himself had told him a confused story of being left orphaned so young he didn’t remember his parents, only fending for himself on the streets of Paris.
This urban poverty and the children who endured it seemed to D’Artagnan far more wretched creatures than his working, but contented neighbors in Gascony. At least most children there lived with relatives. And at the peak of winter, when nothing grew, they got to sit by the fire with their parents and while away the dark days in peace.
Coming out of his thoughts, he realized that the others were well away into discussing something.
“So, we’ll go to the tavern,” Porthos said. “And ask.”
“It’s not that easy, and you know it,” Aramis said. “If it were that easy, you’d have braved it yourself, going into the tavern and asking questions on your own. But it is not. We can’t walk in and start asking about the boy without their suspecting that there is something wrong and some reason for strangers to ask.”
“We’ll say that some stranger asked us to look,” Porthos said. “We can hint it was the boy’s father without saying it.”
“What if they know who the boy’s father is?” Athos asked.
“Unlikely,” Porthos said. “Boys who work like that, at that young an age…” He shrugged. “If he had a living father, somewhere, he’d have gone to his father, or given him the money. There would have been some… presence of his father in his life.”
“He might have run away from the provinces to come to the city,” Aramis said. “His parents might still be there, somewhere, in the country.”
“Indeed,” Porthos said. “But if so, it is unlikely the tavern keeper will know of it. And if he ran away bringing his sister with him, then surely there was some great reason to run away. Which means that he would not have told the tavern keeper of his parents.”
“True,” Aramis said. “First of all we must use tact in asking.”
“And that,” Porthos said, “is why I didn’t go in on my own. I thought I’d need tact, and immediately thought of the three of you.”
Sometimes, D’Artagnan thought, it wasn’t easy to tell if Porthos was being serious or ironic. But he guessed at serious, in this case, because Porthos seemed genuinely pleased at the thought of his friends coming with him to the tavern and helping him ask questions.
“There’s only one thing,” Athos said. “We can’t quite eliminate the chance that the Cardinal is involved in this.”
“But if the boy is a simple tavern boy,” Aramis said. “Surely-”
“There’s nothing sure in this,” Athos said. “Yes, he’s just a plebeian boy, but how many times has the Cardinal not reached into the lowliest ranks to get his spies, his agents, his enforcers? Granted, Rochefort is as noble as I am, if perhaps poorer. But there are others…”
They all nodded. They’d run into others. Grocers and prostitutes, beggars and wine sellers who, surprised by the condescension of the Cardinal in even speaking to them, were more than willing to do the great man’s bidding. It could almost be bet that the lower the origin of the recruit, the more slavishly he’d do everything that the Cardinal asked.
“But…” Athos said. “Whether the Cardinal’s or someone else’s, th
e truth is that he must have been in someone’s pay.”
“Why?” Porthos asked, frowning.
“Two things. If he were not, there is no possibility he could have-on his own-afforded such a nice suit as the one he had on. And neither would there be any reason for him to have a list of your ancestry in his pocket.”
“Right,” Porthos said. And frowned. “At least no reason we know.”
“If you’re going to tell me again that your mind knows things you don’t know…” Aramis said.
Porthos shrugged. “Not anything that defined, no. It’s just that… well… there might be more complex reasons than we know now.” He frowned. “Or at least… We usually end up finding that there are, don’t we?”
As he spoke, he turned and started down the stairs, followed by Athos and Aramis. D’Artagnan followed, thinking that Porthos was right about that. Around the four of them, particularly when murder was involved, things were usually stranger than they seemed to be at first.
The Hangman; Another Nobleman; A Young and Quiet Girl
AS soon as they entered the Hangman-its name represented by a leaping man holding a noose and looking almost maniacally inclined to mirth-Athos knew why they didn’t frequent it much. It wasn’t so much that the wine was overpriced. It was more like the whole tavern was out of the musketeers league.
While the Cardinal, in a fit of passion, had been known to declare that no drinking spot or bawdy house in town was free of the scourge of the drunken, brawling, whoring musketeers, he was in fact wrong. The more expensive bawdy houses were very free of them, as were the more expensive taverns, like the Hangman, with its clean tables, its well-scrubbed walls, the candles that burned wax and not some smoky mixture of tallow, and its sour-faced proprietress behind the bar, looking menacingly at the four men with their uniforms and swords, as they came in.
A jovial fat man-possibly her husband-scrubbing one of the nearest tables, looked up at them as they entered, too, and his face did a quick succession of expressions, from surprised to worried to frantically jovial, the last the expression of a man who does not wish to see a brawl start in his tavern. “Sirs,” he said, looking up. “Glad to see you. Find yourself a place to sit. Amelie!” This called over his shoulder towards the shadows and definitely not in the tone he would dare address his imposing wife. “Amelie, where have you got to, girl?”
A girl of about ten, stick thin, with dark eyes and lank brown hair came out of the shadows. She was attired in a clean, probably third- or fourthhand dress and other than her thinness could have been the couple’s daughter. But Athos doubted very much that any child of the couple would have been allowed to grow so thin. Also, the woman behind the bar looked on the girl as though she were something that had crawled from beneath a rock, and moved her lips as though muttering something under her breath.
The musketeers and D’Artagnan sat at the nearest unoccupied table, and the girl approached, hesitantly. Athos’s phobia towards women did not apply yet at this age, when girls were more children than anything else. He felt towards the girl as he felt towards boy children the same age-as he would view something young and in distress. A vague feeling that he should protect her crept over him, and his voice was kinder than it would be to any adult as he said, “Hello, Amelie.”
He fumbled in his almost empty purse-it was getting so tallow candles would soon look good for dinner-and brought out a coin, which he tossed in the middle of the table and to which Aramis, silently, added two more. “Get us what wine those will buy, would you? A mug for each of us.”
The girl bowed and scrambled towards the bar and the woman behind it. Soon they could hear her whisper and hear the woman answer in harsh tones.
Athos ignored the exchange. No matter how tempted, it was neither possible nor desirable for him to save every stray waif in Paris. For one, there was a good chance he’d end up killed if he tried. And for another, his duty was somewhat more immediate. He’d sworn to serve king and country. And, in this particular case, he’d sworn to defend Monsieur de Treville, and to find out who’d killed this boy so that the boy’s death could not be used in a plot against the musketeers. Then there was his loyalty to his friends, and to Porthos, most of all, who was suffering from shock and grief at the death of the boy he’d considered some sort of apprentice.
“Holá, host,” Athos said, towards the tavern keeper.
The round-cheeked man looked up from the table which, to own the truth, he seemed to be only pretending to polish while he kept an eye on the four newcomers.
“Yes, Monsieur Musketeer?” he said, looking up, his hand still on the rag with which he’d been polishing the already gleaming table with some sort of oil he kept in a clear bottle by his side.
“Could you come here for a moment,” Athos asked, giving his whole countenance, his whole speech that tone of command that he knew other people resented but obeyed in equal measures. Porthos called it putting on his noble airs, and Aramis looked on enviously, whenever Athos did this, as though he wished he, too, could command people by assuming a natural superiority of look and manner. D’Artagnan merely watched, which was perhaps the boy’s greatest quality.
The tavern keeper hesitated and glanced towards his wife. But as his wife was very busy setting cups of wine on a broad tray, he shrugged and approached them.
“How may I help you?” he asked.
“You may tell us if you know this boy,” Athos said and pulled, from his sleeve, the picture of Guillaume as drawn by Aramis.
There was recognition in the man’s eyes, as soon as they fell upon the drawing. Then there was a frowning, momentary look, as though the man were considering whether he could lie and have his lie believed. He looked up and, in Athos’s dark blue eyes must have read the certainty that his first expression had been detected.
The man scrunched the rag he still held in his right hand, and frowned, then sighed. “It’s Guillaume,” he said.
“Guillaume who?” Porthos asked.
The man looked at him and opened his mouth, then closed it again. He shrugged. “Just Guillaume, sir. He was born in our stables and I guess he grew up here. I never heard of his having a family name.”
“His… mother’s, perhaps?” Athos asked.
The man shrugged. “His mother was a…” He looked at Amelie who approached with a tray laden with mugs. She sagged under the burden which was clearly too heavy for her. The tavern keeper’s eyes softened, and he looked back at the table. “His mother arrived here with child. She came, she said, to find her fiancé. She never found him. She stayed and helped serve.” He shrugged. “Amelie was born a few years later, and then a few more years later, Pigeon- as the clients called her-their mother, died of a fever. We let the boy and the girl stay in the stable, but other than that, know nothing about them.” While Amelie put the mugs of wine on the table, the man gave Athos as clear and untroubled a glance as ever man bent upon customer. “Has the boy done anything that has got him in trouble?”
“No,” Athos said, and that much was true, since Guillaume could now be said to be past all trouble or at least all trouble a mortal body could find. He thought fast. If he claimed he knew the boy’s father he was only likely to excite the curiosity and perhaps the venality of the tavern keeper. Easier, much easier to claim the boy had been trying to find better employment. “It’s only,” he said, “that the boy talked to my servant Grimaud, some time ago. It seems he was interested in being a fighting man’s servant himself. At the time I didn’t know anyone looking for a servant and I didn’t have enough employment for him, myself. But since then I’ve heard of a young musketeer who comes from a house with some… some substance behind it. He has a servant already, but wants someone to look after his horses, and I thought perhaps…” Athos rallied. Since the man didn’t know the boy was dead and didn’t seem to be concerned about him, there was little point in telling him of the event. Easier, much easier, to find out something about the boy’s life from this man and maybe from that deduce the
killer. Easier to find if the boy might have been in the employ of someone else-like the Cardinal. “Is he about?” Athos asked, and saw a flinch from Porthos who sat catercorner from him on the table and for just a moment feared that Porthos would remind him the boy was dead.
But Porthos, strangely and unaccountably, seemed all concentrated on what the girl, Amelie was doing, walking back with the tray, setting it on the bar. This was unfathomable since Porthos didn’t usually even notice children much. He probably hadn’t paid any attention to a child since the time he’d adopted Boniface under the guise of hiring him, and made him into the more bellicose-sounding Mousqueton, and the day that Guillaume had asked for instruction in the plying of a sword.
But perhaps Guillaume had made Porthos think about all children. Now and then, in the privacy of his own thoughts, Athos, who had left thirty behind, thought of an heir-someone who would inherit his domain and his title after his death. Unfortunately to beget an heir he’d need a woman. And Athos’s experience of women had neither qualified him to trust them nor to trust himself.
Athos looked back at the tavern keeper, who was looking at Porthos, also, with some concern. He now transferred his glance to Athos, “No, sir. I haven’t seen the scapegrace in some days…” He shrugged. “The thing is, you see, that he’s been talking for some time now about leaving my employ and finding himself a patron who is wealthier and better able to look after him. He’s not stupid, Guillaume. Cheeky, undisciplined and often infuriating, but not stupid.” He smiled a smile that made him seem more human. “He taught himself to read and write when he was very young, begging one letter of a customer, another off another. People taught him because he had winning ways. And so, he knows how to read and how to write, and he’s got ideas in his head… I don’t know what he means to do at any time.”
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