And the whole idea that the trap had been set for Mousqueton just because he happened to be alone and away from them-and if this were engineered by Richelieu, it would need believing just that-was disturbing. Did this mean each and every one of them was in similar danger? Each and every one of their servants? “Aramis,” he said, speaking as though out of his dreams, without looking at his friend. “And D’Artagnan.” He took a deep breath, bracing for what he was about to say, and any questions that might follow. “We must send messages to our servants now, if you know where yours are. Grimaud should be at home. Ask your servants to meet Grimaud at my home and stay there. And for neither of them to go out without at least one of us.”
There was a silence, and for a moment, Athos believed his friends would argue, but instead, what he heard was a deep sigh from Aramis, followed by, “Oh, Bazin will not like that.”
“I understand,” Athos said. “But I believe his safety must trump his preference in this matter.”
“Yes, I believe so too,” Aramis said. D’Artagnan didn’t say anything. They walked back, and into the captain’s compound, where they found three servants to take hastily scrawled notes to their servants. Porthos waited by, silently, as if deep in thought. Athos would like to believe that Porthos’s being deep in thought meant he was thinking of something sensible.
The problem with the redheaded giant-beyond his open warfare with language-was that Porthos’s brain seemed to work in a very original manner. Perhaps this came from his having been raised, wild and almost illiterate, cut off from civilized interaction, in a distant domain. Or perhaps it was just the way Porthos’s genius-and it was genius-worked.
But while he might be the only one of them to think of examining the pattern of blood drops at the scene of a crime [2], and while this might be the key to the entire murder they were trying to solve, the truth was that Porthos’s ideas were often impractical, or disregarded such minor things as what other people might think or the possibility of being arrested for something.
Athos badly wanted to get Porthos to tell them what he was thinking about, but chances were the answer would muddle more than enlighten, so he kept quiet, as they walked back out of Monsieur de Treville’s residence, and onto the street once more. They walked, four abreast, down the street, forcing everyone else to take long detours around them, and to cast them almost fearful looks. Athos realized their steps were perfectly in rhythm, which, given their varying heights and walks, was somewhat of a miracle, and smiled despite himself.
In his life, he’d lost title and honor, wife and domain. But his friends made it possible for him to wake every day and do what must be done, no matter how many ghosts had haunted his remorse-plagued sleep.
At the next crossing, Aramis paused, and the rest of them stopped, one step forward, and turned to look at the blond musketeer.
Aramis tilted his head back to look at them, a frown of deep thought on his regular features. “I wonder…” he said.
“Yes?” Athos said.
Aramis nodded, but his mind seemed to be very far away. “That is,” he said, “I think I should go to the royal palace. After all, Mousqueton’s… friend… Hermengarde, lives there. Surely, if he did do this or if… if the problem is with the armorer, Hermengarde will know?”
“Mousqueton did not do this!” Porthos said, harshly.
“No. I don’t believe he did, Porthos, except maybe if it was in self-defense. Imagine that the armorer has some reason to hate Mousqueton. Imagine that… shall we say… the armorer thought he wanted to kill Mousqueton and advanced on him. Can you doubt that Mousqueton has seen enough swordplay to instinctively pick up a sword and…”
Porthos snorted. “Mousqueton might have seen swordplay, but that doesn’t make him an expert. Surely you’d seen swordplay before you came to me because you wished to fight your first duel. If I hadn’t taught you to wield a sword, how would that duel have gone with you?”
Aramis shook his head. “But he would be fighting against someone who is not a dueler.”
“Granted,” Porthos said. “But all good armorers are trained in the weapons they make. They study them and work at them and wield them in practice, so that they can tell how the balance should be and whether the weapon they just created is any good. And this one, Langelier père, was the best armorer in Paris. Not the most expensive but the best. I went to him because though his swords and knives were not ornate, they were the best balanced and the sturdiest. I know. I used to teach fencing.” He shook his head gravely. “My poor Mousqueton would not have a chance.”
Aramis sighed. “You don’t know. People do strange things in the grip of fear.”
Porthos shrugged. “By all means,” he said. “Go and ask Hermengarde, but I don’t think you’ll find anything. If Mousqueton had felt any animosity towards this armorer, count on it, I would have heard.”
Athos knew the interminable discussions Porthos and Aramis could get into. They resembled the bickering between brothers and often gave the impression they had been going on since the beginning of the world and would go on until the final trumpet. In this one, Aramis, contrary to form, was not using the longest words he could find in his vocabulary, or the convoluted argumentation methods taught to him by his Jesuit masters, but doubtless, that too would come, if Athos allowed the discussion to continue. Which Athos had no intention of doing. Instead he cut in. “Aramis, you cannot go alone.”
Aramis graced him with a sudden smile. “I cannot? And why not?”
“But you just saw… you just wrote a letter to Bazin, telling him to go and stay with Grimaud. Surely, you don’t think that you’ll be safe, if our servants aren’t?”
Aramis shrugged. “Bazin is notoriously bad with a sword,” he said. “If someone attacked him, he’d probably either bless them, or-if we’re lucky-hit them over the head with a crucifix. And since he doesn’t normally carry a crucifix about on his person, I’d have to guess the blessing part. I”-he smiled again-“am not Bazin.”
“I cannot approve of your risking yourself this way, Aramis,” Athos said. “After all, with the edict hanging over our heads, any duel could be a death sentence.”
“Not if you kill your enemy and his seconds, and there are no witnesses,” Aramis said. “That will keep you from being arrested.”
“Aramis!” Athos said. He could well understand his friend’s frustration at the idea that they were, yet again, in a situation where it was not safe to conduct business alone and without chaperonage. But then again, he must see the situation as it was. “Why do you believe you will be attacked, and not merely entrapped?”
Aramis shrugged. “If I’m entrapped, I’ll attack.”
“I could go with you,” D’Artagnan offered.
“I would prefer you don’t,” Aramis said. “If, as you believe, the Cardinal is seeking to entrap the Queen by taking Mousqueton-if, as the captain believes and as it is rumored, the Cardinal imagines conspiracies against his life… Then if I go alone to the palace, and they see me talking to Hermengarde, they will think that I am just talking to yet another woman.” He gave a little smile, quite different from his previous ones-half filled with rueful self-mockery. “You must know it is believed I’ll sleep with any woman at all. However, if I am with D’Artagnan, the Cardinal will wonder if we’re trying to circumvent his plan to entrap Mousqueton. Or if we’re part of some plot to kill him.” He looked at his fingernails. “You must see it can’t be done.”
“Must I?”
Aramis smiled, and this time it was yet another smile-his suave, practiced courtier’s smile that gave the impression he could glide over trouble and not feel it. “Indeed you must. Fear not. Nothing will happen to me.”
And with that, he walked away. Athos, staring after him, crossed his arms on his chest. What could he do? He might feel as responsible for his younger friends as if they were his children or his vassals, but he couldn’t tell them that. It would only enrage them. The second possibly more than the first.
He looked back at his other friends, to realize there was only one remaining. D’Artagnan, looking back at Athos with an expression between amusement and worry. “Porthos must have walked away while we were arguing with Aramis,” D’Artagnan said.
Athos nodded and repressed a wish to sigh. “Indeed. Which would not worry me as much, if I didn’t know how Porthos’s mind works. Or doesn’t.”
“Yes,” D’Artagnan said. “Me too. I wonder what he got it in his head to do.”
“If we are lucky,” Athos said, “he’s gone to Athenais to ask her opinion of all this. Athenais will keep him from doing something foolish.” Athenais was Porthos’s longtime lover, the younger wife of an aged notary. She had met all of them under trying circumstances and had earned the respect of them all and, possibly, a little of Aramis’s fear.
“If he’s gone to Athenais,” D’Artagnan began, doubtfully, “you know, what I should do…” he said, and hesitated. Then, as though acquiring renewed courage, continued, “You know, it is possible this is not the Cardinal’s trap. Or at least that it wasn’t set by him. It is not unusual to see five guards of the Cardinal walking around town in a group.”
“Though it’s more likely to see them sober than it is to find five sober musketeers,” Athos said, only half joking.
“Yes, very paltry fellows, the Cardinal’s men. Comes from serving a churchman,” D’Artagnan said, and a humorous light danced in his dark eyes. “But all the same, they walk all around town in groups, as much as we do, which is what results in so many duels between the musketeers and the guards.
“So, they might have been passing by, and might have seen an opportunity. Perhaps they are of the trusted few who know that the Cardinal needed a hostage. Or perhaps they just recognized Mousqueton and decided to avenge themselves on Porthos through him.”
Athos shrugged. “Well, that does not matter. It would still be the same, once the Cardinal had hold of him. A mind such as Richelieu ’s cannot have failed to see Mousqueton as a pawn in a game where he can entrap the Queen. Or lead her to entrap herself.”
“Indeed,” D’Artagnan said. “But it makes a very great difference towards two purposes, you see?” He lifted his hand and counted on his fingers. “One, if the trap was not set on purpose, it is not likely the Cardinal will try to entrap the rest of us, or our servants.” And as Athos opened his mouth to reply, D’Artagnan said, “Not that I suggest we risk ourselves unnecessarily. But the qualifying term there is unnecessarily. I realize the Cardinal might think circumstances offered him a really good opportunity to entrap us, and might seek to replicate them from now on. But even so, he’s unlikely to get anything set up in time.”
“In time?”
“Right now. Today. These things take time.”
“I suppose,” Athos said, frowning. He could see that D’Artagnan had some maggot in his brain and some plan that would, more than likely, be foolhardy. If not as foolhardy as Porthos-or at least not as unheeding of consequences-not very far off. He narrowed his eyes at his friend. “Why today? What do you intend to do?”
“Well, I thought,” D’Artagnan said. “You know the place I come from. Not very… well… being the son of the lord didn’t mean I was that far above the peasants. And in my youth,” he said, quite unheeding of the irony of saying these words when the beard growth was still uncertain upon his chin, “I used to associate with farmers and crafters, and all manner of people.”
“Yes?” Athos asked, trying to get the boy to tell him the nonsense he intended, so that Athos, who was old enough to be D’Artagnan’s father, could stop him before he got hurt.
“Well, I thought I could borrow one of Planchet’s suits of clothes-”
“And look like a scarecrow,” Athos said, because Planchet, D’Artagnan’s servant, was taller than Athos himself and thinner than anyone Athos had ever seen-as opposed to the young Gascon’s broad-shouldered figure, which came no higher than Athos’s shoulder.
“Well, probably,” D’Artagnan shrugged. “But that is all to the good and only adds to the image I’m trying to create.”
“Which is?”
“That of a young man, from a farmer’s household, just come from Gascony to earn his living in Paris. You see,” he rushed ahead as though he feared that Athos would contradict him, “ Gascony is so poor, what with all the wars and invasions and all, that it is not just noblemen who can’t provide for their sons there. Even well-to-do farmers, if they have more than two sons, often send one to seek his fortune in Paris.”
“I fail to understand why you would want to pretend to be a peasant seeking employment,” Athos said, half-guessing where this was going and dreading it. D’Artagnan would walk in where angels feared to tread. No, he would dance in.
“Because then I can go to the neighborhood of the armorer,” D’Artagnan said. “And ask the people in the neighborhood if someone might have wanted him dead. If this is not a trap of the Cardinal’s, there’s a good chance that the person who murdered the armorer was someone in the family or one of his acquaintances. Only someone in the neighborhood will know who’s likely to have done it.”
“And so,” Athos asked, folding his arms. “You intend to leave your post as guard and go work as a chamber pot emptier at some inn?”
D’Artagnan laughed, the easy laughter of youth. “I was hoping,” he said, “for some more distinguished position. Perhaps swine feeder.” He shook his head. “But no, I did not intend to take a post. Tell them I have another thing waiting, you know, but I’m just… looking around for another post, in case the first one doesn’t come through. That way, I have an excuse for not staying there too long. And if I meet a likely lass around my age, I may return, and claim it is for her sake… and ask a few more questions.”
Athos thought a moment. The boy was right. If this was not a plot of Richelieu’s-and no matter how much power Richelieu had, he couldn’t be held accountable for every crime in France -then it must be something that had happened in the man’s family and neighborhood. He looked down at D’Artagnan, who was looking up at him, his eyes shining with mischief and that repressed excitement the youth always seemed to feel when they were in the middle of an adventure.
The boy might be right. But he could not go alone and unprotected. “I’ll come with you,” Athos said.
D’Artagnan’s eyes widened. “No. Everyone would know you for what you are.”
“But I’ll borrow a suit of Grimaud’s!”
D’Artagnan’s lips stretched in a convulsive smile, which he seemed to control only by a great effort of will. “Athos, my friend, no.” And to what Athos was sure was his own bewildered countenance, he added, “My friend, you could dress in rags and soot, and you’d still look like one of the noblest men in the land.” He bowed a little. “Which you are.”
“But-” Athos said. Oh, he was proud of his ancestry and his family name. For their sake, he had renounced his domain rather than drag that noble name through the mud by associating it with his marriage to a branded criminal. But he didn’t think, if he should dress as a commoner, anyone would guess his true origins.
“Trust me,” D’Artagnan said, with a slight smile. “Everyone who meets you knows you come from a noble background. I don’t think there’s anything you can do to make yourself look as a commoner. Cloaked and hidden, your posture must yet announce your quality to the world.”
Athos sighed. He didn’t want to believe it, but the truth was, there were many people who’d told him the same in the past. That there was something about him that stood out. And hadn’t he seen it, in his duels with strangers, that they always demanded to know his true name-that they always knew his name was one of the noblest in France. And yet. “But D’Artagnan, I don’t want any harm to come to you. You are the youngest of us.”
“And you are the oldest. Do not let it disturb you. No harm shall come to me. I can’t take my sword, but I shall take a dagger, and you know, if I’ve survived the snares we’ve escaped so far, I won’t be that
easy to kill.”
He bowed slightly, almost formally, to Athos.
And Athos, standing alone on the street corner, watched him walk until he turned right and disappeared from sight, headed for the Rue des Fossoyers, where he would be getting an outfit for the expedition.
So, Aramis has gone to the palace. To see Hermengarde, he says. And D’Artagnan has gone to look about the neighborhood where the armorer lived. And I? What can I do? He stood on the street corner, and his mind went back to the interview with the captain. Monsieur de Treville had looked more worried than he should. As though he were not absolutely sure he could keep Mousqueton from harm in Richelieu ’s prison.
If that was true, what could Athos do? Only one thing came to mind. I must, he thought, go see if this is Richelieu ’s plan, myself.
Night was falling, the streets of Paris filled with the curious red of a wintry sunset. Athos squinted at the sunset, then at the crowds of commoners, noblemen, whores and musketeers pouring out for an hour or two of amusement.
And he turned and headed towards the compound that housed the Cardinal Richelieu and those he commanded.
Grief and Comfort; Where Mousqueton’s Reputation is Tarnished; The Merest Acquaintances
TURNING towards the royal palace-the so called hôtel de ville-brought an already familiar bittersweet ache to Aramis’s heart. Last winter, when he turned this way, he’d been on his way to see his seamstress, Violette, Duchess de Dreux, one of the noblest women in the land and, in Aramis’s eyes, the most beautiful woman in the world.
She’d been a friend of Anne of Austria’s, come with her at the time of the Queen’s marriage and forcibly married to a French nobleman who spurned his new wife’s charms, charms that Aramis had been more than happy to enjoy. It seemed to him, these many months after she’d been cruelly murdered, that he’d only realized how much he loved her and how much he’d miss her after she was lost to him forever.
Dying by the Sword Page 3