“Porthos,” D’Artagnan said, after a while. “It might interest you to know that this is not one of my favorite modes of walking with a friend.” And to his friend’s blank look, D’Artagnan sighed. “You are holding my ear, Porthos.”
“Oh,” Porthos said, letting go of D’Artagnan’s ear. He looked over his shoulder, then back at D’Artagnan. “What are you doing here, D’Artagnan?” he asked. “And why are you calling yourself Bayard?”
D’Artagnan calculated in his head the chances of Porthos understanding what he meant in the time available and without too much argument, and sighed when he could not raise the number above less than a chance in a million. Not that Porthos was stupid. Porthos was in no way stupid. But his mind worked on concrete details and on small points, and he would want D’Artagnan to explain why exactly he’d chosen the name Bayard, or else why he’d picked that exact color of russet suit from Planchet’s wardrobe.
Instead, D’Artagnan shook his head. “I’ll explain later,” he said. “For now, tell me what you have been doing? How came you to raise that racket in the armorer’s?”
Porthos gave him a sheepish look and shook his head in turn. “You see,” he said, and opened his big hands, as though to illustrate his helplessness, “I found that I couldn’t drop hammers on my head.”
D’Artagnan raised his eyebrows and gave his friend a level, attentive look. “You had for a moment considered that this might be a good plan?”
Porthos sighed. “Not a plan,” he said. “Not a plan as such. It’s more…” He bit his lower lip as though in deep consideration. “You see, I thought it was odd that if a hammer had fallen on Mousqueton’s head it should not have dashed his brains out altogether.”
“If it were a glancing blow…” D’Artagnan said.
Porthos looked at him, with that air of mute misery he displayed when he was trying to think of words. Porthos could think of everything at all, but words caught on his tongue and refused to flow out as did the words of normal men. He hissed in frustration, and D’Artagnan waited for the words, looking at Porthos, betraying no impatience.
“You see…” Porthos said, and again he opened his hands, to show his lack of weapons, or perhaps his utter helplessness before the alien foe that was language. “I have been at Langelier’s before, and I had an idea, though I confess I’d never looked very closely, that the ceiling beams were too high. They could not be reached with a hand.”
D’Artagnan frowned. “You mean, you could not extend your hand and reach the beam? But surely, Porthos, one cannot reach most ceiling beams with one’s hand.”
“Of course,” Porthos agreed, amiably, but his tongue came out to touch his lips, and he made a grimace like a man in pain. “But I mean that you can’t touch whatever you hang on the rack that you hang from the beams.”
“Thereby making it impossible for anyone to retrieve a hammer easily,” D’Artagnan said. “And making it so that no artificer in his right mind would hang a hammer from such a rack.”
“Yes,” Porthos said with audible relief. “You understand.”
“Yes, I believe I do. And so you slipped away to go to the armorer’s and verify the height of the ceiling beams without telling us what your intentions were.”
“Did I not?” Porthos said, looking guilty. “I thought I had. Only I was thinking very hard on it, and it didn’t seem to bear the trouble of explaining.” He looked down at his feet. “I hope I value Aramis as I must, his being one of my best friends, and the noblest man in the whole world, excepting only Athos and… and perhaps yourself, D’Artagnan.”
“No, don’t strain your courtesy,” D’Artagnan said, fighting hard not to laugh. “It is not fair to include me in the same class as Athos or even Aramis. Let’s establish our two friends are the noblest men who ever drew breath and go from there.”
“Well, yes. And I know Aramis is my friend, and a kind friend too. But he asks questions, and he would want to know what I was going to do, and why, and he would… push me half to death, before I could explain what I was about to do. And by that time I might very well be confused on the why and the when.”
D’Artagnan nodded. He’d seen the process many times. “And Athos would try to convince you it was too dangerous.”
“You understand,” Porthos said.
“Oh yes, I understand, for you see, he tried to convince me it was too dangerous for us to go out at all, by ourselves, for however long it took to solve this murder. And then he tried to convince me that he could come with me and pass as a plebeian in this neighborhood.”
Porthos looked at him in shocked horror. “Good men,” he said. “They are. And noble, and Athos is so learned. But sometimes I wonder…”
“Where he gets his ideas,” D’Artagnan said. “Yes, so do I.” He spoke entirely without irony. Oh, D’Artagnan was cunning enough, and he understood the complex words that frustrated Porthos’s tongue and ear. But he also understood how Porthos’s mind worked better than he understood Athos’s or Aramis’s minds. Perhaps because he and Porthos, though noble born enough, had not after all, been raised as high nobility. It was a different country, almost, the level of pride and honor at which Athos had been brought up.
Porthos gave D’Artagnan the smallest of smiles, as though gratified to be making common cause with the Gascon, then shrugged. “At any rate, when I got there, I lit my candle, and I realized that there were indeed no hammers hanging from the upper racks. Nor should there be, since they could not be easily reached. You needed this hook thing I called the shepherds crook, just to remove the swords from their hooks.”
“So it was unlikely that Mousqueton could grab a sword quickly without anyone stopping him, and, therefore, it is unlikely he was stealing it.”
Porthos looked pained. “I have learned,” he said, primly, “that it is never a good idea to say it is unlikely for Mousqueton to steal anything at all, D’Artagnan. When I first met him, he managed to steal my monogrammed handkerchief from my sleeve, without my ever feeling him touch me. And I know at least one case where he stole two pigeons in a cage from a shop where they were the only livestock.” He shook his head. “Not that I intend to speak of these cases to anyone.”
“Please, do not,” D’Artagnan said. “No one needs to know who doesn’t already.”
Porthos touched the side of his nose in a conspiratorial way. “This I know,” he said. “But you see, I thought it was still possible that someone who didn’t know Mousqueton-particularly someone who didn’t know Mousqueton or myself-would say that he had asked Monsieur Langelier for the sword, and then run him through suddenly when he least expected it.”
“They wouldn’t say that if they knew Mousqueton or yourself?”
“No, because anyone who knew Mousqueton would know that he would never run a man through like that, in cold blood. And anyone who knew me…” He shrugged. “Anyone who knew me would know that I have no money for an expensive sword. And, what’s more, would know Monsieur Langelier knew it also.”
D’Artagnan nodded. Having walked all the while they spoke, they were now well away from the neighborhood of the armorer’s and at the point where they must choose whether to turn in the direction of Porthos’s lodgings or D’Artagnan’s. D’Artagnan motioned towards the alley which would lead them to the Rue des Fossoyers, where he lived. “Come with me,” he said. “I must change out of this suit.”
“Of course,” Porthos said, good-naturedly, and followed him. “So I thought perhaps they had hammers up there. Not… Not that I could see them there, and I don’t think anyone would have their work hammers so far up they would need a tool to retrieve them, but then… perhaps they’d made a hammer or two, to see how they would sell, you know… and hung them up there.”
“Unlikely,” D’Artagnan said.
“Very, but I was thinking, you see, of what people would say.”
“Of course,” D’Artagnan said. “And so…”
“I put a hammer up there, hung it with a bit of leather. A
nd then I swung the rack, to see if it would fall.”
“And did it?” D’Artagnan asked.
Porthos shook his head. “Never did. And, you know, I could not allow it to fall on my head, but I’m sure we can get some large melons or something of that nature. I would wager you, if I can make it fall, coming from as far up as it would be coming, even a glancing blow would be enough to crush a melon. Or a human head.”
Frowning, D’Artagnan nodded. “You may be right,” he said.
“I know I am,” Porthos said, with that complete absence of arrogance and absolute certainty in his own experience that was his hallmark. “So it is quite impossible for Mousqueton to have done it. Of course, I already knew Mousqueton couldn’t do it, but… I didn’t have proof.”
“Yes, yes, and proof is very important.” They had reached D’Artagnan’s door, and D’Artagnan opened it and started up the stairs, to his lodging. Porthos followed.
“Planchet,” D’Artagnan said, “will be with Grimaud, so it would be perhaps a good idea for us to go there, after I have changed.”
“Certainly,” Porthos said. “Perhaps we may speak to Athos about the hammers and… and the impossibility of the whole thing, and perhaps he can lay that impossibility before Monsieur de Treville.”
Thinking that while Athos would be more than happy to lay the impossibility before Monsieur de Treville, it was highly unlikely that the captain could do anything more about it, D’Artagnan started to cross his vast front room, empty except for a table at which the four of them often held their war councils. And stopped. On the mantelpiece was a letter in a hand he knew much too well.
He stopped and broke the seal and was momentarily overwhelmed by the familiar perfume of Constance, Madame Bonacieux, the wife of his landlord, D’Artagnan’s lover and, incidentally, the first true love of his young life.
All of which made him frown at the shakiness of the hand in which she had written: “Please meet me at the palace as soon as you can. Monsieur de la Porte will make sure you can enter. Tell him I am expecting you. Yours, anxiously, C.B.”
He turned to Porthos, letter in hand.
“Bad news?” Porthos asked.
“Not… I hope not, but Constance wants to see me,” he said. “As soon as may be. I will change and go to her.”
“You know,” Porthos said, slowly, “Athos will never forgive me if I let you go alone. Perhaps I should accompany you now?” And then, in a rush, “Oh, I don’t mean I will go with you to see Constance. I don’t… have the need to see her. But I will accompany you to her door and wait for you. You know how Athos worries.”
And D’Artagnan, looking up at his friend’s eyes, knew how Porthos worried, also, and wasn’t cruel enough to refuse his offer. “I would be very grateful to you,” he said. And added with a hint of mischief, “But only if you promise not to drop hammers on my head.”
Porthos looked shocked. “Melons,” he said, drily. “Not Gascons.” And before D’Artagnan could decide whether his friend was joking or not, he added with a smile, “Everyone knows your average Gascon head is hard enough to break any hammers dropped on it, no matter from what height.”
Instead of Love; The Many Forms of Forgetting; Where Athos Sometimes Was Correct
ARAMIS entered the room, as the Duchess de Chevreuse sealed her letter, dropped it on her desk as something of little importance, and turned towards him with a smile. “My friend,” she said, and extended both hands.
The Duchess de Chevreuse had to be close to Athos’s age. Aramis wasn’t sure exactly how old she might be, but he knew she was on her second marriage and that her son, Louis Charles D’Albert, a godson of the King’s, was now six and that she’d given birth to a daughter just the year before. But no one would have believed it, looking at her.
Blond, with soft, well-shaped features, Marie Aimee de Rohan, Duchess de Chevreuse-or Marie Michon [4], as she called herself in the midst of her impetuous adventures and intrigues, which had made her the scandal of France and the amusement of the rest of the world-looked no more than seventeen.
Her hair retained the intense gold shading which was usually the mark of the very first youth, and her intent blue eyes projected an expression of complete innocence.
Yet she stepped into Aramis’s arms with the ease that betrayed a woman who had had more than one husband and who, at this time in her life, entertained several lovers from various orders of nobility.
Aramis received her body in his arms, with a sigh-half of relief and half of desire. He was no fool. He knew that she was no Violette. Oh, he might have thought when he’d first started seeing Violette that he was only one of the musketeers and servants that she took to her lonely bed that her husband had spurned.
He might have continued to think so with his brain, but in his heart he knew that Violette was his and his only. As he was hers. He would have been offended-and fought a duel-had anyone told him that his Violette was seeing anyone else.
It wasn’t like that with Marie. In fact, he had no illusions at all. He thought of Marie as he supposed Athos thought of the bottle. Something in which to lose himself when the pain grew too intense to bear and the futile longing for what could never again return so strong that he could hardly think against the force of it.
For the last several months, when that longing got too strong, its buffets impossible to resist, he’d come here and satiated them on the warm lips, the pliant flesh of the Duchess.
Now he kissed her, ardently, his tongue invading her mouth, his hands roaming the heated expanse of her velvet-dressed body. She responded in kind, her hands bold and searching, loosening his doublet and slipping beneath it and his linen shirt to raise a hundred points of desire from his flesh.
“Ah, D’Herblay,” she said, as he pulled away to draw breath, and she looked up at him smiling, her eyes dazed with desire. “Nothing like the sword to make the muscles of a man stand out.” Her hands went lower and struggled for a very brief time with the fastenings of his breeches, then found their mark. Clutching it, she looked up and favored him with a dazzling smile. “I do so love a man with a good sword.”
Aramis groaned, and picked the lady up by her waist, surprising a delighted squeal from her. “Ah, Marie Michon,” he said, because he knew it pleased her to be addressed that way. “I’ve heard you’re quite good with the sword yourself, now and then.”
She giggled. “Only when some gentleman lets me borrow it.”
“Well, my friend Porthos was the one who gave fencing lessons, but I learned from him, and well enough to win duels, so let me see if I can teach your grace something useful.” Joining word to action, he dropped her on the bed, and pulled up the mass of her skirts and petticoats, beneath which she was, of course, bare. He ran his hands up her stockinged legs and caressed her, until her eyes looked wholly unfocused, the eyelids half-closed over them, “D’Herblay!” she said.
He grinned at her. “Are you begging me to unsheathe, milady? Is this where you wish to test my steel?”
“Yes, yes, a thousand times yes,” she said, impatiently. And then, as though remembering herself and her sense of humor, “What good is a duel if all you do is brag to the other man about how fierce you are, but you will not show your mettle?”
Aramis unfastened what remained fastened of his clothes and plunged into the safe haven of her body, so suddenly and so completely he raised a small shriek from her, though not one that could in any way be considered a protest. He took a deep breath. “Have I wounded you?”
For her only response, she raised her body and pressed against him, and he lowered himself upon her, kissing her beautiful face, her soft neck, burying his own face into the soft, scented mound of her breasts.
Anything, anything at all, to avoid thinking of another body, another pair of breasts, now taken from him by the only rival he could not hope to best.
Violette’s breasts had been smaller, but firmer, her neck longer and her features, though not as universally celebrated as those of this Duc
hess, had a sort of arch sweetness that made him fall at her feet at the sight of them. And while he had not been her first lover, nor the second, nor, indeed, he very much doubted, in the first dozen, she was somewhat less bold than De Chevreuse. Or at least she liked letting him set the rhythm and rarely pushed against him in that impatient manner, telling him to stab forcefully or not at all.
And yet, this woman too was sweet, and her scent of spice and some indefinable exotic mixture tantalized his senses. And his body responded with deep-seated pleasure to her advances and, in the way of things, he pursued release eagerly, till his body gave it to him, blotting out thought and-for a moment-breath and awareness of self with it.
He came to while being rather rudely shoved aside, and because the lady was inconstant, but never rude, he opened his eyes in shock, to find her glaring at him. “D’Herblay,” she said, crossing her arms on her not inconsequential chest, from which he seemed, somehow, to have torn enough lace and ruffles that her left nipple stood up among such a nest, looking like a slatternly version of its more demure right-side sister, still sheltered by fabric.
“Yes?” he asked, dazed, as he pulled away and fastened his own disarranged clothes.
To his surprise, she answered him with a bubbling laugh and, looking up, he found her sitting up and smiling at him. “It won’t do, my friend. It won’t do. This is much like sending a challenge to duel to the wrong man.” She shook her head. “At the very least, you’ll offend the offended yet more, and you’ll offend a whole other group of people.” Looking up at what must be his very bewildered expression indeed, she laughed again. “How abominable you are, D’Herblay. You have no idea at all what you have done, do you?”
He shook his head, checking that he was indeed now decent, and adjusting his doublet.
“Who is Violette?” she asked.
The name, pronounced in the light of day, made him tremble all over and look up. “Vio-” he said, but could not pronounce the rest of it. Not here. Not in front of this woman.
Dying by the Sword Page 9