Aramis stared at Athos’s stern features for a moment. Could Aramis have? Could he have killed Violette and forgotten all about it? He heard a low groan escape his throat and put his face down into his hands.
“Oh, nonsense,” Porthos said. And added in a tone of someone making the final argument, “Aramis is not a woodcutter.”
But Aramis wasn’t sure at all that his social class protected him from suspicion. He wasn’t a woodcutter. He was a musketeer. He had become used to killing people. It would be easier for him than for some peasant. He groaned again.
D’Artagnan drew in breath loudly, a sound that, in the otherwise still room, echoed like a shot. “Porthos makes a good argument,” he said. “For a woodcutter, perhaps, killing someone would be something to forget forever. But Aramis . . . has killed people before. With no forgetfulness.”
Aramis looked up at the youth with hope. D’Artagnan, he had suspected for sometime, was the cleverest of them all. Oh, not the most cultured. That honor belonged to Athos. And not the most cunning. Modest though his beliefs and his future chosen profession obliged Aramis to be, they didn’t force him into blatant lying. He was the most cunning and this he must admit. But D’Artagnan was the cleverest, capable of penetrating to the heart of a question or the main point of an event.
The heart of the matter here was that Aramis had no reason to forget, had he killed Violette. He blinked at the young guard.
D’Artagnan nodded, as though having read the desired response in Aramis’s eyes. “Did you have any reason to wish her dead?” he asked. “Had she played you false or somehow betrayed you?”
Aramis took a deep breath and shook his head. “And even if she had,” he said, then shrugged, unable to explain fully. “We were never . . . I was never for her nor she for me. She has a husband somewhere and I am bound for the church, eventually. If she had another lover or twenty, as long as she did not turn me away from her door . . .” He shrugged again.
“And that she clearly hadn’t done,” D’Artagnan said, and bit at the corner of his upper lip, a gesture he made when deep in thought.
Aramis shook his head.
“The problem is,” D’Artagnan said, and his hand went to the pommel of his sword as though the very words required a defensive posture. “The problem is that not everyone in Paris knows you as we do, or can think through your actions as I can.”
Aramis drew in breath. He understood the words D’Artagnan had not said. “I am suspected?” he asked.
D’Artagnan waved his hand in a way that reminded everyone forcefully that he came from Gascony, near the border with Spain. “It is only tavern rumor,” he said unhappily. “But tavern rumor has it that you killed your . . . seamstress because she loved another better.”
“It is hardly to be wondered at,” Athos said. “When you left your uniform behind, and it is well known that you visited the lady at all hours.”
“And stayed for hours too,” Porthos said.
“I’ve often told you, Aramis, that associating with a woman in that way only gives her power—”
Aramis didn’t think that he could listen to Athos’s ideas on women and men’s best way to interact with the female of the species. In the five years Aramis had known Athos, Athos had been involved with exactly one woman and that brief and disastrous. “They say I killed Violette?” he asked D’Artagnan, unable to believe it. “Who says it?”
D’Artagnan shrugged. “It’s the talk of every tavern,” he said. “I went to a lot of them this morning, you know, to gather the talk, and it is the talk in every tavern.”
“By name?” Aramis asked.
D’Artagnan nodded. “It is said everywhere that you stabbed her, and then jumped from her balcony and were brought to Paris by accomplices, just ahead of the pursuers.”
“But it can’t be very serious talk,” Porthos said. “The guards of the Cardinal have not come by to arrest you, have they? And surely they would not fail to do it, and would rejoice in it, given the excuse? Besides the Cardinal thinks it is his duty to keep peace over all of Paris.”
“This is true,” Aramis said. He shrugged. “If it’s just tavern gossip . . .”
“I’m afraid it isn’t,” Athos said. “This morning, before coming here, I went to visit Monsieur de Treville, our captain, to set his mind at ease should he hear rumors . . .”
“And?” Aramis asked.
“The rumor mongers had been there ahead of me. He’d already heard of the events of the night, only—knowing us a little better than most people—he guessed we helped you escape.”
Aramis felt a groan leave his throat, heard it echo in his ears with a sound of despair. “Monsieur de Treville believes me guilty then?”
Athos started to shake his head, then shrugged. “He did not weigh on his belief of your guilt. But he said the case looks bad for you, since the lady is well born and well above your station.” Athos reached into his doublet and pulled out a filled leather pouch. “He sent this, which he says is an advance on your wages, which you can earn after you return when your name is cleared.”
“Return?” Aramis asked.
Athos nodded. “Monsieur de Treville says he lacks the ability to protect you and, as such, must advise you to get out of Paris and stay out till your name should be cleared and you are no longer at risk for arrest.”
Aramis took the pouch from Athos’s hand and squeezed it in his right hand. The leather was soft, the heaviness of the parcel betrayed a quantity of money inside. “But how am I to be cleared if I leave town?”
“You leave us behind,” D’Artagnan said. “And you must know we’ll work to clear your name in any way possible.”
Aramis nodded. He knew that, but it still seemed wrong for him to leave when he’d done nothing to deserve exile. And it seemed even worse for him to have to depend on others to clear his good honor.
Athos had walked away from the group and was looking out the window, a frown on his face. “I think, Aramis, there is a patrol of guards up front even now. They haven’t emboldened themselves to knock at the door, but I’d wager they’re bold enough to arrest you if you should step outside. Is there another way out of this place?”
Aramis nodded. “There is the coal delivery trap,” he said. “But—”
“Then I advise you head that way now. Fast. Before they can knock and question your landlord on your whereabouts.” He paused for a moment and cleared his throat. I know of a country estate where you can stay. It’s near Ruan. I can give you a letter to my—To the steward there, who will—”
Oh, this was rich. Aramis was sure the estate that Athos spoke of was Athos’s own. Some rural idyll where the servants would obey the lord’s orders with no question. Even after the lord had been missing for years.
But if it came to that, Aramis also had an estate he could return to, and where the inhabitant would keep him in secrecy and protect him from the Cardinal’s guards if it came to that. “I thank you,” he said. “But I know of an estate where I might stay, with a widowed gentlewoman.”
“Oh, not another of your women, Aramis,” Porthos said impatiently. “They will say that you killed the other for this one, that you—”
Aramis felt a hint of his old accustomed smile come to his lips and twist them upwards ironically. “Oh, trust me, Porthos, no one will think I killed anyone for this lady.”
He stood up, feeling more decision than he had in a long time, opened his wardrobe, and started stuffing suits into a leather bag, paying little attention to how he lay them in there. “Holla Bazin,” he called, as he did it.
Bazin opened the door a crack and looked in, proving once more that he’d been listening—an abominable habit of which Aramis had tried to break him for years. Might as well try to break a cat from hunting mice.
Looking over his shoulder, Aramis saw Bazin looking at him, with every mark of anxiety stamped on his cherubic features. “Pack what you need to, Bazin,” he said. “We are going to leave Paris for some days.”
“Leave Paris?” Bazin asked. “But on what horses?”
“We’ll hire some,” Aramis said, feeling the weight of Monsieur de Treville’s pouch within his sleeve. “Pack what you need. We’re going out via the coal delivery door.”
Bazin only nodded without asking why, because he probably knew very well why already. He scurried away.
Aramis, having finished throwing all his clothes into his leather saddle bag, in a way that would normally have horrified him, now assumed a sheepish look as he opened the compartment within the wardrobe which contained his crest-embossed stationary. He would not leave this behind, with such a blatant clue to his identity.
Throwing the few sheets into the bag, he backtracked to the table by the window where his silver hair brushes sat, with the initials R H on the handle. These, too, he threw into the bag, then turned with a smile he hoped was engaging. “And now, my friends, I’ll leave everything that is of worth to me in your hands—my reputation and honor and my ability to return to Paris and serve in the musketeers.”
“You know you can trust us,” Athos said.
“Indeed,” Porthos said, with rather more enthusiasm. “We’ll find the villain who killed your lady and we’ll bring him to justice.”
“Him or her,” D’Artagnan said.
“I will trust you, then,” Aramis said and, feeling self-conscious as he always did at these occasions, he put his arm forward, palm up. “One for all.”
“And all for one,” the other three responded, their hands, palm down, falling one after the other, atop of Aramis’s.
And with this reaffirmation of brotherhood, Aramis slung his bag over his shoulder and headed for the door. In the little hall outside his lodgings, instead of heading for the stairs, he opened the smaller and inconspicuous door that led to the servants’ stairs. These stairs, taken all the way down, led to the cellar and from hence to the coal delivery door and outside to the backstreet.
He hurried down the steps, hearing Bazin follow him.
Behind him and down the stairs to the other side, fierce pounding echoed. The guards had mustered their courage and were knocking on the door.
He wasn’t afraid of getting caught. Even if they’d left one man at the coal door entrance, one man he could deal with. And if the guards went through the front door first— as they probably would—his friends would delay them long enough.
It was the prospect of going to his mother’s house, now, that worried Aramis. How would he explain his predicament to Madame D’Herblay?
Oh, he wished he’d never met Violette, if he would now suffer this way for her death. He should have stayed in seminary and stayed away from all women.
Where Three Musketeers Can Slow Six Guards; The Fine Points of Gascon Honor
ARAMIS had barely vanished from the room, when D’Artagnan heard pounding at the door downstairs. He walked out, past Bazin’s—now empty—monklike room, and opened the door to the hall, in time to see a confused half-dozen men, all attempting to climb the narrow stairs at the same time, in a flurry of angry faces, waving arms and the blood red tunics and hats that the guards of Cardinal Richelieu wore.
They were a lot more serious about it than the musketeers who, beyond the color, often allowed all manner of variation in what they called their uniforms. Those guards—the private army of the man who was, for all intents, the power behind the throne in France—were by nature and habit the enemies of the King’s musketeers. In dozens of back alleys and up a hundred public staircases made slippery by the daily muck musketeers and guards faced each other. At any time of the day the cries of “For the King” or “For the Cardinal,” the rousing yells, “To me musketeers,” or “To my aid, guards,” could be heard throughout the city, where blue and red would meet in a clash of swords, a spark of conflict. And smart bystanders stood well away from the brawling factions.
It was therefore no wonder that the guards were the ones sent to arrest Aramis. His being one of the more prominent musketeers, who had so often bested them in fight and duel, would make them only too eager to accuse him of murder. That eagerness now carried the red-attired guards, stumbling and cursing, pressed together up the stairs, each unwilling to give the other the chance to reach Aramis first.
D’Artagnan backed into the room, but had no time to close the door before three guards—with a resounding thud—planted their feet on the tiny landing at the same time. He recognized them by sight and remembered them by name. The one in front was Bagot, a large, florid man with a bristling moustache, and a good fighter if a little too prone to losing his concentration in a pinch. Pressed to his right side, his right arm swinging a sword, his left arm caught between his comrade’s body and the wall, stood Dlancey, a stripling of a man, reedy and tall, with a straggle of long blond hair. He’d gone the interesting shade of red-purple that fair people went when vexed. To the left side of Bagot, his left hand holding a large sword, his right hand clenched onto a railing being all that prevented him from falling headlong onto the hall downstairs, stood Fasset, a small Gascon man whom D’Artagnan had never exchanged words with but who was reputed throughout Paris to be almost as sharp as D’Artagnan himself.
They were all talking at the same time. Shouting. Disconnected words, “murder, arrest, law” emerged from their screaming.
D’Artagnan took a farther step back and fetched up against the wall-like solidity of Porthos. A quick glance showed him the sword in Porthos’s hand, and D’Artagnan, himself, swiftly pulled his sword out, and stood beside Porthos.
Bagot had managed to extricate himself from the press of his comrades, and stand slightly ahead of them on the narrow landing.
“Holla,” he said, looking from D’Artagnan to Porthos. “You receive us armed, do you? Stand aside and let us arrest the criminal or it will go worse with you.”
Without turning, D’Artagnan felt Porthos move. Then someone tapped D’Artagnan’s shoulder lightly. D’Artagnan stood aside to let Athos through.
The older musketeer looked composed, his sword in its sheath, his hat on his head. He now removed the hat, and, as Porthos and D’Artagnan took a step back to allow the space, bowed civilly to the red-faced Bagot.
“I will greet you with all due courtesy,” he said. “Though I should perhaps note that you were the first ones to unsheathe your swords.” He looked markedly at Bagot’s hand holding the sword.
Bagot followed his gaze and made a growl low in his throat. He punched his hat farther down on his head, didn’t sheathe his sword, and glared at Athos, “We are keeping our swords out because we are here on a mission to arrest a foul murderer.”
Athos threw his shoulders back. Even if he couldn’t see Athos’s face, D’Artagnan knew his aristocratic friend well enough to guess that Athos’s face had acquired the proud, blind dignity of a marble statue, and that his eyebrow would have raised the slightest bit, to indicate his disdain for Bagot. Athos was the noblest of the musketeers and, with a step forward and the throwing back of his well-shaped head could make even a prince in silks and velvets look like rabble.
Bagot was no prince. His reaction to Athos’s expression displayed itself clearly in a reddened face, eyes bulging out of their prominent sockets. “Mortdieux,” he said.
And had no time to say more, because Athos, speaking with the icy calm of one who addresses an inferior so beneath him that it’s hardly worth to waste words on him, said, “I know no murderers, nor do I associate with murderers. You are, perhaps, not apprised that this is the lodging of my good friend, Aramis?”
“Ah!” Bagot said. “Aramis is not even a proper name. It’s a nom de guerre, a fake name. I wonder what hides beneath it, and how many women fell prey to the foul monster in the years—”
Slowly, in controlled movements, Athos’s hand went to his sword. “Sir,” he said. “I can’t believe you know what you are saying. I only hope that, wandering in your mind in some distress, you have confused my friend with someone else.”
“Aramis!” Bagot sneered. His
hand, clasped on his own sword hilt, was so tightly clenched that the knuckles appeared white. “Aramis indeed. It is he, whatever his true name is, who killed the Duchess de Dreux not a day ago, in the palace, after having wormed himself into her bed with who knows what threats and cunning.”
“Are you certain I’m not misreading your meaning?” Athos asked. “You do indeed mean to insult Aramis, my friend? Aramis who has served as my second in countless duels and, likewise, asked me to be his second in countless more?”
“Dueling is against all the edicts,” Bagot said, his face now so red that it shaded to purple in places. “And you’re confessing to it so calmly.”
“Indeed,” Athos said.
“Then I’ll have no choice but arrest you.”
Athos threw his head back, a gesture that made his long, blue black hair—tied back with a simple ribbon—flick upon his faded musketeer’s uniform. He removed his hat and bowed slightly.
D’Artagnan didn’t need to see his friend’s face to know the mad rictus of a smile that distorted Athos’s features and made mockery of its own frozen politeness. In this mood, Athos scared even his friends.
Bagot, though he didn’t know Athos, must have been able to read expressions, because his eyes widened and for a moment shock replaced anger in his expression, as he took a step backwards.
“My dear sir,” Athos said, still bowing, his voice icily polite and echoing with accents such that had, doubtlessly, been learned at the knee of the sort of tutor that only ancient and cultured nobility would think to hire. “You leave me no choice but to charge.”
Athos rammed the hat back on his head, and, in a movement so fast that the eye could not perceive it, pulled his sword out of its sheath. In that small landing, atop a very narrow staircase, there shouldn’t have been space for such antics. But Athos had the well-trained grace of the dancer, the agility of a born athlete. And Bagot had, at the very least, healthy self-preservation instincts. As did his cohorts.
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