“Would you prefer Rene?” Porthos asked.
Aramis could only shake his head.
Moments later, Madame Coquenard—wearing a cap, and a dressing gown, appeared at the door. When he first saw her, Aramis was shocked. Oh, Porthos might lack the sophistication of the court, but surely even he could attract a woman whose skin wasn’t lined, whose eyes weren’t sunk from worry, and whose hair didn’t have many silver strands entwined in it.
And then, Athenais Coquenard raised her head. And Aramis found himself staring into the most intelligent eyes he’d ever seen in any woman. And realized that the woman had noticed and marked his look of distaste.
“Madame,” Porthos said. “This gentleman who says his name is Francois Coquenarde, claims to be your husband’s sixth cousin and has come from the provinces to seek a post as a clerk in your husband’s firm. He says he had a letter of introduction from his unfortunately late mother, and that it was stolen from him when ruffians set upon him on the way.”
Porthos’s playacting wouldn’t deceive a child. He recited the whole thing in a monotone, and Aramis was about to bristle with resentment at it, when he realized that, in fact, if Porthos were repeating what some new acquaintance had just told him, or someone he’d escorted across town out of charity, and whom he never intended to see again, he would not speak it with any more feeling than that.
Athenais looked Aramis over, then looked back at Porthos, her eyebrows raised. “Is this going to bring us any problems?” she asked.
“Harboring a distant relative who will help in the office?” Porthos asked. “I doubt it.”
“If he can help in the office. Can you, Monsieur?”
“I was brought up by the church, madame,” Aramis said, bowing. “And I write quite a convent hand.” This with a teasing glance towards Porthos.
Madame Coquenard frowned at the word convent, but then she must have caught the flicker of amusement in Porthos’s eyes and known this for a joke. She bowed slightly. “So long as he pulls his own weight and demands no privileges, nor complains of the food, I’ll keep him here, then,” she said. And, with a look at Porthos. “And safe.”
The Matter of the Knife; A Dead End
MONSIEUR de Treville had offered them a room. Or rather, D’Artagnan thought—as the servant led him into the small but well appointed room which actually had three narrow beds, a trunk for clothes, a washbasin, a pitcher of water and even towels—Monsieur de Treville had offered Athos a room for the night.
D’Artagnan was aware—and had no doubts—that no one would make such gestures to him. He didn’t resent it, any more than he resented that, without Athos, he’d not have been able to stay at the home of the Duke de Dreux.
If people had made such gestures for Athos just because he was, presumably, a count in disguise, D’Artagnan might have felt the sting of envy. But he knew that with Athos, people reacted as much to his nobility of character as to his nobility of birth.
What he resented was that he’d been sent up, with the servant, ostensibly to look at the room, but in fact so that Athos could speak with Monsieur de Treville in relative privacy.
He ambled over to the bed on the right side of the room and sat down on it. Even though it was a narrow and clearly a collapsible bed of some sort, it felt softer and springier beneath him than his bed at home ever had.
He realized he’d only slept a few hours tonight even though night had almost fully become morning and a thin, greyish light was starting to shine through the window.
With a gesture, he sent the servant away, indicating that he found the room adequate enough. He didn’t know if Athos would find it equally satisfactory, but then D’Artagnan was just a Gascon from a poor household. He could never and would never be able to understand the tastes of a French count.
Bending down he removed his boots, thinking that he would lie down and close his eyes and wait for Athos.
He woke with the bedroom door closing and with what sounded like stealthy footsteps. By instinct, he unsheathed his sword, and found himself, fully awake, sitting up, sword in hand . . . looking at Athos, who stood in the middle of the room, managing to appear, at once, alarmed and amused.
“I beg your pardon,” D’Artagnan said, sheathing his sword. He glanced towards the window, where the light was now full. In fact, from what D’Artagnan could determine, it was now possibly close to noon. With the light, noises filtered in through the window—vendors calling their wares, an insistent hammering, probably from some nearby workshop. Through the door came the incessant sea of noise from the antechamber. The yells of men, the confusion of brags and gossip, of jokes, the occasional sound of swords which meant that someone was playing king of the mountain on the staircase and defending it with his sword against all challengers.
Athos held a bundle of dark fabric in one hand and looked so tired he was swaying slightly on his feet. The middle bed, which D’Artagnan had mentally thought Porthos would occupy, was empty. “Porthos?” he asked Athos.
The older musketeer looked momentarily surprised, as though he’d forgotten all about Porthos or their agreement to meet here.
D’Artagnan rose, started looking for his boots. “He was waylaid,” he said. “Someone found him and Aramis. They tried to kill them once again and were successful. They—”
Athos smiled. He made his way to the farthest bed, laid the bundle of cloth beside him and sat down, to remove his boots.
“Athos, you don’t understand, they could even now, be preparing to sell their lives dearly.”
Athos shook his head. “I’ve known Porthos for five years,” he said. Having removed his boots, he looked down, with a dismayed expression, at his stockings which were a mass of holes, then shrugged. “I know something of the way he works. That expression he had, while we explained our theory to Aramis? Porthos has some theory of his own, or thinks we are fools for some reason, and he will not come back, he will not rest until he has either proven his theory or so totally disproved it that even he might give it up.” Athos frowned at his breeches as he started unlacing them. “D’Artagnan, do you know what kind of abuse one receives when crossing the antechamber twice wearing what is clearly the breeches of the uniform for the Cardinal’s guard?”3
D’Artagnan blinked, realizing for the first time—so busy had they been—that Athos’s breeches were not only clearly a great deal too small for the musketeer, straining at the seams and ending a couple of palms below his knees. He remembered the story of how Fasset had helped Athos, and presumed the breeches were his. However, he must still have been staring in horror at Athos when Athos looked up.
“Mine were utterly ruined,” he said. “Between the sword thrust and the mud, and my ripping them further, in the dark, to try to feel the wound and assess my odds of surviving it.”
A shiver ran up D’Artagnan’s back. It was so much like Athos, and not like anyone else at all, that clinical examination of a wound while he was alone, in the dark. D’Artagnan didn’t doubt for a moment that, had the musketeer decided the wound was fatal and he could not survive it, he would have laid back down in the mud and patiently waited for death.
The idea was so disturbingly likely, and so inhuman, that D’Artagnan felt he had to banish it from his head. “So Porthos will come back to us when he has proven his theory wrong?” he asked.
“Or correct.” Athos had removed his breeches and was pulling on linen under breeches and a pair of dark blue breeches, clothes that—clearly—Monsieur de Treville had loaned him. He met D’Artagnan’s gaze, then looked down again, to tie his breeches together. “Porthos is not stupid, D’Artagnan, nor is he always wrong. You should not confuse facility with words with intelligence, though the two often work together. Look at Porthos, and the size of him. Can you not believe that everyone in his family, generation after generation, was trained as a warrior or a guardian? And that both they and those who employed them, found little use for a cultured mind in a body that was twice as large and strong as anyone else’s?
”
“I didn’t think Porthos stupid,” D’Artagnan said, then felt heat on his cheeks. “Well, at least not since I first met him. After I got to know the three of you a little better, I could not imagine either you or Aramis having a close friend who was impaired in judgement or thought.”
He’d noted the bandage on Athos’s thigh, stained with blood, and he wondered how Athos’s judgement was, on the other hand. What kind of man runs and then fights duels while nursing a wound through the thigh.
D’Artagnan was starting to suspect that Athos was not fully human or more than human. He didn’t know which, but whichever it was it gave the older musketeer a glittering hard edge that both made him capable of accomplishing the impossible and kept all people—even his closest friends—at a distance.
“But Porthos must be wrong,” D’Artagnan said. “He has to be. Our theory is the only one that makes sense.”
Athos inclined his head, and shrugged, as he finished tying his breeches and slipped on a clean doublet of the old-fashioned type he preferred.
The clothes seemed to fit perfectly, D’Artagnan noted, and wondered if Monsieur de Treville kept clothes in all sizes around, just in case one of his musketeers arrived without breeches. Having seen the unruly mob in the antechamber, he could well believe that they ruined several breeches and doublets, tunics and shirts per day.
“We might have been wrong about this, D’Artagnan. Or at least, I think we’ve hit a dead end,” Athos said.
D’Artagnan said nothing, as he wasn’t absolutely sure of what the older musketeer spoke of.
Athos sat on his bed. “I asked Monsieur de Treville about the knife. It occurred to me that he spends a lot more time with the King than we do, and he has known the King much longer. In fact, so far as the King has any friends and not merely courtiers, we’d have to admit that Monsieur de Treville is one of them. And the Cardinal, possibly, the other.” Athos shrugged. “I apologize for sending you upstairs but I was afraid the captain wouldn’t speak frankly with you there. He has at least as high a regard as the Cardinal for the King’s reputation and for protecting it, even from his musketeers. Though I doubt,” he said, and permitted one of his quick smiles. “That Monsieur de Treville intends to send men to kill us just to prevent us from talking.”
“The men—” D’Artagnan started, as it occurred to him that the last time they’d killed a large number of guards it had occasioned an incident at the court.
“I’ve forewarned Monsieur de Treville. In fact, even now, he should be at the palace, complaining to the King about how the Cardinal sent a mob to kill his innocent musketeers.”
“I hope he gets there before the Cardinal,” D’Artagnan said.
“He will, or he’ll find a way to get the King’s ear and convince him. Trust the captain, D’Artagnan. He would not have kept his post all these years if he couldn’t convince the King that we are not an undisciplined bunch of ruffians.” This time the brief grin was far more than an elusive smile. “Which, at times, must take some skill and effort.” Athos looked up, fully. “But the knife, D’Artagnan, and who might have owned it, will apparently lead us nowhere.”
“Why?” D’Artagnan asked blinking. “Was it truly the King’s and no one else’s? Was it . . . Did . . .”
“You must banish the thought from your head,” Athos said. “Even if he had, he would be our lord and liege.” He shook his head. “But I doubt it. Our . . . His weakness is not of the sort that strikes out suddenly, with a knife. If he’d truly felt such a great animus against the woman, he would have exiled her or hounded the Cardinal to make her life miserable. He’s done it often enough, before, to other friends of the Queen. No. The reason I say the knife is a dead end, is that I believe it was in possession of the Duchess herself.”
“The Duchess?”
“Monsieur de Treville says he was with the King, when the King sent the knife, via a valet, to Madame de Dreux as a sign that her scandalous and immoral behavior had her walking on the thin edge of the King’s good graces. This was the day before the murder.”
“A knife? He sent an ivory knife of such manufacture as a warning?” D’Artagnan asked.
“You have to remember he pays very little attention to such things, which he considers mere trinkets. And sending a knife saved him the need to write a letter—a task to which he is at least as averse as our dear Porthos.”
“But then . . .” D’Artagnan said. He couldn’t imagine how Athos, wounded, tired, could still think clearly. Thoughts trickled through D’Artagnan’s mind like bubbles in mud, each in complete isolation and seemingly invisible from the others. It was an effort to string them together. “But then the knife would be in the Duchess’s room.” He could imagine the object, tossed carelessly on one of the many ornate side tables, amid books and discarded jewelry and who knew what else. “And the murderer might simply have got hold of it as a convenience. You are right. We are indeed at a dead end.”
Athos nodded. “Only perhaps,” he said, as he lay back on the bed. “We’ll be lucky and Porthos’s investigations won’t be as fruitless as ours. He was, perhaps, right and the intruder in the room was the murderer. Perhaps—”
But Athos stopped, and D’Artagnan realized that he, himself, had toppled onto his bed, and his eyes were closing of their own accord.
“Sleep, D’Artagnan,” Athos said. “It’s a been a long day and a longer night. I doubt the morning daylight will keep us awake.”
D’Artagnan took the words with him into deep sleep. Sometime later, he thought he heard Porthos come in, open the door, close it. The shudder of the middle bed as Porthos collapsed on it made D’Artagnan smile in his sleep.
Sometime later, still in the depths of a dream, D’Artagnan was aware of one of his friends leaving the room.
Fire and Color; The Very Deep Reasoning of Porthos; Where Aramis Becomes Acquainted with a Different Side of Petticoats
PORTHOS came to Monsieur de Treville’s house late. He’d been looking for acrobats, but found none, and finally exhaustion led him to Treville house, where he was directed to a room in which D’Artagnan and Athos lay asleep—Athos face up, arms at his side, looking like a marble statue upon a noble tomb; D’Artagnan sprawled, one arm above his head, a leg angled towards the floor.
Porthos looked at them and smiled. He couldn’t understand these two and their conviction that the Cardinal was trying to . . . kill them, make them seem guilty of murder, and who knew what else they might have come up with to ascribe to His Eminence by now.
Shaking his head, he collapsed on the middle bed, and fell into a deep sleep. Only to wake with what seemed like the dim light of sunset coming through the window.
He started at the reddish light. He truly didn’t want to stay till they woke and have to listen to them discuss the Cardinal’s designs to their fate as though they were vitally important to the most powerful man in France. So important, in fact, that he would go to all this trouble just to do something to them. He didn’t want to be told that the person on the balcony was a prank or a dream.
Fine, he was willing to concede it was probably not a ghost, since ghosts didn’t need to disguise themselves and rarely wore masks. But in the same way, why should a prank or a dream disguise herself and wear a mask.
He got up quietly and got out of the room and out of Treville house through the back gate, unnoticed.
Last night he had been working towards something. There was, in his mind, as yet mostly hidden, a shape, a puzzle that was about to be completed. He felt as though he had all the pieces. Almost. But not quite yet.
In fact, the problem was that Porthos didn’t seem to be filling in a puzzle but two, and he didn’t know where, in the middle, the puzzles would converge. Or if they would.
On one hand, he still thought the right way to find out who had killed Aramis’s Violette was to find out who could have done it. In the circumstances, this immediately limited the field. And Porthos had an idea as to that. It had started forming wh
en he first saw the acrobats on the street, leaping about, walking on stilts.
Oh, he took Athos’s opinion on that, that it was unlikely anyone would feel comfortable walking on stilts near the palace: That near the palace. Though Porthos didn’t view it as impossible. That by itself was manageable. Put the stilts near the tree, totter across, remove them. Porthos knew enough of how these big houses worked to suspect that two boards leaning up against a balcony would not particularly call anyone’s attention.
No, the problem there was that Porthos did not believe it was possible for anyone to walk on stilts tall enough to reach the balcony.
But there were other things. He had seen acrobats flip and dive midair, with every appearance of near flight. If they could do that, perhaps they could reach the balcony from the tree. After all, even Aramis had managed to survive going the other way.
As he thought this, he heard the noise of an acrobat troupe down the street. He let his feet walk that way, because he thought he should watch this. Acrobat troupes, who performed on the street and did everything from short burlesques to juggling, thronged to Paris in the spring and early summer. They came from as far away as Italy or Spain. And this fit, in Porthos’s head with the image of the person in Violette’s room. Perhaps she had looked as though she were performing because she was, in fact, used to performing. She was used to cavorting around on the street, for the entertainment of the crowds. Every gesture, every movement would have been honed to entertain, to please, to call attention. Hence, the exaggerated kissing of the cross.
But the cross was a problem. As was why the woman would cover her face. The only reason for her to cover her face would be if she was known at the palace. Or thought she would be known at the palace. Which was why Porthos had asked Aramis if Violette had a portrait of her sister.
Of course, the idea of a nun becoming an acrobat was insane. But then, hadn’t Athos said that Fasset, the Gascon fighting demon, almost as lethal as D’Artagnan himself, had been brought up to be a monk? Why shouldn’t an acrobat have been brought up to be a nun?
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