Another voice answered, in a whisper, also in Gascon, “The dark-haired one.”
“But there’s two dark-haired ones.”
Through D’Artagnan’s still-foggy mind, the thought went that his friends had learned to speak Gascon very fast. But neither of the voices sounded like his friends’ voices, and then there was that knife, the sound of it. Truth, they used knives to eat with, but there were no sounds of eating.
He opened his eyes. There were two men—
He had no time to see beyond that. Two men. Two men he didn’t know, and they were standing by the table. At the table, D’Artagnan’s friends sat and for a moment—for a cold, heart-stopping moment—the youth thought they were dead. But their heads were down on the table, and in front of them the remains of what seemed like a cyclopic repast. And Porthos was snoring.
The two men stood by the table hesitating.
“We could cut all their throats,” one of them said.
“No,” the other one said. “You know his orders very well. Only the dark-haired one and no more.”
“But there are—” and in saying it, the intruder, who spoke Gascon, and who was short and dark, turned to look towards the bed and met with D’Artagnan’s gaze. “Ventre saint gris, he looks—”
He never said what it was that D’Artagnan looked, because D’Artagnan had fortuitously realized that he’d been so tired on arriving at the inn that he’d dropped right to sleep without so much as removing his scabbard and sword. His hand, as though moved by a keener mind than his foggy brain, had already grabbed hold of the blade.
Jumping across the room, ignoring the shots of pain from his shoulder, he screamed as he moved, “Athos, Porthos, Aramis. Wake up, wake up, wake up.”
Porthos opened one eye. His snore stopped. But the other man had pulled out a sword and was coming at D’Artagnan, while the one with the knife backed away towards the side of the table. This left D’Artagnan free to concentrate on the man with the sword.
The man was neither swift, nor by any means as good as the duelists D’Artagnan was used to facing in the capital. He held his sword like a cutthroat and came at D’Artagnan full of intent and malice. But he lost both when D’Artagnan retaliated and soon was backing away very quickly, while the young Gascon pressed home his advantage.
Only the intruder maneuvered towards the door and, opening it, dropped his sword and ran down the stairs. D’Artagnan ran after him. He had no more than left the room, though, than he heard the ruffian left inside say, “Come back inside and drop your sword, or I cut your friend’s throat.”
D’Artagnan looked over and realized that Athos was still sleeping, and that the man had his knife at Athos’s throat. There was nothing for it but to back inside the room and drop his sword.
As the sword fell to the floor, the intruder pulled the knife away from Athos’s throat and said, “Ah, I knew you would—”
He never said what his prescience had warned him of though, because at that moment Porthos rose, swiftly, lifting his chair above his head.
The giant redhead brought the chair down on the intruder’s head, just as D’Artagnan—who had been as swift to retrieve his sword—ran the man through.
Doubly mortally wounded, the ruffian made scarcely a sound as he sank to the ground. D’Artagnan withdrew his sword and wiped it on the man’s clothes, and looked up at Porthos. “Why didn’t Athos and Aramis wake?” he asked.
Porthos shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Only that I still feel sleepy, as though I had cobwebs upon my senses.”
D’Artagnan—ignoring his shoulder, which was hurting him more than he was willing to admit even to himself—went to the table and swiftly checked both Aramis’s and Athos’s pulses. He’d no more reassured himself that both were alive, than a splash of water fell over all three of them.
Looking up, D’Artagnan saw Porthos holding the empty washbasin. He was about to protest, but Athos was stirring and so was Aramis and both, by the sound of it, in a temper. Aramis said, “Porthos? God’s wounds, this is my good doublet.”
Athos exclaimed something more to the point and yet more profane. Looking up at the larger musketeer, Athos looked like he was keeping his temper barely in check as he said, “Have you taken leave of your senses, Porthos?”
“No, but you see, we couldn’t wake you any other way.”
“Wake us? Why…” And at this moment Athos stopped, as though only then realizing that they were in a room that would be pitch dark, save for the glow of the moon coming through the two windows. Judging from the food on the table, D’Artagnan guessed that they’d gone to sleep shortly after eating, which would be at sunset.
Athos ran his hand over his face. “How long did I sleep?”
Porthos shook his head. “I don’t know, as I just woke, with the man saying he had a knife to your throat.”
“Man?” Aramis said, and turning around looked at D’Artagnan. “D’Artagnan, why does he speak in riddles?”
D’Artagnan pointed to the man on the floor. “That man. He and his accomplice came in…somehow. I don’t know whether through the window or through the door. I woke up with them in the room discussing whether they should kill me or you, Athos. I engaged in a duel with one of them, who escaped, and then this one…”
“A duel?” Athos asked.
“A duel. And you and Aramis slept through it, though Porthos gave some indication of waking up.”
“Aye,” Porthos said. He was pouring water from the washing jar over his head, as he leaned over the empty washing basin. He shook his hair, like a dog coming out of a river, splashing them all liberally. “I woke up, or at least you could call it that, only I was still…I felt as though I weren’t quite awake. Still do, in a way.”
“The wine,” Athos said. And reached for an almost empty bottle on the table, smelling it. “I don’t smell anything, but it must be the wine.”
“How do you come to that conclusion?” Aramis asked.
“Well,” Athos said. “D’Artagnan is the only one of us who did not have the drink, and the only one of us who woke up immediately, when someone entered our room. Porthos was the second most alert one, and he would be, being the largest. The dosage of whatever the potion might be would be smallest for him. While Aramis is the lightest one, and therefore would sleep soundest, except that I…” He rubbed his forehead. “I might have drunk a little more wine than the rest of you and therefore have been equally lost to the world.”
Knowing his friends’ drinking habits, D’Artagnan was quite sure that by “a little more wine” Athos meant easily three or four times the amount. He didn’t say anything. The reverse of Athos’s nobility was his inability to take criticism from those he considered his inferiors. And to Athos everyone was inferior.
“Well,” Porthos said. “I shall go and ask the host why he poisoned our wine then.” He said it pleasantly and carelessly, as though this were quite a normal errand.
“Stop, Porthos,” Aramis said. “You could go, except you won’t understand a word he says.”
Athos stood up. “I shall go,” he said.
“But you my friend, you do not speak Gascon either,” D’Artagnan said. “And besides it is foolish of us to go charging out into the inn like this, in the middle of the night. They might very well be lying in ambush for us and, in the dark, we’d be likely to be overcome.”
“D’Artagnan is right,” Aramis said. He lit one of the candles on the mantelpiece from the dying embers in the fireplace. “It would be foolhardy to charge into the night, into unknown territory.”
“Then you propose we cower here, in the dark, not knowing who might be ambushing us or why?” Porthos said. “And not a drop to drink that isn’t drugged?”
D’Artagnan cast about for an answer, since neither alternative seemed palatable. But his chest hurt, and he could feel the blood seeping beneath his shirt and doublet, and his head going utterly dizzy with the loss.
“Well,” Athos said, phlegmatically.
“I suppose I should search the corpse. It might tell us something about his purpose and why he attacked us.”
“He attacked us to kill either you or me,” D’Artagnan said. “He said his orders were to kill the dark-haired one. He seemed confused there were two of us.”
Athos raised an eyebrow at him but said nothing. Instead, he knelt by the corpse, rapidly looking in all the likely places. At last he stood up, with the man’s purse in his hand. “Five pistoles,” he said. “And nothing else.”
“Well, that’s half what the other attackers had,” Porthos said.
“Perhaps Gascon cutthroats are cheaper,” Aramis said.
“Are you sure there are no other papers or letters or anything that will tell us who this man is?” D’Artagnan asked, feeling as though his head were swimming. “But this is maddening. How are we to know more about this man, then?”
“I’m quite certain. If you and Porthos wished me to find out more about him, you should not have made him so thoroughly dead.”
D’Artagnan opened his mouth to say that they’d seen no other alternative, but the words never formed. Instead, he stared intently at a dagger in the man’s hand. Kneeling, he pulled at the man’s still lax fingers to free the dagger. It was a fine implement, the handle of which was ornamented with two lions facing each other upon a field of azure. Seeing it, he felt as though a grey mist descended before his eyes. His knees gave out under him.
“D’Artagnan,” Aramis yelled, followed shortly by Porthos and Athos’s shouts.
D’Artagnan felt as his friends caught him before he fell and eased him onto one of the beds. As hands unlaced his doublet, he started to protest, but the words didn’t seem to be more than inarticulate sounds—protests that didn’t form into words.
And then Athos said, “Porthos, go and find the host, and have him send for a physician, or our brave D’Artagnan dies. Quickly.”
D’Artagnan tried to exaggerate, but there was nothing for it. Words wouldn’t form, and his mind was in an agony of confusion. Time seemed to pass very fast or else very slowly. Suspended somewhere where thought made no sense, but pain was quite real enough, D’Artagnan felt hands at him, tugging and pulling, and felt as dress was packed into his wound, and it was doused with something that smelled like green grass and stung like alcohol.
Then hands tied dressings tightly around his torso and hands slipped a shirt over his head.
At long last, as though the rest were a dream and he were only now waking up, he opened his eyes to see a mug of wine in front of his face, held in Porthos’s huge hand.
“Drink,” Porthos said. And there was no arguing, not while Porthos forced the cup on his lips. He drank one draught, two. He fully expected to fall back asleep, this time drugged, but instead, his head cleared.
Presently he became aware that his friends were all watching him and holding the landlord in front of them.
He had changed his apron for a long, flowing, white nightshirt. And in the swimming light of the candle, he looked as white as the nightshirt.
“Speak, villain,” Athos said. “Tell us why you drugged our wine.”
And the man broke into French—not good French, but French at any rate. “I’m sorry,” he said, volubly. “Only I have a wife and ten children, and I can never be sure with ruffians like this, that they would leave my family alone. For myself, I would have resisted all attempts to make me do such a vile thing as drug travelers’ wine, but for them—how could I resist when these men might have killed my family in retaliation?”
“Stop,” D’Artagnan said, his head still swimming. He leaned back against pillows someone had disposed behind his head. “How comes it that you now understand French?”
The man sniffled, as though he were fighting with all his willpower to avoid crying. “I pretended not to speak French because I hoped one of you would say, ‘Oh, look, it’s an ignorant fool of a Gascon who doesn’t even speak our language. Surely we won’t stay here, but we will go down the street to the Golden Calf or the Notre Albret.’ But no, you would stay. Even though I warned you.” He stared at D’Artagnan accusingly. “I warned you.”
“Yes, yes,” D’Artagnan said. “You warned me. Though so cryptically that I could hardly be expected to understand—but still the question is, what did you warn me about?”
“And what did you know?” Athos said.
The man shook his head. He was sweating. Thick beads of sweat rolled down his forehead. “They came by. A few hours before you arrived. And they said I was to drug your wine, and let you sleep. And I was to ask no questions.” He shook his head again. “I thought…I thought that it was something having to do with politics, or messengers. Gascony has seen so much war, and it is normal for one side to try to overcome the other by treason and to use us, locals, as cat’s-paws. ‘So, you see,’ I told the man, ‘I will not take this powder you give me. If it’s a sleeping draught you want in the wine, then I will use some herbs that I know, and they’ll sleep.’”
He looked from one to the other of them, halfway between pride in his own reported actions and obvious fear that they would not approve of them. “You see, I told them that, and they laughed at me, and that’s what I did, because I couldn’t be sure this powder of theirs, you know, that it wouldn’t kill you. And I didn’t want to be responsible for a murder.”
“But you were willing to let them come in here, while we were in a drugged sleep,” Athos said, “and cut our throats without our being able to defend ourselves. How is that less murder? And why should I not slay you for it right now?”
The man shook his head. His hair came loose in the movement, shaking itself free from a tie that held it at the back of the head. It was black hair heavily streaked with white, lank and lifeless and shoulder long. “No, no. You see, I heard them talking when they thought I wasn’t listening. And what they said—what they said was that this would stop the papers ever coming to light. So I thought they just meant to come to the room and steal some paper or some letter. It wasn’t till I saw one of them run out, and found the other dead, and these kind gentlemen”—he bowed slightly, first to Athos, then to Aramis—“told me that he’d tried to kill monsieur that I realized they were assassins, you see.”
“I still say,” Porthos rumbled, as he poured himself a fresh mug of wine from the new jar that he must have had the landlord bring in, “that if we can’t prove you knew of their murderous intentions, we should, nonetheless, set fire to the inn, to punish you for drugging us.”
The landlord cringed. “But I had my family to think of,” he said. “Surely, you didn’t want me to let them kill my family, only to keep strangers safe.”
“It is difficult, in Gascony,” D’Artagnan said, almost not believing what he heard come out of his own mouth. “We have been at war so long, and the war has been so fierce. It is difficult sometimes to remember that strangers are also people and deserving of your protection.”
“How could I protect you, monsieur?” the landlord asked. “I tried to warn you.”
“I still say he wasn’t very Philistine, and we should—”
“It is Samaritan, Porthos,” Aramis said, with a heavy sigh.
“I’m not sure that you didn’t know they were assassins,” Athos said.
“Listen,” D’Artagnan put in, feeling tired and above all else not wishing to see the landlord killed. Perhaps he was lying. Perhaps he had no family. But as he was, with his hair streaked with white, he reminded D’Artagnan, forcibly, of his own father, so recently dead. For the sake of his father, he did not wish to see this other man killed. “I say he puts us up for the couple of days I will take to recover before we resume our way.” He paused and allowed his comrades to protest without actually listening to their words. He registered that they thought two days insufficient for his recovery, and yet he knew he could wait no longer. “We’ll see,” he said. “But for however long we need to stay, he will put us up and feed us. And we’ll speak no more of this, if he doesn’t betray us again.�
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In the back of his mind was the thought that if the ruffians did come back to take revenge on the landlord, they would have to contend with himself and his friends. And that he did need to recover.
“Two days,” he said. “And I hope no more. Someone is trying very hard to keep me away from my domains. That makes me all the more anxious to get there.”
Later, after the landlord had gone, the four of them barred the door by pushing the table in front of it and shuttered and locked the windows.
In the impenetrable darkness, D’Artagnan lay staring at the ceiling, turning in his mind the image of that dagger. How could the man have come by it?
“D’Artagnan?” Athos’s voice just barely louder than Porthos’s snoring reached his ears.
“Athos. You’re awake.”
“I rarely sleep. D’Artagnan—why did you startle at the sight of that dagger?”
D’Artagnan drew a deep breath. Porthos snored too convincingly to be awake and from D’Artagnan’s other side came the sound of steady breathing. But the breathing didn’t mean Aramis was asleep. He might be awake and listening.
And then D’Artagnan realized it didn’t matter at all. Aramis had doubtless already remarked the emblem on the dagger—it was the sort of thing that did not escape the cunning musketeer.
In a few days, when they arrived at D’Artagnan’s home, he would know what that coat of arms was.
“D’Artagnan?” Athos said.
D’Artagnan sighed. This journey into his home would not allow him to hide any shame or confusion.
“It is the coat of arms of my cousins, the de Bigorres,” he said at last. And to Athos’s silence, which seemed of a sudden so absolute as to have a physical presence, “The senior branch of my family.”
Athos didn’t answer and as odd as it would be, D’Artagnan wondered if he’d fallen asleep.
But at long last, out of the dark, Athos said, “I’m sorry, D’Artagnan.”
D’Artagnan protested, with heat he did not feel, “Perhaps it was stolen.”
Death in Gascony Page 7