Edmond paused and shivered in so noticeable a way that D’Artagnan could see it out of the corner of his eye. “He looked at us, but it was really odd. As though he couldn’t see us, but something else. Like…like he was following a panorama of his own mind, if that makes any sense.”
D’Artagnan nodded. Once or twice, he’d seen men like that. The drunk, the mad, the terminally wounded all had a look that stared beyond the present at the unimaginable future.
“So, he looked at us,” Edmond said. “And then he focused on de Bilh, though I’d swear on the holy book that he wasn’t seeing him. He stumbled across the distance between them, though, pulling his sword out of its sheath and saying…in this odd tone, not quite a whisper, ‘Ah, you villain. I will teach you to attack a man by stealth.’
“De Bilh was so shocked you know? Speechless. At first he looked to smile, as though he thought your father was joking—and very well he might have been, since just the night before the two of them were talking together in the tavern. And then your father came at him, sword in hand…”
“Yes,” D’Artagnan said, more to encourage him to continue than in agreement.
“You know what your father was,” Edmond said.
“Yes.”
“He came at de Bilh with his sword raised. It was all the poor devil could do to draw his own sword. And he was parrying, and saying ‘Stop, Charles, you don’t know what you’re about.’”
“Did my father talk, also?”
Edmond shook his head. “No, not at all. Just huffing and puffing and giving these weird little grunts, almost whimpers, but with it all, still coming at him, in a dead heat. It took no time at all for the fight to get really close at hand, with them standing practically together, and de Bilh was still trying to defend himself, just using his sword to parry your father’s thrusts. And he’d raised his sword thus”—he lifted his arm beside his own neck as if to demonstrate.
“And then your father said, ‘You’re my undoing but I’ll be yours.’ And charged towards the sword. It went into his neck, where the great vein runs, and there was blood everywhere.” He swallowed. “And that was that. De Bilh was horrified and pulled the sword out as fast as he could, and called for me or the priest to send for a surgeon. But one look at that injury and I knew a surgeon couldn’t do anything. The blood was pouring out of your father like water out of the fountain in the main plaza.
“Your father took ten steps back, and then he collapsed, and then he died. And that was it.” He gave D’Artagnan an appraising glance. “So if you were intending to do something supremely foolish, like challenge de Bilh for a duel, stay your hand.”
“Why does everyone think I want to challenge people for duels on the flimsiest of excuses?” D’Artagnan asked.
Edmond merely looked at him a long time.
D’Artagnan sighed. “And about what you said earlier? You say my father was working for Richelieu?”
“I don’t wish to discuss it,” Edmond said.
“Well, and I regret the necessity to ask you to do so,” D’Artagnan said. “But it is necessary, nonetheless.”
“Why is it necessary?” Edmond asked. “I have told you what my involvement in your father’s death was, and exactly what happened. If you can find some way in which the guilt of this can be laid at my door…”
D’Artagnan thought of telling him about the ambushes on the way to Gascony. Or perhaps of telling him about the letter from the Cardinal in his father’s trunk. But he could not. For one, it was possible that Edmond had something to do with one or both of those events. He thought of the dagger with the de Bigorre shield now in his luggage.
“It is not a matter of laying anything at your door. Only my mother told me in her letter that my father was working for the Cardinal. In Paris, I’ve thrown my lot in with the musketeers who, whatever you have heard in the provinces…,” D’Artagnan said realizing how insufferably smug he sounded, but not knowing what else to do. “Whatever you’ve heard, the musketeers do not support the Cardinal. Rather they’re for the King, in spite of and beyond his eminence’s machinations.”
“So it was a shock to find your father worked for the Cardinal?”
“Not…a shock as such,” D’Artagnan said. “But a sharp reminder that when I left home my father told me to respect Cardinal and King alike. Advice I don’t think I know how to keep, as my preference for his Majesty’s camp is very decided. But…enfin, I’d like to know what my father was doing for his eminence.”
“I don’t know what else he was doing,” Edmond said heavily. “But as it pertained to me, he told me they knew of my gambling debts, and that his eminence had purchased some of them. And if I should not break my engagement to Jeanne de Laduch and allow a protégé of the Cardinal to win her hand, I’d be made to pay those debts, with money I do not have.”
“I see,” D’Artagnan said.
“No. I don’t believe you do. This is why I went to Bordeaux, trying to gamble what I have in exchange for what I don’t.” He frowned. “I broke even, but I did not win.”
“But…what was the Cardinal’s interest in your marriage?”
“None but to allow someone he favors to take Jeanne’s hand and her fortune.”
“Are you in love with Jeanne, then?”
“In love…” Edmond made a sound. “D’Artagnan, she is ten years older than I and cross-eyed. But if I don’t marry her, I’ll have to go into the church, and I don’t think I’m suited to being a priest.”
“I see…” He took a deep breath, seeking to gain courage. His cousin had motive—more than motive enough—to rid himself of D’Artagnan’s father. While his cousin had not said it, D’Artagnan could well imagine what kind of pressure his father would bring to bear on behalf of the Cardinal. Give in, or we’ll tell your father about your debts, was part of it, as was Give in or we’ll tell Jeanne’s family. Instead, D’Artagnan said, “You said you don’t know what else he was doing. What makes you think he was doing anything else at the Cardinal’s behest?
“Well…” Edmond looked at him a while. “I don’t know what, and I’m not sure why, but I am sure that your father was meaning to ensnare de Comminges.”
“Ensnare…?”
“Well, there was much muttering about how now de Comminges would finally pay for the evil he’d done. And about how your father had them under eye and they could not escape.”
Oh, Father, how could you be so foolish? D’Artagnan thought.
“I tell you, it worried me most of all when old de Comminges died. Only a week before your father, but at the time I wondered if your father had done it. Sometimes, I still wonder.”
A Musketeer’s Conscience;
Religion and the Cardinal;
A Matter of Horses
ARAMIS found Athos in the stables. A shrugging Bayard pointed him that way, with a good deal of babble in Gascon to the extent that he wasn’t sure why monsieur had gone that way but that—at least from what Aramis could make out of the utterly alien tongue—all non-Gascons were crazy anyway.
Going into the stables, Aramis was tempted to agree with the man. Athos, for no reason Aramis could understand, seemed to have acquired a maddening interest in horses. In fact, he was going from stall to stall and from horse to horse, examining hooves and manes, and seemingly studying the creatures as though he intended to buy one.
“Athos,” he said, squinting into the dim stable, trying to see if one or more of the D’Artagnans’ hirelings might lurk in the shadows. What he had to say didn’t bear discussing in front of the servants, not the least because Aramis wasn’t wholly sure of where the servants fell, on which side of the religious divide.
Athos looked up from what he was doing—which looked uncommonly like examining one of the horse’s mouths—to give Aramis his coolest look. “Yes?”
“I must speak to you,” Aramis said, coming fully into the stable, and looking around into its cool, darkened depths to confirm that, indeed, his friend seemed to be alone here. “
Listen—I’ve been thinking about religion.”
Athos frowned up at him; a puzzled look that seemed to ask when Aramis wasn’t in fact thinking about religion.
Aramis let out a deep breath at this, allowing air to hiss out between his teeth. “It is not funny, Athos. I did not mean that I was thinking about my own religion, or about my relationship to God, or yet about the way in which I might earn salvation. All these are right and proper to concern oneself with and indeed should occupy any right-thinking man’s time, who is concerned for his salvation and who yearns, as all fallen humans must, for that time when he must shed his external, mortal coil and embrace—”
“Aramis, have done,” Athos said, as he moved to look at a bank of saddles against the wall. “What has put you in such a muddle?”
“I am not muddled. I am merely saying that—”
“Yes, yes, that I should be looking forward to the day when I will finally shuffle off my endless mortal coil and face my maker.” Athos permitted himself one of his infuriating smiles that seemed to slide across his lips and vanish leaving only bitterness behind. “Forgive me, my friend, if some of us are not quite that anxious to meet with judgement for what we’ve done.” He lifted a hand before Aramis could protest that Athos underestimated God’s forgiveness. “No, please. You and I have gone the full rounds on it, and it doesn’t befit us any more than a playground discussion. I’ve told you often enough that I would not forgive any divinity willing to forgive me.”
“But—”
“No. I will discuss this, or what you wish with you, at another time, but not now, in Gascony, while our friend D’Artagnan might be in danger of his life. And I assume it is something about this, and not about my immortal soul’s longing for forgiveness, that has put you in this state. Please, leave my immortal soul alone, and speak to my mortal body. I presume you mean you were thinking of religion in Gascony?”
Aramis swallowed back unpronounced words and tried to straighten in his mind what he meant to say and what it signified. It was characteristic of Athos to be able to throw Aramis into complete and muddled confusion, far from the strict rules of thought and logic he’d learned back in his seminary days. And Athos had also a way of bringing up near-blasphemous, and yet fascinating, thoughts, such as whether one had the right to refuse forgiveness from God. And then he expected Aramis not to pursue it.
Aramis let out breath again, this time in a great explosion. “I was thinking about the wars of religion,” he said, and as he spoke, he backed up onto a straw pile behind him, and sat on it full force. “And how they wracked this region. And I thought perhaps the whole thing—the Cardinal’s interest in Monsieur D’Artagnan, or yet someone’s wishing to kill D’Artagnan—might not have its origin in just such a time. That it might be, in fact, the wars of religion by other means.”
“You think Monsieur D’Artagnan père was killed because of his religion?” Athos asked, frowning.
“Well, not for sure, but I do think that it might have something to do with that. That it might have something to do with the wars, in some way. That this is why he was working for the Cardinal.”
Athos continued to look over the saddle for a moment, and Aramis thought that the older musketeer was dismissing his idea out of hand, which worried him. If Athos didn’t listen, who would? Porthos was likely to not believe that anyone could kill for a motive as philosophical and distant as beliefs. And D’Artagnan…He had grown up in this region, rifted with religion and war. He probably would not even think of religion as a motive.
But Athos turned around, from looking at the saddle and, dusting his hands together as though some contaminant might have come from the saddle to them, said, “What did you do about this suspicion of yours, Aramis?”
“I—” Aramis said, and frowned at the saddle. “Why were you looking at the horses and the saddles?”
Athos shrugged. “It matters not. We’ll just say that Bayard says the King and the Cardinal sent these to Monsieur D’Artagnan less than a month ago.”
“The King and the Cardinal?” Aramis said, looking at Athos in shock, while he tried to imagine the exact conjunction of circumstances that could bring such an unlikely gift from such unlikely quarters. “Surely…”
“No, surely not. Or at least,” Athos said, shrugging, “it is possible, of course, that his eminence sent them and said they were from him and the King. This far in the provinces, you know, people often don’t know that the King and the Cardinal are not of one and the same mind.” Another shrug. “For that matter, even in the capital, this is not often absolutely sure.”
“No,” Aramis admitted, thinking of the many times when they’d fought for the King only to find that he had united with the Cardinal to reproach them. “But…” He started, feeling that Athos had other suspicions, that he thought something else that he was not saying. Else, why the careful examination of the horses?
“Just an idea I had,” Athos said. “If it were possible, I would send Grimaud to Paris to get word on exactly how these horses got here. To find out, at the very least, if any gift of horses was sent to Monsieur D’Artagnan from the capital. Surely, these many horses, traveling across the mountains,” he shrugged again.
Aramis understood what he meant. Those many horses, traveling over the mountains would be sure to be remarked. And someone in the capital would know too. “But why is it not possible?” he asked. “We could send Grimaud. We have the money.”
Athos sighed heavily. “We were attacked twice on our way here, Aramis. Surely you don’t think D’Artagnan is safe now.”
“Well, we haven’t been attacked since we got here.”
Athos waved a dismissive hand. “D’Artagnan has been watched or in our company all the time, has he not?”
“Well, at night he sleeps in another…”
Athos shook his head. “Wing of the house. Yes, but Aramis, I have taken the liberty of recommending Planchet to sleep across the door of his master’s bedroom. And our excellent Mousqueton has stood in front of that same door, in a very prominent way. Surely, any malefactor would be afraid of attacking D’Artagnan in his own house when he was thus guarded? It could, at the very least, rouse alarm. And here…” He gestured to include the house in his words. “Someone would be bound to know the attackers, or know whence they came.”
“So, you’re saying he hasn’t been attacked because there hasn’t been opportunity.”
“To an extent. I’ve made sure he has at least one of our more bellicose servants with him, or is under their eye, somehow. The one thing I’m sure of, though,” Athos said, “is that the longer we stay here, the more likely he will be attacked. Well. The longer we stay here without finding out who the murderer is. As soon as we find out the real killer, the danger should pass. But that means I don’t have the week to send Grimaud to Paris, and the week to wait for him to come back. And that’s if everything goes well.”
Aramis nodded, understanding. “But then, how can we know where the horses came from? And why should it matter?”
“Well, it should matter,” Athos said, “because we know Monsieur D’Artagnan said he was working for his eminence, and this is the first possible reward we’ve seen around here. If we trace it, we can confirm that he was working for the Cardinal or…Or not.”
“Of course,” Aramis said, finding the flaw in the reasoning. “He might have received his reward from one of the Cardinal’s minions, not from the Cardinal himself, you know?”
“Doubtless,” Athos said. He leaned against the piled-up saddles, comfortably. “But Aramis, I didn’t say my whole goal was to prove they didn’t come from Paris. If we establish where they came from, then we can find out if the master of the house was in his eminence’s pay or not.”
“Oh,” Aramis said. “And you were examining the horses because…”
“I wish to be able to describe them by identifiable characteristics to Porthos, to whom I will give the unpleasant chore—or perhaps he finds it pleasant—of speaking to hosteler
s and farmers hereabouts, and to stable boys too. And finding out where the horses came from.” He made a face. “One thing I tell you. I took myself this morning, soon as I was wakened, to that pleasant village we were at last, on the way here. The place we had dinner. And no one recalls these many horses coming through. Save some horses from Monsieur de Comminges, which seem to have been sent from his other estate, where, I am to understand, he breeds a few of these sort of cattle.”
“De Comminges,” Aramis said, hearing his own voice echo hollow, like a sermon preached in an ancient and deserted church.
“De Comminges,” Athos said. “Why? Did the name come up in your investigations?”
“I went to the priest this morning,” Aramis said. “Or rather, I went to Mass early morning, at the little church around the corner. I thought perhaps afterwards I could approach the priest and ask questions.”
“And did it work?”
“Well, to an extent, though not immediately.” He frowned. “You see, D’Artagnan turned up at the Mass too.”
“D’Artagnan? By the Blood. Why?”
“When I first saw him,” Aramis said, “I thought he was there for the same reason I was. Or at least, I thought he might have discovered something or read something, perhaps in his father’s papers, which had led him to believe that his father had been involved in religious strife. And therefore, I thought, was there to talk to the priest and find out how the religious situation was in the region.”
“I take it you were wrong in his motives?” Athos said.
“Yes. It turned out he was there simply because Madame D’Artagnan had informed him that his father was killed in front of some witnesses, one of them being the priest. And he was there to check the priest’s account.”
“And how did that…relate?”
“His father seems to have been drunk or irate, or perhaps mad when he came onto the threshing floor,” Aramis said and made a dismissive gesture. “But that is not the whole of it. The thing is, the priest seemed bewildered by Monsieur D’Artagnan’s behavior. Oh, he told us it meant nothing, what with the age of the man and all, but…I wondered…”
Death in Gascony Page 18