All for One (5 page)

A bowl of hearty stew and a glass of wine did much to restore Aristide’s energy, and Raúl and Gerrard proved to be good company, sharing tales of their journey from Spain to visit friends in France. They may have seemed an unlikely duo, but Aristide could sense the connection between them, for all that their public behavior gave nothing away. He found Gerrard’s possessive attitude toward Raúl somewhat amusing but wondered what it would be like to have someone regard him with that same possessiveness. Bidding them farewell when they prepared to continue on, the musketeer gathered the remaining wine and a clean glass and headed back upstairs. To his dismay, the stranger was stirring restlessly, the bedcover twisting around him as he tossed. Aristide eased the sheet away from his wounded shoulder, murmuring quiet words of reassurance even though he wasn’t sure the young man was alert enough to hear them. Wetting a fresh cloth, he bathed as much of the fevered skin as he could reach, the cool water seeming to offer some relief. Deciding to try and get him to drink the rest of the soup, Aristide lifted the stranger to rest against his chest, holding him securely with one arm as he reached for the now-cool broth with the other.

P
AIN
was the first sensation to register as consciousness slowly returned, followed by the feeling of arms around him. His first thought was of his wife. She would hold him this way, helping to ease the pain of his injury, whatever it was, trying to get him to eat. But she was dead, a victim of the same plague that had wiped out most of his village. Cold broth filled his mouth, choking him as he swallowed reflexively. The arms holding him tightened, and a man’s voice crooned in his ear for him to relax and swallow.

A man’s voice.

Awareness returning in a flood, Benoît struggled weakly, trying to pull away from whoever held him in place. Had he been more than a shadow of his former self, he would easily have thrown off the hold, for the man did not have that good a grip on him, given the odd angle at which they sat. The fact that he did nothing more than knock the bowl from his captor’s hands, splattering them both with cold broth, was a testament to the months of hunger he had endured as he’d searched for a town that needed a blacksmith or even a blacksmith who needed a second pair of hands. He’d occasionally found enough odd jobs to earn him a few crusts of bread, but only just enough to keep him alive. The messenger’s job to Paris had been a godsend, but he doubted he’d see any more of the promised money now.

“Easy,” Aristide murmured, biting back a curse when the stranger’s flailing knocked the bowl of soup from his grip. Fortunately it was no longer hot, and more of it hit the stranger’s chest than the musketeer’s arm, but he didn’t want the man’s struggles to pull loose the bandages or start the wound bleeding again. “You’re safe,” he assured softly, loosening his grip and easing his arm from behind so that the stranger was once more reclining on the pillows. Wondering what in the man’s past had made him so fearful, he kept his voice low and gentle as he continued, “You were injured and have been feverish. I was just trying to feed you some broth. Unfortunately it works better when taken internally than applied to the skin,” he added with a chuckle.

“Where? Who? What happened?” Benoît stuttered, trying to take in the fact that he was lying in an inn, an expensive one by the looks of it, naked to the waist, being hovered over by a man he didn’t know.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Aristide answered. “My friends and I found you lying at the side of the road. You’d been shot,” he added in explanation as the young man seemed to discover the bandage for the first time, running the fingers of his other hand over the site of the wound and wincing slightly. Judging that the gypsy’s herbs must have rendered quite an improvement if the injury was only painful to the touch, he added, “That was yesterday afternoon. You’ve been unconscious for nearly a full day since.”

That would explain why Benoît was even weaker than he had been recently. He’d used the down payment for his delivery services to buy his first decent meals in months, but a few meals were hardly enough to make up for the long privation. “I was supposed to carry a message to Paris,” he told the musketeer, “to Cardinal Richelieu. I rode from Lyon three days ago, heading that way. I left Semur-en-Auxois in the morning, hoping to make it to Auxerre before I had to stop for the night. I guess I didn’t make it that far.”

“You’re in Époisses,” Aristide confirmed, reassured when the young man didn’t try to conceal his errand. Perhaps he was nothing more than an innocent messenger after all, as the musketeer’s instincts urged him to believe. “Do you know what the message said? Who gave it to you to deliver?”

“I didn’t open it,” Benoît replied honestly. “A foreigner, well-dressed and fluent but with a strong accent, asked me if I was heading north. He said he had business in the south but that he had forgotten an important message for the Cardinal. He offered me fifty
louis
if I delivered the message. I didn’t see any harm in taking the money and doing the job. I have little enough else to tie me down these days.”

Aristide frowned. His heart wanted to believe the young man’s story, but if it was true, it seemed he could tell them next to nothing to help them track down the source of the slanderous message. “Where did this foreigner approach you?” he asked. “Lyon, you said? Did he give his name, or tell you where he was going, or say anything else that might help me find him?”

“What is it to you who gave me the message or why?” Benoît asked defensively. “I’ve done you no wrong, nor done any in accepting the coin for honest work.”

“You know nothing of the contents of the message?” Aristide confirmed. When the stranger shook his head, his face tightening in irritation, the musketeer sighed. “The seal was torn open when we found you,” he said, wondering how much he should admit of what they’d learned. If he trusted the young man was telling him the truth, he could not find it in himself to prevaricate in return. Hoping that his faith would not prove misguided, he continued, “The message contained information falsely accusing the leader of the King’s musketeers of treasonable behavior. Anything you can tell me about the man who engaged you might help lead me to the ones spreading these lies.”

“Why should you care?” Benoît pressed, sure he was missing something in the conversation. The blond man was far too intent on getting answers to be a disinterested party. “If he did what he’s accused of doing, he should be punished. And if he didn’t, he can defend himself.”

“No one is more loyal to the King than
M.
de Tréville,” Aristide insisted. “It is my honor to serve in his company, and I will do all in my power to protect his good name and the safety of the King.”

“And your name?” Benoît asked. “So I might know to whom I owe my life?”

“Aristide, of the King’s musketeers,” Aristide answered. “And yours?”

“Benoît, late of Montredon, a blacksmith by trade,” Benoît replied, not adding his reasons for leaving or his troubles since he took to the road.

“Blacksmith, hmmn?” Aristide mused. That explained the muscle he’d felt, but not the thinness, as if the stranger—Benoît—had been ill or gone hungry for some time. “Why would a blacksmith need turn messenger for a stranger, even for pay?”

“A blacksmith needs people to hire him for his skills,” Benoît replied bitterly as his memories assailed him with images of his friends and family succumbing to the plague or fleeing in hopes of escaping it. “Montredon is a graveyard. There is little call for blacksmiths there.”

Aristide shook his head at the pain in Benoît’s voice. The blacksmith had endured sickness and hunger both, it seemed. It was, sadly, not an uncommon story. “You lost family?” he asked quietly, understanding well the emptiness of being cut off from those who had been dear.

“All I had,” Benoît nodded, choking back the tears that still threatened at the loss of his wife and their unborn child. He had begged Pauline to leave at the first sign of the plague, hoping to spare her the sickness, but she had refused, saying her place was at his side. He would gladly have died if it would have spared her life and the babe’s. “We waited too long to leave, and when I came back, it was too late to die.”

The pallor which accompanied the words reminded Aristide that the young man had barely escaped dying far more recently. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, running the back of his knuckles over Benoît’s forehead, not surprised to find his temperature had risen again. “I’ve kept you talking when what you need is rest.” Turning to the sideboard, he poured the last of the wine into a glass and set it on the bedside table, then wet the cloth from the ewer and offered it to Benoît. “The wine will help restore your blood. Why don’t you clean up while I ask the innkeeper for some more broth?”

“I don’t want your pity,” Benoît said angrily as he took the cloth and swiped it across his bloody skin. “I would have been perfectly happy to die on that road out there. At least then the Church couldn’t accuse me of suicide and condemn me to hell for wanting free of this suffering.”

“Unfortunately you were in no position to ask if you wanted to be saved when we found you,” Aristide answered dryly, though he could understand feeling so torn and lost inside that death seemed the only escape. “And you have information which I need to discover who is plotting against the musketeers, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to keep you alive in any case.” He turned toward the door, adding with a wry smile, “The wine really is quite good,” before heading downstairs.

Benoît picked up the glass and swallowed it with one gulp. “Stupid musketeer,” he muttered. “I’ve told him all I know. What else does he want from me?” He scrubbed at his face with his hands as he tried to decide how he felt about his once again changing circumstances. He had wine in his glass and the promise of food—even if only broth—in his belly again after months of near starvation, but it meant accepting he was practically this Aristide’s prisoner. A golden prison, perhaps, but a prison nonetheless, until such time as the musketeer decided Benoît was no longer useful to him, at which point he’d be turned out to return to his long, slow starvation. He glanced across the room at the sword propped against the wall. It would be so easy….

Balancing another bowl of soup in one hand and a fresh bottle of wine in the other, Aristide reentered the bedchamber to find Benoît trying to free himself from the bed sheets. Following the blacksmith’s gaze to the sword he’d removed during the long night’s vigil, he scowled, broth splashing as he dropped it on the table, followed by the wine. Pushing Benoît back against the pillows with a strong hand, he buckled the sword belt around his hips. “You’re barely strong enough to stand, much less wield a blade,” he observed. “Better build up your strength first, if you can ever manage to get any of this soup inside you. Maybe by then you’ll decide you’d rather live—to find whoever shot you, if for no other reason.” The musketeer smiled as he worked the cork from the bottle of wine. “Besides, it’s damned hard to run yourself through with a sword.”

Chapter 4

N
O MATTER
how many times he rode beneath the stone archway of the headquarters of the Royal Musketeers in Paris, a thrill of pride swelled Léandre’s heart. Becoming a musketeer had not been his parents’ plan for him—as a younger son of a family of minor nobility, his father had enrolled him at an early age in seminary school, with an eye to his joining the priesthood. It had not taken long once he reached puberty to demonstrate that the young acolyte was in no way suited to take to the cloth, far preferring the pleasures of the flesh to the contemplative life of the spirit. The
abbé
in charge of the seminary had been able to forgive the several instances of Léandre trysting with serving-girls from the nearby villages, a weakness to which most of his students were all too vulnerable; but when the young man was found
in flagrante
with another of his fellow seminarians, not even his family’s influence would have been sufficient to prevent his expulsion. Not that Léandre had sought it. Refusing to return home in disgrace and determined to make his own way in the world, he had pawned the few possessions he had been allowed to retain at the seminary and found his way to Paris. There, his skill with a sword had soon enough won him a place as a soldier, and after serving his apprenticeship in several lesser regiments, he had been granted the honor of acceptance into the most revered and respected company of arms in all France, the King’s own musketeers.

More comfortable hiding his emotions behind a mask of cynicism and easy humor, Léandre’s pride was nonetheless evident on his face as he turned to smile at his companion. “Let’s leave these nags at the stables and find
M.
de Tréville at once. Though ’twill seem odd to be seeking him rather than his calling for us!”

Perrin chuckled. “’Struth,” he agreed. “We need his assistance far more often than he needs ours.” They rode into the stable yard, the lads running out to take the horses, surprised to see them returned so soon and without Aristide. “No gossiping, boys,” he scolded. “We’re on musketeer business, and it doesn’t concern you sorry lot.”

Not pausing even to clean the dirt of travel from their persons, the two musketeers strode into the main hall and up the stairs to the chamber where
M.
de Tréville received visitors. Ignoring the handful of petitioners who sat waiting, Léandre swept open the door and entered unannounced, his only goal to hand over the incriminating letter as quickly as possible.

“I thought I had finally taught you better manners than that,”
M.
de Tréville chided when he saw who had barged into his antechamber unannounced. “And what brings you back to Paris when you should be in Burgundy drinking your fill of new wine?”

“Treason,” Perrin replied, seeing no one in the room but other musketeers who, he knew, would defend
M.
de Tréville as vehemently as he and Aristide and Léandre intended to do.

“Treason?” the captain of the musketeers repeated. “Who is the accused?”

“You are,” Léandre growled, handing over the letter. “We took this from a peasant on the road to Clos Vougeot. He’d been shot, though we don’t know if this was the cause or not, and he was in no shape to tell us. Aristide stays with him until he’s recovered enough to bring to Paris for questioning.”

A frown on his face,
M.
de Tréville took the letter and skimmed it quickly. “Too vague to be truly damning and yet clearly intended to raise doubt in the mind of the recipient,” he mused aloud, turning it over to seek a name or address, but the outside of the letter was blank.

“The Cardinal must be behind it,” Perrin insisted. “Who else would benefit by discrediting you?”

“The Cardinal has no need to hide behind unsigned letters,” the captain answered. “It is all too easy for him to gain the King’s ear. No, I suspect someone else is behind this duplicity.”

“Who, then?” Léandre demanded. “And what do they hope to gain by such lies?”

M.
de Tréville shrugged, well inured to the politics of court after his years at the King’s command. “Who, I could not say. The English, the Italians, the Austrians… France’s list of enemies is long. As for what they hope to gain, a distracted captain of the guard, distracted guards even, would make the King a far easier target. It is our job to make sure that does not happen. It doesn’t matter what happens to me, but the King must be protected at all costs. He is France and our future. I am just a humble musketeer.”

“You’re not ‘just’ anything,” Perrin protested. “You’re the captain of the Royal Musketeers, the man every boy in Paris aspires to be!”

“I am nothing if I don’t protect my King,”
M.
de Tréville corrected. “I will speak to him tonight when we dine together and trust that my version of the tale reaches him before any other. In the meantime, we must hope that Aristide succeeds in nursing the peasant sufficiently back to health for us to learn what he knows.”

“Should we warn the other musketeers?” Léandre asked, casting about for some way protect his captain’s honor. “There may be more attempts to spread these lies—they can be on guard for any suspicious messages, keep watch for any strangers….”

“There are always strangers at court,”
M.
de Tréville reminded them. “A new English ambassador arrived just the other day. I expect him to be at dinner tonight. Perhaps I will learn something useful. Did Aristide not mention meeting him?”

“No, he didn’t,” Perrin mused, “but if it was the day before we left, once he returned from duty we kept him too busy—” He broke off awkwardly, suddenly remembering to whom he was speaking.

“Preparing for our trip,” Léandre added, treading on Perrin’s boot. “Last minute arrangements to make; it must have slipped his mind.”

M.
de Tréville just smiled. He knew his musketeers and the paths that had led them to him as well as he knew his own past. The three misfits fit perfectly as far as he could see, and so he allowed them their fiction. “It was indeed the day before you left. Ask Aristide about the new ambassador when he returns. I would enjoy knowing his thoughts about the man. He’s quite young for one of his station.” He did not mention
vicomte
Aldwych’s attractiveness, or his suspicion that the ambassador shared the trio’s proclivity. He would leave that to Aristide to describe. He needed Léandre and Perrin focused on their jobs, not on finding and seducing the Englishman, particularly since he suspected the ambassador’s bodyguard would have something to say in the matter. Relations with England were strained enough without adding possibly unwanted sexual overtones.

“Let’s hope Aristide returns quickly,” Léandre muttered under his breath to Perrin as they bowed and took their leave.

“
T
HAT’S
looking much better,” Aristide approved as he removed the bandage from Benoît’s shoulder. His gaze swept over the young man’s chest, a few days’ decent meals having done much to fill out his unnatural gauntness, the honeyed flesh now smooth over underlying muscle which even months of hunger had not atrophied. He dipped his fingers into the pot of salve the gypsy, Raúl, had left with him, promising it would speed healing and soften the inevitable scar. Working it gently over the wound, he noted absently that the fever had gone, leaving only warm skin beneath his fingers. Not allowing himself to linger, his gaze rose to the blacksmith’s face, noting with approval that it did not reflect pain at his touch. Binding the wound with a fresh cloth to prevent the rough tunic from rubbing against healing flesh, he nodded in satisfaction. “Another few days and you won’t even need the bandage. Do you always heal this quickly?”

“I’ve never been wounded this badly,” Benoît admitted as the musketeer fussed around him. He had grown used to the man’s hands on him over the past few days, to the point that it no longer bothered him to sit shirtless while Aristide tended his wound, “but it does seem remarkably fast to me. It must be all the good food you keep insisting I eat.” He didn’t point out that he had no way to pay for the lodging and meals. Aristide had found him on the side of the road. Surely the musketeer realized he had nothing but the clothes on his back.

“You’ll need your strength for the ride to Paris,” Aristide answered, gathering up his supplies from the bedding. The first few days, his patient had done little but sleep, and Aristide suspected the young blacksmith was recovering from far more than just the ball in his shoulder. Gradually he had remained awake longer, but though Aristide had tried to draw him into conversation over meals or as he tended the wound, Benoît remained reticent, sharing little about his past beyond what he had recounted the afternoon he awoke. A thought occurred to the musketeer, and he added, “Would you like to come with me to see to the horses? A bit more time on your feet will do you no harm, and I expect you’re more than ready to get some fresh air.”

Benoît shrugged. “If you wish it,” he agreed. The horse he’d been riding was no great prize by noble standards, but if it hadn’t been lost, perhaps he could sell it to some farmer and have some means of living until he was well enough to work again, though that would be some weeks yet, he suspected. He hated the thought of parting with Sagace, but he couldn’t condemn his mount to the same slow starvation he was likely to suffer. His shoulder no longer throbbed constantly, but he could only move his arm a little still, nothing like the range of motion he would need to wield a hammer with any strength.

Aristide could wish Benoît showed more enthusiasm, for while his charge’s physical stamina had increased and he had made no further mention of taking his own life, the continued emotional listlessness concerned him more than he let show. But he needed to check on Orphée and hoped seeing his own horse would awaken some spark of interest in the young blacksmith. Once Benoît had stiffly eased the shirt Aristide had lent him over his head—he was still thin enough that it hung in loose folds over his slender torso—and pushed carefully to his feet, Aristide waved a hand to indicate he should precede him down the narrow staircase.

Benoît negotiated the stairs carefully, not wanting to fall and reopen his wound. The noise of the taproom seemed incredibly loud after the peaceful stillness of the upper chamber. He grimaced and turned toward the exit, enjoying the fresh air. Despite Aristide’s best attempts, the bedchamber was stuffy and smelled faintly of blood.

After watching the young man negotiate his way to the stables to be sure he was steady on his feet, Aristide turned inside and found the stall where Orphée was housed. The big bay snorted loudly and tossed his head when he caught sight of his master, and Aristide endured a few hard nudges to the chest as the horse conveyed his displeasure at being kept penned inside for so many days. Rubbing a hand over the strong neck and murmuring softly, Aristide calmed his mount. When the bay started lipping at the ends of his hair, threatening to pull it from its queue, Aristide bent to the saddlebags at the side of the stall. Extracting a pair of apples, he offered one to Orphée, who bit into it eagerly. Glancing over his shoulder to see Benoît hovering uncertainly at the stable door, he tossed the second apple toward him. “Here,” he called, smiling as the blacksmith caught the fruit awkwardly with his left hand. “A treat for your horse.”

“That’s a fine animal,” Benoît commented, catching the apple and offering it to Sagace in the next stall. The horse was the one thing he had left from his life before the plague. “Do all musketeers merit such noble steeds?”

“Orphée is an old friend,” Aristide answered, sidestepping the question and reaching for a comb from the stable wall to begin brushing the bay’s mane. “We’ve been through many a campaign together, haven’t we?” he asked, the horse tossing its head almost as if in reply. “What about yours?” he asked in turn. “Meaning no offense, it looks as though it would be more comfortable pulling a plow than wearing a saddle. Though he didn’t run far after you were shot. Most horses would have panicked at the noise of the musket.”

“His name is Sagace,” Benoît replied, stroking the heavy neck. “He’s all I have left of my village, though I suppose I shall have to sell him soon, too, since I don’t see my saddlebag anywhere. What money I had was in it and all I had to keep either of us. With no way to work, I have no way to feed him.”

“My companions found a knapsack beside you on the road, though if you truly were beset by bandits, I fear any money in it was long gone,” Aristide admitted. “I don’t remember seeing it in the bedchamber, so perhaps they took it with them to Paris. You can reclaim it when we arrive there—though you’ll certainly need to keep your horse at least until then. Orphée is a patient mount, but I would not ask him to bear both of us all the way back to the capital.”

“There’s nothing in it to reclaim if the money’s gone,” Benoît replied with a shrug. “You would have done better to leave me to die on the side of the road without ever waking, you know. With my shoulder injured, ’tis only a matter of time before I starve. I can’t keep imposing on your generosity forever.”