The musketeer's apprentice (22 page)
Read The musketeer's apprentice Online
Authors: Sarah d' Almeida
Athos nodded his condescension of this unusual reception, and presently they wound around the staircase, to arrive at a door, which the gentleman leaned over to open. Inside was a comfortable entrance room, the floor tiled in yellow.
There, through foresight or training, someone had left a basin and several pitchers of water, as well as towels for the hands, and various rags on the floor, presumably to clean their footwear. Two footmen waited, in a corner, but didn’t move to receive their lord, as he said, “You may clean yourself here. I must clean and change before going within, or my lady wife will have my head on a pike.”
Hoping it was metaphorical, Athos examined himself by the light of the broad window that took up most of the far wall in this room. To his surprise he found he had somehow got blood on his hands, and a slight stain on the cuff of his shirt.
Cleaning it was quick work, with the water provided, and he cleaned himself using a corner of a towel, dipped in water, to remove the spot of blood from his cuff. While he was doing so, the valets stepped forward and helped the Monsieur de Comeau out of his suit. It was all Athos could do not to smile, because the gentleman seemed as careless of undressing before a stranger as any musketeer, used to sharing quarters with his fellows, or any commoner who’d slept in a bed with many siblings. In fact, for lack of modesty or self-consciousness, the Monsieur de Comeau could easily rival Porthos.
He removed his suit, till he was left in his underwear, by which time Athos had finished using the basin. One of the valets threw the stained water out, and rinsed the basin, after which the gentleman proceeded to wash himself with remarkable thoroughness, and to use a comb in his, relatively short—barely touching his ears—black hair.
Even while he was combing his hair—and removing a wealth of straw from it—his men were dressing him, with the aplomb of those who had been trained to this and were used to performing their task without the least cooperation from their subject.
So it was that, as he finished combing himself, one of his valets was lacing the front of a splendid doublet in fawn-colored velvet, while the other one was contriving— to his lord’s considerable inattention—to get a pair of highly polished boots on the gentleman’s feet.
Athos made use of a rag in the corner to clean the main muck from his feet which wasn’t much, his having spent a very short time in the stables.
They were both presentable at the same time, when the gentleman smiled at Athos, “What did you mean to see me about?” He hesitated. “At least I assume you didn’t come to see the newborn foal?”
“No.” Athos said, mindful of the presence of the valets and not wishing to question the gentleman about what might be an embarrassing subject in front of them. “He seemed lively enough.”
“Aye, it’s a good bloodline. Part of the reason I might have been a bit foolish about it. Could have got myself bit. So . . . What did you wish to ask me?”
“It is,” Athos said, not meeting the man’s eyes. “A rather private matter.”
“Oh, so?” The gentleman’s eyebrows raised, but he nodded, and waved one of his valet’s away. “Francois, go to the kitchen and bring us a bottle of the red and . . . some cheese?” He looked over at Athos. “You’ll forgive me, but I missed my breakfast, dragged out of bed because the mare was giving birth. And while I doubt there’s anything ready and cooked now, since the kitchen will be preparing for lunch, there should be cheese and bread, if you don’t mind . . .”
Athos bowed.
“Very well, Francois, cheese and bread and a bottle of that red we got last week from my farm.”
Francois bowed and disappeared, and the gentleman opened a door bordered in gold trim, onto a room set in a far more opulent style. It was a man’s room—or at least it had been decorated by a woman with the intention that it should be a man’s room—with yellow silk curtains and straight-backed yellow silk upholstered chairs. Against a window, a small table had been pushed, which was piled high with documents, a welter of writing quills and a few pots of ink.
The gentleman led Athos away from that table and towards where two chairs sat almost side-by-side. He took one, and waved Athos onto the other.
“I don’t have the pleasure of your acquaintance,” he prompted.
Athos smiled. “I am a musketeer, and I am known as Athos.”
The eyebrows went up. “Ah. I have heard rumors, in fact . . . It matters not, but there are those who say that half of his Majesty’s corps of musketeers are noblemen in disguise. ”
“Not half,” Athos said smiling.
The gentleman opened his mouth, and it looked for a moment as though he would say that surely Athos was a nobleman in disguise, but then he seemed to think better of it, and shrugged. “Well . . . It matters not. For some people the birth is evident in feature and movement.”
Athos wondered if that was true. He very much suspected what was evident in him, other than a certain beauty of feature and form, which he knew he had inherited from the Countess his mother, was his father’s excellent and relentless training.
At any rate, his host was disposed to wave this away and deal as though with equals. “You meant to speak to me of . . . ?” He prompted.
Athos nodded, even as he studied exactly what to speak to the gentleman of. “There was a boy, sometime back,” he said at last, speaking slowly as he weighed the best way to phrase it all. “A child of about eleven, with auburn hair, who might have sought employment with you?”
Monsieur de Comeau looked at Athos a long time, his eyes seeming to look inward. Not a guilty expression, nor exactly a puzzled one, more the look of someone who is listening to another person speak in a foreign language and can’t make heads or tails of it. At last, the fine dark eyebrows drew together and he said, “I beg your pardon?”
Athos sighed. “I’m putting it very badly,” he said. “I know. But I don’t know how else to put it. I’m not in the habit, commonly, of questioning noblemen about their private life or their private decisions, or even the street urchins who might have pestered them.” The gentleman frowned as though not sure what Athos might mean by that, and Athos continued. “There is this boy who came to my friend Porthos, some time ago, and begged him to teach him fencing. He presented himself as a young man of birth, but we have reason to believe that he was a mere plebeian. He lived—and indeed was born at the Hangman—”
At the name of the inn, Monsieur de Comeau’s expression changed, shifting so fast through various changes from astonishment to shock, to surprise, to . . . anger? At the back of it all there was something else, something in his eyes. It was a familiar expression, but one that Athos was hard put to place.
“Ah,” the gentleman said and leaned back in his chair as though to appraise Athos from a long distance. “Ah. Guillaume. ”
Athos nodded. “I see you know him?”
“Know him?” the gentleman asked. “I have often been tempted to strangle him with my bare hands.”
Athos was conscious of inhaling sharply before he could stop himself, and he saw the gentleman look surprised at this, then shrug. “My dear sir, I don’t mean that literally. Surely . . . But Guillaume needs at least a very sound thrashing.”
“If you pardon my asking, why?”
The gentleman shook his head and opened his mouth, but at that moment his servants came in with wine and bread, a plate of cheese, and a bowl of butter. While they disposed it on the table, the two men held their tongues.
Once their cups were filled and bread broken, and the servants had left, they resumed talking.
“Guillaume,” the gentleman said, pronouncing the name as if it tasted wrong to his tongue. “Guillaume is . . . Well . . . I suppose no better could be expected of him, growing up as he did at the back of a tavern and with a . . . well . . . a common slut for a mother, but . . .”
“His mother was . . . a bawd?” Athos asked.
Monsieur de Comeau shrugged. He took a sip of his wine. “Oh, mind you, I don’t know if she charged, save, of course that her admirers were likely to give her gifts, but she was known not to be too attached to her virtue. She would drink a little and she would . . . well, give in to the advances of whoever . . .”
Athos’s eyes had grown big, and he said, “I can’t ask if—”
“Oh, of course man. Not . . . Not in the last seven years, since I’ve been married. But before? Yes, of course. I was . . . in Paris, alone. That was when I used to frequent the tavern and I daresay Pigeon made herself agreeable half a dozen times.” He frowned. “That’s how the boy knew me, and that is, I fancy, how he came to me. But how come you—” He tore a piece off the bread and favored Athos with an evaluating once-over. “A man of quality, to concern yourself in the brat’s affairs?”
“My friend was teaching him fencing,” Athos said, conscious of how little explanation that was, in fact. “And he has disappeared.”
“Oh, depend upon it, he has cast about for another father.”
Athos, in the middle of swallowing a mouthful of wine was surprised enough by this to stare. “Another father?”
The man nodded. “He’d got it into his head that I was his father. How, I don’t know, since even the tavern keeper tells everyone that when she arrived in Paris, and at his establishment, she was already big with Guillaume. But he was convinced of it, or at least pretended to be.” He took a broad bite of the bread and shook his head. “It is quite possible that he simply feigned this belief because I was the most noble of his mother’s clients and he knew so.”
“And what did he wish of you?” Athos asked. “Not . . . recognition?”
The man shook his head. “Not . . . as such. Guillaume is not deluded. He is a sharp boy, actually, is our Guillaume. What he wanted of me was an allowance, or, as he put it, enough money to go on with, so he could set up as a young gentleman in town, after which—he assured me magnanimously—he would make his own way in the world.”
Athos listened, astonished both at the daring of the boy and the casual way in which the man told him this.
“And you?” Athos asked. “If you pardon my asking, how did you react to such demands?”
The gentleman laughed, loudly. “Why, as anyone of sense would react. Well . . . and at that perhaps not, because I think most people of sense would be more outraged by it than I was. You see, the thing is, I nurtured a fondness for the rascal. Very bright boy, though the conditions of his birth perhaps not all that could be desired. I wanted to . . . I didn’t wish to quell his enterprising spirit completely, no more than I wished to pay, so that his false accusation should not be carried to my wife. And so . . .”
“And so . . . ?”
“I had him thrashed and thrown out the yard.”
“And you haven’t seen him since?”
Monsieur de Comeau flashed a bright smile between bites of bread. “Oh, I’ve seen him. He’s come around again. He’s knowledgeable of horses and quite good with them, you know. Probably a result of having grown up in a stable. He’s come around now and then to help the grooms, but he has not bothered me. In fact, he takes care to stay as far away from me as possible.” He shrugged. “Someday he’ll grow out of his ridiculous pretensions and make a fine groom whom I’d be glad to hire.”
It was on Athos’s tongue to ask about the horses and the vast establishment, all out of proportion to the lodging and the perceived wealth of the owner. It was none of his concern, and truly he had no excuse for even thinking about it. Other people’s finances had nothing to do with Athos. He’d been taught that money was nothing next to nobility of birth and even now, he felt guilty thinking about it.
And yet, wouldn’t it be possible that a gentleman as fond of horse flesh as Monsieur de Comeau, and as yet having failed to achieve any particular royal sinecure, would have been paid to attract the child here or to poison him? By the Cardinal, or even by Monsieur Coquenard, the husband of Porthos’s mistress?
Just because Monsieur Coquenard was old, it shouldn’t be supposed he was deaf, dumb and blind. And he certainly had cunning and money. In many ways, in fact, this plot bespoke more of him than the Cardinal who would have more ways in which to ensnare Porthos—and would probably target Aramis and not Porthos for his wrath. But Monsieur Coquenard . . .
Athos couldn’t think of any way to question Monsieur de Comeau on the matter that wouldn’t have brought about a duel, a duel in which he would almost certainly kill the man. And because Monsieur de Comeau had no fame—no reputation at all—as a duelist, it would be rumored far and wide that Athos killed the innocent.
It couldn’t be tolerated. He made a correct bow to Monsieur de Comeau and walked down the stairs to the sun baked yard filled with horses. Porthos was waiting by the gate, as though all his own enquiries were done and he had nothing more to do with it.
A sudden feeling of being watched, and Athos looked over his shoulder and at a window high on the facade of the house, where he’d swear a woman was watching from. Just a hint of long hair, an impression of an oval face.
Truth be told that a woman should watch Athos was nothing new. They often did, noblewomen and maids alike. And yet, this one’s glance made the space between his shoulder blades prickle.
He determinedly turned away from that window, and joined Porthos by the gate, only casting a final look over his shoulder at the horses and grooms in the yard. Monsieur de Comeau had joined them and was inspecting the back leg of a nervous grey.
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