Read The musketeer's apprentice Online
Authors: Sarah d' Almeida
The musketeer's apprentice (9 page)
Another
harumph
and Aramis hastened to add, “I mean, I’m not sure I look at nobility the same way others do. Look at me, I let my servant run on and on at me about my misbehavior and how I should long since have entered the church.”
harumph
and Aramis hastened to add, “I mean, I’m not sure I look at nobility the same way others do. Look at me, I let my servant run on and on at me about my misbehavior and how I should long since have entered the church.”
This elicited a chuckle from Porthos, which, at least, had the advantage of sounding like natural Porthos. “We all think Bazin would be made far more acceptable by a regular thrashing, or at least the liberal use of a muzzle.”
This was such a common complaint, that Aramis smiled, for a moment, and forgot he was aggrieved with Porthos, before coming back to his main argument. “The point is,” Aramis said, “that though Bazin is no more than the son of tenants on my parents’ land, I know he was brought up for the church as I was, and his mind is, if not the equal of mine—” Did Porthos truly need to snort? “If not the equal of mine, at least close enough to it that what he says might illuminate my path as I try to make myself worthy enough to enter the church.”
Porthos made a sound again. “So you’re not sure what’s noble and what isn’t, but you believe this could be a plot to implicate me? That people, strangers and people who’ve talked to me, would think I killed just to prevent it being known that not all my ancestors were noble? And killed a child, yet?”
Aramis shrugged. “We all know you to be proud, Porthos, all of us.”
“Indeed? In what way am I more proud than any of you?”
Aramis felt blood rush to his cheeks. There was nothing for it but he would have to list his friend’s defects of character, or at least the visible outward marks of those defects. The truth was that beneath his quick gossiping tongue and the eye that was ever ready to apprehend and mock a fashion faux pas, Aramis was more tolerant than he would wish anyone to know.
His maxim, or at least one of the maxims that cluttered his religiously brought-up conscience was “Judge not lest you be judged.” He knew how often—particularly in sins of the flesh—he fell short of the Christian ideal. Particularly the ideal of the Christian bound to a religious life of chastity and obedience. He didn’t like to throw Porthos’s vanity, or Athos’s drinking, or D’Artagnan’s more than eager wish to view everything as a challenge to a duel into his friends’ teeth. And he hoped and fervently prayed they wouldn’t throw in his teeth his inability to resist any beautiful female who set her mind on dallying with him.
But now he would have to and there was nothing for it. He waved at Porthos. “There is the way you dress,” he said, stiffly. “I don’t find anything wrong with it, mind,” he lied. Truth was there were a hundred things wrong with it, but mostly the fact that a well brought up gentleman wouldn’t dream of mixing stripes with dots or adorning his person with three different shades of gold trim and a bit of silver thrown in just in case. It wasn’t the sort of wrong he meant, anyway, he told himself. “But there are few musketeers who, on a musketeer’s pay, wear that much good quality velvet and such a profusion of gold and silver.”
“What is wrong with wishing to appear nice?”
“Nothing,” Aramis said. And floundered. “Nothing at all. You know what care I take with my own appearance. But then there is . . . and mind you, I mean no offense about your most excellent Athenais.”
“You leave Athenais out of this,” Porthos roared causing a few people near them to turn and stare and others, farther up, to run out of their way, possibly convinced that Porthos’s noise was a carriage at full trundle coming up behind them.
“I did say she was most excellent.”
“Indeed she is, and you should abstain from mentioning her name at all, except in praise.”
“I am praising it,” Aramis said, at his wits end. “I have nothing against the lady or her mind, even if she sometimes thinks it fair to make sport of me.” He lifted a hand to stop another outburst from his friend. “But is it, or is it not true that you tell everyone around that she’s a duchess or a princess, or another of the high heads of the realm.”
Porthos sulked at this, setting his lips in a taut line and glaring at Aramis. “She should be. And she is noble born. And by nobility of mind and capacity of thought, she should be . . .”
“Oh, I’m not disputing that,” Aramis said. “But still, if you think so highly of her you could just say that—that she’s as good as any princess. Not tell all and sundry that she is a princess.”
Porthos shrugged. “I know what people think of me. Musketeers. Courtiers. They think I’m rough and dumb. And I . . .” He shrugged. “I don’t want them to think themselves justified and to assume I can’t aspire to the highest ladies in the court. I can, you know? When I first came to Paris, and even when I first became a musketeer, I bedded my share of them. Only they are all so incredibly boring, all full of their own magnificence and beauty and never wishing to talk of anything else. So I have . . . Athenais. But I don’t think that’s what people would believe. They would think Athenais’s station in life is the best I can aspire to.”
“Yes,” Aramis said patiently. He considered pointing out that the hole in Porthos’s pedigree was of the same kind, but then he thought Porthos would point out that he’d never threatened to kill anyone who discovered that Porthos’s lover was nothing but an accountant’s wife. So he sighed. “And then there’s D’Artagnan.”
“Eh? What is wrong with D’Artagnan? Oh, yes, I know what he’s said. His father is a younger son and the whole of their property is so small that the area of the cemetery devoted to children is larger than their entire holdings, but Aramis . . . He’s clearly nobly born, taught to use his sword at an early age and . . . Aramis, he at least was taught to read at an early age. He understands you even when you are full tilt in one of your theological speeches and I suspect he understands Athos’s quotations too. At least sometimes he smiles when Athos says something that makes no sense to me. So I don’t see what D’Artagnan has to do with your thinking everyone could believe I would kill a child to hide some imaginary shame over my ancestors.”
“I didn’t mean any of those things,” Aramis said. “But cast your mind upon your first meeting with D’Artagnan. Did you or did you not challenge him to a duel for having got enmeshed in your baldric and thus showing people that it was not gold on the other side?”
Porthos’s eyes went very wide, then he frowned as though trying to understand what Aramis might mean by all of this. “In public,” he said. “He did it in public, and when I’d been showing off the new baldric too. What was I to do? Oh, I understand now that he didn’t do it on purpose. He was just in such a blessed hurry to catch up to Rochefort. But at the time it seemed to me that his entire purpose in life was to show the world that my baldric was not nearly so fine as it looked.”
“See, and you challenged him to a duel.”
Porthos raised an eyebrow as though pondering the matter—again an unaccustomed expression and one that would have looked more natural on Athos. “So, I challenged him to a duel. As did you, if I remember, because the pup tried to return to you the handkerchief of a lady you didn’t want it to be known you associated with. And Athos—Athos of all people—challenged the young Gascon to a duel because D’Artagnan careened into him and failed to apologize enough for the hurt he caused Athos’s shoulder. I believe at the time apologizing enough would have consisted of slitting his own throat then jumping into a roaring fire.” Porthos smiled, sheepishly. “The truth, my friend, is that none of us was himself that day. We’d just had the very unpleasant experience of being arrested by the guards of the Cardinal, followed by the even more unpleasant experience of having Monsieur de Treville flay our flesh from our bones with sarcasm. Surely you don’t think any of us is normally that thin-skinned?”
Aramis couldn’t help but grin. “Well, D’Artagnan is.”
“Indeed,” Porthos said and grinned, and twirled his moustache in a more accustomed manner, probably at a young woman who was standing in the doorway of a tavern ahead and smiling at him through the gathering gloom. “But still, I challenged him for a duel. I did not poison him or knife him in the back, did I? I’m not a villain. And D’Artagnan wasn’t and isn’t exactly a child. Kindly recall what he did to Chausac and de Brisarac on his very first confrontations.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“No buts about it. Just because I’m willing to challenge someone over exposing my baldric, it doesn’t mean I would poison someone else for exposing my pedigree. And I’m sure all other musketeers would know that.”
“Ah, yes, but does the Cardinal know it also?”
Porthos sighed. “They say he’s shrewd and that he has spies everywhere. Surely he knows I would no more kill someone by stealth than I would spread gossip about someone behind their back. If someone makes me aggrieved enough to wish to kill them or even to say anything unpleasant about them, I say it to their face or call them out to a duel. I do not, and never have, done things by stealth. I’m not good at it, at any rate.”
“Indeed,” Aramis said.
“So if this were the Cardinal’s plot, he would have known it wouldn’t work.”
“Porthos.” Aramis was sure the edge of impatience in his voice was now making people stare at him. “His eminence might know you’d never do it. But he would think people believe you vain and proud, and that your being vain and proud, you’d be a logical suspect for this.”
“Oh,” Porthos said. His expression cleared for a moment, then became charged again. “I hope he’s wrong. If he does think that. Because . . . because I hope most people know I’m honorable, also.”
“Indeed,” Aramis said.
Porthos nodded. And then with that inconsequence full of meaning of which only Porthos was capable, he added, “But you know, we’re all now friends with D’Artagnan.”
To Aramis’s blank look, he explained as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “So the duel wasn’t that important. Perhaps you’re wrong. Perhaps most people realize that I wouldn’t kill a child because of my ancestry. Perhaps even if there is one person out there evil enough to commit murder for that reason, perhaps even if all this came out, no one else would believe it.”
“Perhaps,” Aramis said, though secretly he suspected that this was no more than wishful thinking on Porthos’s part. “And yet, I would not wish to risk it. So I hope we find who murdered the boy quickly, if indeed he was murdered. Which means, too, finding his family, through them we’ll know any contacts he might—or might not—have had with the Cardinal. And we’ll be prepared to avenge Guillaume.”
“We are agreed on that,” Porthos said.
And so, while having a fascinating discussion about baldrics and pedigree, they left behind the noisy and bustling areas of town and walked now along a street lined with mansions, most of them with guarded gates. Aramis thought it best to keep his council.
A Propinquity of the Heart; When Everything Adds to a Good Impression; Athos’s Amusement
"WHY
is it logical?” Athos asked D’Artagnan, "that we should go to your landlord’s first? Surely not that many noblemen lodge nearby?”
is it logical?” Athos asked D’Artagnan, "that we should go to your landlord’s first? Surely not that many noblemen lodge nearby?”
D’Artagnan couldn’t seem to remember why it was logical at all. His home was within walking distance, but it was hardly in the best part of town. Rather, it was in an area frequented by the bourgeoisie and not particularly wealthy bourgeoisie at that. The Rue des Fossoyers where the young guard of Monsieur des Essarts lodged, was broad and lined on both sides with tall buildings that sheltered shops on the bottom floors. Some of the merchants lived on the bottom floors, too, while other lived above their shops. But usually all or part of the houses were rented to people very much like D’Artagnan—young men seeking their fortunes in Paris and with their foot on what could be considered the first rung in the ladder of success.
In D’Artagnan’s case, his new uniform of the guards, almost indistinguishable from that of the musketeers save for a slightly lighter color, marked him as noble born. Other young gentlemen wore the garb of clerks or apprentices in various professions ranging from law to blacksmithing.
D’Artagnan knew, or at least suspected that some of them might be noble . . . and if they were noble . . . He felt Athos’s stare on him and shook his head. “I thought,” he said, his desperate cunning saving him as it so often did. “That if they’re not too wealthy a family and not too well known at court, they might have had dealings with my landlord who is, among other things, a grocer. I suspect he has all kinds of other businesses too, though, from lending on security of some sort, to perhaps selling used clothes or appointments that such a family might need. Since Aramis said the suit didn’t fit well . . .”
And on this, D’Artagnan ground to a stop and shrugged. Athos nodded. “And since the suit didn’t fit well you thought that of all the possible shops in Paris, the boy must have been seen by your landlord.” He cleared his throat. “I thought you were several weeks in arrears with your rent, though?”
D’Artagnan shrugged. “If we do it properly we will not need to see my landlord,” he said. “His wife, who normally stays at the palace is visiting and she . . .” He felt the blush climb to his cheeks and heat there, like a blazing furnace beneath the skin. He shook his head, as he thought of the beautiful woman and wished that he wasn’t quite so transparent about his interest.
But Athos must have been in a kind mood. He inclined his head slightly. “Ah. Sometimes even the logic of seventeen is right, or at least leads one onto the right path. Don’t worry about it, D’Artagnan, as I see no evil. We might as well ask. In a place like this, full of merchants and clerks, you’re right that someone might very well have seen the boy who was almost certainly not high nobility.”
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