Traitor's Chase (19 page)

T
HE
M
USKETEERS QUICKLY RETURNED TO
S
T
. T
ROPHIMUS
to see if Milady might have returned there. The monks hadn't seen her, but one of them knew where to find the horse trader who had betrayed the boys. His name was Augustus, and he had a small office just off the market square.

Athos set off for it immediately, even though he was in terrible pain. He hobbled along so quickly that his fellow Musketeers had to pursue him through the streets.

“Athos, wait!” Porthos implored him. “You need to go easy on that leg! We need to clean and dress that wound!”

“There will be time for that later!” Athos said. “As soon as this trader gets wind of what's happened, he'll most likely flee as well.”

“And you'll die from blood loss,” Greg argued. “Listen to reason, will you?” He looked toward Aramis—who was usually the voice of reason—for help. But Aramis had said almost nothing since Milady's disappearance. He, too, had refused to tend to his wound. He was so distraught about Milady, he barely looked up to see where he was going.

Athos, meanwhile, was consumed by rage. Despite his wounded leg, he hadn't stopped moving since the Arena. He'd merely cinched a tourniquet around his thigh and had been charging about the city, determined to track Milady down.

“What's got into him?” Porthos whispered to Greg as they reached the market plaza. “The way he got along with Milady, I'd have thought he'd be
happy
she's gone.”

“You know how chivalrous Athos is,” Greg said, afraid to divulge the truth. “If there's a damsel in distress, he has to save her.”

Catherine was right on their heels. Her emotions seemed to be a mixture of Aramis's despair and Athos's resolve.

But Greg was wary. The more he played the ambush at the Arena over in his mind, the more convinced he was that Milady had betrayed them. He thought back to the day at the waterfall. Had Milady somehow left a message for Valois? That would explain how Valois and the assassins had found them. And now that the attack had failed, Milady had fled with Valois before being exposed as a traitor. Most likely, they had gone to regroup with Dinicoeur, Richelieu, and the army.

But there was no way Greg could tell the others that. He had no proof—and was sure Athos and Aramis wouldn't even believe him if he did.

And yet, even Greg had to admit there was still a chance he was wrong about Milady. What if she truly was innocent? Perhaps Valois and the assassins had tracked the boys down without any help and now had captured Milady. If that were the case, Greg would feel terribly guilty if anything happened to her. But there was something about this that didn't quite make sense, and he had a nagging feeling that he'd missed something important.

Once the Musketeers reached the market, it wasn't hard to locate the horse trader. They merely had to follow the smell. There was a stable on the far side of the plaza that reeked of horse manure, as if it hadn't been cleaned out in days, if not weeks. There was only a single horse in it at the time—a flea-bitten nag so starved her ribs poked through her skin—and Augustus was currently trying to sell her.

He went white with fear the moment he saw the Musketeers. “You!” he gasped, as though they'd risen from the dead. Then he ran for the door.

Athos was on him in a second. Ignoring the pain in his leg, he charged through the stables and pounced on the trader. They smashed through the gate of an empty stall and slammed into the ground. Augustus was driven face-first into a two-day-old pile of manure.

Athos grabbed a handful of Augustus's hair, yanked his head up, and hissed in his ear. “Where did they go?”

“Who?” Augustus asked.

Athos slammed the trader's face back into the manure. “You don't want to play stupid with me,” he snarled. “Four men hired you to help them kill us. Only two of them are still alive. Unless you want to be next, answer the question.”

He yanked Augustus's face up again. The trader gasped for breath. “I don't know where they went …” he began.

Athos snapped a knife out of his boot.

“Wait!” Augustus pleaded. “Let me finish! I'm telling the truth about not knowing where they went.... But I do know
some
things that may be of help.”

“Like what?” Athos demanded.

“They were an odd group: three Spaniards and a Frenchman. Although the Frenchman was the leader, the Spaniards didn't like him. They talked behind his back—in Spanish, so he wouldn't understand.”

“But you did?” Athos asked.

“Yes. I speak Spanish,” Augustus replied. “They didn't know, so they didn't realize I could understand them. They said they were glad this mission would soon be over so they could regroup with their countrymen.”

“That's exactly what they said?” Porthos asked. “‘Regroup with their countrymen?' Not ‘Return to Spain'?”

“Yes,” Augustus said. “Regroup. Like there were more of them around here. You're aware that someone has been buying up every bit of food and livestock in the countryside?”

“We've presumed there's an army nearby,” Greg put in.

“That's the guess of everyone in Arles as well,” Augustus agreed.

“And yet, you've all gone and supplied it,” Athos snarled through clenched teeth. “Even though it has invaded our country.”

“And what would
you
do if you were in our position?” Augustus asked. “If we refuse to sell to the Spaniards, they'll simply take what they want. There is no one to stop them. Paris has never done a thing for us. You are the first emissaries from the king any of us have ever seen in our lives. Louis has never sent an army here to protect us from the Spaniards. He only cares about protecting himself and his precious capital city.”

Greg shared a self-conscious look with Porthos. Augustus had a point.

Athos wasn't so convinced. “The king hasn't sent an army because he has no idea this is happening. We have only just informed him of the possibility....”

“Oh,” Augustus said. “So the king's defense isn't that he doesn't care about us. It's that he's ignorant.”

Athos flushed red, but Greg stepped in before he could take his anger out on Augustus. “I think we've got offtrack here,” Greg told the trader. “You want the king to send an army? We can make him do it. The more we know about the Spanish, the more we can help. Do you have any idea where this army might be?”

“From what I understand, most of the goods the Spanish have purchased have been delivered to the countryside west of Nîmes,” Augustus said. “If there's an army, that's where it must be. And I'm guessing the assassins who came after you went to meet them there.”

“Then that's where Milady is.” It was the first time Aramis had spoken in more than an hour. The clue to Milady's whereabouts had injected new life into him, as though he suddenly had a glimmer of hope again. “But … Nîmes is north of us, isn't it?”

“Northwest,” Augustus corrected. “About a day's ride.”

“So … they're not heading toward the river?” Aramis asked. “How do they intend to get to Paris?”

“Overland, I suppose,” Augustus said. “The Rhône might be the fastest route for a small force, but there's no way an entire army could travel up it. There aren't enough boats in all of France. But there's an old Roman road from Nîmes that heads north....”

“To Paris?” Porthos inquired.

“I assume so,” Augustus said. “Although I can't say for sure. I don't know anyone who's ever gone the whole way there. I've only been as far as the aqueduct.”

“What aqueduct?” Aramis demanded.

“The Pont du Gard,” Augustus explained. “The Romans built it. It used to bring water to Nîmes, but it stopped working two hundred years ago. It still functions as a bridge, though, over the Gard River.”

The Musketeers looked to one another. It seemed to Greg that they were all of one mind immediately.

“We need to go to Nîmes,” Aramis said. “To observe this army and rescue Milady.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Porthos agreed.

“I've told you everything I know,” Augustus said. “Have I absolved myself?”

“Not quite yet.” Athos got back in the trader's face. “We need some horses.”

“I don't have any more!” Augustus cried. “I swear it.”

“But you know where to find some, I'm sure.” Athos tightened his grip on Augustus's hair. “Six horses would go a very long way toward absolving your sins. Otherwise, I believe the penalty for conspiring to kill a Musketeer is death.”

“Six horses,” Augustus said quickly. “I think I might know someone.”

Within fifteen minutes Augustus had tracked down six of the remaining horses in Arles. Athos refused to let Augustus out of his sight for an instant, lest the trader attempt to betray them again, so he and Porthos stayed with him while Aramis, Catherine, and Greg headed back to the boat to gather their gear.

“We ought to send another pigeon,” Aramis said as they hurried down the dock. “To let the king know the Spaniards will be coming over the Roman road, rather than from the Rhône.”

“But we don't know that for sure,” Greg cautioned. “We only have four pigeons left. Perhaps we should wait until we know the army's route before wasting one.”

“It's a moot point,” Catherine said, pointing to their boat.

The cage that had held the pigeons had been smashed to bits. The birds—and thus, their only ability to communicate with Paris—were gone.

TWENTY

A
LTHOUGH THE OTHERS WERE IN A DESPERATE HURRY TO
leave the city and track down Milady, there was one more essential thing Greg needed to do before they left. While the others packed up the horses, he raced back to St. Trophimus.

Brother Timothy answered the door. “Can anyone here read Greek?” Greg demanded.

“Brother Leo can,” Timothy replied.

Greg didn't even wait for Timothy to lead him to the library. He charged through the monastery and found Brother Leo exactly where he'd last seen him, hunched over his desk.

“Begging your pardon, Brother,” Greg said. “But I have something I need translated.”

“I'll be with you in due time,” Leo said, without looking up.

“It won't take long,” Greg pleaded. “And I'm in a very big hurry....”

“I'm sure you've heard that patience is a virtue,” Leo chided. He dipped his quill pen in ink, then delicately shaded one of the pictures on the border with painstaking care.

“I think this will help keep the man who stole the text from you from recovering the Devil's Stone,” Greg said.

Leo looked up from his work, and Greg proffered Dinicoeur's map and pointed at the letters on it. “Can you read this?”

Leo took the map and studied it. After a few seconds, Leo handed the paper back with a quizzical expression. “I can read it, though it doesn't make much sense to me. All it says is ‘the crown of Minerva.' Does that mean anything to you?”

Greg frowned. He'd been hoping for much more than that. “Not really,” he admitted. “I don't even know who Minerva could be.”

“She was a Roman goddess,” Leo offered. “The equivalent of the Greeks' Athena. Goddess of wisdom, medicine, commerce, poetry, music, and magic.”

“Still doesn't help.” Greg snuck a glance at his watch. It was time to get back to the others. “Sorry for wasting your time, Brother. I must get back to my friends.”

“The pursuit of knowledge is never a waste of time,” Leo replied, but Greg was already racing out the door.

As he ran back through the streets of Arles, he chided himself for ever thinking the translation might solve his problems. What had he expected, that Dinicoeur would have written ‘The second half of the Devil's Stone is right here' on his map?

Maybe the inscription didn't even pertain to the Devil's Stone, Greg thought now. Maybe it was merely idle doodling. Maybe Dinicoeur hadn't even written it....