Like D’Artagnan, Athos had washed the travel dust and changed into fresh clothes. But he looked even more browbeaten than D’Artagnan, whether by the decadent surroundings or by meeting his childhood friend, D’Artagnan could not say.
D’Artagnan backed into his own room, ahead of Athos, who closed and locked the door behind himself, then stalked around the room, straightening a picture and looking behind a tapestry. “D’Artagnan, I trust your silence on anything you see or hear here that relates . . . That has to do with my true identity.”
“Athos,” D’Artagnan said. “You know you can trust me.”
Athos nodded. “I have in the past, and you have not failed,” he said, and looked around once more, then lowered his voice. “I don’t think Raoul knows his wife is dead.”
“How can he not?” D’Artagnan asked. “Surely there’s been time enough for a messenger—”
“I don’t think anyone has thought to send a messenger. They lived such separate lives.” Athos shrugged. “You noticed he said ‘my wife’ not my late wife?”
“But if he doesn’t know she’s dead, he can’t have killed her,” D’Artagnan said. He felt greatly relieved at this, not only because he sensed how much the possibility of his friend’s guilt worried Athos, but also because he thought that since de Dreux wasn’t guilt they would now be able to leave and go back to Paris and resume the true investigation there.
Athos shook his head. “Or he knows only too well and chooses to hide it. Don’t be mistaken, Raoul can play the fool or the simpleton, if he so wishes, but he is neither. We must stay here till we find where he was two days ago or if he could have hired anyone to do away with his wife, in Paris.”
D’Artagnan sighed and nodded. He hadn’t been cut out for opulence, he thought. This ducal residence made him long for his small rented rooms.
And if the Duke was the murderer, in this vast domain who would prevent him from doing away with an inconvenient guard of a minor nobleman?
Cooks and Maids; Holes and Tunnels; Food and Love
P
ORTHOS returned to the palace promptly before dinnertime, counting on the cook’s getting busy with dinner and making it easier for him to escape without paying her what she would no doubt consider her due. In the same way, he made sure that Mousqueton would come and call him with an important message from—he didn’t know whom, nor did he particularly care. The King or Monsieur de Treville, either of them would do, so long as it called Porthos away from the cook.
However, for all his wish to avoid the woman’s amorous intentions, Porthos had dressed himself carefully in his gold-embroidered doublet and his best dark blue velvet cloak, he had Mousqueton polish his boots till they shone, and he had combed not only his hair but his luxurious beard and moustache.
It pleased him that passersby—particularly women— stopped to look at his magnificence as he passed. In fact, the entire palace kitchen fell silent as he opened the back door and walked in.
Almost at once the head cook with whom he’d spoken the day before was standing before him, smiling. “Ah, Monsieur,” she said. “I was afraid you didn’t mean to come at all.”
“Of course I meant to come,” Porthos said. He ran down the steps, all seeming eagerness, and bowed deeply while kissing her hand. This brought a giggle—from a woman who was certainly as old as Porthos and who probably weighed almost as much.
“Oh, Monsieur,” she said, blushing. Then she grabbed him by the arm. Her hands were hot. She smelled of cinnamon and ginger. “Come, come, I have news,” she said. And, thus speaking, pulled him—he hadn’t counted on that—to a small room at the back. Her room, judging by its narrow, sagging mattress, propped atop a pallet in a corner.
The devil!
Porthos thought.
Even if I meant to do the deed, her bed would prove as narrow and uncomfortable as Athenais’s.
Athenais bed, not the one she—rarely—shared with her aged husband, but her own, was a single bed that creaked alarmingly under Porthos’s capacious weight.
The cook pushed Porthos in and crowded close. Truth be told, in that room, there wasn’t that much space to contain both of them. And in the same way, the cook looked almost beautiful, her black eyes shining, her lips full and poised at the edge of a smile. But by the light of the single candle on a wall niche near the bed, almost all women who had only one head and all their limbs would look good.
Uncomfortably, more than a little scared by her proximity, more than a little determined not to betray his lovely Athenais, Porthos allowed himself to be pushed into a corner. “You said you had news?” Porthos asked. And hoped Aramis would appreciate Porthos’s efforts and the peril Porthos was enduring for his sake.
“Oh, Monsieur, I’ve talked to all the maids,” as she spoke, the cook brought her head close. “And none of them, not one,” her hands moved upon Porthos’s garments, to his waist, his breeches, the lacings.
“Madame!” Porthos said.
But she only giggled and left her hands where they rested, warm and inquisitive against Porthos’s flesh, separated only by the insufficient—or so it felt—material of his breeches and his embroidered over breeches. Her face leaned close, the smell of cinnamon and ginger overpowering.
Porthos tried to back up against the wall, but his back was already against the wall and all he managed was to squeeze himself against it farther, feeling, even to himself, like a shy maiden trying to avoid a musketeer’s advances.
The cook’s face leered, close to him, and he tilted his hat desperately, trying to avoid eye contact with her. Stories crossed his mind—he could tell her he was injured. A knife fight, a duel. Something that made it impossible . . .
But, no. Even as he thought of it, her hands, moving softly, trying to figure the way to untie his breeches, had probably felt enough to give such stories the lie.
“The maids, madame, the maids,” he said, desperately, his voice higher and far more nervous than normal. “You said you’d spoken to them. What did they say?”
“Oh, that there was no passage,” the cook said. “So I guess your friend was guilty. This is what comes, you see, from getting involved with these high ladies with their fine manners.” She grinned close to him, then planted a soft kiss upon his cheek. “You see, they’re all strumpets who’ll betray you and—”
“Madame,” Porthos said, and slid against the wall, feeling the age-roughened plaster drag at his fine cloak, and not caring so long as he avoided the worst for just a moment. “It is impossible that Aramis is guilty.” He turned slightly, trying to avoid her hands, which were making it hard enough for him to think, much less to think coherently. He invoked the memory of Athenais, bringing to mind her sharp eyes, her smiling lips, her sweet voice, as a way of avoiding responding too much to the present danger. “It is impossible, I tell you. Your investigation was incomplete.”
“How could my investigation be incomplete?” the woman protested. Her hands found him again, and didn’t relent, though in the insufficient light neither could she seem to see enough to determine how to untie his breeches. “I asked every maid, I tell you, every one of them.”
Porthos slid farther and realized he’d wedged himself behind her bed. The only way to escape her hands—and her—now was to vault over her bed. He pictured himself jumping over the bed, pushing the woman aside . . . No. It was ridiculous. He couldn’t do it. Not without hurting her. Not without raising alarm.
“Madame, I can’t—” he said.
But she giggled. “Oh, I think you can.” She gave him an emphatic squeeze. “In fact, I’m sure you can.”
Porthos could tell her that he was not interested in women. But—curse it all—though several members of the royal family were just that way, for a mere musketeer to confess to such would bring the law on him.
A fleeting thought of discovering a sudden vocation crossed his mind, but how could he, when the whole city knew that Porthos was not even interested in Aramis’s sporadic preaching.
He looked at her, so near, leering triumphantly. He felt that her fingers had finally figured the lacing in his over breeches and undone them. The breeches fell around his knees, revealing his under breeches. She made a sound of annoyance.
But the lacing for the under breeches was the same, and her fingers had the way of it, pulling the under breeches loose.
A knock at the door made them both jump.
“What is it?” the cook asked, ill-humoredly, her hands stopping at their task.
The door opened. A young woman, probably not much older than seventeen, stood in the opening. She had a sweet oval face and large blue eyes. A scraggle of blond hair escaped from beneath her cap. “If you pardon me, madame, only they told me you wanted to know as soon as possible—” She curtseyed.
The cook let go of Porthos’s breeches and turned around. Porthos’s breeches fell, and he bent to grab them, and pull them up quickly, all too conscious of the maid’s giggle.
But as he tied his breeches and over breeches back in place, he still paid attention to what the maid was saying.
“They told me you were looking for a passage into the room of the murdered Duchess.”
The cook put her hands on either side of her thick waist. “I was, and there isn’t one.”
The little maid curtseyed again. “Begging your pardon, madame, but there is. Or if not that, then close.”
“Close?
“There is a passage that ends behind a picture and through the eyes of the picture you can see the whole room,” the maid said.
“Only see?” Porthos said. Having fastened his breeches, he now gently pushed the cook aside and managed to step out from behind the bed.
“Yes, Monsieur,” the maid said, and curtseyed again, though the hint of a devilish grin still remained in her eyes and lips. “Only look. There is no opening, you see, that will allow the watcher into the room.”
“Why did you interrupt us, then?” the cook asked. “This means nothing and it changes nothing.”
“Begging your pardon,” Porthos said. “As someone who knows a little more about such things—as someone who knows that his friend, Aramis couldn’t possibly be guilty—I beg to disagree. I’m sure there is a way into the room that you’ve somehow missed.” He was well past the cook, and face-to-face with the young maid. And . . . had she winked at him? “Please show me this passage and this picture. Perhaps you’re only missing the spring that opens it.”
“I don’t think so, Monsieur,” the maid said, looking dubious.
“Please,” Porthos said, and, in turn, not sure what he was doing would be taken in the right spirit, he winked at her. “Please show me the place. I will not rest unless I am sure there is no way into the room. I can’t believe my friend is a murderer.”
“Well,” the cook said from behind. “Your loyalty does you credit, but I would still say that he is guilty and that this is all foolishness. Do take him to the room quickly, Hermengarde, but bring him back right away once he’s verified there is no way into the room from the passage. I have business with the gentleman.”
The blond maid curtseyed once more, then turned. Porthos followed her out of the room, and up three flights of stairs from the kitchen with some relief.
The stairs were narrow, stone, unadorned, clearly servant stairs and probably not very popular servant stairs at that, since they didn’t meet anyone while the maid scampered up the stairs ahead of Porthos and Porthos himself followed with much more lightness of step than was his usual.
Even then, Porthos waited till they were three floors up before he asked, “Mademoiselle, did you wink at me down there?”
The girl turned around and smiled, a devilish smile. “Indeed, I did, Monsieur. Mousqueton sent me to rescue you from the dragon. I told him she was a man-eater and there was no point at all his waiting the time you told him. By that time, you’d likely be squashed on that bed of hers.”
Porthos swallowed. “Mousqueton?”
The maid had the grace to blush but she answered eagerly enough. “Mousqueton and I are great friends,” she said. “I’m a maid on the third floor, you see, and we maids have our own little parlor there. He often comes and warms himself at my brazier, on a cold winter night.”
Porthos would just bet he did. Oh, he was aware that his servant, no longer the little street rat that Porthos had rescued so many years ago, attracted women and, perforce, must have his share of love affairs. But till now the rascal had kept it all quiet enough.
“Well, well,” Porthos said, smiling beneath his moustache and thinking he would have to tease the younger man about it. But then a horrible thought occurred to him, which removed all his joy in the revelation. “You were lying, then?” he asked. “About the passage.”
Hermengarde blinked, shook her head. “Oh, no, Monsieur. I wouldn’t lie about that. There really is a passage that runs behind the room, and which allows one to spy from the little holes at a portrait’s eyes. It’s very well done. Little bits of glass mask the eye holes, but . . .”
“And are you sure it doesn’t open into the room as well?” Porthos asked.
“Hard to do. It’s right behind a massive wardrobe. The portrait hangs above it, which is why it’s never been changed and never moved since the room was the Queen’s own. She only gave it to the Duchess two winters ago, you know? It used to be the Queen’s own closet.”