Monsieur Musketeer understood. And now, recollecting the conversation, he sighed. What could he expect from a shop where the owner traded in stolen goods, buying and selling as the opportunity offered? Of course he would not have a sign over his shop, or a lantern. And of course the door would be mostly closed. And of course he would take great care not to appear prosperous. After all, in this neighborhood, chances are if you looked prosperous you wouldn’t remain prosperous for long.
On the other hand, the last jeweler had sworn that Pierre would know any ivory that had crossed the shop, or his brother’s hands, during his brother’s life. And he might very well know other ivory, if it had crossed his shop, in more or less illegal ways.
And so, Athos was here, and knocking at the door.
“Yes?” a man’s wavery voice spoke from within.
“I have a question to ask you, Monsieur,” Athos said.
“Come inside,” the voice said.
Athos pushed the door open. Inside, the room was small and dark. An older man—or at least one that looked loose lipped and shivery—sat behind a table. Around the table, in piles and half-open boxes, jewelry glittered. Stones and gold and silver shimmered from the shadows.
And behind the older man, two young men stood who reminded Athos of no one so much as of the son of Aramis’s landlord. They were broad of shoulder and brutish of feature. And both showed the same gratifying widening of eye and respectful expression upon noticing Athos’s uniform, his musketeer’s hat.
“You have something for me?” the jeweler asked.
“I have something to ask you,” Athos said.
The jeweler pursed his lips. He evaluated Athos with a long up and down glance and did not seem as intimidated as his children or employees—whichever they turned out to be. “We buy and sell,” he said. “We do not answer questions.”
He was either a fool, near blind—enough not to recognize the musketeer’s uniform, in which case his expertise on the ivory would be useless—or a fearsome man. Or perhaps near enough to his death that he didn’t care if a musketeer hastened it.
Athos sighed and fished in his coin pouch for a pistole. He brought the glittering coin out and laid it on the table in front of the jeweler. “Will this be enough to buy an answer?” he asked.
At the back of his mind he was thinking that he, himself, would need to moderate his drinking. He could see himself in ten years, as loose lipped and shaky of hand as this man. And what would he do then? He didn’t even have a seedy jewelry trade, nor an expertise in not quite legal ivories to trade upon.
When you were a musketeer—or a nobleman—you were a warrior, a man of the sword. Lose that, lose the ability to do that, and you were near useless.
The jeweler looked at the coin, then up at Athos. “Ask,” he said.
Athos pulled the dagger out from within its sheath and laid it on the table. “I came by this. Never mind how. What I want to know is to whom it belonged last.”
The jeweler’s eyes lit up, animated by a sudden interest and, seemingly, focusing for the first time since Athos had come in.
“Antoine,” he said. “Antoine’s work.” He picked up the dagger with hands that were suddenly firm and inquisitive, and ran loving fingers along the handle. “Antoine’s work.”
“Your brother?” Athos asked.
The jeweler nodded. “Antoine made this ten years ago,” he said. “I remember because he was ever so pleased with himself at how much detail he put in. And also, it was his little joke, you know. It was for a wedding present, so he thought—”
“A wedding present for whom?” Athos asked.
“Why . . .” The man blinked at Athos, as though Athos were the one who was addled by wine or age. “Why . . . for his majesty, the King.”
Athos would never be able to remember how he’d got out of the shop, nor how he’d got the dagger back from the jeweler’s caressing hands. But he must have done both, because he found himself outside in the alley, taking lungfuls of air as though he would drown and sheathing the dagger.
The King. How could it be the King’s dagger. Well, it could be said that the King was not, after all, the most brilliant of men. Athos was clear eyed and intelligent enough to respect royalty and the function of the king without respecting the man who, at present, fulfilled the responsibilities.
Oh, he’d allow himself to be cut into ribbons for Louis XIII, if it was needed. Such his oath, such his duty as a nobleman. But he would do it knowing that the King, at the present time, was little more than a figurehead and a hope of descendants for his royal line.
The man who held the reins of power, the man who made plans and executed them, the man who was responsible for the course of France at the moment, was Armand, Cardinal Richelieu.
Which meant that the King could very well have thought that the Duchess had conspired with the queen or . . . anything. And have killed the Duchess. Or arranged to have her killed. Athos couldn’t actually imagine the King, middle-aged and thick of waist, vaulting onto the balcony from an impossibly low perch, killing the Duchess and jumping down again. He couldn’t even imagine the King unlocking the door, rushing across the room, killing the Duchess and then disappearing, all before Aramis returned to the room. No.
Besides, wouldn’t the Duchess have tried to get up from the bed, if she’d seen the King?
And besides, it would have left unexplained exactly what or who the person who’d come in, dressed all in black and wearing a mask could be.
This, of course, left the Cardinal even more culpable in Athos’s mind. Not having control of his own purse, and often not managing to commandeer for his expenses more than he won at cards or was given as gifts by courtiers, the King often gave objects to his favorites. The objects could be jewelry, or anything at all he had laying about.
Athos himself, after some successful duels, or some conspicuous acts of battlefield bravery, had received from the royal hand a ring or a trinket that the king found lying about.
Was it not possible, then, that the King had given the dagger to the Cardinal? And was it not possible that the Cardinal had decided to use the dagger in this manner, giving it to his minion to kill the Duchess, because he knew it would be traced back to his majesty?
Athos’s head was swimming, as if he’d been drinking, though, as of yet, today, he’d had no more than a glass with his meager lunch. He stood in the alley very still, then thought he had to talk to his friends. He had need of D’Artagnan’s cunning and Porthos’s down-to-earth thinking.
He took a step northward, towards the larger road, lined with taverns. He might have need of a glass of wine, too, he thought, but then thought of the jeweler with his shaky hands.
No. Not now. Not yet. He took a step and then another.
Two dark clad figures detached themselves from the shadows and approached him, swords unsheathed.
Athos barely had the time to pull his own sword before the two were on him, swords raised, fighting for all they were worth, with no regard for honor, nor care for any rules of combat.
Athos met them bravely. He was tired from his travel from Raoul’s domain, and the day had been a busy one, but he was up to fighting two men—two guards of the Cardinal, by their moves—easily enough.
And then he heard the running steps behind him. He managed a look over his shoulder, hoping wildly that they were his friends.
The men running were dressed in dark clothes. But they moved with the cocky sureness of the guards of Richelieu.
Athos turned and prepared to sell his life dearly.
Blood and Wine; Guards and Thieves; The Prey Turns Hunter
A
THOS woke up. There was mud beneath him and a horrible smell all around. He raised himself on his elbows, confused.
The first thing he saw was his sword, his good, serviceable musketeer’s sword. It lay broken by his hand. The second thing he saw were two pairs of boots, in improbable positions, one by his head and one near his feet.
The boots puzzled him, in the same measure that the broken sword dismayed and angered him. It wasn’t until he’d pulled himself up to sitting on the squishy mud of the alley, that he realized that the boots were attached to feet, the feet attached to legs, and the legs belonged to men who, judging by their positions, were definitely, unavoidably dead. And judging from the quantities of dark blood glistening on their clothes, and on the mud of the alley, they’d been killed by the sword.
Since Athos couldn’t possibly imagine that two of his assailants had turned on the other two, he had to assume he had killed them. It only surprised him a little. He had a vague memory of thrusting and parrying, always with the certainty that he would die here, he would die from this.
That he was awake at all was the big surprise. Why would they leave him? And how, unless they thought he was dead.
His head felt confused and right at the back it hurt like the blazes. He was lying close enough to the wall to have hit it hard when he fell. He put a hand up, tentatively. It was hard to tell, for all the mud in his hair and on his face, but he thought he felt the peculiar consistency of blood.
So, he’d fallen, struck his head, bled, and they’d assumed he was dead. This made a certain sense. The edicts against dueling were still in place. So, of course, once they thought Athos was dead, they had left him and their dead comrades, and run.
But why had they wanted to kill him? Why was he so important that the Cardinal, himself, had sent his guards to kill him? Had the Cardinal sent them? Or was there another power play at work, perhaps within the guards corps, itself?
Athos couldn’t think, and he certainly wasn’t going to think lying down, like this in the mud of the alley. Instead, he reached for the wall to help himself up and managed to pull himself upright.
He was dizzy, which fit in with having hit his head, and possibly with the loss of blood. A veteran duelist, he knew as well as anyone else that head wounds bled profusely. And yet, if the way he’d evaluated this alley before still held, if he knocked at any doors here and asked for help, at best they would knock him on the head again and steal his boots and clothes. At worst, they would kill him, then steal his boots and clothes. He was sure he was not steady enough to intimidate anyone, not even in his uniform.
He tried to stand away from the wall. Blazing pain surged through his right leg, as it folded up under him. He reached for the wall again, to steady himself.
Sangre Dieu
. He was wounded. Holding himself against the wall with his right hand, he used his left to feel his right thigh. He found his breeches, soaked in blood down to the beginning of his stocking.
In the dim lighting of the alley—now coming only from a distant moon that hardly penetrated the narrow space flanked by tall walls—he couldn’t see his own thigh to evaluate the extent of the damage. He knew there were veins in the thigh that, if cut, would have a man dead in no time at all. He didn’t think his had been cut, or he would not have awakened. But where was the wound and what was the extent of the damage? What were the chances that he, on his own and wounded like this could make it to place where he might get succor?
With impatient fingers, Athos tore at his breeches, and the small clothes beneath, for once glad that his clothes were so threadbare as to rip with very little effort.
He prodded at the flesh beneath, till he found the hole, doubtless made by a rapier thrust with force. From the location, it would have got only muscle. Or rather, skin, and a very thin sliver of muscle.
It was bad enough. He leaned against the wall, fully. Just trying to find the extent of his wound had tired him. How could he make it anywhere?
The nearest home of a friend was D’Artagnan’s, and it was a good ten blocks northward. As for any other place where he might get help, he supposed he could always stick his head into a tavern and scream “To me musketeers.”
The problem was getting to a tavern. Even the length of the alley seemed too long with this injury and with nothing to support himself upon.
He was leaning against the wall, taking deep breaths, when a voice said, “You’re alive,” in a tone of great surprise.
Athos tried to wheel around, and put his hand to the scabbard in which he’d kept the dagger. He found it empty.
He also found a strong hand under his elbow, before he could fall upon his right leg again.
“Easy, Monsieur, easy,” a voice with a strong Gascon accent said. Not D’Artagnan’s voice. Athos turned, to look into the thin, intent face of Fasset. Shorter than Athos by more than a head, the man stood at Athos’s right shoulder and held Athos’s elbow. “I believe, Monsieur, it might be easier if you throw your arm over my shoulder, as one does when one has drunk a little too much? Then it might be possible to walk.”
Athos was too tired and in too much pain to fight it. Why a guard of the Cardinal would be helping him to walk made no sense at all. Unless Fasset meant to walk him right into the Bastille. But then Athos remembered what Porthos and D’Artagnan had told him of Fasset’s behavior in the battle for Aramis’s lodgings. The man seemed to be a conscientious man, even if he worked for the devil himself. And, Athos might allow, as there were some devils who worked for Monsieur de Treville, there must be saints who worked for the Cardinal.