However, and even though Porthos knew that
Violette
was not the woman’s true name—not even close—wouldn’t there be people who might remember later that the musketeers had spoken of this subject? And if they did, that, coupled with their description, would damn them, would it not?
“Shhh,” Porthos repeated, and looked over Aramis’s shoulder at D’Artagnan. “This is not the time to speak of these things.”
D’Artagnan opened his mouth, as if to protest, but Porthos said, “There will be time. Now, someone might notice too much, or remember what they should not.”
D’Artagnan looked dubious, but nodded and looked around with a most gratifying look of suspicion.
Porthos knew his friends weren’t stupid men. In fact, he also knew that suspicion of stupidity tended to attach to him. At least, it attached to him from other people. None of his three friends seemed to take his sometimes odd or too-obvious seeming questions as a mark of a slow mind.
In return, he tried not to think of them as slow and strange. But he found himself oft marveling at how all of them—perhaps Aramis worst of all, but Athos and even D’Artagnan as well—could ignore the reality before their eyes for the fascinating thoughts inside their heads. It was Porthos’s opinion that people with the turn of mind to get their ideas tangled in the words that formed them could act utterly senseless and get themselves in great danger thereby. He gave a sharp look at D’Artagnan. Good thing Porthos was here to keep his friends out of trouble.
They stumbled into the more crowded part of town where Aramis lived.
Porthos knocked at the door of Aramis’s lodgings, causing the solid-looking oak to tremble, while his huge fist raised echoing booms.
Noise responded from within. Bangs and booms and the sound of ceramic dropping, followed by vigorous cursing in a male voice. Aramis rented his upstairs rooms from a family who occupied the bottom floor. Presently Pierre, the son of the family, pulled the door open with the sort of gesture one makes when one wishes to intimidate the people knocking.
He was intimidating enough, being almost as large as Porthos, dark haired, dark visaged and with a villainous cast to his features that a gold hoop earring enhanced rather than diminished. The
almost
as large as Porthos was the deciding factor, though. Since he’d become an adult and grown to be considerably larger than normal men both in height and musculature, Porthos had seen many times the changes of expression that now played themselves across Pierre’s face—cockiness, bewilderment, and, finally, obsequiousness.
Pierre bobbed something that might have passed for a bow in Porthos’s direction, then looked over at Aramis and a slow smile spread his lips. “Got himself a bit too drunk, did he?” he said, and moved aside.
Porthos and D’Artagnan dragged the still-insensible Aramis into a small hall from which a narrow staircase led upwards, and a door opened to the left. The door led to the family’s quarters. The staircase led to Aramis’s lodging.
Porthos’s bulk, by himself, took up the entire rung on the stairs. The stairs being open on the right side—with a mere railing dividing them from a fall onto the floor below, it was perilous to attempt to climb three abreast. But D’Artagnan managed to hold hold up Aramis all by himself all the way up. Though it slowed the young man down. By the time the two of them reached the top of the stairs, Porthos was already there, knocking at the door with what he hoped was a discreet and low-key knocking and was vaguely aware was only slightly less thunderous than the pounding he’d given the door downstairs.
He had a moment to be afraid that Bazin would not be at home. Most of their servants would be home if they were not out with their masters, but Bazin was an odd one and had interests and plots of his own. Truth be told he only followed Aramis because he hoped Aramis would still live up to the vocation the family had decided for him early on and become a priest or a monk.
But the worry passed as Bazin opened the door. He was a short man and almost as wide as he was tall. Nature had graced him with the round face of a medieval monk and a bald head that resembled a monk’s tonsure. He looked at them out of little surprisingly blue eyes.
His stare at Porthos conveyed displeasure, then a look at Aramis changed it to a half-open mouth and the appearance of shock. “My master,” he said. “The Chevalier . . . Have you devils got him drunk again?”
Porthos always found it amusing that, as far as Bazin was concerned, Aramis was an angel of light and innocence forever led astray by the demonlike musketeers and guard, his friends. Now he simply nodded and said, “Let us get him inside.” He was not about to debate, here on the landing, how Aramis had got in his present incoherent condition. He would bet Pierre or other members of his family were down there, ear glued to the door, listening for any stray word from up the stairs.
Bazin’s expression looked like he’d very much like to pick a fight on this point, but in the end he didn’t. Instead, he stepped back and back into the room, till he allowed Aramis and D’Artagnan, who was supporting him, to come in. Porthos followed into a little room outfitted much like a monk’s cell. There was a narrow bed, a peg on the wall that held a change of clothes, and a massive wrought iron cross at the foot of which lay an oak-and-velvet kneeler much too ornate and elaborate to have belonged to a humble abode.
The candles burning at the foot of the cross cast a bright—if trembling—light upon the room. Enough light to allow Porthos to run the three security bolts on the door after he closed it behind them. Enough for Bazin to see his master’s true state.
As D’Artagnan pulled the borrowed cloak off Aramis, more became apparent and Bazin covered his mouth with his pudgy hand. “My master . . .” he said again, but no more.
“Your master escaped the scene of a murder,” Porthos said.
Bazin turned startled eyes to him. “My master murdered someone?”
“No. But he is suspected. Presently, there might be people along trying to arrest him.”
“Arrest him?”
“That is what I said,” Porthos answered. “Do not open the door to anyone but us. We’ll be back to talk to your master. He’s not coherent enough to answer questions just now.”
“Will he . . . is he drunk?”
Porthos looked at Aramis who stood, where D’Artagnan had left him, near the cross and its complement of candles. Aramis swayed slightly on his feet and seemed dazed. But Porthos hadn’t smelled any alcohol on his breath or his person in helping him here.
“Not noticeably. In fact, I doubt he has drunk at all. But put him to bed. He will be better in the morning.”
“But—” Bazin started. He was pale, and his eyes wide.
“Don’t ask questions,” Porthos said. “We don’t know how to answer them and it wouldn’t do you any good to ask.”
“And besides,” D’Artagnan put in, his voice soothing and smooth. “The least said about these events, the better the chance you can find a religious house to take the two of you.”
Bazin’s eyes, still reflecting shock and surprise, now filled with the cunning of the desperate, and he closed his mouth and nodded.
When they left, Porthos heard the bolts slide home behind him. He had seen Bazin in a mood, and he did not fear that the rotund would-be monk would let intruders in. Aramis would sleep well tonight.
Which was more than Porthos could say for Porthos. He would lay awake and wonder at what trouble his friend had got into and how they were going to get him out of it.
The Inconvenience of a Murdered Noblewoman; Athos’s Doubts; Aramis’s Anger
A
THOS arrived at Aramis’s lodgings the next day not sure how to face the coming trial, how to question Aramis, how to face Aramis’s guilt, if it were such.
He’d awakened and dressed in silence, glad he’d trained his servant, Grimaud, to utter and silent obedience long ago. Oh, as a child Athos had been garrulous, talkative in the way of a smart boy. And as a teenager his overwrought emotions had flowed out in poetry and elegant prose.
But all had changed on the day that Athos had killed his wife and his innocence with her, and left his domains to escape condemnation and censure for what he then viewed as justice and had—in later years—started to fear had been murder.
The image of Charlotte pursued him still—her blond hair, her sweet features—and some days he would very much like to believe that the fleur-de-lis branded on her shoulder had been a mistake or an enemy’s ploy. Even if that meant he was guilty.
And yet, his clear and uncluttered reason told him he’d never committed murder, or not unprovoked. He’d simply punished an escaped murderess, who’d wormed her way into his heart, his home, his family name.
Caught between guilt and grief, he’d stopped being able to speak. Or at least being able to enjoy speaking with any fluency at all. Instead, he hoarded silence like a treasure, and ordered Grimaud through a system of gestures and expressions.
He’d had few occasions to congratulate himself as much on this arrangement as he had this day. Because if he had needed to explain it all to Grimaud, he’d not have known how to, nor what to say. Because, after all, what did he know about Aramis?
Later, yesterday, in the way of such news, rumors and hints had filtered down. After Porthos and D’Artagnan had returned to their guard post at the royal palace, they had heard through the servants of the duchess, murdered in her room, the weapon missing. And everyone talked of her lover, that musketeer who pretended to be a priest—or perhaps that priest who pretended to be a musketeer—and who visited her in her room so many times. Who had been seen—the maid was sure—entering her room just that night.
It was no use at all for Athos to mention to Porthos that perhaps Aramis had killed his lover. Porthos’s face just closed and his red eyebrows descended upon his eyes like storm clouds announcing a gale. Porthos said it was monstrous to even suspect Aramis of such a thing. That Aramis wouldn’t do any such thing. Not ever.
But the truth was more complex than that. No one who knew Athos, before or after his wife’s death, would suspect him of killing her, either. He had always struggled to be the embodiment of honor, the soul of probity. Striking an unarmed woman didn’t seem to be within his abilities.
In fact, Athos himself would never have believed he could do it and only half understood it as he saw his own hands fashion a noose and hang Charlotte from a low-hanging branch.
In retrospect, it made all too much sense. Almost too much sense for his taste, as it could not in any way be called a crime of passion. He’d been revolted and shocked to see the fleur-de-lis on her shoulder when he’d opened her gown to give her air, after she’d fallen from her horse. The fleur-de-lis was the mark of an adulteress, a murderess headed for the gallows. She’d escaped somehow.
Oh, he could have denounced her to the local magistrates. But that would only ensure that his ancient family name of la Fere would be dragged through the mud along with her. So he’d killed her.
He’d killed her quickly and ruthlessly, before his brain had even had time to reason through all this.
What if Aramis had found the like treason and decided to take a similar solution?
With this in mind, Athos fetched up outside of Aramis’s door just in time to meet Porthos and D’Artagnan coming from the other side of the street.
They both looked as badly as he felt. Well—Porthos had taken his usual care about his appearance, which was quite a bit more than other people took. For such a large man and one so sensible, Porthos had a broad streak of peacock. Right then that streak manifested itself in venetian breeches in velvet ornamented with Spanish lace, and an embroidered doublet whose sleeves showed a profusion of needless ribbons and buttons. All of this was topped off with a sky blue cloak and the hat of his musketeer’s uniform, which—in Porthos’s case—seemed to have been ornamented with a few more plumes than was normal. And D’Artagnan had dressed as he usually did, his wiry, muscular build lending elegance to the blue grey uniform of the guards of Monsieur des Essarts and the oval, olive-skinned face that showed between collar and plumed hat displaying well-trimmed facial hair and well cared for black hair pulled back with a leather tie.
But despite this superficial care, both of them looked exhausted. Porthos’s eyes showed dark circles around them, marring his fair skin. And D’Artagnan’s normally deep set eyes now seemed to be looking through a tunnel of shadows. And even D’Artagnan’s youthful exuberance could not disguise the taut and worried line of his lips.
They nodded at each other and didn’t speak, like strangers meeting for a difficult mission and unwilling to clutter it with unnecessary chatter.
Porthos raised his hand to knock at the door, but Athos grabbed at his wrist and firmly pulled the hand down, before knocking at the door himself. Porthos’s knocking could, on a good day, eclipse the trumpet of the apocalypse.
Athos wondered if Porthos had knocked the night before and if so how many of the neighbors had looked around their shutters and behind their curtains to see who was trying to knock down the door. And how many had seen the state Aramis was in.
However, there was little for it. The time had passed to remedy that. Only thing he could do was not make it worse. Athos noticed Porthos’s shuffle of impatience when their knocking wasn’t immediately answered and raised his hand to knock again.