Read The musketeer's apprentice Online
Authors: Sarah d' Almeida
The musketeer's apprentice (17 page)
Martin turned to Athos, “The boy means well, and, as I said, who did not entertain a crazy dream as a young man. I assure you he is normally reliable, at least when properly employed. Of course, we never quite employed him, just told him he could get some food in return for a bit of work. So he never had a real job here, but he helps our stable boys look after guests’ horses and I’m sure—”
Athos realized the man was doing his best to repair any impression he might have given that the boy, Guillaume, might be unreliable. He was doing his best, and a bit besides, to convince Athos that the boy could be hired and that the boy was worth hiring.
Picking up his cup of wine and taking a quick swallow of the wine, Athos thought of Porthos saying that the boy had always been exactly punctual. An amazing virtue in a young nobleman, as they had thought him at the time, but even more laudable when it involved a young peasant boy who could, at any time, be commanded to some task that might interfere with his time and his plans.
From his description, too, having acquired his letters early and without any real instruction, Guillaume must have been a smart boy. Perhaps Porthos was right in lamenting him. Perhaps he would have become a man worthy of being called friend.
And thinking of Porthos, Athos realized that Porthos had grabbed young Amelie’s arm and was talking to her, in hushed tones. He wasn’t absolutely sure what Porthos meant by it, or what he was trying to find out. With Porthos it could be intensely important and absolutely all that needed to be known on the case, or something so strange as to have no bearing whatsoever on events.
In case it was the first, though, and suspecting that the tavern keeper might interfere with the talk, should he notice, Athos endeavored to keep the man from noticing.
“Does Guillaume ride?” he asked. “My friend might have need of a young man who can ride messages to his father’s domain a few hours distant.”
A Name Well Remembered; Porthos’s Guilt; A Girl’s Shame
"AMELIE.
” Porthos grabbed at the girl’s arm, as she was about to go away, and she turned from the table to stare at him, her eyes half-afraid and half-hopeful. “Amelie, what was your mother’s name?”
” Porthos grabbed at the girl’s arm, as she was about to go away, and she turned from the table to stare at him, her eyes half-afraid and half-hopeful. “Amelie, what was your mother’s name?”
It had been working at him for a while. It was probably nothing. How many women were there in France named Amelie? Dozens. Hundreds. So why should he imagine, looking at this girl, that she was the daughter of the woman— no, the girl—he’d loved as a young man? Amelie didn’t look a thing like that other Amelie of time’s past. She had lank mousy-colored hair, where Porthos’s Amelie had blond hair. And her grey eyes had no echo of Amelie’s dark ones.
And yet . . . Perhaps it was Porthos’s guilt working at him. He’d left in the dead of night, without so much as saying good-bye to the girl who’d given him everything, the girl who’d shown him what the love between a woman and a man could be.
He’d thought at the time that if he just left, she could continue with her life without thinking about him. After all, what had Porthos been in her life but a distraction and a nuisance? What good was he, or dreaming of him—of marrying the gentleman’s son—to a simple farm girl? If he left, he thought, she would marry someone else quickly. And her life would go on as if nothing had happened between them. Let him carry the sense of what he had lost, but let her not suffer.
That had been the idea, but was it the truth? Horrible ideas rose in his mind, ideas he didn’t want to dignify with full thought. He didn’t want his mind to know what he thought. He didn’t want his mind to even suspect it, truth be told. But he knew . . . he knew all too well.
The grey-eyed little girl looked back at him. “My mother?” she asked.
“Do you know what your mother’s name was.”
“They called her Pigeon,” she said.
“Who did?” Athos asked.
“Men.”
His heart clenched. There was no reason, really, none at all to imagine that Pigeon could ever have been his girlfriend, but what if she had? She had been someone’s girlfriend. And there was Guillaume with Porthos’s genealogy in his pouch. But he’d never tried to blackmail Porthos, and why else would it matter to him?
“But that was not her real name, was it?” he asked. He kept his voice even, sweet. The girl looked scared and he didn’t want to scare her. First, he knew well enough that his towering height and his red hair scared most people. And second, he could well imagine that being interrogated by Athos would scare practically anyone. He didn’t need to induce more terror in Amelie. “Do you know what her real name was?”
Amelie nodded, once. “Amelie,” she said. “Like my name.”
“Ah,” Porthos said. “And did you know . . . Did your mom ever talk of her fiancé, that she came to Paris to find?”
Amelie shook her head, then shrugged. “Not to me, but she must have talked to Guillaume, because he said he’d found him.”
Porthos’s heart clenched within his chest. “Guillaume found him?” he asked, unable to keep his panic from his voice. “Guillaume found his . . . father?”
The girl nodded. “He said his father was a nobleman and he had found him,” Amelie said. “And then he said that he was going to get me money, lots of it, and that he would come get me and I would live like a lady.”
Porthos’s brain had gone numb. His father was a nobleman. He had found him. He was going to get money and take his sister to live like a lady.
Sangre Dieu, he was my son
, Porthos thought. And on the heels of that.
And he was going to blackmail me.
Sangre Dieu, he was my son
, Porthos thought. And on the heels of that.
And he was going to blackmail me.
In the surge of these conflicting emotions, his mind and heart seized and he trembled.
Seeing him tremble, Amelie surged forward, put her hand on his shoulder. “Monsieur? Are you well? Only you look so ill.”
And out of nowhere the tavern keeper’s wife descended, hard of face and harsh of voice, grabbing at the girl, pulling her away from Porthos, raining a hail of blows on the girl’s face, on the little frail body. “Whore,” she screamed. “You’re a whore like your mother. It’s all you’ll ever be. Tempting men. You’re not even a woman and you’re a whore.”
Porthos rose, grabbing for the woman’s arm, and found the tavern keeper, Martin, holding his arm. “No,” he said. “No. Let her be. If you come between you’ll only make it worse. If you come between she’ll kill the girl or turn her out which is the same as killing her. No. This will blow over, it always does.” He spoke, fast, low, in a whisper that could be heard by Porthos, but not by anyone else over the woman’s scream. The other diners looked on the thrashing as a spectacle. The other musketeers and D’Artagnan rose from the table, hands on their swords, but they didn’t move, while the tavern keeper stood there, holding Porthos’s arm and whispering. “If you go for her, I’ll have to defend her,” he said. “And then your friends will kill me, and Amelie will have no protection. Please, Monsieur Musketeer I beg you to believe I do not want the girl hurt or thrown out.”
His voice was so earnest, his expression so urgent that Porthos believed him. Quite without knowing what to say, he felt as if he were back in his youth, back in the time when his father had laid his choices before him and sent him from du Vallon rather than letting him elope with Amalie.
A bargain with the devil
, he thought.
I’m making a bargain with the devil.
But sometimes all choices are bargains with the devil and seeing the girl get beaten—very still, without crying—he realized that for Amelie these beatings were nothing new and that he couldn’t in any way help her. Not by interfering. Bad as her situation was, it would be worse out on the streets.
, he thought.
I’m making a bargain with the devil.
But sometimes all choices are bargains with the devil and seeing the girl get beaten—very still, without crying—he realized that for Amelie these beatings were nothing new and that he couldn’t in any way help her. Not by interfering. Bad as her situation was, it would be worse out on the streets.
And what could he offer her, if she were thrown out? It was possible that Aramis knew of some charity, some house that took in girl children of uncertain parentage and no means. But almost for sure, there, too, she would be beaten. And it was not as if he could take her home and adopt her. Had she been a boy and known how to cipher, he could have handed her over to Athenais. However, even in Athenais’s care, he knew the clerks often starved, on the meager money her husband allowed for their feeding. Oh, not starved to death, but went about famished and disconsolate. That was where they had found D’Artagnan’s servant, and Porthos remembered how Planchet preferred even the irregular food he got now to the continuous privation of an attorney’s clerk.
He could do nothing. All this went through his mind, as he slowly lowered his arm and allowed the tavern keeper to turn him around and say, “Leave, sir, leave, please, and I shall deal with it all. I’ll take care of the girl.”
Like an overweight sheepdog herding wolves, he hounded the musketeers to the door and out of it, till they stood outside in darkness, blinking.
“It was damnable, that,” D’Artagnan said, rubbing his face with his hand, as though trying to remove the memory of the scene they witnessed. “Why was she attacking the girl?”
“I think,” Athos said, slowly. “That the girl is her husband’s daughter.”
This had never occurred to Porthos. He’d been busy holding himself accountable for Guillaume’s existence and, somehow, in his mind, thinking that if Amelie was his sister, then she must be Porthos’s daughter also. All of which was nonsense because the child had been born a good two or three years after Guillaume and therefore could not be his. He stared at Athos in shock saying, “How? How? How?”
Athos sighed. “I imagine in the normal manner of such things. The woman, Pigeon, was fulfilling much the same function the children would later serve, helping with serving and running errands in return for some food and a place to sleep in the barn. She was probably a handsome woman, or at any rate more accomodating than his wife . . .”
“I wasn’t . . .” Porthos shook his head. “Athos! I am not a child. I wasn’t asking you how it came to pass. I was asking you why you thought so, how you deduced that.”
“Oh. She has his eyes,” Athos said. “Clearly. And also clearly he cares for her as a daughter, more than just a childless man would care for any orphan.”
“Oh,” Porthos said. His head hurt. He’d drunk the cup of wine from the tavern and he knew from the taste that it was good wine, but it felt heavy in his stomach, like lead. “I think . . .” he said in a whisper. “I think that Guillaume was my son.”
“Why?” Aramis asked. “Why would you think that?”
“She said . . . The girl said that her mother was also named Amelie and that her brother told her he’d found his father and that his father was a nobleman.”
“The nobleman!” Athos said. “I knew it.”
Porthos didn’t know it. He looked, confused.
“The nobleman who thrashed him,” Athos said. “It had to be him. I thought it was a little strange that he was seeking work with a nobleman but left after a thrashing. Surely a thrashing would be nothing strange for a waif born in a stable.”
“But . . . he was my son,” Porthos protested.
“Why would you think that?” Athos asked.
Porthos ticked off the reasons on his fingers. “First,” he said. “He came to me and I’m a nobleman.”
“He’d be more likely to think of you as a musketeer,” Aramis said. “He would say, he’d found his father and he was a musketeer, not a nobleman.”
Porthos shook his head. “I am a nobleman.” He lifted another finger. “Second, he did have my genealogy in his pocket, and of what interest could it be to him, if he was not my son?”
“He could have been intending to blackmail you with it,” Aramis said.
“He never spoke a word about it.”
“He might have been waiting, or he might just have acquired it. Or it might have been put in his pocket by someone else who wished to make it look like you killed him because he tried to blackmail you.”
Porthos sighed. All of that was true, and yet. “The girl, back home, the one my father didn’t want me to marry, the one he told me to leave, which is how I came to Paris, was named Amelie. And the girl there, she said her mother was Amelie. And when I left would be . . . thirteen years ago. So Guillaume . . . Guillaume could be my son.”
“Porthos,” Athos said, sounding as gentle as he’d sounded to the child in the tavern. “Porthos, do you know how many Amelies there are in France? Does that child look at all like your lover?”
Feeling defeated and miserable, Porthos shook his head. “But—” he said.
“Porthos, my friend,” Athos said. “It is not reasonable for you to think this. It is not . . . right. You feel guilty over your girlfriend that you left behind. And you feel guilty about poor Guillaume, and the two of them have come together in your mind so that, somehow, you think they must be related, but they are not, Porthos.”
Porthos’s head whirled. He tried to think, as he had before, of Amelie fat and happy, a farmer’s wife with many children clustered around her. But he couldn’t. The image in his mind now was of her working in that miserable inn. Of her giving up on finding him. Of her finding consolation with the tavern master and eventually . . . He shook his head. “I don’t know Athos. I’m still afraid that is the only reason Guillaume would come to me, that he knew something . . . Amelie in there says that her mother talked to Guillaume about his father. He must have known something. And why did he come to me?”
“To learn to duel?” Athos asked. “He’d meant to be a gentleman and live like one, and so he wanted to learn to fence? So he could uphold his end in a duel?”
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