How he could see Athos expression while Athos remained half bent over, his hair streaming water and filth back into the bucket, Athos would never know.
It took three more buckets of water, and then judicious and careful use of a comb and brush before Athos’s hair streamed only clear water. At which time Fasset handed him a large square of cloth for drying his hair, and had Athos lean slightly upon the chair so that the lamp lit the wound on his scalp.
Fasset’s fingers prodded at the wound, and Athos heard himself gasp, before he could even register the sharp stab of pain that seemed to paralyze his breathing.
“Easy, milord,” Fasset said. “It is something you cannot do for yourself, this one. And I’m afraid I must sew.” He went to the same cupboard from which he’d got his tinderbox and returned with a small cup, and a slightly larger, polished wood box. He set the box on the table, and poured brandy into the cup, which he proffered to Athos. “Drink, please,” he said.
Athos took the cup and swallowed the brandy so fast he barely tasted it, save for the burning sensation at his throat. He coughed then looked at Fasset. “Milord?” he asked.
“Pardon?” Fasset said. He was rummaging in his wooden box, bringing out thread and needle.
“You called me milord . . .”
Fasset grinned, a grin that was more politeness than amusement and which flashed across his face and was gone. “I don’t know your name,” he said. “Your true name. But everyone in the Cardinal’s guard says you’re a nobleman of some sort, hiding from some heinous crime. I’m not going to guess as to the crime, but I’d wager my right hand that you are a nobleman.”
He touched Athos’s head, very lightly. “I’m going to sew the wound shut and it’s going to hurt. It’s not actually . . . It’s just skin. But anything on the scalp hurts like all the devils. You might want to take another shot of brandy.”
“No,” Athos said. “I believe I can take it.”
“As you please,” Fasset said. His fingers went for the salve and the burning coolness of the potion touched Athos’s scalp.
“Brace now, milord,” Fasset said. This time his touch was firmer, holding Athos’s scalp in place. Then came the pain.
It felt . . . like strings of liquid fire streaming across his head. Athos knew only two ways to deal with this kind of pain. One was to scream, the other to abstract his mind from the actual suffering. “You do this well,” he said, choosing the second. His voice only trembled slightly.
“I learned it in seminary,” Fasset said.
“Seminary?” Athos asked, his eyes going to the cross on the wall.
Fasset chuckled. “Here before you stands the younger son of a moderately wealthy family. Oh, not like yours. I don’t think we were ever noble. Not as such. Just landowning. My parents had two sons, you see, and since both of us were rude enough to survive to adolescence, it was determined I was to be a monk. That way my brother could inherit the whole land, without throwing me out into the gutter, or suffering any dispute from me about the inheritance.”
“I’m sorry,” Athos said.
“Why? You didn’t do it. And it’s common enough. Done everyday. I had loving parents. The only thing is, they didn’t give me a choice between the military and the monastery. I entered the monastery as a novice at eleven and the closer I got to professing the more I found that I was a military man at heart.” He pulled on the needle, bringing an especially sharp pain to Athos’s scalp. “So I ran away before I professed. Took another name and came to Paris where his eminence was kind enough to employ me.”
He picked up a dagger and cut the thread. He reached for his salve and slathered it along the suture.
A post which Fasset had now lost, Athos thought, but didn’t say anything about it. He guessed at depths of pride and reserve in the man, and he didn’t wish to prod them, any more than he would wish a stranger to question him. And besides, there were other things which Athos must know.
While Fasset rolled up his remaining thread and put it away with his needle, Athos said, “Why was I attacked? Do you know? Is it something you can talk about?”
Fasset took a deep breath, something between a sigh and a gasp, and didn’t turn from where he was.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Athos said. “I realize while you may have resigned your commission, you still have a certain amount of loyalty and probably took oaths that—”
Fasset turned around. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “The reason you were being followed—and all of you were being followed—is that your friend Aramis left his mother’s estate sometime yesterday and the Cardinal was trying to intercept him and arrest him. Anyone could guess that the four inseparables would cleave together, so the fastest way to find him was to guard the three of you.”
“Aramis left his mother’s estate?” Athos asked, shocked. And, to Fasset’s quick nod, he added, frowning. “But why try to kill me then? And you know that this was an attempt to kill me, nothing else. No one asked me where Aramis was. No one . . .”
Fasset was shaking his head violently. “No. I could understand their following you. I could understand their apprehending your friend Aramis. What I couldn’t understand, nor could I accept or condone, was that they’d tried to kill you on such a slim excuse.”
“Excuse?”
“The . . . there was an object.”
“The dagger!” Athos said.
Fasset sighed. “Yes. The dagger. The one used to kill the woman. We’d been looking for it for some time, and today you were seen washing it in a fountain, presumably to rid it of blood. And then you went from shop to shop, to find out to whom it belonged.”
“And it turned out it had been made for the King, for his wedding.”
Fasset nodded. “The . . . man who was following you heard that conversation and thought you’d have to be killed.”
“Why?”
“Why? Milord, surely you know better. What if you spoke to anyone of the King’s dagger being used for the murder?”
Athos spread his hands, palm up, on his lap, as if to signify his helplessness in the face of oaths given and education received. “How could I?” he asked. “I am the King’s musketeer. Even if I thought his majesty—”
“Of course,” Fasset said. “And that’s what I told them. But by the time I told them, the man who’d been following you had assembled a group, and they’d . . . You know how I found you. I only heard about it when I overheard them reporting to his eminence.”
Athos got the impression that Fasset overheard a lot of things. Probably not all by accident. Not even most of them.
“And then you resigned,” he said. “Seems excessive for the deeds of some guards.”
“Oh,” Fasset said. “I told you I overheard them reporting to his eminence. Well. I also heard his eminence’s reply.”
Athos felt as if his heart skipped a beat. There was an idea forming in his head, an idea that he really didn’t want to condone nor think about. But it was growing. He wasn’t quite sure what it was yet, except for a feeling of something looming over him, a feeling that he should be doing something. Aloud, he completed Fasset’s reply. “The Cardinal approved.”
Fasset shrugged. “I could not work for someone who accepted unjustifiable murder.”
Murder. Was there more to it than that? What if the King had given the dagger to the Cardinal? What if the Cardinal had then used it, via a minion, to kill the Duchess? What if he was afraid they’d discover this through the knife?
If he hadn’t stolen the knife, Athos would have been able to present it to the King as proof.
And then the idea, monstrous, immense, breathtaking, hit him like a clout to the head. “My friends,” he said, his mouth hurrying ahead of his brain and trying to explain his fear to Fasset ahead of his mind’s fully connecting the thoughts. “My friends. Does the Cardinal know . . . Does the Cardinal think they have seen the dagger and heard of it, they might find the same link to the dagger once I’m found dead?”
He stood, on trembling legs. His thigh didn’t hurt nearly as badly. He could walk. He looked at Fasset who stood, eyes wide open, looking like he too had been hit hard, between the eyes.
“Hurry, man, lend me a sword,” Athos said. “I must go help my friends.”
Fasset shook his head. “Monsieur, you’re in your shirt. You’re not in the state to fight anyone, and you’re surely not going to fight the guards of the Cardinal in your shirt and bare bottomed.”
Athos looked down impatiently. His breeches, lying on the floor by his feet, were useless. But his over breeches . . . He reached for them.
“Catch,” Fasset said. And Athos turned, to catch a pair of breeches thrown in his general direction. They were the bloodred of the Cardinal’s guards, and loose venetians, but that hardly signified at the time.
“They should fit you,” Fasset said. “Though they’ll be perhaps a tad short.”
Before he’d stopped speaking, Athos had already fastened the breeches. His drying hair, he likewise tied back with a scrap of the same strip he’d used to bandage his thigh.
“A sword or a dagger?” he told Fasset.
“You cannot mean to go fight. You cannot get there in time. You cannot even walk the distance to the nearest of their houses, much less run it as you’d need to do if you wish to get there in time.”
Athos ground his teeth. “Watch me,” he said.
Fasset sighed. From a corner, he retrieved a sword, which he extended to Athos, pommel out, even as Athos finished fastening his sword belt. Athos sheathed the sword, then slipped his feet into boots. He pulled his doublet on, laced it tightly.
He was aware, if he allowed himself to think about it, that his thigh hurt like the blazes. But it was properly bandaged, it had been treated and he refused to give it more attention than it deserved. He would go to D’Artagnan’s first. If he was careful he could follow an itinerary that hit each of his friends’ houses in turn, in a minimum of time. That way he could aid whoever needed aid.
Opening the door, he rushed out. He was two flights down the rickety stairs, when he heard Fasset’s door slam and a rush of feet.
Looking up, over his shoulder, he saw Fasset—fully attired and wearing his sword—following him.
At the look, Fasset called out, “I’m sure there is a commandment that forbids someone who almost became a monk from letting a madman go alone to seek his death.”
Where Porthos Discovers the Virtues of Recessed Doorways; The Guards of the Cardinal Get a Surprise; And Aramis Comes Back Home
A
RAMIS had stood in the recessed doorway so long that he must have dozed.
He was fairly sure he knew where his foe was. Or at least, he had some inkling of where the Cardinal’s spy hid—in a doorway three doors down. He wondered if the spy had any idea he was there. He was fairly sure the man could have no idea of who Aramis actually was. If he did, he would long ago have walked down the street and arrested Aramis. No. His identity remained hidden. His presence might not, but then, the guard wouldn’t know anything but that someone else was spying on the same door.
Aramis felt worn out. Exhausted by vigilance. He stared at Porthos’s doorway so much his eyes hurt. He wished for a glimpse of his friend and realized, with an almost physical pain, that he missed Porthos.
Had anyone asked him before today, he would have said that of course, Porthos was one of his best friends. After all, he had allowed Aramis to escape sure death in that first duel. And he’d been so kind as to stand second in a duel to a seminarian who could have found no one else to stand with him. But he’d have said that he tolerated Porthos’s company. Barely. He would say Porthos was too uncouth, his education too deficient. And while Porthos’s mind left nothing to be desired, what came out of his mouth often bordered on incomprehensible gibberish.
All that he would have said before this week. Now he realized that he’d grown used to Porthos. Oh, perhaps it was only that. Or perhaps it was that he and Porthos had long grown used to functioning as a unit, a complete person. Aramis supplied the philosophy, the ease of expression, the fluency. And Porthos supplied the strength, the solidity, the unswerving loyalty.
Aramis would wager that of all the people in Paris and the many who called themselves his friends, Porthos was the only one who—not for a moment—would have never considered Aramis’s guilt in this. And he would not talk about it, nor would he dissect it. The moment he saw Aramis, the only thing in Porthos’s mind would be to make everything as it had been before these horrible events. And that was all Aramis wanted. All he could hope for.
So, where was Porthos? Why didn’t he come home?
Aramis leaned against the door frame, and must have dozed. He must have dozed because he woke up to the sound of clashing swords, as well as the continuous stream of talk that was characteristic of Porthos when he dueled.
“Five of you, is it?” Porthos said. “Five of you to take the one man. Ah. Watch as I fight all of you. Cowards. Canaille.”
The shadow three doorways down detached from the building and ran, to join the guards. Six. Six against Porthos.
Without thinking, Aramis’s hand went to where his sword normally hung, and he cursed at finding the scabbard gone from his belt. Blindly, he grabbed for his other scabbard, and pulled out his dagger, as he ran forward, a formless scream tearing his throat.