Grimaud's mouth grew thinner and harder. "I have," he said, speaking while barely decompressing his lips, "prepared you a chicken, and a soup of mutton and lentils, and a sweet of . . ."

Oh, there would be no use arguing with this. When Grimaud took the time to prepare a full meal-when they had enough money to warrant preparing a full meal-there was no gainsaying him. Athos sighed. "Very well. Bring me water to my room, so I can at least wash my hands and face." Because sitting in estate while covered in dust and feeling like he still smelled of his drunken sweat-which was true-would be insupportable. He must at least wash his hands and face, comb his hair and change his shirt.

He was in the middle of combing his hair, when Grimaud came up and, silently, his lips still compressed, poured warm water into the basin in the room. Athos splashed it on his face, and washed his face and neck, his hands and arms, and turned to find Grimaud holding out a clean shirt for him.

The servant left while Athos was tidying his doublet over his shirt, which was the first time that Athos dared cast a look at his friend, on his bed-mostly because he was afraid doing so while Grimaud was there would have caused some withering comment about straw or chickens.

Aramis was indeed snoring, something else that Athos was not aware Aramis could do-and they had often shared lodgings on campaign and in travel. Never before had he seen Aramis lying like this, faceup, his mouth slightly open, snoring in loud, prolonged bursts. Were it not for the stubble, glimmering on his face by the light of the five candles that stood on the nearby table, and for the creases around his eyes that spoke of recent dissipation, Aramis might, in fact, have looked like a young child.

The light of the candles was also more than enough for Athos to catch sight of a few bits of straw stuck to Aramis's normally impeccable hair. What had he been doing? Out tumbling farm girls? While he had the d.u.c.h.ess? And could bed her at will or close to it?

Athos shook his head, pityingly. "Ah, Aramis. You don't know what you are ignoring."

And on that, Aramis half sat up and stared at Athos with bewilderingly intent green eyes. "She means to kill us all," he said. "She has asked for our heads as her reward."

In a moment of sick feeling, his stomach lurching within him, Athos felt as though Aramis were answering his innermost thoughts and warning him against the d.u.c.h.ess de Chevreuse. He took a step forward. "Who? Who means to kill us all, Aramis? To whom did she ask for our heads?"

Aramis looked at him, bewildered. Or rather, did not look at him, but at something that appeared to be on a parallel line with Athos's face, but possibly some miles distant. "The chickens," he said, very firmly. "And the goats." He made a gesture with his hand, flat, palm downward, and swept it from left to right, in a circular half motion, as though indicating all the expanse of the room, or possibly of the Earth. "All of it in the service of the Cardinal."

And then, he fell back on his back, and resumed snoring. Athos smiled and shook his head. His verdict to Grimaud, as Grimaud served him some sort of compote, which he said was "made from pears from the north orchard, sent to me by my daughter, for you, milord," was, "Monsieur Aramis is drunk as a wheelbarrow and you know, Grimaud, if you wish me to sleep well, you might not insist I sleep on that bed."

Grimaud narrowed his eyes and made his lips very thin indeed, but, before he could start on his tirade, Athos sighed. "It's no use, Grimaud. We can move him, but if we put him on one of the chairs, or even on the floor, he'll not sleep well, and will be more likely to get up and get into some mischief than otherwise. So, I recommend we leave him on my bed, and you can take my thickest cloak and make me a sleeping area in the sitting room."

Grimaud didn't say anything, but the glare of his eyes said everything. Notwithstanding which, when Aramis was done drinking a small gla.s.s of brandy after his dinner, he found that Grimaud had in fact made him an admirable sleeping area, with cloaks and cushions and who knew what else. He stripped down to his shirt, threw clothes and sword over the back of a nearby chair, and climbed into it, too tired to care if by rights he should have had his bed or not. He was bone tired-weary with a weariness that mere physical tiredness couldn't explain.

For what seemed like a few minutes, he was blessedly, happily unconscious. Only to be brought awake again, by loud, repeated pounding on the door. From the sound of it, it seemed very much like it would be Porthos. Athos, hearing Grimaud hastening down the stairs and calling out, "I'm coming, I'm coming, wait," a.s.sumed that he could go back to sleep.

He relaxed in his nest of cloaks and cushions, and started to close his eyes again. Which is when, upon his sleeping ears, there erupted the oddest sound in the world-Grimaud, yelling at a stranger. Or at least the words sounded like they were directed at a stranger. "Get away you hussy, you strumpet. This is a respectable household and we want none of your tricks."

In Athos's recently awakened mind, these words mingled with images of the d.u.c.h.ess and more alarming images of his long-lost wife, and he realized he was bolt upright and moving, as he ran down the stairs, towards the front door.

The woman at the front door could not be the d.u.c.h.ess, she was not rounded enough. And she could not have been Charlotte. She was much too short. A short, flat little woman, with disproportionately broad shoulders, attired in a dark red dress that would be in the latest fashion, except for the fact that it was much too long on her, and broad and narrow in all the wrong places. She looked, in fact, not so much like a strumpet, as like someone who wore another woman's discards. And the bits of scraggly black hair that peeked from underneath her broad brimmed hat with its veil didn't help at all.

She was bravely resisting Grimaud's attempts at pushing her out and, considering her previous pounding on their door, Athos had to consider the possibility that this was, after all, if not a hussy, at least a madwoman. He wasn't sure which one he would have liked better. And then the woman advanced a foot, and Athos realized that she was barefoot.

He was about to step forward and intervene, when Grimaud, reaching widely, managed to knock the intruder's hat off. His words of "Monsieur D'Artagnan" hit Athos's ear at the same time as the sight of that pale face, those staring, horrified dark eyes, the hair standing all on end, the two-day growth of scraggly eighteen-year-old beard, all of it above the satin and silk of a very expensive dress.

The sound of his own laughter, ringing out, surprised Athos, but not enough to make him stop. In fact, once he had started laughing, he who rarely indulged in display of emotion of any kind, could not stop. His laughter rang out louder and louder, while he sat down on the steps-his knees gone too weak to support him-and tears ran down his face in rivulets.

He calmed down sometime later, with D'Artagnan grasping him by the arm and saying, "Athos, for the love of G.o.d, you must listen to me."

He looked up at the boy's face, and read the very real terror in it. Looking for a handkerchief in his sleeve and not finding it, because he was not wearing his doublet but solely his shirt left loose to fall almost to his knees, he wiped his streaming eyes and soaked face to the sleeve itself. "Yes, D'Artagnan," he managed, swallowing to maintain his composure. "You must forgive me, it was your looking so male and . . ."

Grimaud had closed the front door and now went by them, on the stairs, cleaving to the opposite wall. The look he gave Athos made Athos aware that if he got his sleep any more disturbed, it was, after all, Athos's fault in allowing his insane musketeer friends the liberty of the house.

Athos looked up and managed to keep his countenance-barely. The boy's fear made that easier. It wasn't something to sport with. "What happened? How come you here, in this attire."

"It is the only clothes I could find on my way out of her bedchamber. She was after me with a dagger." D'Artagnan shuddered.

"She?" Athos asked.

"Milady. Your . . . wife."

Athos felt as if an ice-cold hand had clutched at his innards, but all he could say was, "I see." And then, louder, "Grimaud, if you could bring some water to my room. I'll help Monsieur D'Artagnan dress, while we speak." And, ignoring Grimaud's mumbled complaints, as he came towards them on the stairs again, Athos helped his friend up the stairs to his room. The only reason D'Artagnan needed help at all was that he appeared to have been running barefoot through shards of clay. "Some tiles that fell from a roof," he said.

By the time Grimaud had come back with warm water in a jug, Athos had found D'Artagnan some underwear, and was digging through one of his clothes presses for a shirt. He didn't see any point giving the boy doublet and hose now, since he would, doubtless, be going to bed. "Here," he said, extending a shirt to D'Artagnan, only to find it rudely ripped off his hands by Grimaud, who went to the trunk and brought out quite a different shirt. "We can send for your clothes in the morning. I a.s.sume you left Planchet in your lodgings?"

D'Artagnan nodded. And added, half under his breath, "I hope he's safe."

And Athos looked up, helplessly, at Grimaud, who huffed. "I'll go, and take Bazin and collect the boy. And we'll get you your clothes for tomorrow."

"Thank you, Grimaud," Athos said.

"But first I'm going to bring you another jug of water, Monsieur D'Artagnan, and don't you dare put those feet on Monsieur Athos's bed. You left a trail of mud all up the stairs and across the floor."

After Grimaud left to collect more water, Athos said, "You must forgive him. He's anxious lest I should be disturbed. I have a feeling this is a truly bad night for him to feel this way."

D'Artagnan gave him a serious look. "I'm afraid so," he said, and proceeded to pour into Athos's ears a tale as chilling as it was unbelievable.

"You believe," Athos said, "that she set it up so you came upon her just as the ruffians appeared to be threatening her? Why? And how?"

"The how wouldn't be difficult," D'Artagnan said. "I suspect she has had us followed. If she is one of the Cardinal's creatures, this can't be wholly difficult."

"No," Athos said, but still felt the cold, clamped on his guts.

Water was delivered, and Athos told D'Artagnan, "I believe it would be best if you laid down and attempted to sleep. I don't know how well you may do next to Aramis, since he alternates between snoring and telling people about the danger of chickens." He smiled a little at D'Artagnan's expression. "I a.s.sure you it's true, and I a.s.sure you I have no more idea what he means than do you. I'm sure he means something, at least in his own mind, but what that might be, I cannot tell you. He is, needless to say, drunk."

D'Artagnan looked at the blond musketeer curiously, as he snored, faceup on the bed. "It seems like something Aramis . . . I mean, it doesn't seem like him."

"Indeed," Athos said. "And after your story, I'm beginning to wonder whether he did in fact get drunk or whether something was added to his food or drink, and, in that case, what that might be."

He helped D'Artagnan rinse his feet, and then saw him climb onto the bed, on the opposite side of Aramis, before he headed out the door.

"I might yet come and try to sleep on a chair," D'Artagnan said.

"You're welcome to," Athos answered and was, by that time, so tired that he couldn't ever remember getting to the sitting room or crawling into his mound of cushions and cloaks.

He could however remember being startled awake by a loud knocking. For a long time, it seemed, he lay there, wishing that Grimaud would answer. But after a while, it occurred to him Grimaud couldn't answer, since Grimaud had gone to fetch D'Artagnan's Planchet. He grabbed a candle, which he'd forgotten to blow out, from the little table in the corner, reached for his sword, and pulling it from its sheath, held it in his hand, as he went down the stairs and threw the door open.

To find Porthos, holding what seemed to be a covered clay dish, staring at him. Athos blinked at the sight then tried to sheathe his sword, realized that he wasn't wearing a sheath, and bowed slightly. "Come in, Porthos," he said, stepping around his friend as he did so, and closing the door. "I presume that's a dish of pigeons?"

Porthos looked down at the vessel in his hands and seemed for a moment quite confused. Then he said, "Oh. No. That is, it used to be. Now it's just the empty dish." As he spoke, he set it on the last step of the stairs, and looked up at Athos, who had gone up half a dozen steps, candle in one hand, sword in the other. "I used it to break into the Bastille."

"I see," Athos said, thinking that, in fact, those words were starting to have an apposite meaning to him.

"And I must tell you what Mousqueton said," Porthos said. "Because I think it is deucedly important and in fact it might solve the whole mystery for us . . . only . . . only I'm not sure how. You know I'm not good at seeing the picture until it is all completed."

"Yes," Athos said. "Yes, of course." And, making a sudden decision added, "Here, take my sword and candle up, Porthos. Put the sword with my clothes, then go in and wake D'Artagnan and Aramis on my bed. I can see all efforts at sleeping tonight will be blighted, and that I might as well give up and stay awake. Tell them it is time for a war council. And if Aramis speaks of chickens, for the love of heaven, pour a jug of water over his head. I believe there is still half a jug left from D'Artagnan's washing."

"But . . ." Porthos said. "Where are you going?"

"Myself? Only to the cellar to get a bottle of wine. Sobriety has proven much stranger than I can endure, and I believe a bottle might improve my feelings."

A Head Like a Case of Rapiers; Where Some Ladies Must Be Protected and Others Delight in Danger

ARAMIS did not like being awakened. He tried to protest, as Porthos, ignored twice, finally grasped him by his shirt, at the nape of the neck, and bodily lifted him from the bed, carried him to the window, threw the window open and poured a good half a jug of water over his head.

While this worked admirably to clear Aramis's head, it also left him spluttering, shivering, and with his wet hair and wetter shirt clinging to him.

"What is the meaning of this?" he asked Porthos, even as every one of the words he p.r.o.nounced echoed inside his head in a fiendish way, coming back at him as both sound and pain. "Why did you pour water over my head?"

"You should thank the saints it's water," Porthos said. "Only because I didn't have time to look and see if there is a chamberpot about the place. You tried to hit me."

"You yelled in my ear," Aramis said.

"Hardly, I merely told you to get up. It is not my fault that you are hungover."

Aramis regarded Porthos with full disbelief, aware at the same time that they were both being watched by D'Artagnan with something very akin to the fond amus.e.m.e.nt of the adult watching two children fight over trivial things. Aramis knew he could not be hungover. He had not gone out drinking. Or at least, he didn't remember going out drinking. He remembered, however, the long hot ride in the agonizingly slow oxcart. And he remembered the many farms each with a vintage worth sampling.

He also remembered-and he was fairly sure this had to be the result of drunken hallucinations-a scene that involved several armed men and a profusion of livestock, including something about chickens roasting in the setting sun. He groaned deep in his throat, "I have," he said, "a head like a case of rapiers, too full and close together, so that every movement brings about a frantic clanking."

Porthos regarded him with a jaundiced eye. "All the same," he said, reaching for the towel that Athos kept near the washbasin, "Athos has said we must have a council of war. Dry your hair. He'll be waiting in the sitting room."

Athos was waiting, with an open bottle of wine and a cup, and an expression of bewildered amus.e.m.e.nt on his refined features. Aramis looked at him, remembering vaguely that Athos had addressed him with a sort of gentle reproach, but not having any idea at all what Athos had told him. He thought he had warned Athos about milady, too, which probably explained the crease of worry between his eyebrows.

It was possibly the strangest council of war the four of them have ever held. At least, it was the first one where three of them were in their shirts, their bare legs hanging out beneath. Also, the first one of them to which Aramis was so ridiculously hungover that he could barely speak beyond a whisper.

To his shocked disbelief, Athos handed him a cup about a quarter full of red wine. "Drink," he said.

The smell of the wine climbed into Aramis's nose and put a knot of nausea at his throat. He pushed it away.

Athos pushed it back, "Drink!" he said. "I beg you to believe I know how to treat hangovers."

And when Aramis merely looked up at Athos, in horror, Athos grasped his hair, at the nape of his neck, causing him to both tilt his head back and open his mouth. At which point Aramis, coughing and spluttering, remembered the story of someone or other who had drowned in a barrel of malmsey, and swallowed frantically to avoid the like fate. As his mouth cleared, he said, "I' faith, Athos, I should challenge you to a duel."

"Probably," Athos said, in all seriousness. "But by the time you sober up enough to do it, I'd have defeated and disarmed you, and if you think I'm going to kill you and save you from feeling this hangover, you are sorely mistaken." And with his aplomb unshaken, he returned to his seat, where he looked at Aramis, as he swallowed and coughed, and squinted at the light of the candles, to determine how many candles there really were and how they burned. He was fairly sure, in fact, that each of the candles did not support a roaring fire, but that was how he saw them, their light augmented by several extraneous auras.

"Over the past few hours," Athos said, as he pa.s.sed cups of wine around, "I have been awakened three times, each by one of you, and each time I've been greeted with a stranger story. It has become quite obvious to me that my best efforts to protect this group and keep you from harm have only spurned you to greater and more ridiculous feats of lunacy. So now I would like to know what each of you has discovered. Why don't we start with you, Aramis, since you are the one who left this house earliest?"

Aramis, whose head still reverberated at every sound, looked at Athos in mute resentment. He was, alas, all too aware that Athos, in this mood, could not be gainsaid. Plus, he would be quite likely to grab Aramis by the nape of the neck again, and force yet more wine into him. There was that glint of amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes, closely followed by a look of hard determination. It was a combination Aramis had never seen in Athos. D'Artagnan, yes, but Athos never.

"When I left here," he said, "I decided to follow up on your impression that you had, in fact, seen your dead wife." He unraveled the whole story of his meeting with Huguette, followed by his forced travel into the countryside, in the belly of a wooden box. He was in the sort of mood where he couldn't think how to leave out the embarra.s.sing parts-possibly because his hangover made him as awkward with words as must be Porthos's normal predicament. He told the story morosely, including the insults that Jean and Marc had leveled at him, before he burst out of the box, and everywhere they had stopped afterwards and what they'd eaten.

Porthos had tried to interrupt, twice, only to have Athos hold his hand up for silence, so that Aramis had to continue unreeling the tale. Only when he got to the part where he'd arrived back at the city and been attacked by swordsmen again did he falter. "Only," he said, "I don't know if there were really any swordsmen, because to believe that, I have to believe, also, that there were several pigs and chickens and goats and that this was what allowed me to get away."

"Well," D'Artagnan said, "people in that neighborhood do keep livestock."

Aramis could have warned D'Artagnan not to talk, because that would only bring Athos's attention on him, but by the time he thought of it, of course, D'Artagnan had spoken and it was too late. Athos turned to him with a slow smile and said, "Why don't you tell us where your follies have taken you, D'Artagnan?"

D'Artagnan told. Some of his words still boomed in Aramis's head, but either Aramis's headache was getting better, or D'Artagnan's voice was not as loud and offensive to the strained cranium as Porthos's and Athos's could be.

The story he told was hard to piece together, mostly because Aramis felt as though he were trying to understand things through a field of blades. "You mean," he finally said, "that Madame Bonacieux thought you had avoided her for the sake of fighting a duel? Why?"

Athos interrupted. "I believe I have the answer to that, but meanwhile, please finish your story, D'Artagnan."

D'Artagnan finished it, and then Porthos was allowed to explain where he'd been and what he'd been doing. Since part of his efforts included listening to the conversation between Madame Bonacieux and Athos, something about it tickled Aramis's mind.

"So," he said. "Was the . . . No, I can't believe it. I know I was suspicious that Marie might have sent the swordsmen after me-but it would be after me, because I insulted her. Never after the rest of you. And when this conversation happened, the insult couldn't have happened yet."

"It hadn't," Athos said. "I've . . . spoken to the d.u.c.h.ess. What?" he said defensively towards Aramis. "A musketeer may speak with a d.u.c.h.ess, you know?"

"Of course. Of course he may," Aramis said, appeasing, not sure what had set off a storm of Athos's always uncertain temper. "And she told you she hadn't done it?"

"It seems hardly to matter, since you've a.s.serted at the time she hadn't any reason to be angry at you, yet. But, indeed, she said the duel she meant was . . . metaphorical," Athos said, and had the grace to blush.

For the first time, in this very odd war council, Aramis had to repress a great impulse to chuckle. He could well imagine how Marie Michon's odd sense of humor had played on Athos's repressed, not to say prudish mind. The older musketeer fidgeted and looked away from Aramis's eyes as if he saw something in them that made him uncomfortable. Aramis wished he could have witnessed that encounter. He would have given something. He would have paid money for the chance.

Porthos had been deep in thought. He finally said. "It's inscrutable, of course, particularly Hermengarde's behavior."

"What is inscrutable?" Aramis said, regretting rather having given Porthos the word, which could be very much like giving a young child a loud whistle.

"The whole thing," Porthos said. "But particularly Hermengarde." He looked towards Athos. "I believe you'd say that all women are the devil, but I don't think it was that. I think it was . . ." he sighed. "That she wanted security of a type that Mousqueton couldn't give."

"Porthos, what's inscrutable is what you might be talking about," Aramis said.

"No, no, that's quite clear," Porthos said. "The problem is that I haven't told you yet of my conversation with Mousqueton." And he proceeded to do that, as he always told stories, in a spare, straightforward style. At least, every time he tried to interject some odd observation or some strange idea of his own about what might have been happening, Athos would make a gesture as though sending him back on track, and Porthos would go back, and describe exactly what he had said, and what Mousqueton had said.

When he finished, he sat there, biting his lip. "You understand all of it, right? Including why there were swordsmen when Aramis came back into town?"

"I think I do," Athos said. "However, if you wish to explain . . ."

Porthos nodded. "Hermengarde told Pierre. I'm sure of it. I'm sure that her relationship with him was such, she told him without the slightest idea what he would do with it."

"But I don't understand," Aramis said.

"I do," Athos said. "The mystery of the ambush can be laid at the feet of Pierre Langelier. You see, he heard from Hermengarde that Madame Bonacieux had taken alarm at the words of the d.u.c.h.ess. It was probably told as a jest. You must remember, of all of them, only Hermengarde knew what sort of hold Madame Bonacieux had on D'Artagnan. And if she saw Madame Bonacieux leave in a hurry . . . well, Langelier and Hermengarde too, could figure her misunderstanding and what she'd set out to do. They knew she had probably sent a note summoning D'Artagnan to her, as a means to stop a presumed fight. All he had to do was ambush D'Artagnan in that part of the palace-in the most secluded area he could do it."

"But why would he want to?" Aramis asked.

"Well, by that time, doubtless, he would have heard of the ghost in his father's workshop. You have to remember, that though we didn't deal with him, I'm sure Monsieur Langelier fils was often present while we talked to his father. I'm sure he knew us all by look and by description too, from Hermengarde's story. He would hear of it and, I think, gather some friends and try his chance at catching us in the palace. Because that was his chance to put an end to our investigations. I'm sure by now there are rumors of how we solve crimes," Athos said.

"But . . . it would be tight timing, and where would an armorer find seven fighters who could outmatch us on the sword?"

Porthos sighed. "Aramis, surely you remember my saying that armorers are all sword experts. They have to be, in order to make good swords. They have to know what makes a sword work, and be a good sword. They practice as much as we do, and perhaps more. They certainly understand their weapons better."