D'Artagnan's lips stretched in a convulsive smile, which he seemed to control only by a great effort of will. "Athos, my friend, no." And to what Athos was sure was his own bewildered countenance, he added, "My friend, you could dress in rags and soot, and you'd still look like one of the n.o.blest men in the land." He bowed a little. "Which you are."

"But-" Athos said. Oh, he was proud of his ancestry and his family name. For their sake, he had renounced his domain rather than drag that n.o.ble name through the mud by a.s.sociating it with his marriage to a branded criminal. But he didn't think, if he should dress as a commoner, anyone would guess his true origins.

"Trust me," D'Artagnan said, with a slight smile. "Everyone who meets you knows you come from a n.o.ble background. I don't think there's anything you can do to make yourself look as a commoner. Cloaked and hidden, your posture must yet announce your quality to the world."

Athos sighed. He didn't want to believe it, but the truth was, there were many people who'd told him the same in the past. That there was something about him that stood out. And hadn't he seen it, in his duels with strangers, that they always demanded to know his true name-that they always knew his name was one of the n.o.blest in France. And yet. "But D'Artagnan, I don't want any harm to come to you. You are the youngest of us."

"And you are the oldest. Do not let it disturb you. No harm shall come to me. I can't take my sword, but I shall take a dagger, and you know, if I've survived the snares we've escaped so far, I won't be that easy to kill."

He bowed slightly, almost formally, to Athos.

And Athos, standing alone on the street corner, watched him walk until he turned right and disappeared from sight, headed for the Rue des Fossoyers, where he would be getting an outfit for the expedition.

So, Aramis has gone to the palace. To see Hermengarde, he says. And D'Artagnan has gone to look about the neighborhood where the armorer lived. And I? What can I do? He stood on the street corner, and his mind went back to the interview with the captain. Monsieur de Treville had looked more worried than he should. As though he were not absolutely sure he could keep Mousqueton from harm in Richelieu's prison. He stood on the street corner, and his mind went back to the interview with the captain. Monsieur de Treville had looked more worried than he should. As though he were not absolutely sure he could keep Mousqueton from harm in Richelieu's prison.

If that was true, what could Athos do? Only one thing came to mind. I must, I must, he thought, he thought, go see if this is Richelieu's plan, myself. go see if this is Richelieu's plan, myself.

Night was falling, the streets of Paris filled with the curious red of a wintry sunset. Athos squinted at the sunset, then at the crowds of commoners, n.o.blemen, wh.o.r.es and musketeers pouring out for an hour or two of amus.e.m.e.nt.

And he turned and headed towards the compound that housed the Cardinal Richelieu and those he commanded.

Grief and Comfort; Where Mousqueton's Reputation is Tarnished; The Merest Acquaintances

TURNING towards the royal palace-the so called hotel de ville-brought an already familiar bittersweet ache to Aramis's heart. Last winter, when he turned this way, he'd been on his way to see his seamstress seamstress, Violette, d.u.c.h.ess de Dreux, one of the n.o.blest women in the land and, in Aramis's eyes, the most beautiful woman in the world.

She'd been a friend of Anne of Austria's, come with her at the time of the Queen's marriage and forcibly married to a French n.o.bleman who spurned his new wife's charms, charms that Aramis had been more than happy to enjoy. It seemed to him, these many months after she'd been cruelly murdered, that he'd only realized how much he loved her and how much he'd miss her after she was lost to him forever.

Her face haunted his dreams. He'd wake in the middle of the night and swear he'd just heard the tinkle of her musical laughter. His hand would stretch to find only cold bed, and no Violette, and he'd come awake in stark loss, as though it had just happened, as if she'd just been taken from him.

And he'd find himself, at a duel, or a game, a night of drinking or in the middle of a conversation with his friends, thinking "I must tell Violette of this," only to realize he'd never tell Violette anything at all, because she was gone forever. And it was all he could do, at such moments, to turn his face and hide the tears that p.r.i.c.kled at his eyes.

He couldn't have brought D'Artagnan with him now. Because while he was alone and walking towards the palace, he could pretend that he was going to see Violette, and that she would be there, in her startlingly pink room, waiting for him with a smile. And walking through the streets, he walked as if in a revery, dreaming of her soft hair beneath his face, of those lips that, on kissing, felt like animated velvet.

Only at the entrance to the royal palace did he wake. He had to, because he was not going to the entrance nearest Violette's room, nor would instructions have been left with the musketeers on guard duty to let him pa.s.s. Instead, he approached an entrance a friend of his was guarding, and bowed slightly. "D'Armaud," he said. "I have some business within."

D'Armaud, a young musketeer who aped Aramis, but with the greatest of admirations, looked at him doubtfully. "I don't think it will do you any good, my friend, to try to plead the case of Porthos's servant with the King yourself. Or even with the Queen. You know they don't receive-"

Aramis laughed, and shook his head. "No, that is not it. I must go tell Mousqueton's girl what happened to him. She is a maid within. I wouldn't bother with it, but, you know, Porthos likes the boy, and he thinks, you know . . . the girl should know."

"Oh," D'Armaud said, looking doubtful. But he stepped aside and let Aramis through.

Aramis knew the palace as well as he knew his own quarters. For years now, he'd stood guard at the palace door and, long before he'd become Violette's lover, he'd taken his pleasure with many of the ladies in the palace. And given, he hoped, pleasure in return.

He crossed a courtyard, ran up a staircase, wound around a hallway, until he came to a place where a door stood ajar. At this door he knocked, ever so lightly.

A formidable white-haired matron emerged, and looked surprised at seeing Aramis. "You're on guard tonight, monsieur? I'm sure her grace-"

"No, no. None of that," Aramis said, smiling through what felt like frozen lips. Had he been so obvious? Did everyone know of his latest flirtation? He could have sworn he'd played it dark and deep. He could have sworn it was all hidden. By the Ma.s.s, he was a fool. "I'm here to speak to Hermengarde. I believe she is a maid here?"

The matron raised her eyebrow at him, as she would at any gentleman, he supposed, who asked to speak to one of her maids. Her hard, dark eyes implied that she knew how these affairs ended.

Aramis shook his head. "She's friends with the servant of my friend Porthos and he-"

"Oh, the poor boy who was taken for murder," the matron said, taking her hands to her chest. "Do you know when he'll be hanged? Have they announced it, yet?"

"We're hoping never, madam," Aramis said, stiffly. "We're sure Mousqueton didn't do it."

The matron patted him on the arm. "And much credit it does you too. But there, you wait here, I'll have Hermengarde fetched to you."

She walked down the hallway and he heard her talking to someone, then she came back, nodding to him as she pa.s.sed him and returned to her lair, leaving him to wait in the hallway, outside her door, like a pet.i.tioner before royalty.

After a while, he heard light, fast steps, and, in moments, Hermengarde appeared. She was a little, blondish slip of a thing, and always managed to look to him more like a waif than a full-grown woman. She stopped awkwardly in front of him, and made him a very tottering curtsey, before looking up to show a face ravaged by tears.

"Monsieur," she said, and her lips trembled. "Monsieur. I'm sure you have bad news of Mousqueton and, oh, monsieur, I wish this hadn't happened."

"But no, my little one. Not bad news," Aramis said, finding himself speaking in the tone he would use for a little kitten or a frightened horse. "I'm sure you know he was arrested, but we've been told that nothing bad will happen to him and-"

"Nothing bad!" Hermengarde said. "But . . . he's in the Bastille! They torture people in the Bastille."

To this Aramis could counter with nothing but a bow. Searching frantically in his sleeves, he found a lace-edged handkerchief, and handed it to her, and looked away as she wiped her cheeks. "I'd like to talk to you, Hermengarde," he said while she did so. "Perhaps you can tell me something that will help us free Mousqueton?"

"Oh no," she said. "At least I don't know of anything . . ." She shook her head.

"Well," Aramis said. "You've helped us with these things before, and surely you know many times people don't even realize what they know, and are all innocently keeping the secret, which if known would set their loved one free."

"I . . . I don't think I know any secrets," Hermengarde said, looking up, and her lip started trembling again, doubtless heralding another flood of tears.

"No. But the point of those secrets is that one never knows," Aramis said, and offered his arm to her. "I know you to be a brave girl, and surely you will help us to free Mousqueton."

She took his arm and he led her, almost by instinct, to a small garden, in what used to be the part of the palace where Violette lived. If anyone of the many people who crossed paths with them thought it odd for a musketeer to walk arm in arm with a crying maid, no one said so. Not even the occasional musketeer who saluted Aramis as an equal.

It wasn't till they exited through an arched gateway into the tiny walled garden where in summer the fragrance of roses was almost overpowering and where now, in late February, only the skeletal twigs of the bushes stood, their arms raised to a lowering sky from which all light had fled, did Aramis realize where his feet had brought him. He sighed, remembering the many times he'd sat with Violette upon the marble bench under the tree. And how many times he'd kissed her, in the rose-scented nights that were now irretrievably gone.

Startled at his sigh, Hermengarde looked up. She looked surprised and blushed as if she'd caught something indecent in his gaze. "Oh. You miss her," she said. "The d.u.c.h.ess."

Aramis nodded, gravely. What he couldn't tell his friends, what he couldn't tell the many women who courted his favors and with whom he could not become involved because none of them could ever hold the place in his heart that Violette had held, he could tell this little waif of a maid. The words tripped from his tongue. "I'll miss her the rest of my life," he said, factually. "We used to come here, on summer nights. It is a little-used garden. And we used to sit on that bench there, under the tree, and face the entrance of the garden. Because if we saw no one else come in, we knew that no one was close enough to hear our conversation."

"And so no one will hear our conversation tonight?" Hermengarde asked, sagely.

"Exactly, my dear," he said. "No one."

He led her to the bench and they sat, the marble's ice-cold temperature seeping through his venetians and his underwear and settling like a chill upon his whole body. "Now," he said, softly, in the tone he'd been told he should use for confessions, and which he'd used, to much good effect, to talk to women in all walks of life. "Tell me what you know of Mousqueton and the armorer. You said you didn't want for this to happen. As I don't doubt you didn't. But what do you think happened, and why?"

"Oh," she said. And then, quickly. "They said that Mousqueton killed Monsieur Langelier pere."

"They said . . . and do you believe it?"

"Oh, no," Hermengarde said, hastily. "At least, if he killed someone, it would have been Pierre Langelier."

"Pierre Langelier?" Aramis asked.

"The son," Hermengarde said, and blushed.

"You know Monsieur Langelier's son?"

"Yes, of course," she said, as if it were a strange thing for him to ask her. "I was born in that street, you see. My parents live a few doors down from Monsieur Langelier. My father is a smith. It was only because my G.o.dmother, Madame du Pontus, is the palace's fifth housekeeper, that I had the good fortune to be appointed to this post."

Aramis, who had more than once seen her duck food, or worse, flung by the n.o.ble guests of the sovereign wondered how she could call it her good fortune without irony. But then he didn't know how much worse her life would have been without such preferment, so he said nothing about it. Instead, he asked, "And Monsieur Pierre Langelierfils?"

"Oh, he wanted to marry me. And my parents approved of it, because they know his parents and . . . and he stands to inherit the armory . . . or I guess has inherited it now. And . . . you see . . . Mousqueton doesn't even know who his parents are. His first memories are of running wild on the street, purse cutting and . . ." She blushed. "Oh, I know he is fortunate and that his position with your friend cannot lead to anything less than great recognition and fortune, but . . . But . . ." Her lips trembled. "My parents didn't view it that way."

"I see. So, they wanted you to accept Monsieur Pierre Langelier's suit."

"Oh yes. Oh, very much so. And the last time I talked to Mousqueton, you see . . . I told him I didn't think we should see each other again, and he left in a fury. I told him I could not help but do what my parents wanted, and that my parents wanted me to marry Pierre. He . . . he accused me of wanting to marry Pierre. He said Pierre and I . . ." She blushed. "He accused me of things I'm sure I've never done. Not with anyone but Mousqueton."

"I see," Aramis said, though he did not in fact see much of anything, except that this made things worse for Mousqueton.

Hermengarde looked up and seemed to read his expression. "But no, monsieur, you can't think that. You can't believe it. Because you see, Monsieur Langelier pere had snow-white hair, and Pierre has blond hair. Golden, like yours, monsieur. And he's almost as elegant as you are, monsieur. He was a late-born son. Even in the darkness of the room with only the forge for light, it would be obvious they were not the same person."

Aramis inclined his head, not to let her see his expression darken still further. That was true, as far as it went, and he was sure she thought she was telling him the truth and that it was impossible for Mousqueton to be guilty. But what if he had come to demand that the father refuse his son consent to marry Hermengarde? And what if the father had refused? He'd seen the way Mousqueton spoke of Hermengarde and if they had been intimate, as her words seemed to imply . . .

Men did all sorts of stupid and criminal things for women they loved. He'd all but cut himself from the living for the sake of his lost Violette. And look at Athos. If Aramis read his hints right, Athos's entire life had been blighted by his love for a woman who had duped him into marrying her. And at young D'Artagnan, involved in a complex affair with his landlord's wife. Or sober, honest Porthos, who went to Ma.s.s even more often than Aramis, but who committed regular adultery with his Athenais, the notary's wife. There was no explanation for it, and no inequity to which a man in love would not stoop and consider himself justified.

"And the other thing," Hermengarde said, her voice rising defiantly. "Is that he had no reason at all to kill Monsieur Langelier, because I'd sent him a note just this morning." She sniffed, and wiped her nose with the handkerchief he'd given her, which looked like a repulsive mess now. "You know . . . I've . . . that is, I found that my monthly course was missed, and it could only be Mousqueton's. So I told him I would marry him as soon as he cared to make me an offer." She sniffed again. "So it makes no sense at all he should do this."

To Aramis too, this made no sense at all. Oh, he supposed Mousqueton's enemies could say that he had lost his mind and sought to steal the sword to use the money from its sale to finance his marriage to Hermengarde. In fact, he could not imagine how she thought they would live on Mousqueton's very irregular salary.

But then he thought if she married before the pregnancy became obvious, there was no reason at all that she couldn't continue working after the brat's birth. She'd just give it to nurse to her relatives, or to a hired maid. There were those who took them in by the dozen, and while one heard horror stories, most of the children survived with little outward injury.

And Mousqueton would have continued to live with Porthos. And more likely than not, Porthos would become a fond almost-grandfather to the child. Aramis could see it all in his mind's eye. He could see Porthos, fond of the little one, and sacrificing a bit of his self-indulgence to keep the young couple happy.

They would be no worse off than Madame Bonacieux, D'Artagnan's lover, who was a personal maid to Queen Anne of Austria and could leave the palace no more than a few nights a week. Though truth be told far more often than she told her husband that her mistress could spare her, because most of the time, she took a detour up D'Artagnan's stairs, and into the young man's bed.

Aramis sighed heavily, thinking of D'Artagnan's love. Athos was known to say the youth lived in a fool's paradise, but Aramis wished he had his paradise back, fool's or not. "I see," he said. "And this note you sent to him?"

"Yes," Hermengarde said. "And I had his answer by present." She smiled. "Monsieur Porthos taught him to write, but I must say his handwriting is abominable. And his spelling." She smiled more broadly. "You see, I learned to write, myself. Some ladies opened a school and taught the children. But I can say Mousqueton . . ."

"Spells and traces his letters like Porthos," Aramis said, amused.

"No, really? But it is often that way, when you have these big men, with their way . . . I bet Monsieur Porthos was too restless to sit and learn his letters when he was little."

Aramis didn't think there was any need to tell her that the truth was that monsieur's old and crusty father found it unnecessary for his son to learn to write and, in fact, believed that such gifts could emasculate his tall, redheaded son. "And what did the note say?"

"He said he would request my hand of me tonight and of my father tomorrow. You see?" She looked up at Aramis, tears trembling in her eyes. "There was no reason at all for him to kill poor Monsieur Langelier pere. I can't think why he should do such a thing."

"Well," Aramis said, but without much force. "We . . . we don't think he did it. Monsieur Porthos is sure he's innocent."

"Like he was sure of your innocence," Hermengarde said. "When everyone said that you'd done murder. I'm sure with such friends on his side, Mousqueton will be fine."

Aramis nodded and took his leave of her, and managed to get himself lost in a maze of hallways before he saw his own tear-streaked face in a mirror he was pa.s.sing. For a moment he was disoriented, as though this were a stranger, whom he had to find a way to console. And then he realized that the woebegone face looking blankly at him was his own, and in his own eyes he read what he was thinking of.

Hermengarde was with child-or probably was-and Mousqueton might very well be lost to her. And Aramis's own Violette had been carrying his child when she'd died. He tried to think whether his son or daughter would now have been born, but he kept getting muddled in the months, his mind confused.

What he wanted, what he craved was to wind back time, to make Violette's death not have happened, and to return her warm and living to his arms, with the baby that was theirs, and whom he would have contrived to raise to carry on his name. The tears in the reflected eyes multiplied, and he groaned, under his breath.

Pulling another handkerchief from his sleeve, he looked at it blankly, surprised, because he didn't normally carry more than one handkerchief. The initials were RH-Rene D'Herblay, the name he'd given up when he'd taken up the uniform, but which still survived in the embroidered handkerchiefs his mother sent him-and so this was his handkerchief. That meant, he must have given another handkerchief to Hermengarde, and that could only mean that he'd give the little maid the handkerchief of the d.u.c.h.ess de Chevreuse.

He smiled at his own reflection in the mirror, as he erased all traces of his tears. Walking to a window, he unlatched and threw it open, to allow the cold night air to efface the last vestiges of his grief from his pale, easily marked skin.

Then he closed the window and walked down the hallway to a door, where he stopped and scratched at the wood.

"Open," a sultry voice called from within. He opened.

The d.u.c.h.ess de Chevreuse stood at a writing desk, dusting with sand a sheet of paper that she had, presumably just written. She looked at him with a smile. "Chevalier," she said, "but how enchanting of you to come. I was just about to send you a note."

He went in and closed the door.

Hammers and Swords; The Tendency of Objects Not To Fall; Where Porthos Decides It Would be a Bad Idea To Drop Objects on His Own Head

PORTHOS didn't know when his mind had become attached to the high unlikelihood of Mousqueton's having dropped a hammer on his own head. He just knew that it had. Of course, it would have been far easier to ask the question of Mousqueton, but he judged from Monsieur de Treville's expression that such an interview would be a hard thing to arrange.

And so, Porthos was left with the explanation that the guards of the Cardinal had given for having found Mousqueton unconscious next to the murdered armorer. And all he could do was to interest himself in the matter personally, as it were.

At any rate, Porthos had found, through the many crimes he and his friends had got involved in-and truly, what was it that had brought so many sudden deaths into their path all of a sudden?-that more than people's conversations, more than confessions or lack thereof, more than the deceptions and counter deceptions of humans, what made sense to him were concrete facts: where blood had fallen when it erupted frm the body of the murdered person. And how far the man had to walk after being hurt, or else, whether there was another way into a room.

Words were all very well, Porthos thought. Certainly, Aramis seemed to derive an immense amount of pleasure from fiddling around with them, arranging them pleasantly and, sometimes, twisting them around to give them meanings that nature never intended. Words were to Aramis as wigs were to certain men, who liked to sport a different head of curly hair for every day of the week-utterly unnecessary but a source of great pride and joy.

Porthos didn't begrudge Aramis this joy. At least he didn't begrudge it when Aramis was using the words for purposes other than bludgeoning Porthos with them. When he was using them for that purpose, Porthos tended to become rather ill-tempered, because most of those words made no more sense to him than if Aramis were to speak a foreign language. Which, in fact, he found, Aramis often did, speaking Latin or Greek, or who knew what else, and making the ch.o.r.e of understanding him yet more difficult.

And Athos . . . Athos h.o.a.rded words like a miser h.o.a.rds gold. And when he spoke at all, it was as likely to be in his own words as in the words of some great writer dead a thousand years or more.

The one whose words made the most sense to Porthos was D'Artagnan. Not that the young man was always straightforward. But he tended to use his words to serve a purpose, and not just to make himself feel this way or that. And words, as far as Porthos was concerned, were just-tools-tools with which he was, he confessed, devilishly clumsy.

So he would leave words behind. He was sure, just like Aramis intended to question Hermengarde, that Athos would go and question someone or other at the palace. And D'Artagnan would, doubtlessly, find some Gascon to give him information about something. As many Gascons as there were in the capital, and as clannish as they tended to be, the surprising thing would be if he didn't find someone to give him information.

But all of this involved words and understanding the words of others, and Porthos simply did not have the patience to deal with that. So, instead, he would deal with hammers and swords-things that could not lie and that very rarely spoke in words. Well, at least not unless one was dead drunk. And even then, Porthos was fairly sure that the swords and the hammers didn't talk so much as the wine roared in his head.

He walked away from Athos and D'Artagnan as they were trying to convince Aramis not to leave. Why they were trying to do that was quite beyond Porthos's ken, since, after all, Aramis had always done exactly what he wanted to do and would doubtless continue to do so. He walked along gradually narrowing streets, till he found himself on the street where the armory stood. It was still closed. Or perhaps, he thought, it was closed again.

After all, he thought, the armory wouldn't be open now, because-and he cast a surprised look up at the sky-night had fallen. A look around sufficed to tell him the streets were quite deserted. Unlike parts of town where there were taverns, or hostelries, there was nothing here to call the custom pa.s.sersby. Only homes, and closed stores.