Dying By The Sword Part 17

"A rat?" Mousqueton said, puzzled, looking up from his platter.

"Never mind," Porthos said. "I believe the gentleman is being what Monsieur Aramis calls metaphorical."

Mousqueton raised his eyebrows but said nothing, as he tucked into the pigeons with apples. Presently, Porthos removed a large, clean handkerchief from his sleeve, and handed it to the servant. "You're going to need it for your fingers," he said. "They don't seem to have provided you with silverware."

"No. I don't know, perhaps they're afraid I'll use it to escape."

"I daresay by now they are afraid of you on principle. Mousqueton, must you be so abominable? How drunk are you?"

Mousqueton looked puzzled. "Oh, not at all, sir," he said. "I've nursed the bottles I get off and on. Though I've been known to pour some out the window, if they've been particularly trying. They hate it when I waste their wine."

"You don't mind if I ask, but how did you manage to get access to the wine? And why the wine?"

He grinned at Porthos. "Walk all the way to that wall," he said.

Porthos did, walking to the point indicated. "And now?" he asked.

"Now kneel and count three flagstones from the corner."

Porthos obeyed.

"Now pry up the third flagstone."

"Mousqueton! I have no tools."

"None needed. Try it, sir."

Porthos tried it. To his surprise, the flagstone, not very big at all, came up handily. Beneath it was a subfloor of wood, which presumably rested on top of beams. There was a neat hole in the wood. Broken, now sawed, but all the same too regular in shape for it to be the result of rotting. And looking through that hole, Porthos could see, beneath them, what looked like a well-stocked cellar. He sat back, whistling softly.

"You found it like this?"

Mousqueton gave him a jaundiced look. "Monsieur! No. I was bored. I tried every flagstone and found that one somewhat loose. After working at it for some hours, it came up, handily. Then I found that the bottom of my bed's legs also came off," he pulled up the covering to show that each of the st.u.r.dy legs of his plain bed had a metal surrounding. "I used that to dig through the subfloor. That the bottles were right underneath was mere coincidence."

"And you reach them how?"

Mousqueton shrugged. "I happened to have some cord in my sleeve," he said.

Porthos nodded, still bewildered. Mousqueton's ability to not only carry the oddest objects about his person, but to keep them there despite very thorough searches had long since become one of the musketeers' jokes. What he couldn't understand was how the rope might have helped the young man get the bottles.

Mousqueton grinned, and taking a looped cord from inside his sleeve, showed Porthos how he had a sort of noose at the end of it. Dropping it through the hole, he got the neck of a bottle. The very process of pulling up the rope tightened the noose, and this brought the bottle, wobbling and shaking, up to the hole in the floor.8 "You are extraordinary," Porthos said.

Mousqueton blushed a little. "To own the truth," he said, "the hardest part about the whole thing is to put the flagstone back, and make sure some dirt is swept back into the crevice, so they don't look there." As he spoke, he put the stone back in place, and dragged his foot to sweep some dirt into the crevice. Then he returned to his dish. "But you did not come here," he said, pulling the cork out of the bottle by means of the little thread inserted there for the purpose, "to ask me about my ways of getting wine, and probably not either, to bring me pigeons, though I thank you, and Madame Coquenard for the thought."

Porthos shook his head. "Nothing to do with her. I got it from the palace kitchens. It was lying on a table, and no one was guarding it."

"Monsieur Porthos, I am proud," Mousqueton said, bowing, a little humor in his eyes. "And all for my sake?"

"No. Or rather, yes, but . . ." In a tumble, he related everything that had been happening, omitting only Hermengarde's death. He tried, but when it came to it, he couldn't bring himself to tell Mousqueton that story. The thing was, in recent times, he'd seen Aramis survive the death of his lover-if indeed he had survived it. There were still days that Porthos wondered. And he suspected that Aramis wondered too. And he'd seen the look on Athos's face when speaking of his long-lost wife. He simply couldn't face seeing Mousqueton's expression crumple like that. Not while the poor man was here, away from Porthos and from all his friends who might support him and comfort him.

So, absent that one distressing fact, Mousqueton listened to everything intently. "She was going to accept my proposal, then?" he said.

"You didn't know that?" Porthos asked.

"She'd never yet told me," he said. He looked somewhat worried. "Is she . . ."

"I think she is well," Porthos said, crossing his fingers as much as might be, and telling himself that he was after all speaking of Hermengarde's soul, which would, doubtlessly, be in heaven.

Mousqueton frowned, which seemed like a very odd response to such a question. "The thing is, monsieur, you see, that Pierre Langelier is a very good-looking man. He looks a lot like Monsieur Aramis, in fact. And though I was willing to marry her, to . . . you know, raise her child as mine, I wanted to make quite sure that that that was all over before I did. One thing is to marry someone knowing they made a mistake once, and another and completely different to marry her and know you are going to be cuckolded lifelong. One I was ready to accept, the other one never." was all over before I did. One thing is to marry someone knowing they made a mistake once, and another and completely different to marry her and know you are going to be cuckolded lifelong. One I was ready to accept, the other one never."

"Hermengarde said-says that you were suspicious of her relations.h.i.+p with the armorer's son, but that, in her heart, there was never any other but you."

"In her heart . . ." Mousqueton said, and shrugged. "Perhaps not. But in her arms there was."

"Are you sure of this?" Porthos asked. "Or is it just your unfortunately suspicious nature?"

"Oh, my nature, surely, but my nature is greatly bolstered by my having walked in on her, in her sleeping room at the palace, in Langelier's arms. He has this uniform . . . at least it is not really a uniform, but a blue suit, of such cut and style that it makes him look like a musketeer. I suspect this makes it easier for him to get into the palace, and he'd got into the palace, and when I came in . . ." He shrugged. "I don't wish to describe it. Let us just establish the child could be either of ours."

Porthos thought that Athos would say that women were, after all, the devil. But Porthos could not echo it. The thing was, with the lives they lived-the lives they all lived-they might be alive in a month and they might not. Porthos knew how much women craved security. Even his Athenais, whom his death would not leave either dest.i.tute or abandoned in the world, was known to scold him most fiercely for his perceived failings-particularly those that regularly put him in the way of men animated by a murderous intent and armed with sharp, pointed objects. She was, for some reason, convinced that Porthos did it only to vex her.

How much more would a woman feel that way, if she were dependent on the man for her chances at a future and at her child's future at that?

Mousqueton seemed to read Porthos's mind in his eyes. "It wasn't, you know, that I didn't understand her. Of course, I did. He might be a gambler and a bit wild, but he was the heir to a thriving business, a man with something to himself, some substance to spend."

"And were you talking to his father when . . ." Porthos started. "I mean, what do you remember happening? Exactly?"

Mousqueton rubbed the top of his head. "The devil of it," he said, "is that I only remember very confused things. I remember waking up, of course, and the corpse right here, and Faustine screaming her d.a.m.n fool head nearby. And then, before I could fully open my eyes, for the infernal pain in my head, the Cardinal's Guards were there, holding me. It was a devilish thing."

Porthos nodded in understanding. "But nothing before that?" he said.

Mousqueton sighed. "I remember going in with sword and . . . working out some terms."

"Terms?"

"Oh, he wanted . . ." Mousqueton shrugged. "He wanted one of us to find out exactly where and how much his son owed. It seems his gambling habit is worse than I'd thought, and his father wanted to know everything he owed. Of course . . ." He hesitated. "He was couching it all under the terms that if Pierre had truly blotted his copy book that badly, he would disinherit him. Something about sending him to the country, to be a smith, which I know for a fact he wouldn't do, since Pierre is one of the best armorers in the country and his father was very proud of it. But he was saying that he would, you know, like people talk when they're very upset. And he said that all his money and his business would then go to Faustine." He rubbed his hand backwards through his hair, as though trying to comb it. It did nothing but increase the wildness with which it fanned around his face. "As though, you know, I could marry her for a few more coins . . ." He shrugged. "And as though I had any idea what to do with an armory. He was telling me, I remember, something about how the man he had trained-not Pierre, but the apprentice-could run it for me very profitably, and all I'd have to do was keep Faustine happy." He frowned. "Which wouldn't be such a bad deal, if only I thought anyone could."

Where Monsieur D'Artagnan Wakes Up; The Strangeness of a Strange Bed; Fleur-de-Lis

D'ARTAGNAN woke up. The bed felt wrong. Too soft beneath him, and too hot too, as he appeared to be sinking halfway into a feather bed. The covers above him were far too suffocating, also. They increased his feeling of being hot, and also made him feel as if he could barely breathe.

He threw them back from his body and tried to think. He'd gone to dinner with milady, last night. That much he remembered. And also that milady had given him far too much wine. But how had he come to be naked on her bed? He could not remember. Probably the wine.

A look to the side showed him that she was under the covers, awake, looking at him. "Are you ready now, Monsieur le Guard?" she asked, her voice seductive, rising from the welter of sheets, her high b.r.e.a.s.t.s all the more prominent-seeming by being encompa.s.sed in a froth of silk.

But D'Artagnan was fully awake now, and fully alive to the possibilities and to everything that might have happened and might happen.

He remembered Planchet's story. It seemed impossible that this blond beauty was Athos's lost and infamous wife. And it seemed impossible that she might have drugged his wine, but unless D'Artagnan's head for alcohol had inexplicably failed, drugging it was what she had, undeniably, done.

And while he could appreciate her beauty-which seemed even more p.r.o.nounced under the light of day, the question remained of why she would want to sleep with him. Oh, he could understand Constance, at least at first, before she had-as he hoped she now had-found better reasons to care for him. Constance, in her confined life, shuttling between palace, where she was under the eye of her G.o.dfather, and her home, under the aegis of her much older husband, could not possibly have met anyone more dazzling than D'Artagnan-such as he was.

She had met a young, wild man, and had been attracted to him for that youth, which she did not share with her husband, and for the wildness which she'd spent most of her life trying to suppress. The love-and D'Artagnan truly hoped she loved him, because he surely loved her-had come later. But that had been the initial attraction.

Now he was sure-as sure as he was of breathing-that milady had her share of acquaintances who were far more dazzling and interesting than D'Artagnan. n.o.ble, beautiful and doubtlessly connected, she could have her share of t.i.tled heads. Even if callow youth were what she wanted, there were a good many young bucks of good family and better looks than D'Artagnan, men she could exhibit abroad, displaying her court and her conquests.

So why had she decided upon D'Artagnan, on the glance of a moment, on the pretext that he had saved her? Why had she conceived such a strong desire for him that she must drag him to her bed and attempt to have her very complex, and rather more knowing than he expected, way with him?

Unless, D'Artagnan thought, she was indeed Athos's wife and had informed herself of the friends.h.i.+p that united the four inseparables, that friends.h.i.+p which had, at many times and different places been the saving-both physical and spiritual-of all of them.

If it were so, doubtlessly she also knew that Athos had stood in D'Artagnan's heart in place of a father since D'Artagnan had lost his own father, or possibly before. And he thought-though he'd never dared ask-that Athos thought of D'Artagnan as a son.

What greater revenge was there, D'Artagnan thought, than to seduce the adopted son of the man who had tried to kill her, the man who had repudiated her? Having seduced D'Artagnan, she could either utterly destroy him or turn him against Athos, whichever offered. And even with his eyes open, in the full light of day, D'Artagnan wasn't sure she could not do either of those. Even now.

She looked at him, her luminous blue eyes sparkling with mischief. And he thought that were it not for his love for Constance, he would be succ.u.mbing even now. He thought of Constance's image, her beautiful face, and that smile she gave him when he had particularly pleased her.

He managed to look away from milady, and the way her hair fell, moonlight-like, outlining her shoulders, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She breathed deeply, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s rose and fell. He started sliding his legs off the bed, a risky proposition, since he had not the slightest idea how far the floor was from here. But he was determined to find out. "I must be going," he said. "I am sorry my stupid head made it so difficult for you last night that I must sleep in your bed, but truly I must be going. I have guard duty," he remembered, with a pang that, in fact, he'd had guard duty the night before. He hoped someone had covered his lack and, though he counted on Monsieur de Treville to smooth things with Monsieur des Essarts, his brother-in-law, he wasn't absolutely sure he could explain this to Monsieur de Treville.

As he was about to slip off the bed, she grabbed his shoulder in a surprisingly strong hand. "Stay," she said. And giggled. "You've been no trouble at all."

Her other hand, insinuatingly, curled around his neck and onto his chest, to rake nails very lightly over his heart and head downwards.

Gritting his teeth together, he thought, suddenly, clearly, that the nightgown, mostly transparent as it was on the front, was nonetheless utterly closed in the back, covering it up all the way to her neck. Which, if he understood, was not the sort of design used for this sort of garment.

While her hand explored parts of him he'd never meant anyone but Constance to touch-or at least not for a great many years-he pulled himself up onto the bed by the force of his arm, so that he was more firmly seated. This had the side effect of dislodging her from her position, half-draped over him.

She took it in good part. Now, facing him, she grinned, and lunged forward to kiss him.

D'Artagnan could no more have stopped what he did than he could have willed himself to stop eating or sleeping. Curiosity, his desire to know what was happening and what things meant, was his defining characteristic, his strongest need. Even as her lips met his, as he kept his mouth resolutely closed against her a.s.sault, he reached back and, with a strong hand, tore the flimsy cloth that covered her shoulders.

And then just as quickly, he pulled away from her and looked back there, to see, faded and obviously covered in cosmetics, a smaller than normal brand, in the shape of a fleur-de-lis. He blinked at it, and, shocked that he must still, after all, be under the influence of whatever she'd given him, heard himself say, under his breath, "The fleur-de-lis. You are Athos's wife."

If the woman who had shared the bed with him had suddenly transformed into a tigress, the change couldn't have been more startling or more obvious.

She came at him, claws and teeth, tearing at his face, at his still wounded shoulder. He grabbed at her wrists. She pulled out of his grasp. Screaming in fury, she dove for her pillow, to emerge holding a long and vicious looking dagger.

Addled still by the aftereffects of whatever she'd given him, D'Artagnan only managed to roll out of her way just in time. But she pulled the dagger that had embedded in the bedclothes, and came after him again.

He rolled off the bed, hitting the floor with more force than he'd expected, because the bed was almost as high as his hips. On the floor, he crawled forward, until his head cleared and he could walk.

And then he realized she was right behind him. Stooping, to grab a bundle of clothes and a hat on a nearby chair, he picked up a pretty little statuette of Cupid, on a writing desk by the window, and used it, held in his good hand, to smash the window, then half jumped and half fell through the window onto the roof below.

Milady didn't seem able to follow that action, or perhaps wasn't willing to follow, as D'Artagnan ran, with more desperation than grace across the roof of the house next to milady's lodgings, clothing firmly held in his hand. Instead, she stood at the window and screamed, "Murder, thief, rape!"

Any second, her desperate screams would attract the neighbors from their beds, and they would come after D'Artagnan. What else would they do, seeing him running naked along the roofs.

Desperately, he aimed for a corner of the roof, aware that he was still fully in her sight, and looked down at an intertwining network of stone-bordered balconies. He stepped on one, then swung onto the one below it, suspending himself by his good arm, which was already holding clothes.

It was slow progress, but progress, and he went from balcony to balcony, moving to the other side of the building as he did so, so that by the time he landed, in the dark alley beneath, he was in quite a different location than where milady would have seen him disappear.

It was only when he alighted in the alley and took a deep breath that he took a look at the clothes he was holding. They'd been resting on a chair, on the way to the window-and they were not even vaguely his. They consisted of a dark red dress, and a matching hat, with a very slight veil.

D'Artagnan looked at them in dismay. Well . . . he couldn't walk naked through the streets of Paris.9

Where Monsieur le Comte Receives Several Surprises; The Difference Between a Roasted Chicken and a Live Countess; Athos Loses his Battle with Reality

BY the time Athos got home, he could have truthfully said that not much was on his mind, other than his desire for some dinner and for the comfort of his bed. He was telling himself he needed to shave, and wondering if he should do it now or leave it till tomorrow morning. His beard and moustache, which he wore carefully trimmed and shaped, depended for their look on his keeping the rest of his face hair free, which he was sure it wasn't now.

If he had been in an introspective mood, he would have admitted that another part of him was thinking of the d.u.c.h.ess's soft b.r.e.a.s.t.s pressed against his chest, of the feeling of her, light and lively, in his hands, of the taste of her mouth against his, of the sheer joy of their kiss. But he shut out any such thoughts and told himself that if he dwelt on them it would only mean he would turn his feet towards the palace once more. And then, where that led no one knew, save that Athos was not one to share, and he was not one to take kindly to his ladylove exposing herself to danger. So their affair would be of very short duration and end with his heart broken.

Instead, he walked along and thought that he would have to ask Grimaud to ask of Planchet to make sure his master returned Athos's doublet and s.h.i.+rt. Or if not, Athos would have to procure new ones, an activity he found so distasteful that he tended to avoid doing it more than once a decade.

In this mood, divided, he reached his lodgings and unlocked the door and went in. The sight of Grimaud standing in the small vestibule was so unexpected that, for a long moment, Athos did not realize he was there. And when he did, it was to blink, bewilderedly. "Grimaud!" he said. "What has happened?"

The second because his old retainer had his arms crossed, and his legs planted, as though ready for a battle. His eyes were blazing and his face pale, and he looked altogether as though he were preparing to challenge Athos on something, which was always a very strange and rare event. The poor man submitted to using sign language and uttering not a word for months at a time, when Athos was in such a state of mind that the sound of a human voice disturbed him. He submitted to leaving behind the estate in which he had a good many friends, and even more sycophants. All for the sake of Athos.

But now the light of battle was in his eyes, and he was treating Athos as if Athos had never left behind his dignity, which was always a very bad sign. "If you think I'm going to allow you to cede your bed to your friends night after night, and sleep all cramped up in some corner, or worse-I know you!-rolled up on a cloak on the floor, let me tell you, milord, it will not do. And as for Bazin telling me that his master has been out doing holy work, that won't be believed either. Bazin can pray all he wants to, and lard all his conversations with Latin, but you won't get me to believe that Monsieur Aramis can come in smelling of liquor and with straw matted in his hair, and talking about dangerous chickens and have been out in the service of the Lord."

For Grimaud this speech was an epic oration, comparable to other men going on for hours on end, and yet Athos could make neither head nor tail of it.

He frowned at his servant. "Grimaud, I do not have the pleasure of understanding you at all. What happened, and why am I the bout of your wrath?"

"Monsieur Aramis. He came in dead drunk, smelling of wine, and behaving in such a way . . . well . . . he could not stay on his own two feet, and our only choice was to strip him to his s.h.i.+rt and put him in your bed. But if you think I intend to let you pa.s.s another unquiet night-"

"Oh, now I see," Athos said. "Your concern is for how I shall sleep, because in your mind I am still the sickly boy whom you watched for through the long nights. But Grimaud, I'm an adult now, and I would thank you-" His mind had caught up with his mouth, and it was informing him rather urgently of something that Grimaud had clearly said. He looked at the weather-beaten face of his servant, and he took a deep breath. "Grimaud, did you say that Monsieur Aramis told you to beware of dangerous chickens?"

Grimaud glared. "He said that she was intending to kill us all, and that if the fire caught all the chickens would be roasted, or something like that, and then, when he became more or less conscious again, as we were putting him to bed, he informed me with the utmost urgency that the chickens might set fire to the sun and kill us all. What was I to make of all this, pray?"

Athos almost chuckled. He couldn't help it. He'd seen Aramis drunk quite a few times, in their years of friends.h.i.+p. But what operated there is that he'd never yet seen Aramis drunk when he, himself, hadn't been drunk. And, in company, when Aramis had got drunk, he had usually amused himself in long arguments with Porthos-or occasionally Athos, though considering that Athos tended to go monosyllabic when drunk, that was a hard feat to achieve-about theology or the manufacture of drinking cups, or whatever else struck his fancy. At the end of it, Aramis would do his best to duel someone, only by that time he was so far gone, he couldn't take his sword out of its sheath. "So Monsieur Aramis is drunk," he said. "Given what we've gone through in the last few days I can hardly make a comment on that. Besides, last night, it was Monsieur Aramis and Monsieur Porthos who put me to bed."

"But didn't strip you down. They didn't even take your sword."

Athos, thinking that this was true and also that it betrayed a naivete as touching as it was dangerous, said, "Yes. I daresay they were a bit gone into their cups, as well." He shook his head. "Don't worry about it, Grimaud. The bed is large enough to accommodate half a dozen people, and at least a normal person and Monsieur Porthos. It is more than large enough for myself and Monsieur Aramis."

But Grimaud's arms remained crossed on his chest. "It's just no use at all thinking that I will countenance your spending another disturbed night, because I won't. When you stop sleeping, it is always the beginning of a troubled time, and I have no intention of allowing you to do that again."

There was this thing about being raised by a male, Athos thought-which in many ways, between his sickly mother and his unbending father, he had been-that should frighten everyone. Mother lions could be scary, but father lions, who had condescended to take notice of their offspring, and devote time to them, could be terrifying.

Still, he knew what lay at the back of it, and he was sure that over the years he'd given the poor man quite a few sleepless nights himself. So, instead of protesting, he put his hand on Grimaud's shoulder, gently. "Don't worry. I can let Monsieur Aramis sleep here. I don't know what he meant by chickens being after him, but I am sure it is nothing but one of those drunken alarms that mean nothing. He will wake tomorrow, and he will be in a better mood, and then we will talk to him and find out what he meant. And meanwhile his taking up a quarter or less of my bed will not disturb me."

"He is snoring fit to wake the saints," Grimaud said. "He is snoring louder than the final trumpet."

"Well, then I shall snore in compet.i.tion with him," said Athos, feeling like he might very well do that, because his late night the night before, the alcohol ingested, and the emotional shocks of the last few hours had all dropped on his shoulders like a heavy burden, making him totter. The d.u.c.h.ess had reminded him that he would not see thirty again and, right then, he felt it. He said, "But first, if you could procure me some broth, or a slice of meat, or something. Just to take the edge off the hunger. I don't think I can sit through an entire dinner just now." At any rate, he had a dread of sitting alone and eating at that polished table, where Grimaud would attend to him as though he were still the Count de la Fere in his ancestral estate.