Dying by the Sword

The Many Uses of a Dish of Pigeons; A Parlor Boarder in the Bastille; A Confused Tale of Young Love

PORTHOS walked along the darkening streets, a dish of pigeons held firmly in his right hand. Fortunately, it was the type of dish they used in the palace kitchens, designed to be carried from the depths of the palace to attics of the palace on the opposing side-that is, designed to preserve as much as possible of its heat and quality even though some poor valet or maid might have to carry it the equivalent of many, many city blocks, before it ever reached its destination. It was made of heavy clay and covered with a lid of heavier clay.

This was part of the reason Porthos had taken it, of course. Had it been in some silver chafing dish, or hidden away in some concoction of painted porcelain, he would have known it was a dish destined for some high personage who had brought his own dishes with him to the palace.

Personages high enough to do that would make life very uncomfortable for the poor valet or maid who waylaid the food. And worse, the plate often being worth far more than the food, they might very well bring up charges against the musketeer who took them.

But this humble clay dish meant that the food was meant to go to one of the palace guests who was either a minor nobleman or perhaps, even, with some luck, an accountant or an artist brought in to serve the court. Which meant it was safe to take.

As for why he’d taken it, Porthos couldn’t have explained that exactly until he was well away from the palace and working at a fast clip towards the forbidding facade of the Bastille. Truthfully, his ideas were normally like this, and he rarely knew what he meant to do till he did it, and this time was no different. It was as though some better informed Porthos thought things through up in the depths of Porthos’s mind, and, being as unable to translate thought to words as the real Porthos, he only revealed his plans to the musketeer as they came up to the instant when he had to know.

This time, by the time he reached the Bastille, he had a fairly clear idea of what he meant to do-he approached the nearest entrance, carrying his dish of pigeons, and hailed the guard-a dark-haired man whose dingy uniform looked as though it hadn’t been washed in several lifetimes. On seeing Porthos so near, he straightened from his previous position of lolling, bonelessly, against the nearest wall. “Holla,” he said, and before he could get to the qui vive, Porthos answered back boomingly, “Holla.”

And then before the man could say anything more, he launched into a hearty explanation of his circumstances. “I wish to see my servant Boniface, who also answers to Mousqueton, before this dish of pigeons with apples grows cold.”

The guard frowned at him, a squinting expression that seemed to indicate a long-unused brain made some attempt to become active behind the small, porcine eyes. “A… a dish of pigeons?” he asked, quiveringly.

“Certainly,” Porthos said. “A dish of pigeons. It was prepared expressly by the Princess de-But one must not be indiscreet. The thing is that my dear friend the Princess is very fond of Mousqueton and she prepared him this dish with her very own hands. In the circumstances, you must realize, my dear man, it would be quite fatal if the dish should grow cold before Mousqueton enjoys it.”

The guard looked at Porthos with a disoriented expression, then looked around himself, as if to ascertain his surroundings, and, finally, turning to Porthos said in an outraged voice, “Monsieur! This is the Bastille!”

“Of course,” Porthos said, reassuringly. “I was counting on that, because, you see, Mousqueton is held in the Bastille. Indeed, it would be very inconvenient if I were to find I was somewhere else altogether.”

“Monsieur!” the man said disbelievingly. “People get… get tortured here. There are people who disappear in here and are never heard of.” He hissed out these words with a dramatic flair that seemed to indicate his own place of employment awed him. “And you come in with a dish of pigeons for an inmate.”

Porthos disciplined his face to slight annoyance. “Oh, I know, it seems fantastical, but as I said, my dear friend, the Princess de-well, she has made this dish of pigeons because she knows Mousqueton favors it. Her own recipe.” He smiled, foolishly. “And you know, her husband the Prince de-but no. I can’t tell you. Suffice it to say he would have the head of any man who displeased her. For he dotes most forcibly on her. And if she hears I was barred from taking her own special recipe to her own dear Mousqueton… well… I can’t swear how she’ll react.” He looked sheepish. “I wouldn’t swear to it that she won’t react badly. A very uncertain temper, has my dear Princess.”

The man looked caught between two uncomfortable decisions. He stared at Porthos, then at the dish in Porthos’s hand. “Open it up, you. To show there is nothing there but food.”

“But…” Porthos said. “The Princess. If the dish grows cold or congeals…”

“Never mind the Princess. If you don’t show us there’s nothing dangerous in there, you shall never get in.”

Sighing and with a show of much reluctance, Porthos opened the dish. The aroma of the stewed pigeons wafted up. The guard took a deep breath, and Porthos decided it was time for more foolish expatiating. “See how good it looks and how well it smells. She has never told me the recipe, but I believe she uses little currants and just a dash of brandy.”

The guard sighed. “You may cover it,” he said, then looked at Porthos. “The thing is, monsieur,” he said, “that no matter what your Princess thinks, I’m not supposed to let just anyone come in and visit the prisoners. I suppose you don’t even know when he was arrested.”

“On the contrary,” Porthos said. “He was arrested three days ago and a friend of mine has spoken to the Cardinal and ensured that nothing bad will happen to Mousqueton until… that is, until his eminence has ascertained a few things relating to the case.”

He thought that showing that the Cardinal and Porthos had common friends could not possibly hurt his case, and, in fact, the guard looked at him very intently for a moment, then said, “Oh, one of the parlor boarders! Why didn’t you tell me that?”

He walked towards the back of his guard booth, and pulled on a handle on the wall. From somewhere, deep within the bowels of the fortress turned prison, came the sound of a bell tolling. Moments later, a man who looked like he hadn’t shaved in at least three years, and whose uniform made the first guard’s appear a model of cleanliness and pressing, came to the door at the back of the booth.

“Holla, Gaston,” the first guard said. “This gentleman here is here on behalf of a Princess, to see one of the parlor borders-the one they call Boniface or Mousqueton.”

“The rat!” Gaston said, which seemed like an odd enough comment, since neither Porthos, nor Mousqueton could be in any way confused with small rodents. He looked Porthos up and down, and shrugged, with a sort of resigned look that seemed to say it wasn’t any of his business, and besides, he was there to follow orders. He motioned with his hand, and turned.

Porthos followed, holding onto his dish of pigeons with both hands, to prevent the top from falling off. He followed the guard, noting with interest that they were in a dark, narrow passageway and that Porthos had to lower his head at some spots. He heard raucous voices from elsewhere, and there was the sort of smell that suggested that somewhere, not far away, a stream of open sewage flowed. But he didn’t see anything really shocking here. The lanterns that illuminated the corridor, at not nearly sufficient intervals, showed dark golden stone wall, marred here and there by what could be moss. There were doors inset in the wall, but no bars and no obvious cells. Somewhere else, someone appeared to be rattling chains.

The guard stopped in front of one of the doors and, slow and deliberate, reached to his belt for a very large key ring. As he selected a key-which seemed to Porthos an impossible task, since they all looked exactly alike-he looked up at Porthos. “They say as he’s in for murder, and I must say, sir, I have trouble believing that.”

Porthos smiled. “We’re quite sure he’s innocent,” he said. “So you should have trouble believing it.”

“It’s not that, sir,” the man said. “It’s just that they said he killed to hide his theft, and I don’t think that’s possible.”

Porthos raised his eyebrows.

The man opened his hands wide. “Well, the thing is, see, sir, that he is such an accomplished and efficient thief that should he choose to steal something, I don’t think anyone would have found out. Why, since he’s been here, there have been bottles missing from the guard’s… that is, the place where we keep our bottles and our food. Everyday something else disappears.”

Porthos thought this sounded eerily familiar, but did not wish to admit it. Instead he said, in an outraged tone, “How can you know it’s him?”

The guard looked at him with a slow, patient look. “Well, sir… if we didn’t keep finding empty bottles in his cell it would help. But we’ve looked all over the room for how he might be managing to get up and go to the storage area, and we can’t find it. We also cannot understand how he can possibly decide to remain in here, if he has the ability to get out that easily. Some of the men think he’s a sorcerer. I, myself, think he’s the best thief I’ve ever met. So I don’t believe he would have to kill to conceal a theft.”

Porthos nodded, and didn’t dare say anything. Part of this, because he was afraid he would laugh if he opened his mouth. The guard sighed, and opened the door. “I don’t suppose you’re here to free him or to allow him to escape?”

“No, you see, there is this dish of pigeons.”

“Pity, because we are starting to feel the loss of wine,” the guard said. And, with that, he threw the door open.

What greeted Porthos was not nearly so shocking a spectacle as he expected. In fact, it was not much different from some lodgings he’d endured in wartime. In fact, it was probably better than many such lodgings. It was at least well covered and the narrow bed, up near the tiny, barred window, looked like it had a mattress and at least one set of sheets. And there was no visible vermin jumping off the sheets.

Mousqueton, who had been sitting on the bed, holding a bottle, looked up, in surprise. “Master!” he said, and almost dropped his bottle. “Monsieur Porthos!”

Porthos looked at him and smiled. “I’ve brought you a plate of pigeons, my dear friend, which the dear Princess prepared for you.”

“Madame de C-”

“Discreet, Mousqueton, discreet. And yes, the Princess herself made you these.”

Mousqueton smiled. “And I didn’t even know she could cook,” he said, as he received the covered platter from Porthos’s hand.

“I’ll stay while he eats,” Porthos told the guard, waving him away. He didn’t know if it was the bottle in Mousqueton’s hand, which had given the guard a pained expression, or if it was the fact that he was being ordered like a lackey that made the man sigh heavily.

“I’ll leave the door unlocked,” he said, in a tone of great hopefulness. “Perhaps monsieur will be so kind as to take the rather large rat away.”

“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 sturdy 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 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 relationship 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 destitute 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 damn 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.”