Dying by the Sword

Where His Musketeerness Discusses a Plan; The Advantages of Dealing with a Shifty Character

“SO you didn’t talk to him that night?” Aramis asked. “Yesterday night? After we went back.” He had tracked Marc’s and Jean’s farms-they were brothers-in-law, and their farms adjoined each other-after he’d found the place on the edge of town where they’d dropped off the oxcart. The family there, distant cousins of Marc’s, had been able to direct him.

On horseback, and at his speed, he’d gotten there in an hour instead of ten, and now he stood by the black horse he’d borrowed from Monsieur de Treville’s stables, and discussed the matter of their plan and their need of a place with the two rustics.

“Well, we talked to him, in fact, and he’s supposed to marry Marie. We didn’t tell him that we’d thought we’d put him a box,” Jean said, looking sheepish.

“No, I imagine you didn’t,” Aramis said. And he didn’t imagine that Pierre knew that part either, else he would not have had his friends waiting for Aramis-he would have sent someone to find what he’d learned from his acquaintances in the country. Or to kill him halfway home.

He looked at the two of them, in their smocks and clearly in the middle of their working day. Would they be able to understand him? They hadn’t struck him as stupid. A little… different perhaps, but in no way worse than Porthos. Their curious approach to life, in any case, had probably saved his life.

Deciding, suddenly, he poured out the story to them, of how they’d realized it was Pierre ’s doing, and of what they proposed to do about it. After he was done, they were silent a long time, and then Jean looked at Marc, “I knew it. Or at least I suspicioned it all along, because, you know what Marie is like. She always falls for bad lots. Remember what she was like with that one-legged peddler.”

Fascinating as the idea was, Aramis did not wish to pursue the case of the one-legged peddler. Instead, he said, seriously, “I know you’ll think that I should, in fact, do my best to find one of his armed friends who would be willing to confess, but…”

“Oh, no, your musketeerness,” Marc said. “That would be fatal, because it would tell Pierre you know. It would not at all do. After all, he owes them money. They wouldn’t want him arrested till he can pay.”

“But you want him to marry your sister,” Aramis said. “Wouldn’t that be the same situation?”

“Not at all,” Jean said. “As your musketeerness knows, or you would not have come to us, would you? With us, as long as Marie marries him, she’s all right, as far as her reputation is concerned. What happens afterward…” He shrugged. “In fact, if Pierre is the sort to go about murdering people, I’d much rather he doesn’t stay around, after he marries Marie. What if he decided he could use my money too? I could be mortal in a tomb, before I knew what hit me. No, your musketeerness, you can count on our help.”

“We’ll bring him over,” Marc said. “To discuss the details of the wedding, we’ll say. And the settlements. Of course,” he said, “we’d best have the priest on hand to marry them before you take him off to face justice. That of a certainty we must do.”