The Musketeer's Apprentice

A Propinquity of the Heart; When Everything Adds to a Good Impression; Athos’s Amusement

"WHY is it logical?” Athos asked D’Artagnan, "that we should go to your landlord’s first? Surely not that many noblemen lodge nearby?”

D’Artagnan couldn’t seem to remember why it was logical at all. His home was within walking distance, but it was hardly in the best part of town. Rather, it was in an area frequented by the bourgeoisie and not particularly wealthy bourgeoisie at that. The Rue des Fossoyers where the young guard of Monsieur des Essarts lodged, was broad and lined on both sides with tall buildings that sheltered shops on the bottom floors. Some of the merchants lived on the bottom floors, too, while other lived above their shops. But usually all or part of the houses were rented to people very much like D’Artagnan-young men seeking their fortunes in Paris and with their foot on what could be considered the first rung in the ladder of success.

In D’Artagnan’s case, his new uniform of the guards, almost indistinguishable from that of the musketeers save for a slightly lighter color, marked him as noble born. Other young gentlemen wore the garb of clerks or apprentices in various professions ranging from law to blacksmithing.

D’Artagnan knew, or at least suspected that some of them might be noble… and if they were noble… He felt Athos’s stare on him and shook his head. “I thought,” he said, his desperate cunning saving him as it so often did. “That if they’re not too wealthy a family and not too well known at court, they might have had dealings with my landlord who is, among other things, a grocer. I suspect he has all kinds of other businesses too, though, from lending on security of some sort, to perhaps selling used clothes or appointments that such a family might need. Since Aramis said the suit didn’t fit well…”

And on this, D’Artagnan ground to a stop and shrugged. Athos nodded. “And since the suit didn’t fit well you thought that of all the possible shops in Paris, the boy must have been seen by your landlord.” He cleared his throat. “I thought you were several weeks in arrears with your rent, though?”

D’Artagnan shrugged. “If we do it properly we will not need to see my landlord,” he said. “His wife, who normally stays at the palace is visiting and she…” He felt the blush climb to his cheeks and heat there, like a blazing furnace beneath the skin. He shook his head, as he thought of the beautiful woman and wished that he wasn’t quite so transparent about his interest.

But Athos must have been in a kind mood. He inclined his head slightly. “Ah. Sometimes even the logic of seventeen is right, or at least leads one onto the right path. Don’t worry about it, D’Artagnan, as I see no evil. We might as well ask. In a place like this, full of merchants and clerks, you’re right that someone might very well have seen the boy who was almost certainly not high nobility.”

“Why not high nobility?” D’Artagnan asked. “Aramis said that he might just be the youngest of a very noble family.”

Athos shrugged. “Because I don’t know the name. I’m not going to claim to know every noble family in France. However, I do know most of the high nobility by name or surname at the very least. I know all of them to Aramis’s level at least. Not… I might not be able to tell you where their domains are or who their children are. I certainly might have no idea what they look like-but I have at least heard the name once. And Jaucourt is totally new to me. So, I suspect that they are either recently ennobled or very small and provincial nobility.”

D’Artagnan, who had for sometime been aware that a gulf lay between nobility such as his own and the type of nobility that Athos embodied, only nodded. “Why didn’t you say this before?” he asked. “In Porthos’s practice room?”

Athos shrugged. “What, after the great discussion about pedigree? To what end? It would only have annoyed Porthos and accomplished nothing. Besides-” He shrugged again. “Who knows? Even families of low nobility have important cousins, second cousins or friends. If it’s a noble family recently come to court, it could very well be that what drew them here were just such contacts. If anyone at the palace has seen them, then surely Porthos and Aramis will find out, between the kitchen maids and the duchesses. And as for us, why shouldn’t we canvass your neighborhood? It has at least the advantage of being well-known territory.”

If Athos was being facetious, D’Artagnan could not detect it. But as they approached D’Artagnan’s lodgings, its bottom floor occupied by Monsieur de Bonacieux’s shop and lodgings, D’Artagnan forgot all about what Athos might think of him and of this errand.

Behind the panes of the lower window, he distinguished, as though half in shadow, a feminine shape. And before his mind could assure him of any such thing, his heart sped up and his mouth went dry.

From the other side, perhaps because of the woman distinguishing a like shape, there was movement, and then the opening of the window, creaking slightly-and there in the opening stood the lovely Madame Bonacieux. She’d changed her clothing. The gown she now wore was not exactly high court fashion, but a simpler, looser garment. And yet, it outlined her heavy breasts just as tightly, and the plunge of its low-cut neckline displayed a fair amount of white and rosy skin.

D’Artagnan’s thoughts stopped in their tracks when he realized she was wearing his rose-the rose he’d given her-on the very end of that neckline, the stem between her breasts and the petals peeking above. He struggled for words like a drowning man might struggle for the proverbial straw, but none came to a tongue that seemed, suddenly, thick and unyielding.

He forced sound through his lips, but what came out was a stammered, “Ma-Ma-Ma-” and no end to the word “madam,” no matter how he endeavored to pronounce it. She smelled like roses, a soft scent, like summer at full bloom, like…

“Madam,” Athos said very correctly, from just behind D’Artagnan. D’Artagnan turned to see Athos, hat drawn, bow with more flourish than he normally accorded any woman.

Athos was always correct with every woman and often more gentlemanly than anyone else around, yet he was always somewhat reserved and fearful, like a child who once burned will stay away from the fire.

Looking at Athos steadied D’Artagnan who was able to draw his hat more clumsily than Athos had, and to stammer, finally, “Madame Bonacieux.”

The beautiful woman was looking at both of them now, including Athos in her welcoming smile. Her fingers, though, were playing, as though she didn’t realize what they were doing, with the petals of D’Artagnan’s rose.

“Sirs,” she said, and smiled at them. “I saw you from behind the window, and saw you hesitate and thought that perhaps you… perhaps you…”

D’Artagnan started wondering if Athos was right and if his logic was seventeen-year-old logic or if, perhaps, there was something else, other than logic at work here between himself and Madame Bonacieux.

“We did,” he said. “Have a question, but I don’t know if… since you don’t spend much time here, I don’t know if…” He floundered again, all his thoughts fleeing him, as he realized her eyes were the exact color of the summer sky when he’d been a young boy and left his father’s house to go and lie out amid the grass fields, looking up at the cloudless, sun-bright sky of Gascony.

“We’d like to know if this boy has been seen in this neighborhood,” Athos said, pulling his drawing of Guillaume from his sleeve, where he’d secreted it, and displaying it to Madame Bonacieux. “He’s given his name as Guillaume Jaucourt, but we’re not sure it is his true name…”

Madame Bonacieux took the picture, opened it and looked at it for a moment, with a little wrinkle of puzzlement between her eyes.

“Have you seen him?” Athos asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m sure I haven’t. But I’m also sure I’ve seen a face very much like his at court… Though I’d be at a loss to tell you precisely whose it was. I can assure you that it is not someone who is much in her Majesty’s circle and company, where I reside, but… someone I’ve seen before, and my mind tells me it was at court.”

“At court,” D’Artagnan said, jumping in. “How much did this person look like the boy? Could it be his brother or his father?”

Madame Bonacieux shook her head. “I couldn’t tell you any clearer,” she said, and her voice seemed to say she regretted not telling D’Artagnan anything at all he wanted to know, and some more besides. “I just… There is an air of family to it. Same cut of the chin, same tilt of the eyes, perhaps. Can’t tell you who it was, though, so it is probably not someone of the highest nobility.”

“And you’ve never seen him here? On this street?”

Madame Bonacieux sighed a little-a sigh of confusion and exasperation. “I spend so little time here. If I… would you wait a moment?”

Athos nodded, and so did D’Artagnan. At least he hoped he did. The fact was that around Madame Bonacieux he felt as if his head were floating several meters above his neck and could only be felt at a distance, as if in a dream.

Just before coming to the capital-and perhaps it had been at the back of his mother’s mind when she’d recommended that he go and make something of himself-he’d developed a sort of smoldering passion for his cousin, Genevieve. He’d loved her desperately and passionately. Her image had filled his mind during the day and visited his dreams at night. She’d allowed him one kiss, and that kiss still seemed to linger upon his lips, in mingled sweetness and pain.

Pain because Genevieve was the daughter of his father’s older brother and betrothed from before she could even speak to a Spanish lord whose lands, on the other side of the border, delineated the limits of D’Artagnan’s uncle’s domain. Even had she not been pledged already, the chances of her father, who’d inherited the larger portion of the lands that fell to the family, accepting the suit of his penniless nephew were not very high.

But even at the height of his infatuation with Genevieve, D’Artagnan had not felt quite so out of his depth and as if he were walking in an unreal world. No. To hark back to a time when he felt this confused, he needed to go back all the way to when he was seven and had caught the small pox and lain feverish, between life and death, for many days.

As if from outside a fog that surrounded his mind and thought, he heard Athos. “Ah, D’Artagnan,” the older man said. “Women are dangerous. Better play with fire than with a woman. Fire will only burn your body.”

D’Artagnan, startled out of his reverie, looked back at Athos. The musketeer appeared both concerned and amused, an expression that made him look at once younger than he was and somewhat sickly, as if he too were burning with a fever, or at least remembering a time when he was.

“I don’t know what you mean, Athos,” D’Artagnan said from the height of dignity conferred by his unfinished adolescence. And if his cheeks flamed, let them. He felt embarrassment at being caught in his admiration of this woman-this married woman. But is also took effort to refrain from telling Athos that it would help if Athos did not choose women as others played with unguarded flame. Being attracted to women that were less than murderous might have made the older musketeer’s experience with love very different.

The problem was that D’Artagnan actually didn’t know anything for sure about the musketeer’s life. All he knew had been inferred and could not be spoken of in the full light of day. The other thing was that he, himself, had no idea what type of women attracted him. It was easy to pass judgement on another man’s taste when he knew so little of females that he had no idea how his own love life would unroll. So he contented himself with saying, “I’m simply making a search for this boy, on Porthos’s behalf and to find the boy’s family.”

Athos made a sound in his throat. It might have been suppressed laughter.

Madame Bonacieux was gone some moments, before coming back, carrying the drawing. She handed it to Athos.

“No one seems to know him,” she said. Her fair, high brow was knit in puzzlement beneath a straggle of blond hair. “No one. And no one knows a Guillaume Jaucourt. Only…” she hesitated.

“Only?” Athos asked.

“Only my husband’s clerk who takes care of large-volume orders says he remembers the boy vaguely in something connected with wine, sometime back. I really don’t know if I’d put much faith in it, though. His memory seems to be like mine-he remembers the boy or a face like his.”

“Well,” D’Artagnan said. Her absence had given him time to clear his head, time to get his thoughts in order. “Since we’re looking for his family, I would like to know if you think of anyone who might resemble him.”

For the first time Madame Bonacieux looked curious. “You are looking for his family? Why? What has he done? Has he stolen something or…?”

D’Artagnan shook his head. “No,” he said, thinking fast. “It’s just that a friend of mine has undertaken to teach the boy swordplay and the boy has missed his last lesson.” That much was true. “My friend is worried and would like to make sure nothing untoward has happened to the child.”

The woman’s expression changed. D’Artagnan couldn’t quite say how, but it shifted, softened. He realized, suddenly, that she was probably younger even than he’d first estimated. In fact, though she was married, she couldn’t be much older than he was. Twenty-one, maybe, or twenty-two. He also become aware that in her mind he’d just gone from a law enforcer attempting to capture a thief to a man worried about a child.

Even D’Artagnan was not so inexperienced or so innocent that he didn’t know how appealing that would be to a young female. He felt warmly rewarded for his efforts and hoped he never needed to inform the lady that the child was already, in fact, dead.

As they walked away, D’Artagnan said, “At least we’ve heard he looks like someone that she knows, so he’s probably truly related to someone at court. You know, Athos, there’s something you haven’t taken into account.”

Athos looked at him, raising both eyebrows.

“That the child might indeed be the son of a nobleman, but not of a noblewoman.”

Athos’s lips trembled into an almost smile that was, in him, a sign of extreme amusement. “Oh, D’Artagnan, I’ve thought of that. The existence of bastards of noble houses is not something totally unknown to me.”

D’Artagnan recalled, with a pang, that some trouble before had involved what was almost certainly a bastard of Athos’s very noble house. “I didn’t mean-” he said.

“No, of course you didn’t,” Athos said. “Forgive me if I seemed to overreact. It’s just…” He frowned. “I too have the impression he resembles someone, but it’s not… I cannot place my finger on it.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “Let’s go ask around some of the places in town better known for lodging noblemen.”