The Musketeer's Apprentice

Where Porthos is Missing; Where Information is Missing; Where One Thinks the Unthinkable

WHEN Athos arrived at Porthos’s home, he found D’Artagnan and Aramis already there. As a worried Mousqueton led him up the stairs, and Athos emerged into the spacious room where they met at Porthos’s, the other two rose from their seats at the massive table, and turned to look.

“Oh,” Aramis said. “I thought…”

“You thought?” Athos asked.

Aramis sighed. He looked tired and drained, more so than he had looked for many a week now. Aramis normally managed to look perfectly groomed, perfectly attired and not at all affected by any situation no matter how unpleasant. It had taken Athos sometime to realize this was not because he did not, in fact, care about anything, but rather because he was in his way almost as stoic as Athos. Even if his way required perfectly manicured hands, a wealth of lace and silk and the latest in plumes for his hat.

“I thought you might be Porthos,” Aramis said, and allowed himself to slump back into his chair, in a distinct un-Aramis-like slump. “Here, Bazin, fetch us some wine. I think the tavern down the street has some that might be less than vinegar.” He tossed Bazin a coin that the servant plucked overhand from the air.

“You have money?” D’Artagnan asked, not accusatorial, but more curiously as a man for whom money has become one of those marvels often heard about but never seen with ones own eyes, or by anyone one knows.

Aramis looked at D’Artagnan, and shrugged a little. “I sold some theology books,” he said.

Athos was amused to note a hesitation in Bazin’s step, but the servant seemed to have decided against warning them on the evils of drinking holy books. To stop the risk altogether, Athos moved forward, pulled his chair and sat. “Why would you think I was Porthos?” he asked. “Where is Porthos?”

D’Artagnan shook his head and Aramis sighed.

“But you were with him,” Athos said, looking at Aramis.

“And you were with D’Artagnan,” Aramis said.

“D’Artagnan and I separated, so we could talk to twice as many landlords and tavern keepers,” Athos said, sternly. “We didn’t see any reason to meet again until we met here with whatever intelligence we gathered.”

“And did you gather any?” Aramis asked.

Athos shook his head and looked at D’Artagnan who opened his hands in a silent show of helplessness.

Athos leaned forward. “And you, Aramis? You separated from Porthos, and-?”

“I separated from Porthos at the palace,” Aramis said, hotly, as though he expected one of them to accuse him of snobbery. “His acquaintance and mine at the palace are different and we thought we’d get more information by going to our separate sources. We were supposed to meet in the courtyard where whoever arrived first would wait for the other.”

“And he didn’t meet you?” Athos asked.

Aramis shook his head. “Not only that, but as I waited there, I was overtaken by a palace maid, Hermengarde, whom I gather is a good friend of our Mousqueton.” Aramis nodded towards the servant. “She had the drawing of Guillaume with her. She said she had been asking around the palace, to all other servants and no one had seen him.” The long, well-manicured finger drew a circle on the polished wood of Porthos’s massive table. “Which accords with the witness from the noble ladies to whom I spoke.”

“So, no one at the palace has seen him?” Athos asked.

“None,” Aramis said. “We asked, as I said, between us, to most servants and most noblemen, and no one had seen the boy. No one knew, either, of a family by the name Jaucourt. And you know, even if they are the smallest of minor nobility, I don’t think it’s possible for them to be in Paris and be in such splendid isolation. Surely, if they came to court, they have to have met with some distant cousin, or some lost friend from their homeland. Somehow, someone at least who has some hold on the court and who knew who they are.”

“I’ve thought of that too. I didn’t find any anything among the landlords to whom I spoke, either. And surely someone would at least have heard of them, or seen them visit relatives or friends.”

“Unless they are truly so isolated, or from some godforsaken province where they have no contacts with the court,” D’Artagnan said. “Look at myself. When I came to Paris, my best chance of making my fortune and my name was the letter my father gave me for Monsieur de Treville with whom he’d served so many years ago.” He smiled a little. “If I hadn’t been foolhardy enough to arrange a duel with three of the most notorious duelists in the corps, I’d doubtless have ended up lost and forgotten in some corner of Paris.”

Aramis cleared his throat, the way he did when impolite laughter arose and must be suppressed. “Three duels, D’Artagnan. You attempted to start three duels.”

“But see-I only got myself known and noticed because I’d brought with me the notion that fighting early and often was my way into the musketeers and perhaps into fame and fortune.”

“Yes,” Athos said. “But you came alone, a single young man, seeking to make your fortune at the tip of your sword. It’s not that way, is it, when one comes with children? When families come to the capital they have to come with the belief-no matter how deluded-that they know someone or that someone will help them get favor with the King. They can’t afford the weeks of starving or living off chocolate or-” He allowed his gaze to slide slyly towards Aramis, who, he was sure, had been given coin by some lady of his acquaintance, and had not, in fact, sold his theology books. “Or theology books.”

“So we have nothing at all on any Jaucourt family, and we do have a young boy’s corpse in my cellar,” Athos said. “To whom we cannot even give decent burial.”

Aramis shook his head, violently, not a negation, but more as if to call attention to something else. “More importantly, ” he said, impatient. “Porthos is missing. He’d told the maid that he’d wait in the courtyard to hear of her investigations, but he did not. So, there must be something that called him away… something important.”

“Did you…” Athos coughed and looked at Mousqueton, then back towards Aramis. “Did you go to the home of his Duchess, and ask if perhaps…”

“If perhaps she was hiding him under her skirt?” Aramis said. “Oh, that would have pleased her husband very much, wouldn’t it? And besides, how could I?” He looked towards the window. “When he left the palace, it was early afternoon. Why and how would Porthos gain admittance to the Coq-” A sharp glance from Athos, and Aramis stopped short. “To his Duchess’s palace? And how would he remain hidden there till now? He does not pass easily for a clerk. And I doubt he would fit anyone’s green dress.”

The last, said with feeling, and alluding to Porthos’s mistress’s attempts at hiding Aramis in the past, made Athos smile. To be honest, he was sure that Mousqueton knew very well that his master’s lover was not a duchess. He would even wager that Mousqueton knew who she was and where she lived. Porthos had hired Mousqueton when Mousqueton was little more than an undernourished urchin accustomed to living by his wits on the streets of Paris. Though Mousqueton now had admittedly respectable employment, he still used his wits quite well. And it didn’t take great cunning to penetrate the deceptions Porthos wove. Porthos always despised deception enough to not do too good a job at it.

“Wouldn’t that be the most likely place for him though?” Athos asked. “Surely they have their arrangements. ” He’d rather burst than share with the other two the rope ladder that he knew Athenais kept in her room and which she used to let Porthos up on occasion.

Aramis shrugged. “You always assume all of us are weak enough for any woman, that we’d be most likely to run to any woman at a time of trouble, but tell me, what rational sense does it make?”

“It makes no rational sense to me,” Athos said, speaking slowly. “That any of you get involved with these women and that you give them power over your lives and over your safety.”

Aramis’s eyes burned with quick offense that made Athos wonder if the blond musketeer was well on his way to replacing his seamstress. With Aramis, he dared say, they’d find out only when he was ready to let them find out, unlike the young Gascon whose partiality for his landlord’s wife flared in blushes, and showed itself in stammers, and whose thought was so dominated by the woman that he would bend the entire investigation around the need to see her.

“I think, Athos, that you, too, have done this in the past. You have behaved irrationally and given power over your life and your safety to women.”

Athos felt the cut, but it was an old wound and one that no longer bled. One that, like old battle wounds, flared only under very precise conditions and whose dull, aching venom could be ignored the rest of the time. “I never said, Aramis, that I was a saint. Only that I saw the error of my ways and I no longer follow my animal impulses when they could endanger my life and sanity.”

Aramis opened his mouth, as though to answer, but before he could speak, D’Artagnan said, “All that is very well, but granted, Athos, the rest of us are fools for women, still, where could Porthos have gone? The two of you have known him much longer than I have. What could have prompted him to forget his appointment with Aramis and to disappear?”

“A message,” Aramis said, and half rose. “A message saying it came from one of us, and demanding he meet us somewhere.”

“But none of us sent him a message. At least I didn’t, did you D’Artagnan?” Athos asked.

“Athos, I didn’t say one of us had sent it, only that someone came to Porthos and said we had. And thus…”

“Convinced him to go to an ambush?” Athos rose in turn.

“Sirs,” Mousqueton said, speaking quietly from where he’d been, near the fireplace, engaged in disposing wood upon it, against-Athos supposed-the time when nights became cold again. A corpulent young man, he looked most of the time like a simpleton disposed to smiling too much. But his dark eyes were shrewd and as full of cunning as Aramis’s green ones. “Sirs, I beg your pardon, but my master is no fool and-”

“I never said he was,” Athos said coldly.

“No, sir,” Mousqueton said, facing up to Athos’s displeasure with more aplomb than many a nobleman would have managed. “However, you believe that he would leave his post and go in search of whoever he believed had sent him a message.”

“All of us would,” Athos said. “If it came from one of the other three and said they needed help urgently.”

Mousqueton shook his head. “No monsieur. I hate to disagree with you, but… You see, my master is a modest man.” He saw Athos’s cocked eyebrow and responded to it. “He’s modest where it counts. Not perhaps in his attire or in the flair with which he displays his sword handling, but he is modest where it counts. He would never trust himself, by himself, to untangle whatever problem the others of you might be facing. So if that were the case, if someone had called him and told him that another of you needed rescuing, he would have gone in search of Monsieur Aramis. Or else, he would have sent someone in search of him. Hermengarde or someone else he could command.”

Having kept his countenance steady and his gaze straight on Athos all through this, Mousqueton now betrayed his nervousness by wiping his broad hands to the front of his doublet-a carefully refashioned old one of Porthos’s. “I hate to contradict such a noble person as yourself, Monsieur Athos, but the truth is I know my master.”

The man’s nervousness and his humility combined with his stuborness granted him one of Athos’s rare smiles. “You might be right, Mousqueton, but granting you that you are, would you tell me, please, where your master might have gone, and what he might be doing?”

Mousqueton shrugged. “If he went of his own accord it could be anywhere, sir. He… He was suffering shock from the death of the boy, was he not? And when he’s in shock or otherwise worried, my master is as likely as not to walk aimlessly for hours. He’s done it before, monsieur, before he decided to throw his lot in with Monsieur Aramis and to become a musketeer.”

“You say if he went of his own accord. You mean, you consider he might not have?”

Mousqueton shrugged. “It would take a half a dozen men. You know how my master fights, sir. But it is possible, yes. I’m not stupid, Monsieur Athos-”

“Not at all,” Athos said.

“Then credit me with having heard that you are afraid the Cardinal has something to do with this, and if he does… It’s likely as not my master is in the Bastille, is it not?”

Just on those words, from downstairs came the sound of someone knocking hard on the door.