The Musketeer's Apprentice

Devotion and Worship; Comfort and Hunger; Where Some Women Are Infinitely Superior to Duchesses

PORTHOS had left the palace before he realized he was doing it. It was his absolute certainty that Hermengarde would come back with no new discoveries, with nothing- in fact-that Porthos didn’t know already.

She would not know who Guillaume’s parents were. Porthos tried to remember all that Guillaume had told him about his family, as he walked. Strangely, for a boy who’d said his father didn’t want him to learn swordplay, he’d never mentioned his father at all. There had been no comments about something his father had done or said. Truth be told, there were no comments about his mother even. The only person the boy talked about was his sister Amelie.

Porthos remembered the name because it had tender associations for him. When he’d been a young man, younger by just a little than D’Artagnan was now, there had been a young woman named Amelie.

Porthos’s father said she was a peasant with her feet in the muck, but to Porthos she’d been kind and gentle, her voice ever pleasing. And though most people in the village treated Porthos as they treated his father-as creatures to avoid at all costs and to lie to when they couldn’t avoid them-Amelie had treated her giant, redheaded future lord as she would have treated a village lad her age.

In the fields, beneath the overspreading trees and behind thickets of berry-heavy bushes, Porthos had learned the first steps in the love of women. And Amelie had learned right along with him, he supposed.

It had come to a bad ending. It was bound to. Porthos’s father didn’t like the idea of his heir being involved with a peasant girl. If Porthos married at all, Porthos’s father had told him, it would have to be later, and it had better be to a girl of some worth. Later, because first Porthos must endeavor to raise the fortunes of a miserable rural backwater of a domain that could hardly support many more generations-what with its peasants leaving, generation by generation, and going to the cities in search of fortune. And to a girl of some worth to increase the chances that Porthos’s grandchildren could still support their title.

Porthos had raged and stormed and his father-just as redheaded, just as large and far more brutish, hardened by a life on the land, a life of seeing his prestige diminish- had raged. They’d clashed and fought and for a time Porthos had entertained running away with Amelie and marrying her somewhere secret. But then Amelie’s father had said he’d send her to a convent and lock her away on bread and water, a penitent the rest of her life. Or, if Porthos would simply leave her alone, they would arrange a suitable marriage for her, and she would be able to go on with a normal life.

And Porthos’s father had threatened to turn her family out unless Porthos left for a while and thus broke the affair off completely.

Threats to him, Porthos could withstand and laugh at. But threats to Amelie made him quake and regret his rash and foolish attachment.

He’d left for Paris before the end of October, and in Paris… Walking along the streets of that town, as evening spun to night and the smell of cooking and of family dinners enjoined around a thousand humble tables mingled on the street, he rubbed the bridge of his nose. In Paris, he’d found his avocation with sword-first teaching sword fighting, and then as a musketeer.

And in Paris he’d met Aramis and Athos and D’Artagnan. Few men, he knew, were so fortunate as to have such friends, brave and capable and as close to him as his own hand or his own arm. But…

But he wondered what would have happened if his father had let him marry Amelie. They would be poor as church mice, doubtless. One of those families with little more to pride themselves upon than the noble ancestors of at least one of them. And heaven knew, even his ancestors weren’t that noble.

They would have gone without food as often as he went without food now. And doubtless, many a time he would have had to work the fields alongside his peasant farmers, clearing land and seeding it. Doubtless his children would be little more than farmers. His children…

He bit at his tongue hard to stop that train of thought, which brought with it a thought of Guillaume and of the parents who would, even now, be worrying about him, the parents to whom Porthos could bring nothing but bad news.

Shaking his head, he realized he’d walked across half the town and that he was now in a neighborhood that was very familiar to him. It was a bourgeois neighborhood of houses that stood shoulder to shoulder, their closed facades keeping behind them the private lives of the residents and their private economies and presenting nothing but solidity to the world.

Up that street and down another, he would come to the garden of Monsieur Coquenard, accountant. And behind the house, the third window on the left was Athenais. A carefully aimed shower of pebbles upon her shutter would bring down the rope ladder through which Porthos could ascend to the closest thing to heaven he was likely to know in his life.

Only… It was too early for that. It was afternoon and everyone would see him.

But his need drove him. It was, like most things that caused him to act and act quickly, something he could neither think clearly through nor even attempt to put into words. Just a feeling. A feeling that Athenais would know what to do. She would make sense of this all. He must go to Athenais.

Because going into her garden and throwing pebbles at her window was out of the question, instead, he went into the alley at the back of her house. He had some vague idea of waiting there for hours, till darkness fell, till the movement in the house stopped, but when a girl came out, headed for the alley, he recognized her as Athenais’s maid, who had seen enough of their meeting in public and private that, if she didn’t know they were lovers she was a worse fool than Porthos was willing to credit.

When the girl saw him, she widened her eyes. Of course, even if he was known, meeting a musketeer in an isolated alley would be alarming for any woman.

Porthos hastened to remove his hat, hold it to his chest and bow.

“Mademoiselle,” he said. “Mademoiselle. I’m sorry to surprise you like this. I meant you no harm.”

The girl smiled and batted her eyelashes at him. She put her hand to her relatively inconsequential bosom with more theatrics than real alarm. “Oh, Monsieur Porthos,” she said. “You scared me.”

He bowed again, deeper. “Pardon me, mademoiselle, only… I wanted to know if you could take a message of mine to your mistress.”

“My… mistress?”

“Madame Coquenard,” Porthos said. Just last week he’d visited and this chit of a girl had seen him. Granted, he’d visited via the rope ladder and his time with Athenais had been scant. Still, he didn’t think anything could have happened to Athenais in a week. At least nothing he would not have heard about.

The maid shook her head. “Oh, the mistress isn’t here,” she said, making Porthos feel as though his heart had just dropped out of his chest and to the muddy ground of the alley.

“Where is she?” Oh, let her not have gone to her parents, who were minor nobility somewhere in the wretched countryside.

“At church,” the girl said. “Only, they had a Mass for a friend of Monsieur Coquenard’s that died last week, and she has gone to attend.”

“Oh,” Porthos said, and hesitated for a moment, not sure how to ask which church.

“St. Magdalene’s,” the girl said. “Just down that way and up the street.”

Porthos followed it before he thought what he was going to do. After all, what could a man do in those circumstances? It wasn’t as though he could barge into the church and there, in the incense-scented decorum of saints and sermons, pull Athenais away for a cozy little chat on murder and the horrors of the lonely life of a musketeer who’d never have children, could he?

When he got to the church, it was worse than he’d thought. For one, it was packed. And packed with the sort of upper-middle-class people who prized themselves on dressing well but in as dull a manner as possible. His musketeer’s uniform, his plumed hat clutched in a sweaty hand, all called attention to him. The gold trim on his coat and hat was matched only by the gold decor of the church and the deep blue velvet of his clothing echoed only in the deep blue of a cloak on the statue of the virgin, in its wall niche to the right of him. All the rest of the church, all of it, was thronged with people in black and brown or somber and boring grey.

He looked at that massed dullness, trying to see his Athenais, trying to spy her reddish gold hair-to speak the truth fast going white-amid the many people in the room. But he couldn’t see any woman’s hair. All of them were swathed in cunning hats and veils.

And the air was thick with incense, and the priest, standing at the podium and speaking, had a rolling, thunderous voice as he spoke of carnal sins and of the death that waited even the most proud man, the most beautiful woman.

Porthos sweated and prayed. His relationship with God was very simple. He asked only that God take care of those things that Porthos could not take care of for himself. Oh, Porthos would try to get food for himself. And Porthos would fight valiantly against those who were his foes, or simply against those who were willing to fight when he was bored. And he didn’t seek God’s help against what he considered the greatest evils in his world-the lack of good wine, and uppity guards of the Cardinal hell bent on enforcing the edicts against dueling.

In return, he asked only that God play fair with him and be a gentleman-that God not allow him to get killed by accident when he was fighting as well as he could, that God not strike him or his friends with some shameful debilitating disease, and that God not take in account Athenais’s wedding vows, for what did they mean? Athenais had been as good as sold off by her father, a penniless nobleman who’d betrothed her to a wealthy accountant in return for having his own debts forgiven. And the accountant was seventy when Athenais had married him, and who could expect him to live another ten years as he had already, preserved in venom and vinegar.

And if Athenais’s marriage had been consummated, well it had been long ago, and it had been done in a way that neither formed her expectations nor marred them. It was left to Porthos to show her the pleasure that could be obtained between a man and a woman. And her heart was as truly knit to his and his to hers as if they’d been married. And it was no one’s business at all, and Monsieur Coquenard’s least of all.

The preaching of the priest made him nervous nonetheless. It twined with Guillaume’s death and with his own feelings that his life had taken a wrong turn somewhere, and left him bereft and wondering if he was indeed in the hands of a vengeful God.

He was still sweating and praying, when a lady’s voice said, from nearby, “Monsieur? Could you move? I cannot reach the holy water with you standing there.”

Porthos recognized the voice as Athenais’s and opened the eyes he’d closed to pray, to see her standing near him, in a very fetching brown dress, matched with a sort of brown veil which made her look paler and younger.

Immediately, with a feeling like his prayer had been answered and his faith in the gentleman renewed, he dipped his huge paw in the fountain, and brought out a handful of water, into which Athenais dipped her fingers, crossing herself. She left, with two attendants following her. One of her husband’s clerks and a maid. Porthos waited a few breaths, and crossed himself in turn, before going out, amid a throng of people leaving the church.

Outside, on the covered portico of the imposing building, Athenais was speaking sharply to her attendants.

“But Madame Coquenard,” the young and pimply clerk was saying, “the carriage is waiting. With the horses. You cannot mean to walk home.”

“No,” Athenais answered, imperious. “Not that it would be any concern of yours if I did, but I just recalled that my friend, Armandine, is ill and she lives just a few doors down. I will go and see if I can help her in any way. And then I will ask her husband to have a carriage take me home.”

“But madam,” the clerk said. “Why can’t we wait?”

“Because I have asked you not to wait,” Athenais said. “I don’t want Armandine to feel that she has exposed my people to inconvenience or that I have gone to great trouble to visit her. Go home, boy. You too Catherine.”

“But, Monsieur Coquenard-” the young man said.

“Is my business and not yours. My husband knows of my works of mercy. He has yet to object to them.”

Finally the two attendants left. Athenais turned and walked slowly down the steps, and then started down the street. Porthos waited to see the Coquenard carriage- unmarked and probably bought used, or else received in security for a debt-drive by, with the two befuddled attendants riding in front with the driver. And then he waited a little longer before taking off in pursuit of Athenais.

With his long stride, he caught up with her shortly enough, just as Athenais took a sudden turn into an alley. He went after her and, a little while in, in the darkness of evening, he caught up with her, clutched at her arm. “Athenais,” he said.

“Shh,” she said, without turning. “Just a little while farther on, Porthos.”

A little while farther on turned out to be five minutes of hard walking, after which Athenais stopped at the door of what looked like a very small, modest house. Fishing in her sleeve, she brought out a key, and opened the door. She went in and closed it, but not all the way.

Porthos followed. Inside it was a one-room dwelling, of the sort that most working men in Paris lived in, save that this one was freestanding and not a part of a larger room. Like many such dwellings-such as the one in which D’Artagnan lived-it was let furnished and therefore it contained a small wooden table and two chairs, and a bed with a thin mattress and a blanket. There was no fire in the hearth and the place smelled cold and unused, if also very clean.

Athenais turned, and removed her wrap. By the abated light of day coming through the single window which looked onto what seemed to be a small, walled garden, she appeared very beautiful and far younger than Porthos knew her to be. He felt as if he were looking at Athenais as she’d been when she’d married Monsieur Coquenard- seventeen-year-old Athenais, devoid of artifice or fear.

“Athenais,” he said, as he flung the door shut, and pushed the bolt to close it. He advanced towards her, and crushed her in his arms, feeling her blessedly warm and alive in his. He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her, his hunger for her body augmented by his feeling that he was living a life that was no life and that he needed… something he couldn’t even name. Warmth or nourishment or life itself.

They were carried on the wave of his hunger, Athenais letting him do as he pleased, until the wave crested and ebbed, and they found themselves on the thin mattress, almost naked-he was wearing only his shirt and she a sort of petticoat for which he didn’t know the proper name- and sated, in each other’s arms.

It was then that the little house and its furnishings bothered him. “Athenais,” he said. “Whose home is this?”

She sat up so slowly that she didn’t break his hold on her and started, composedly, as though this were the most logical thing to do, to comb through her disarrayed hair. She removed the pins, then rebraided her hair. Holding the hair pins in her mouth, she spoke nonetheless clearly enough. “Mine,” she said. And then. “Or Monsieur Coquenard’s. We acquired it in a deal some time ago, and it’s been leased, but the occupant moved out. I had the key with me, as I meant to inspect it before leasing it again. I didn’t mean to come here today, but I’d put the key in my sleeve-pouch and meant to come here maybe tomorrow. When I saw you in church, it seemed… providential.”

“Um…” he said, and leaned forward to kiss the neck she’d bared in pulling her hair up to braid.

She giggled at being tickled with his beard. “I’ll never get my hair braided properly this way,” she said. “And the servants will wonder how I got so disarrayed in looking after Armandine.”

“Is your friend truly ill?” Porthos asked.

“She gave birth this week,” Athenais said, her hands moving very rapidly and braiding her hair by touch more accurately than many a woman could do it in front of a mirror. “A boy.”

“Athenais…” Porthos said.

Athenais turned, concerned. One of the things that Porthos liked about her was that even when he couldn’t put what he felt, or what was bothering him, into words, she nonetheless seemed to catch the edge of his worry, the crux of his sadness. She turned to look at him, and she let go of her hair, as her gaze softened. She took the pins out of her mouth and kissed him, a quick, concerned peck on the cheek. “Porthos, we can’t. You know we can’t. How would I explain it to my husband? He no longer can…”

Porthos shook his head. “I know,” he said. “But I wish we could. I wish we could get ourselves… well…” He shook his head again, as if to clear it, but the images only came rushing into it more-the images of a life that could never be his. “I wish we could have our own home,” he said. “Even if it were as modest as this. And two boys and three girls.” He thought about it a minute. “No, too many girls. What would we do with them all? How would we find them all dowries. Four boys and a girl.”

Athenais giggled. “I see you’ve given the matter a great deal of thought,” she said, her eyes wishful and grave. “Pray tell, why must we have girls at all?”

“Well,” Porthos said. He chewed on his lip with concentration. Right then that imaginary family seemed the most important thing in his world, and it blocked out his thoughts of the dead boy. “I want at least one daughter who will be as beautiful as her mother.”

“Oh, Porthos,” she said, in the soft tone women use when they don’t believe a compliment, and yet know that the speaker means it. Her hair, which she’d never pinned, had flowed free of the braid and now covered her shoulders in red gold waves.

With the petticoat, which was a skirt only, leaving her top completely bare, the lose waves of her hair looked like the veil of a saint. No. Not a saint. A pagan goddess. No saint would go about bare breasted. “Not unless there were swords in it.”

Athenais blinked. “Swords?”

“On the saints’ breasts,” Porthos said. “It’s the only time bare breasts are allowed in church.”

This brought a peal of throaty laughter from Athenais. She grabbed his hand and forced him to open it, palm up, and put her hair pins in it, while she started braiding her hair again.

“Madam, do I look like your vanity, or your maid?”

“You look like a man with great big hands, who can hold my hair pins,” she said, and helped herself to a hair pin to hold her hair in place.

Porthos sighed. Athenais looked over her shoulder. “What is wrong? None of this is like you-coming to see me before dinner time, nor being so oddly sad and concerned. ”

Porthos sighed again. “It’s the boy,” he said.

“A boy?” Athenais looked genuinely surprised, then nodded, as if she’d finally understood. “The Gascon?”

“No, no. A real boy. Twelve. He approached me, months ago, and… he knew my true name, Athenais! And he asked me to teach him sword fighting.”

“And you,” she said. “Very promptly thrashed him for thinking you were a proscribed nobleman and then refused to have anything else to do with him.”

“Athenais!”

“No. Of course not.” She looked as if she were about to say something else, but had stopped herself in time. “You gave in to his blackmail.”

“It wasn’t blackmail, Athenais. He was just a boy. Twelve. A stripling. And what he wanted was to learn sword fighting. What did I lose by teaching him? And he was good too.”

Athenais sighed. She retrieved the last hairpin from his hand, and put it in her hair, and rose. “Was good? Was? Porthos… what happened?”

It all came spilling out, simple descriptions of what happened because Porthos had never learned the knack of embellishing a story and so told things sequentially, as they’d occurred. When he talked about his genealogy in the boy’s pocket, Athenais had been reaching for her dress. She let her hand fall. “It was blackmail, Porthos.”

“Why? Why would it be blackmail?” Porthos asked. “I’d already given in to what he wanted, which was to teach him to fight. Why else would he have my genealogy in his pocket? What could he make me do with it?” Porthos shrugged. He’d told Athenais about the genealogy and about what it revealed. “You see, I know my family is not as noble as yours, but-”

Athenais laughed. “Porthos. My father married me to an attorney of no nobility at all. As his third wife. Porthos. Don’t speak of genealogy and papers and traditions.”

“Yes,” Porthos said. “But the thing is that I never cared. There’s Athos, noble as Scipio, and he doesn’t care if my ancestors were merchants, does he? He’s as much my friend as he’s Aramis’s.”

Athenais had thrown her dress over her head and now looked firmly trapped by it. Porthos knew that she normally had a maid or two to help her dress. He hastened to fulfill the role of the maid, and she let him lace the dress up her back. He’d never done this job, but he’d done its reverse often enough. He told her how they’d looked in the palace and Athos and D’Artagnan were canvassing the neighborhoods for someone who might know the boy’s family. “Only, no one ever heard of Jaucourt as a family name and, Athenais, what if we don’t find them? What if they’re in agony looking for their boy, and he’s lying dead, and they’ll never know it? And what if I find them and I have nothing but this dismal news to give them?”

Athenais was grave. She turned around and looked seriously at Porthos. “He told you he was noble,” she said. "And that his family name was Jaucourt?”

Porthos nodded.

Athenais pursed her lips together and looked at him, with that expression she had that made him feel like he was a small child under the serious scrutiny of a stern governess.

She turned away from him and reached for her veil on the table and picked it up, then put it down again. “Porthos, have none of your friends considered…”

“Oh,” Porthos aid. “Aramis thought the boy might have been sent to me as a ploy of the Cardinal’s, that the papers in his purse, and his having been killed might all be part of a ploy to get me taken for murder.”

Athenais turned around. She looked more serious than ever. “Yes, all that might be true, and more besides, but has none of you considered that he might have given you a false name?”

“A false name?” Porthos said. “Oh, yes, we considered it. That is why Aramis made drawings, when we went to ask for him, in case he had a different name.”

“But you’re looking for him in the palace?” Athenais said. “And where noblemen lodge? It has not occurred to you, my dear, that he might not be a nobleman at all? Just a street urchin the Cardinal employed in this? Or someone did?”

“But he…” It had never occurred to Porthos. And now it did, he felt cold and lost. Curse it all. If Guillaume wasn’t even a nobleman, then it meant he could be anyone at all in Paris. How were they to find his family. “But he behaved as a young gentleman,” he said.

Athenais nodded. “Manners are a thing anyone can pick up with just a little observation.”

“But… Athenais! How am I to find who he is, then?”

Athenais tilted her head a little. “I would go near where you found him. And start looking there.”

“Near where I found him…” Porthos said.

Athenais wrapped her veil around her head. “And now if you’d escort me to Armandine’s home, so I don’t have to brave the streets of Paris alone, I’ll make up something to account for my delay. That I was moved to go back and pray, perhaps.”

As she locked the door behind them, and he waited beside it, she said, “You know, I could hide the fact that this house hasn’t been let. I could hide it in the accounts. My husband would never know. And we could have it.”

“Why?” Porthos asked. “We have the rope ladder.”

“And every servant waiting for the bed to creak. This could be ours, just ours.”

He nodded saying nothing. He wished it was really theirs and their true home. Aloud, he said, “I found the boy lying against the back wall of a tavern.”

“Then that’s where I would look first,” she said. “That tavern and the immediate neighborhood.”