The Musketeer's Apprentice

Things Known and Unknown; A Discussion on Poisons; The Beauty and the Plot

"WHAT do we know, then?” D’Artagnan asked. They were seated in the front room of Porthos’s lodging, the one just up a flight of stairs from the street. It was the most spacious and grand of any of their lodgings, and right now the bits of marble decoration on the wall and the elaborate painted ceiling-all of which had once graced a much grander house, which was now divided into lodgings-felt oppressive in its grandeur. That, and the advanced hour, probably explained why the four friends had been sitting around Porthos’s table, looking sullen and quiet, each lost in his own thoughts and concerns.

Even D’Artagnan’s words didn’t bring the immediate storm of conversation it normally would bring. Instead, they all looked at one another, and Porthos looked solemnly back at D’Artagnan and blinked. “That Guillaume is dead,” he said.

D’Artagnan nodded. And then he tried to briskly move the subject away from the obvious fact of the dead child, a fact he understood caused Porthos to mourn and lament, to something more rational, more clear cut, less steeped in grief. He tried to get them to think of it as a puzzle. “The thing is,” he said. “Who killed him?”

“Did anyone kill him?” Aramis said.

As they all turned to look at him, the blond musketeer shrugged. “It must be said.”

“But… you were the one who told us he had symptoms of poisoning,” Porthos said, his voice dull.

“Yes, but… Poisoning need not be murder. Children eat things by accident all the time. Or out of curiosity. Or simply because they’re hungry.” His green eyes looked into D’Artagnan’s and seemed troubled by one of those rare expressions of concern that didn’t relate to Aramis or to whatever lady held Aramis’s attention at the moment. “Peasant children did, sometimes, when I was growing up. Ate the wrong berry. Or picked the wrong mushroom. It always scared me. Not that I thought it might happen to me, but because some children like me out there…” His voice trailed off, he shook his head, and then when he spoke again it was with his old confidence and self-assurance. “But the truth is that we don’t even know for sure what the poison was. If it was poison.” He raised a hand to stop an objection from Porthos, though none seemed forthcoming. “I think it was nightshade, but I’m not sure, and until I’m sure, we’ll not know how much was needed to kill him, or when it was administered in order to kill him by the time he got to Porthos, or… where nightshade can be got, other than the bushes, or…”

“So, how do you propose to know?” D’Artagnan asked.

Aramis linked his hands and rested his chin upon them. “I know a man.”

Porthos normally reacted to this announcement with an exclamation of surprise, saying that usually Aramis knew women. But Porthos was not in good enough spirits to say it. Instead, he shrugged. “And what would this man of yours know about it?”

“He’s a monk, Porthos,” Aramis said. “Here in town. He works with poisons.”

“You know a poisoner?” Porthos asked, frowning.

“No. He works with poisons to find those helpful qualities which they might have. For you must know that there is no substance so wretched that it does not, somewhere, serve to cure an ill, as well as to cause one. Brother Laurence is a Benedictine and he works indefatigably to improve the lot of man.” Aramis looked up. “You can come with me, Porthos, when I go to speak with him.”

“Well, then,” Athos said. “I shall take D’Artagnan with me tomorrow and go find Monsieur de Comeau and find out how his story accords with Guillaume’s, shall I?”

D’Artagnan opened his hands. “I have guard duty in early morning, but I shall be quite free midday. And I suppose if tomorrow is going to be consumed with such investigations, I should take myself to bed now.” He looked suspiciously at the sky, where the high moon announced the hour as close to midnight. “If I hurry I might get a good four hours of sleep.”

“I’ll leave now, also,” Aramis said, rising. “And keep you company part of the way.”

They walked together down to the front door where an ever-vigilant Mousqueton opened the door for them.

Outside, they walked for a while in silence, before D’Artagnan said, “You don’t believe then, Aramis, that the boy was Porthos’s son?”

Aramis shrugged. “I wouldn’t know one way or another. There are so many children… I don’t think we have any reason to think he was. But then, we also have no proof that he wasn’t. Porthos is old enough to have fathered him, mind…” He seemed preoccupied with something for a long while. “Sometimes I wonder…” He shrugged and rubbed his face with his spread fingers, as though seeking to remove an obstruction to his sight.

“If you have any children out there, forgotten?” D’Artagnan asked.

Aramis smiled unexpectedly. “None that would thank me for claiming them,” he said. “If I have sired any child, it was when I was very young and surely his mother’s husband can better look after him than I can. Also, if that ever happened, the lady never saw need to inform me. No, D’Artagnan. I was thinking of Violette. If she had lived and had my child, I wonder what the child would have been like.” He was silent a while longer. “You know, it’s funny because until now I never thought I’d want to be a father. It’s obvious that Porthos wishes to be one, but I never thought of it. And then Violette… Well… I’d have liked to see what kind of child we’d have had together. I would have liked…” He shrugged again. “But what is life without some regrets? And, after all, in consigning myself to holy orders and the church, I shall have not one, but a hundred spiritual descendants.”

D’Artagnan was so surprised, he let the words burst forth before he could stop them, “You are sincere about wanting to take orders.”

“Oh yes,” Aramis said, looking a little surprised. “I thought you knew? What would be the point of shamming?”

D’Artagnan shook his head. Having blurted out his feelings without thought he now had to concentrate to attempt to make sense. “It’s just that I knew you wanted to enter the church, but I wasn’t sure it was a real spiritual pursuit. So many people take orders…”

“I know, I know,” Aramis said. “His eminence the Cardinal, for instance. But… This is not for me. I do intend to devote myself to the church. I have given it much thought these last few months, since Violette…” He shrugged. “I don’t think I’ll ever feel for anyone what I felt for her. At the same time… I am a fallible man. I don’t feel I’m ready to dedicate myself fully to the church yet. And so I shall wait. Besides, our friends need me.”

D’Artagnan interpreted Aramis’s speech to mean that Aramis was not ready to give up on the fair sex. But perhaps here, too, he was doing Aramis an injustice. At least Aramis meant to take his orders seriously when he took them.

Meanwhile they’d arrived at the Rue des Fossoyers, and D’Artagnan’s mind wandered away from Aramis and Aramis’s concerns. He found himself scanning the front of the house anxiously, looking for the shape of someone watching from the windows. Oh, he knew it was ridiculous at this time of night. What would she be doing up? Waiting for him? She was a married woman and worked for the Queen as one of her favored maids. And he was a seventeen-year-old guard, not even a musketeer. What could she ever see in him?

He realized he’d been silent for a while and that Aramis was watching him curiously. D’Artagnan blushed dark and said, “I must go. I really should get some sleep before I stand guard tomorrow at Monsieur des Essarts.”

“Yes, you probably should,” Aramis said, but he still looked curious. When D’Artagnan didn’t say anything, Aramis said, “Good night my friend.” And turned to leave.

No sooner had he taken three steps away, than D’Artagnan heard an urgent “Pssst” out of the shadows.

He barely had the time to turn before one of the windows in the bottom floor opened and something came sailing out of it. By instinct more than by design, D’Artagnan caught it, in the dark.

It was a rose. Not the one he had given her, but another, for it still had its thorns upon it. To protect his hands upon catching it, she’d wrapped a silken handkerchief around the stem. It was lace bordered and the initials worked upon it were CB.

He lifted it to his lips and kissed the initials. From somewhere up the road, he’d swear he heard Aramis chuckle.

But when he turned, Aramis was walking away, in the dark night, and didn’t look like he’d ever turned back or witnessed the scene.

D’Artagnan looked back, towards the window, from which rose and handkerchief had dropped, and saw her looking out. Her. Or at least enough of her to recognize: a hint of blond hair, the curve of a cheek, two intent blue eyes. His heart sped up and blood thundered in his ears like an oncoming summer storm.

He bowed deeply and removed his hat, while bowing almost to the ground.

As he straightened, he saw her smiling at him, a smile full of intent and meaning and at the same time, she lifted her hand, as though telling him to wait.

D’Artagnan wasn’t sure what she meant, but at that moment, he couldn’t have moved no matter how much he wished it. He stood planted, on the street in front of her house, and presently-it seemed to him as though she were decanted from moonlight and roses-she opened the door and stood before him, dressed in her dress and a cloak with a hood. She was a little breathless, causing her chest to heave and putting pink on her cheeks. Which made her even more beautiful than she’d been before. And she plucked at his sleeve. “Monsieur. Would you render me a service?”

D’Artagnan was sure he was sleeping, then. The night had run too long and he must have fallen asleep, with his head on Porthos’s table, and the others, feeling sorry for his youth and tiredness, had scrupled to wake him. That must be it, because it was only in D’Artagnan’s dreams that beautiful women asked him this sort of question. In fact, it was only in D’Artagnan’s dreams that beautiful women spoke directly at him.

However, this being a dream he enjoyed, he decided he would take it at the full and enjoy it to the end. Bowing deeply, he said, “Madam, you have only to tell me where I may lose my life in your service.”

She smiled, and blushed darker, and said, “Oh, I hope that might not be needed, but you see… I have a friend…” When he didn’t dispute this, she went on. “A friend who is married to a most suspicious husband, and there is a man she loves, but with whom she is too honorable to have any commerce. She wishes to send this man a message, to prevent his being foolish enough to appear at her door as he’s been threatening to do. Only, she is constantly watched.”

“By her husband?”

“And his minister.”

“And his-” D’Artagnan took a deep breath. Until that word he had been, complacently, imagining that Madame Bonacieux referred to him in a round about way. “You mean she is the-” Her hand clapped on his mouth before he could finish the sentence.

“Yes,” she said.

“And?”

“And this message to her gentleman friend she entrusted to me,” Madame Bonacieux said. “Only I am a woman, too, and frail. I’m afraid of being attacked between here and the house where I’m supposed to deliver it. She believed my husband might protect me, but I don’t think my husband will be much good against armed attackers, do you?”

Her hand still covering his mouth, all he could do was shake his hand.

“Would you escort me, then?” Madame Bonacieux said. “On my errand?”

“With the best will in the world, madam,” D’Artagnan said, offering her his arm. She accepted it, and slipped her hand upon it.

“You are so brave, monsieur,” she said. “I perceive with you, there will not be the slightest cause for alarm.”

In fact, D’Artagnan found no cause for alarm, at any rate. As they walked along the deserted, darkened streets, everything was quiet. It seemed to him, for a long while, that he heard steps behind him, but after a while he was sure it was just the disordered beat of his own heart.

He was so far in this dream of love and romance that he didn’t realize for a long while that they were going towards the Rue Ferou, where Athos lived. It was only as they stopped in front of a house, and Madame Bonacieux said, “Only go back now. I will get someone else to escort me on the way back,” that he realized he was just across the street from Athos’s home.

Bowing slightly, he turned away from her obediently. Some part of him reproached himself for leaving her without being absolutely sure she would be safely escorted on the way back, but the rest of him insisted he must obey her. This was, after all, the Queen’s business and bigger than both of them.

He turned away and had gone only a few steps, when he heard, behind him, running feet. Turning he saw Madame Bonacieux at the door, raising her hand to knock, and six guards of the Cardinal bearing down on her, swords out.

“Ah, villains,” D’Artagnan called out. “You’d attack an unprotected woman?”

He turned, sword in hand, and rushed back. “To me, villains. ”

The men instantly turned to accept his challenge and D’Artagnan, perceiving that he was far outnumbered and that these were old hands at the game of duel, called out in turn, “Athos, Athos, help me.”

A window opened above, and presently Athos’s front door was flung open and two men rushed out. Athos who joined the fray with ready sword and Grimaud who rushed away into the night.

Considerably relieved, but still hard pressed, D’Artagnan called out, “To me, musketeers, for the King.”

Just at that moment-Grimaud doubtlessly having gone, providentially, to the nearest tavern, a crowd of musketeers appeared, following Grimaud. They fell onto the guards and the fight was joined with such enthusiasm, that D’Artagnan found himself on the periphery of it, looking at Athos.

“How came this to be?” Athos asked.

D’Artagnan shook his head. He knew if he talked of Madame Bonacieux Athos would call him a fool. He said, instead, “I was walking around, thinking, and I found myself here, and they fell on me.” Even as he spoke, he made sure his beautiful landlady was nowhere in sight.

“How came you to be here? Near my house?”

D’Artagnan shrugged. “I don’t even know. I was walking. I lost track of where I was.”

From Athos’s disdainful smile, D’Artagnan perceived that Athos thought he’d been thinking of Madame Bonacieux, anyway. And let him think that, for D’Artagnan had.

Leaving the still furious fight behind him, D’Artagnan started towards his house, feeling for her embroidered handkerchief within his sleeve.