The Musketeer's Apprentice

An Odd Avocation; Poison in the World; Belladonna

IT was cool morning as Aramis headed for Friar Laurence’s workshop. It was in fact one of those beautiful mornings where the world appears newly minted or recreated. The normal stink of Paris seemed muted, as a cool breeze blowing from the river brought with it freshness and untainted air.

Early morning, the city looked like a woman just awakened, Aramis thought, and not yet having put on her makeup or her public attire. Most windows were shuttered. From far off came the sound of a horse’s hooves on cobbles. From somewhere else, in the nearer distance, the sounds of a woman calling out something, and of a child crying. Other than that, it was stillness, punctuated with birdsong, here and there.

If you closed your eyes, it would be possible to imagine that you were in a small village, somewhere, surrounded by bucolic solitude.

Only Aramis didn’t close his eyes. He looked around, instead, at the tall buildings around him, at the shutters opening, here and there. Down the street, a woman threw open her door and walked out to sweep the street. Elsewhere, a man’s voice rose in round, full singing.

It was this Paris that Aramis loved. Or perhaps, truth be told, it was one of the parts of Paris he loved, for he loved the evening Paris, too, shrouded in darkness and full of secret alleys and fraught encounters in the streets. And he loved Paris in the afternoon, languid under the sun, the streets filled with passersby.

The city was like a woman, and like any woman she exerted an hypnotic fascination over Aramis. In his heart of hearts he had to admit that was part of what held him away from the church, to which he always said he was destined. The truth was he could no more leave Paris than he could be truly celibate. Not yet.

He hastened away from the center of town and towards the suburbs, where there were more people awake and signs of life in the workshops and forges. Farther still, down beaten-dirt streets, he found himself standing in front of the Benedictine monastery-an imposing stone facade with small, deep windows that would allow the light in, but not the prurient curiosity of a glance out at the street to see who might be passing.

Again, as always when he approached such places, Aramis asked himself what it would be like to live within, in the sacred silence, with ordered days and specified times for every task. Oh, obedience didn’t frighten him. He had to obey now. He obeyed Monsieur de Treville. He stood guard when he must and he went on travel for the captain when he must. He came when bid, and he fought whomever the King ordered. No, obedience was not a problem.

And poverty… well… Despite his lace and velvet, the well-cut clothes upon which he spent much of his money, the truth was that no musketeer was truly rich. The wolf of famine often rounded the musketeer’s door and very, very often was admitted in.

No-of all the three it was only chastity that bothered Aramis. And not just the vow of chastity that would prevent him from touching female flesh again, but the vow of chastity that would bar him from looking at women, from taking a material interest in the day-to-day life of the city and of his neighbors and of the court too.

Chastity stood before the door of the monastery as a stumbling block stopping Aramis on his way to taking vows. And yet… He sighed and knocked at the heavy oak door.

It was presently opened by a cowled monk in a black habit. Upon seeing Aramis, he bowed and mumbled his welcome, as Aramis had been known at this house since he was just a young seminarian newly sent to Paris to be educated.

“I have come to see Brother Laurence,” Aramis said, and was waved through, his presence here being customary and so well known that they wouldn’t bother even to escort him down the long, cool hallways, the shadow-filled darkness of the monastery.

An ancient building, constructed of massive stone blocks, it seemed designed to keep the world out, though the Benedictines were not a cloistered order and indeed often worked within the world as teachers, physicians and other avocations. But within here, it was all fresh and silent and Aramis once more felt the tug to leave the world behind and consign himself to unvarying holiness. Only, he remembered the call of the streets outside too well to obey.

He hastened faster down the hallways, towards the back of the building where they’d set up Brother Laurence’s workshop. The figures who met him on his way nodded to him and he nodded in response. That none of them remarked upon his presence nor even seemed to notice his rather gaudy-today a deep blue-velvet attire, nor the discrete bits of golden ornamentation upon it, which contrasted as much with their black habits as a bird of paradise’s plumage would contrast with a crow’s, only told how accustomed a presence he had become within.

Brother Laurence’s workshop was open, and Aramis went in-into a labyrinth of shadows and shelves, of strange materials bubbling in glass apparatuses, and other, more difficult to understand vessels. Metal and clay and little contained flames were all around. From the ceiling of the workshop hung dried bunches of herbs and also a stuffed crocodile whose purpose Aramis was loath to enquire. On shelves, distributed more or less haphazardly, sat jars filled with odd fluids, or else with bits of animal and plant. Again, Aramis didn’t ask about them unless they came up in some conversation or brought up in some discussion. He had a vague idea that most of them were unpleasant or at least unsavory.

“Ah, D’Herblay,” Father Laurence said. He popped up around a set of shelves with every appearance of a jack-in-the-box coming forth from the confined space. Truth be told, he looked more than anything like one of those trained monkeys that court ladies kept around for show, only slightly bigger and slightly less hairy. His features were almost entirely simian, his nose just slightly more prominent than that of a monkey. And his eyes, like a monkey’s, peered dark and preternaturally intelligent from deep sockets. The black cowl around his face made the whole look incongruous, like a child’s prank or a lady’s idea of a joke.

That he was grinning inanely with pleasure at Aramis’s visit would have alarmed a man who knew him less well. But Aramis only smiled and said, “You know very well, Brother Laurence, that I have laid that name by and will not resume it until I think myself purged of my sin and capable-”

“You’ll not resume it until you’re done playing the musketeer, ” the little man said, waving the rest of Aramis’s intended speech away. “Come, come, I am no fool. Aramis, then, if you insist on being Aramis. Glad to see you. It’s been at least two weeks, and I haven’t told you any of my new experiments. I’m almost sure I’ve found an herb to suppress cough. You know, in winter it is often the cough and the tiredness of it that kill our aged ones.”

Aramis had never been able to understand why Brother Laurence assumed that Aramis had the same interest in his herbal medicines that he himself possessed, save that, he supposed, the little man got to speak with precious few people. His brothers, doubtless, not being fools, avoided the workshop if they could. Aramis always thought that had been the reason to locate it at the back of the house, facing the still sizeable backyard.

Oh, doubtless, it also made it convenient for Brother Laurence to tend to the herbs and trees and cultivate the odd plants that were part of his materials. But at the same time, it took him out of the main flow of the house, so that no one need pass by the workshop unless he meant to go there.

Like all lonely people, Brother Laurence talked a great deal. And yet, while being led from bubbling pot to deep, clay keeping jar, to yet another interesting concoction of macerated herbs at the bottom of some mortar vase, Aramis thought of how useful Laurence was to his community. He’d come here in winter, sometimes in search of medicines for Bazin who was as likely as not to suffer from a weak chest, and he’d seen the little man bring relief to many suffering from colds or other infections of the head and chest.

Brother Laurence brought him, with a flourish, towards a bench and handed him a little container of some pomade, saying, “And that should hasten the healing of any wounds you get in your duels. I had the recipe from a Gascon monk who visited.”

Aramis took the salve, wondering if it was the same not so secret Gascon recipe that D’Artagnan swore by.

“I thank you, Brother Laurence,” Aramis said, holding the salve in his hand and contemplating what to do with it, since he wore no capacious waist-pouch which would ruin the lines of his elegant attire, and he surely had not enough space for this jar of salve within his sleeves. So he held the smooth ceramic pot in his hand, and turned it round and round as he said, “But what I’ve come to you for is… a little different.”

Brother Laurence turned around and fixed Aramis with an intent look of his simian-like eyes. “Different?” he said, his voice seeming to echo itself in various tones of worry.

“It is…” Aramis said. “A child. A friend of mine…”

The Benedictine’s eyebrows rose. “My dear D’Her- Aramis. You probably know more of foundling homes than I do. You could not-”

“It is not a foundling. It is-”

“Oh, that. You must know my friend, that while there are herbal remedies that stop the life within the woman there are none that do not endanger the mother also, and you-”

Aramis shook his head. “Not that, Brother. Not that. I’m well aware of my sins of propinquity and unchastity.” He raised his hand as he saw the little Benedictine open his lips to speak. “But it is not that. At any rate I’ve never had to face that trouble. If things had been different…” He shook his head. “As it is the matter concerns not me, but a good friend of mine, and the child involved is not his, but only a boy to whom he agreed to teach the art of fencing.”

The little benedictine remained mercifully silent, possibly surprised by such an unusual problem for a musketeer, while Aramis poured out the entire tale of woe involving Guillaume, and the symptoms of the boy’s death.

“Nightshade,” the Benedictine said, rubbing his chin. “Aye, it might very well be that, for look here, the berries ripen around now. Yes, it might very well be that. And many householders grow nightshade beside their doors, as an ornamental plant. But…” He chewed the side of his lip. “All you tell me, so far, makes sense, as far as sense goes. The boy had a dry mouth, was red and dreaming awake, as it were. Yes, it sounds like nightshade poisoning right enough.” He opened his arms, palm outward. “I don’t understand what you want me to do in the matter though?”

“Oh… There are questions,” Aramis said. “Other questions than the simple fact of how the boy might have died. You see, while it is true what you say, and I’m sure I’ve seen the bush around Paris, there are people, perhaps, who wouldn’t be in a position to go out and lop off leaves from a bush to poison anyone. People who… it could be said… would want a more concentrated dose, and more lethal. People in a position of power who…”

The Benedictine’s eyebrows rose again. “You mean, in sum, his eminence Cardinal Richelieu, I suppose?”

Aramis shrugged. “Someone of prominence, whosoever they might be,” he said. “Someone who would not be in a position to run to the garden and cut leaves, or to bake a pie incorporating them. You see, if this child was as I suppose him to be, streetwise and capable, I don’t think he would easily be tempted by a dainty full of poisonous berries. Doubtless he would have tasted them or known them.”

The Benedictine spread his hands again, this time in a seeming show of helplessness. “I always think that you gentlemen in the King’s Musketeers are a little too obsessed with the Cardinal, as though if his eminence were to achieve all his goals France would be lost by it. And yet, I’d swear the man, though he enriches himself a bit, is not even as corrupt as most of our noblemen. He doesn’t seem to crave riches or women or…”

“It is power he craves,” Aramis said. “Just power. Surely you understand that.”

“But a craving for power doesn’t mean the power is necessarily wrong. It seems to me the Cardinal’s aims are as much for the good of France as anyone else’s at court. He might have different ideas as to what that good might be, but that is about it. Surely…”

Aramis shrugged. He transferred the jar to his left hand and examined the nails of his right hand, something he always did when immersed in thought. In anyone else making this speech, he would have suspected a fatal sympathy for the Cardinal, such as might mean Brother Laurence was already the churchman’s agent. But Brother Laurence wasn’t like that. He was one of those creatures who go through life thinking more than doing-and more involved in his studies than in any human affairs. If the Cardinal were an herb, then surely Brother Laurence’s opinion would be soundly and carefully reasoned. The Cardinal, and France and the court for that matter being either people or assemblies of them, the good brother’s opinion would be slightly less well thought out. “I’m not going to dispute with you,” he said. “Whether the Cardinal’s ideas for France are correct or whether the King’s or… other people’s are. I’m just going to say that surely you don’t doubt, in the pursuit of his objectives, the Cardinal would not spare the life of a child.”

“In the pursuit of his objectives,” Brother Laurence said. “The Cardinal would not spare the King himself nor the Queen, but truly… why would he kill a child?”

Aramis shrugged. “As a means of creating the appearance of a crime so heinous that even Monsieur de Treville would not defend one of his own musketeers?” Aramis said. “Besides, you must know if he manages to strike at one of us, myself or my three friends, the rest of us are bound to go into exile or otherwise disappear, for what credit and face would we have, when presented with such dishonor in our midst?”

The Benedictine’s eyes watched Aramis, attentively, then the man shrugged. “You might have good reason there. Or more than good reason. And yes, his eminence is quite capable of such behavior where it suits him, and I won’t dispute it might have suited him. I don’t live enough in the world to understand such impulses and such crimes.”

Aramis nodded. “There are other suspects… other people who might have done it. A nobleman, perhaps one who was the boy’s father or at least whom the boy thought was his father.” He shrugged. “People like that, at that level, unlike housewives or other plebeians, might find it hard to come by the berries and leaves, and might have had to disguise the poison in some other way.”

The brother nodded. “Well,” he said. “Nightshade is called belladonna, because its extract, when dripped in the eyes, makes the pupils huge, something that is accounted of great beauty by our court ladies. There are other preparations that use it. As a cream, it is said to make the skin smooth and even. You must understand I have no personal experience with it in that form, as my patients are rarely concerned with the appearance of their skins, and yet…” He shook his head. “There’s many ways it can manifest itself and many people who make extracts of it.”

“And if someone ate… either the berries or the concentrate of it? How long till death?”

Brother Laurence shook his head. “It might not lead to death at all,” he said. “You understand, it is possible to have it in such a small dosage that it causes only dreams and hallucinations. In adults, at least, most of those hallucinations seem to be of a… sexual nature.”

“Supposing a dosage large enough to kill?” Aramis asked. “In a boy about this height,” he held his hand at below his shoulder. “And weighing very little, though most of it muscle?”

The Brother sighed, then shook his head. “Half an hour? An hour? Not very long at any rate. With that little flesh, it is easy for the entire body to become poisoned very quickly.”

Aramis nodded. Porthos had just had the time to become alarmed at the boy not having shown up for his lesson. That meant an hour, maybe less. And the boy had died shortly after Porthos found him. “So it is not one of those poisons… It wouldn’t be possible for someone to have poisoned him over weeks, or months? Or perhaps to have given him the poison the night before?”

The friar shook his head. “Oh, no. It’s not a slow acting poison at all. If you take enough to poison you, you will die very quickly.” He turned his back on Aramis and started rummaging amid his clay jars on a shelf. “Someone would have had to poison the boy, at the most, a couple of hours before he died.”

“Well, that at least gives us something solid to ask-a person’s whereabouts just before the boy died.”

“Well… indeed. Except they could have given it to him in some flask of liquor or some baked something with instructions to consume it at a certain time.”

Aramis tilted his head. “It is devilishly hard,” he said. “I much prefer murders by stabbing or bludgeoning.” And, seeing Brother Laurence look over his shoulder at Aramis with a startled expression, Aramis added. “I mean, I much prefer trying to solve such murders, not that I prefer committing them that way, for as I hope you know I do not make it my business to kill people.”

“I should pray not,” Brother Laurence said. “Except for your duels, of course.”

“Those are hardly murder.”

“Indeed. I suppose not.” The little friar sighed. “My friend, surely it has occurred to you that having found such a relatively easy way to dispose of inconvenient people, the murderer is bound to murder again?”

Immersed in this gloomy thought, as he left the monastery, Aramis managed to walked all the way into the middle of a group of men, who were waiting a little distance from the door before he realized that they were all dressed in the blood-red uniforms of guards of the Cardinal.

“What can this mean?” he asked. “Were you gentlemen waiting for me?”

The leader, an ugly man with a scar, whose name, Aramis vaguely remembered as Remy, said, “Indeed, and if you just deliver the papers to us, we shall now be gone. We ransacked the house, you see, and couldn’t find it. So one of you must have it. And since there’s a woman involved, it must, perforce, be you.”

Aramis was as baffled by this speech as could be expected. The only thing he could understand from it was that these men wanted some papers. Porthos’s genealogy, he thought. Now that it had failed to incriminate the musketeer, its very existence pointed to the Cardinal. They wanted to eliminate proof.

Mentally he counted them. Five of them. Very well, he would die here, then. He pulled at his sword. “This is the only thing you’ll get from me, sirs,” he said. And then, though he didn’t expect any musketeers to be in this far flung area of town, far from their normal taverns, he yelled. “To me, musketeers. To me for the King.”

To his surprise, four men appeared running. And though one of them was de Termopillae, and therefore as good as half a man, if that, at the very least the odds were somewhat even.

Squaring off against Remy, Aramis thought that the day that four and a half musketeers couldn’t beat five guards of his eminence would be a sad day indeed.