The Musketeer's Apprentice

At the Top of the Ladder; Accounts and Accounting; A Wife’s Loyalty

THE Coquenard home slumbered in silence. All but the mistress who, having responded to a hail of pebbles on her shutter, had opened the window and let down the rope ladder to admit Porthos.

Porthos had come into the small room-barely large enough for the one narrow bed and the small wardrobe at the foot-and there stood, holding his hat. He’d never felt so awkward in this place as he now did. Or at least, not since the first time that they’d conceived of this way of meeting. He was no longer sure which of them had suggested it, but the first time he’d climbed the ladder and found himself here, he’d been half in thrall of her and half in fear of doing this in a full house, with servants waiting.

Like that first time, this time, he stood by the window, his back to it, silent and still. Athenais faced him, her hair loose down her back, her simple nightgown hugging her body and revealing that despite the white threads in her hair, the fine wrinkles at the corner of her eyes, she was still more beautiful than half the painted misses at court. Her face went from a welcoming smile to a look of alarm. “Porthos,” she said. And after a pause, in which he didn’t answer her, “What is wrong?”

Porthos shook his head, trying to figure out how to begin and how to tell Athenais so many momentous things. Not for the first time, he wished he had Aramis’s facility with words, his ability to ease his way into serious subjects with a quote, a scrap of Latin. But it wasn’t part of him. He looked up, and his eyes met his lady’s serious gaze. “Athenais,” he said, only the word came out more as a lament, than just a saying of her name.

And now Athenais was alarmed, crossing the distance between them, taking his hand in hers. “What is wrong?”

“I don’t know how… I don’t know if… How can I tell you? How can I ask you?” Porthos said, hearing his voice out of control and trying to keep it low so no one in the nearby rooms would hear him. What if Monsieur Coquenard had already heard him? What if it had cost him his boy’s life? “I don’t…” He swallowed hard.

Her hands, holding one of his, squeezed tight. “You must know,” she said. “You must know that there is nothing you can’t tell me. While we have not had the benefit of having our hands joined in church, surely you know that our souls have long been joined, that…”

Porthos sighed, a heavy sigh, and said the only thing he could think of, “You will be angry at me.”

“I? Angry at you? When have I been angry at you?”

“All the time. When I brought Athos over. When I do something you think is stupid. When you hear I fought a duel. When I make too much noise trying to get your attention at the window. When…”

She smiled. “I do get angry at you, don’t I? Enough, I suppose. But I don’t get angry at you in truth, Porthos. Irritated, perhaps. Annoyed. Particularly when you fight needless duels. But I don’t hold anger against you for any time, Porthos. I don’t resent you for hardly any time at all.”

Porthos blinked. He knew this was true. Oh, in truth of fact, many times he’d climbed that rope ladder to find his Athenais fully dressed, with flashing eyes and stern countenance, ready to read him the riot book for, what she called, his mad behavior and his foolish disregard for his own life and nature. But there was never a time he’d left the room without their having made up, without her having at last smiled at him, even if she told him he was a very great fool as she smiled. And he’d never left without sharing her bed or, time not permitting so much, without holding her in his arms.

He took a deep breath and stepped away from the wall, and across to the bed, on which he sat. It creaked under his weight, as he looked up at Athenais’s worried face.

“Are you ill?” she asked him, anxiously. “You know, you could stay in that little house down the way, and I could come and nurse you often enough and-”

“I’m not ill,” he said. “I know I must look ghastly, but it is not illness. I wish it were, as it would be easier to cure. But it’s not. Alas. No physical illness, at least. My heart…”

She searched his features with an anxious gaze. At last she knelt at his feet, and took his hands in hers. “My dear, what are you afraid of? What happened? Did anyone tell you I played you false? For if they did, they were wrong, you know? I never even look at other men.”

It hadn’t ever occurred to him she might play him false, and even now it didn’t occur to him. Although now they were seasoned and used to their clandestine love affair, he remembered how many pangs of conscience it had, at first, cost her, and how difficult it all had been, even discovering some means to be alone together.

He shook his head slowly. “I never thought you’d play me false, Athenais. I know your heart. No. That never crossed my mind.”

“And yet you say your heart has been wounded. Surely, Porthos, you don’t mean really. Was it a wound, or-”

He smiled at her. Her alarm was so far from the mark. And yet he felt his own smile fade as soon as it appeared. “No, no. That isn’t it. It’s just that… Athenais, he was my son.”

“Who was your son? The boy who-?”

“Yes, yes. The very same.” He let the words pour out of him, as he told her the whole story of their discoveries and what he had contrived to deduce.

Athenais listened to the story with an attentive air, and then at the end of it, it seemed as though her face, which until then had shown only attention and nothing else, melted. “Oh, Porthos,” she said. “Oh, Porthos, I am so sorry.”

He nodded. He didn’t know how to take anyone’s condolences. “But Athos and D’Artagnan and Aramis say that we must prove for sure why the boy was killed because…” And he realized where he was going with this, and this was not how he wished to break it to Athenais. “So that whoever killed him… so that… So we can prove it to the law.” He realized he’d made a circular argument and took a deep breath. “We must go to the village and see if he was truly there, and if he talked to anyone, and what he might have said.”

“It seems logical,” Athenais said.

“Yes, but… Athenais… I haven’t seen my father since I left to come to Paris.”

“Well,” she said, stroking his hands, gently. “Well… perhaps it’s time you spoke to him, then. Perhaps it’s time you went and saw how things are in the domains.”

“I can’t return, you know,” Porthos said. “I don’t want to, at least.” He flashed a smile, realizing he was lying to himself when he said he simply couldn’t go back. “I don’t want to leave my friends, or… or you.”

“Then you don’t need to,” Athenais said. “But you should go, and perhaps make your peace with your father. He can’t be very young, is he?”

“All the men in my family live forever,” Porthos said, shrugging. “But listen, Athenais, there’s something else. Something I’m afraid of telling you.”

“Something you think will make me angry at you, yes, I perceive, since nothing you’ve said up till now could even remotely upset my feelings.”

“The others think… that is… Monsieur de Comeau has too many horses for his establishment being such as it is, for his fortune being such as it is. They think he’s getting financed by someone and they think… In short… They think that someone paid him to kill my son.”

“The Cardinal?” Athenais asked.

“Well, no… Or perhaps the Cardinal but it could also be… someone could have lent money to Monsieur de Comeau for years, and could have offered to forgive him his debt in return for giving the poison to the boy.”

“What do you… Oh.” Athenais’s hand flew to her mouth. “You mean… Monsieur Coquenard,” she said. “My husband?”

“I told you you would be angry,” Porthos said.

She swallowed, then shook her head. “Not angry, but Porthos… no. The… He’s still sharp, that I can’t deny, in the business way. Still sharp, though he trusts me with more and more of it every day, but he’s still in control of his business, but… but no. Not about me. I don’t think he cares about me. I don’t think he… He hasn’t, you know… in years, and as long as I appear to be a good and faithful wife to him, as long as I manage his business and look after his household, I don’t think he cares, in the normal way of things whether you… you visit me, or what…”

“I’m not sure he doesn’t mind, Athenais. Just that he can’t do anything about it. If he could, if an idea presented itself…”

Athenais had gone pale. She nodded. “I can’t say… Oh, I wish my loyalty permitted me to say that he would never do that. I wish… I wish I had the very proper feelings of a wife, and that I could rely on those feelings to say that nothing, ever would persuade Monsieur Coquenard to try to kill anyone.” She put both hands in front of her mouth, then lowered them slowly. “Oh, I am an unspeakable wretch. The only thing I can’t believe-the only thing, Porthos-is that my husband would have the resources to find out about your son, or to know that your son was spending time at Monsieur de Comeau’s. But he might have found it by accident. We get a lot of information in various ways. Whispers in the dark, you know, conversations that happen in here, behind closed doors. It is possible. It is possible he has somehow found it out.” She shook her head. “The only thing I can think, Porthos, the only thing I can say is that my husband being who he is, and my having lived with him for these many years, he’s not a… convoluted man. For someone in his work, he’s not a devious man. He wouldn’t think of killing the child, Porthos. He’d be more likely to kill you.” She smiled, a nervous smile. “He would be very likely to kill you, probably stealth or with poison, of course-or even more likely to pay someone to challenge and kill you in the street.” She held up a hand to forestall any possible protest of his. “Porthos, I know that no normal fighter could have killed you on the street, but Monsieur Coquenard wouldn’t know this.”

“Except, perhaps,” Porthos said. “If he were very angry at our… involvement, he truly wanted to punish me. Perhaps he wanted to kill one of the two people I would have died to save, and in such a way that everyone would think I had killed him. Perhaps he was looking for me to be killed in the gallows. Perhaps that would be his great revenge.”

Athenais paled, then blushed, then paled again. She sighed and shook her head. “I wish I could say…” she said.

“I know,” Porthos said. “I don’t want to believe it of him, simply because I know it would sully your name, and leave you alone in the face of the world… only not really, because you know I would be ever ready to protect you with my name and my honor… but…”

Athenais, who had been staring at Porthos with a horrified expression, as if she were looking onto her own doom, now giggled. “Porthos,” she said. “Did you just tell me that should my husband be a murderer, should he go to the gallows and leave me penniless and lost, you’d marry me?”

Porthos opened his hands as he did when he didn’t know what else to say. Didn’t Athenais know this? How could Athenais not know this. “We’d go hungry, sometimes, ” he said. “And you might have to follow us on campaign. The life of a musketeer’s wife is not an easy one, but, Athenais, of course I would marry you. Do you think I’d abandon you in your hour of need? Do you think…?”

“Oh, Porthos,” she said. “Don’t say any more. Don’t say anything else…”

“You’re angry at me,” Porthos said, trying to read her expression which was odd in the extreme. She was smiling, but her eyes were full of tears and half-closed, as though something hurt her.

“No,” she said, and shook her head. “No. I’m not angry at you.”

“Irritated, then,” Porthos said.

But Athenais giggled. She giggled and covered her mouth, and then she giggled again. And Porthos hoped she wasn’t hysterical because what he’d heard about curing a woman’s hysteria involved slapping her hard, and he couldn’t even imagine slapping Athenais, not the least of which because he had a serious suspicion that Athenais would slap him back.

However, Athenais’s giggling didn’t escalate. Instead, it stopped all together, and when she removed her hand from in front of her mouth, her smile was something of wonder, the smile of a child faced with a new toy, the smile of a woman on her first ball.

“Don’t speak, Porthos, don’t speak.” And before Porthos could think or move or protest, Athenais surged forward and put her arms around him. Her warm lips met his, and she kissed him with passion that had happened rarely in their accustomed, comfortable relationship.

Caught between confusion and Athenais in his arms, her warm body against his, her tongue in his mouth, Porthos did what any gentleman would do and kissed her back with all the passion he could muster.

It was a while before he could collect his thoughts again, enough to speak rationally. “But Athenais, why are you so… Why are you so… What did I say that was so good?”

Athenais smiled. She sat down by his side, looking composed, with her hands on her lap. “When you get to be my age,” she said. “And never having been a beauty.” She smiled at Porthos. “I know what you’d say, Porthos, but you have no need to be gallant. I was not beautiful enough to be sold to a higher bidder than an aged accountant. I know my price.”

“Your father was a fool,” Porthos said.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps you see more beauty in me than I actually have,” Athenais said. “It signifies not. Until this moment I never fully believed you could want me for me and not for the substantial inheritance I’ll receive when Monsieur Coquenard dies.”

“Athenais!” Porthos said.

“I’m sorry, Porthos, did I-”

“I have a good mind to be angry with you,” Porthos said, but looked at her, staring at him with her eyes still flooded with tears and her mouth still smiling. He reached out and grabbed her, and kissed her again, wildly.

Afterwards, as both were recovering their breath, Athenais said, “I’ll look at the accounts, of course. Set a couple of my husband’s clerks to trace things for me. If we’ve ever loaned anything to Monsieur de Comeau, I’ll find it.”

“Good,” Porthos said. “I’ll be gone for some days, perhaps you’ll have an answer for me when I return.”

“Where will you be going for some days?” Athenais said, then shook her head. “Oh, wait, you told me. Your father’s home.”

Porthos nodded.

“Good. I think it’s time you went home. You don’t have to stay but you should know…”

“Athenais, the only thing I want to know is whether Guillaume went there and to whom he might have talked.”