The Musketeer's Apprentice

Family Resemblances and Family Burdens; A New and Dreadful Code

"HOW could we not know he was yours?” Morgaine answered. She set a loaf of bread and the knife to cut it on the table, then sat down next to her man and held his hand while she looked at Porthos with wide and astonished eyes. “He looked exactly like you did at that age.”

“He did?” Porthos asked, with some surprise, because it had never occurred to him that Guillaume had looked like him. And he’d never thought of himself as the boy had been-a gracile stripling, agile on his feet.

“But yes,” Rouge said. “Same body type, same features, the same way of speaking, even. Well…” He grinned. “He is perhaps a little more fluent than you were at his age, and not a surprise, since you lived in the dreadful expectation that your father would violently disapprove of anything you might say, while he surely didn’t grow up with such a fear.”

From Rouge’s smile, from his look, it was clear that he thought he was making Porthos a compliment. It was clear he didn’t know that the boy was dead, much less what his upbringing had been. Part of him longed to tell Rouge all, just as he had told him everything as a child. Rouge had often been the sounding board for Porthos’s discontents and confusion. Though he was only a miller’s son, Rouge had been sent to the local priest for his first letters and from that point had found much to read and write-scraps of this and bits of that-around which he wove stories and explanations for their lives and their difficulties. All of which meant that he could usually better express himself and express Porthos’s own discontents in terms that Porthos could never find. He had, in fact, been much as Aramis now was to Porthos. And yet, Porthos knew that he must not tell Rouge anything. Not yet. First, he must ask questions, while Rouge was unaware of what was happening.

“I never thought of his looking like me,” he said, simply.

“I daresay,” Rouge said, thoughtfully, “that you didn’t spend much time looking at yourself when you were growing up, so it would be more readily noticeable to us. But trust me, Guillaume will look just like you when he grows up and grows into his height and muscles.”

Porthos thought of Guillaume, lying cold and dead in Athos’s cellar, and his throat knotted up again. Aramis, who was looking at him, must have perceived this difficulty, and his thought must have been parallel, because he charged into the breach with his considerable aplomb. “So, Guillaume came here, did he? You saw him?” he asked, casually, as though it were all one thing.

“Oh, yes,” Rouge said. “He came here. He got a ride with a peddler who was headed this way, and really, Pierre, if I didn’t know you, I would have been shocked. No other father would think to let a young man of some address, let alone nobility, travel on the back of a peddler’s cart like a tramp. Surely…”

“I didn’t know what he was up to,” Porthos said. “He came of his own accord, on his own head. You know how boys are.”

“Aye,” Rouge said, and grinned. “I remember some scrapes we got into ourselves, and I daresay our fathers would have given us a good hiding if they knew the half of them.”

Porthos nodded.

“So he came in,” Aramis said.

“Well, I thought Pierre knew,” Rouge said, confused, looking around the table. Then he looked back at Porthos. “Is that why you came? To find out what he did while he was here? Is anything wrong?”

Porthos shrugged. “Not as such. It’s just… I can’t get him to give me an account of his adventure,” he said. “And considering the results I’ve already seen in my father, I thought…”

Rouge inclined his head. There was a small smile on the corner of his lips. “Ah, yes, your father came to Paris and gave you a piece of his mind. I guessed as much when he left last week. I thought after having stewed for over a month in his rage over the boy’s visit, he’d finally broken down and gone to Paris to make you suffer for it. Was I right?”

Porthos opened his mouth to answer, but could find none. His father had gone to Paris last week. There was a pretty kettle of fish. His father was as likely as any other of the villains around to commit murder and to want to murder Guillaume. Slowly, he said, “He was very upset, I guess?”

“Upset? He was breathing fire. What he gave out was that you were dead, that you’d died in a duel and that he refused to recognize your brat by that… well, pardon me, Pierre, but he called Amelie a slut and said he could not believe you had married her… A lot of other things.”

“He told this to Guillaume?” Porthos asked.

“Oh, to him first, and loud enough that all the servants heard and soon spread it to the village. But you know your father. He also told this to every trader, every peddler, every two bit friar to cross the village, and slowly worked himself up to greater fury.”

“Of course,” Porthos said, because that much was a given for someone who had grown up with his father. He wondered what Guillaume had thought of it all. He’d clearly made up a story about Porthos’s having married his mother. And of course, he clearly meant to claim his place as Porthos’s heir. Was all this before he’d actually located Porthos in Paris? Had he thought that Porthos was dead, as his mother was? Did he think that his grandfather would be happy to see him, glad to know he had a scion? How grossly he’d underestimated Monsieur du Vallon. “And what of Amelie’s parents? What did they think?”

“Ah…” Rouge shook his head. “Have you been by there, Pierre?”

“Not at all,” Porthos made an effort to eat the slab of meat on his plate, knowing that Rouge would know for sure something was very wrong if he didn’t. “Not at all. I only just arrived and went to the manor house, only to be turned away.”

“Ah,” Rouge said. “They turned Guillaume away too. They were less… less kind than your father, if it’s possible. Amelie’s father had his grandsons beat him and turn him out.”

“Beat him?” Porthos asked.

“Oh, yes. When he came to us, he was bruised and battered. ”

“But… why?” Porthos asked.

Rouge shook his head. “They’ve grown prosperous, Pierre. They’re one of those farmers who’ve grown rich. And with the riches came a certain sort of respectability. The poorer people around here look up to them, and they are hard pressed to admit… you know…”

“That they were common as muck, or that their daughter slept with the lord’s son?” Porthos asked.

“To own the truth,” Rouge said. “Though they never intervened when it was happening, perhaps they didn’t know it, or perhaps they thought you would marry her. But when Amelie started showing, they were very quick to turn her out of doors and disown her, you know?”

“They disowned her?” Porthos said, feeling his anger rage. Oh, his Amelie had been abominably treated, even by her own parents.

“Oh, Lord, man. She never told you, before she died? I thought Guillaume said she only died two or three years ago. She never told you that her parents turned her out and that this was why she came looking for you in Paris?”

“Besides her loving you, which I’m sure she did,” Morgaine said.

Porthos shook his head, dazed.

“Well, her parents did turn her out,” Rouge said. “So I’m guessing even then, though they still hadn’t any riches, they were already looking to their stern respectability. And since then her father has become very… rigid. All his granddaughters dress like nuns and behave like prudes. I guess it has worked, though, because all of them are marrying above themselves, but Lord, what a dreary life it is in that house.”

“Though perhaps we shouldn’t judge them too harshly,” Morgaine said. “Because truth is that they turned him out and beat him, but their conscience must have hurt them because in the next month, first Amelie’s father, then his mother, have gone to Paris. And her older brother just last week. Did you or Guillaume see either of them?”

Porthos shook his head. Amelie’s parents had gone to Paris too… Oh, what might it all mean? Was he obliged, now, to suspect everyone of the murder of Guillaume? And yet, if they were so jealous of their respectability, wasn’t it right to suspect them? Surely they would want to protect themselves against the rumors that they had an illegitimate grandson, even if that grandson was the lord’s grandson as well.

There would have been a time when any peasant would have been proud to say that their daughter had had the son of Monsieur du Vallon-even if illegitimate. There was a time, and it wasn’t far distant, when even Porthos’s father wouldn’t have viewed Guillaume as a young man’s mistake and nothing much to talk about. At worst, the boy would have been taken from his mother and reared, discreetly, by some order of monks or something. He would have been an acknowledged bastard and, failing of a legitimate successor to the name, the acknowledged heir. His existence would no more have shocked anyone than it would have surprised them.

But the times were changing, as was clear by all this newfound prosperity all around Porthos. He chewed on some excellent mutton and thought it over. In the changed world, the lord couldn’t afford a bastard, because he had no way to support him, or any others with similar claims. And if you couldn’t support them in style, you might as well deny their existence.

By the same reasoning, the newly wealthy peasants should have been glad to embrace an offshoot of noble blood. But it seemed impossible for this new class that was forming, these peasants with money, these merchants with connections, to view morality the way noblemen had once viewed it-as something to be aspired to but, enfin, too demanding for fallible man to achieve in this lifetime, without special grace from the Almighty. In this new class, as he knew from Athenais’s own life, respectability was everything, even when it was just a respectability of semblance without true content. And in this new class, it would be worth throwing your pregnant daughter out for having marred the family honor. Wouldn’t it be equally likely that they would kill their illegitimate grandson, before he could embarrass them before the world?

Porthos felt a headache coming on, but there was nothing for it. Rouge and Morgaine paraded before him their eight children-seven boys and a girl, the youngest, as pretty as Morgaine and full of graces that had once been reserved to the daughters of the nobility.

And it wasn’t until they, all four of them, were shown to the guest room at the back, with its warm-burning fire, its beds with sheets aired and turned and warmed by the fire, that Porthos dared speak to his friends. “It’s hard,” he said, “not telling him the truth.”

Athos-always understanding-inclined his head. “I guessed it would be,” he said. “But Porthos, you may come back and tell him the truth, if you wish, once we know the whole thing. For now, do you really want everyone in the village to know it? Do you want Amelie’s family on their guard before we ever meet them?”

Porthos shook his head. “But Rouge is trustworthy. And though you, Athos, would say that no woman is trustworthy, I would guess that Morgaine is also reliable.”

“Oh, it’s not your friends that frighten me,” Athos said, lowering his voice. “But with all the servants and possibly young relatives-I never understood exactly who all the servers were-coming and going around us at table, I would bet every single thing we said, and every expression, will be all over the village in no time at all.”

Porthos nodded. It would be hard to dispute that. He knew it for the absolute truth. Soon everyone in the village would hear everything they had said.

“But the boy came here,” Porthos said. “And told them that Amelie and I had married before she died and that…”

“It is my guess,” D’Artagnan said, speaking quietly from where he was sitting on the bed and removing his boots. “That he came here before he had found you. It is my guess that he came by in the full assumption that you had died-”

“That I had died?” Porthos asked, with some confusion.

“Yes,” D’Artagnan said. “I would assume he thought you were dead, because his mother had looked for you so long in Paris, and yet hadn’t found you. What would be more logical than to think you had somehow died?”

“Oh.”

“Indeed,” Athos said. “And everyone in the provinces knows that life in Paris is full of dangers for those who live by the sword. You might have been killed in any of a dozen duels, any of a hundred skirmishes.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Porthos said. “Why would I die of something like that. It would take a fool to be killed in Paris. Or at least someone luckless or unable to fight ably with the sword. Neither of which I am.”

“But Guillaume wouldn’t know that,” Athos said. “To him you would be nothing more than his mother’s recollection of her childhood friend and lover, someone who had come to Paris and disappeared. He probably thought you dead.”

“And thinking you dead, he thought the most logical thing was to claim that you’d married his mother. Who could trace among the several parishes in Paris, whether you’d actually married or not? Any parish priest might have married you,” D’Artagnan said.

“And the records might easily have got lost afterwards,” Athos said.

“And as such,” Aramis said. “He could claim to be your legal heir and claim your portion.”

“It must have shocked him,” Athos said. “When Rouge and Morgaine told him you were still alive. Fortuitous they got it across before he’d given himself away by proclaiming you dead.” He gave Porthos the weary eye. “Did you write to them and tell them you were joining the musketeers? ” he asked. “They seemed to know it.”

Porthos sighed. “Yes. It seemed like someone should know.”

“But why not write to your father?” D’Artagnan asked, puzzled.

“Because my father doesn’t know how to read,” Porthos said.

“Oh,” D’Artagnan said, looking somewhat shocked.

It was something that Porthos thought his friends would never fully understand, the difference between their upbringing and his. His father thought a lord should care about war only. While Aramis had been brought up for the church. And Athos had grown up with the examples of the men of Greece and Rome, who had left dialogues and memoirs and who knew what else. As for D’Artagnan, from what he said, his life had been half lived in books filled with sagas and legends of heros.

“That’s why I wrote to Rouge and Morgaine,” he said. “So if I came to a bad end in Paris, and somehow word made it out, or Monsieur de Treville sent word out, someone would understand. And so if they needed anything… If anything happened to my father…”

Athos nodded. “Provident, almost. But I wonder how much they told the boy, and further how he contrived to get it out of them without ever giving away the fact that he hadn’t grown up with you and hadn’t, in fact, the slightest idea where you might live.”

“I think,” Porthos said. “That he was very cunning.”

“Certes, he must have been,” Aramis said, his mouth set in something that might have been humor or regret, or a bit of both.

“And then, after learning you were alive and in the musketeers, and, having seen your father, and perhaps having heard from your friends how much he himself looked like you and how much you, in turn, looked like your father, he decided to approach you. I wonder if he got the parish records of your family before or after finding out. If after, it was clearly with intention of approaching you.”

“By God’s Blood,” Porthos said. “I swear he never brought it up. He never told me I might be his father or tried in any way to extort money or protection.”

“No,” Athos said. “No. And like you, I wonder what that meant.”

“But surely,” Porthos said. “If he didn’t even know I was alive, he couldn’t be part of the Cardinal’s plot against me. Surely if the Cardinal plotted…”

“It was without Guillaume’s connivance?” Aramis asked. “Using him rather than enlisting him? I was thinking the same.”

“But then who could have done it?” D’Artagnan asked. “Other than Monsieur de Comeau. Would your father…”

Porthos sighed. “In the old days, I would tell you no. My father would be more likely to fell someone with a blow to the head, or attack them with the wood chopping ax than to use poison against them. But then, I don’t think my father ever went up against a boy child. And then, you know, my father despised cunning-the same way he despised reading and all those other arts he called effeminate. And I don’t know how he would choose to counteract someone he’d perceive as cunning and… sly. Plus there is the fact that my father is older than he was, and might not have known much about Paris or how to set about things in Paris. He could not have challenged Guillaume to a duel, at any rate.”

“No,” Athos said. “But would he resort to poison?”

Porthos shrugged. “He probably would not, still. Father is… a direct thinker. But he might have hired…”

Athos nodded. “Indeed he might. As might Amelie’s parents. Or did you not think of that?”

“I did think of that,” Porthos said. “I think we should talk to them tomorrow.”