The Musketeer's Apprentice

Where Poison Might Be Useful to a Churchman; Pedigree and Ancestry

ARAMIS turned from where he knelt, on the stone floor by the child’s body. So young a child. Somehow he didn’t count on that, though he’d heard that he was only twelve. Perhaps Aramis had forgotten what he had looked like at twelve. Perhaps it was living all day, everyday amid rough men that made this small corpse seem more pathetic and frailer than it should have been.

He heard D’Artagnan’s exclamation, he saw out of the corner of his eye as Porthos turned to explain the scene, helped now and then by Athos’s single, prodding word.

Aramis, in his turn, was looking at the corpse. He wasn’t sure the boy had died of poison. There was no way of knowing. It could have been poison or a sudden illness. But Porthos’s description, and the child’s fixed and dilated pupils, and the dry skin which seemed still too dry added up to a feeling in Aramis that there had been a poisoning done here.

There were other details about the body. The suit he was wearing was good. Or good enough. But though the violet velvet had been the best money could buy, and though it had once been well tailored, it was obvious to Aramis’s considering eye-used, at any rate to examining form and fashion among all-that it hadn’t been tailored for this boy but for another. One who’d been larger of shoulders and thicker of waist.

It might mean all or nothing. It might mean the boy’s family was that sort of mean nobility hanging by their fingernails to the edge of their birth privilege, forever afraid of dropping off. They would buy the best thirdhand and be quite glad they could afford it. That would fit with a family just come to town to seek their advancement at court. But then, this level of wear, and the suit not tailored for the wearer would fit just as well a family of the highest nobility and careless of appearances. Those with many boys often passed the suits down the line as each of them grew out. And then, if Guillaume had been destined for the church, he was probably the second child or third. Often it was first to the land, second to the army and third to the church, though those last two were often reversed.

Aramis permitted himself a bitter smile that he was one of very few only children to be raised for the church. There were reasons for that, and at any rate, he was not dissatisfied with his vocation, such as it was. If he could control his immoderate fondness for the fair sex, he would be able to be a great churchman. A bishop or… he was aware of a smile sliding across his lips before his brain commanded it. Or a Cardinal.

“Is there anything to smile about?” Porthos asked. He’d walked around and planted himself near the child’s head, looking down at Aramis. He was pale and he was sullen and he looked truculent as though he could barely wait to find someone on whom to take out his anger.

Aramis shook his head. Any man in this mood was scary. A man who knew how to use a sword in this mood was very scary. And a man Porthos’s size was always very scary. “No. I was thinking of… my mother.”

This got a sudden raising of the red eyebrows above Porthos’s eyes and he said, “Oh.”

Aramis hastened to change the subject. “Was he hot, Porthos? When you found him?”

“Hot?” Porthos said. “Yes.” He nodded slowly, as though considering it. “Hot as if he had a fever, and scarlet as if he burned with it, and seemed to be hallucinating too. And he said he was thirsty.” He paused for a moment and let out air in a sound that was neither sigh nor huff of exasperation but had hints of both. “Was it poison, Aramis? Or did something befall him on the way here? He seemed perfectly fine two days ago, when I saw him last.”

Aramis shrugged. He looked into the child’s eyes and shook his head. “I would tell you it was just a fever,” he said. “One of those sudden fevers that kill in a moment. Except…”

He looked up and met with Porthos’s concerned glance, and sighed because he very much suspected this was indeed murder and though a fever might have meant they were all now in peril, a murder was yet something else again. Together the three of them had unraveled two murders done by stealth. Neither of the murders had proven easy to solve. And both of them had brought far too many complications that none of them could have dreamed or anticipated. Even the murder that didn’t pertain to him had involved the Cardinal. And each murder had come close to destroying the four friends or at least to chasing them out of Paris and out of the musketeers.

“What?” Porthos said. He squatted down, so that his face was as close to being on a level with Aramis as it was likely to get. “What do you suspect? What causes your suspicions? ”

Aramis sighed again. “It is his pupils. They are wide and dilated. You said he talked of angels and of flying. I think he was poisoned and from the symptoms I would say it was belladonna, which the Englishmen call nightshade.”

Porthos frowned. Athos and D’Artagnan, on the other hand, seemed to inhale at the same time and then to remain silent with what was more than just the absence of words, like certain nights are darker than merely the absence of light would warrant.

Aramis looked up and saw Athos’s face set and serious. “You know much about poisons, Aramis,” he said, slowly.

Aramis raised his eyebrows. Sometimes Athos’s reactions were unaccountable, though the Gascon, too, was looking pale and drawn and suspicious.

“You don’t think I killed the boy,” he said, heatedly. “What reason would I have had to-”

Athos shook his head. “I never thought that,” he said. “But I wonder what part of your upbringing had to do with learning poisons and why this was thought necessary.”

“When I was a very young man,” Aramis said. He avoided looking at his friend because if he did he would have to take offense and he didn’t want to call Athos for a duel. “In fact, about the age of this poor child, I was, for six months, apprenticed to a Benedictine monk who believed in the practice of charity by more visible means than the disbursement of wealth. He treated illnesses through herbal remedies and at his knee I learned the use of herbs to heal, and their counterpart, the ill effects they could have if misused. ” And, unable to repress his malice, he looked up at Athos’s chiseled features set now in mild surprise. “Why did you think I’d learned, Athos?”

The older musketeer colored, a rare event and a striking contrast between the blood flooding his cheeks and his normally marble-pale skin. “The Vatican,” he said, not making much sense. “And power within the church. One hears… stories…”

Aramis grinned, suddenly. He never knew from whence Athos’s fears and suspicions came, but unlike D’Artagnan’s or Aramis’s own, they usually echoed from some deep well of suspicion learned from a book in some library in forgotten childhood. “Indeed, one does,” he admitted to Athos’s murmur. “But the stories one hears aren’t meant to apply to everyone who enters the church. It has never been said that the men in the hierarchy of the church are better than other men, only, one hopes, aided by grace. And, Athos, when I take the habit, if I become hungry for temporal power, I’ll have better means to advance than poisoning those in my way.”

“That I believe,” D’Artagnan said, with the sound of an exclamation that escapes the speaker unawares.

Aramis nodded at the young man. “And that you might. But the thing is, I have reason to believe, from his skin still being very dry, that he died of belladonna. This can’t be sure, but I’d wager it.” As he spoke, he started looking through the corpse’s attire.

“Aramis!” Porthos said. “Surely you don’t mean to search him.”

“Surely I do,” Aramis said.

“But his family!”

“We must find his family. And there is no one to tell us who they are or where they live.”

“He said his name was Guillaume Jaucourt.”

“A name none of us has heard. Porthos let me look. A letter, or some trinket with a coat of arms will get us that much closer to restoring this child to the relatives who, for all we know, search for him in vain even now.”

But the doublet had no hidden pockets. It wasn’t till Aramis patted the corpse down-gently as though some part of him feared waking the child-that he found, beneath the edge of the doublet a leather purse. And within the leather purse…

Aramis removed the purse and the tie that held it at the child’s waist, and went through its contents.

There was only a sheaf of pages, looking like paper that had been scavenged a bit from everywhere at random and cut or torn into random sheets. The top of the first one read in the uncertain, scrawled handwriting of a child just learning to write, “The genealogy of Monsieur Pierre du Vallon.”

This was enough to raise Aramis’s eyebrows and peak his attention because if very few people in Paris remembered Porthos’s family name, even fewer had ever known his first name. Aramis knew it only as the result of long and close friendship. He scanned the pages. It was damning indeed.

Oh, Aramis knew very well that Porthos wasn’t of as long or noble a line as his own or Athos’s. From his father’s refusal to let him learn to read or any other book learning- which Porthos had only remedied once he’d come to Paris and been on his own-to Porthos’s broad shoulders and the way he approached life, all bespoke a family so close to its own peasants that they were only above them by reason of birth. Or perhaps not even that.

Aramis frowned at the pages. If this was true, if the words on this page were copies of old records or recordings of old gossip, then Porthos’s ancestors had been born plebeian and grown rich through trade until, having enough money and having purchased enough lands, they had declared themselves noble and stopped the payment of the feudal labor tax and claimed ancient noble ancestors. In all this they had been aided by the great plague that had swept the land.

There were notes referring to the monasteries and village churches where the supposed originals of these records were kept.

“Porthos,” Aramis said and, without explanation, passed the sheets of paper to Porthos.

Porthos frowned at them, squinting, and flipping through the pages. Then he let the pages fall from his hand as if he’d lost all interest in them. He looked at the small corpse, his brow knit in incomprehension. “He had a recording of my family line? What does that mean? Is that how he found my true name.”

“Not unless the recording came with a drawing of you,” Aramis said acerbically. He repented it immediately as Porthos shook his head. Porthos wasn’t stupid, but he was, at the best of times, too literal. And now, in shock… “No, Porthos, think. He couldn’t have known it from that… What concerns me is what it says. About your ancestors. Did he tell you he knew that?”

“What?” Porthos asked, still frowning in confusion.

“That your ancestors had ennobled themselves more or less on their own fiat,” Athos said. He’d picked up the pages and was looking through them. “By stopping payment of the labor tax and claiming noble ancestors. Before that they were bourgeoisie engaged in… horse trade?”

Porthos smiled. It wasn’t an expression of joy but an almost sardonic pull of the lips in a face not accustomed to reflecting subtle emotions. “Ah. Yes. My ancestors were bourgeoisie. Does that make you despise me, Athos?”

Athos frowned, then sighed. “Porthos, we’ve been friends for years. There’s nothing that would make me despise you. I’m just saying that society at large might view your-”

“I don’t give a horse’s ass for society at large,” Porthos said, visibly startling Athos. Then sheepishly, added, “I’m sorry. I know I’m not as noble as you, Aramis. I’m probably not as noble as D’Artagnan and no one is as noble as Athos.” He said it without irony and probably did not mean the sting that made blood surge, visibly, in Athos’s face. “But why would this child have those papers? Who cares? Who, unless it is someone considering a marriage alliance with my family.”

Aramis gave up on finding anything else on the small corpse. No jewelry, no coin, nothing-nothing he could find, at least without a more thorough and tasteless search than he was willing to undertake. He stood up and looked at Porthos who, in turn, rose slowly to his feet, as though half aware of defending himself against an accusation none of them was going to voice.

“Porthos, any other nobleman, or almost any other nobleman would consider it a great shame to be known as having bourgeois blood. And you are known in the land for being a proud man who romances princesses and duchesses.”

Porthos shrugged. “All this”-he held up the pages- “can be found in our parish records, if you’re willing to dig. And it was two hundred years ago and more. Since then my ancestors have married women descended from noble families. In all, we probably have as many noble ancestors as anyone else, Athos always excepted, of course.”

“Porthos-” Athos said, a hint of warning in his voice.

“No, Athos, no. Truly. I can’t imagine your family marrying anything less than women with as full a pedigree and as great a noble background as yourself. You’re probably descended several times over from Caesar and Hercules and Hannibal and them all.”

A smile-one of the few, rare, untroubled smiles to grace Athos’s face-slid over the older musketeer’s lips and, his voice showing amusement and not offense, he said, “I doubt Hercules and Hannibal, but if I understand your meaning, you do not mean to give offense.”

“Not at all,” Porthos said. “And that”-he pointed at the sheaf of papers now in Athos’s hand-“doesn’t offend me, nor would it offend me if the word got out. Who in this land can point with certainty to a pedigree longer than two hundred years. Princes have less, if the mother line were investigated.”

“You’re missing the important part,” D’Artagnan said. He’d stood in the background, half in shadows, holding his hat to his chest as if he were at a funeral service. Now he spoke, his voice trembling a little and his dark eyes looking haunted by something he couldn’t quite name. “You’re missing the whole thrust of this, all of you. The thing is not whether Porthos is noble enough or not.” The young Gascon smiled, a sudden sardonic smile. “Coming from Gascony and from a family scarcely wealthier than the farmers around it, I can’t promise I’m even as noble as Porthos, so I’d be the last to condemn our friend’s ancestry. And I don’t know how the dead boy found it out, and that, too, is perhaps important but not now. The most important thing, right now, is what he hoped to gain by having it. It is clear…” D’Artagnan looked over Athos’s shoulder at the scribbled pages. “It is clear at least to me that this was written in a boy’s untutored hand. So chances are great he copied it himself. But why? And what did he hope to gain from it?”

As usual, D’Artagnan had gone straight to the heart of the matter. Aramis felt as if the ground moved under his feet, tilted, turned upside down. He did what he usually did when an idea was unbearable and he could not readily cover it in theological reasoning. “Are you suggesting,” he asked D’Artagnan, “that the boy tried to blackmail Porthos with this knowledge?”

D’Artagnan looked surprised. “I wasn’t suggesting it,” he said. “Merely asking why he would want to have Porthos’s genealogy in his pocket.”

“I was suggesting it,” Athos said. “Porthos, did he?”

“Athos, are you saying you suspect Porthos of killing the boy?” Aramis asked, his hand at his sword.

Before Athos could answer, Porthos did. “Don’t be a fool, Aramis. No one could accuse me of killing a… child. I like children.” He rubbed his huge fingers on his nose as if it itched. “Once, seems long ago, I wanted to get married and have many children. I don’t know how it got so far and me without children.” He seemed to fall in deep thought. “What I mean is, this life we live… what’s the future in it?”

Aramis, not daring to say more, still clenched his hand on the grip of his sword and glared his defiance at Athos.

But Athos only shook his head. “I never meant that. I would no more suspect Porthos of murdering a child than I would suspect any of us. No. What I mean is, was the child supposed to be found dead? Porthos says he found the boy collapsed behind some tavern. What if he had been found dead like that, and this the only thing in his pocket? Think you not that, to someone who doesn’t know Porthos, this”-he waved the written pages in the air-“might be believed to be enough cause for murder?”

Aramis opened his mouth, then closed it. He shook his head in turn. “Someone might think it was. Porthos, did the child ever talk to you of your family?”

Porthos sighed. “No. I might have told him things my father once or twice said while he was teaching me to use my sword, but that was about it. Other than that, my family was never mentioned.”

“So,” D’Artagnan said, his voice brisk, as if even he didn’t want to dwell too long on what he was saying, “what if someone else planted these pages on the boy and then poisoned him? So that when the boy was found everyone would think that Porthos did it?”