The Musketeer's Apprentice Read online

  The Musketeer's Apprentice

  Sarah D'almeida

  Next in the swashbuckling series featuring mystery-solving Musketeers.

  In a search for his apprentice's killer, Musketeer Porthos rallies his friends to discover who was responsible, pursuing the truth even as he puts his own life in danger.

  Sarah D'Almeida

  The Musketeer's Apprentice

  The third book in the Musketeers Mystery series, 2007

  To the memory of my grandmother,

  Carolina Joaquina Marques,

  who told me stories.

  The Many Inconveniences of a Sin of Vanity; Flying and Fighting; Murder Done

  MONSIEUR Pierre du Vallon-a huge man with broad shoulders and a wealth of red hair and beard-knew that his besetting sin was vanity.

  Oh, he wouldn’t put it that way, though his friend Aramis often put it just that way. If pressed, Monsieur du Vallon, whom the world had known for years as the Musketeer Porthos, would say that he knew himself to be a well set man, twice as broad, twice as strong, twice as valiant as all others. Pushed further, he might admit he had a fine taste in clothes and that his swordplay was the best ever seen. This he did not consider vanity, as such, but a mere statement of facts. It only seemed to him odd that most people refused to acknowledge these truths.

  That this made him particularly vulnerable to the admiration of those who did know Porthos’s true worth, Porthos would be the first to admit. It had been Aramis’s admission that Porthos was the best fencing master in Paris which had caused Porthos to try to teach the effete young man-then known as Chevalier D’Herblay-how to fence in time for an impending duel. It had, however, been Porthos’s real worth as a teacher that had allowed Aramis to kill his opponent in that duel-in direct violation of the king’s edict against dueling. And this in turn had forced both D’Herblay and du Vallon-his second in the duel-to go into hiding, as Aramis and Porthos in the King’s Musketeers.

  None of which, Porthos thought as he stood in the middle of the vast, empty room, explained why he found himself now waiting for a student who was a good two hours late.

  The student, Guillaume Jaucourt had approached Porthos some weeks ago and had told Porthos that he knew Porthos’s secret. He knew Porthos’s true identity. Porthos had shrugged this off, because who would listen to a son of minor nobility, a young boy just turning twelve. And besides, Porthos was fairly sure that the King and Monsieur de Treville, captain of the musketeers, knew his identity. He was fairly sure, even, that it was an open secret in the court. It was only that-Porthos thought-as long as no one could prove it, the King didn’t need to punish Porthos for du Vallon’s trespass.

  But then the young man-who had begged Porthos to teach him fencing-had said that du Vallon had been universally acknowledged as the best fighter and sword master in all of Paris-which is to say in all the world.

  Porthos’s inability to resist hearing the truth thus stated, had made him agree to teach the boy to fence. And he’d done just that for weeks. The youth-a stripling with promise of future sturdy manhood-had proven deft with the sword, capable of parrying and thrusting with the best of them, and with fast and deceptive enough footwork to rival Porthos’s own.

  Not that Guillaume was ready to fight duels. He was all of twelve, with dark red auburn hair, grey eyes and an intent, serious expression. He’d listened most attentively to Porthos instructions not to duel. After all, the Musketeers didn’t take boy recruits. But he’d proven a willing student, ready and capable of great work.

  He’d always been on time. Punctual like an Englishman. It was only today that he was late. Very late. And Porthos found himself worried against his wishes.

  The room where Porthos stood was on the bottom floor of the lodgings he rented. Situated at the back, it faced the garden and the back gate. It had been-in the distant past when the house had been built and when this area of Paris had still held fields and farmers-the loggia of the building, the place where harvest was brought in and fruits and vegetables stored.

  Vast and cool and windowless, it got all its light from the door when it was opened. Why the landlord hadn’t converted it into rooms to rent, Porthos didn’t know nor care. But when he’d found out that this room sat here, unused, at the back and bottom of the house, he’d made it his business to ask the landlord for the use of it.

  Given the musketeer’s size and girth, few men of normal size thought to say no to him. And so Porthos, and his friends-Aramis, Athos and D’Artagnan-had for some time commanded the use of this room for their sword practices. Musty and smelling of long-disuse and dried apples, it was nonetheless broad enough and secret enough that they could have mock duels without calling on them the wrath of the Cardinal Guards with their fanatical enforcement of the prohibition on duels. And here they didn’t have to listen to comments and heckling from other musketeers as they did when they practiced at Monsieur de Treville’s residence.

  Aramis had snickered and said it was vanity that had led Porthos to line the narrow space with many mirrors. And though Porthos felt aggrieved by the accusation, he did not know how to defend himself.

  For there was this in Porthos, able, accomplished giant that he was-that words scared him more than any foe whom he could meet in field of battle or duel might. Words slipped through his mind, where sounds and sights and senses resounded as clearly as church bells on a silent summer afternoon.

  So he lacked the words to explain to Aramis the mirrors were there for two reasons-one to propagate what little light came through the open door. And another, to allow him to study his movements and those of his opponents when they practiced swordplay. If it allowed him to examine the excellent cut of his doublets, the fullness of his hat plume and the way his broad, ankle-long venetians molded his muscular legs, so much the better.

  But now he looked in the mirror and did not see that. Instead, above the worn linen pants and tunic, in which he’d dressed for the lesson, he saw a pale, intent face with dark blue eyes staring in puzzled wonder.

  Because Guillaume hadn’t come.

  And this, he told himself, might not mean any more than that the boy had been stopped by a zealous father or an officious mother. From things the boy hadn’t said, from hints and notions and occasional mentions of his family, Porthos understood they didn’t mean for him to learn to fight.

  Why, Porthos couldn’t hazard to guess. Who understood parents, anyway? Porthos’s own father hadn’t wanted his son to learn to read, being fully convinced that learning to read would soften and feminize his huge son. Porthos hadn’t been able to master reading until he’d come to Paris in search of his fortune.

  Perhaps Guillaume’s father intended the boy for the church and perhaps he subscribed to the-not particularly popular-notion that churchmen should be men of peace. In which case, Porthos should introduce him to Aramis, who had once been a seminarian and who still considered himself in training for the habit, but who could wield the sword with murderous skill and intent.

  Still, Porthos told his very worried-looking reflection- Guillaume’s absence meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just that his family had caught him sneaking out of their lodgings. Or perhaps that the boy had changed his mind about wanting to learn swordplay. Which meant Porthos should never have agreed to teach him in the first place. Or not for free. At least if he’d demanded money the boy might have taken the whole thing more seriously.

  The Porthos in the mirror ignored these rational reassurances. He bit worriedly at the corner of his lip. Porthos grumped, and smoothed his moustache out of his mouth and glared at his reflection.

  The reflection glared right back, his eyes full of worry. Worry for what? The boy was fine. He’d missed one lesson. Wha
t was there to that?

  Porthos’s thick fingers pulled and stroked frantically at his luxuriant red moustache. What was there to it? Only this. That the boy had been so intent, so decided, so capable of hard work, that Porthos refused to believe he would give up on his lesson so easily.

  And because Porthos had made sure the child understood that he wouldn’t continue teaching him unless he showed for every lesson punctually, Guillaume would know that this one miss could mean the end of his apprenticeship.

  The Porthos in the mirror looked triumphant, justified in his worry. And Porthos stomped. God’s Blood! So, the boy was late. And so, perhaps something had happened to him. What was Porthos to do with that? He was not the boy’s father.

  And on this there was a sharp feeling of something that inarticulate Porthos would never find the words to describe. He had the sudden forlorn feeling that, had life been different-had his family lands not been poor and forsaken and inhabited by peasantry just as poor and forsaken; had his father known how to plant the land with newer, more fashionable crops-he would now be married and have half a dozen children clustering around him. The longing for that life that had never happened surprised him. He would have liked half a dozen broad-shouldered sons, clustering around him, learning sword fighting and horseback riding from him, and admiring their father’s strength and courage.

  He growled at the Porthos in the mirror, whose image was giving him these ideas, and removing his hat, flung it with force to the dusty stone floor of the room. Oh, curse it all. God’s Death! What was he to do about this? And what did Guillaume have to do with these children that Porthos had never had and would probably never have?

  What the frowning, worried reflection seemed to tell Porthos was that Porthos had enjoyed Guillaume’s company as if Guillaume were a replacement for those sons Porthos would never have. And the boy had responded to Porthos that way too. He’d listened to him with full attention and learned to repeat his movements faultlessly.

  No. Nothing short of a major disaster would have prevented such a determined and cunning boy from coming to his lesson.

  Slowly, Porthos picked up his hat and dusted its plume. The devil of it was that he had no idea at all where the boy came from. Oh, the child had told him his name, but Jaucourt was not a name that Porthos knew. It must be the name of a family recently come to Paris from the provinces and probably renting lodgings meaner than Porthos’s own from some landlord, in some part of town. What part of town, only God himself knew. That is, if He had paid any attention to such an unimportant matter.

  Porthos hadn’t bothered to find the family home because the child was clearly coming to his lessons in secret-but assiduously.

  As a huge sigh escaped his lips, Porthos wondered how to track someone-how to find them and discover if a mishap had befallen them when you didn’t know where they were coming from or what their route was?

  He walked to the door and looked down at the garden, slumbering in the early morning cool soon to turn into heated midday of very late summer. Very well. So, he knew that the child came in through the garden gate at the back.

  Without much thought, without much more than a need to move, a need to do something, Porthos walked impatiently down the garden path, past the kitchen garden with its parched-looking rows of herbs, and down, past an area where trees shaded the path, to the unpainted, rickety gate at the back that had been barely visible from the practice room’s door.

  He opened the gate, satisfied at its shriek, and looked out at the broad plaza back there. Back here, truly, you wouldn’t know you were in Paris. This garden gate opened to a bucolic landscape-the back of several houses, narrow alleys running between the tall walls that encircled gardens.

  There was a vague scent of roses in the air, and Porthos remembered that Guillaume had come in yesterday with a rose in his cap-a bright red rose with wide-spread petals, of the sort that often grew along the lanes of Porthos’s native village. Guillaume had said they were flowering just up the lane from here.

  Like a dog on the trail, Porthos followed the strong scent of roses across the plaza. Peering down a lane, he saw a straggle of nearly wild roses pushing over the top of a rickety stone wall. The roses were exactly the same color and look as the one Guillaume had worn.

  Convinced he at least knew the boy had come this way, Porthos trotted down the narrow alley. It was barely wide enough for his shoulders and it was hemmed in by two very long, very high walls, both of which, from the noise and talks emerging from beyond them, probably hid communal gardens shared by several rental houses or houses filled with rental rooms.

  At the end of the alley, another alley ran across it, forming as if the top of a T. Porthos frowned. Right or left? If he went right, and the boy was coming in, late, from the left, he would miss him completely. And then Guillaume would wonder where Porthos had gone.

  What had Guillaume said about his route here? What that might give Porthos a clue as to where the boy came from?

  Vaguely, because he hadn’t been paying much attention, Porthos remembered that Guillaume had complained of the heat of a smithy he passed on the way here. It had been a couple of weeks ago, when August was at its hottest, the sun beating Paris to a red heat, as though it had been metal laying on Vulcan’s own forge.

  And now straining his ears, Porthos could hear as if hammers on metal. From the right. He hastened down the right side of the alley, till he came to a busy forge. It took up the bottom space of a tall house, but it had at least three doors, all of them open to the day. There were anvils with sweating men pounding on them, and there were boys working frantically at the bellows, and there was a nobleman-from the attire-in a corner, holding a nervous white horse who was being shoed by two muscular young men.

  Porthos bit at the corner of his moustache. So-there was a forge. Pray heaven it was the right one. Now… from here…

  Something about a fishmonger’s. Just down the street. Porthos’s nose led again, till he came to a fishmonger’s in a huge plaza. From there so many roads led on that Porthos found himself quite at a loss. Until he remembered Guillaume admiring Porthos’s new boots and saying that he’d seen some at the cobbler’s on the way here, but that his father would never give him money for them.

  Peering down the streets, Porthos found the cobbler’s. From there, he remembered the boy making some mention of a tavern at the end of an alley and how musketeers sometimes drank there. The boy hadn’t wanted to discuss the tavern much, but he’d told Porthos it was the Hangman.

  From Porthos’s foggy memories of being led by Athos to every tavern in Paris, when Athos was in one of his drinking moods, Porthos found the alley that led to the back of the Hangman.

  He walked down half the alley before he saw the boy. At first, he thought it was just a pile of clothes, though the clothes were purple velvet and the hat had a plume uncommonly like Guillaume’s. It was crumpled against a wall, on the muddy ground of the alley at the back of the tavern.

  But when Porthos approached, his big feet raising dull echoes from the packed dirt, the bundle near the wall stirred, the hat went up, and a flushed, haggard face with bulging blue eyes stared at Porthos.

  “Guillaume,” Porthos said. “What is wrong, boy?”

  The boy looked at Porthos. His eyes were wide and shiny, but didn’t seem to see him. “The angels,” he said. “The angels flying.” He was very red.

  “Oh, here, boy. How much did you drink?” Porthos asked, feeling annoyed with Guillaume and with himself. It was clear the boy had got hold of wine somewhere. Clumsily, Porthos reached for the boy and tried to make him stand, but he only flopped around like an ill-stuffed rag doll.

  Guillaume’s arms moved, outward. “Flying,” he said.

  And here, Porthos was momentarily confused. The boy was flushed, and he acted drunk, but there was no smell of alcohol about him. Could he have gone mad? Or was he ill?

  “Here,” Porthos said, trying to support the boy as he would one of his comrades when wounded
or drunk.

  But the boy twisted and convulsed.

  “Thirsty,” he said. “Very thirsty.”

  Porthos, despairing of holding him firm, finally lifted him up and threw him over his shoulder. He would take Guillaume back to his lodgings then call on Aramis. Aramis knew nearly everything and everyone. If the boy was sick, Aramis was the best person to find the boy’s family. Sick or mad, they would need to know.

  Porthos hurried back towards his lodging at a semi-run. The boy, thrown over his shoulder, talked constantly, but not of anything that Porthos could see. “Beautiful,” he’d say. “Angels. Flying. Flying. Birds. The sky is so blue.”

  These words, as they walked through narrow, darkened alleys made the hair at the back of Porthos’s neck stand up. It was as if the boy were talking of some reality only he could see.

  Suddenly he stopped and convulsed, then again. There was a sound like a startled sigh.

  It didn’t surprise Porthos when he put the boy down on the floor of the practice room to find the boy had died. Still he checked it, with a finger laid against the boy’s neck, a hand searching for a heartbeat that wasn’t there.

  At long last, he stood and slowly removed his hat in respect for the small corpse with his wide-open eyes, his expression of surprise.

  Guillaume Jaucourt was dead. Who knew from what? Who knew how to contact his family? Who could break the news to them? And-if murder had been done-who could ensure the killer was found?

  Athos, Aramis, D’Artagnan. The names of his friends, the other three of what all called the four inseparables, came unbidden to Porthos’s mind. He never doubted it.

  Slamming the hat back down on his head, he left the practice room, closing the door gently behind him. Athos, noble as Scipio and twice as wise, Aramis, learned in theology and the labyrinthine ways of Parisian society, D’Artagnan the young, cunning Gascon. Those three would know how to help Porthos seek justice for his apprentice.