Death in Gascony Page 3

  What D’Artagnan could offer him would be a menial life working for a poor house. “I am sure,” he said, not feeling sure at all, but hoping, “that Monsieur Porthos or Athos or Aramis will find you a position and—”

  “Monsieur!” Planchet said. “Monsieur!” He dropped to sitting on D’Artagnan’s bed. In a low voice that seemed to come from the other side of the grave, he said, “You can’t mean it. You can’t. I’ll end up as a clerk again. Most gentlemen don’t want intelligent servants. Most gentlemen would not tolerate my correcting them or…Monsieur!”

  D’Artagnan could not bear it. Through his mind, still—stark—ran his mother’s words. His father had been working for the Cardinal. And now his father was dead. Supposedly, he’d died in a duel. But D’Artagnan’s father could not have been killed in a duel, fairly fought. So that must mean…

  His heart was full of images of all he was about to lose—Athos, Porthos, Aramis. Their hours of easy camaraderie, the duels in which they all served as seconds for each other, the nights spent on guard—all would be gone, and no more than a fleeting, receding light to warm the darkness of his future years in Gascony.

  Constance would be gone too. She would go back to being just Madame Bonacieux, a beautiful woman trapped in a loveless marriage. A beautiful woman he’d known all too briefly.

  He managed not to sigh, but it took an effort. There was no room in his mind for Planchet. Planchet would accompany him to Gascony, and then he’d come back with the horses. And then one or the other of the musketeers would provide for the young servant. Surely, they would find him something. “I’m sure,” he said, “they’ll look after you. I’ve leave a note for Monsieur Athos.”

  He’d thrown all his possessions into the saddlebag, not a hard feat even if he now possessed more clothing than he had when first arriving in town. At the top he put the jar of the ointment made according to his mother’s recipe, an ointment so miraculous that, by its use, every wound that had not reached vital organs would be cured in three days. After all, it was a long journey south to Gascony, and who knew what perils he’d encounter. Particularly if his father had been murdered.

  “I’ll write notes, now, while you go borrow two horses from Monsieur de Treville’s stables. Tell them you will return them in no more than ten days. Tell them I require the horses on a matter of great urgency, but pledge my honor for their return.”

  As he spoke, he was heading towards the table where he kept some sheets of paper and an inkwell and quill. He must write to Athos and Porthos and Aramis. Separate letters, as his friends had very different natures. And he must write yet another note to Constance—which he’d enclose inside Aramis’s note for delivery, as otherwise her husband might read it first.

  He barely heard as Planchet eased his way out of the house into the evening outside.

  How Not To Wake a Musketeer;

  A Little Perfidy in the Right Place

  ATHOS woke up with someone climbing in through his window. Or rather, he woke up with the window slowly creaking open and then scuffing sounds, as though someone were dragging himself up through the window.

  It was so impossible, so patently impossible for anyone to be insane enough to break into a musketeer’s room—much less the room of one of the most dangerous of that band of barely disciplined ruffians—that Athos knew he had to be dreaming. Asleep on the massive, curtained bed that he’d brought with him from his estate, wearing only his shirt, he turned in bed, trying to find a more comfortable position.

  This turn caused the linen sheet and the blanket to slip aside. He felt a cold current of air. Cold. As if someone had opened the window, prior to climbing in. The scuffing sounds were followed by two light thumps, like the sound of a not very heavy someone jumping into the room.

  Athos rose. He rose before waking, tearing aside the linen sheet. His hand grabbed for the sword that he kept always by the side of the bed. By the time he opened his eyes fully, he was standing, sword in hand, bearing down on a slim figure by the window.

  The figure—little more than an indistinct darker patch in the surrounding gloom—was that of a tall young man, or perhaps a woman. Tall, almost as tall as Athos himself, but much, much slimmer, with no sign of the muscles that made the musketeer a dangerous foe in combat. It made a bleating sound and pressed itself against the wall, arms splayed against it, as if it were trying to crawl into the wall.

  “Ruffian,” Athos said. “You thought you could come through my window and kill me while I slept. Do you go about robbing innocent men in their sleep?”

  And to scare the creature—whom Athos could tell wasn’t armed, and whom he merely wished to terrify away from a criminal life—Athos thrust his sword forward, stopping a hair’s breadth from the intruder’s chest.

  “Monsieur,” the creature bleated. And, on a deep breath, drawn in with force, like that of a drowning man, he added, “Monsieur Athos, it is I.”

  Athos blinked. That someone would break into his room was impossible enough. That it was someone who knew him—not only by reputation but by name—was unbelievable. No one, not a single one of his friends would presume that far upon their friendship as to startle Athos out of a sound sleep and count on escaping unscathed before the musketeer even regained his senses.

  This was not one of his friends. Athos blinked again. “Who—”

  “Monsieur, it’s Planchet. You must help me with my master.”

  “D’Artagnan,” Athos said, his voice filled with alarm. The young guard, almost young enough to be his son, had become somewhat Athos’s adopted son in these last six months. By virtue of being the oldest of the musketeers, the erstwhile Count de la Fere had made it his business to keep the youngest of his friends out of trouble. Which, given D’Artagnan’s nature, often proved a fraught and slippery business. “What has happened to D’Artagnan? Speak. Is he wounded?”

  But Planchet only bleated again, “Monsieur,” and Athos realized that he was still holding his blade in close proximity to Planchet’s heart, and that there was a good chance the youth was scared.

  He withdrew the blade and, by touch, made his way to the mantel in his room, from which he grabbed a candle in its pewter candlestick. He lit it from an ember in the banked fire in his hearth.

  The wick, flaring to life, revealed a very pale Planchet still knit with the wall, as though fearing another bout of homicidal madness from Athos.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Athos said, and setting the candle on the mantel, started casting about for his breeches and doublet. “What of your master? With what do you need my help? Is he wounded? Surely not. We left him hale. Did he—”

  “He’s mad,” Planchet said.

  Athos looked over his shoulder, as the young servant took a step away from the window. “If by mad you mean wandering in his wits, I doubt it. D’Artagnan is one of the shrewdest men I know. Granted, the shock and grief over his father’s death,” Athos said, remembering the contents of the letter he’d taken from Planchet’s hand and read before passing it on to D’Artagnan, “might cause him to act a little distraught. But…mad?”

  Planchet leaned against the wall again, this time as if he needed support. His skin was ashen grey, in shocking contrast with his hair. “He’s getting ready to leave for Gascony now,” he said. “Even as we speak, there are two horses tied at your door. They belong to Monsieur de Treville, and they will be used to carry my master and myself to Gascony. From whence I am to come back and return the horses.”

  “You are to come back?” Athos asked. “But we’d said—We’d agreed—” He controlled himself and pressed his lips together, as though grimly accepting the inevitable. “I see,” he said. “And your master?”

  “He stays in Gascony, monsieur. He says he’s his father’s only son and that he must fulfill his duty. He says—”

  “Doubtless a great deal of nonsense,” Athos said, pulling his doublet laces so tight that they were just short of impeding respiration. “His father was killed, and we don’t know why,
so he would go and brave Gascony on his own?”

  “Yes,” Planchet said. “He says he doesn’t want to drag you into this, since he can never return with you to Paris, and that—”

  “As you say,” Athos said, strapping on his sword belt. “Mad. You did well to come to me, even if you could have used a more orthodox way of gaining entry.”

  “I knocked,” Planchet said. “And knocked. But I can’t delay too long or my master will suspect…”

  “Indeed. So you took your life in your hands. A brave man, Planchet.”

  Planchet didn’t look particularly brave. He looked like he might lose consciousness at any minute, after the shocks of the last few moments.

  “Perhaps you can leave through the front door this time, though,” Athos said. “I told Grimaud not to open to anyone, you see, which is why you had no answer. I thought we’d be traveling in the morning. I see D’Artagnan has changed this.”

  “Monsieur, you can’t let him go alone. He—”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. You go to your master. I will go to Porthos and Aramis at the Palais Royale.”

  “But Monsieur, you’ll never catch up with us.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I know shortcuts. Trust me. We would not let your master face possible murder alone.”

  “But I don’t know which road we’re taking, and I…”

  “Worry not. We’ll find out. Your master is not the first man we’ve followed.” He allowed a small smile to tug on his lips remembering all the mad adventures they’d engaged in, even just since D’Artagnan had joined them. The people they’d followed. The mysteries they’d solved. “But you see, I must get Aramis and Porthos and then I must speak to Monsieur de Treville, or at least leave a note. And find someone else to take our places in the guard roster. It is a duty we can’t simply walk away from.”

  “Monsieur, monsieur,” Planchet said, alarmed by this long list of things to do. “But my master will leave as soon as I arrive. I know it. It will be hard to ever find us.”

  “Don’t worry,” Athos said. “Don’t worry. We will catch you before you’re too far gone.”

  He followed the boy down the stairs to the street, his mind efficiently organizing things and listing what he must do like any general marshaling troops for a difficult campaign. He had no doubts they’d catch D’Artagnan. Though the Gascon was as cunning and twisty minded as Aramis at his worst, he was not likely to be using his cunning fully to escape his friends. He was more likely—being modest and placing a low value on his own company and friendship—to think as soon as he was gone they would utterly forget him. The fool.

  They would follow him and they would go to Gascony with him. But what madness had the boy’s father got into? What could he have been doing for the Cardinal? What tangle would they find in Gascony?

  The Many Inconveniences of Wintry Travel;

  Meager Purse and Rushing Mind;

  The Foolhardiness of Highwaymen

  D’ARTAGNAN’S face felt frozen from galloping against the cold air of fall. Though he wasn’t galloping anymore. For a long time, he’d kept up a fast pace.

  He thought of the letters he’d left in his lodging, neatly lined up. One for Athos, which explained everything and made it clear he must leave and that there was no other choice. The letter for Constance was within it, and beside it were the letters to Monsieur des Essarts and Monsieur de Treville. He hadn’t left letters for the other two. He trusted Athos to explain it to them. Besides, had he left a letter for Porthos, Porthos would have made Athos explain it to him all the same and Aramis. Aramis…

  D’Artagnan made a face. He couldn’t avoid the thought of Aramis reading his farewell letter with one of those unnerving little smiles that seemed to say he saw through you and he didn’t believe a word you said. Did D’Artagnan believe a word he said? Was it then so necessary that he left Paris and all behind? Was it so necessary that he bury himself in Gascony, just because his father was dead?

  His father…In his mind, his father’s features formed, laughing with the excitement of a mock duel with D’Artagnan. His father. Ever since D’Artagnan was very small, his father had been the man to imitate, the man whose footsteps he wished to follow.

  He remembered being barely a toddler and walking behind his father, trying to imitate his father’s limp because—ignorant of the causes of it—he assumed this was how a man walked. Or at least a man anyone would admire.

  Then, in early childhood he’d heard his father’s tales of his adventures in Paris, and he’d known he would have to go there as a young man and have those too, before coming home to live in Gascony. Before coming home…

  Why did the words feel like the lid of a coffin shutting off all light? Hadn’t he always wanted to return to Gascony after he was done with his wild years in Paris?

  But some part of him protested that he hadn’t wanted to return now. Not just yet. Not while he was still barely a man. When he’d imagined going back, he’d been a thirty-year-old veteran of the musketeers, with an abundant moustache and a scar or two like his father’s, and his own supply of jokes and stories and battle memories.

  He’d go back, then, and marry one of the buxom local beauties and set about siring little D’Artagnans. And in the evening his father and he would sit by the fire and sip at their drinks, and trade stories.

  And there was the rub; and this he kept coming back to. His father wouldn’t be there. And because his father wouldn’t be there, D’Artagnan must be. Now. There would be no time to save money, no time to establish a reputation. No time to be young.

  He rode his horse silently on a deserted road amid denuded fields. The harvest had been taken in and all that remained behind were stubbly stalks, covered in frost, sparkling in the moonlight. In the horizon there was as yet no sun or color, but rather that dishwater-dingy light that precedes the breaking of dawn.

  “Monsieur,” Planchet shouted from the side. “Monsieur.”

  He turned to look at his servant. He was, like D’Artagnan, wrapped in a cloak, his somewhat thinner than D’Artagnan’s, having been D’Artagnan’s before the guard’s pay had allowed the young man to replace it with a thicker and better one. But the cloak’s hood had fallen down a little, revealing Planchet’s tuft of red hair, his very pale face. The tip of his nose was angry red, and dripped a little.

  Planchet shouted at D’Artagnan, “We have to stop and rest the horses, monsieur. We can’t keep them up like this without rest. They’ll burst.”

  D’Artagnan realized his horse had slowed considerably and faltered once or twice. He’d pressed horses fast before this, of course. There had been cross-country races in great urgency. But then he’d been with his friends, and they’d had changes of mounts arranged at hostelries. Or had arranged for changes of mounts on the spot and paid more.

  D’Artagnan could do neither. And beyond the natural reluctance at injuring a fine animal, he couldn’t in conscience hurt this horse, since it was Monsieur de Treville’s.

  No. He must stop, that much was true. In fact, thinking of it, he slowed down to almost a walk.

  The thing was, he knew exactly how much was in his purse, and how long he and Planchet could be on the road, before he got to his paternal abode, and the two totals didn’t match. He could not buy lodging at any hostelry—much less lodging and care for his horse—and manage to get to Gascony.

  A spurt of anger surged up that he’d never thought of the cold, before. He’d assumed he could stop and sleep by the roadside. He’d traveled this road six months ago, in the opposite direction, mounted on his old, orange horse, a gift from his father. But stopping hadn’t been a problem before. It had been spring, and, the weather being mild, he’d pastured his horse by the roadside while he himself slept in a nearby thicket and ate whatever fruit offered from roadside trees. He’d stopped at an inn only once, in Meung.

  But now, in this weather, stopping just by the roadside was not an option. Not unless he wished to catch his death in the cold and damp.
And barring foraging for fallen wheat grains amid the harvested fields or the last shrunken and dried cluster of grapes accidentally left behind on some vine, there would be no food. And no food for the horses either.

  Just as his mind had reached this melancholy place and he was again weighing the travel he must accomplish against his meager purse, he saw as if a shadow among the trees. It was stone and half-ruined, but it sparked a memory.

  When he’d traveled in the other direction and been this far from Paris, he’d seen, near to where he’d paused for a rest, the ruin of an old building. Very old. It looked like what remained of some defensive tower, perhaps going back so far as the Romans.

  As his horse pastured and rested, after D’Artagnan had rubbed him down, D’Artagnan, with a surfeit of youthful spirits, had explored the surroundings, including the remains of the tower. And he’d found, as was often common with such ancient ruins in rural locales, that the place smelled strongly of sheep and had within it a feeding through and such arrangements as indicated that it was used for lodging a flock through the winter months.

  Of course the floor had been thick with muck and, it being spring, the place had been deserted, the flock probably in the fields with their shepherd. Now, in winter, it would probably be occupied and there was a good chance the shepherd slept within it, with the sheep. He would have to bribe the shepherd for oats for the horses and for lodging for himself and his servant. On the other hand, mucky and all, it would at least be warm and relatively safe. And the shepherd’s bribe would probably cost much less than a night at an inn. And there was always, after all, the chance that the shepherd wouldn’t be there. Sometimes such buildings were merely left locked, and not with an on-site guard. Well enough.

  D’Artagnan dismounted from his horse with a leap, then motioned to Planchet. But Planchet—amid his many admirable qualities—was a trained horseman, raised in his father’s horse farm in Picardy. More than that, he was accomplished at following his master’s actions and guessing what they must do without asking any questions. Only Grimaud, whom Athos had trained to the task, excelled more than the young former accountant in obeying unspoken orders.