Death in Gascony (4 page)

“I
don’t think we’ll find them now,” Porthos said, dolefully, for perhaps the third time in the last few minutes, since they’d dismounted and started looking about the roadside for signs of the young Gascon’s passage or for a sign of him.

Athos gritted his teeth and said nothing. Aramis, both Porthos’s best friend and his most constant critic, would have answered with some quip that would have ignited a never-ending exchange between the two and probably alerted the whole countryside—and D’Artagnan, were he within earshot—to their approach.

But Aramis, impatient and the youngest of the three as well as acknowledged as the most cunning and observant, was riding ahead, then back again, in little looping forward sorties. Porthos and Athos followed behind, slower, scanning the sides of the road for any signs of the boy.

Athos didn’t answer Porthos’s comment because it echoed too well with his own internal complaint. It had sounded, over and again, for sometime now.
We should have seen him by now. We should have seen him or Planchet. He can’t have ridden farther than this. Where can he be hiding?

He had been so sure when they left Paris, so sure this was the road D’Artagnan would take back to the paternal abode—now devoid of his father. It was the road he had followed into town, so many months ago. Oh, there were others, less and more direct, but D’Artagnan hadn’t been in Paris long enough—hadn’t exploited its surroundings long enough—to know the shortcuts. And he wouldn’t have any reason to take a less direct road. Not even fear his friends would follow him. He didn’t know of Planchet’s treason.

And yet, Athos looked at the desolate fields, sparkling with ice under the dishwater grey light of dawn, and shrugged deeper into his cloak and sighed.

“Where can they be?” Porthos asked, his voice rumbling deep and seemingly so strong as to shake the frost from the trees and bring whatever inhabitants lived hereabouts running to see the giant. Or to kill him. “What can he have done? Perhaps you got it all wrong, Athos.”

“I didn’t get it wrong,” Athos said, quietly. Behind them, walking their horses also, their servants followed. Athos could hear the sound of their discussion and he would bet it mirrored his and Porthos’s. Pious Bazin was saying something that sounded much like his endless decrying of folly. Mousqueton was arguing for a return to the city and a checking of D’Artagnan’s quarters in a voice almost as loud and voluble as his master’s. And Grimaud’s monosyllabic answers echoed the same annoyance Athos felt.

He hadn’t got it wrong. Planchet had told him that D’Artagnan meant to leave in the night and to make his way to Gascony alone. He didn’t think he’d be able to return, and he didn’t trust himself to be able to resist his friends’ entreaties, should they ask him to come back to Paris with them.

But where in the Devil can the boy be?
The sense of being the oldest of them all rested heavily upon Athos’s shoulders, all of a sudden. He shouldn’t have left the boy such free reign. He should have…

“Perhaps he changed his mind,” Porthos boomed. “Perhaps he realized that going without us was madness and perhaps he—”

“Ah!” Athos said. “He’s a Gascon. He lives, breathes madness.”

Porthos looked at him, but before he could speak came the gallop of Aramis’s approaching horse. Perhaps Aramis had found D’Artagnan.

“That he is, a Gascon,” Porthos said, and sighed, not attempting to argue the madness of Gascons or the high unlikelihood of any of them—D’Artagnan most of all—coming to his senses.

He sighed again, clearly oblivious to the approaching hoofbeats. Was Athos imagining the hoofbeats? Were they only a mirage born of his imagination, of his desire for Aramis to return with news of D’Artagnan? He realized suddenly Aramis had been gone a very long time. Had he found a hostelry ahead? Or had he perhaps—

“Are you sure you didn’t dream Planchet?” Porthos asked. “I mean his visit. In the night.”

“What?” Athos asked, startled out of his own thoughts. “Porthos. I did not.”

“But are you absolutely sure? Because just last week, after that banquet at the tavern, remember, the one that de Pignon gave to celebrate his having inherited his aunt’s fortune, I dreamed I had an uncle who was a Chinese Mandarin, in a bell-surrounded tower, and he’d died and left me his tower, and his harem of fifty-five maidens. And I’d swear on the Divine Body and Blood it was true, you know? I woke up wondering what I would tell Athenais. And what she would have said to the maidens, and all.”

Athos stared, at a loss for what to say about such a dream. Surely Porthos wasn’t suggesting that an uncle who was a Chinese Mandarin with a harem was about as likely as Planchet’s breaking into Athos’s room via the window and…

Athos stopped, floundering. Indeed, the idea of a Mandarin uncle and maidens who would upset Athenais, Porthos’s long-time mistress, might be less insane than the idea that anyone would break into a musketeer’s room. And Athos’ room at that.

“Of course,” Porthos said. “I doubt she would have said anything to the maidens, for undoubtedly they would have spoken Chinese or some other heathen language, but you know what I mean.”

In that moment, in the cold light of dawn, Athos stopped, as if he’d been run through by an unexpected bolt. How many times was Porthos right? How many times had the giant, with his slow words pierced through the pretty words and the pretty illusions of his more fluent friends? How many times did Athos have to remind himself that just because Porthos was slow of words it didn’t mean he was slow of mind?

He touched his forehead with the tips of his long, aristocratic fingers and sighed. Had he dreamed Planchet? Planchet was not one of the ghosts that normally visited Athos’ dreams. No, not
ghosts
, for there was only one. Charlotte, who’d been all too briefly Countess de la Fere and Athos’ wife. And whom he’d killed. Was his guilt now driving him mad at last?

“Are you well, Athos?” Porthos asked, stopping and looking at his friend. “Only you’ve gone the color of the Cardinal when Monsieur de Treville tells him we’ve wounded three of his best fighters.”

Athos struggled for words. As a child he’d been verbose; as a young man he’d been gifted with poetic speech. But his words had been left behind on the day he’d killed Charlotte. Unable to wrap his words around the thing he’d done, he’d shed the words—as he’d shed honors and title and nobility—and mutely gone to live amid rough musketeers as though they were quiet monks. He’d even trained Grimaud, who’d known him from a child, to keep silent and to obey Athos’s silent commands.

“You know, Porthos,” he said. And was about to confess it might all have been a dream, when he was interrupted by Aramis’s voice shouting, “To me, musketeers. To me.”

There was no time for thinking. This scream, which echoed around Paris a dozen times a day—often followed by “to me of the king” or “to me of the Cardinal”—usually meant that a musketeer was under attack. Often enough by the guards of Cardinal Richelieu.

A call of brotherhood and duty, a call of honor, a sacred request that must be obeyed.

Athos gave his reins to Grimaud who—well trained and ever obedient—was there, stretching his hand for them. He was aware of Porthos doing the same beside him. They ran side by side up a rise of the road, then down again on the other side.

“To me, musketeers,” Aramis’s voice sounded again, this time imperative. And in a lower voice, “Ah, canaille.”

Athos could tell it came from within a wooded stretch, and, as he followed the imprecations of close combat, the sound of sword hitting sword, he could see a path amid the trees. He ran through it, headlong, not caring about the branches that stretched onto the path and caught at his clothes. It mattered not. None of it mattered.

Closer, and closer—his feet slipping on round paving stones beneath a loose covering of soil—he tried to count the men and managed no more than a thought that there were many of them and that D’Artagnan—if D’Artagnan were there—was unusually silent and not letting his usual gasconades be heard.

And then he erupted into a clearing around the ruined tower of a donjon. There were people fighting—many people. He recognized Aramis immediately—the younger musketeer had discarded his cloak, and fought in his well-cut, fashionable blue tunic and venetians. His long blond hair had worked free of its ties and flowed down his back like a living thing, twisting and writhing—like a bit of ice come alive in the wintry landscape.

But the fight was hardly a proper duel. For one, no one was fighting Aramis. Or everyone was. There was a group of men, right enough—a lot of them—all of them no taller than D’Artagnan. But only two of them were turned towards Aramis. And those—for all that—didn’t seem to be giving him their full attention. They kept looking over their shoulders at the larger group of them, who attacked…another cloaked man who…

For just a moment Athos stopped, breathing heavily, frowning. Had Aramis picked a quarrel with strangers? Had villagers set upon him? But if so, why was he fighting only two of them?

And then in the doorway of the donjon, he saw Planchet. It was unmistakably the boy who’d once been an accountant and who was now D’Artagnan’s servant. For all that Porthos seemed to think Athos was capable of hallucinating Planchet out of whole cloth, the mind boggled at the idea of creating that vivid red hair, the sharp features or the freckles that competed with blemishes on the boy’s too-young countenance. He stared gape mouthed at the fight while holding back what appeared to be a massive dog of uncertain parentage.

Right. If Planchet was here, then so must D’Artagnan be. A look at the man defending himself in the melee, and Athos realized that it was none other than his young friend.

The cloak might disguise all else, but the dancing steps back and forward, the lightness of the turning and twisting, was all D’Artagnan, all over.

He was being attacked by…six men, only two of whom condescended to even defend themselves from Aramis’s attack. And those two keeping Aramis at bay, the other four attempted to…murder the boy. For nothing less than murder could operate when there were four against one.

Porthos—apparently having sized the situation faster than Athos, had pushed forward to stand beside the besieged Gascon, calling out, “Deal with me, you villains. Deal with me.”

And now Athos’s mind went dark—with the darkness of rage and blood. It was a state obtained all too often when Athos took sword in hand—and a state he strived to avoid.

There was inside the urbane, polished count turned musketeer—behind the well-thought classical quotations, the ironical smile and the careful observation of etiquette and tradition—something raging and feral biding its time, waiting only to strike. Wanting to strike in revenge for his despoiled life, his destroyed heritage.

Most of the time Athos managed to keep the darkness at bay—locked inside him. But now watching these cowards attempting to murder his friend, he could hold back no longer. He surged forward, making a sound like a growl at the back of his throat.

Had the villain in front of him not turned at that sound, Athos—who’d raised his sword like an ax—would have stricken him down where he stood. Instead, the man turned and, sword hastily upraised, parried the formidable blow.

He was a short man and dark, like D’Artagnan was dark—olive skin tanned by an open-air life. In the effort of defending himself from Athos’s fury, he threw back his cloak, and the hood fell, revealing that he looked, in fact much like D’Artagnan.

And he fought like a Gascon, even if not with D’Artagnan’s imaginative quickness. He fought well enough to parry Athos’s thrusts and to attack often enough that Athos was kept wholly occupied by him—incapable of helping D’Artagnan more, incapable even of seeing how D’Artagnan was doing in the fray or if any of his other friends had succeeded in freeing the young Gascon from his attackers.

With each parried thrust, each time he pressed Athos close, the adversary made Athos more and more furious, till a cold fury possessed him and drove him. In the grasp of it, he pressed forward and forward and forward, till he had the man backed against a tree. He was physically pressing close to the man, so close there was almost no room for their swords, pressed together between them, and no room at all for any maneuvering. So close to the man that he could smell the man’s fear, and hear his quickened, shortened breathing.

And at that moment, from behind him, where the others were, he heard a cry of surprise and pain. It was the cry of a man pierced through. And the voice was D’Artagnan’s.

“D’Artagnan,” Athos said, and—coming to himself as quickly as he’d abandoned himself to the fight—he wheeled around to see his young friend fall to his knees as his opponent withdrew a red-stained sword.

“D’Artagnan,” he said again, and took a step towards the youth, who was still besieged by three men in black cloaks.

A step, a broken twig, a quickened breath—something made Athos turn. Blindly, he turned and swept back with his sword.

The part of his mind that could still think registered that he’d driven his sword halfway through the throat of the man he’d been dueling. The other part of him—the part that thirsted for blood and cared for nothing else—withdrew the sword just as quickly, and swept forward, on the crest of his fury.

He felt his sword pierce a man’s body from the back before he even realized he intended to do it, and he pulled back, with a rapid movement, before the falling man could pull his sword down. He lifted it again.

The two men remaining between him and D’Artagnan, who was on his knees still and pale as death, glanced over their shoulders. Whatever they saw in Athos’s countenance put them to flight, running madly through the trees. Athos started after them, but a voice called him back—Aramis’s voice, very even, very calm. “Leave them, Athos. Help me or the Gascon dies.”

Like cold water upon a raging dog, the words stopped Athos’s fury. He turned back, to see that, in the clearing, Aramis and Porthos only remained standing, amid four fallen men. And D’Artagnan. D’Artagnan, whose cloak Aramis was removing, was being supported by Porthos.