Athos himself was not sure what to think, as he bowed over Madame Bonacieux’s hands and told her to be careful and that he would do his best to keep D’Artagnan out of the path of harm. “Though you know D’Artagnan, madam, and you know, therefore, how difficult that can be.”

And she had given him a little rueful smile. “Yes, indeed, I do know, since I argued with him simply for trying to keep him out of a duel, where, you see, he ended by getting injured.”

This brought Athos to with a start. “A duel?” The only time recently that he could think of D’Artagnan’s getting injured had been right here, in the gardens of the palace, and there D’Artagnan must be exonerated from recklessness. A fool he might be, and gallant to a fault, and always to rush in defense of others or his own honor. But even D’Artagnan could not have known that he would be attacked by stealth, while walking across the gardens in the royal palace towards an appointment with his mistress.

“Last night,” Madame Bonacieux said, “I… someone told me that he had a duel, and so I called him to come to me, because I believed, of course, that he would come to me rather than go to the duel. But he didn’t. And when he appeared this morning, he was injured.”

“But…” Athos said at a loss. “He was attacked by stealth while coming to your appointment. From whom did you hear this, madam? It is very important that I know.”

Madame Bonacieux was looking at him with intent eyes. “You mean…”

“I mean that I think whoever convinced you to send him a note and ask him to come to your chambers on that night, at the hour of the supposed duel, was laying a very clever trap for my young friend.”

The lady went pale. “Impossible,” she said.

“Why impossible, madam? Who can have told you?”

“She doesn’t know I have any relationship at all with him,” she said. “She couldn’t possibly have guessed.”

Athos only raised his eyebrows, a gesture of such imperiousness, that he often found people answering questions he had not yet asked them. This woman was no match for his questioning. She sighed. “It was the… it was the Duchess de Chevreuse,” she said. “And she only mentioned it in jest. Because of… You know she’s friends with your other friend Aramis?”

Athos nodded. He personally would not call it friends but he knew that the lady had some relationship with Aramis, and he would guess-reluctantly, if absolutely pressed on the point-that the relationship probably required close contact. But for the purposes of this conversation, he would call them friends.

“Well, she was talking-not to me, but to a crowd of people, and she said that Aramis would have a duel on his hands-he and his friends both. And I thought… She said they would be fighting for their lives that night. And so I thought…” She looked horrified at the idea that perhaps D’Artagnan had got wounded because of her attempts to protect him.

“And do you remember, madam, who it was that the lady was talking to?”

Madame Bonacieux shook her head. “Some of her circle, you know. The women she talks to, and some of the men who admire her. But…”

“But?”

“I remember little Hermengarde was standing by.”

“I see,” Athos said, and bowed swiftly, ready to depart. Then stopped. “No, wait, one more question-whom did you tell that you were summoning D’Artagnan to you that evening?”

“Why, no one.”

“What did you do after you heard that? You must have been in some agitation. Or at least it sounds as though you were. Which surprises me a little, to own the truth, because the fact that musketeers fight duels should not surprise a lady who is in an intimate relationship with one of them. You know that we-”

“Fight,” she said. “Yes, I do. And knowing it doesn’t make it easier to bear, but I understand that men of both honor and temperament…” She shrugged as if to express that there was much one could forgive to men of those attributes. “No, this agitated me more than it would just knowing that one-or all-of you were about to fight a duel. You see, there was such malice in her voice, as though… as though there were some treason at stake, something horrible about to happen. And I thought…”

“You thought you’d preserve my friend, which is very worthy,” Athos said, reluctant to admit the, to him, impossible idea that a woman had acted, in fact, from the best of motives. “But what did you do, exactly, madam?”

“I went to my room, and I wrote a note to D’Artagnan, summoning him to come to me. I didn’t know the time of the duel, but I surmised that he would be coming home to change or pick up his other sword, or some such thing.”

“Yes,” Athos said. It was true. All of them usually repaired home before a duel, if for no other reason because one liked to look one’s best. “And whom did you send with the note?”

“No one,” she said, and blinked in confusion. “I went myself.”

“But that means you must have told someone you were leaving or asked someone for permission?”

“Only the Queen, monsieur, only the Queen. And surely you don’t mean-”

Athos didn’t mean. The thought might cross his mind, dangerous and slick like an iced-over river, but he didn’t dwell on it, nor was it something he wanted to encourage. While the Cardinal might suspect the Queen of whatever he might very well want to suspect her, and while the lady, herself, had been known to make less than steady choices or informed decisions, yet it was not to be believed that she had conspired against men who had so often bled in her service. He simply shook his head and bowed.

“Well,” Madame Bonacieux said, “I must say I can’t conceive how anyone knew of my decision, to choose to bring him here and that I hope… I hope I’m not responsible for his wounding. You will tell him that when you see him, will you not?”

Athos nodded. “I will do my best to persuade him you meant him no harm.” Which, if nothing else, would make for an amusing change and quite a bit of surprise to D’Artagnan to hear Athos-Athos, of all people-defending a woman. “Meanwhile, madam, may I beg of you to stay silent on the subject of D’Artagnan’s visit here, this morning, and to contrive to make it as little known as possible that you… that you have an intimate knowledge of him?”

“Yes, oh yes. If indeed it was my fault that he got wounded; that he might easily have got killed, it is dangerous for me to do anything else that might bring a trap upon him. I shall be as silent as the grave.”

He felt so guilty for having suspected her of perfidy earlier, that he bowed over the hand she proffered to him, and lightly touched it with his lips. Yet he waited till he and Porthos had gone some distance before deciding to speak. But then, Porthos spoke first.

“The devil,” he said. “I wonder what she means by that, that Hermengarde was seen with a musketeer before she was killed.”

“Well, she might not have meant anything at all,” Athos said. “It seems that D’Artagnan did come to the palace earlier and spoke to Hermengarde, even I have gathered that. So it would seem that he was seen with her. You know what people are like about places and times. Quite likely this is what they refer to, and nothing of more import.”

“Quite likely,” Porthos said, but he was biting at his moustache. “The devil of this,” he said, “is that now everyone will naturally think we are involved. I wish I could see Mousqueton and ask him what exactly was happening and what he thought he was doing, to be getting in this sort of trouble.”

Athos felt a sudden stab of enlightenment. “I wish you wouldn’t try to talk to Mousqueton, Porthos, not unless you can arrange it through Monsieur de Treville.” This because he could think of many other ways for Porthos to manage the thing-ways that were more in keeping with Porthos’s peculiar mind. They could involve all or anything, including fomenting an armed revolt that took over the Bastille. Porthos’s capacity for admirable and transforming action was only comparable to his inability to understand the world at large.