“Well,” he said, dolefully. “I don’t think Monsieur de Treville is going to arrange for me to see him at all. And the devil of it is, we might likely find out who killed the armorer by talking to Mousqueton.”
Athos mentally added to his excellent friend’s qualities-or lack thereof-his complete inability to imagine how his words sounded to other people. “You cannot possibly mean that,” he said. “The only way for us to discover that would be to find that Mousqueton had murdered the armorer.”
“What? No. What I mean is that clearly there are other circumstances surrounding this, including Mousqueton’s proposed marriage. It’s all inscrutable without his view of the matter.”
Athos was so surprised that he stopped, stock-still. “Porthos, my friend, did you just say it’s inscrutable?”
“Yes, yes, I did. It means it can’t be penetrated with eye or mind, depending on whether it’s a physical darkness or a darkness of the spirit.” He looked at Athos’s expression, and Athos must have looked back in total shock, because Porthos guffawed. “It’s this new plan of Aramis.’ ”
“Oh?” Athos said, somewhat fearful, because when a plan of Aramis’s involved Porthos in it, the results were usually incalculable and often bizarre.
“Yes. He thinks that if I learn a new word every week, soon I will not feel about long words the way I do, and I won’t confuse their meanings either. So this week, he taught me the word inscrutable, and he has told me to make sure I use it in all possible cases. I presume I used it correctly.”
“Admirably so,” Athos said, suppressing a smile. The friendship between Aramis and Porthos was in itself one of the inscrutable mysteries of life. The two men could not be more different if they’d been knit from entirely different clay, on opposing shores of different continents. And yet, they bore each other’s quirks with greater kindness than the rest of them often could.
They were now at the gate through which they had come, and Athos demurred. “Porthos, I believe I should go and talk to… to the duchess the lady mentioned, but I am not sure any of us should be outside alone. We can’t help that Aramis and D’Artagnan are, though we can hope they met with each other and that one is guarding the other, but…”
“I see,” Porthos said. “This is what I propose to do. You go and speak to your duchess, and then you come and talk to me in the kitchens of the palace.”
“The kitchens?” Athos said. He knew from their previous adventures-though it had never fully been explained to him-that Porthos had conceived an almost fear of one of his majesty’s head cooks.
Porthos sighed resignedly, and combed his moustache with his fingers so that the tips pointed upwards. “It is a cross to bear,” he said, “to be so handsome that women fall in love with one at a glance. The cook was more than usual importune. But I am hoping that I can get information from her without… without its going too far.”
Half amused, though he had to admit that maids, cooks and peasant women did indeed seem to fall in love with Porthos at a first glance at his shining head of red hair, his strong features and his sparkling eyes, Athos nodded. “Well, I’ll come and find you in the kitchens, then, when I’m done interviewing the duchess.
The Disadvantages of a Hot Day; Many Ways to Slacken Thirst; Evangelists and Pigs
ARAMIS had realized, about an hour into the drive-no, the journey, for it was epic and involved shades of odyssey-that he probably could get to Paris earlier if he got down and walked. This because not only did the oxen move at a snail’s pace, but also the two men in charge of the oxen felt it incumbent upon them to stop at every roadside stall and every isolated farmhouse to purvey themselves with the necessities of life.
There were two reasons he hadn’t actually jumped off the oxcart. The first was that while the oxen were probably slightly slower than Aramis could walk, by sitting in the cart he was sparing his legs, for what he expected would be a run all over Paris to locate his friends, once he got to town. The second, and no less pressing, was that the necessities of life-according to his ex-captors-included a great deal of food and wine, which, of course, they shared freely with him, by way of reparation.
On the road so far, he had tasted some very good ham, some excellent bread, a strong-smelling cheese and a dozen boiled eggs. All of this-the day being hot for the end of winter-had necessitated washing it down with a great deal of wine.
So, by the time they stopped on the farm at the edge of town, where his amiable hosts had friends or contacts or cousins, or whatever it was they had, Aramis was feeling quite at ease with the world and, indeed, of a warm and glowing disposition, where all would be forgiven.
They let him off and explained they were about to go back to the neighborhood where they’d first mistakenly importuned him, so they could capture the original miscreant.
“Well,” Aramis had said airily, “only, be sure to take a box with you, in case he resists.”
This had resulted in many laughs, which had eventually dissolved into giggles and a never end of “your musketeerness,” and Aramis was never to understand exactly how, but he found himself walking along the street with Jean and Marc in the best of understandings.
Or at least, he hoped they understood him correctly, since he was attempting to lecture them on the biblical significance of their names and explaining that if they were evangelists, and his name were Luke, they would be three of a set of four. This seemed to impress them profoundly, and Marc expressed the earnest hope that, if he had his life to live again, he could become knowledgeable in Latin and Greek “and all that horse manure.” Forgiving his way of expressing himself, which was clearly due to his lack of exposure to the belles lettres, Aramis said, “My friend, Porthos, he has the same problem. That’s why… that’s why we have this plan.” He walked along for a while in silence, his mind assuring him that he’d said absolutely everything he needed to say, until Jean said, “Your musketeerness?”
“Yes, mon bon Jean?”
“You never told us your plan.”
“Oh, it’s simple. You take a word, any word. The word this week is inscrutable. And you learn that word for a week. And when the word is-” Aramis stopped because his intended audience had run in opposite directions, away from him, as fast as their legs could carry him.
Looking forward, Aramis discovered the cause of their fright. There were not one, not two, but at least six men, wearing dark cloaks and armed with swords. “I knew you would come back,” the leader of them said, advancing towards Aramis with drawn sword.
Aramis had a vague idea of having met with this treatment before, but the adventure he’d just undergone had given him fresh insight into the possible causes of this. “I think,” he said, as he crossed his arms, “that you have quite the wrong man. You see, I’m not Pierre.”
“Not Pierre?” the leader said, and looked so confused that, for a moment he halted his advance and lowered his sword. “What do you mean by this, that you’re not Pierre?”
“Well, I would think that is glaringly obvious,” Aramis said, hearing creep into his voice the peevish tone that he normally used to explain some point of theology to his religion-blighted friends. “If I were Pierre, I would be Pierre. But as it chances, I’m not Pierre. I am Re-I mean… I am Aramis.” He took his hat off and bowed, very correctly.
At which point the furies of Hell broke loose. At least that’s what Aramis thought at the time, though later on, on reflection, he realized that someone had got into the backyard of one of the nearby houses and opened the pens containing the usual collection of domestic animals. Or perhaps more than one backyard, since a veritable bedlam of pigs, chickens, and a few very frightened goats rushed onto the street at the same time.