The Advantage of Moving in Different Spheres; Maids and Duchesses; Knowing People Who Don’t Know You

"IT would be best if we separated,” Aramis said, as soon as they were past the gates of the palace. "And meet here again once our enquiries are done. If you encounter trouble, send me word by someone. If I run into trouble, I shall send you word.”

Porthos nodded. He didn’t resent Aramis’s suggestion. Oh, perhaps Aramis was embarrassed to be seen with Porthos-it wouldn’t be the first or the last time. Porthos was aware that his clothing was too loud, too brash, too brazen for his carefully attired, groomed and perfectly mannered friend. He knew that most people wondered why they were friends at all.

But he also knew that under normal circumstances Aramis would be taking Porthos along. These weren’t normal circumstances. The two of them needed to find out as much as possible about the boy, Guillaume, and his family in as short a time as possible. That meant going where their strengths were greater. Porthos knew some people among the servants, notably the girlfriend of his servant, Mousqueton. And Aramis… who knew who Aramis might know? But they were all probably too high in the instep for Porthos to approach.

“Aramis,” he said, instead, as his friend turned to leave.

Aramis looked back and Porthos struggled with the thought that had been bothering him since they got through the gates. “What if we never find his true name or his family?”

Aramis frowned. “What makes you think-”

“There are so many twelve year olds in Paris. And if he was working for the Cardinal, he might be hidden. He might… The Cardinal might have muddied the trail…” He shrugged.

Aramis tilted his head sideways, as if in thought, then threw the mass of his blond hair back with a careless hand. “We’ll find them, Porthos, don’t worry. We’ll show the picture and ask questions. And if someone doesn’t know him by that name, they might know him by another one. And if they don’t know him by any name, they might yet look at the picture and think they know someone who looks like him. We’ll trace him. Paris is a very large town, but when it comes to the nobility it is like a small family, gathered in and bickering. We’ve all run into each other. Or our ancestors have.”

Porthos nodded. Sometimes when Athos and Aramis spoke of the nobility of France, he felt very much the plebeian. They seemed to assume all French nobility was related and that they all counted in the numbers of their close relatives three assorted dukes and five kings. Porthos’s family had nobility enough in its ancestry, even if some long-lost ancestor had fudged the point. But that nobility consisted of minor seigneurs and small land owners, not people who normally went to court. Not people who normally cared to go to court. That he knew, he’d been the first in his family to even come to Paris.

But Aramis spoke as if he were so sure that Porthos hated to question him. Instead, he said, “But what if we can’t find his family? What if no one will know who he is?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Aramis said with airy impatience. “Don’t fret. One way or another we will find him. You forget that I know a lot of people. I even know people who don’t know me.”

“You-?” Porthos asked, confused.

“I mean there are people of whom I’ve heard, who almost surely have never heard of me.” Aramis turned and awkwardly tapped Porthos on the shoulder. “Really, don’t fret. I’m sure we’ll find out. If four good men, with working heads on their shoulders and ready swords, can’t find the parents of a lost child in Paris, the world has come to be a complex thing indeed. You go and talk to whomever you know in the palace and I’ll pursue my own acquaintances. We’ll meet here. Can’t be more than an hour.”

Porthos watched Aramis turn and head up a staircase at a fast pace. Sometimes he wondered who Aramis knew, and how. Oh, until recently Aramis’s main center of information at the palace had been a Duchess, Spanish by birth, who allowed Aramis to call her Violette, and allowed him to call on her very frequently.

But Violette, once Duchesse de Dreux, was gone. What other contacts did Aramis have? To whom did he talk?

From things the musketeer didn’t say, Porthos suspected that Aramis was deep in intrigues in the palace. All of Paris knew, or at least surmised, that their Majesties- not liking each other and keeping separate courts and separate favorites-the King favoring-at the whim of his grey eminence, the Cardinal-Germany, and her Majesty favoring Spain and Austria, meant that their interests and opinions, their policies and desires, were often at cross purposes. The royal palace-Porthos vaguely felt, though it was rarely given to him to be in on the secrets and convoluted calculations-was like a swiss cheese, tunneled through with myriad plots.

Porthos suspected that Aramis navigated amid all those plots and made all his plans, and knew everything there was to know. And watching Aramis’s agile figure run up the staircase barely visible through the door opposite, Porthos shuddered in relief.

He would hate to be where Aramis was, to be caught in the cross threads of multiple plots, to always have to watch his mouth and what he said. He liked to blurt out the truth and nevermind what people might think.

Of course, he wasn’t absolutely sure where to go in the palace, himself. He knew a lot of people here-but mostly by sight. He’d seen the servants, talked to them, flirted with the maids for all the years he’d been serving guard at the palace. And now and then a maid brought him a warm drink-or an alcoholic one-on a cold night and stayed to flirt.

These weren’t friendships, as such, but they were the kind of acquaintances that would normally allow him to go along the hallways, showing the picture of the boy and asking if anyone had seen him. The easiest thing to do, the thing he’d do at any other house, would be to go to the kitchen and install himself there, with his tales of war and his charming smile to every woman who came near him. And then he’d flash the picture, and soon, between one mug of wine and the next, he’d have talked to every servant in the palace and found out all he wanted.

Even in the royal palace, that would be the best strategy. The kitchen was huge, sure. And filled with people of all descriptions going about their disparate tasks. But Porthos was well known enough, if by sight only, that he might get some attention.

Only now…

Standing in the hallway, he twirled his moustache. Only now, he didn’t dare. The thing was that last time he’d needed to investigate the servants in the palace one of the female cooks had got very friendly with him. Very, very friendly. And she wanted to be more than friends, in fact. So much so, that Porthos had felt he could not comply with her wishes without betraying his own, longtime lover Athenais.

So if he went into the kitchens… The cook would be on him, in anger and lust, and he wasn’t sure which he dreaded more.

In an agony of hesitation, he stood in the courtyard and twirled his moustache, trying to think of another way. There was the girlfriend of Porthos’s servant, Mousqueton. Her name was Hermengarde, and she was maid on the third floor of the palace. It might be easier and ultimately quicker to have brought Mousqueton with him, but Porthos had neglected to do so. Instead, the servants had stayed behind to manage the small corpse and the coffin.

But he thought if he stood in the stairwell between the kitchen and the third floor-the back stairwell used by the servants-he would sooner or later see either Hermengarde or someone who looked likely enough to take a message to her. As far as he understood the lives of servants at the palace, most of what they did was fetch food for their lords and ladies, and sometimes filch it from the kitchen if they didn’t have the seniority to get it by fair means.