He saw them everywhere, stoking the fires at forges and holding horses for people, and running errands for various masters through the streets of town. He saw them, seemingly, always working. Never resting. And all of them had a hungry, restless look. But hungry most of all.

He’d heard from Porthos that Mousqueton had been one of those children-a skinny street brat, driven by hunger to try to steal from the then fencing master. Looking at the large young man it was hard to believe. And Mousqueton himself had told him a confused story of being left orphaned so young he didn’t remember his parents, only fending for himself on the streets of Paris.

This urban poverty and the children who endured it seemed to D’Artagnan far more wretched creatures than his working, but contented neighbors in Gascony. At least most children there lived with relatives. And at the peak of winter, when nothing grew, they got to sit by the fire with their parents and while away the dark days in peace.

Coming out of his thoughts, he realized that the others were well away into discussing something.

“So, we’ll go to the tavern,” Porthos said. “And ask.”

“It’s not that easy, and you know it,” Aramis said. “If it were that easy, you’d have braved it yourself, going into the tavern and asking questions on your own. But it is not. We can’t walk in and start asking about the boy without their suspecting that there is something wrong and some reason for strangers to ask.”

“We’ll say that some stranger asked us to look,” Porthos said. “We can hint it was the boy’s father without saying it.”

“What if they know who the boy’s father is?” Athos asked.

“Unlikely,” Porthos said. “Boys who work like that, at that young an age…” He shrugged. “If he had a living father, somewhere, he’d have gone to his father, or given him the money. There would have been some… presence of his father in his life.”

“He might have run away from the provinces to come to the city,” Aramis said. “His parents might still be there, somewhere, in the country.”

“Indeed,” Porthos said. “But if so, it is unlikely the tavern keeper will know of it. And if he ran away bringing his sister with him, then surely there was some great reason to run away. Which means that he would not have told the tavern keeper of his parents.”

“True,” Aramis said. “First of all we must use tact in asking.”

“And that,” Porthos said, “is why I didn’t go in on my own. I thought I’d need tact, and immediately thought of the three of you.”

Sometimes, D’Artagnan thought, it wasn’t easy to tell if Porthos was being serious or ironic. But he guessed at serious, in this case, because Porthos seemed genuinely pleased at the thought of his friends coming with him to the tavern and helping him ask questions.

“There’s only one thing,” Athos said. “We can’t quite eliminate the chance that the Cardinal is involved in this.”

“But if the boy is a simple tavern boy,” Aramis said. “Surely-”

“There’s nothing sure in this,” Athos said. “Yes, he’s just a plebeian boy, but how many times has the Cardinal not reached into the lowliest ranks to get his spies, his agents, his enforcers? Granted, Rochefort is as noble as I am, if perhaps poorer. But there are others…”

They all nodded. They’d run into others. Grocers and prostitutes, beggars and wine sellers who, surprised by the condescension of the Cardinal in even speaking to them, were more than willing to do the great man’s bidding. It could almost be bet that the lower the origin of the recruit, the more slavishly he’d do everything that the Cardinal asked.

“But…” Athos said. “Whether the Cardinal’s or someone else’s, the truth is that he must have been in someone’s pay.”

“Why?” Porthos asked, frowning.

“Two things. If he were not, there is no possibility he could have-on his own-afforded such a nice suit as the one he had on. And neither would there be any reason for him to have a list of your ancestry in his pocket.”

“Right,” Porthos said. And frowned. “At least no reason we know.”

“If you’re going to tell me again that your mind knows things you don’t know…” Aramis said.

Porthos shrugged. “Not anything that defined, no. It’s just that… well… there might be more complex reasons than we know now.” He frowned. “Or at least… We usually end up finding that there are, don’t we?”

As he spoke, he turned and started down the stairs, followed by Athos and Aramis. D’Artagnan followed, thinking that Porthos was right about that. Around the four of them, particularly when murder was involved, things were usually stranger than they seemed to be at first.

The Hangman; Another Nobleman; A Young and Quiet Girl

AS soon as they entered the Hangman-its name represented by a leaping man holding a noose and looking almost maniacally inclined to mirth-Athos knew why they didn’t frequent it much. It wasn’t so much that the wine was overpriced. It was more like the whole tavern was out of the musketeers league.

While the Cardinal, in a fit of passion, had been known to declare that no drinking spot or bawdy house in town was free of the scourge of the drunken, brawling, whoring musketeers, he was in fact wrong. The more expensive bawdy houses were very free of them, as were the more expensive taverns, like the Hangman, with its clean tables, its well-scrubbed walls, the candles that burned wax and not some smoky mixture of tallow, and its sour-faced proprietress behind the bar, looking menacingly at the four men with their uniforms and swords, as they came in.

A jovial fat man-possibly her husband-scrubbing one of the nearest tables, looked up at them as they entered, too, and his face did a quick succession of expressions, from surprised to worried to frantically jovial, the last the expression of a man who does not wish to see a brawl start in his tavern. “Sirs,” he said, looking up. “Glad to see you. Find yourself a place to sit. Amelie!” This called over his shoulder towards the shadows and definitely not in the tone he would dare address his imposing wife. “Amelie, where have you got to, girl?”

A girl of about ten, stick thin, with dark eyes and lank brown hair came out of the shadows. She was attired in a clean, probably third- or fourthhand dress and other than her thinness could have been the couple’s daughter. But Athos doubted very much that any child of the couple would have been allowed to grow so thin. Also, the woman behind the bar looked on the girl as though she were something that had crawled from beneath a rock, and moved her lips as though muttering something under her breath.

The musketeers and D’Artagnan sat at the nearest unoccupied table, and the girl approached, hesitantly. Athos’s phobia towards women did not apply yet at this age, when girls were more children than anything else. He felt towards the girl as he felt towards boy children the same age-as he would view something young and in distress. A vague feeling that he should protect her crept over him, and his voice was kinder than it would be to any adult as he said, “Hello, Amelie.”

He fumbled in his almost empty purse-it was getting so tallow candles would soon look good for dinner-and brought out a coin, which he tossed in the middle of the table and to which Aramis, silently, added two more. “Get us what wine those will buy, would you? A mug for each of us.”

The girl bowed and scrambled towards the bar and the woman behind it. Soon they could hear her whisper and hear the woman answer in harsh tones.

Athos ignored the exchange. No matter how tempted, it was neither possible nor desirable for him to save every stray waif in Paris. For one, there was a good chance he’d end up killed if he tried. And for another, his duty was somewhat more immediate. He’d sworn to serve king and country. And, in this particular case, he’d sworn to defend Monsieur de Treville, and to find out who’d killed this boy so that the boy’s death could not be used in a plot against the musketeers. Then there was his loyalty to his friends, and to Porthos, most of all, who was suffering from shock and grief at the death of the boy he’d considered some sort of apprentice.