“Ah, D’Herblay,” Father Laurence said. He popped up around a set of shelves with every appearance of a jack-in-the-box coming forth from the confined space. Truth be told, he looked more than anything like one of those trained monkeys that court ladies kept around for show, only slightly bigger and slightly less hairy. His features were almost entirely simian, his nose just slightly more prominent than that of a monkey. And his eyes, like a monkey’s, peered dark and preternaturally intelligent from deep sockets. The black cowl around his face made the whole look incongruous, like a child’s prank or a lady’s idea of a joke.

That he was grinning inanely with pleasure at Aramis’s visit would have alarmed a man who knew him less well. But Aramis only smiled and said, “You know very well, Brother Laurence, that I have laid that name by and will not resume it until I think myself purged of my sin and capable-”

“You’ll not resume it until you’re done playing the musketeer, ” the little man said, waving the rest of Aramis’s intended speech away. “Come, come, I am no fool. Aramis, then, if you insist on being Aramis. Glad to see you. It’s been at least two weeks, and I haven’t told you any of my new experiments. I’m almost sure I’ve found an herb to suppress cough. You know, in winter it is often the cough and the tiredness of it that kill our aged ones.”

Aramis had never been able to understand why Brother Laurence assumed that Aramis had the same interest in his herbal medicines that he himself possessed, save that, he supposed, the little man got to speak with precious few people. His brothers, doubtless, not being fools, avoided the workshop if they could. Aramis always thought that had been the reason to locate it at the back of the house, facing the still sizeable backyard.

Oh, doubtless, it also made it convenient for Brother Laurence to tend to the herbs and trees and cultivate the odd plants that were part of his materials. But at the same time, it took him out of the main flow of the house, so that no one need pass by the workshop unless he meant to go there.

Like all lonely people, Brother Laurence talked a great deal. And yet, while being led from bubbling pot to deep, clay keeping jar, to yet another interesting concoction of macerated herbs at the bottom of some mortar vase, Aramis thought of how useful Laurence was to his community. He’d come here in winter, sometimes in search of medicines for Bazin who was as likely as not to suffer from a weak chest, and he’d seen the little man bring relief to many suffering from colds or other infections of the head and chest.

Brother Laurence brought him, with a flourish, towards a bench and handed him a little container of some pomade, saying, “And that should hasten the healing of any wounds you get in your duels. I had the recipe from a Gascon monk who visited.”

Aramis took the salve, wondering if it was the same not so secret Gascon recipe that D’Artagnan swore by.

“I thank you, Brother Laurence,” Aramis said, holding the salve in his hand and contemplating what to do with it, since he wore no capacious waist-pouch which would ruin the lines of his elegant attire, and he surely had not enough space for this jar of salve within his sleeves. So he held the smooth ceramic pot in his hand, and turned it round and round as he said, “But what I’ve come to you for is… a little different.”

Brother Laurence turned around and fixed Aramis with an intent look of his simian-like eyes. “Different?” he said, his voice seeming to echo itself in various tones of worry.

“It is…” Aramis said. “A child. A friend of mine…”

The Benedictine’s eyebrows rose. “My dear D’Her- Aramis. You probably know more of foundling homes than I do. You could not-”

“It is not a foundling. It is-”

“Oh, that. You must know my friend, that while there are herbal remedies that stop the life within the woman there are none that do not endanger the mother also, and you-”

Aramis shook his head. “Not that, Brother. Not that. I’m well aware of my sins of propinquity and unchastity.” He raised his hand as he saw the little Benedictine open his lips to speak. “But it is not that. At any rate I’ve never had to face that trouble. If things had been different…” He shook his head. “As it is the matter concerns not me, but a good friend of mine, and the child involved is not his, but only a boy to whom he agreed to teach the art of fencing.”

The little benedictine remained mercifully silent, possibly surprised by such an unusual problem for a musketeer, while Aramis poured out the entire tale of woe involving Guillaume, and the symptoms of the boy’s death.

“Nightshade,” the Benedictine said, rubbing his chin. “Aye, it might very well be that, for look here, the berries ripen around now. Yes, it might very well be that. And many householders grow nightshade beside their doors, as an ornamental plant. But…” He chewed the side of his lip. “All you tell me, so far, makes sense, as far as sense goes. The boy had a dry mouth, was red and dreaming awake, as it were. Yes, it sounds like nightshade poisoning right enough.” He opened his arms, palm outward. “I don’t understand what you want me to do in the matter though?”

“Oh… There are questions,” Aramis said. “Other questions than the simple fact of how the boy might have died. You see, while it is true what you say, and I’m sure I’ve seen the bush around Paris, there are people, perhaps, who wouldn’t be in a position to go out and lop off leaves from a bush to poison anyone. People who… it could be said… would want a more concentrated dose, and more lethal. People in a position of power who…”

The Benedictine’s eyebrows rose again. “You mean, in sum, his eminence Cardinal Richelieu, I suppose?”

Aramis shrugged. “Someone of prominence, whosoever they might be,” he said. “Someone who would not be in a position to run to the garden and cut leaves, or to bake a pie incorporating them. You see, if this child was as I suppose him to be, streetwise and capable, I don’t think he would easily be tempted by a dainty full of poisonous berries. Doubtless he would have tasted them or known them.”

The Benedictine spread his hands again, this time in a seeming show of helplessness. “I always think that you gentlemen in the King’s Musketeers are a little too obsessed with the Cardinal, as though if his eminence were to achieve all his goals France would be lost by it. And yet, I’d swear the man, though he enriches himself a bit, is not even as corrupt as most of our noblemen. He doesn’t seem to crave riches or women or…”

“It is power he craves,” Aramis said. “Just power. Surely you understand that.”

“But a craving for power doesn’t mean the power is necessarily wrong. It seems to me the Cardinal’s aims are as much for the good of France as anyone else’s at court. He might have different ideas as to what that good might be, but that is about it. Surely…”

Aramis shrugged. He transferred the jar to his left hand and examined the nails of his right hand, something he always did when immersed in thought. In anyone else making this speech, he would have suspected a fatal sympathy for the Cardinal, such as might mean Brother Laurence was already the churchman’s agent. But Brother Laurence wasn’t like that. He was one of those creatures who go through life thinking more than doing-and more involved in his studies than in any human affairs. If the Cardinal were an herb, then surely Brother Laurence’s opinion would be soundly and carefully reasoned. The Cardinal, and France and the court for that matter being either people or assemblies of them, the good brother’s opinion would be slightly less well thought out. “I’m not going to dispute with you,” he said. “Whether the Cardinal’s ideas for France are correct or whether the King’s or… other people’s are. I’m just going to say that surely you don’t doubt, in the pursuit of his objectives, the Cardinal would not spare the life of a child.”