“You, stop.” Came from behind them, in a scream.

Athos looked to Porthos, who shook his head slightly and continued walking down the path, as though nothing were the matter. They heard running steps after them, and an irate voice say, harshly, “Are you such a coward, sir, that you do not understand a challenge? I should have known that anyone who thought himself a friend of my son would be craven and-”

Porthos turned, and Athos turned also, just in time to see his friend intercept the old man who had been running straight towards Aramis. Porthos’s father’s left hand had been raised as if to strike a blow, and his right hand had been tugging at his sword. Porthos had grabbed both hands, holding them in their positions, immobile.

“I told you I made a mistake,” he said. “And my friend, too, made a mistake in trusting me to identify my childhood home. It’s clear to me you’re wholly a stranger and not my father. It is obvious to me that I do not know you. Go back to your house, please. And be at peace.”

It was clear to Athos, who was near enough to see the exchange, that Porthos was exerting some force in holding the old man, and that his father was forcing forward, still attempting to carry out who knew what mad attack on Aramis. For a long time they were locked like that, and Athos was sure that the second Porthos let go of the old man he would come running, madly, to attack one of them, to seek the fight which he seemed to believe was essential to his honor or his well being.

But instead, after a long while, the man shook his head and shrugged. “If you’re all such cowards that you won’t duel me, then it is obvious I might as well go inside and eat my supper.”

At the word “coward” Aramis stepped forward, but Athos held him, and the one small step must have been invisible in the dark, because the man turned and went back to the manor house.

“Athos, that was vile,” Aramis said, turning to Athos. “And Porthos also. Why wouldn’t you let me take up his challenge. Surely you’re not going to tell me filial duty held you in place, when he treats you in such a disgraceful way?”

Porthos shook his head slowly, like one in a dream. “Not… not duty exactly,” he said. “But Aramis, if you dueled him and killed him, it would be murder. He’s not the man I remembered. Time has not dealt kindly with him, and he was already old when I was born. You’d have killed him far too easily and once having killed him, you’d have accounted yourself a murderer the rest of your life. He’s not worth it, Aramis.”

Aramis looked like he was about to say something, but he must have seen Athos’s warning frown, because he stepped back.

It wasn’t till they’d come within sight of the village again, that Athos said, “And now what? Where will we sleep, Porthos? Is there a hostelry, hereabouts?”

Porthos, who had seemingly been immersed in thoughts of his own, now turned to look at Athos. “There is no hostelry,” he said. “Not for another two hours riding and that if we’re lucky, as I don’t remember very precisely. And that,” he said, “was a vile accommodation, fit only for the lowest of villains. You wouldn’t want to lodge there. It wouldn’t please you.”

Athos didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “I know this is all very well for you young people, but I’m past the age where I find it comfortable to sleep under a tree rolled in my cloak.”

“No need for that,” Porthos said, mounting his horse. “There is still one place around here where I may be sure of my welcome.”

They mounted, and the servants who had stayed fixed on the road behind them as they passed, mounted also, and followed them.

The Mill House; Childhood Friendship; Improvements and Fortune

PORTHOS led his friends, unerringly though the night, up a narrow path beaten in the surrounding forest probably centuries before by cows making their way from some forgotten field to some forgotten stable.

It had gotten almost pitch-dark, save for the curdled-milk glow of a distant quarter moon, and the path wound disastrously amid tall trees that obscured what residue of light there might be. At the place where it forked from the village street, Porthos dismounted again, and led the horse apace, telling his friends, “There are roots underneath and riding would lead to injury. Just follow me.”

Halfway into it, climbing a steep slope, Aramis hissed from behind, loudly enough for Porthos to hear, “Are you sure you know the way, Porthos?”

“Oh, sure and sure,” Porthos said. “Many times did I take this way in the dark of night or the sun of noonday. Many times as a child and as an adult.”

“Where does it lead,” Athos asked.

“To the home of my best friend,” Porthos said. And even as he said it, he wondered whether that was still true. He’d been gone for years, and so many things had changed. He’d left St. Guillaume as an obedient son and he now seemed to return as a proscribed criminal.

What else might have happened in the village. For all Porthos knew Rouge might well be dead, or could have turned wholly against Porthos by rumor or innuendo, or even by the long silence to which Porthos had subjected their standing friendship.

When Porthos had left, Rouge, a young miller’s son had just been married to his childhood sweetheart. The contrast between their romances-started the same way and almost at the same time-could not have been greater. When Porthos had left, Morgaine, Rouge’s wife had just been increasing. He wondered what the child was and what it had grown up to be. And did they have more? Thoughts and memories long forgotten rushed to his mind. Amelie and himself attending Rouge and Morgaine’s wedding and drinking far too much to celebrate the pledging of their troth.

A knot grew in his throat. He would have given a great deal to be back there. He was not normally given to fantastic dreaming nor to weaving fantasies of what could never be, but this, this he wished he could manage-to wind back time, like a string on a spool, to that point at which his father had convinced him to leave St. Guillaume and go to Paris. The point at which his father had promised, and promised faithfully at that, to make sure that Amelie found herself a husband and was happily bestowed.

Had his father failed on his promise? Had he lied all along? Or had Amelie braved it all for the love of Porthos?

Porthos could not know. He’d written a letter to Rouge and Morgaine when he’d changed his name and gone into the musketeers, but he’d not given them his address, and they’d never tried to find him. Thinking back, he believed he’d been afraid if they wrote back or visited him, they’d tell him that Amelie was happy and the mother of a brood. Why that had scared him then, he didn’t know. He’d now give half his life to know just that.

It was with a knot at his throat, a prickly feeling in his eyes that he got within sight of the mill house. And stopped. When he’d left, his friend’s house had been a small, low building-one large room, where the whole family-six children, five dogs, and the parents-all slept and cooked and lived. Above it on a hill kept clear cut and so situated that it enjoyed almost continuous breezes from the sea, stood the windmill proper-a wooden building equipped with blades as large as sails, beating continuously against the sky and propelling the stone grinders inside to produce flour. The miller had bought the wheat from everyone around here and ground it and sold it at market to people in other places-as well as renting the use of his mill to grind the flour the farmers themselves used.

It had been one mill, small and perhaps mean, befitting the surrounding countryside and the small horizons of St. Guillaume. Now, on the hill above there were five mills. Five of them, arrayed, their blades beating at the sky. And beneath the hill, sheltered, was a sprawling building, probably as large as the manor house, though built of brick instead of stone, and in far better repair.