Porthos sighed. “Yes. It seemed like someone should know.”

“But why not write to your father?” D’Artagnan asked, puzzled.

“Because my father doesn’t know how to read,” Porthos said.

“Oh,” D’Artagnan said, looking somewhat shocked.

It was something that Porthos thought his friends would never fully understand, the difference between their upbringing and his. His father thought a lord should care about war only. While Aramis had been brought up for the church. And Athos had grown up with the examples of the men of Greece and Rome, who had left dialogues and memoirs and who knew what else. As for D’Artagnan, from what he said, his life had been half lived in books filled with sagas and legends of heros.

“That’s why I wrote to Rouge and Morgaine,” he said. “So if I came to a bad end in Paris, and somehow word made it out, or Monsieur de Treville sent word out, someone would understand. And so if they needed anything… If anything happened to my father…”

Athos nodded. “Provident, almost. But I wonder how much they told the boy, and further how he contrived to get it out of them without ever giving away the fact that he hadn’t grown up with you and hadn’t, in fact, the slightest idea where you might live.”

“I think,” Porthos said. “That he was very cunning.”

“Certes, he must have been,” Aramis said, his mouth set in something that might have been humor or regret, or a bit of both.

“And then, after learning you were alive and in the musketeers, and, having seen your father, and perhaps having heard from your friends how much he himself looked like you and how much you, in turn, looked like your father, he decided to approach you. I wonder if he got the parish records of your family before or after finding out. If after, it was clearly with intention of approaching you.”

“By God’s Blood,” Porthos said. “I swear he never brought it up. He never told me I might be his father or tried in any way to extort money or protection.”

“No,” Athos said. “No. And like you, I wonder what that meant.”

“But surely,” Porthos said. “If he didn’t even know I was alive, he couldn’t be part of the Cardinal’s plot against me. Surely if the Cardinal plotted…”

“It was without Guillaume’s connivance?” Aramis asked. “Using him rather than enlisting him? I was thinking the same.”

“But then who could have done it?” D’Artagnan asked. “Other than Monsieur de Comeau. Would your father…”

Porthos sighed. “In the old days, I would tell you no. My father would be more likely to fell someone with a blow to the head, or attack them with the wood chopping ax than to use poison against them. But then, I don’t think my father ever went up against a boy child. And then, you know, my father despised cunning-the same way he despised reading and all those other arts he called effeminate. And I don’t know how he would choose to counteract someone he’d perceive as cunning and… sly. Plus there is the fact that my father is older than he was, and might not have known much about Paris or how to set about things in Paris. He could not have challenged Guillaume to a duel, at any rate.”

“No,” Athos said. “But would he resort to poison?”

Porthos shrugged. “He probably would not, still. Father is… a direct thinker. But he might have hired…”

Athos nodded. “Indeed he might. As might Amelie’s parents. Or did you not think of that?”

“I did think of that,” Porthos said. “I think we should talk to them tomorrow.”

The Comforts of the Bourgeoisie; Bees and Dogs; Where a Daughter Might Not Exist, but Her Shame Remains

ARAMIS had to admit that the comforts of this mill house were perhaps greater than the comforts of his mother’s house-a noble manor that was, granted, far more comfortable and cheerful than the abode of Porthos’s father, yet far from this world of fluffed sheets and blankets that smelled of rosemary and other herbs, as if they’d been rinsed in aromatic water.

Early morning the smell of baking bread pervaded the abode, as well it should have, he supposed, since its owners dealt in flour. But their trade did nothing to diminish the credit of having servants who brought warm water for washing and shaving as they did, with all the promptness and politeness that could be managed. And Aramis found himself thinking that perhaps he had been born entirely to the wrong class. He should have been born in a bourgeois household, growing prosperous and full of comforts. There wouldn’t then have been the idea of sending him to the church for the atonement of his mother’s youthful sins.

But then it occurred to him there just might have been. After all, these people seemed to have more of a care for their honor and more of a hidebound honor than even Aramis’s mother could manage. And that reflection of that thought on Aramis’s face seemed to cause a chill in the graceful smile of the wench who delivered the water.

Aramis summoned Bazin who had slept in what he described as a very adequate room at the back, a room shared between the musketeers’ servants and a group of young men who were either servants or young relatives of the master of the house-Bazin was not sure which.

Bazin had helped Aramis shave and brush his hair and dress with the efficiency of long experience. Afterwards, Aramis had read his breviary and said his prayers while the other three rose and proceeded to wash and shave and dress-though Aramis suspected D’Artagnan’s shaving was still more hopeful than necessary. Oh, the boy had a neat beard and a small moustache, but their very neatness, their appearance, was characteristic of hair growth that hadn’t fully come in yet, and not of hair that was carefully trimmed everyday.

At the table, over soup and bread, and honey-apparently the millers had their own bees-and while his wife struggled to keep a semblance of order amid their children, Rouge had said, “I suppose you’ll be going to Amelie’s parents, now, to see what the boy might have done there?”

“Yes,” Porthos said. “Yes. I must find out why they’ve been going to Paris and what they’ve been doing there.”

Rouge nodded. “There must have been a reason, if they didn’t go to reconcile with you and Guillaume. Though perhaps they visited Amelie’s grave.”

“That is possible,” Porthos said, suddenly melancholic, wondering where that pauper’s grave would be and if the sad parcel of ground was even marked.

The rest of breakfast passed with desultory conversation, before Rouge saw them out, with his best wishes, and Morgaine flung herself into Porthos’s arms for one last embrace before leaving. “You take care of yourself, Pierre,” she said. “And that boy of yours. And bring him to visit us soon, will you?”

Looking at Porthos, Aramis was amazed at how his un-subtle friend managed to keep a straight-and even cheerful-face through this, amazed that Porthos did not break down at these words. Oh, he understood his friend enough to know how the words must cut at him. But there was no way Morgaine could have guessed it.

It wasn’t till they were on the main road of the village again, riding into the morning sun, that Porthos permitted himself to wipe his face with the back of his hand, all the while complaining of the sun in his eyes and how it was making them tear. Aramis chose not to divest him of his disguise for his emotion.

They followed Porthos for a while, till they came to a road leading off the main road with its miserable hovels. Down amid fields they led the horses slowly because the road was too rocky and prone to sudden turns. Porthos made pertinent observations as they went. “This was all woods, or maybe sometimes pasture, when I left,” he would say now and then, when passing some verdant field, or some just-harvested one, or rounding the corner of a well-grown orchard. “All woods, and not very good land. I guess Rouge really did make a difference with his mills that pull water from the stream.”