None of them answered. It was doubtful whether their servants behind could even have understood a word of their exchange or what it all meant.

At the end of the road with its border of fields, they came upon a compound that rivaled the houses in Paris – with two pillars supporting a tall iron gate, and the area walled high all around. “Holá,” Porthos said. “And this wasn’t here either.”

However, Porthos’s view of gates was always-in Paris or the country-that he would pound upon them till they, presently, opened up.

These opened up-once more proving that rumors flew wide and fast in any village-to show a group of young men, villainous and scruffy, holding pitchforks and various farm implements. Aramis handed the reins of his horse to Bazin and stepped forward, his hand on the pommel of his sword. He’d rarely had to fight this kind of crowd, and he knew that they would obey no rule of combat, and yet, if the day had come that three musketeers of the King-or rather four, since D’Artagnan was a musketeer in all but his uniform-couldn’t take on ten undisciplined youths, then it was time to relinquish the country to the untutored rabble.

“What do you want?” one of the boys, in the front asked, glaring. Behind them there were several dogs, barking and showing teeth. Mutts all of them, none showing the sleek lines or the careful discipline of hunting dogs. Mere brutes, trained to do violence and nothing more.

“I wish to speak to the owner of the house,” Porthos said. And then, focusing on the boy nearby. “My word. Aren’t you Evrard’s boy?” he asked.

The lout who had spoken, a straw-headed creature with flat nose and all the marks of a brutish nature, glared, but was silent, as though disarmed.

“Let me see if I remember your name… You are… Mathis, are you not?”

The young man looked to the side, to another boy so similar to him that for sure he was a brother or a cousin, and the other boy glared at Porthos in turn. “Grandpa said we were not to open the door to you, and that he had nothing to say to you. He said you’ve done enough harm.”

“Have I?” Porthos asked, mildly. He looked at the boy, frowning slightly. “You’d be Lucas, would you not?”

The young man glared and made some frantic gesture with his hand and, as though at his command, all the other boys started forward, to close the gate. They were a little too slow. At their movement, which took a little time to coordinate, Porthos moved forward and placed his foot in the way of the closing gate.

Aramis stared only half believing. Many times in the past, he’d seen Porthos engage in feats of strength which other men could only watch openmouthed. However, even he was shocked, as Porthos, his foot firmly planted, withstood the ten youths attempting to close the gate by brute force. The gate creaked and trembled, and Porthos’s foot and leg seemed to tremble, also, with the effort, but the gate made no progress towards closing.

One of the pack of boys called out something inarticulate and whistled, and suddenly all the boys scrambled away from the opening while a dog-or at least Aramis assumed the blur was a dog, for in the circumstances it could have been a giant wolf-charged towards Porthos, growling.

Before Aramis, or Athos, or D’Artagnan, could do more than take a step forward, the creature was on Porthos. And it took Aramis a blink and a deep breath before he saw Porthos was in no danger. Rather, having bent down, he had grabbed the animal by its collar and now held it aloft, scrambling and suffocating.

“Let my dog down, you pup,” a man’s voice said, loudly from within. “Let him down, I say. Would you kill my best guard dog?”

“Do you promise not to send your dogs or your boys at myself or my friends?” Porthos asked.

“Yes. Let him go,” the man said, his voice betraying that he must hold this dog in some peculiar affection.

Porthos immediately let the animal drop, and it proved to have no lasting damage, as it first fell heavily, but then struggled onto its legs and, whining, crawled away.

The man who stepped forward to examine it and pat it was perhaps in his late fifties, a tall and spare man, with white hair and a face marked by the creases of a farmer who lived most of his life outside. His beard was wild, and his eyes glared above it. “You had no right,” he said. “This is a respectable house. You have no right to come here, lord or no lord.”

Aramis judged this had gone far enough. He stepped forward. “Old man,” he said. “You have no right to address one of the King’s own Musketeers that way. For it would be disrespect to the King himself, and that in turn would force all the King’s Musketeers to fight you.”

The old man looked at Aramis, and his mouth dropped open. Aramis judged that in these heathen parts they’d never seen a man wearing the latest in soft over-breeches of finest velvet, and perhaps not the looser doublets that were now fashionable. At least everyone he had met here, even the better dressed, tended to favor the tight-fashioned clothes that Athos relished wearing, in the fashion of ten to twenty years ago.

At this moment, as though to increase the man’s confusion, Athos stepped forward. He was doing his best grand seigneur impression, his head thrown back, his hand on the pommel of his sword, and, despite his worn and faded uniform, he managed to look far more the nobleman than Aramis knew he’d ever look. Aramis wanted to glare at Athos, but he knew that would be fruitless, as they’d had this contest many times before and each time Aramis had lost. So, instead, he glared intently at the man.

“My friend came to ask you some questions,” Athos said. “By order of the King. Questions pertaining to the youth who called himself Guillaume and who-”

“I never met any youth named Guillaume,” the farmer said, glaring back at all four of them, since D’Artagnan had taken this opportunity to step forward and stand on the other side of Porthos.

“Oh, surely you jest,” Athos said. “For you see we have accurate information that the youth came here, and we are on his Majesty’s orders to find all we can about his visit and about what he might have said and done.”

Aramis was briefly, breathtakingly impressed by Athos’s capacity to lie. And then he realized that Athos was speaking nothing but the truth. For, after all, they were here on the orders of Monsieur de Treville, and it was doubtless that Monsieur de Treville was speaking on behalf of the King himself. Therefore, since they were investigating the murder at the behest of their captain, they were under the King’s orders to investigate whatever Guillaume had done on his visit to the village of St. Guillaume.

The farmer frowned. “The boy weren’t nothing but his whelp. His whelp and that of the abandoned slut who-”

“Enough,” Porthos said. He stepped forward. “Enough.” His hand went up and closed around the farmer’s neck. “You will not speak of her that way. You-”

“I’ll speak of her as I please. And you know she was a slut, since you was the one who debauched her,” the farmer said, glaring up at Porthos, unafraid of the giant’s hand at his throat.

“Porthos,” Athos said. “That solves nothing.”

“God’s truth,” Porthos said. “And I know it doesn’t. But I would feel better for knowing there was one less villain in the world. How could anyone send his own daughter out into the world, alone and with child, just because they think she marred their precious honor!”

“Oh, it’s very easy for you to speak of honor that way,” the farmer said, stepping back from Porthos’s hand, back from the reach of Porthos’s fingers. “You have lands and papers that prove your family is noble. We have nothing but this farm and what we can make grow with the sweat of our brows. If I allowed the slut to live here, I could only give my other girls in marriage to the poorest of the poor. No respectable merchant or attorney would trust a woman who came from such a tainted background. And why should they, when she had no dowry, either? Now I have made some, and my granddaughters shall leave the house with enough money on their stocking foot to see them to a good marriage. But back then I didn’t. In corrupting my daughter-”