Sarah D'Almeida: The Musketeer's Apprentice

“That I believe,” D’Artagnan said, with the sound of an exclamation that escapes the speaker unawares.

Aramis nodded at the young man. “And that you might. But the thing is, I have reason to believe, from his skin still being very dry, that he died of belladonna. This can’t be sure, but I’d wager it.” As he spoke, he started looking through the corpse’s attire.

“Aramis!” Porthos said. “Surely you don’t mean to search him.”

“Surely I do,” Aramis said.

“But his family!”

“We must find his family. And there is no one to tell us who they are or where they live.”

“He said his name was Guillaume Jaucourt.”

“A name none of us has heard. Porthos let me look. A letter, or some trinket with a coat of arms will get us that much closer to restoring this child to the relatives who, for all we know, search for him in vain even now.”

But the doublet had no hidden pockets. It wasn’t till Aramis patted the corpse down-gently as though some part of him feared waking the child-that he found, beneath the edge of the doublet a leather purse. And within the leather purse…

Aramis removed the purse and the tie that held it at the child’s waist, and went through its contents.

There was only a sheaf of pages, looking like paper that had been scavenged a bit from everywhere at random and cut or torn into random sheets. The top of the first one read in the uncertain, scrawled handwriting of a child just learning to write, “The genealogy of Monsieur Pierre du Vallon.”

This was enough to raise Aramis’s eyebrows and peak his attention because if very few people in Paris remembered Porthos’s family name, even fewer had ever known his first name. Aramis knew it only as the result of long and close friendship. He scanned the pages. It was damning indeed.

Oh, Aramis knew very well that Porthos wasn’t of as long or noble a line as his own or Athos’s. From his father’s refusal to let him learn to read or any other book learning- which Porthos had only remedied once he’d come to Paris and been on his own-to Porthos’s broad shoulders and the way he approached life, all bespoke a family so close to its own peasants that they were only above them by reason of birth. Or perhaps not even that.

Aramis frowned at the pages. If this was true, if the words on this page were copies of old records or recordings of old gossip, then Porthos’s ancestors had been born plebeian and grown rich through trade until, having enough money and having purchased enough lands, they had declared themselves noble and stopped the payment of the feudal labor tax and claimed ancient noble ancestors. In all this they had been aided by the great plague that had swept the land.

There were notes referring to the monasteries and village churches where the supposed originals of these records were kept.

“Porthos,” Aramis said and, without explanation, passed the sheets of paper to Porthos.

Porthos frowned at them, squinting, and flipping through the pages. Then he let the pages fall from his hand as if he’d lost all interest in them. He looked at the small corpse, his brow knit in incomprehension. “He had a recording of my family line? What does that mean? Is that how he found my true name.”

“Not unless the recording came with a drawing of you,” Aramis said acerbically. He repented it immediately as Porthos shook his head. Porthos wasn’t stupid, but he was, at the best of times, too literal. And now, in shock… “No, Porthos, think. He couldn’t have known it from that… What concerns me is what it says. About your ancestors. Did he tell you he knew that?”

“What?” Porthos asked, still frowning in confusion.

“That your ancestors had ennobled themselves more or less on their own fiat,” Athos said. He’d picked up the pages and was looking through them. “By stopping payment of the labor tax and claiming noble ancestors. Before that they were bourgeoisie engaged in… horse trade?”

Porthos smiled. It wasn’t an expression of joy but an almost sardonic pull of the lips in a face not accustomed to reflecting subtle emotions. “Ah. Yes. My ancestors were bourgeoisie. Does that make you despise me, Athos?”

Athos frowned, then sighed. “Porthos, we’ve been friends for years. There’s nothing that would make me despise you. I’m just saying that society at large might view your-”

“I don’t give a horse’s ass for society at large,” Porthos said, visibly startling Athos. Then sheepishly, added, “I’m sorry. I know I’m not as noble as you, Aramis. I’m probably not as noble as D’Artagnan and no one is as noble as Athos.” He said it without irony and probably did not mean the sting that made blood surge, visibly, in Athos’s face. “But why would this child have those papers? Who cares? Who, unless it is someone considering a marriage alliance with my family.”

Aramis gave up on finding anything else on the small corpse. No jewelry, no coin, nothing-nothing he could find, at least without a more thorough and tasteless search than he was willing to undertake. He stood up and looked at Porthos who, in turn, rose slowly to his feet, as though half aware of defending himself against an accusation none of them was going to voice.

“Porthos, any other nobleman, or almost any other nobleman would consider it a great shame to be known as having bourgeois blood. And you are known in the land for being a proud man who romances princesses and duchesses.”

Porthos shrugged. “All this”-he held up the pages- “can be found in our parish records, if you’re willing to dig. And it was two hundred years ago and more. Since then my ancestors have married women descended from noble families. In all, we probably have as many noble ancestors as anyone else, Athos always excepted, of course.”

“Porthos-” Athos said, a hint of warning in his voice.

“No, Athos, no. Truly. I can’t imagine your family marrying anything less than women with as full a pedigree and as great a noble background as yourself. You’re probably descended several times over from Caesar and Hercules and Hannibal and them all.”

A smile-one of the few, rare, untroubled smiles to grace Athos’s face-slid over the older musketeer’s lips and, his voice showing amusement and not offense, he said, “I doubt Hercules and Hannibal, but if I understand your meaning, you do not mean to give offense.”

“Not at all,” Porthos said. “And that”-he pointed at the sheaf of papers now in Athos’s hand-“doesn’t offend me, nor would it offend me if the word got out. Who in this land can point with certainty to a pedigree longer than two hundred years. Princes have less, if the mother line were investigated.”

“You’re missing the important part,” D’Artagnan said. He’d stood in the background, half in shadows, holding his hat to his chest as if he were at a funeral service. Now he spoke, his voice trembling a little and his dark eyes looking haunted by something he couldn’t quite name. “You’re missing the whole thrust of this, all of you. The thing is not whether Porthos is noble enough or not.” The young Gascon smiled, a sudden sardonic smile. “Coming from Gascony and from a family scarcely wealthier than the farmers around it, I can’t promise I’m even as noble as Porthos, so I’d be the last to condemn our friend’s ancestry. And I don’t know how the dead boy found it out, and that, too, is perhaps important but not now. The most important thing, right now, is what he hoped to gain by having it. It is clear…” D’Artagnan looked over Athos’s shoulder at the scribbled pages. “It is clear at least to me that this was written in a boy’s untutored hand. So chances are great he copied it himself. But why? And what did he hope to gain from it?”