Sarah D'Almeida - The Musketeer's Apprentice

“A false name?” Porthos said. “Oh, yes, we considered it. That is why Aramis made drawings, when we went to ask for him, in case he had a different name.”

“But you’re looking for him in the palace?” Athenais said. “And where noblemen lodge? It has not occurred to you, my dear, that he might not be a nobleman at all? Just a street urchin the Cardinal employed in this? Or someone did?”

“But he…” It had never occurred to Porthos. And now it did, he felt cold and lost. Curse it all. If Guillaume wasn’t even a nobleman, then it meant he could be anyone at all in Paris. How were they to find his family. “But he behaved as a young gentleman,” he said.

Athenais nodded. “Manners are a thing anyone can pick up with just a little observation.”

“But… Athenais! How am I to find who he is, then?”

Athenais tilted her head a little. “I would go near where you found him. And start looking there.”

“Near where I found him…” Porthos said.

Athenais wrapped her veil around her head. “And now if you’d escort me to Armandine’s home, so I don’t have to brave the streets of Paris alone, I’ll make up something to account for my delay. That I was moved to go back and pray, perhaps.”

As she locked the door behind them, and he waited beside it, she said, “You know, I could hide the fact that this house hasn’t been let. I could hide it in the accounts. My husband would never know. And we could have it.”

“Why?” Porthos asked. “We have the rope ladder.”

“And every servant waiting for the bed to creak. This could be ours, just ours.”

He nodded saying nothing. He wished it was really theirs and their true home. Aloud, he said, “I found the boy lying against the back wall of a tavern.”

“Then that’s where I would look first,” she said. “That tavern and the immediate neighborhood.”

D’ARTAGNAN stood up at the sound of running steps on the stairs. In his mind, he formed a picture where some intruder had pushed past Mousqueton and was now rushing up the stairs to do them who knew what mischief.

He noticed that Athos and Aramis had put their hands on their swords, and he, in turn, let his hand drift towards his. Only then did he think that he’d not heard anything from Mousqueton who’d gone down the stairs to open the door on the pounding.

And there was only one person that Mousqueton would let climb the stairs without at least making some remark… He thought this, just as Porthos, red hair in disarray, face almost as red from running as his hair, climbed the last step and emerged onto the broad room.

“I’ve found-” he said, and stopped, breathing hard, and bending over, hands on knees, as he recovered his breath.

“What?” Athos asked.

“Have you found the murderer?”

“Have you found the boy’s family?” D’Artagnan asked, while he thought that Porthos, who rarely breathed hard after duels, must have run all the way to tell them this.

Porthos looked at D’Artagnan and nodded, as he straightened. “I found where the boy came from. Not his family.” He frowned. “At least I don’t think so. I didn’t go in and ask. But I found where he… lived. And worked.”

“Worked?” Aramis asked. He stood frozen, as he had risen from the table, his hand now fallen beside his sword and he looked shocked at the thought that the boy might have worked.

“We were all fools, you know?” Porthos said. “I thought we were missing something, but it never occurred to me what it might be till I spoke to Athenais.”

“Athenais!” Aramis said.

And along Athos’s lips, a smile slid, as if wordlessly affirming he’d been right after all.

Porthos looked at Aramis and frowned. “Of course, Athenais. Where else would I have gone like that, without warning?”

“I didn’t know where you had gone,” Aramis said. “And I half suspected you might have been killed or kidnapped, or… somehow tricked into leaving the palace. You told me you’d wait for me in the courtyard.”

Porthos’s face fell. He looked remorseful and also upset at himself. He slapped his own forehead with some force. “Indeed I did, Aramis. I’m sorry. Did I worry you?”

“I knew you were too evil to die that easily,” Aramis said, and looked intently at his nails, as if examining them for imperfections. As if Porthos’s disappearance had left him quite unmoved.

Porthos smiled, not at all taken in, then frowned, in obvious contrition. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to wander away. I didn’t realize I’d done it until I was almost at Athenais’s home, and then it seemed a little silly to go back. I didn’t even know why I was doing it, you know, except, as Hermengarde-your excellent Hermengarde, Mousqueton-” He nodded to his servant who smiled. “As she was going about the rounds of making sure no one in the palace had heard of the boy or seen him, all I could think of was that she wouldn’t find anything. I just had a feeling. And such feelings in me usually mean my mind knows something I don’t know.”

“Your mind cannot know something you don’t know,” Aramis said, giving up the examination of his nails. He sounded irritated, which-D’Artagnan thought-was the way Aramis normally sounded around Porthos. “Your mind is yourself.”

Porthos shook his head. “No, Aramis,” he said. “Your mind is yourself. My mind… Well… Sometimes I think I do half my thinking with my elbows or perhaps my toe-nails. And they don’t always talk to my mind, you see?”

“Nonsense. No one can think except with their mind and-”

“Well, Aramis,” Porthos said. “Sometimes I know things my mind can’t put into words. And sometimes I’m not even sure what I know until I have talked it over with someone.”

“So you went to speak to Athenais,” D’Artagnan said.

“Yes.”

“And what did the incomparable Athenais reveal?” Athos asked.

Porthos turned towards Athos quickly, as if suspicious of irony in the older musketeer’s tone, but on looking at Athos, and, apparently, finding only honest curiosity in his gaze, he sighed and shook his head. “The incomparable- and she is that, Athos-” he said, as Athos nodded, “Athenais told me that we’d been overlooking a very important chance that the boy might have lied to us.”

“Nonsense,” Aramis said. “You’re losing your wits. I told you from the beginning that it was possible he was lying to us. That was why I thought I should do a drawing of him. So that we were not dependant on the name Guillaume Jaucourt to find him. I thought there was a good chance the name was false.”

“Yes, but none of us thought of looking beyond the name,” Porthos said.

“What do you mean?” Aramis asked. “You speak in riddles.”

“It is plain.”

“I don’t see how,” Athos said.

“Really, Porthos,” D’Artagnan said, trying to sound more reasonable than his two aggrieved and older friends. “You’ve told us nothing except that we should look beyond the name. In what way do you mean?”

“Well,” Porthos said. “What else could be false?”

“I knew it,” Aramis said. “He was a plant by the Cardinal. ”

“No,” Porthos said. “Or at least… I don’t know so yet. But he was not what he said he was. Athenais said that any plebeian boy can learn to act noble with a little wit and a little practice. And that started me thinking… And she said I should go and ask near where I found him. Just ask people in the neighborhood. That they were more likely to give me an answer than anyone else was.”

“So, what was the boy’s real name?” Aramis asked.