and squinted at the light of the candles, to determine how many candles there really were and how they burned. He was fairly sure, in fact, that each of the candles did not support a roaring fire, but that was how he saw them, their light augmented by several extraneous auras.
“Over the past few hours,” Athos said, as he passed cups of wine around, “I have been awakened three times, each by one of you, and each time I’ve been greeted with a stranger story. It has become quite obvious to me that my best efforts to protect this group and keep you from harm have only spurned you to greater and more ridiculous feats of lunacy. So now I would like to know what each of you has discovered. Why don’t we start with you, Aramis, since you are the one who left this house earliest?”
Aramis, whose head still reverberated at every sound, looked at Athos in mute resentment. He was, alas, all too aware that Athos, in this mood, could not be gainsaid. Plus, he would be quite likely to grab Aramis by the nape of the neck again, and force yet more wine into him. There was that glint of amusement in his eyes, closely followed by a look of hard determination. It was a combination Aramis had never seen in Athos. D’Artagnan, yes, but Athos never.
“When I left here,” he said, “I decided to follow up on your impression that you had, in fact, seen your dead wife.” He unraveled the whole story of his meeting with Huguette, followed by his forced travel into the countryside, in the belly of a wooden box. He was in the sort of mood where he couldn’t think how to leave out the embarrassing parts—possibly because his hangover made him as awkward with words as must be Porthos’s normal predicament. He told the story morosely, including the insults that Jean and Marc had leveled at him, before he burst out of the box, and everywhere they had stopped afterwards and what they’d eaten.
Porthos had tried to interrupt, twice, only to have Athos hold his hand up for silence, so that Aramis had to continue unreeling the tale. Only when he got to the part where he’d arrived back at the city and been attacked by swordsmen again did he falter. “Only,” he said, “I don’t know if there were really any swordsmen, because to believe that, I have to believe, also, that there were several pigs and chickens and goats and that this was what allowed me to get away.”
“Well,” D’Artagnan said, “people in that neighborhood do keep livestock.”
Aramis could have warned D’Artagnan not to talk, because that would only bring Athos’s attention on him, but by the time he thought of it, of course, D’Artagnan had spoken and it was too late. Athos turned to him with a slow smile and said, “Why don’t you tell us where your follies have taken you, D’Artagnan?”
D’Artagnan told. Some of his words still boomed in Aramis’s head, but either Aramis’s headache was getting better, or D’Artagnan’s voice was not as loud and offensive to the strained cranium as Porthos’s and Athos’s could be.
The story he told was hard to piece together, mostly because Aramis felt as though he were trying to understand things through a field of blades. “You mean,” he finally said, “that Madame Bonacieux thought you had avoided her for the sake of fighting a duel? Why?”
Athos interrupted. “I believe I have the answer to that, but meanwhile, please finish your story, D’Artagnan.”
D’Artagnan finished it, and then Porthos was allowed to explain where he’d been and what he’d been doing. Since part of his efforts included listening to the conversation between Madame Bonacieux and Athos, something about it tickled Aramis’s mind.
“So,” he said. “Was the . . . No, I can’t believe it. I know I was suspicious that Marie might have sent the swordsmen after me—but it would be after me, because I insulted her. Never after the rest of you. And when this conversation happened, the insult couldn’t have happened yet.”
“It hadn’t,” Athos said. “I’ve . . . spoken to the duchess. What?” he said defensively towards Aramis. “A musketeer may speak with a duchess, you know?”
“Of course. Of course he may,” Aramis said, appeasing, not sure what had set off a storm of Athos’s always uncertain temper. “And she told you she hadn’t done it?”
“It seems hardly to matter, since you’ve asserted at the time she hadn’t