Dying by the Sword - By Sarah D'Almeida Page 0,121

seen something and who could say . . .”

“What if we had someone who says he’s seen something?” Athos said, suddenly.

“Someone?” Aramis asked.

“Some lady, an inmate of the palace, who claims they’ve seen the murder of Hermengarde up close,” he said. “And who is willing to confront Langelier and pretend to blackmail him, while we wait right by, and intervene when needed. We’d have to have witnesses, of course . . .”

“Don’t even think on it,” D’Artagnan said. “I mean to make peace with Constance as soon as possible, and I’m sure she’s very brave and she would gladly offer to help, but the truth is, my friends, she is a delicate lady, gently nurtured and—”

“I know a lady who would delight in it,” Athos said. “She lives for danger and madcap defiance of odds.”

“You do?” Aramis asked, looking at him, at the same time that the other two echoed him, and D’Artagnan continued, “You know a lady?”

“Well,” Athos said, and smiled a little, with his old irony. “Certainly that can’t be any stranger than Aramis knowing a man.” And without giving them time to realize he’d made a joke, “The Duchess de Chevreuse would, I’m sure, lend herself to our schemes. If only Aramis asks her nicely. And you see, because she knows Aramis so well, if Pierre Langelier tried to tell her she’d mistaken them one for the other . . .”

“Her denial would carry force,” Aramis said. “By the Mass, Athos, I believe you are right! Get me writing paper,” he said, to the room at large. “And a pen. And ink. I shall send her a note right away.

“Shouldn’t you find out what you are supposed to tell her, first?” Athos asked, his voice vibrating with amusement. “Like . . . where she should meet us, and what we should do?”

“Not at the workshop,” Porthos said. “Too many swords, and those hammers, and perhaps his friends too. We could never guarantee her safety.”

“No,” Athos said. “It must be someplace that he thinks he’s utterly safe.”

“I’ve got it,” Aramis said, and his own shout set his head aching again.

Where His Musketeerness Discusses a Plan; The Advantages of Dealing with a Shifty Character

“SO you didn’t talk to him that night?” Aramis asked. “Yesterday night? After we went back.” He had tracked Marc’s and Jean’s farms—they were brothers-in-law, and their farms adjoined each other—after he’d found the place on the edge of town where they’d dropped off the oxcart. The family there, distant cousins of Marc’s, had been able to direct him.

On horseback, and at his speed, he’d gotten there in an hour instead of ten, and now he stood by the black horse he’d borrowed from Monsieur de Treville’s stables, and discussed the matter of their plan and their need of a place with the two rustics.

“Well, we talked to him, in fact, and he’s supposed to marry Marie. We didn’t tell him that we’d thought we’d put him a box,” Jean said, looking sheepish.

“No, I imagine you didn’t,” Aramis said. And he didn’t imagine that Pierre knew that part either, else he would not have had his friends waiting for Aramis—he would have sent someone to find what he’d learned from his acquaintances in the country. Or to kill him halfway home.

He looked at the two of them, in their smocks and clearly in the middle of their working day. Would they be able to understand him? They hadn’t struck him as stupid. A little . . . different perhaps, but in no way worse than Porthos. Their curious approach to life, in any case, had probably saved his life.

Deciding, suddenly, he poured out the story to them, of how they’d realized it was Pierre’s doing, and of what they proposed to do about it. After he was done, they were silent a long time, and then Jean looked at Marc, “I knew it. Or at least I suspicioned it all along, because, you know what Marie is like. She always falls for bad lots. Remember what she was like with that one-legged peddler.”

Fascinating as the idea was, Aramis did not wish to pursue the case of the one-legged peddler. Instead, he said, seriously, “I know you’ll think that I should, in fact, do my best to find one of his armed friends who would be willing to confess, but . . .”

“Oh, no, your musketeerness,” Marc said. “That would be fatal, because it would tell Pierre you know. It would not at all do. After all,