suddenly and startlingly. “Overgrown boys, all of them. Much mischief, and all that, but also high ideals, and wanting to rescue others. Not the stuff of which murderers are made.”
D’Artagnan, stunned by the idea that anyone could call Athos—Athos!—an overgrown boy, and imagining the response of Alexandre, Count de la Fere, no matter how submerged under his nom de guerre, to such an assessment of his character, could not find words to speak, and before he could, the boy, Xavier, said, “Only they say he’d lost consciousness at a hammer that fell from the overhead rack and hit him on the head.”
The baker snorted. “Yes, and that’s likely enough, isn’t it? Xavier, you’ve been in the shop, as have I. There are no hammers on the racks, overhead. Only swords and such. Besides, as high as those racks are, if a hammer had hit the boy on the head, he’d not be unconscious, he’d be dead, and his brain, likely as not, splattered all over the floor.”
“Yes, but . . .” Xavier said. “Something must have happened.”
“Ah, you see,” the baker said, and then suddenly, “What is your name, son?” to D’Artagnan.
“Henri,” D’Artagnan said and then, acutely aware that to pronounce his father’s family name would give away his true origin, “Henri Bayard.”
“Well, Henri, what I say is that we don’t know the half of the story, and that it will all become clear in time, and it is none of our business. You and Xavier might find all this very exciting, and stuff to dream on. But the thing is . . .” He shrugged. “Murderers are not usually grabbed at the scene of the crime like that. It’s not usually that simple, is it?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” D’Artagnan said, startled at his own capacity for lying. “I’ve never been close enough to a murder to . . . to observe it.”
“And lucky you should count yourself.”
“But then . . .” D’Artagnan said, contriving to seem disappointed—which he was. Or at least frustrated at his inability to question the man. “But then you don’t believe this was done by the musketeer’s servant?”
The baker shrugged. “No. Or at least, I don’t believe it was, though sometimes people do things you don’t expect and would never have thought of them. But why Boniface, such a nice young man, with a sunny disposition—oh, light with his fingers, but everyone must have a failing—should feel the need to murder the armorer is quite beyond my reckoning. You see . . .” He shrugged. “He came around to the armorer’s a lot. Monsieur Langelier, in fact, had plans for him.”
“Plans?” D’Artagnan asked, shocked. Almost as shocked as to find that here Mousqueton went by Boniface, his name before he had become Porthos’s servant.
“Well . . .” The baker smiled. “Ah well. That is probably all ruined now, because her brother would never allow it, not and have to pay out money from what—I hear—is already a much eaten inheritance for her dowry. But you see, besides his son and heir, the armorer has a daughter.”
“Faustine,” Belle said, and giggled, as if the name itself were very funny.
“Aye, Faustine, twenty-five if she’s a day, and no one has ever looked at her twice.”
“She has cross-eyes,” Belle said, and made a face.
“Now, child,” her mother said, mildly. “That is not charitable.”
“Neither is she. Temper like a viper and a tongue like the devil,” Belle said.
“Well, and all that might be true,” the baker said. “But Langelier always said she would have a good enough dowry, something, you know, to start a shop, or to buy a house, or to do with what she wanted. She and her husband. And a boy like Boniface, well set up and kind, even if he was a musketeer’s servant . . . well . . . And eventually the musketeer might make something of himself too—not to mention that half of them are grand seigneurs, noblemen in disguise, here to escape some debt or work out some crime . . . well, Boniface would be all right, might still be, I daresay. And Langelier thought, what with all that, he couldn’t do better than marry him to his Faustine. So he’d been talking to him, slow like, leading him gently by the reins, as it were.” He broke another piece of bread and bit into it. “You see, the young man never had money for the sword repairs his master asked for, and so he was in