handed one to each of them. D’Artagnan looked at his own dubiously. “I’m not sure if it’s such a good idea after all the brandy.”
But Aramis spoke up. “Drink it, D’Artagnan, for I’m sure that Athos will let you have accommodation for the night, and truth be told, I don’t think you should go back to your lodgings. Not in your state.”
Athos waved the servants away, tossed back a cup of the full-bodied wine, then poured yet another and drank it. And found Aramis watching him with a cool look. “When you drink so much, Athos, it can only be because you wish to make yourself drunk. And if you wish to make yourself drunk, it can only be because—as you accused us earlier—you have been running all about, trying to get yourself killed.”
Athos frowned at him. “Wide off the mark, my friend,” he said, quietly. “Wide off the mark. When I wish to get myself drunk, it is that I am very much afraid I might kill someone. And not in duel.”
Aramis’s eyebrows went up. He took a sip of his wine, and said, almost fearfully, “Athos, you must tell us—what have you done?”
“Well,” Athos said. He walked towards the window, and looked out through the small panes of glass towards the street immersed in darkness. “I know you will, all of you, consider me disloyal, but I could not consider that Monsieur de Treville would have any hold over the Cardinal. Not if the Cardinal felt that his own life or interests were threatened.”
“No, I don’t consider you disloyal,” Aramis said.
“Nor I, either,” D’Artagnan said, his words slightly slurred by the drink. “The thing is, I thought that Monsieur Treville might very well be able to delay the execution of Mousqueton, but only that. There would be little else he could do.”
“It has occurred to me,” Porthos said, “that there wouldn’t be much the captain could do. I mean, they . . . they torture people in the Bastille, and if he couldn’t keep Mousqueton from being tortured, then he couldn’t keep him from being executed. People will confess to anything under torture.”
“So you all agree with me,” Athos said, as he drank yet another cup of the wine. It would take a while to take effect. All the more so, because he had long since grown used to the wine as a palliative for his distress. But even so, the more he drank, the more he would look to his friends as though he had justification for any wild words, or wild thoughts. He was glad too that there were only three candles lit in the room, so that perforce the details of his expression would be obscured to their eyes. He walked from the chairs to the window, then back again.
“You are behaving like a caged lion, Athos,” Aramis said. “And this, again, is never good.”
Athos shrugged. “I think there’s very little good in recent events. Let me explain first, my reasoning, when the three of you left me standing alone on a street corner while you went to investigate multiple and disparate things.” He walked towards the window again. “I thought that since the captain could do next to nothing against the Cardinal, it would come down to the Cardinal in the end, and we would have to deal with him directly.
“Now I couldn’t imagine living like this, waiting for the Cardinal’s trap to spring, so I . . .”
“So you did what you always do, and ran headlong into the trap?” Porthos asked.
Athos gave his large friend a surprised glance. Sometimes one forgot that Porthos, for all his difficulties with language, had a mind sharp enough to see through people’s motives. He shrugged and felt his cheeks heat. “You could say that,” he admitted, at length. “You could say I did, for you see, I reasoned that if it finally came to the Cardinal wanting someone to . . . to defray the conspiracy, I would . . .”
“No.” Aramis had half risen from his seat, his features contorted by something like anger. “You cannot have meant to deliver the Queen to the Cardinal, for that must be your whole plan.”
Athos frowned at his friend, and finished drinking the cup of wine he held. “It might be,” he said, and dipped his head a bit. “But I will admit, my dear Aramis, that the situation seems to me somewhat more complex than that.”
He had the gratification of seeing Aramis raise eyebrows at him.