he heard the next words tumbling out of the young woman’s mouth. “It is all very well, you know, but I heard her price for working for the Cardinal. I know that you’re a musketeer, which is why I feel a little naughty talking to you, and I know that you and your friends are forever fighting the guards of the Cardinal. But I also know that you look so kind, and I know you speak so sweetly, that it can’t probably be provoked by you.” She shrugged, completely unconscious of the irony of her words. “But I also know that when you do fight the guards, it is in duels, and it is all fair and correct. But milady is not like that. And I heard her tell the Cardinal that there was a musketeer she wanted dead. It appears he has done something to her, some time ago. Only I guess he wasn’t a musketeer then.”
She looked at Aramis, eyes wide, lips trembling a little. “She has found out he has become a musketeer, and her price for whatever she’s doing for the Cardinal is a safe conduct to be allowed to do what she wishes to this musketeer and his friends.”
“Do you remember the musketeer’s name?” Aramis asked, cold sweat now trickling down his body, and his mind clenching in panic. “Anything that might tell me who he is?”
“His name is Athos,” Huguette said. And, quite unaware that Aramis felt as though he’d just turned to stone, “I remember because it’s an odd name. Like yours.”
Where Monsieur Aramis Attempts to Investigate; Creditors with No Sense of Humor; It Is Better to Bless Than to Fight
ARAMIS, having left the tavern in good time, and finding himself, as of yet, devoid of followers, stood in a narrow alley, removing his gloves and slipping them back on, a trick he had when he was in something of a puzzle.
He could return to Athos’s house, but he could not imagine why he would be needed there. After all, the two most affected by alcohol were sleeping and, if he knew Porthos, the one least affected by alcohol would be snoring—and loudly too. This meant that Athos’s chamber was the last place to seek repose. As for the sitting room, he supposed he could sleep on a chair, or rolled upon his cloak on the floor. In fact, he’d slept in far worse conditions, when the King’s honor demanded that they march to battle. He remembered nights in arms, spent sleeping standing up, against a wall, under the pouring rain.
He had no wish to repeat that experience, though he was fairly sure he would, when next the kingdom embroiled itself in war with its neighbors over someone’s religion or someone else’s vacant throne. Until then, he had absolutely no interest in recollecting the hardships of battle by putting himself in discomfort.
Thoughts of his bed, its soft mattress and immaculate linen sheets, came to mind. Only he remembered the tone of voice in which Huguette had told about the woman, Charlotte. If she was one of the Cardinal’s minions; if she was even half so dangerous as Huguette believed . . . Well, it would be all up. Perhaps Aramis was becoming as afraid of shadows as his friends had been under the influence of alcohol, but he still couldn’t dispose of the conviction that the last place he should go was his lodgings. If she had asked for Athos’s life—and by extension their lives—as recompense, then heaven only knew what information the Cardinal might have given her, and what it might mean as far as their being safe in their own homes and in their own beds. And if he went home now, he wouldn’t even have the relatively ineffective Bazin as a guard.
And yet, he couldn’t imagine going to Athos’s house and crowding upon the already crowded floor or the even more crowded bed. He could, he thought, ask Grimaud for his bed, and he was fairly sure Grimaud would give it to him too. But Grimaud was old enough to be Athos’s father, which meant, in the end, that he was almost old enough to be Aramis’s grandfather. No good could come of this. Aramis could obtain his bed, but he would find himself unable to sleep for the remorse.
The other part of it was that he did not, very much, feel like sleeping. His body was charged with a sort of electrical energy, and he could not help but