The Musketeer's Seamstress - By Sarah D'Almeida Page 0,76
. Nothing.”
Athos cast a look at the jewelry trunk, managing to convey the impression that it had personally offended him, then he stalked out to the balcony, himself.
Their voices came to Porthos, slightly distant but completely understandable.
“A rope ladder,” Athos said. “Whoever it was could easily have used a rope ladder.”
“Easily?” D’Artagnan asked. “But how? It couldn’t have been thrown with hooks up here. What are the chances it would reach? And then, after the person left, who would loosen the ladder and remove it? No one could have entered this room while we were gone.”
It wasn’t strictly true, Porthos thought. Hermengarde could have. He looked at the little blond maid, though, and failed to believe she had. Or that she was, even now, hiding a rope ladder somewhere about her person.
“It was a ghost,” Porthos said. His voice echoed strange even to himself. And he normally didn’t really believe in ghosts and spirits, or to be honest, anything he couldn’t touch, feel and bite. “It must have been a ghost.”
Athos came back into the room. “Porthos, don’t speak nonsense. Why would a ghost wear a mask? Why would a ghost wear male attire? And why would a ghost come in from the balcony, and open the door rather than just walk through it?” He looked down. “Besides, look here. Footprints.”
As he spoke, Athos pointed down, at a row of footprints from the balcony door. They’d been made in reddish dirt, and they faded progressively more till they ended a few steps from the jewelry trunk. “Only a corporeal entity could leave these,” Athos said.
Porthos felt better. He didn’t really want to believe in ghosts, anyway.
“Perhaps the dirt can tell us something,” Athos said. “Perhaps it will tell us where she came from.”
Porthos sighed. This was another of those instances of his friends getting lost in their own thoughts. “Athos,” he said. “The entire garden has that same fine reddish dust. It won’t tell us anything but that she stepped in the dirt of the garden, beneath the balcony, before she came here.”
Athos straightened up, from where he’d knelt, examining the foot prints, and looked up at Porthos and sighed. “Perhaps,” he said. “But if so, how did she get up here? She can’t have flown.”
The Prodigal Musketeer, Revisited; The Sins of Musketeers; Nowhere to Hide
ARAMIS made it to Paris as night was falling. He hurried, with the natural impatience of one who’d been too long away from his home, and who feels as though everything must have changed in his absence.
He dismounted as he came to the city, and told Bazin to take the horses back to the rental stable from which they’d acquired them.
“And then?” Bazin asked. “What am I to do?”
Aramis had given the matter some thought, just as he had given thought to the attire he was wearing. He’d changed in the inn, last night, into one of the suits his mother had wished on him—black linen and wool mixture. Scratchy against the skin and, truly, a garment of mortification.
Oh, Aramis was well aware that not everyone could wear silk and that many, many people went through their lives wearing wool, even in summer. He was duly grateful that he didn’t often have to submit himself to such penance. But the truth was that in this undistinguished suit, the equally black hat pulled low over his eyes, no one would know him. To ensure this, he’d taken the care of tying his hair firmly and tucking all of it under his hat. Even people who didn’t know Aramis called him “the blond musketeer.” His curtain of golden blond hair would make it impossible for him to hide.
This way—at least from what he remembered, having surveyed himself in the full length mirror the night before— he looked like a servant or a common apprentice. At least at nighttime and with the hat pulled down to hide his features.
Because of the disguise, he could not wear his sword, which was in the luggage he surrendered to Bazin. He could, however, and did wear his dagger, concealed under the hem of the longer than normal tunic.
In this attire, he gave Bazin the rein of his horse, and leaned close. “Go to the monastery on the Rue des Jardins. Do not tell them where I am, only that you need asylum for this time, while your master is unjustly pursued for a murder he didn’t commit.”
“What if they don’t believe me?” Bazin said. “About your not committing the murder?”