Dying By The Sword Part 3

From the homes, usually right next to the stores, came voices and the occasional cry of infants. None of the homes were very large or very st.u.r.dy-just barely more than hovels, made of stone. The house next to the armorer's was a little larger, and perhaps in this area it pa.s.sed as a wealthy residence. Porthos supposed so, after looking at it appraisingly. He also judged, from the light of fire and probably candles emanating through the cracks in the wooden shutters of the room most distant from the armorer's, that everyone would be gathered there, probably having dinner. This meant, if he was going to break into the armory, now would be the best time to do it.

He walked towards the door, as though he had every right to be there. Although he doubted that very many people would be looking out of doors at this time, he had long ago learned that when doing something reprehensible or-in this case-highly illegal, it was best to proceed as though one were doing something official and perfectly legitimate.

The door was heavy and, to Porthos's eyes, looked like oak. In the almost complete dark, he found the lock on it, part by touch and part by sight. It was a st.u.r.dy lock. But then Porthos was an unusually st.u.r.dy man. In fact, he had often been compared to the giants in the Bible-and he was never sure the comparison was meant as flattery. He had often thought when he retired from the musketeers he would devote his life to replicating the feats of Hercules, at least those that didn't involve dressing up as a girl, which he had the vaguest of ideas Aramis had once told him Hercules had done. Of course, Aramis might have been lying. The fact that Athenais once, for the purpose of hiding him, had dressed Aramis in a fashionable green dress3 still seemed to rankle Porthos's friend. still seemed to rankle Porthos's friend.

So he set his hands to the wood, one ma.s.sive hand pushing against a panel of wood, while the other seized hold of as much of a lip as there was on the other side of the door and pulled. His first attempt at applying force caused the lip of the wood to crack and splinter. However, it also pulled the door slightly out of true, giving Porthos a firmer grasp on that side of the door. With that firmer grasp, well past the lip that covered the joining of the two halves, Porthos pushed and pulled again.

Meeting with resistence, he thought that the lock might have been forged by the late armorer who, as Porthos had told his comrades, was known for metals of exceptional resistence and strength.

But just as he thought it was a lost cause, he heard wood splinter, as the lock, under pressure and not breaking, parted company with the more fragile oak. The side of the door that had been under the lip of the other side let loose and swung inward into the shadows of the armory.

Porthos paused, long enough to recover his breath, and then entered the armory in turn.

It was warm. Even during a winter night, the armory retained some of the heat of the forges, a heat augmented by the banked fires-the embers of the last fires, now covered in ashes, to keep them smoldering but not burning-glowing in the ma.s.sive hearths.

The armory looked like a very large smithy, with two large forges and a succession of smaller ones. Porthos did not doubt that if Monsieur Langelier had been born and lived in a village that was exactly what he would have been, his talent for weapons notwithstanding. He'd have run a smithy and shod horses and mended plows and shovels as often as he would get to mend the occasional sword or create the occasional knife. Or rather, far more often, for those were the services that people in villages needed more often.

Even if there were a seigneur, in a village, it was not to be thought he would engage in dueling all that often. Not even with the lords of neighboring villages. Well, at least not, he corrected himself, scrupulously, unless he chanced to be of the same disposition as D'Artagnan's late father, who seemed to duel with even his best friends, just to keep in practice.

But, generally, in such small, confined societies, even the most bellicose of lords had to keep on good terms with his neighbors, and certainly couldn't afford to duel any of them to the death.

In Paris, however, people of Monsieur Langelier's abilities could obtain ample reward for them, and do nothing but work upon swords all day long. The evidences of this work, in the shape of swords in various stage of finishing piled in corners and hung upon walls and depended from racks on the ceiling. Even in the dark, Porthos could catch glimmers of their shapes and his practiced eye could have told which ones were finished-by and large the ones on ceiling racks and walls-and which ones were not-mostly the ones in piles, in various places throughout the workshop.

Without light, he could tell nothing else, but fortunately Porthos, in what Athos doubtlessly would call one of his strangely provident turns of mind, had thought to stop on the way here and provide himself with two candles from his lodging. Not that stopping had interrupted his thoughts or given him much pause. Or that he had even thought of what he might use the candles for. If he were forced to explain his decision to bring candles in so many words, he would say that he realized he would need light to see by, and that an armorer's, after nightfall and closing, was unlikely to provide that.

Now he made sure that the door was closed again and met as nearly as it could, so no light escaped from within. Then, in darkness even deeper than before, he went to the big hearth. Using one of the pokers nearby, he moved aside some of the ash from atop the embers, and touched the wick of one of the candles to it, then smiled and sighed as the light came up, pure and white.

The candle was made of the best wax, the sort of wax often burned at cathedrals during Ma.s.s. Heaven only knew where Mousqueton had got it, though of course Porthos hoped he hadn't stolen it from the cathedral.

He didn't think so. Mousqueton was of a larcenous frame of mind, but not an impious one. Now, stealing it from one of the merchants who sold to the cathedral before they could make delivery, that was something else, and he wouldn't answer for it that Mousqueton hadn't done so.

At any rate, the light was much better than anything that anyone had any right to expect from a single candle, and Porthos dripped some wax onto one of the large anvils, and stuck the candle to it as it hardened. Then he looked around.

Given the benefit of the light, and his reasonably sharp eyesight, he could see this was where the murder had happened-right there, next to the anvil, where a dark stain marred the dirt floor.

Porthos looked up, almost instinctively, at the weapons hanging over the forge. Swords. Just swords. But . . . Porthos was sure that they'd said that Mousqueton had been felled by a hammer falling from the rack over the anvil.

Well, let's imagine then, he thought, he thought, that there truly was a hammer hanging up there amid the swords. that there truly was a hammer hanging up there amid the swords.

He frowned. It seemed a very unlikely thing to imagine. The racks were affixed to the ceiling of the workshop, more than ten feet up. At least Porthos presumed so because he was a very tall man, and yet with his arm extended he could not reach the tip of those swords. He could tell that these were the armorer's best swords-shining examples of the sword-maker's art. Which explained, of course, why they were hung so far up and out of reach of anyone who might come into the workshop and perhaps momentarily manage to distract the armorer with talk.

The inferior swords were hung from the wall, where the enterprising might reach them, but not these. So why would anyone hang a hammer-a tool of the trade-that far out of reach?

It made no sense at all. First, all the hammers Porthos could see were either dropped here and there, haphazardly, or stacked neatly near one of the anvils. In either case, he thought, they were where they could be quickly reached.

And besides-he frowned up into the dark recesses of the ceiling from which the racks hung-wouldn't a hammer falling from that distance onto someone's head kill them? Instead of just stunning them? Well . . . perhaps not. Perhaps if it only hit a glancing blow. And it would depend on the size of the hammer. I guess I'll have to try it to see.

Porthos was, in fact, very much a man who could not believe without seeing. Aramis, once, mid-argument, had flung at him that he was a doubting Thomas. Porthos could perceive from the tone of voice and the expression on Aramis's face that the blond musketeer meant this as a terrible insult. It had missed its mark. As far as Porthos was concerned, Saint Thomas was the only man who had handled Christ's resurrection the way it should have been handled.

After all, if your teacher and master, who claims to be the son of G.o.d himself, has just returned from the dead, wouldn't you want to make sure it was him and not some fakery, by putting your fingers or hand into his wounds? Else, how would you know it wasn't just something painted on, and the look on the man's face a mere casual resemblance? And if you were going to go out preaching this as truth to the whole world, how could you not not need to know for sure? need to know for sure?

He shook his head in dismissal of Aramis's odd notions, notwithstanding that Aramis was a good man and a better friend. Porthos must remember this, and perhaps he should try to argue with him less. Aramis could not avoid the blindness his excellent education had created in him.

Meanwhile Porthos, who was far from blind, discerned in the corner an instrument somewhat like a shepherd's crook, which was used to bring swords down and put them up onto the ceiling racks. He loped over to get it, and returned to select a hammer to hang up.

Here he was faced with an immediate problem because while swords had means of hanging from the hooks on the suspended racks, hammers did not. There was no handle, no loop of leather, no way he could hook that hammer on the shepherd's crook, and get it hanging from the rack. Which left . . . balancing the hammer on the shepherd's crook and hanging it up there.

Porthos looked at the hammer, the handle of which was big enough to fit his own hand, but for which most men would need two hands, and the head of the hammer, which was almost as big as Porthos's own head. "Right," he said, and wandered off in search of some sort of material to make a loop. He found it in the form of a pile of leather strips in the corner, that, by the look of them, were used as some sort of polishing implement.

He tied a couple of the longer strips to the hammer handle, then using the crook, gently inserted the loop into one of the hooks on the rack, then looked up at the hammer hanging amid the swords. So far so good. If there had been a hammer hanging on the rack, that would be what it had looked like. Now, if that hammer fell, and hit someone on the head . . .

Porthos frowned upwards. The hammer was too high for the result of such a blow to be unconsciousness. Even a casual blow, glancingly struck, would kill a man when coming from that height and endowed with the speed and force of its fall. He could not try it on himself. Of course, he could not try it on anyone else either. Not that he expected to have any volunteers.

So, what was the good of putting a hammer up there, except to prove to whomever came in after him that hammers could indeed be hung up there? None that he could think of.

He frowned at the swords up there. But then, how could Mousqueton have got those swords, again, without getting hold of the shepherd's crook? Oh, Mousqueton was ingenuous and able, both as a servant and a thief. Porthos had seen him steal bottles from locked cellars and meat from the spit without the owners being any the wiser. But . . . a sword? Wouldn't the armorer think it odd, if Mousqueton went to get the crook, to pull out the sword?

Besides, this was an armorer to which Porthos sent Mousqueton often enough. There was no possible way the man did not know of Mousqueton's sad failings when it came to the eighth commandment. Just like anyone who had a pa.s.sing acquaintance with Aramis knew of his almost inimical relationship with the seventh. No one in his right mind would allow Mousqueton near his property or Aramis near his wife.

But Porthos knew all this was no good. His friends might believe him. His friends might understand that Mousqueton could not possibly have stolen the sword. But his friends either already understood, or were willing to pretend they believed that Mousqueton was innocent. To strangers, he couldn't possibly explain how stupid the whole story was.

Well, first because Porthos couldn't hope to explain much of anything else. His words would get tangled, even if he tried to explain things people already knew or with which they were in utter agreement. But, beyond that, in this case, people would simply tell him that Mousqueton would have asked for the sword, as if to evaluate it, and then killed the armorer with it.

Which was utter nonsense, of course. If Mousqueton asked the armorer for the sword, the armorer was likely to laugh in his face. If it was Langelier's masterpiece, neither Mousqueton, nor Porthos, nor indeed Monsieur de Treville could have afforded it.

So it left Porthos to figure out-and prove-whether the hammer could be brought down from the rack or not.

He wondered what could make the hammer fall? Shaking the rack, definitely. Taking a deep breath, he took the flat end of the shepherd's crook, and set about shaking the rack back and forth.

The swords swayed and trembled, and hit each other with an infernal racket, sounding much like a madman loose in a bell tower and having hold of the ropes to the bells. And yet, neither sword nor hammers fell. Porthos. .h.i.t the side of the rack with the hook, with enough force to set the rack swaying on the chains that suspended it from a ceiling beam.

Through the deafening racket, he barely heard the voice from outside, "Holla! What goes on in there? Who is there?"

Monsieur D'Artagnan Searches for a Position; Bread, Soup, and the Friendship of a Gascon; A Clatter in the Night

D'ARTAGNAN felt oddly excited about going in search of a position as an apprentice or as a day laborer of some sort. Perhaps, he thought, it was that he had never done that. He had come to Paris to look for employment in the musketeers, but he'd come with a letter from his father.

And the letter being stolen, he had yet to obtain that position he had once dreamed of. So, now he would like to try his luck and see if he could obtain another position, without such help or such problems.

Wearing Planchet's suit, which had, in truth, been made out of the suit that D'Artagnan himself had worn to town and which had been altered to fit Planchet. Of course, now that it had been altered-by Planchet's able needle-wearing it was akin to wearing a much too long tourniquet. But D'Artagnan could endure it for a few hours. Much harder was the lack of a sword by his side. He kept reaching to the side and finding it bare, and feeling lost, as if he'd left some essential part of himself behind.

It was true, since for almost a year now, he had lived by the sword. The sword earned him the respect of his fellows as well as his income as a guard of Monsieur des Essarts. Now, going into the working cla.s.s neighborhood, where the houses were either much smaller-and only one story-than even the ones in the area where he lived, or tall, flimsy looking towers where each floor seemed to be inhabited by an impossible number of screaming babies, he realized that people walked much closer to him, and occasionally jolted him.

It was sunset, and women rushed home to prepare the main meal of the day, while their husbands rushed home to eat it, and sons, whether apprentices in nearby workshops or merely street-playing urchins, were called home by the tolling of their empty stomachs. None of these people saw any reason to steer clear of this short young man, with the dark hair and the curiously ill-fitting suit.

As for D'Artagnan he found himself quite at a loss for what to do next. He was not normally of a retiring disposition and since coming to Paris had struck many more friendships than with just his closest friends. And he'd found himself in situations he'd never before faced and made himself known.

But he'd never been in a situation he didn't quite understand as something other than himself. He'd never had to present both a humble and yet unremarkable appearance. He'd never had to be . . . common. He understood, as people walked past him without a glance, that even in his childhood days, when he had mingled freely with farmers and merchants and behaved like one of them, they had not behaved to him as to one of their children. He'd always been Monsieur D'Artagnan's son, and, as that, accorded more respect than he would have otherwise had.

He felt a smile play on his lips, as he thought to himself that he was a fool, lecturing Athos about fitting in, when he, himself, seemed to fit in all too well, and to-thereby-be able to achieve nothing.

And just as he thought this, he pa.s.sed a small house with a shop. Like most houses in this area, the shop was part of the house, the door open to allow people in and out, even as the business of living went on on the other side of it. Judging by the smell of freshly baked bread, and by the people coming out carrying various forms of bread, the place was a bakery. But what attracted D'Artagnan, more than the aroma, which caused his still-adolescent appet.i.te to wake up and his stomach to growl, was the voice emerging from it-clearly the voice of a father giving orders to a daughter and a son. "Now, Belle, what are you doing? And, Xavier, did I tell you to put that tray there?"

The words were innocuous, save that they were said in the curious mix of French and the Gascon tongue that only transplanted Gascons used. D'Artagnan took a step in the door, almost unable to help himself. The family looked like his people too-or at least like most of the people around his province, even if his father hadn't been one of them-small and dark, with straight, black hair. It was, for a moment, like looking back at a bakery in Gascony, as he watched the father take a tray out of the oven and swiftly hand the loaves of bread to his daughter who handed them out.

A quick look up discovered D'Artagnan lurking in the doorway, as customers streamed in and out and jostled him as they went. The father of the family looked intently at D'Artagnan, then away as though he'd forgotten him, to shout an instruction to his son to go tell his mother to have dinner done "momentarily," since they were running out of both baked loaves and customers, as those rushed home with their prizes.

The boy, probably only a couple of years younger than D'Artagnan, vanished through a door at the back, and the father and sister continued dispensing loaves, till eventually all the loaves were sold and the late-arriving customers went away empty-handed. Then the father strode towards the door, clearly to close it.

D'Artagnan, waking from his revery-in which mingled memories of his mother, his father and the servants who had helped raise him, all scented with his longing for home, and the melodic syllables of that Langue Gascona Langue Gascona, which had been his first speech-nodded to the man, politely, and took a step back.

But the baker, his hand on the door as if to close it, darted the other hand out, and grasped D'Artagnan's arm. "Hold, lad," he said. "Hold."

D'Artagnan looked back, and realized only as the man patted his shoulder and said, "Don't be afraid," that his look of shock at being thus unceremoniously held, had been mistaken for fear.

"Don't be afraid," the man repeated, and shook his head. Then, looking one way and the other down the street, said in a low tone of voice, "Are you hungry?"

D'Artagnan was hungry. Famished, in fact. Strangely, Monsieur des Essarts paid his guards far more regularly than King Louis XIII, with his permanently entangled finances, did. But that meant nothing, when it all came down to it. The pay of a guard was never enough, not once his servant's upkeep and his own, and the inevitable drinking bouts with his friends, were taken into account.

The last time D'Artagnan had eaten fresh bread had been when Mousqueton had brought a couple of loaves and sworn they'd been lost by someone on the street and he'd simply picked them up. And he could smell, now that most of the loaves were gone, the meal being prepared for the family-hints of garlic olive oil, and the unmistakable odor of meat.

But he knew he was not hungry the way the baker meant, and the part of D'Artagnan who was the son of a seigneur, an armed man, entrusted with both protecting and looking after peasants, bridled at the thought that he had been confused with one of the urban poor, one of those unfortunates who needed food, or would perish of hunger.

Caught in this stream of conflicting emotions, he found himself as unwilling to speak as Athos, as clumsy with words as Porthos, and could only shake his head.

The baker frowned. "Proud, aren't you?" he asked. "Proud like the devil, and never had to ask anyone for anything back home, did you? No doubt your father does well enough as a farmer or a tinker, or whatever, and you never knew one day of stomach-churning hunger. Aye. I remember my days, when I first came to the capital. My father . . ." He shrugged. "Too many of us at home, and I'd guess you know that too, no, boy?"

D'Artagnan, an only son, nodded mendaciously, and the man continued volubly, in a low, paternal tone. "Look, there is no shame in it. I was never hungry, not once, not for a moment, when I was in my father's house. He was a baker, see, and the bread we ate might be stale, if times weren't so good. But there were always vegetables from the back garden, and a chicken now and then. And then I came to Paris. The things you hear of Paris! Everyone is wealthy and eats beef every day. I thought, of course, I would live like a n.o.bleman."

The man shook his head as though at youthful folly. "Ah, idiot child that I was. But you see, in Paris, I didn't know anyone, and before I got myself an apprenticeship at a bakery and saved enough to open my own . . ." He shrugged. "I was hungry many times. Lodgings had to be paid, as had food. An no vegetable patch in the back." He patted D'Artagnan's shoulder with a hand that left white streaks of flour. "But there, there were other Gascons. Like you, I would be called by the language and stand there and listen to it, because it reminded me of home. And Gascons look after each other. Have to, since our cursed land has always produced more boys than food, and more rocks than both."

D'Artagnan, pummeled by the flow of the man's generous talk, could only swallow, and smile, and manage to speak in a small voice. "I'm not hungry," he said. "I mean, not that hungry, though your bread smells very good." And though he was aware that he should, truly, exploit this opening and find out what he could about the death of the armorer, he could not bring himself to do it. He'd feel as if he were taking advantage of a kind, generous family. "And I was . . . thinking of buying some, only I was listening to you speak, you know . . . our tongue, and I forgot . . ."

The baker smiled. "Buy it, were you? With what coin? No, please, don't tell me more lies, lad, there is no need."

The huge hand grabbed D'Artagnan by the shoulder. "You're hardly older than my own son, and even if you're more st.u.r.dily built, I know what you eat like at your age. I tell you what, if you'd do us the honor." As he spoke he pulled D'Artagnan into the shop and closed the door behind him. "If you're not that hungry, just come and give us the pleasure of your company, Gascon to Gascon, and eat at our table tonight."

To that, there was nothing D'Artagnan could oppose and he let himself be led, by the shoulder, through the dark doorway at the back into a small, crowded kitchen where there stood what seemed to be an overflow of flour barrels, other barrels and bundles of miscellaneous supplies, a small, dark wooden table, and a huge hearth, at which a dark, plump woman worked.

She turned at their entrance and seemed to take it as normal that her husband should come in with some waif off the street. The two children, boy and girl, were already seated side by side at the table, with a bowl of soup and a piece of bread in hand, and squirmed aside to make s.p.a.ce for D'Artagnan as a matter of course.

D'Artagnan wondered whether the baker did this every day and how many waifs he fed. As he took his place beside them, he found a piece of bread and a bowl, overflowing with vegetable soup with some small pieces of what appeared to be pork dropped in, were set in front of him.

He watched as the baker sat and talked to his wife of how much they'd sold and of what type of bread, while she served him and then herself, from a large pot of soup she'd set in the middle of the table.

D'Artagnan had resolved, before he ever sat down, that he would eat little, and show no unusual enthusiasm for the food. Part of this was his pride, revolting at his pretending to be a mere homeless, rootless Gascon waif in Paris. The other part of it was his absolute certainty that these people-no matter the actual facts of the matter-should need the food more than he did. He had his commission as a guard, after all, as well as his career, which he was sure would be long and ill.u.s.trious. He aimed for nothing else than the post Monsieur de Treville held.

And while he had absolutely no idea what ambitions lay in the future of a baker in Paris, he was sure they would be more limited than his. So, with absolute certainty that he would not let himself eat too much of these poor people's food, he took a mouthful from his spoon.

The flavor exploded in his mouth, like a surprise, bringing with it the tastes of his childhood but much improved, unexpectedly sweeter, one playing off the other. He saw the baker looking at him, and he swallowed hastily, before taking another spoonful, feeling suddenly more ravenous than ever.

The baker laughed. "Cooks well, doesn't she, my Adele?" He half embraced his wife, who made a playful motion to swat him away. "Eat what you will, lad," he said. "There is plenty, and it is a compliment to the house."

And D'Artagnan, not able to protest against the commands of his body, ate a full two bowls and a full half-loaf of the crusty, dark bread, before he could slow down. And wished he could, on some excuse, take this food back to his comrades. Though he could well imagine the reaction of aristocratic Athos faced with dark peasant bread and vegetable-heavy soup.

He was so amused by this image that it shocked him as the baker said, "Have you a job? Or do you want me to look about for one for you? We don't need help at the shop right now, as it happens, but I'm sure-"

"Oh, no," D'Artagnan said, quickly, fearful that he would find himself helped to a job as he'd found himself helped to food, and thereby forced to live a double life for the rest of his time in Paris, standing guard at night and working during the day in a bakery, and possibly, eventually, keeping a wife and children in each place. "Oh, no," he said. "It is not like that. My father . . . you see . . ." and deciding, quickly, to go on a variance of his real story. "My father used to be in service with Monsieur de Treville, you know, as his valet, and he sent me with a letter to Monsieur de Treville's valet, as used to be his apprentice. Only though they want me to work for them, they don't have need of me right now, so they said as I could start tomorrow. It's just the last week has been rough."

The baker nodded. "Monsieur de Treville will look after you, right enough," he said. "And most of his staff are from our land." He smiled slightly at D'Artagnan, "So you were lost, were you? Or exploring Paris?"

D'Artagnan decided this was the time, if ever, to bring the subject around to what he needed to know. "Well, the thing is," he said. And managed to look embarra.s.sed, which in fact he was, though not over what he appeared to be. "I heard that there had been a murder this way. Some musketeer's servant was caught at it, I heard at Monsieur de Treville's. And of course, well . . ." He shrugged. "I've never been anywhere anyone was murdered. My village was not that big."

The baker smiled, but something like a shadow pa.s.sed his eyes. "You are lucky," he said. "Being of a generation from Gascony which didn't see enough death." Then shrugged. "Not that I'm sure that the musketeer's servant did it, mind."

"But, dear," his wife put in. "Everyone says as he was caught, with the sword in his hand, and his arm all over blood."

"Adele," her husband said, looking at her seriously, but with the twinkle of humor in his eyes. "I saw the boy taken, as did you, with all those guards around him. There was no blood on him, not even a few drops as someone will have if they stab any person or animal nearby. And the other thing is, they said he was unconscious, and what musketeer's servant would fall unconscious after stabbing someone. For you're not going to tell me he collapsed at the sight of blood, because that I won't believe. Always pulling their swords in and out of their sheaths, are those musketeers, and I wouldn't trust them for a moment, be it with my food or with my daughter, but murderers . . . that they're not." He smiled at D'Artagnan, 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 a.s.sessment 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 p.r.o.nounce 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.