“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 embarrassed, 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 passed 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 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 obligation to Langelier…”
D’Artagnan saw it, perhaps too well. He’d seen Mousqueton with Hermengarde, the little palace maid, and he knew how attached they were. Would Mousqueton’s temper flare if he felt he was being blackmailed into marrying the cross-eyed viper? “But at Monsieur de Treville’s,” he said, hesitantly, “they say that he is… that is, that he is friends with a maid at the palace.”
“That would be Hermengarde,” the baker’s wife said and shook her head.
“Ah, yes, Hermengarde,” her husband said. “Cute little thing, Hermengarde, but… well… you know, like us. Starting out on her own with nothing to call her own besides whatever education she brought from her father’s house, which will not be much, and her palace connections, but that just makes her a devilishly uncomfortable wife, because she’ll never be home.
“No, they couldn’t tie the knot, Hermengarde and Boniface. Not that they needed to, because Langelier wanted Boniface for his daughter and his son, Pierre, wanted Hermengarde for his own.”
“Seems odd,” D’Artagnan said, and though the innocence of the words might be a put-on, the frown that accompanied them was quite genuine. “That they are… friends and being courted by siblings.”