Oh, Aramis knew very well that Porthos wasn’t of as long or noble a line as his own or Athos’s. From his father’s refusal to let him learn to read or any other book learning- which Porthos had only remedied once he’d come to Paris and been on his own-to Porthos’s broad shoulders and the way he approached life, all bespoke a family so close to its own peasants that they were only above them by reason of birth. Or perhaps not even that.
Aramis frowned at the pages. If this was true, if the words on this page were copies of old records or recordings of old gossip, then Porthos’s ancestors had been born plebeian and grown rich through trade until, having enough money and having purchased enough lands, they had declared themselves noble and stopped the payment of the feudal labor tax and claimed ancient noble ancestors. In all this they had been aided by the great plague that had swept the land.
There were notes referring to the monasteries and village churches where the supposed originals of these records were kept.
“Porthos,” Aramis said and, without explanation, passed the sheets of paper to Porthos.
Porthos frowned at them, squinting, and flipping through the pages. Then he let the pages fall from his hand as if he’d lost all interest in them. He looked at the small corpse, his brow knit in incomprehension. “He had a recording of my family line? What does that mean? Is that how he found my true name.”
“Not unless the recording came with a drawing of you,” Aramis said acerbically. He repented it immediately as Porthos shook his head. Porthos wasn’t stupid, but he was, at the best of times, too literal. And now, in shock… “No, Porthos, think. He couldn’t have known it from that… What concerns me is what it says. About your ancestors. Did he tell you he knew that?”
“What?” Porthos asked, still frowning in confusion.
“That your ancestors had ennobled themselves more or less on their own fiat,” Athos said. He’d picked up the pages and was looking through them. “By stopping payment of the labor tax and claiming noble ancestors. Before that they were bourgeoisie engaged in… horse trade?”
Porthos smiled. It wasn’t an expression of joy but an almost sardonic pull of the lips in a face not accustomed to reflecting subtle emotions. “Ah. Yes. My ancestors were bourgeoisie. Does that make you despise me, Athos?”
Athos frowned, then sighed. “Porthos, we’ve been friends for years. There’s nothing that would make me despise you. I’m just saying that society at large might view your-”
“I don’t give a horse’s ass for society at large,” Porthos said, visibly startling Athos. Then sheepishly, added, “I’m sorry. I know I’m not as noble as you, Aramis. I’m probably not as noble as D’Artagnan and no one is as noble as Athos.” He said it without irony and probably did not mean the sting that made blood surge, visibly, in Athos’s face. “But why would this child have those papers? Who cares? Who, unless it is someone considering a marriage alliance with my family.”
Aramis gave up on finding anything else on the small corpse. No jewelry, no coin, nothing-nothing he could find, at least without a more thorough and tasteless search than he was willing to undertake. He stood up and looked at Porthos who, in turn, rose slowly to his feet, as though half aware of defending himself against an accusation none of them was going to voice.
“Porthos, any other nobleman, or almost any other nobleman would consider it a great shame to be known as having bourgeois blood. And you are known in the land for being a proud man who romances princesses and duchesses.”
Porthos shrugged. “All this”-he held up the pages- “can be found in our parish records, if you’re willing to dig. And it was two hundred years ago and more. Since then my ancestors have married women descended from noble families. In all, we probably have as many noble ancestors as anyone else, Athos always excepted, of course.”
“Porthos-” Athos said, a hint of warning in his voice.
“No, Athos, no. Truly. I can’t imagine your family marrying anything less than women with as full a pedigree and as great a noble background as yourself. You’re probably descended several times over from Caesar and Hercules and Hannibal and them all.”
A smile-one of the few, rare, untroubled smiles to grace Athos’s face-slid over the older musketeer’s lips and, his voice showing amusement and not offense, he said, “I doubt Hercules and Hannibal, but if I understand your meaning, you do not mean to give offense.”
“Not at all,” Porthos said. “And that”-he pointed at the sheaf of papers now in Athos’s hand-“doesn’t offend me, nor would it offend me if the word got out. Who in this land can point with certainty to a pedigree longer than two hundred years. Princes have less, if the mother line were investigated.”
“You’re missing the important part,” D’Artagnan said. He’d stood in the background, half in shadows, holding his hat to his chest as if he were at a funeral service. Now he spoke, his voice trembling a little and his dark eyes looking haunted by something he couldn’t quite name. “You’re missing the whole thrust of this, all of you. The thing is not whether Porthos is noble enough or not.” The young Gascon smiled, a sudden sardonic smile. “Coming from Gascony and from a family scarcely wealthier than the farmers around it, I can’t promise I’m even as noble as Porthos, so I’d be the last to condemn our friend’s ancestry. And I don’t know how the dead boy found it out, and that, too, is perhaps important but not now. The most important thing, right now, is what he hoped to gain by having it. It is clear…” D’Artagnan looked over Athos’s shoulder at the scribbled pages. “It is clear at least to me that this was written in a boy’s untutored hand. So chances are great he copied it himself. But why? And what did he hope to gain from it?”
As usual, D’Artagnan had gone straight to the heart of the matter. Aramis felt as if the ground moved under his feet, tilted, turned upside down. He did what he usually did when an idea was unbearable and he could not readily cover it in theological reasoning. “Are you suggesting,” he asked D’Artagnan, “that the boy tried to blackmail Porthos with this knowledge?”
D’Artagnan looked surprised. “I wasn’t suggesting it,” he said. “Merely asking why he would want to have Porthos’s genealogy in his pocket.”
“I was suggesting it,” Athos said. “Porthos, did he?”
“Athos, are you saying you suspect Porthos of killing the boy?” Aramis asked, his hand at his sword.
Before Athos could answer, Porthos did. “Don’t be a fool, Aramis. No one could accuse me of killing a… child. I like children.” He rubbed his huge fingers on his nose as if it itched. “Once, seems long ago, I wanted to get married and have many children. I don’t know how it got so far and me without children.” He seemed to fall in deep thought. “What I mean is, this life we live… what’s the future in it?”
Aramis, not daring to say more, still clenched his hand on the grip of his sword and glared his defiance at Athos.
But Athos only shook his head. “I never meant that. I would no more suspect Porthos of murdering a child than I would suspect any of us. No. What I mean is, was the child supposed to be found dead? Porthos says he found the boy collapsed behind some tavern. What if he had been found dead like that, and this the only thing in his pocket? Think you not that, to someone who doesn’t know Porthos, this”-he waved the written pages in the air-“might be believed to be enough cause for murder?”
Aramis opened his mouth, then closed it. He shook his head in turn. “Someone might think it was. Porthos, did the child ever talk to you of your family?”
Porthos sighed. “No. I might have told him things my father once or twice said while he was teaching me to use my sword, but that was about it. Other than that, my family was never mentioned.”