This brought a peal of throaty laughter from Athenais. She grabbed his hand and forced him to open it, palm up, and put her hair pins in it, while she started braiding her hair again.
“Madam, do I look like your vanity, or your maid?”
“You look like a man with great big hands, who can hold my hair pins,” she said, and helped herself to a hair pin to hold her hair in place.
Porthos sighed. Athenais looked over her shoulder. “What is wrong? None of this is like you-coming to see me before dinner time, nor being so oddly sad and concerned. ”
Porthos sighed again. “It’s the boy,” he said.
“A boy?” Athenais looked genuinely surprised, then nodded, as if she’d finally understood. “The Gascon?”
“No, no. A real boy. Twelve. He approached me, months ago, and… he knew my true name, Athenais! And he asked me to teach him sword fighting.”
“And you,” she said. “Very promptly thrashed him for thinking you were a proscribed nobleman and then refused to have anything else to do with him.”
“Athenais!”
“No. Of course not.” She looked as if she were about to say something else, but had stopped herself in time. “You gave in to his blackmail.”
“It wasn’t blackmail, Athenais. He was just a boy. Twelve. A stripling. And what he wanted was to learn sword fighting. What did I lose by teaching him? And he was good too.”
Athenais sighed. She retrieved the last hairpin from his hand, and put it in her hair, and rose. “Was good? Was? Porthos… what happened?”
It all came spilling out, simple descriptions of what happened because Porthos had never learned the knack of embellishing a story and so told things sequentially, as they’d occurred. When he talked about his genealogy in the boy’s pocket, Athenais had been reaching for her dress. She let her hand fall. “It was blackmail, Porthos.”
“Why? Why would it be blackmail?” Porthos asked. “I’d already given in to what he wanted, which was to teach him to fight. Why else would he have my genealogy in his pocket? What could he make me do with it?” Porthos shrugged. He’d told Athenais about the genealogy and about what it revealed. “You see, I know my family is not as noble as yours, but-”
Athenais laughed. “Porthos. My father married me to an attorney of no nobility at all. As his third wife. Porthos. Don’t speak of genealogy and papers and traditions.”
“Yes,” Porthos said. “But the thing is that I never cared. There’s Athos, noble as Scipio, and he doesn’t care if my ancestors were merchants, does he? He’s as much my friend as he’s Aramis’s.”
Athenais had thrown her dress over her head and now looked firmly trapped by it. Porthos knew that she normally had a maid or two to help her dress. He hastened to fulfill the role of the maid, and she let him lace the dress up her back. He’d never done this job, but he’d done its reverse often enough. He told her how they’d looked in the palace and Athos and D’Artagnan were canvassing the neighborhoods for someone who might know the boy’s family. “Only, no one ever heard of Jaucourt as a family name and, Athenais, what if we don’t find them? What if they’re in agony looking for their boy, and he’s lying dead, and they’ll never know it? And what if I find them and I have nothing but this dismal news to give them?”
Athenais was grave. She turned around and looked seriously at Porthos. “He told you he was noble,” she said. "And that his family name was Jaucourt?”
Porthos nodded.
Athenais pursed her lips together and looked at him, with that expression she had that made him feel like he was a small child under the serious scrutiny of a stern governess.
She turned away from him and reached for her veil on the table and picked it up, then put it down again. “Porthos, have none of your friends considered…”
“Oh,” Porthos aid. “Aramis thought the boy might have been sent to me as a ploy of the Cardinal’s, that the papers in his purse, and his having been killed might all be part of a ploy to get me taken for murder.”
Athenais turned around. She looked more serious than ever. “Yes, all that might be true, and more besides, but has none of you considered that he might have given you a false name?”
“A false name?” Porthos said. “Oh, yes, we considered it. That is why Aramis made drawings, when we went to ask for him, in case he had a different name.”
“But you’re looking for him in the palace?” Athenais said. “And where noblemen lodge? It has not occurred to you, my dear, that he might not be a nobleman at all? Just a street urchin the Cardinal employed in this? Or someone did?”
“But he…” It had never occurred to Porthos. And now it did, he felt cold and lost. Curse it all. If Guillaume wasn’t even a nobleman, then it meant he could be anyone at all in Paris. How were they to find his family. “But he behaved as a young gentleman,” he said.
Athenais nodded. “Manners are a thing anyone can pick up with just a little observation.”
“But… Athenais! How am I to find who he is, then?”
Athenais tilted her head a little. “I would go near where you found him. And start looking there.”
“Near where I found him…” Porthos said.
Athenais wrapped her veil around her head. “And now if you’d escort me to Armandine’s home, so I don’t have to brave the streets of Paris alone, I’ll make up something to account for my delay. That I was moved to go back and pray, perhaps.”
As she locked the door behind them, and he waited beside it, she said, “You know, I could hide the fact that this house hasn’t been let. I could hide it in the accounts. My husband would never know. And we could have it.”
“Why?” Porthos asked. “We have the rope ladder.”
“And every servant waiting for the bed to creak. This could be ours, just ours.”
He nodded saying nothing. He wished it was really theirs and their true home. Aloud, he said, “I found the boy lying against the back wall of a tavern.”
“Then that’s where I would look first,” she said. “That tavern and the immediate neighborhood.”
News at Last; The Strange Knowledge of Porthos’s Mind; Suits and Genealogy
D’ARTAGNAN stood up at the sound of running steps on the stairs. In his mind, he formed a picture where some intruder had pushed past Mousqueton and was now rushing up the stairs to do them who knew what mischief.
He noticed that Athos and Aramis had put their hands on their swords, and he, in turn, let his hand drift towards his. Only then did he think that he’d not heard anything from Mousqueton who’d gone down the stairs to open the door on the pounding.
And there was only one person that Mousqueton would let climb the stairs without at least making some remark… He thought this, just as Porthos, red hair in disarray, face almost as red from running as his hair, climbed the last step and emerged onto the broad room.
“I’ve found-” he said, and stopped, breathing hard, and bending over, hands on knees, as he recovered his breath.
“What?” Athos asked.
“Have you found the murderer?”
“Have you found the boy’s family?” D’Artagnan asked, while he thought that Porthos, who rarely breathed hard after duels, must have run all the way to tell them this.
Porthos looked at D’Artagnan and nodded, as he straightened. “I found where the boy came from. Not his family.” He frowned. “At least I don’t think so. I didn’t go in and ask. But I found where he… lived. And worked.”
“Worked?” Aramis asked. He stood frozen, as he had risen from the table, his hand now fallen beside his sword and he looked shocked at the thought that the boy might have worked.
“We were all fools, you know?” Porthos said. “I thought we were missing something, but it never occurred to me what it might be till I spoke to Athenais.”
“Athenais!” Aramis said.
And along Athos’s lips, a smile slid, as if wordlessly affirming he’d been right after all.