“No,” Athos said, and that much was true, since Guillaume could now be said to be past all trouble or at least all trouble a mortal body could find. He thought fast. If he claimed he knew the boy’s father he was only likely to excite the curiosity and perhaps the venality of the tavern keeper. Easier, much easier to claim the boy had been trying to find better employment. “It’s only,” he said, “that the boy talked to my servant Grimaud, some time ago. It seems he was interested in being a fighting man’s servant himself. At the time I didn’t know anyone looking for a servant and I didn’t have enough employment for him, myself. But since then I’ve heard of a young musketeer who comes from a house with some… some substance behind it. He has a servant already, but wants someone to look after his horses, and I thought perhaps…” Athos rallied. Since the man didn’t know the boy was dead and didn’t seem to be concerned about him, there was little point in telling him of the event. Easier, much easier, to find out something about the boy’s life from this man and maybe from that deduce the killer. Easier to find if the boy might have been in the employ of someone else-like the Cardinal. “Is he about?” Athos asked, and saw a flinch from Porthos who sat catercorner from him on the table and for just a moment feared that Porthos would remind him the boy was dead.
But Porthos, strangely and unaccountably, seemed all concentrated on what the girl, Amelie was doing, walking back with the tray, setting it on the bar. This was unfathomable since Porthos didn’t usually even notice children much. He probably hadn’t paid any attention to a child since the time he’d adopted Boniface under the guise of hiring him, and made him into the more bellicose-sounding Mousqueton, and the day that Guillaume had asked for instruction in the plying of a sword.
But perhaps Guillaume had made Porthos think about all children. Now and then, in the privacy of his own thoughts, Athos, who had left thirty behind, thought of an heir-someone who would inherit his domain and his title after his death. Unfortunately to beget an heir he’d need a woman. And Athos’s experience of women had neither qualified him to trust them nor to trust himself.
Athos looked back at the tavern keeper, who was looking at Porthos, also, with some concern. He now transferred his glance to Athos, “No, sir. I haven’t seen the scapegrace in some days…” He shrugged. “The thing is, you see, that he’s been talking for some time now about leaving my employ and finding himself a patron who is wealthier and better able to look after him. He’s not stupid, Guillaume. Cheeky, undisciplined and often infuriating, but not stupid.” He smiled a smile that made him seem more human. “He taught himself to read and write when he was very young, begging one letter of a customer, another off another. People taught him because he had winning ways. And so, he knows how to read and how to write, and he’s got ideas in his head… I don’t know what he means to do at any time.”
“Is it normal for you not to see him for days?” Athos asked.
The man shrugged. His unconcerned face seemed to show absence of guilt. “Oh, he’s been gone, now and then, for two or three days. Never more than that because, you see, he’s not really a bad boy and he cares for his sister, and comes back to see her. Amelie, she’s good and she’s always here and always helpful. But Guillaume…” He shrugged again. “Young boys will be young boys. In my own day, I used to dream…” For a moment his eyes unfocused, as though he were looking back at a lost time. “I used to dream many things. But the thing is… He’s not a fool, and he will look around till he finds something that suits him. He worked for a nobleman for a short time, but he didn’t like it, and they thrashed him, so he came back here and ran errands for me awhile longer.”
“A nobleman?” Athos asked. “Would you happen to know his name?”
“I don’t rightly remember. Why?”
“Because I’d like to know if perhaps the boy has already found employment with this nobleman, in which case my searching for him is in vain.”
“No, no,” the tavern master said. “He didn’t find employment with the man. He left him. Something about the man giving him a thrashing.”
“And yet,” Athos said, making his face as impassive as possible. He was vaguely aware that somewhere near the bar the woman was muttering at the young girl. “And yet, I think these things are sometimes not as clear as they seem. Young boys, particularly, get angry at a master for an unkind word and leave as though this were the end of the world… only to come back later and make it up and seek employment again.”
The tavern keeper sighed. “It is possible,” he said, but in the tone of a man who concedes a point so as to avoid an argument more than because it’s true.
He looked as though he were thinking things through and Athos would have bet what he was thinking was that it wouldn’t do any harm at all to send the men to the nobleman. At the worst, it would be a wild goose chase, and it would get them out of his hair.
Because Athos was sure the man didn’t know the boy was dead-either that or he was the world’s best actor-he would be thinking if he could forestall the whole thing a while Guillaume would show up and take care of his own business.
“Amelie,” the tavern keeper called. “Amelie, if you would please…”
Both woman and girl looked up. The girl was crying. There were marks of tears on her cheeks. The woman was lowering a hand that had been raised either for a slap or for another slap. She pushed the girl rudely, in the middle of her back. Her lips moved. She whispered, but it was clear she was saying “Go then.”
None of the men around the tavern seemed in the least concerned with this scene and Athos, himself, didn’t know why it made his hair stand at the back of his neck and why it made him feel less desirous of drinking the very appetizing wine in front of him.
It was the nature of human beings-though perhaps not the best part of their nature-to abuse those over whom they had power. This, writ large, had led to the tyrannies of the Roman emperors. Writ far smaller, it commanded a myriad smaller tyrannies, from the father who imposed his every wish on his terrified sons to the master who abused a helpless servant. It was nothing new. Nor could Athos, with the best intentions in the world, stop humans from behaving as humans.
He was not a child, charging out at the world, ready to right all wrongs and correct every injustice. He was not even a young man like D’Artagnan full of illusions and hope for the world. He was older, and tired, and sure of nothing except that he too could commit horrible acts. So why was he bristling at the treatment of this young girl who now approached, her eyes full of tears, wiping her face on the back of her hand.
She managed a little smile for Athos, and a pretty curtsey.
And Athos who knew very little about how not to scare people-Athos who could make strong men quake and who had been known to intimidate the most evil hearted of villains-forced a smile at her. He was afraid it looked either like a sickly expression or like a display of teeth in menace. From the girl’s little startled jump, he was afraid it looked like that to her too. But he modulated his voice and tried to speak sweetly, gently, as his nursemaid had once spoken to him. “Amelie,” he said. “This man-”