“Martin, monsieur,” the tavern keeper said.
“Martin tells me that your brother was briefly employed by a nobleman, but Martin does not remember the name. Do you?”
Amelie nodded, her grey eyes still overflowing with tears and very attentive and grave. “Yes. Yes, I do. It was Monsieur de Comeau.”
“Comeau… and where does he lodge?” Athos asked. He had a vague memory of having heard the name and the association was not pleasant.
“Guillaume said he was down that street awhile and that he rented the two floors over a bakery. He did not tell me any more.”
Athos nodded gravely. The girl had pointed down the main street on which the tavern was located and finding a place down the street atop a haberdashery wouldn’t be all that hard. That a nobleman was lodging in this part of town meant he probably wasn’t very wealthy. Then again, renting two floors would require more income than any of the musketeers could command. “Thank you, Amelie,” he said trying to keep his voice even and low, in the same way as before and hoping-very much hoping-it didn’t come across as a threatening whisper.
“Monsieur,” Amelie said, eagerly. “Is he there, then? With Monsieur de Comeau? He said he would come back and he would have a lot of money, and that he would take me with him and I’d live like a lady. Is he there? Did he get employment with Monsieur de Comeau again?”
Athos was saved from answering by the tavern keeper’s putting his hand on the girl’s shoulder and saying, in a much better gentle voice than Athos was sure he could command, “Now, Amelie, don’t bother the gentleman. He is trying to find your brother to offer him employment. I’m sure we all want to see your brother employed in a position he enjoys. Whether he’ll ever make enough to take you with him, much less to have you live like a lady…” Martin shrugged. “You must not believe all the crazy dreams your brother spins.”
Martin turned to Athos, “The boy means well, and, as I said, who did not entertain a crazy dream as a young man. I assure you he is normally reliable, at least when properly employed. Of course, we never quite employed him, just told him he could get some food in return for a bit of work. So he never had a real job here, but he helps our stable boys look after guests’ horses and I’m sure-”
Athos realized the man was doing his best to repair any impression he might have given that the boy, Guillaume, might be unreliable. He was doing his best, and a bit besides, to convince Athos that the boy could be hired and that the boy was worth hiring.
Picking up his cup of wine and taking a quick swallow of the wine, Athos thought of Porthos saying that the boy had always been exactly punctual. An amazing virtue in a young nobleman, as they had thought him at the time, but even more laudable when it involved a young peasant boy who could, at any time, be commanded to some task that might interfere with his time and his plans.
From his description, too, having acquired his letters early and without any real instruction, Guillaume must have been a smart boy. Perhaps Porthos was right in lamenting him. Perhaps he would have become a man worthy of being called friend.
And thinking of Porthos, Athos realized that Porthos had grabbed young Amelie’s arm and was talking to her, in hushed tones. He wasn’t absolutely sure what Porthos meant by it, or what he was trying to find out. With Porthos it could be intensely important and absolutely all that needed to be known on the case, or something so strange as to have no bearing whatsoever on events.
In case it was the first, though, and suspecting that the tavern keeper might interfere with the talk, should he notice, Athos endeavored to keep the man from noticing.
“Does Guillaume ride?” he asked. “My friend might have need of a young man who can ride messages to his father’s domain a few hours distant.”
A Name Well Remembered; Porthos’s Guilt; A Girl’s Shame
"AMELIE.” Porthos grabbed at the girl’s arm, as she was about to go away, and she turned from the table to stare at him, her eyes half-afraid and half-hopeful. “Amelie, what was your mother’s name?”
It had been working at him for a while. It was probably nothing. How many women were there in France named Amelie? Dozens. Hundreds. So why should he imagine, looking at this girl, that she was the daughter of the woman- no, the girl-he’d loved as a young man? Amelie didn’t look a thing like that other Amelie of time’s past. She had lank mousy-colored hair, where Porthos’s Amelie had blond hair. And her grey eyes had no echo of Amelie’s dark ones.
And yet… Perhaps it was Porthos’s guilt working at him. He’d left in the dead of night, without so much as saying good-bye to the girl who’d given him everything, the girl who’d shown him what the love between a woman and a man could be.
He’d thought at the time that if he just left, she could continue with her life without thinking about him. After all, what had Porthos been in her life but a distraction and a nuisance? What good was he, or dreaming of him-of marrying the gentleman’s son-to a simple farm girl? If he left, he thought, she would marry someone else quickly. And her life would go on as if nothing had happened between them. Let him carry the sense of what he had lost, but let her not suffer.
That had been the idea, but was it the truth? Horrible ideas rose in his mind, ideas he didn’t want to dignify with full thought. He didn’t want his mind to know what he thought. He didn’t want his mind to even suspect it, truth be told. But he knew… he knew all too well.
The grey-eyed little girl looked back at him. “My mother?” she asked.
“Do you know what your mother’s name was.”
“They called her Pigeon,” she said.
“Who did?” Athos asked.
“Men.”
His heart clenched. There was no reason, really, none at all to imagine that Pigeon could ever have been his girlfriend, but what if she had? She had been someone’s girlfriend. And there was Guillaume with Porthos’s genealogy in his pouch. But he’d never tried to blackmail Porthos, and why else would it matter to him?
“But that was not her real name, was it?” he asked. He kept his voice even, sweet. The girl looked scared and he didn’t want to scare her. First, he knew well enough that his towering height and his red hair scared most people. And second, he could well imagine that being interrogated by Athos would scare practically anyone. He didn’t need to induce more terror in Amelie. “Do you know what her real name was?”
Amelie nodded, once. “Amelie,” she said. “Like my name.”
“Ah,” Porthos said. “And did you know… Did your mom ever talk of her fiancé, that she came to Paris to find?”
Amelie shook her head, then shrugged. “Not to me, but she must have talked to Guillaume, because he said he’d found him.”
Porthos’s heart clenched within his chest. “Guillaume found him?” he asked, unable to keep his panic from his voice. “Guillaume found his… father?”
The girl nodded. “He said his father was a nobleman and he had found him,” Amelie said. “And then he said that he was going to get me money, lots of it, and that he would come get me and I would live like a lady.”
Porthos’s brain had gone numb. His father was a nobleman. He had found him. He was going to get money and take his sister to live like a lady. Sangre Dieu, he was my son, Porthos thought. And on the heels of that. And he was going to blackmail me.
In the surge of these conflicting emotions, his mind and heart seized and he trembled.
Seeing him tremble, Amelie surged forward, put her hand on his shoulder. “Monsieur? Are you well? Only you look so ill.”
And out of nowhere the tavern keeper’s wife descended, hard of face and harsh of voice, grabbing at the girl, pulling her away from Porthos, raining a hail of blows on the girl’s face, on the little frail body. “Whore,” she screamed. “You’re a whore like your mother. It’s all you’ll ever be. Tempting men. You’re not even a woman and you’re a whore.”