Porthos nodded. “Though I bet they do, I know what you mean. You mean you don’t feel her to be guilty, though you’ll wait Athos’s judgement.”
“Exactly,” Aramis said.
“So, this leaves whom still to be suspected?”
“Oh, the late Amelie’s mother and father,” Aramis said. “Though my mendicant friar could find no evidence that they’d ever been near the child himself. Or not near enough to poison him. Certainly, they established no relationship with him that would allow them to offer him food and have him eat it.”
“This doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have paid someone to…” Porthos frowned and sighed. “You know I don’t like to say it of my own father. Proud as the devil, of course, but bastards who don’t impinge on him and his land, provided they aren’t made legitimate by my marrying their mother…”
“Exactly,” Aramis said. “I would say it would not concern him. And indeed his main work in Paris seems to have been to make sure that you hadn’t married Amelie.”
While speaking, they’d arrived at D’Artagnan’s neighborhood and started, through dint of long habit to walk along a normally deserted alley between buildings. It was normally deserted because it was not in point of fact an alley, but only a space left when buildings had been put up. Musketeers and other big men not scared by the darkness cast by the tall buildings nor by the odor of urine caused by the many men who chose that place to relieve themselves cut through that space. But few other people did.
Porthos sighed. “I don’t suppose we can pin it on the Cardinal after all?”
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t,” Aramis said. “There’s also that group of anonymous ruffians who seems to fall on us out of nowhere. The leader sounds distinctly English, and I’ll be cursed if I know-”
“Stop in the name of the Cardinal,” a voice said.
Aramis and Porthos looked at each other. Porthos had thought for a moment that the voice came out of his own thoughts, and doubtless Aramis thought the same. In the time it took them to realize that both of them had heard it, five men had emerged from the shadows, blocking the alley ahead of them.
“If you’ll just give us what we want,” one of them said-and Porthos was sure it was Remy, the same ugly, scarred fellow from the hostelry on the road back to Paris. “You’ve led us a chase long enough.”
“We have not,” Porthos said, “the slightest idea what you want.” He bowed gallantly, while saying so, because that was what Athos would do. “And so we will just have to fight you.”
“With pleasure. And then you must give it up, or tell us which of your friends has it.”
“I say,” Aramis said. “The guards of the Cardinal must have run insane. I wonder if his eminence himself has lost his reason.”
“Canaille,” the scarred man said, charging Aramis. “You shall pay for that.
In no time at all, the alley resounded with the noise of crossed swords.
A Rude Awakening; A Lady in Distress; A Monstrous Idea
D’ARTAGNAN slept. At the back of his mind, in the part of him that was somewhat conscious, there was the idea that he had slept too long. But there was also another feeling, a feeling of needing rest and of relishing it, which was quite unusual to this young man of seventeen and of an active disposition.
And then upon his deep, dreamless sleep there impinged a sound of crossing swords and a couple of exclamations that he knew for a fact to be uttered in Porthos’s voice-well, either to be uttered in Porthos’s voice or to have been shouted right by his bed, because that was the only way a voice could be that loud.
Adding insult to injury, a hand seized rough hold of D’Artagnan’s shoulder and shook it. “Monsieur D’Artagnan, Monsieur D’Artagnan.” The voice was undoubtedly Planchet’s and yet it couldn’t be, because Planchet was not fool enough to wake his master from a deep, dreamless sleep.
Without opening his eyes, D’Artagnan half turned and muttered as much through his teeth, though he might have taken the time to add a couple of choice swearwords to make Planchet understand the enormity of what he was about to do.
“Monsieur,” Planchet said. “You’d never forgive me if I let you sleep. If what I can see from this window is true, then it’s Monsieur Aramis and Monsieur Porthos and as many as half a dozen of the guards of the Cardinal.”
At these words, D’Artagnan was instantly awake and sitting up. He’d had the foresight of lying down to sleep fully attired and as he stood, he found Planchet with admirable promptness, helping him strap on his sword. The boy would make an excellent servant yet.
Fully attired, D’Artagnan started down the stairs to his front door two at a time. It was a measure of how much better he felt that he did not misstep a single time. He pulled his door open and ran out, fully intending to run across the street to the alley, to help his friends.
Only instead he careened full force into a warm, soft body, and both of them fell. It took him only a moment to realize the person he’d toppled, and atop of whom he was now lying, smelled of some soft roselike perfume. Another moment to realize it was undoubtedly a female. And a blink of his disbelieving eyes, to take in blond hair, oval face and amazed blue eyes, and to realize he was lying atop Madame Bonacieux.
“Monsieur D’Artagnan,” she said, and the two of them did a creditable job of springing up and apart.
She blushed and he blushed, and only the sound of swords from across the street could force him to move. He reached for his hat, and started to remove it and to bow, when to his confused mind there came the thought that he had lost the handkerchief she’d given him. And in his befuddled state he said, “Only… I’ve lost your handkerchief. ”
She blushed a dark, dark pink, and lowered her eyes, then looked back up at him, and sighed. “Don’t worry about the handkerchief,” she said. “It is safe.”
He couldn’t understand why she looked ashamed, nor what she might mean by it, but he only bowed again, and then he ran into the alley, screaming “To me,” and calling the attention of two of the opponents who had engaged Porthos and Aramis. He could perceive he had arrived just in time, since both Porthos and Aramis-each of whom had been fighting three enemies at once, for who knew how long-gave the impression of being very tired.
The problem, as D’Artagnan realized, is that this still left each of them defending himself from two enemies. Except that at that moment, from the entrance of the alley, there echoed in Athos’s most resonant voice, “To me, musketeers. ”
A moment later, Athos claimed the attention of one of D’Artagnan’s opponents, whom he discharged in very short order, just as D’Artagnan managed to dispatch his own. Which left both of them in the position of being able to relieve Porthos and Aramis, just as three more musketeers, called by Athos’s yell, charged into the alley. Moments later, another two arrived running from the other end.
The two guards of the Cardinal who were still unscathed made the rational decision of running full tilt towards the newly arrived musketeers, while the two who were wounded leaned against the wall and surrendered their swords.
Leaving their comrades to dispose of dead and wounded, the four inseparables walked towards D’Artagnan’s home. D’Artagnan led them, of course not expecting to see Madame Bonacieux anywhere. And indeed, she was gone, and he didn’t have time to look at the windows of her house, to see if she might be watching him. Besides, what she had said really troubled him.
What could she mean by saying the handkerchief was safe? And by looking so guilty?