“The lady,” the wench said, curtseying, “will see you now, monsieur.”
She led Athos up the staircase and, at the top, opened the door and announced, “Monsieur Musketeer,” as if this were some sort of title.
Athos entered the room to find it handsomely outfitted with a profusion of chairs, settees and a reclining couch in the Roman manner, upon which a young woman was lying daintily, holding silken embroidery upon which she seemed to have worked an intricate pattern of very diminutive flowers.
Not a man to judge others by their material worth and-being descended from an old and noble house- even less accustomed to thinking of objects as displays of good breeding, Athos was not yet so unworldly that he didn’t recognize, in the large, gilt-framed mirror on the wall, a Venetian masterpiece worth a king’s ransom. This, taken with the new yellow velvet covering the sofas and chairs, and the newly painted walls with their profusion of just-too-new, supposedly ancestral portraits made Athos think to himself that horse trading might be the way to go.
But he said nothing of the kind. Instead, he bowed, with every appearance of respect, and said, “Madame de Comeau. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I am, as your maid said, a musketeer, but my name is Athos.”
This so provoked her that she sat up, from her reclining position, and fulminated him with an almost glare from very fine, honey-colored eyes. “Oh,” she said. “But that’s not a person’s name. That’s no one’s name. That is a mountain, isn’t it? In… Armenia?” She was petite, rather than small, designed on a small frame, but with everything that the most lavish sculptor could want. Her oval face, with its slightly too prominent nose, betrayed more than a hint of Roman blood.
It was a face well adapted to frowning, and while she frowned at him, he bowed hastily. “Madam,” he said. “Few women know that. Few men, even.”
“Oh,” she said, a sound of peevishness, not of surprise. “My father had all of us excellently educated, boys and girls alike. He said a well-trained mind was the best weapon in the world and he did not intend to send any of his children out unarmed.” She frowned at him, dark eyebrows brought low over golden brown eyes. “But it is very provoking of you to call yourself after a mountain. What is your real name?”
Athos thought that, had he not enough reason to be weary of women, reason that had trained him as a dog or a horse could be trained, through severe pain instilling aversion, he would be in some danger now. There was to the woman a combination of peevish childishness and sharp reasoning which would doubtless prove the downfall of better men than himself.
As it was, and because he knew better than to court Madame de Comeau’s-or indeed any woman’s-favor, he permitted himself to grimmace and bow again. “That, madam, is known to my confessor and to very few other people in this world.”
She set her embroidery aside and stared at him. “It is a noble name, that much I know,” she said. “From your way of standing and your address. So why would you hide it? Have you done something to so displease the King that… But no.” She flicked the thought away with a careless gesture of her fingers. “No, of course not. If you’d displeased the King, you’d not be in his musketeers.” She frowned again. “But it is some great wrong here, something you very much wish to hide.”
He bowed again, in silence.
She slapped the sofa by her side, with some energy. “Oh, you are a very trying man. Why wouldn’t you tell me? It’s not as though I’m trying to interrogate you so that I can babble it at court.”
He bowed yet again and she sighed. “Very well,” she said, and from the tone of her voice she might have been a queen dispensing a high favor. “Very well, if you must be that way. Please sit down.”
He chose an armchair not too far from her, and sat down. And she sat primly now on her original reclining perch. Her hands folded on her lap spoke of a careful upbringing, as did the attentive glance she bent upon him. “You wish to see me,” she said.
“Yes,” Athos said. “Very much. I’ve asked your husband some questions, but I wish to ask them of you as well. Your husband… might not have apprehended the situation as well as you will.” He’d meant to say this all along, knowing that flattery was a good part of questioning people about things they might not, otherwise, wish to share. But in this case, it might very well be true.
“Oh, my lord…” She shrugged, a gesture that effectively and tactfully dismissed her husband’s discernment. Then she looked at Athos, giving the impression of turning her whole mind to his speech. “Very well. Tell me what you wish to talk about.”
It had an odd effect of his being interrogated but, lacking Aramis’s interest in and ability to speak to women, Athos felt it was just as well if he progressed quickly to the matter at hand. “I don’t know if you ever even heard of this person, though your maids, apparently think you talked to him. However, there was a young boy, thirteen or so, with auburn hair, who used to come and-”
“Guillaume,” she said, quickly, with no attempt at disguise. “From the Hangman.”
Athos inclined his head, partly to avoid showing her his expression of surprise. “Your husband told me that Guillaume tried to get him to give him a stipend and claimed that he was your husband’s natural son.”
Madame de Comeau put her head a little sideways, a clear expression of doubt that didn’t necessitate her saying anything about her husband.
Athos smiled a little. “I don’t know if he told you the truth.”
The little hand rose and fell in what seemed to be her peculiarly dismissive gesture again. “Oh, as to that, he might very well have. The whole thing is the sort of foolishness that Guillaume would contrive and that Monsieur de Comeau might even find amusing. He has a soft spot for rogues and cheats.” She shrugged. “But you know, he never could be my husband’s bastard. There are plenty of those around my lord’s domain, and they are all, like my lord, small and dark. Guillaume is, as you say, auburn haired, and tall and rawboned enough that you know he’s going to be a great hulking man when he’s done growing.”
Athos, amused by her attitude towards her husband’s profligacy, nodded. “No. He isn’t your husband’s siring. But your husband had him beat and thrown out nonetheless. ”
She nodded, approvingly. “Well, it wouldn’t do for him to go about thinking he had the power to force my husband to dance to his tune, now would it?”
“But he didn’t prevent the boy from coming and hanging around the yard again.”
“Which was his folly,” Madame de Comeau said, her gaze merry. She seemed to view all of this as much of a game. “Because he found out my husband’s secret.”
“That your husband trades in horses?”
At this she raised her eyebrows. “If it is an open secret, then my money was ill spent. Or did Guillaume tell you that? Are you perhaps his attempt to extract more from me? Have a care sir. I neither have the money to give you, nor the disposition to submit to constant fleecing.”
Athos shook his head. “I have no intention of fleecing you.” This idea actually got a smile from him, but it vanished as soon as he realized what she had said. “You gave Guillaume money?”
She shrugged, a very expressive gesture. “What else was I to do?” she asked. “Otherwise the horrible boy would bruit it all around town that Bernard… Monsieur de Comeau deals in horses. And while I couldn’t care much where our money comes from, the rest of society is so tiresome about it.”
Athos raised his eyebrows. “Indeed. How much did you give Guillaume?”
She shook her head slightly. “Tell me, first, how did you come to find out about Bernard’s dealings?”