The musketeer's apprentice by Sarah d' Almeida Read Free Book Online

married. And he thought that Porthos’s lover was married. And Aramis’s lover had been. And then he couldn’t think anymore because his mind was too full and his heart ready to burst and he could neither move nor speak looking at her.

    A throat was cleared loudly behind him and he turned to see Bazin glare. “My master said—”

    “That I should hurry, of course,” D’Artagnan said, and turned back to see Constance curtseying at him. Again his heart was full to bursting, but this time it compelled him to action. He ran to the side of the house where roses with broad satiny pink petals spilled over the garden wall. Late blooming roses, their fragrance intoxicating in the air. He reached for one, ignoring the bite of the thorns on his fingers, and pulled it free of the vine, then scraped the thorns off with his fingernail and, bowing, with hat held to chest, proffered Madame Bonacieux the rose.

    She blushed as pink as the rose and for a moment looked as young as D’Artagnan’s seventeen years of age. A glimmer of tears appeared in her eyes as she said, “You shouldn’t, monsieur.”

    “The flower deserves to be ornamented by you, madam,” D’Artagnan said, and bowed.

    She blushed darker. “Thank you,” she said. And she took it.

    He bowed to her again then ran, since Basin and Planchet were already walking a bit down the street. It wasn’t till he’d caught up with them and passed them, on the crowded sidewalk that he realized he’d given her one of her husband’s own roses. And it wasn’t till he was almost at Porthos’s door that he realized that the way she had blushed she must not be used to such gallant gestures. Well. He’d never had too good an opinion of Monsieur Bonacieux and now this decided it all. The man was a low creature, not deserving such a wife.

    With this thought in his mind he started towards the front door of Porthos’s lodging.

    “Not there, Monsieur D’Artagnan,” Basin said. “The practice room. At the back.”

    “The practice room?” D’Artagnan asked. Basin nodded and D’Artagnan started down the alley towards the back gate, then trotted along the garden to the broad door at the back of the house which led to what he assumed was an abandoned cellar where the four of them often practiced sword fighting.

    That they were meeting here must mean he was required for second in a duel that demanded extraordinary skill. He flung the door open and stopped, shocked.

    The three musketeers were there, assembled around something lying on the floor of the room.

    Not something. Someone. A corpse. But it was not a corpse as D’Artagnan was used to seeing them, after duels or brawls. It was smaller, more delicate. A child. It was a child.

    “Sangre Dieu,” he said. “What is this?”

Where Poison Might Be Useful to a Churchman; Pedigree and Ancestry

    ARAMIS turned from where he knelt, on the stone floor by the child’s body. So young a child. Somehow he didn’t count on that, though he’d heard that he was only twelve. Perhaps Aramis had forgotten what he had looked like at twelve. Perhaps it was living all day, everyday amid rough men that made this small corpse seem more pathetic and frailer than it should have been.

    He heard D’Artagnan’s exclamation, he saw out of the corner of his eye as Porthos turned to explain the scene, helped now and then by Athos’s single, prodding word.

    Aramis, in his turn, was looking at the corpse. He wasn’t sure the boy had died of poison. There was no way of knowing. It could have been poison or a sudden illness. But Porthos’s description, and the child’s fixed and dilated pupils, and the dry skin which seemed still too dry added up to a feeling in Aramis that there had been a poisoning done here.

    There were other details about the body. The suit he was wearing was good. Or good enough. But though the violet velvet had been the best money could buy, and though it had once been well tailored, it was obvious to