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 Aramis’s considering eye-used, at any rate to examining form and fashion among all-that it hadn’t been tailored for this boy but for another. One who’d been larger of shoulders and thicker of waist.

It might mean all or nothing. It might mean the boy’s family was that sort of mean nobility hanging by their fingernails to the edge of their birth privilege, forever afraid of dropping off. They would buy the best thirdhand and be quite glad they could afford it. That would fit with a family just come to town to seek their advancement at court. But then, this level of wear, and the suit not tailored for the wearer would fit just as well a family of the highest nobility and careless of appearances. Those with many boys often passed the suits down the line as each of them grew out. And then, if Guillaume had been destined for the church, he was probably the second child or third. Often it was first to the land, second to the army and third to the church, though those last two were often reversed.

Aramis permitted himself a bitter smile that he was one of very few only children to be raised for the church. There were reasons for that, and at any rate, he was not dissatisfied with his vocation, such as it was. If he could control his immoderate fondness for the fair sex, he would be able to be a great churchman. A bishop or… he was aware of a smile sliding across his lips before his brain commanded it. Or a Cardinal.

“Is there anything to smile about?” Porthos asked. He’d walked around and planted himself near the child’s head, looking down at Aramis. He was pale and he was sullen and he looked truculent as though he could barely wait to find someone on whom to take out his anger.

Aramis shook his head. Any man in this mood was scary. A man who knew how to use a sword in this mood was very scary. And a man Porthos’s size was always very scary. “No. I was thinking of… my mother.”

This got a sudden raising of the red eyebrows above Porthos’s eyes and he said, “Oh.”

Aramis hastened to change the subject. “Was he hot, Porthos? When you found him?”

“Hot?” Porthos said. “Yes.” He nodded slowly, as though considering it. “Hot as if he had a fever, and scarlet as if he burned with it, and seemed to be hallucinating too. And he said he was thirsty.” He paused for a moment and let out air in a sound that was neither sigh nor huff of exasperation but had hints of both. “Was it poison, Aramis? Or did something befall him on the way here? He seemed perfectly fine two days ago, when I saw him last.”

Aramis shrugged. He looked into the child’s eyes and shook his head. “I would tell you it was just a fever,” he said. “One of those sudden fevers that kill in a moment. Except…”

He looked up and met with Porthos’s concerned glance, and sighed because he very much suspected this was indeed murder and though a fever might have meant they were all now in peril, a murder was yet something else again. Together the three of them had unraveled two murders done by stealth. Neither of the murders had proven easy to solve. And both of them had brought far too many complications that none of them could have dreamed or anticipated. Even the murder that didn’t pertain to him had involved the Cardinal. And each murder had come close to destroying the four friends or at least to chasing them out of Paris and out of the musketeers.

“What?” Porthos said. He squatted down, so that his face was as close to being on a level with Aramis as it was likely to get. “What do you suspect? What causes your suspicions? ”

Aramis sighed again. “It is his pupils. They are wide and dilated. You said he talked of angels and of flying. I think he was poisoned and from the symptoms I would say it was belladonna, which the Englishmen call nightshade.”

Porthos frowned. Athos and D’Artagnan, on the other hand, seemed to inhale at the same time and then to remain silent with what was more than just the absence of words, like certain nights are darker than merely the absence of light would warrant.

Aramis looked up and saw Athos’s face set and serious. “You know much about poisons, Aramis,” he said, slowly.

Aramis raised his eyebrows. Sometimes Athos’s reactions were unaccountable, though the Gascon, too, was looking pale and drawn and suspicious.

“You don’t think I killed the boy,” he said, heatedly. “What reason would I have had to-”

Athos shook his head. “I never thought that,” he said. “But I wonder what part of your upbringing had to do with learning poisons and why this was thought necessary.”

“When I was a very young man,” Aramis said. He avoided looking at his friend because if he did he would have to take offense and he didn’t want to call Athos for a duel. “In fact, about the age of this poor child, I was, for six months, apprenticed to a Benedictine monk who believed in the practice of charity by more visible means than the disbursement of wealth. He treated illnesses through herbal remedies and at his knee I learned the use of herbs to heal, and their counterpart, the ill effects they could have if misused. ” And, unable to repress his malice, he looked up at Athos’s chiseled features set now in mild surprise. “Why did you think I’d learned, Athos?”

The older musketeer colored, a rare event and a striking contrast between the blood flooding his cheeks and his normally marble-pale skin. “The Vatican,” he said, not making much sense. “And power within the church. One hears… stories…”

Aramis grinned, suddenly. He never knew from whence Athos’s fears and suspicions came, but unlike D’Artagnan’s or Aramis’s own, they usually echoed from some deep well of suspicion learned from a book in some library in forgotten childhood. “Indeed, one does,” he admitted to Athos’s murmur. “But the stories one hears aren’t meant to apply to everyone who enters the church. It has never been said that the men in the hierarchy of the church are better than other men, only, one hopes, aided by grace. And, Athos, when I take the habit, if I become hungry for temporal power, I’ll have better means to advance than poisoning those in my way.”

“That I believe,” D’Artagnan said, with the sound of an exclamation that escapes the speaker unawares.

Aramis nodded at the young man. “And that you might. But the thing is, I have reason to believe, from his skin still being very dry, that he died of belladonna. This can’t be sure, but I’d wager it.” As he spoke, he started looking through the corpse’s attire.

“Aramis!” Porthos said. “Surely you don’t mean to search him.”

“Surely I do,” Aramis said.

“But his family!”

“We must find his family. And there is no one to tell us who they are or where they live.”