Rochefort seemed surprised he had passed up a chance to engage in a battle of wits. “His eminence,” he said with something like a twang of disappointment in his voice, “has intercepted some correspondence between the Queen and some of her friends.”

Athos inclined his head. “Not the first time,” he said. “Nor the last.”

Rochefort shrugged, as though to signify this did not matter. “The Queen is very loyal to her brother the Emperor,” he said. “Sometimes it seems inexplicably so. She has also conceived the most vehement dislike of his eminence, for no reason anyone can understand, since you must know his eminence has always had her best interest-” He stopped, and shrugged and Athos was very much afraid he’d allowed a chuckle to escape him. “At any rate, you see, the Queen’s loyalties are divided, and having the King’s best interests-and, aye, those of the kingdom-at heart, the Cardinal can’t help but monitor her conversations. We are not going to beg pardon for doing what must be done.”

“I assure you, Rochefort, we never expected you to beg pardon.”

He got a look of dubious enquiry for that, followed by an exasperated exhalation. “The thing, my dear Count, is that…” He hesitated. “This correspondence hinted that there would be a great change in France soon, and it was clear they meant that the Cardinal would be dead and…” He paused. “And the throne might be better managed. We believed the implication was that they meant to murder the King.”

He paused. Athos caught himself halfway out of the chair, rising by the force of his arms upon the armrests, and he forced himself to sit down again. He noted Rochefort’s gratified expression at what Athos was sure was his alarmed face, and Athos forced his face to relax; forced himself to discipline his emotions. This was Rochefort and Rochefort was an echo of the Cardinal. They-both of them-told the truth only when they couldn’t tell lies, or when the truth served their purpose better than a lie. The chances of this being truthful were less than none.

Yet, Athos’s voice still sounded altered and distorted by emotion, as he said, “You cannot know what you’re saying. You cannot mean it.”

Rochefort was looking neutral, his pleased expression gone. “I wish I didn’t,” he said. “Though in the beginning it was just… a suspicion, or less than that. A thought that the matter should be followed up. A vague idea that things were not all they seemed to be. So I… followed up on it. The Queen’s correspondent, the Duchess De Chevreuse, who you know, is like the worst half of her majesty, and has already been responsible for one miscarriage of her majesty’s, for encouraging her to behave in a very irresponsible manner in the halls of the palace…”

“Or at least that was the reason given,” Athos said.

Rochefort shrugged minimally. “We intercepted correspondence of the Duchess’s, next. The names this brought to us were a little… odd. It appears Madame la Duchess has for some time entertained correspondence with Captain Ornano, the governor of the house of Monsieur, the brother of the King.”

Athos, completely confused by the introduction of the governor of Monsieur, the heir apparent, Gaston d’Orléans, could only raise his eyebrows and try to appear more knowledgeable than he was and yet less enlightened on the matter than he felt he should be.

Rochefort smiled and shook his head. “Perhaps I should explain,” he said. “I understand your friend Aramis is quite au courant of every possible affair in the court. I judge it will not be a surprise to you if I say that we’ve had some strange reactions to the announced marriage of Monsieur to Mademoiselle de Montpensier?”

“Is he to marry her?” Athos asked.

“But… It has been announced by his majesty himself,” Rochefort said, as though shocked that anyone at all could have missed this all-important news. “Surely-”

Athos shook his head. “My only interest in the royalty is to serve them,” he said. “Not necessarily in the person of the present occupant of the throne.” And, added, hastily as Rochefort raised his eyebrow in turn, “No, I don’t mean anything disloyal by that. I am a musketeer of the King’s and I will serve him to the utmost of my understanding and my ability. That is not what I meant. I meant…” He steepled his hands, then shook his head. “When I was… fifteen, I ascended to the dignity of Viscount de Bragelone, the junior title in my family. As such, my father judged that I should be knighted according to the true and ancient rites. What occasioned the knighting-the performing of an act of valor-all that matters not. It was an organized tourney, in which I could display my prowess.” He was aware of a rueful smile distending his lips. “Such as it was, at the time. Good enough for my father’s blessing, at any rate. And he took me to the Abbey of St. Derris where the crypts hold the bones of the kings of France. There he made me aware that the occupant of the throne such as he is, remains, for all he is our sovereign and King, a passing being-a mortal like all other men. What I must serve, he then told me, and made me understand, is the monarchy of France. The present occupant is merely the… vessel of that sacred line, that power which represents and rules all of the kingdom.”

In Rochefort’s eyes, for just a moment, there was something of a fellow-feeling and a look of understanding. “As I assume the Cardinal would say, we must worship the presence of Christ in the sacrarium and not the vessel itself.”

Athos shrugged. “I would say something akin to that. But while one might, on occasion, destroy the sacrarium, one should never destroy the King. Which doesn’t mean one should take a great interest in his life or that of his relatives, either. I have gathered, from gossip, that the King’s marriage is an unhappy one, and the only reason that matters to me is that it reduces the chances of France’s having an heir and, therefore, lays the kingdom open to the depredations of foreigners intent on seizing the throne. My only interest in Monsieur, therefore, is that he is the heir to the throne and stands between us and a disputed throne. Whom he marries signifies little, next to the imperative that he marry and sire children for the crown.”

“It is the Queen Mother’s only interest, also, I believe. That and that Mademoiselle de Montpensier carries with her a large dowry as well as all the ancient dignities and powers of that branch of the Bourbons. Her mother was a Joyeuse and the Queen made much of her and… indeed, of the daughter. In fact, you could say the Queen Mother has been planning this match since before Monsieur was breeched. The sum of this all is that, Monsieur being seventeen, the King has granted permission for the marriage to take place.” He looked at Athos, half in wonder, as though meeting a strange creature, and half in amusement. “If you do not listen to gossip, it is possible you don’t realize this would throw into disarray several people who have an interest, direct or indirect upon the throne and the fate of Monsieur and any heirs he might sire, in particular.”

Athos frowned. He did not, in fact, take any interest in gossip. However, he had been born and raised as a nobleman, sitting night after night at his father’s table, in their domains de la Fere, and listening to the discussions that washed up in their rural province, like echoes of a far-off sea. And then, after all his ambitions and hopes and desires had come to an end in the person of a beautiful blond woman marked with the fleur-de-lis of infamy upon her peerless shoulder, he’d come to court. There, he could no more hope to avoid being immersed in gossip than a fish could hope to avoid being immersed in water.

And the gossip ran rife, of course, as it would, since the twenty-five-year-old King had no heir and his fraught relations with his wife made it very unlikely indeed that he would have any. For a time-and perhaps still, though Athos refused to enquire-there had been a running pool among the more daring of the musketeers about who might sire the heir of France.