Porthos answered only with a long stream of swearing-inventive swearing, D’Artagnan noted, even in his shocked state, his hand holding his wounded arm up and staring in disbelief at the stream of blood pouring forth. He was fairly sure whatever the Cardinal might or might not have done to or for his niece Madame de Combalet, it could not be what Porthos had just said he did. Mostly because it was anatomically impossible and probably fatal.

He felt light-headed and as though he would presently lose consciousness; only Aramis touched him on the arm and said, “D’Artagnan.” And D’Artagnan, looking up from his arm, realized that Aramis had put away his sword, and was holding up one of his immaculate, embroidered, silk-edged handkerchiefs, and trying to remove D’Artagnan’s doublet.

“Can you remove your arm from the sleeve without my cutting it away?” Aramis said. “Your doublet might be salvageable with the insertion of some panels. I’m sure Mousqu-Well, one of our servants should be able to help with that. Only I must tourniquet your arm as soon as it may be, else you will bleed out very quickly.”

As though in a dream, D’Artagnan opened his doublet and removed his arm from its sleeve and watched Aramis tie the handkerchief around his arm. A gulp escaped him when Aramis tightened the handkerchief, and then Aramis made D’Artagnan lift his arm. “It will help stop the flood,” he said.

Meanwhile, the guards of the Cardinal had come into the light, and it was de Brisarac and Jussac and about six underlings. Jussac, apparently under the control of an idea that dominated all others, said, “Which of you wounded the boy? What were you dueling over? I thought you were inseparables.”

“I knew you had deformed moral structures, to serve the Cardinal so willingly,” Aramis said drily. “I did not know that you also had subnormal wits. Why would we be dueling each other, Jussac? We are friends. We are, indeed, inseparables.”

“The first time I met the boy, you were all dueling him,” Jussac said.

“Oh, that was because I had only come to town, and made their acquaintance,” D’Artagnan said. “Now I know them better than that, and I would never duel with all of them at once.”

“So you would duel them one at a time,” Jussac said.

Aramis gave D’Artagnan a warning look and said, “I wish you wouldn’t speak, my friend, not while your head is clouded by blood loss. You see that Monsieur Jussac is determined to judge us before he has any facts.” Then turning to Jussac, he said, “We were crossing the garden, together, as you see. We were looking for our friend Athos, who said he might come and help supplement the guard today. And out of nowhere, we were ambushed by men in black wearing monkish hoods. What you saw was our effort at defending ourselves, nothing more. It was no duel, with appointed time and seconds, but surely, even under the Cardinal’s rule, a man is still allowed to defend himself when in fear for his life?”

“I didn’t see any men,” Jussac said, mulishly, jutting out his chin. “What I saw was the three of you, with your swords out. And since I know you’ve fought each other before…”

A stream of invective escaped Porthos, prompting Aramis to say, “Porthos, I don’t think the Cardinal can have done that.”

“And why not?” Porthos asked, in a challenging tone.

“Because I think you’ll find,” Aramis said, “that only women have that organ.”

“Oh,” Porthos said, and frowned. “But I meant it in the sense where things aren’t really true, but the spirit of them is, anyway.”

“The metaphorical sense? Even in that sense, that is not something I’d ascribe to the Cardinal,” Aramis said, absentmindedly and then, examining D’Artagnan’s arm. “I think the bleeding is slowing.”

“Well,” Jussac said. “Porthos can have the pleasure of explaining to his eminence his views on anatomy and metaphor, both, since I know his eminence will be overjoyed to see you. As will, might I add, most of our comrades. If the edicts have been signed tonight, which will cause you to die in the morning, we might even throw a party.”

“Ah, yes,” Aramis said. “I’ve long known that you were afraid of us.”

“Afraid? Us?” de Brisarac asked.

“Indeed. Else, why would you hope the law would rid you of us? Why else, but that you, yourselves, could not defeat us?”

De Brisarac reached for his sword, but Jussac held his arm. “No,” he said. “You do not want to answer to his eminence for that. We’ll simply arrest these miscreants, and they can tell his eminence their pretty tale.”

“It is not a pretty tale, you fool,” Porthos said. “Here. Come here.” Without ceremony, the giant musketeer grabbed Jussac by the arm and dragged him over to where he’d been fighting his enemies. “Do you see that? The ground is fairly hard, but even so you can see my footsteps and, see, two others.”

“So, you were fighting these other two and they-”

“Don’t be more foolish than you can help being,” Porthos said, and D’Artagnan had to suppress a wish to giggle, since that was a comment more often heard from Aramis to Porthos. “Look there. I wounded this man. See the blood? And before you tell me it’s D’Artagnan’s, note how the drops vanish into the shadows there. And here.” He forcibly led the guard another way. “Here, see, was where Aramis wounded his adversary. Look how he ran into the night, pouring blood out of him. Why, if the boy had bled that much, instead of simply looking white as a ghost, he would be a ghost.”

The guard made a noncommittal sound in his throat. And Porthos said, in a tone of utter, sneering disdain, “Your Cardinal is in many ways a man without honor. But he is not stupid. If you should go to him with that story, and I told him mine and showed him the evidence, I would not be the one arrested. Nor you, I dare say, since it is not a crime to be a fool. But if I know the tender mercies of the gentleman you serve, he would be furious you ignored attackers, loose in the grounds of the royal palace. And even more furious that you showed yourself for a fool. Now, I don’t know how true this may be, but I’ve heard stories of what happens to those who displease the Cardinal.”

Jussac was quiet a long time.

“Come, Jussac, you know he is right,” de Brisarac said, in a resigned tone.

“Very well,” Jussac said, in a tone that sounded more like challenge than like surrender. “We will follow your so-called attackers, but heaven help you if we find they were your accomplices.”

“How could they be our-” Porthos started.

But Aramis made a gesture to silence him. And as the guards vanished into the night, in the direction the figures had disappeared, he turned to D’Artagnan. “There, you have stopped bleeding. Now, if you can walk, we will go to Athos’s lodgings and see if we can unravel this very confusing hour.”

ATHOS left Rochefort’s office by way of a side door to the Palais Cardinal. He stumbled blindly past the guard there. And stopped.

Walking past him, down the darkened alley into which the door opened, was a ghost. It was a ghost he’d often seen in the dark, but never while wide awake. The ghost of the woman he’d once killed.

Tall, slim, though her heavy breasts and slim waist were disguised in a heavy cloak, Athos could tell she was indeed his late wife. Her carriage, the way she held her head, the pale blond hair that swept down to her waist-all of them belonged to Charlotte, Countess de la Fere.

Her name was on his lips. He wanted to pronounce it, to beg her pardon, to besiege her to look at him, to forgive him for having killed her. But she was so clearly there-solid, as solid as he was.

He thought, for a moment, madly, that perhaps Charlotte had had a sister-someone who looked exactly like her. But as she approached the door, without noticing him-not unbelievable, since he was wearing a musketeer’s attire and had his hat low over his eyes-she raised her hand to show the guard something. And on her hand, Athos saw a very small silver ring, with the glimmer of a pinkish stone. The ring that had once been his mother’s, the ring he had given his wife.