At the next crossing, Aramis paused, and the rest of them stopped, one step forward, and turned to look at the blond musketeer.

Aramis tilted his head back to look at them, a frown of deep thought on his regular features. “I wonder…” he said.

“Yes?” Athos said.

Aramis nodded, but his mind seemed to be very far away. “That is,” he said, “I think I should go to the royal palace. After all, Mousqueton’s… friend… Hermengarde, lives there. Surely, if he did do this or if… if the problem is with the armorer, Hermengarde will know?”

“Mousqueton did not do this!” Porthos said, harshly.

“No. I don’t believe he did, Porthos, except maybe if it was in self-defense. Imagine that the armorer has some reason to hate Mousqueton. Imagine that… shall we say… the armorer thought he wanted to kill Mousqueton and advanced on him. Can you doubt that Mousqueton has seen enough swordplay to instinctively pick up a sword and…”

Porthos snorted. “Mousqueton might have seen swordplay, but that doesn’t make him an expert. Surely you’d seen swordplay before you came to me because you wished to fight your first duel. If I hadn’t taught you to wield a sword, how would that duel have gone with you?”

Aramis shook his head. “But he would be fighting against someone who is not a dueler.”

“Granted,” Porthos said. “But all good armorers are trained in the weapons they make. They study them and work at them and wield them in practice, so that they can tell how the balance should be and whether the weapon they just created is any good. And this one, Langelier père, was the best armorer in Paris. Not the most expensive but the best. I went to him because though his swords and knives were not ornate, they were the best balanced and the sturdiest. I know. I used to teach fencing.” He shook his head gravely. “My poor Mousqueton would not have a chance.”

Aramis sighed. “You don’t know. People do strange things in the grip of fear.”

Porthos shrugged. “By all means,” he said. “Go and ask Hermengarde, but I don’t think you’ll find anything. If Mousqueton had felt any animosity towards this armorer, count on it, I would have heard.”

Athos knew the interminable discussions Porthos and Aramis could get into. They resembled the bickering between brothers and often gave the impression they had been going on since the beginning of the world and would go on until the final trumpet. In this one, Aramis, contrary to form, was not using the longest words he could find in his vocabulary, or the convoluted argumentation methods taught to him by his Jesuit masters, but doubtless, that too would come, if Athos allowed the discussion to continue. Which Athos had no intention of doing. Instead he cut in. “Aramis, you cannot go alone.”

Aramis graced him with a sudden smile. “I cannot? And why not?”

“But you just saw… you just wrote a letter to Bazin, telling him to go and stay with Grimaud. Surely, you don’t think that you’ll be safe, if our servants aren’t?”

Aramis shrugged. “Bazin is notoriously bad with a sword,” he said. “If someone attacked him, he’d probably either bless them, or-if we’re lucky-hit them over the head with a crucifix. And since he doesn’t normally carry a crucifix about on his person, I’d have to guess the blessing part. I”-he smiled again-“am not Bazin.”

“I cannot approve of your risking yourself this way, Aramis,” Athos said. “After all, with the edict hanging over our heads, any duel could be a death sentence.”

“Not if you kill your enemy and his seconds, and there are no witnesses,” Aramis said. “That will keep you from being arrested.”

“Aramis!” Athos said. He could well understand his friend’s frustration at the idea that they were, yet again, in a situation where it was not safe to conduct business alone and without chaperonage. But then again, he must see the situation as it was. “Why do you believe you will be attacked, and not merely entrapped?”

Aramis shrugged. “If I’m entrapped, I’ll attack.”

“I could go with you,” D’Artagnan offered.

“I would prefer you don’t,” Aramis said. “If, as you believe, the Cardinal is seeking to entrap the Queen by taking Mousqueton-if, as the captain believes and as it is rumored, the Cardinal imagines conspiracies against his life… Then if I go alone to the palace, and they see me talking to Hermengarde, they will think that I am just talking to yet another woman.” He gave a little smile, quite different from his previous ones-half filled with rueful self-mockery. “You must know it is believed I’ll sleep with any woman at all. However, if I am with D’Artagnan, the Cardinal will wonder if we’re trying to circumvent his plan to entrap Mousqueton. Or if we’re part of some plot to kill him.” He looked at his fingernails. “You must see it can’t be done.”

“Must I?”

Aramis smiled, and this time it was yet another smile-his suave, practiced courtier’s smile that gave the impression he could glide over trouble and not feel it. “Indeed you must. Fear not. Nothing will happen to me.”

And with that, he walked away. Athos, staring after him, crossed his arms on his chest. What could he do? He might feel as responsible for his younger friends as if they were his children or his vassals, but he couldn’t tell them that. It would only enrage them. The second possibly more than the first.

He looked back at his other friends, to realize there was only one remaining. D’Artagnan, looking back at Athos with an expression between amusement and worry. “Porthos must have walked away while we were arguing with Aramis,” D’Artagnan said.

Athos nodded and repressed a wish to sigh. “Indeed. Which would not worry me as much, if I didn’t know how Porthos’s mind works. Or doesn’t.”

“Yes,” D’Artagnan said. “Me too. I wonder what he got it in his head to do.”

“If we are lucky,” Athos said, “he’s gone to Athenais to ask her opinion of all this. Athenais will keep him from doing something foolish.” Athenais was Porthos’s longtime lover, the younger wife of an aged notary. She had met all of them under trying circumstances and had earned the respect of them all and, possibly, a little of Aramis’s fear.

“If he’s gone to Athenais,” D’Artagnan began, doubtfully, “you know, what I should do…” he said, and hesitated. Then, as though acquiring renewed courage, continued, “You know, it is possible this is not the Cardinal’s trap. Or at least that it wasn’t set by him. It is not unusual to see five guards of the Cardinal walking around town in a group.”

“Though it’s more likely to see them sober than it is to find five sober musketeers,” Athos said, only half joking.

“Yes, very paltry fellows, the Cardinal’s men. Comes from serving a churchman,” D’Artagnan said, and a humorous light danced in his dark eyes. “But all the same, they walk all around town in groups, as much as we do, which is what results in so many duels between the musketeers and the guards.

“So, they might have been passing by, and might have seen an opportunity. Perhaps they are of the trusted few who know that the Cardinal needed a hostage. Or perhaps they just recognized Mousqueton and decided to avenge themselves on Porthos through him.”

Athos shrugged. “Well, that does not matter. It would still be the same, once the Cardinal had hold of him. A mind such as Richelieu ’s cannot have failed to see Mousqueton as a pawn in a game where he can entrap the Queen. Or lead her to entrap herself.”

“Indeed,” D’Artagnan said. “But it makes a very great difference towards two purposes, you see?” He lifted his hand and counted on his fingers. “One, if the trap was not set on purpose, it is not likely the Cardinal will try to entrap the rest of us, or our servants.” And as Athos opened his mouth to reply, D’Artagnan said, “Not that I suggest we risk ourselves unnecessarily. But the qualifying term there is unnecessarily. I realize the Cardinal might think circumstances offered him a really good opportunity to entrap us, and might seek to replicate them from now on. But even so, he’s unlikely to get anything set up in time.”