Death in Gascony (23 page)

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dawn the next day, by mutual, undiscussed agreement, they went outside, on horseback, to the nearest hill. There, they assumed they could speak without interruption, without being overheard and with ease of seeing who approached from any side.

There, on top of the hill, they dismounted to talk, while their servants held their horses nearby. It was cold—a cutting wind blowing and biting at the cheeks that their cloaks and hoods left exposed. And Aramis wondered what they looked like, there, atop a hill, four men in dark cloaks. In the more superstitious regions of the country such a sight would probably be enough for rumors of ghosts and demons.

Here, it would doubtless be assumed they were plotting. Which they were, but not against any authority nor to overthrow any order.

“I was thinking,” D’Artagnan said. “Yesterday. One of us must go see the priest, of course, but I think it might be best if I go on my own.”

“Never,” Athos said. “You shouldn’t go anywhere on your own. Remember what almost happened when you went to visit de Bilh?”

“But what can happen to me in the middle of town and in a sanctuary?” he asked.

Athos shook his head. So did Porthos. And Aramis felt himself joining in. “D’Artagnan,” he said. “The chapel is dark and isolated. How hard would it be for anyone to slip in after you and put a dagger in your back before anyone—even Father Urtou—noticed? Surely you don’t want that?”

“No. I’m no more suicidal than any of you,” he said. And sighed. “We’ll do it that way then. I shall go with…”

“Me,” Athos said.

“Right. Provided Athos stays outside the sacristy when I go in to see the priest in private, as I think it far more likely he will confide in me alone than in me accompanied by anyone else.”

“Very well,” Athos said. “And as for Porthos, I’ve already discussed with him what he must do. He must go to the various houses hereabouts and see what he can find about the horses.”

“The horses?” D’Artagnan asked.

“Yes, the horses your father said the King and the Cardinal had given him. Or at least that’s what your good Bayard understood, though how much of it your father said, and how much Bayard allowed his partiality for your house to deceive him…”

“Quite possibly a lot,” D’Artagnan said, with a thin smile. “He is—was very loyal to my father.” He frowned a little. “Aramis, I’d like you to search something for me. It is really imperative that we find out what, if anything, my father was doing for the Cardinal. I found that safe-conduct but nothing else.”

“And it could be all or nothing,” Aramis said. “Very well. Where did you find the safe-conduct and where do you think it would be most fruitful for me to search?”

“My father’s study,” D’Artagnan said, and proceeded to give his friend close instructions. “Oh, and take Mousqueton with you. He knows how to open the door and the box under the desk, and anything else that might be locked.” He gave other instructions about what the trunks were likely to contain.

“And take Planchet also,” Athos rumbled. “If you’re going through papers and books, the boy is invaluable, should there happen to be a secret code on any paper.”

“
Hola,
Planchet and Mousqueton,” Aramis said, turning. “It appears I have need of you. Lets on our horses and go back to the D’Artagnan house.”

It was only as they were about to leave that he stopped and asked D’Artagnan, “What do I tell your mother, if she should ask?”

D’Artagnan smiled, an impish smile that made him look very much seventeen. “Tell her it was by my order and for the good of the family that you did what you had to do.”

T
HEY
approached the chapel just before Mass should have started. It was Athos’s devout hope that they could talk to the priest before anyone arrived for the Mass and that, this early in the morning, he would be pliable and disposed to answer their questions.

He entered the chapel, crossing himself reverentially. For years now, he hadn’t been sure that there was a God at all. Or, more exactly, he hadn’t been sure that, if there was a God, he could be counted on to be a gentleman. This, however, did not excuse him from showing reverence—in the same way that the fact that Louis XIII was undeniably a weak king did not excuse Athos from showing reverence and loyalty to the monarchy.

He slid into the shadows of a pew, while D’Artagnan forged ahead, step by step, stopping to genuflect in front of the altar before going to the little door to the side that led to the sacristy. “Father Urtou,” he called. “Father? It is I, D’Artagnan.”

Athos slid to his knees on the pew, joined his hands and rested his forehead on them. Not praying exactly, but thinking of everything they were facing and asking Him, if He should chance, indeed, to have a hint of noblesse oblige, to take a hand in it. To keep D’Artagnan safe and, if possible, to arrange for a way for the boy to return to Paris, as it was obvious he would be miserable if forced to stay behind in Gascony.

His eyes were covered, so he didn’t see D’Artagnan come out of the sacristy. But he heard his disordered breath, fast and with an odd edge almost of sobbing.

He had opened his eyes and turned before D’Artagnan said, “Athos.”

The boy stood in the door to the sacristy, looking pale as death and seeming to totter on his feet.

Athos’s first thought was that the boy was wounded—that, somehow, the priest had been bought by their mysterious enemy and, forgetting church, vows and loyalty, he’d plunged a knife into the boy.

Carried by his concern, Athos found himself out of the pew and halfway across the chapel, stretching out supportive hands to hold the boy should his legs give out altogether. “D’Artagnan,” he said. “D’Artagnan, my friend, what is wrong? Are you wounded?”

D’Artagnan shook his head. He drew in a breath, noisily. “Not wounded,” he managed.

Athos was by his side by now, holding onto his elbow, looking him over for any sign of blood, in the dim light. Relaxing a little when there didn’t seem to be any obvious wound.

But the boy was still as white as curds as he turned his face towards Athos and said, with some impatience, “I’m well, Athos. I’m well. It is…Father Urtou.”

“What? Did he say anything?”

“No, Athos,” D’Artagnan said and stepped out of the door to the sacristy.

Athos surged forward, entered the sacristy. It was quiet, very quiet. Slightly brighter than the chapel, since there was a long, narrow window on the wall and the space was small. It was furnished with various locked cupboards, what looked like a pole on which someone—or various someones—had hung a confusing welter of vestments, and a tall, narrow writing desk with shelves beneath it. Presumably the shelves had contained several heavy black notebooks.

Presumably that is, because Athos had seen other arrangements of the kind. And the top book was still there, opened, on the top of the multitiered furniture piece. On it the priest would write marriages and baptisms and funerals. For most people these were the only records of their lives—the only marks they made in an otherwise indifferent world.

In Gascony, because of church burnings and Catholic and Protestant enmity to record keeping of any sort by the enemy, Athos suspected the records in most churches didn’t go back all that far. But this one looked to have enough records. Enough that each book, its covers and pages torn out and strewn wildly about, had furnished enough paper to form a mound that took up half of the sacristy.

At first Athos thought it was all it was, and that D’Artagnan’s exclamation about the priest related to how much work the poor man would have, to restore his records to any semblance of order. But then he caught sight of a wrinkled, yellowed hand protruding from the pile of paper. It lay, palm up, as though begging for an alms that Athos could not give it.

A second look revealed, peeking out of the papers at another place, a small wrinkled face and beneath it, stretching and staining the paper, a dark red puddle. The smell in the air, thick, mingled dust and blood.

“Someone hit him on the back of the head,” D’Artagnan said, sounding on the verge of nausea. “I almost stepped on him, covered in papers as he was. What—Who do you think did this? And why? Who would have any interest in hurting him?” And then, in the plaintive voice of a child, “People hereabouts said he was a saint.”

Athos didn’t believe in God—or at least not the way he was painted—but he did believe in saints. Saints were those who, under difficult circumstances, strived to bear more of a burden than they were made to carry. By that definition, perhaps Father Urtou was a saint.

Certainly in this region, where the last fifty years had provided more than enough martyrdom for everyone of every possible denomination, no one would be a priest just for the glory or the power of belonging to the church. Not when death was on the line.

“It was probably church robbers,” Athos said. “In search of the platter.”

D’Artagnan inhaled with a sound that might have been bitter laugh. “Then it couldn’t be anyone local,” he said. “Because no one—no one—here would think there was platter worth selling. It was stolen years ago, in the wars. Father Urtou made do with a clay plate and a few cups, no better than those at a peasant house.”

Athos was examining the bank of doors on the wall behind the priest’s corpse. “Every one of those doors has been opened,” he said. “And not by someone of Mousqueton’s ability.” Each of the doors, at least the nearest ones that he could see clearest, were broken, the wood wrenched till the metal had come free of it, and the door had opened.

“Oh,” D’Artagnan said and, stepping carefully over the priest, opened the nearest door, to reveal several altar clothes of the finest linen, roiled and thrown about as if a small and exceedingly vicious wind had scattered them. “Oh,” again, in a different tone and then, “I don’t think this was done by robbers, Athos. I don’t think they killed Father Urtou to steal what he had. Buy why do it, otherwise? Who could have a vendetta against the poor man?”

Athos opened a couple more doors, to find the contents—holy books, missals, and what looked like a pile of schoolboy exercises in catechism and letters—tossed about just like the linen and the pages on the floor.

“I don’t think it was a vendetta,” he told D’Artagnan. “I think whoever did it was looking for something.” He looked around at the pages torn from the registry books. “I’d guess they were looking for a birth, death or marriage record.”

D’Artagnan made a sound of disbelief, followed by a bitter chuckle. “Couldn’t they have asked?”

“I don’t think they could. I don’t know why not—but it is obvious they’d rather kill than ask, and that’s not the usual choice.”

“No,” D’Artagnan said, and then soberly, “We should go call his housekeeper. She lives next door. I’ll tell my mother too. I don’t know if he has family, but someone will have to take charge of the corpse and prepare it for burial and—”

“Not just yet, D’Artagnan,” Athos said. “First let us look at these papers, one by one, shall we? Let’s make sure there’s nothing here that the murderers left behind that might incriminate them.”

Again the laugh-sigh echoed from D’Artagnan. “I don’t think they left anything at all of any use behind. Look how thoroughly they looked.”

“Yes,” Athos said. “But the fact they rent the record books page from page and only searched the other areas perfunctorily tells me they were looking for a record. And the fact that the other areas were searched at all tells me they didn’t find what they needed in that book—and probably ran away at the sound of our approach. Which, in turn, tells us they expected us to recognize them on sight—so that even if they managed to escape, we’d be able to point a finger at them.”

D’Artagnan had calmed down. At least his breath was slower and more regular. “I think I understand what you mean,” he said. “You mean for us to search page by page of this.” He gestured at the floor. “And to go through those cupboards, also, if we fail to find something here.”

Athos nodded and, kneeling down, started to pick up pages, look at them, and stack them, roughly by date. Birth, marriage, death. Birth, marriage, death. What a senseless round.

“But Athos, what I don’t understand is why you want to do this. How could this possibly relate to my father’s death or to the attacks on me?”

“I don’t know,” Athos said. “I only know this. There are crimes happening in Gascony, from your father’s murder to the attacks against you. They seem wholly unrelated. And they might very well be. But if they are, D’Artagnan, with these many attacks happening in the last few weeks, Gascony is worse than it was when it was at war.”

D’Artagnan looked at him a moment, then knelt down at the other end of the pile. “What if he’s alive still?” he asked, looking at the priest. “What if we allow him to die by not calling for help?”

Athos could have told him that no one with their head bashed in like that could possibly be alive, but it would require too much explanation and argument. Instead of arguing, he reached for the priest’s neck, to feel for a pulse he knew wouldn’t be there. Aloud, he announced his results, “He’s cold, D’Artagnan. The Mass will start in just a few minutes. Let’s gather the papers.”

“The Mass can’t start,” D’Artagnan protested, his normal quickness of mind overwhelmed by shock. “He’s dead.”

“Yes,” Athos said. “But the people don’t know that, and they’ll be arriving. If they find us here, they might be so delusional as to think we murdered him. Let’s collect the papers quickly and then call for help at his house.”

This seemed to jolt the young man into action as nothing else might have managed to. Together, the two friends sifted through the documents—some so old they were written on stray pieces of parchment and some, more recent, loose and charred—setting them by order of the date they’d occurred.

“I still don’t think we’ll find anything,” D’Artagnan said.

But Athos, looking at a document with familiar names, was very much afraid he already had.