the musketeer's seamstress Read Online Free Page A

of the crowd. A woman, Athos realized, as she pushed forward to stand before him. She was very short, barely coming up to his chest, she was also very round, not so much fat as spherical, with the sort of coloration that betrayed she was either Spanish or from somewhere very close to Spain. Her hair was tucked up into a bun and her clothes were the genteel but not too fashionable attire of a maid of honor to a noblewoman.

    “It is my lady,” she said, wringing her hands together in front of her. “My lady de Ysabella de Ybarra y . . .”

    “What happened to your lady?” Athos asked.

    “We heard a scream from her room,” the woman said. She looked up with sad black eyes. “We heard a scream and went to look, but the door was closed. Locked. She was—She’d been—”

    Athos raised his eyebrows. If the Lady Ysabella was the woman whom Aramis called Violette, and if Aramis had been present in her room, Athos could very well imagine what she’d been.

    The woman clearly could not bring herself to say that her mistress had been disporting herself with a musketeer. Instead she shrugged, an elaborate and very Latin gesture, and said, “Well, she was with a friend whom she trusted. But no one answered when we called, and when we knocked the door down . . .” She took a deep breath with a hint of sob to it, as though she were just holding hysteria at bay. “When we broke down the door, there she was, my lady, on her bed, with a wound between her breasts.”

    “Did she tell you what happened?” Athos asked.

    Again the elaborate shrug. “She was dead. But from her balcony there came a sound and we went to look. We think the miscreant who was with her, jumped from her window.”

    “On what floor was your mistress?” Athos asked. “And did you see him jump?”

    “Third floor, and no,” she said. “In fact . . .” She shrugged again. “It is hard to believe he could have jumped. But he must have, because he left behind his musketeer’s uniform. So he was there with her. And the door was locked. Who else could have done it?”

    “He was the musketeer who goes by Aramis,” one of the men said.

    “That’s his friend,” another of them said. “Where is he, Monsieur?”

    “Sangre Dieu,” Athos said. “My friend Aramis is there.” Aramis had enough presence of mind to look over his shoulder at the sound of his name, showing just his chin, a bit of his face, not enough for them to examine for blood, but enough that his reaction of turning to look seemed natural and proper. “He’s been with us all night, playing dice.”

    “Are you sure?” the man who led the searchers asked. “Because he—”

    “Would I not know who my friend is?”

    “And he’s been with us all the night,” Porthos said. “Wish he hadn’t been, in fact. He’s won quite a few pistols off me.”

    “May I help you?” Aramis asked.

    The man looked confused. He turned to the woman, “I thought you said—”

    The woman shrugged again, theatrically. “He was blond and handsome and dressed in a musketeer’s uniform. How am I to know if it was the same? My mistress seemed to be very fond of him, but—”

    Unspoken, in the air, was the fickleness of women in general and noblewomen in particular, and if none of them would say it, then neither would Athos that most women at court had the mind and manners of a cat in heat. It had so long been an article of faith with him, at any rate, that it would come as no surprise to anyone who knew him.

    The maid of honor was giving Aramis’s back a suspicious look. “Someone,” she said, “ran through the garden. And scrabbled up the wall, leaving a trail of blood. Someone who left a uniform behind in my lady’s room. Surely you’re not going to tell us a man could run naked through the palace and out here without anyone noticing.”

    “Except, perhaps, he stole a uniform?” Athos asked. “A servant’s uniform, perhaps? The better to disguise himself?”

    The men