Death in Gascony Read Online Free

with other letters addressed to his friends. One of his friends would have to convey D’Artagnan’s formal resignation to Monsieur des Essarts. Perhaps not the best way to do it, but D’Artagnan knew he wouldn’t—couldn’t—be coming back, and all of a sudden couldn’t bear the thought of having to take leave of any of his friends and acquaintances in person.
    “We must hurry,” he said.
    Planchet, still looking distressed, had taken time to light a candle, which he now brought into the room. “I don’t understand your determination to leave before you see your friends again,” he said, in measured tones.
    “Oh, them most of all I do not wish to see,” D’Artagnan said. “Their circumstances are so different from mine, that they’d try to convince me to return from Gascony after organizing my affairs. They’d try to convince me to leave someone else in charge and come back with them. Only imagine Aramis’s dismay at the thought that I’ll go to a place where fashion doesn’t penetrate. And Athos, who abandoned his own domains, won’t understand that I have no convenient family to take over mine. And Porthos…Well…Porthos just won’t understand. There’s nothing outside of Paris for him.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to explain it to them, and it’s easier to present them with the fact of my departure and leave letters explaining. I will of course invite them to visit and of course they won’t, but…Easier that way.”
    “And myself, monsieur?” Planchet asked. He set the candle down and opened his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
    “You’ll come with me. I’ll need a servant on the way, in case I meet with some mishap. Someone to go call for help, at any rate. And besides, you’ll need to bring the horses back.”
    “The horses?” Planchet asked, as if he’d never heard of such a creature.
    “Of course.” Why was the young man so slow-witted today? Normally his mind raced close enough to D’Artagnan’s, or, truth be told, if it involved numbers, from the counting out of money to the planning of a leave, raced ahead of D’Artagnan’s. So, why so slow today? The news of D’Artagnan’s father’s death could not have distressed Planchet. It must be that he didn’t like the idea of that long a journey. “We’ll have to borrow horses from Monsieur de Treville, and—since I won’t be coming back—you’ll have to bring them back to him.”
    “But…what about me?”
    “You? What do you mean?”
    “You mean to send me back to Paris,” Planchet said. “How am I to make my way back to Gascony, afterwards?”
    D’Artagnan frowned, suddenly understanding, but confused. He hadn’t given it any thought. Planchet was just Planchet. He’d been D’Artagnan’s servant from D’Artagnan’s first week in Paris. He’d accompanied D’Artagnan on all adventures. D’Artagnan hadn’t thought…
    Now he looked at Planchet as the horrifying realization dawned on him that he couldn’t really support Planchet as a servant in Gascony. For one, the house already had servants—an elderly couple. They’d been with D’Artagnan’s parents forever. In fact, the man had been D’Artagnan’s father’s servant in the wars.
    It wasn’t that the house couldn’t afford one more servant—D’Artagnan cast a critical gaze over Planchet’s scrawny frame—or at least it could easily afford a servant well used to starving. But D’Artagnan thought, for the first time, on what Planchet would think of Gascony. He’d worked as a clerk at an accountant’s before hiring on with D’Artagnan, and he’d complained of the boredom. Surely, a rural house in Gascony could be no better.
    What D’Artagnan could offer him would be a menial life working for a poor house. “I am sure,” he said, not feeling sure at all, but hoping, “that Monsieur Porthos or Athos or Aramis will find you a position and—”
    “Monsieur!” Planchet said. “Monsieur!” He dropped to sitting on