A Powerful Little Love

Chapter 8

                  

The cellar was cold and dark compared to the rest of the château.  The only room with any windows to let some of the last remaining daylight trickle in was the vast kitchen.  The group of five congregated around an old a very worn oak table in the middle of the room.  Amorette and D'artagnan had found nothing of consequence in the downstairs rooms and the same could be said for the others.  Now, they were all trying to decipher what to do next.  Amorette's eyes caught on the burn marks and knife indents of the old table in front of her as she zoned out of the conversation.  Many times she had engraved her name into this table with a sharp object as a child but there was no trace of the markings now.  They had all been chipped away.  She wondered vaguely if that had been requested by her uncle.  Suddenly she was sorely tempted to get onto her hands and knees to check the underside of the great table to check for markings.  Amorette resisted though.  She pushed the table and it's markings from her thoughts and looked back up to find all four musketeers looking at her.  "Sorry?" Amorette questioned, realising only too late that one of them had asked her something. 

At once they all donned sympathetic smiles.  "We were asking who it was that you travelled here with." Aramis murmured from the opposite side of the table. 

"My companion Elise and her husband John," confirmed Amorette.  "But only as far as Provins.  They were in England with me for a time and wanted to visit family whilst we were back in France.  It seemed only logical to me to leave them with family and travel on here."  Amorette watched a notion of irritation flicker across Athos' face for a second before it was gone again.  She braced herself for a lecture about traveling alone but it never came.  Athos seemed to have thought better of it due to the current situation.

"Staying with them tonight is out of the question then," muttered Aramis.  "We'll have to head back to the inn soon if we want to be sure of getting rooms for the night.  Why don't we leave now and carry on our search tomorrow morning?"

Amorette's head whipped around to look at him.  The thoughts of having to muster up the courage to come back to the house all over again the next day terrified her.  "Or we could stay here?" she suggested.  Amorette turned and dashed to the larder behind her and was met with the sight of some fresh meat and vegetables.  "There's not a great variety of food but there's enough to do something with it, and I don't need to check the wine cellar to know that there will be wine.  There's more than enough room for us all."

"I suppose that would be more beneficial for us," nodded Athos, "But if you'd rather not stay the night Mademoiselle then we will certainly retreat to the village."

"Actually..." Amorette almost lost her train of thought as she realised that she would indeed be uncomfortable staying in the house overnight, but the thought of being able to leave it tomorrow and never return outweighed that.  "I'd rather do what we need to do and then leave knowing I don't have to come back."

"That's settled then," Porthos said as he threw his arms wide.

Athos, Aramis and D'artagnan nodded their agreement.  "Let's check these cellar passageways before we do anything else though," suggested D'artagnan and moved towards the doorway.

"I'll stay here," said Porthos, nodding towards Amorette as he removed his doublet and slipped it onto the back of a chair.  He perched on the edge of the table as Athos and Aramis followed D'artagnan out of the room.  Amorette retreated to the larder again and brought the food out with her.  After that she walked the length of the room in search of a large cooking pot.  Finding one, she began to make her way back across the room towards the stove.  Amorette came to an abrupt halt as she passed the table again when a memory stirred in her mind.  Setting the pot on the table, Amorette crouched down to look at the underside of the table-top.  More markings had been chipped away from there as well.  Amorette followed the grain of wood to the very edge where the joins of the table leg and table-top met and sure enough, in the very corner there was a marking that had been missed entirely.  "What is it?" Porthos asked from behind her.