The Sun King Conspiracy (36 page)

T
HE moment he reached his lodgings, Gabriel wrote a note to Louise, begging her to come. He entrusted the note to the coachman, with the order to ‘return only with Mademoiselle de La Vallière’. It was several weeks since he had lived in this room. As he re-entered it and saw his possessions strewn everywhere, he felt as if an eternity had elapsed. He was no longer the apprentice actor who had dreamt of giving magnificent performances to tumultuous applause. Nor was he the awkward, rootless young man from Amboise. He had been a spectator at the cruel comedy of power which crushes individual destinies and claims that it does so in the name of the State. He had known the immense happiness and devastating pain of finding his father and then losing him for ever, a father whose life had proved to be steeped in mystery. Now he was a member of a shadowy organisation, protecting a mystical secret whose purpose still eluded him. Gabriel reminded himself that he had weathered these ordeals alone. Indeed he felt stronger and aspired to prove worthy of his name and of the trust placed in him by his father. The idea of leaving for the Americas frightened him a little, but it also filled him with excitement. As he threw into his trunk the few things he would need for his journey, Gabriel began to dream of extraordinary adventures.

Louise arrived just as he was finishing a letter to his landlady, enclosing the money he owed her.

‘Louise – it’s you, at last!’ cried Gabriel, leaping to his feet as the young woman entered and taking her in his arms.

‘Careful, you’re hurting me!’ protested Henrietta of England’s companion, a little surprised by this welcome. ‘I hope you haven’t brought me here in the middle of the night, without a word of explanation, just to suffocate me in your arms the minute I get through the door!’ she added teasingly as she pulled away.

‘No! The situation is … is fantastical! But sit down,’ said Gabriel. ‘I have to speak to you!’

Louise took off her cape, whose voluminous hood, edged with soft fox fur, enabled her to hide her face.

‘I’m listening,’ said the young girl, treating him to her most winning smile.

Gabriel gave her an account of the last few hours and told her of Fouquet’s arrest. Bartet’s news had not yet reached Paris.

‘You must find yourself a safe place to live,’ Louise interrupted. ‘You no longer have a protector. I shall speak to the King as soon as he returns to Paris, if you wish me to!’

At these words, the young man scowled. A dull anger rumbled within him.

‘No, no, and again I say no! I do not need you to talk to your King about anything. What is more, it was your King who ordered the Superintendent’s arrest. He acts for his own pleasure and in his own interest! When will you see him for what he really is?’

‘Do not judge the King too hastily. He conducts matters of State on the basis of information which you and I are unaware of. But I am sure of his character. He would never allow an injustice to be committed against you. I shall tell him …’

‘You will tell him nothing at all, for I must leave!’ Gabriel exclaimed. ‘Before he was arrested, Fouquet entrusted me with an
extraordinary mission. He asked me to leave for the Americas to ensure that his affairs prosper there.’

‘The Americas?’ exclaimed Louise. ‘But when do you leave?’

Gabriel smiled at the young woman’s surprise and took her hand.

‘That’s why I asked you to come tonight,’ the young man explained tenderly. ‘We have known each other since we were children. Rediscovering you here in Paris in February was a shock, and I didn’t fully comprehend its consequences. When I received your message at Vaux, informing me that you were in danger … While I was galloping to your rescue, I realised …’

‘You realised?’ said Louise, suddenly anxious.

‘I love you, Louise! I love you! I have never loved anyone but you,’ said Gabriel, kissing her hands.

Louise said nothing. She looked at Gabriel as he drew her towards him.

‘We can leave together tonight,’ he said suddenly, savouring the sensual pleasure of this sweetest of moments.

‘Leave? For the Americas? What are you thinking of? Henrietta needs me and I can’t just leave like that!’

‘I don’t think you’ve really understood me,’ said Gabriel, gazing deeply into her eyes. ‘I’m not just talking about a journey. I love you and I’m asking you to be my wife, and to come and live with me.’

‘But I can’t! I can’t!’ cried the King of France’s mistress, drawing back.

‘Open your eyes. You’re dazzled by the splendour of the Court, but deep inside, you know. You don’t belong to that world of intrigue!’

‘My life is here, Gabriel! This world which you denigrate because you want to escape it is my world. I feel at home in it. I am loved and …’

‘You think you are loved!’ raged the young man. ‘But what do you know about love and about the way people really feel at Court. It’s just a masquerade!’

‘I’m young, Gabriel. I want to laugh and enjoy myself. I want to go to parties and balls, and experience the heady atmosphere of the theatre. I want to be intoxicated by the salons, meet the most famous scholars, and be dazzled by the greatest works of art. I want to charm the most powerful men and I, too, want to savour the delicious pleasures of power. You don’t seem to understand that my life is here! I didn’t leave Amboise only to abandon everything all over again, just as my dream is becoming real! Gabriel, I …’

Incredulous, Gabriel watched as her eyes flashed with a brilliant light.

‘Don’t say any more,’ he cut in, pushing aside a lock of her hair with the back of his hand. ‘Don’t give me your answer yet. Not tonight. From three o’clock tomorrow there will be a carriage at the Porte Saint-Martin. I shall wait for you until four …’

Gabriel’s gaze, at once determined and sad, touched Louise deeply and re-awakened the attraction she had felt for him for so long. She had always called it sisterly affection, as if to hide its true nature. She approached Gabriel and pressed her slender lips to his, feeling his warm breath. He enfolded her in his arms and kissed her ardently, encircling her waist in an embrace which she resisted only for a moment.

Pale rays of dawn light played upon Gabriel’s sleeping body. The sound of footsteps on the wooden floor awakened him suddenly.

‘Louise …’ he said, his voice still heavy with sleep.

In the doorway, Louise turned and placed a finger to her lips before continuing on her way.

‘We shall meet again, Gabriel de Pontbriand,’ she whispered as she ran down the stairs.

C
OLBERT awoke with a start, his hands trembling, and cold sweat trickling beneath his nightshirt. He realised that he had cried out. Pushing back the covers, he peered warily into the surrounding darkness. He crossed himself furtively in the total silence and mumbled a few inaudible words, then placed his feet on the ground and groped around for his slippers. Pushing aside the bedroom curtain, he looked at the gilded clock he had inherited from the Cardinal.

‘How absurd,’ he said aloud, as if to reassure himself. ‘It was only a nightmare! Well now …’

Before going back to bed, he hesitated for a moment. Although he was convinced that this was perfectly sane and reasonable, he could not bring himself to do it.

‘Tantalus,’ he murmured, his voice still shaking with emotion.

His nightmare came back to him. Once again he pictured himself tied up, consumed by hunger and thirst and incapable of taking sustenance, of gathering the fruits which hung above his head …

In the corner of the room, amongst dozens of boxes and packages received as gifts or stolen from Fouquet’s residences and brought directly to his own domicile, a small package rested against the wall. Colbert picked it up nervously and, removing the hastily sealed wrapping, looked once again at the painting: the canvas, surrounded
by a frame of gilded wood, depicted the torments of Tantalus.

‘Accursed picture!’ he shouted, throwing the canvas to the ground.

Ever since he had opened this package almost by chance two days before, sure that it would contain yet another act of homage to flatter his pride, he had not been able to rid his mind of its image. And now it had even provoked a nightmare in which he himself had been subjected to the same torture.

Anxiety gripped him again.

Could it be possible?
he wondered, terrified.

Unable to rest, he picked up a day jacket that lay on a sofa and quickly put it on, then covered his bald pate with a little felt skullcap and opened the door of his bedroom. The corridor was even darker. Colbert bumped into a column and almost knocked over the vase placed on top of it. He stood still for a moment, waiting for his heart’s furious beating to grow calmer.

‘Onward,’ he said, continuing his walk to the staircase which led to his office. ‘I must be sure.’

In this room, files were piled up on tables which had been added as need dictated. Colbert had assembled here everything relating to Mazarin’s succession which he did not wish to see in the Kingdom’s inventories. Half opening the shutters to admit the first light of day, the little man was unable to suppress a smile. The presence of these documents reassured him. Each pile consolidated his power. One contained inadmissible secrets in personal files that had accumulated over time. Several hundred influential individuals were here, like animals on a leash. Two other more voluminous piles contained details of the double accounting of public financial operations which had necessitated the use of third parties.

As the icy hand of apprehension which had awakened him insinuated itself once more into his mind, Colbert tried to divert his thoughts by sitting down in front of the fourth pile. He hastily leafed through the documents he had been analysing over the past few days and soon found what he was looking for. Colbert now examined the pages more closely, hesitated, then read on with even greater concentration.

‘Onward,’ he quietly encouraged himself.

The sun’s rays now shone with their full force upon the wooden panelling behind Colbert and the large mirror that hung above the fireplace.

Deathly pale, the Steward of Finance sprawled back in his chair, with his hands laid flat on the armrests, and gazed into emptiness as if hypnotised. Perfectly still, he waited for the silent minutes to pass, each one bringing him closer to the moment when the house would come to life again. The premonition he had now confirmed would then be given life, too. For a few moments longer he was the only person to have understood it, and in an almost puerile way he held back the news which devastated him, as if the fact that no one else knew it would make it any less terrible.

Everything was there right before his eyes, and so clear that he wondered how it had taken him so long to realise. This was probably due to the urgency with which he had had to cover things up and protect himself, before orchestrating the counter-attack and finally dealing the death blow to Fouquet having transformed him into the perfect scapegoat. With all his energy directed towards these goals, he had neglected to check that, in addition to acting as an
inventory, these papers also provided the means to access the riches they described …

His jaw clenched convulsively: ten, twelve, perhaps fifteen million livres! He hardly dared add up the figures.

Suddenly shaking himself, he frantically moved the papers around. Bills, percentages, commission received, years of the Cardinal’s fraudulent practices and scheming to divert the fruit of this secret toil to Italy and the Netherlands: it was all there, meticulously recorded – but totally inaccessible …

One vital paper was missing, the one that would enable him to decode the series of figures that concealed the third parties; the banking establishments and the names with which the accounts had been opened. Without this document, everything else was as useless as a bottle of water placed beyond the reach of a man who was dying of thirst.

Then the truth hit him: that was it, the missing document stolen from the Cardinal’s offices, a document so personal that even Mazarin had omitted to mention it to him. The burglars had acquired the key to the treasure and had all the time they needed to calmly siphon off deposits carefully divided amongst the most discreet banking establishments in the whole of Europe.

Straightening up suddenly, Colbert turned towards another pile of gifts heaped on his desk which was more impressive than that in his bedchamber.

‘That painting … The coincidence is too great … And there was another,’ he moaned as he rummaged haphazardly through the mass of packages of all sizes, flinging away those which hindered his search.

Finally, as he lifted up a larger frame, he happened upon a package identical to the first. He stood rooted to the spot for a moment, then began to tear off the paper wrapped round it. When he saw the second canvas, Mazarin’s former secretary blanched: it depicted a man on his deathbed, with his family praying beside him. Amongst the figures at the front one could easily make out a tearful son.

Colbert’s face drained as put down the painting. It was then that he noticed a card stuck to the back of the canvas.

With trembling hands, he brought it closer to the light:

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,
he read.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Dumbfounded, Colbert turned over the card:

Cursed be the avaricious, for they shall not enjoy their ill-gotten gains; cursed be the hard-hearted, for they are destined to suffer. Consider your current fate enviable. The deprivation of unwarranted financial resources and personal suffering are merely warnings designed to temper your sense of victory, and to convince you of how dangerous it would be for you to continue your search for those papers illicitly owned for a certain period by Cardinal Mazarin. You would then expose yourself to a crueller fate.

Colbert almost suffocated as he finished reading. Threats, in his own home! And blaspheming the Scriptures!

The dogs
, he thought.
The accursed dogs: Deprivation of resources!

He almost choked, then bent forward to look at the note again.

Personal suffering?

He was so lost in thought that he did not hear the door open.

‘Monsieur,’ called the familiar voice of his personal valet, breathless after he’d been searching for him, ‘Monsieur!’

Colbert gave his servant an incandescent glare.

‘What is it, at this hour?’ he growled.

‘A misfortune, Monsieur, a misfortune!’ cried the valet.

A dreadful premonition rooted Colbert to the spot.

‘My God, Monsieur …’

‘Well, speak!’ roared Colbert.

‘Your father, Monsieur …’

Colbert collapsed into his chair, dropping the sheet of paper, which fluttered to the ground.

‘He was found this morning, in his bedchamber. Dead.’

‘Dead,’ repeated Colbert in a daze.

Feeling faint, he put a hand in front of his eyes to drive away the words which danced before them:
cursed be the hard-hearted, for they are destined to suffer …