The Sun King Conspiracy (2 page)

T
OUSSAINT Roze had been poring over the documents before him for more than two hours. Seated in the armchair given to him by the Queen’s mother, Anne of Austria, Jules Mazarin’s private secretary had slid out the fine inlaid shelf of the imposing writing desk which stood against the wall, its back towards the window of the Chief Minister’s private office. This item of furniture had a secret compartment and had been specially made in Milan a few years earlier. With unfeigned pleasure, Roze had just extracted from it a large, dark-red leather case, stamped with the Cardinal’s arms. He caught himself admiring the quality of the leather and the finely worked steel clasp.
Why has His Eminence asked me to bring him these papers as a matter of urgency?
he wondered as he caressed the age-smoothed cover of the magnificent document case. He wondered all the more since, as far as he could recall, and despite being a devoted colleague, he had practically never had access to this desk. The rumours about the Chief Minister’s illness went round and round in his mind, like an obsessive litany.

All was calm this cold morning in Mazarin’s private apartments – almost more so than usual. Currently the owner preferred to occupy his private rooms in the Louvre, and the servants had for the most part left to join their master or were taking advantage of a day’s freedom. Eventually the fires had even gone out in the fireplaces. Was it the cold of these early February days or exhaustion from
performing a fastidious task which made Toussaint Roze shiver as he returned to his work?

Concentrated as he was on reading the parchments, the good secretary – who, it must be said, had become a little deaf over the years – did not hear the men who had just entered the hallway of the apartment.

There were five of them, wearing brown leather eye-masks and swathed in voluminous black capes. Having silently closed the oak double doors to the great staircase that led up from the library, they stealthily crossed the room, one behind the other.

Down below in his office, Étienne Baluze, His Eminence’s personal librarian, was finishing off a memorandum to his employer that gave an account of his first few weeks of work. The sound of visitors to the neighbouring library had interrupted him in his task several times. The young man was not yet accustomed to this busy day of the week. Moreover, he did not understand why the Cardinal wished to open up his collection once a week to learned Parisians. With a gesture of annoyance, he ran his hand through the thick blond hair which made him such a success with young women, and gave him the look of an angel worthy of the Italian painters whose works filled the Cardinal’s collection.

‘Help! Fire! Sound the alert!’

These shouts mingled with the racket of falling chairs and running feet that came from the other side of the internal wall. Étienne Baluze scarcely had time to stand up before thick smoke began to filter underneath his door.

As he entered the great reading room, the librarian saw at once the extent of the conflagration. The smoke made it almost impossible to
see the other end of the room. Stunned, he watched as flames licked at a whole row of bookshelves.

‘Quickly, water … We must have water!’ shouted the young man, who seemed not to notice the crowd of people jostling each other in their haste to get outside and escape the flames.

Suddenly, with a terrible crashing sound, one entire wall of the library collapsed into the room, inducing panic in those fleeing. Étienne Baluze’s only thought now was to save the fabulous library.

The young librarian struggled to gather his wits. Suddenly it struck him that he could save at least some of the most precious works from destruction if he organised a human chain between the well in the courtyard and the library, where flames danced ever higher.

‘Buckets! Go and fetch all the buckets you can find!’ Étienne Baluze shouted to the Cardinal’s guards, who had seen the smoke and rushed to the door of the great room.

At that moment, puzzled by the noise, Toussaint Roze looked up from his reading. His cry was stifled by the gag stuffed into his mouth by one of the men in black.

‘Tie him up securely,’ said the man, his tall frame towering over the poor private secretary. ‘If need be, knock him out! And search the apartment – there may be other people here. Time is pressing.’

Terrified, Toussaint Roze felt his blood turn to ice as the man’s strange eyes – one green, the other brown – rested on him.

While his accomplices dispersed throughout the apartments, the leader of the band began to force open the drawers of the imposing Italian desk. Armed with an iron bar, the attacker cared little for the damage he did to the precious wood veneer covering the desk.
Like an automaton, he stuffed all the papers filed that morning by Toussaint Roze into a bag hidden beneath his cape. Roze saw with alarm that smoke was now pouring into the apartments from the floor below.

Just then the office door opened and one of the Cardinal’s guards entered. The soldier, who had run upstairs to alert the secretary, froze for a moment, petrified by the sight of overturned furniture and the alarming appearance of the intruders. Caught unawares by this unexpected interruption, they stood rooted to the spot, pausing in their search.

‘Guards! Over here! Guards …’ was all the soldier had time to cry out.

Without another word, he collapsed heavily onto the ornate round carpet that covered the middle of the floor, a dagger between his shoulder blades. The assassin – the smallest of the intruders – stood proudly in the doorway, legs apart and hands on hips.

‘Thank you, Le Jeune,’ said the man with mismatched eyes, as he went on opening the drawers one by one and emptying their contents into his large linen sack.

‘It was nothing. The Almighty is protecting us. He guided my hand.’ The voice was that of a child, but emerged from the mouth of the individual who had just killed the guard with such incredible precision.

At these words, Toussaint Roze lost consciousness.

‘We must go,’ said the leader to his men, gathered once more in Mazarin’s office. ‘We shall take advantage of the confusion to leave the same way we entered. Do not forget to remove your masks as you go down, and turn up the collars of your capes, so that you do not stand out too much in the chaos downstairs.’

Without so much as a glance at Toussaint Roze, who was deathly
white and still unconscious, the men in black turned to leave the private apartments and headed down the stairs. But they had scarcely reached the foot of the staircase when they ran into the Cardinal’s guards who had formed a human chain and were passing buckets of water from hand to hand. Looking up, the captain of the guard realised that the intruders were emerging from His Eminence’s apartments, to which entry was forbidden. Dropping his bucket, he instinctively reached for his sword and unsheathed it.

‘Back the way we came,’ ordered the intruders’ leader as he hurried back up the stairs, followed closely by his four accomplices.

‘Guards! Follow me!’ barked the captain, ready to rush off in hot pursuit of the fugitives.

‘Do not move! I order you not to move! The fire! We must put this fire out …’ panted Étienne Baluze. ‘Continue, I beg you! The Cardinal would never forgive us!’

Complete confusion reigned in the corridor. The guards just stood there, no longer sure whom to obey.

‘Three men, come with me! The rest of you, stay and put out this damned fire,’ said the captain, realising that he could not simply abandon the librarian.

But these contradictory orders had given the black-clad intruders a significant start. Without wasting a second they had rushed upstairs, towards the rooftops.

The clock in the tower of the new church of Saint-Roch a few streets away was striking twelve as the five fugitives emerged onto the roof of Mazarin’s palace.

‘Le Jeune … where is Le Jeune?’ demanded the leader of the band as he ran, his men making relatively swift progress despite the danger and the height.

Suddenly, the face of the young lad they had outpaced appeared
behind them. They slowed down to enable him to catch up. Without a word, he showed them the bulging purse he had casually removed from Toussaint Roze’s pocket.

‘I found this too,’ he said, brandishing the dark-red leather document case. ‘It was lying at the old fellow’s feet.’

Pleased with his young recruit’s boldness, the leader signalled to his companions to make haste and follow him.

‘We must hurry. Watch out for the frost, the roof is slippery. We’ll go through the Palais-Royal theatre and disappear from sight as we head down towards the Seine. Hurry,’ he added, turning towards the distant skylight, a stone’s throw away, through which they had hauled themselves onto the roof. ‘I can hear the guards.’

The captain’s imposing silhouette appeared at that moment, followed rather more clumsily by three soldiers. Managing to maintain their lead, the black-clad men reached a spot above the theatre and began to look for a way down into the building. A terrible crash of breaking glass stopped them in their tracks. Le Jeune had suddenly disappeared through a pane of glass he had inadvertently trodden or perhaps slipped on, having lost his footing on the frozen roof. Leaning over the gaping hole, the leader of the band saw the boy’s broken body lying directly below, right in the middle of the large stage of His Majesty’s new theatre.

‘Hurry, we cannot do anything for him. God has him in his keeping,’ he added, crossing himself. ‘He has returned to the true Kingdom.’

Without further ceremony, the man with the strange eyes motioned to the group to advance and head in the direction he was indicating. Before the eyes of the pursuing guards, they vanished into the darkness of the theatre’s attics.

As his accomplices successfully made their escape, the young boy
dragged himself towards the edge of the stage onto which he had crashed, his body racked with pain. With one final effort, he found the strength to reach inside his shirt and take out the red leather case he had pinched a few minutes earlier. Gasping for breath and twisted in agony, the boy pushed it to the bottom of the well where the prompter usually sat. Exhausted, he let his head fall back into the pool of blood which was now spreading out across the floorboards of the stage, like a sinister extension of the half-drawn purple curtain.

At that moment, intrigued by the noise, the theatre concierge entered the auditorium. All he saw was the boy’s clenched hand falling back onto the apron of the stage. Horrified, the old man rushed into the wings to fetch help.

‘Molière,’ he yelled, ‘Molière, come quickly!’

T
HE curtains were drawn and all candles snuffed out with the exception of two nightlights positioned on either side of the sick man’s bed. The massive fire-guard was in place, blocking out everything but a faint red glow from the burning coals. All the furniture in the room was of dark wood. The scene in Cardinal Mazarin’s bedchamber had been expertly contrived to remind the few permitted visitors that a man was dying here, and a man of great power at that. The majestic silence was disturbed only by the sick man’s irregular breathing and the muffled footsteps of the servant who came at regular intervals to check if His Eminence required anything.

Motionless and propped up on a mountain of pillows, the most powerful man in France, the King’s godfather, a minister whose orders were never questioned, appeared to be dozing. All that could be seen of him was his gaunt face, its waxen complexion topped by a Cardinal’s red hat and encircled by a crown of white hair, and his hands which lay on the sheets, emerging from the lacy sleeves of an immaculate white shirt.

‘My books,’ he murmured. ‘My books, my papers, just imagine the stench of fire on my books!’ he went on in a tired voice curiously tinged with emotion. His hand flapped helplessly. ‘And my paintings, Bellini’s
Virgin
, the Raphael which arrived last month from Rome … Have they at least been accounted for?’

In the ambient silence came a whispered reply:

‘Not all of them, Monseigneur. But I am attending to it.’

The breathy voice emanated from a shape hunched on a chair which had been squeezed between two large chests, to the left of the canopied bed. The small, thin man, whose short arms ended in bony hands that looked like claws, melded so intimately with the atmosphere of the place that he was all but invisible. Dressed in a curious suit of ecclesiastical appearance, he was pale-skinned with high cheekbones and a firm chin beneath narrow lips that were pressed together in an expression of contempt. He sat with his hands on his knees, clutching a bundle of documents. His protruding eyes darted towards Mazarin in a look that seemed to express all the tension he was feeling.

‘The paintings have been saved, Your Eminence. One frame has some heat damage, but the canvas is intact.’

‘Approach, Colbert …’

In a single bound the little man was on his feet and bending humbly over the invalid, his head slightly to one side, silent …

‘Was I asleep for long?’

‘No, Monseigneur,’ replied the Cardinal’s shadowy advisor. ‘A few hours have passed since you wished to rest after news of the fire.’

‘What has been said about my condition?’

‘The truth, Monseigneur: that you are resting.’

The Chief Minister of France gestured in irritation:

‘I am not deceived by the hypocritical airs of courtiers, nor by the grand words of doctors.’

He fell silent for a moment, his eyes closed; then he spoke again, this time more softly:

‘The former have long since dreamt of burying me, and the latter
are afraid to tell me the truth … Simoni, my astrologer – bring him to me, Colbert. I have no illusions. I want to know how much time I have left. People say I am ill – what of it! They write about it in lampoons, they make up songs, they draw up far-fetched plans: children’s games, all of it. What matters is that for the moment we are in control. Have you read that fable by La Fontaine about the dairymaid and the milk jug, which Fouquet had me listen to a few days ago for my entertainment? Now there’s a tale my enemies should meditate upon … Did you not keep it, Colbert? I can no longer remember the last verses: can you recall them?’

At the mention of La Fontaine and Fouquet, Colbert stiffened. However, his voice did not betray him as he answered in a steady, even tone, after a moment’s rummaging amongst his papers.

‘Here we are, Monseigneur, these verses are indeed well observed: “Whose mind does not stray/Who does not build castles in Spain/Picrochole, Pyrrhus, the dairymaid, all of us in fact/As many wise men as fools.” Nevertheless, I trust Your Excellency will permit me to express my regret that Monsieur de La Fontaine has not the good taste to limit his irony to these verses, which his protector Nicolas Fouquet abases himself by reading to you.’

Mazarin raised an eyebrow, demanding an explanation:

‘Monseigneur, I have here ten sheets of those filthy lampoons to which you have alluded, and in which we find much of Monsieur de La Fontaine’s verve …’

Mazarin smiled.

‘Come, Colbert, for pity’s sake don’t waste police time on such childish nonsense: what can La Fontaine do if he has talent and is inspired? And do you think that Nicolas Fouquet, Superintendent of His Majesty’s finances, is amused by these games?’

Annoyed, Colbert rearranged his papers in silence.

‘Returning to what matters most, Colbert, what information do you have about the investigation?’

‘It seems that the possibility of an accident has been discounted, Monseigneur. I agree, but I have refrained from telling anyone so, and in the city everyone firmly believes that all that accumulated paper was the source of the fire. The populace has little love for books, Monseigneur. The theory is easy to promote and our friends are eager to spread it. They support it with reference to a partial inventory of the works destroyed …’

This word provoked a moan of distress from Mazarin.

‘… Dante, Herodotus, part of the map collection, the section on medicine, Fathers of the Church, astrology …’

Mazarin raised his hand to interrupt the litany. His head rolled from right to left and he mumbled phrases in unintelligible Italian; Colbert tried to convince himself that they were prayers. He began again, cautiously:

‘There is another thing, Monseigneur, which I fear is more serious. It seems that the fire was merely a diversion to mask a theft. The fire was started deliberately. A guard was murdered. Your secretary, Monsieur Roze, was attacked, and it is a miracle that he escaped with his life …’

The Chief Minister listened in silence. His mouth twisted into a rictus. Colbert thought that his master was in pain, but changed his mind when he heard him speak:

‘Who, Colbert?’

‘I do not know, Monseigneur, nor do I know why. But I have deployed all my resources and my finest men in order to find out.’

The little man came closer and lowered his voice.

‘Far be it from me to importune Your Eminence, but if I utter the name of Nicolas Fouquet, it is because certain disturbing elements concern him indirectly.’

Mazarin’s voice became tired and dull.

‘Yet again? The facts, Colbert, the facts.’

‘We lost track of the assailants in the new Palais-Royal theatre, whose tenant is Monsieur Molière, who – although his troupe bears the fine name of the Théâtre de Monsieur
1
and therefore honours His Majesty’s brother – also belongs unofficially to Nicolas Fouquet …’

Mazarin clasped his white hands with their long, thin fingers and, bringing them close to his face, deliberately emphasised each word.

‘Enough of all this suspicion, Colbert, I want clear leads, names. Quickly. What do the witnesses say?’

‘That the assailants talked constantly of Our Lord, saying that he holds us in his mercy. In the absence of prisoners, that is all we have. The only man the miserable band left at the scene will not be able to tell us more. He died before we could question him, on the very stage of the theatre where Molière is rehearsing. We couldn’t get anything out of him. He was a child, a beggar no doubt, a member of a secret society such as the Cour des Miracles or the Gueule du Chien. He wore a cross around his neck, however, and an olive-wood chaplet at his waist, which is somewhat unusual amongst beggars, whose only religion is sorcery.’

Mazarin sighed.

‘This suggests something else to me: fuel for the fanatical pyre. Yes, that is possible. Do we have spies in the religious factions we have dissolved?’

Colbert nodded.

‘Activate them. The Jansenists are peaceable, but those … Too bad, they will all pay together. Consider summoning a meeting of the assembly of clergy to regulate this affair officially, and cleanse the churches of the sectarians who are lurking within. But first, intensify your investigation. You have a free hand, Colbert,’ Mazarin added firmly.

Then, seeing the carnivorous smile which had appeared on his confidant’s face:

‘On this specific matter, Colbert, you have a free hand. Right, let us come to the subject of the theft. I want to know everything. I must have precise details if I am to have a clear understanding of these infamies.’

Colbert breathed deeply but did not answer.

‘Well, Colbert?’ demanded Mazarin impatiently.

‘The thing is, Monseigneur, there is something even more serious than the fire and that man’s criminal character …’

Mazarin paled.

‘These malefactors, Monseigneur, were not targeting the library, but your own apartments. They entered your apartments,’ he specified when he saw the Chief Minister’s incredulous expression.

Mazarin grew increasingly angry as he pictured the assailants in his own private rooms, their hands sullying the precious items of furniture he had chosen and accumulated over the years.

‘Within my walls!’ he roared. ‘How far did they go? They did not enter my bedchamber, did they?’

Colbert lowered his eyes.

‘Yes they did, Your Eminence. And your office. That is where Roze was when they attacked him.’

Mazarin’s complexion changed suddenly from pale to deathly
white. Alarmed, Colbert thought that the Cardinal had been taken ill, and was about to rise and call for help, but Mazarin indicated that he should remain seated. He recovered his breath.

‘Continue. They took papers, did they not?’

Colbert nodded.

‘Which ones? From where?’

Mazarin was almost shouting.

‘There is great disorder, Your Eminence, and we do not yet know everything, particularly as Roze was filing the papers in accordance with the orders you had given him. But they took a number of accounting documents from the two sealed chests which stand against the wall, of that Toussaint Roze is sure. Before he lost consciousness, he also saw them breaking open the inlaid writing desk …’

Colbert broke off at the Cardinal’s ice-cold sigh.

‘He mentioned several folders of correspondence, two of beige leather and another dark red …’

A long shudder went through the Cardinal’s body.

‘And also a few coded files. I have asked him to give us a precise inventory as soon as possible.’

The Cardinal did not react and lay still for a long time. Then he sat up a little and shook his head gently.

‘Who knows about the deaths and the robbery?’

‘Roze, four of your most reliable guards, Molière and a few of his actors. There is nothing to worry about there. The former are trustworthy and we have sufficiently frightened the performers with references to matters of State and the prospect of a trip to the Bastille … The premiere of the play is tomorrow, and they would rather keep silent than endanger their show, of that I am sure. Doubtless it will all filter out at some point, but we have a little time before then.’

‘Good. Ensure that the troupe also receives a gratuity from me. It can only help to keep their mouths shut. As for the rest, Colbert, leave no stone unturned: this search must be speeded up. I want those papers. Our enemies are many, we know that. They are powerful, all the more so since we do not know who they all are. Nothing must be overlooked, nothing, in the quest for what they have stolen. This is a most perilous time: news of my illness and the robbery itself, these mean that we are no longer safe. Colbert, my interests and therefore yours depend upon the swiftness of our agents. And perhaps a great deal more than that,’ murmured Cardinal Mazarin, looking straight at Colbert.

Without a word, Colbert got up and bowed low. Then he walked silently to the door. Calm had already returned to the room when, just as he was opening the door, the Cardinal’s voice called him back.

‘Colbert!’

‘Your Eminence?’

‘Go and see Roze, and retrieve the papers from my private desk. Find a totally secure place in which to hide them. Then come back. We must talk again about my will.’

Colbert bowed again and backed out of the room. As he turned away, he looked preoccupied and extremely agitated.