by Mark Keating
‘Why?’ the soldier picked up an apricot pastry. ‘What is it?’
‘Rat. Would you credit that for a Faubourg?’
The four of them laughed, the second soldier blowing pastry crumbs from his cheeks as he sampled Dandon’s delicacies.
‘Rat?’ the soldier pushed it away to a corner of the tray. ‘Those Faubourgs are dogs to be sure! No offence to your daughter for taking one, Monsieur!’ He put down the pastry on his stone seat and picked up and crunched through a tart, the pleasure of its cold sweetness wetting his mouth.
Devlin and Dandon stood shoulder to shoulder with the soldiers, their backs edging past the pillars and under the cover of the passage.
The soldiers shared an ear. If Devlin had not missed his guess there was always a captain who deserved a rat pie. The soldiers filled their pockets with crumbly delights.
‘You should go through,’ the solder waved Devlin on. ‘The courtyard only. Find a Captain Droussard. I am sure he would enjoy your pie!’ More laughter. ‘Tell him it is goose! And good luck to your daughter, Monsieur, and her rat-loving husband!’
Devlin and Dandon bowed their way past and into the sun and Dandon tried not to gasp as his eyes squinted through the glare.
A palace indeed. The building that framed the dazzling garden was the same they had seen from the outside, tall arched windows with blue roofs housing smaller, oval windows – the servant’s quarters – and around the edge a walkway of doric and ionic columns and glass doors as grand as an image of Rome that Dandon had seen as a child, when he had leafed through a book and imagined the gods that walked there.
Devlin snapped him out of his awestruck trance. He cocked his eye to the almost separate building to their right, a low wall shielding a smaller garden.
‘That is the real palace. This is just a garden for fops and mistresses. That is where we need to be. We have the name of a captain: that might help.’ His voice expressed nothing but ease, as if this were simply any Sunday in any garden. ‘And Law is here. It’s three. He should be hungry for some rat pie by now.’
One more guard to go. Devlin leaned into Dandon. ‘This passageway runs around the palace. We get in here and we’re done.’
‘Done what?’ Dandon slowed his captain. I have no idea what we’re doing. Am I about to die?’
‘The pepper pot,’ Devlin shook his tray. ‘It is filled with priming powder. We’re going to make a fire.’ They walked on toward the broad soldier.
‘A fire. Of course. Why should I have not known. I am going to die.’ He grinned at the guard and followed Devlin’s lead.
The guard agreed with his colleagues at the gate that Captain Droussard would indeed enjoy a rat pie and he waved them through. Devlin had become sick of simpering, sick of wearing rags. In minutes he could end it. He could burn it.
They clacked down the corridor in their wooden clogs. Diamond-shaped black-and-white tiles graced the floor, silk curtains in gold and pink the tall windows. They stalled at the first corner.
‘Law is with the regent down there,’ Devlin pointed his tray to the adjacent corridor. ‘Get me a candle.’
Dandon went to the walls and plucked one free. They were unlit but Devlin had striker and flint already in his hand and then snatched his fist closed as a tall, white-moustached officer rounded the corner on them.
‘What is this?’ he glowered at them both, taking in the baker’s trays and the candle in Dandon’s hand. ‘Who are you? What is your business?’ He was in his white uniform and red sash but wore no hat and his buttons were open; it was Sunday after all. Devlin and Dandon edged together like schoolboys caught with a frog behind their backs.
Devlin chanced his arm. ‘Capitaine Droussard?’
‘I am,’ replied the officer, surprised.
Devlin offered up his tray. ‘Your men suggested you may like a goose pie for Sunday. I am giving away my last trade for the day.’
Droussard’s face grew lighter as Devlin placed one of the two larger pies in his hand. But he became stern again at the candle in Dandon’s hand. ‘What are you about with that?’
‘Forgive me, Captain,’ Dandon gave the officer his fawn-eyed look that usually persuaded maidens to show him their pale thighs. ‘I like to read at night. The regent has so many. I meant no offence. I shall return it.’
Droussard bit into his rich pie and smiled deep. ‘No harm. Payment for your meat. Keep it, my friend. Read to your children by its light. But both of you will be gone now. Thank you for your delicacy.’ He raised his hand and turned away.
They listened for the squeak of his leather boots to fade. Alone again, Devlin swung his tray to his side and went back to his striker. One moment later the candle was lit. Dandon could not resist one question amid their dreamlike circumstances.
‘The pie, Patrick? Was it really rat?’
‘I saw no geese or ducks where I bought it.’ He unscrewed the pepper pot and poured it at a curtain’s hem. ‘It was fortunate I gave him the right one. The diamond is in the other.’ He flung the candle to the powder but did not expect such a roar of flame, and they both jumped back.
Within seconds the fire had crept to the crown of the wall, and the primer powder billowed out a cloud of smoke like a bonfire – smoke that would panic people better than the flames. They stood mesmerised for too long and followed the flames until they reached the ceiling above their heads, which shook Devlin from his fascination.
‘Maybe better than I hoped! We should go.’ He slapped Dandon and off they trotted.
‘Hmm? I’m sorry, Milord?’ John Law sat in the regent’s office with him and Claude Ronde, the lapidary commissioned to make the crown. He had spent most of the last quarter hour looking absently between the door and the window. His distraction was not missed by Philippe.
‘Your opinion on the crown, Lass? I think there are too many gems. It is not as elegant as it should be. The king would be disappointed I’m sure, no?’
Law managed both to bow and rise at the same time. He walked over to the brass replica of the crown and stole a glance at one of the trio of clocks in the room. Quarter past three. His heart matched the ticking that sounded deafening to his over-alert ears. He casually picked up the crown from its red velvet cushion.
‘These are paste gems I take it, Monsieur Ronde?’
Simpering, Ronde humbled himself to his feet. Although only a replica he forbade his fingers to touch the crown and instead pointed out its detail with a gold retractable pencil. ‘Yes, Monsieur Lass. Two hundred and eighty-two diamonds.’ He touched each arch in turn, his voice clicking out the numbers like a rosary. ‘Sixteen sapphires, sixteen rubies and sixteen emeralds. Two hundred and thirty-seven pearls! A crown truly for the king of kings!’
Philippe beamed. ‘Or a mad pope!’
Ronde could not help his glare which the duke matched effortlessly. Law carried on to distract them.
‘And the Regent? Where is it placed?’
Ronde’s teeth shone. ‘Here,’ he tapped the empty front-flower setting. ‘In pride over all. Even the Sancy diamond will sit humbly at the base of the silver acanthus with the Mazarin stones,’ he touched his pencil against the wooden fleur-de-lis on top of the crown.
Law nodded his approval. ‘I think it will be splendid, Milord.’ He put down the crown reverently and idly pulled his cuffs from his sleeves. ‘Would it suit, Milord, to honour Monsieur Ronde with a glance at the Regent? So he may know what he is to work with?’
Ronde clapped his hands. ‘Oh, yes, Milord! That would be delightful!’
Law went back to his seat and watched as Philippe thought.
‘No need,’ he said at last, and saw Ronde’s shoulders sink. ‘The crown will be made under the supervision of Duflos. He will set the gemstones. I could not risk the Regent and the Mazarin diamonds to leave the palaces.’
Law held in the reeling of his stomach. It was over.
He had only ever heard Claude Ronde’s name mentioned in relation to the crown. Augustin Duflos
was the young royal jeweller, resident at the Louvre Palace. Naturally Augustin would look over and approve the work – as befitted his appointment – but it was to be the master, Ronde, who crafted it. Law had always presumed that would be at his own workshops. That was Law’s understanding, that was the tinder that had fuelled Walpole’s plans. But it seemed that Philippe had kept close to his chest the idea that it would be only under the heavy protection of the palaces that the diamond would find its setting. It would not go to Ronde’s workshop in the Rue de Richelieu. It was never going to the Rue de Richelieu. It would never leave the court at all.
Something Devlin had said in London fluttered through Law’s memory. Something about Walpole and himself never having stolen anything. Maybe Devlin had known. A thief’s wisdom. He had known that Philippe would never let the diamond leave his pocket.
John Law was a gambler through and through; but the pirate, surely, was reckless. Yet he had been right. He knew all along that the diamond would have to be stolen from the palace. But where was it? If the regent would not even show Ronde, what were they to do?
‘Lass!’ Philippe barked. ‘What is with you today? You sit there like you have lost a bride!’
‘I’m sorry, Milord. Have I missed something?’ Law even managed a smile. There was some surprising small relief in failure after all.
Philippe began to reply but his bellow could not compete with the cries now rising outside the door.
In the centuries when flame and wick ruled the night, and kings and emperors studied siege warfare as keenly as dancing, two phrases filled their palaces with dread.
‘The enemy is at the gates!’ was the first, understandable enough.
The second could change your world even more.
‘Fire!’
The shout went down the corridors and up the marble stairways.
‘Fire!’
Law tensed. A look at the clock again. But surely not? Not even a pirate could be so bold?
Guards and footmen ran from door to door with the cry, smoke at their backs, horror greeting them at every open door as lords, viscounts and clerks ran from their offices with linen at their mouths and valuables clutched about them. They made for the garden, for the courtyard. There were certainly enough glass-doors for easy escape, to be flung wide, allowing in oxygen enough to stoke the flames.
In the garden, they coughed and dried their eyes and watched the smoke billowing out of the open doors and climbing up over the blue roofs where servants hung from their windows and screamed futilely for help to the lords and ladies below.
Skinny, aproned men and women, dusted with flour, filled the courtyard from the kitchens below and pointed and yelled at the smoke engulfing the east wing. Their senses returned, some of the more regal witnesses sent their servants scurrying back into the smoke to fetch more of their goods, lowly protests impatiently slapped away with bejewelled fists.
Philippe stayed at his desk, his eyes on the door. Ronde cradled his brass and wood crown to his chest. Law watched the regent measure the threat by the rush of footsteps in the hall and the screams of women far off; but then they would shriek at a cold wind, so that was hardly a gauge. Philippe’s eyes flashed to the foot of the door as the first trickle of smoke began to puff and spread.
‘Lass!’ he shouted. ‘See what goes on!’
Law sprang up, his hand at the door just as it was thrust open, catching his wrist painfully. A white wig appeared and a spluttering footman with streaming eyes and powder running off his face begged them to leave, as a black cloud formed behind him. Ronde ducked beneath his arms and was gone before he had finished his plea.
Philippe held to his desk, clutched the sides like a pitching deck. ‘Firemen to their sand! Where is the fire? Report!’
The footman wiped his brow. Somehow a fire had broken out in the east wing. A curtain set ablaze by a fallen candle had then spread. A quick thinking piss-boy had dashed to the area with his pails but some accident with another fellow, a collision with an arm to his throat, had sent him and his waste spilling along the floor. Now there were pastries and piss everywhere and fire all about.
‘Pastries?’ Philippe’s exclamation provoked some coughing fit from Law, or perhaps it was only the smoke.
‘No matter, Milord. Please, hurry! Come now!’
Law gathered himself.
‘Pay attention,’ Devlin had said.
‘We should retreat to the garden, Milord. Let the firemen to their work.’ His request was suitably punctuated by a sudden black belch from the corridor.
Philippe’s instincts were not without their reward in Law’s eyes. At first, disappointment, as the regent grabbed a miniature oval watercolour of his late daughter and pushed it into the highest pocket, closest to his heart; then, as his footman could no longer wait and fled, the duke’s hands were beneath his chair. An instant later Law glimpsed a small green silk bag slip into another pocket. Philippe’s head rose in a snap, cautious in case Law’s eyes were upon him; but he only saw the Scotsman peering anxiously down the corridor, and heard his voice calling back.
‘We should leave, Milord.’
Philippe was already at his shoulder, hearing more than seeing the panic of a fire. ‘To the garden, Lass,’ he said, and closed the door behind them.
Priming powder alone makes for good smoke. Primer poured. A candle dropped. A curtain suddenly engulfed. Two men running, shouting down the corridors, alerting the denizens of the palace to their impending doom. Others take up the call without seeing the sight; the word is enough.
Minutes later, the corridors cleared, the firemen with their sand victoriously extinguish the small blaze and puzzle over the vast clouds of smoke that one curtain had managed to create.
In the garden the fortunate saved begin to return to their offices, the smoke still hanging above their heads, and the higher-appointed order a change of clothes to be brought to their apartments. Philippe, crowded by ministers and clerks, nods at every apology and explanation and walks calmly back to his rooms. He dismisses with a wave those that irritated him, his only concern being that he had secured the diamond in one pocket and his late daughter’s only miniature in another.
John Law surveyed the rooftops, the chaos diminishing into nothing but a smart anecdote for the evening’s supper before the commencement of Philippe’s other feast of flesh that crowned every evening.
‘Monsieur Lass,’ came not a question but a whisper at his shoulder. He turned to see Devlin admiring his work rather than meeting his eye, as if the two were not talking at all, Devlin’s tray empty save for the one large pie.
‘You did this?’ They were the only horrified words Law could shape. Once he had stood on Primrose Hill and shot dead a man who had dared to kiss his darling’s hand. That is what gentlemen do. They do not set fire to royal palaces. ‘People could have died!’
Devlin, growing into his French demeanour, shrunk his neck into his shoulders. ‘People die every day. You paid attention like I said?’
Law, aware of those lingering around them, picked up the pie on Devlin’s tray as if it were his only interest. ‘Indeed. I know where the regent keeps the Regent.’
‘Then we’re done. He did not see that you watched him?’
Law put back the pie. ‘I thought you did not take me for a fool?’ Here, in Law’s very place of position, Devlin’s brusque tone would at least be matched.
Devlin looked about for Dandon and found him offering the last of his tarts to a giggling pair of kitchen maids. He pushed his tray back to Law. ‘Take the pie: the replica is inside.’
Law paled, looked down at the crust with new light. ‘Could you not have given it to me this morning? Was the drama so necessary?’
‘And you’d have spent the afternoon trembling in front of the duke if you’d have known. I said before that you gentlemen are not thieves. Besides, you’ll be the one taking the diamond for the other tonight. I figured that would be enough for your nerves.’
‘Me?’
‘Who else? You belong here. I’ll see you tomorrow in your office. My part is played. I showed you where it was. Take the pie. Don’t worry, John. It’s only beef.’
‘I cannot,’ he said as, still, his hand took hold of it. ‘I will be killed if caught!’
‘We’ll all be dead if you do not play. Tomorrow morning, Monsieur Lass.’
Law watched him walk away to summon Dandon, who had at least earned two kisses for the afternoon. Law dragged himself back to the palace, mulling the weight of the pie between his hands. His failure weighed more so. The dreams of his greatest venture, his dream to raise France above all others, reduced to a crust.
From the tall doors of the passage, through the mullioned panes, Philippe watched the lank form of his finance minister trudge away from the tall peasant. Philippe ducked, as if he could hide behind glass, and watched the dour face of Law study the pie in his hands, clearly not pleased with his gift.
Philippe followed the backs of the two others as they went to join the crowd leaving the grounds. His thumb rested in the coat pocket where the green silk bag lay.
He straightened and switched his gaze back to Law, now entering under the pillars far to his right and disappearing.
He sniffed the smoky air, the thumb now stroking the hard lump inside the bag. He ignored the trio of ministers with raised fingers and flapping papers vying for his eye and spun back to his rooms, slamming the doors against their indignant white faces.
Chapter Twenty-Two
A good pirate ship possessed an enviable selection of marksmen. Often pirates took to the sweet trade from an impoverished hunting background – those that had not sprung from a decade of service as soldier or seaman.
Such men were accustomed to sleeping with a gun; they were men with powder forever lined or pocked in their faces. The buccaneer of the old Tortuga ways was marked by his long French musket. His clothes might be little more than rags of goatskin, his features indistinguishable under the filth, but his gun was waxed, oiled, cleaned and screwed to watchmaker precision.