Empires of Sand

by Empires of Sand (retail) (epub)

  And then one day when he was seventeen it came to him.

  It was an epiphany.

  It was the Church.

  His uncle had come to visit. He was a religious man, and Murat’s mother had insisted the family accompany him to a Christmas mass. Murat had not been to church since he was baptized. They went to Notre Dame on a cold, crisp morning. The streets of Paris were busy, but nowhere so much as near the church, where there was an excitement, an energy in the air. The sanctuary was crowded to overflowing. Murat and his family were jostled about rudely and had to content themselves with standing behind a pillar to the rear of the railing of the nave. Murat could see nothing. He held on to the pillar and climbed onto the railing, and there he saw things that made his spirit soar as high as the magnificent vaulted ceiling.

  The archbishop of Paris himself was conducting the service. He stood in the chancel before the high altar. The church was so big he looked to Murat as though he were a mile away, and all heads were turned reverently toward him. Even from a distance, Murat could see the flowing robes and brilliant sashes, and perceive the majesty. The archbishop was flanked by priests and servers, and his voice rang out above the crowd of worshipers, who sang their hymns and bowed their heads and looked up to that man standing above them all, a man whose open arms promised glory for those who would accept his truths. Murat couldn’t understand the words.

  They were Latin, unintelligible to his unpracticed ear, but they had the certain ring of omnipotence, settling over the hushed congregation, the word of God Himself. The prelate’s voice boomed off ornate columns and echoed in the alcoves. The sun shone through glorious windows of stained glass and fell upon the gold miter on his head and upon his white and purple robes.

  Murat saw the plush red carpets behind the altar and the precious stones gleaming in the chalice that a priest held to the archbishop’s lips. He saw the parishioners, even the poor ones who had only rags to cover the holes in their rags, slipping their alms into the collection plates, and he saw that the plates were made of silver. He watched the throngs of faithful who stood as the bishop beckoned, and sang as he sang, and prayed as he prayed. Everything was perfect, everything divine: the geometry, the light and the space, all the energy and life and worship focused on the archbishop and the altar behind him – the stone arches soaring overhead, massive and powerful; the mighty chandelier, hanging, it seemed, all the way from heaven. The choir sang and golden bells pealed the glory of God and, for Murat at least, the even greater glory of His church and His ministers.

  That Christmas morning Murat came closer than ever before in his life to feeling something deeply. It was a glorious sensation that filled him up and brought a smile to his face. Had his mother seen him at that moment it would have frightened her, for it was the same smile another man had worn in her kitchen years before – a smile of smug superiority, a smile of chilling certainty. Murat had found his way, a path to power that even a poor child could follow, and the door to it was wide open. The Church had suffered from a severe shortage of priests since the Revolution, when those not deported were executed. Their ranks had never again been completely filled. Vacancy meant opportunity. Less competition meant more room to advance. Murat knew at last where he was going, and where he was going had nothing to do with God.

  He entered the Seminary of St. Michel in his eighteenth year. He had no difficulty with seminary life, adapting quickly to its requirements and dedicating himself to its conventions. He developed a perfect understanding of what it took to become a priest, coolly calculating the expectations of the Church hierarchy and the parishioners themselves, and took great pains that every word and deed might make him appear to be that priest. Religious thought rarely entered his mind. When it did, it was as rote, not as belief. He hadn’t the slightest belief in God. When he prayed it was to nothing, empty words to fill a void. God was never expected to answer his prayers. God never did. He never looked for God in his surroundings, never wondered whether He was there. It wasn’t important. The priesthood was a commerce of sorts, a commerce that trafficked in men’s souls rather than goods, and no more required a belief in the underlying premise of God than a broker required a belief in the underlying premise of the Bourse. All that mattered was whether it worked. If others believed, he granted them their faith. If he himself did not, who was to judge him harshly so long as the conventions were kept? He was a clever chameleon who did not suffer the inconvenience of a moral base.

  It was in the confessional that his talent for adaptation reached its greatest height. There he feigned agony and invited the most severe acts of contrition. There he admitted those things that he knew his confessor on the other side of the screen needed to hear. He conceded at least some of the sins of his life; and where he thought they might be lacking, he burnished them for effect. He sought a realistic balance. He admitted greed, but left out ambition. He admitted the empty place inside, but left out his failure of faith. He admitted anger at the man who had brought death to his father, but left out his envy of that man. He said all the things a penitent his age would be expected to say. And he knew where to stop. A certain amount of candor in the service of his aims was one thing; candor in the service of plain truth was another, and further than he cared to go. So he did not acknowledge the women he still had on his occasional trips outside the seminary. Nor did he confess the man. Each Monday after final prayers had been said and the seminary had fallen silent for the night, a priest slipped quietly into Murat’s small room and stayed until just before dawn. Such revelations would have been too much for the priest behind the screen, so Murat kept them to himself.

  Murat was convincing in his demeanor. He struck a pose of pure humility as he knelt. His prayer voice resonated with conviction. He took the conventions of his apprenticeship seriously, applying himself diligently to the study of the Scriptures, Church history and doctrine, and the decorum of the Church. Latin came easily to him, as did the ritual ceremonies. Whether Murat stood before a parishioner or a peer, a bishop or a king, he struck exactly the right note; and over time, his brilliant act of deception took on the reality of repetition. Hours of practice brought the Holy Spirit to his voice and the wrath of God to his gestures and made righteousness run fast in his veins. He delivered the charade so convincingly that he himself began to believe it; and his message grew real to his audiences, which in turn reinforced him. At last one could not tell, standing in front of Murat and a man whose soul was pure and whose existence was truly devoted to religious thoughts and good works, which was the believer, and which the pretender.

  Murat went from the seminary to the diocese of Boulogne-Billancourt which had two other priests, with whom he worked out a comfortable if unspoken arrangement. They worked on the souls of the parishioners, while Murat worked on their pocketbooks. He was a more effective fund-raiser behind closed doors than in a chapel, dispensing blessings with one hand while accepting thanks with the other. But he was effective in the chapel as well. Where some priests preached hope and salvation, Murat found that a well-developed fear of God and eternal damnation was a more direct route to loosening men’s wallets. He pounded the pulpit and his eyes bulged with almighty fervor. His voice was deep and mellifluous and full of the sound and fury of the Lord, and that voice fell upon vulnerable consciences like the golden hammer of God. The francs poured into his coffers.

  Yet his great strength lay not in the gospel of fear. He quickly demonstrated to his elders that he was a gifted administrator and organizer, talents the Church desperately needed. In France, the Church and its bishops were quite independent and received no help from Rome, and little enough from the state. Murat found ways to make the diocese money, and ways to save the diocese money. He straightened out muddled accounts and established his own procedures for keeping the ledgers. He began dealing directly with bankers and brokers and vendors, and soon his offices bore a steady stream of visitors. Gradually, he gained direct access to the accounts of the Church. At first his access fell u
nder the close scrutiny of the bishop. But as time passed his freedom increased. It was then that he began to demonstrate what was perhaps his greatest gift, the one most highly prized by his elders. He was a genius at finance. He speculated on the Bourse, somehow knowing when to buy and when to sell. It was all very small at first, for the bishop was a man whose nerves were easily frayed and whose appetite for a gamble was well under control. But each success brought Murat more liberty, until at last he stopped asking altogether. Murat showed similar genius at acquiring and selling property. As with stocks, he always seemed to know just what to do with property, and when to do it. He could bring more money into the Church with a single land transaction than he could in twenty years behind a pulpit.

  If Father Murat was shrewd, even ruthless in his dealings, no specific complaints ever reached the ear of the bishop. There were rumors, it was true, rumors of dark dealings and transactions on the slippery edge of the appropriate, but the bishop showed little interest in the ledgers so long as things ran well. If Murat was disliked by the other priests, well, it was of little consequence. If the bishop himself did not like Father Murat, if he found his stares cold and empty and devoid of Christ inside, if he felt a certain chill when the priest talked, he dismissed the notion and turned his attention to more pressing matters of the diocese, for the bishop was a man who understood performance and could judge ambition. Above all, he was a man who could count. His diocese had always possessed a surplus of debt, never a surplus of cash; yet within two years of Father Murat’s arrival, the first renovations to the cathedral in two hundred years were made, and improvements and repairs followed, even to the bishop’s own castle. There had even been enough money for contributions to the workingman’s fund and to the orphanage. The bishop was well pleased.

  There was also money for accounts that even the bishop didn’t know about. These accounts were private, established by and known only to Murat. In the beginning, they contained modest amounts, but each success made him bolder and the amounts grew. Murat needed the money to make things work in ways that sometimes troubled the squeamish. Difficult bargains had to be sealed, and bureaucrats purchased: matters that his less practical superiors might not approve. It was all perfectly justified, he reasoned. Without him the Church would not have the money anyway, and as he used it to further his ends in the name of the Church it was all quite appropriate. Over time, the line between the interests of the Church and the interests of Murat began to blur. He began using the money for his own personal needs, needs that grew steadily in number and were quite insatiable.

  For years Father Murat worked that way, developing contacts among government functionaries, civic officials, lords and ladies of the realm. He gave tips and received them. He granted favors and asked them, storing up obligations for later use. He learned secrets and remembered them. He learned others and divulged them. Along the way, he thundered at the moral infirmities of his flock, exhorting them to saintliness and damning the sins of flesh that crept through the night streets of Paris. He did it even as he slept with whores, even as he slept with men. He threatened hell and sold maps to paradise, and found his parish brimming with souls eager to buy the maps. France was a nation of realists and doubters and skeptics, but Murat was not deterred, for he knew something of men’s nature – that in crops of doubters could be found a rich harvest of souls.

  He dealt and he damned. And he ate. Upon entry to the seminary he had been scrawny, the product of long years of near starvation. At the seminary the food was plentiful if not fancy, and he gained a little weight. At the parish he took charge of the matter personally, and soon the food was as fancy as the wine, and both were abundant. He filled out and ordered new robes, and filled out some more. Within a few years, he grew corpulent and sprouted an extra chin. The bulk added timbre to his voice and his voice added funds to the coffers.

  Father Murat had come far from the kitchen where his father’s life had ended. People paid him homage and asked for his blessings and showed him deference and respect. His life was bountiful and he lived well. But he was neither content nor finished. He had only begun. The first step on the road he had chosen had been taken with his eyes fixed firmly upon the robes of the archbishop. He would not stop until he wore them, and after that the red robes of a cardinal.

  Murat advanced along his path by ingratiating himself with ministers and bureaucrats of the government – men who needed the money he could give them, men who in turn gave him the information he required to make the money. The president was Louis Napoléon, nephew of Bonaparte. Murat had supported Louis Napoléon from the first. Each time the man sought more power, Murat was there to help. Finally, a coup led to Louis Napoléon’s installation as emperor. The development suited Murat well, for it was the emperor, not the pope in Rome, who named bishops in France. Murat already knew most of the emperor’s staff and had made several of them rich. Beyond that, Murat had tailored his own political views of matters concerning Church and State to suit the emperor’s needs. That the emperor required the loyalty of bishops above any they might feel to Rome was perfectly logical to Murat. Rome did nothing for him.

  It was simply a matter of time until he could exchange black robes for purple. He would have to be patient, however, as there were no vacancies among the ranks of the bishops except in the provinces. Murat disdained such posts, which were hopelessly poor and consumed with spiritual drudgery. He preferred the opportunities and connections of Paris and bided his time. Then a new bishop was transferred to the see. He was a kindly man who avoided politics and whose courtliness and simple devotion to the teachings of Christ had won him deep love and respect among the parishioners of his diocese. The bishop was healthy, a relatively young man of fifty-four, and Murat knew he was likely to be bishop for many years to come. Murat chafed under the gentle hand of the new bishop, who would not let him use his talents the way he had done before. He was diverted from finance to the priestly tasks of visiting the sick and tending to the salvation of the parish.

  “Yes, my son,” the bishop agreed when Murat protested, “it is true our temporal needs are pressing. But the good Lord will provide for those. It is your task to do His work among men’s souls.” No amount of argument made a difference; and at least on the surface Murat was forced to comply, but he was growing impatient.

  His opportunity, when at last it came, was quite unexpected, as near to an act of God as he had ever seen.

  Terrible springtime floods had swollen the Marne and Seine Rivers to overflowing, and parish houses had been destroyed across the river. The bishop asked Father Murat to accompany him as he looked after the needs of his flock, and to lend assistance where possible. Murat was not given to fanciful acts of goodwill on his own. He detested the thought of spending hours in a downpour in a futile quest to save men’s dwellings or comfort their souls. It was his preference to send money and other priests, better-suited than he to provide this kind of help. But the bishop asked, and Murat assented.

  The storm raged furiously around them as they boarded the little ferry for the short trip across the river. The wind whipped their robes about them and they had to hold on to their hats. The surface of the water was angry with whitecaps. It was dusk, the coming of night hastened by the thick dark clouds overhead. The ferry was not much more than a raft, a low wooden craft that had been built before the Revolution and rendered faithful service in the decades since. Now it strained against the flood waters as its operator pulled on the ropes that were suspended across the water to guide them to the opposite shore. They were nearly halfway across when a large tree floating downstream caught the ferry on its corner and turned it partway around. The tree broke free and continued floating, but the raft did not immediately straighten itself in the roiling water. A wave caught a corner of the port side, which dipped slightly under the water. That was enough to brew disaster. The load of crates on the ferry shifted. A mule lost its footing and slipped toward the side, which sank the endangered corner even more. Pandemonium er
upted. Amid the shouts of the ferry operator and the braying of the mule and the noise of the storm, the edge of the craft dipped completely under, tilting the boat and hurling its occupants into the water. The ferry was held tight by the overhead rope and dragged against the current at an impossible angle. One of the passengers disappeared downstream, holding on to the back of the frantically braying mule.

  Murat went under, swallowing great gulps of icy black water as he flailed about looking for the edge of the ferry. He caught a rail beneath the surface and was able to pull himself partway up to where he could hold on. Gasping, he used his free arm to work the raging current and keep himself upright. Water had gotten in his nose and mouth and he coughed violently. The lower half of his body was still submerged. At that moment he saw the bishop’s arm break the surface of the water, and then his head. The brave father struggled furiously, but his robes were heavy and prevented him from moving freely.

  “I cannot swim!” he half-cried, half-spluttered as he saw Murat. “Help me!” A brilliant burst of lightning illuminated the scene, freezing it in a brief eerie glow. The bishop had lost his hat. His head was gashed and bleeding.