Empires of Sand

by Empires of Sand (retail) (epub)

  “Eminence, look! Perhaps all is not lost. This is where the route will now be placed.” He traced a line on the map with his finger. “If Your Grace can somehow acquire the land here” – he pointed to a large tract – “and here, and here, then your earlier acquisitions will retain their value.” The bishop looked carefully at the map. It was true, he saw. The land Portier indicated would join his holdings to the new route.

  “Who owns the land?”

  Lit with new enthusiasm, Portier hurried to the land records section of the bureau. He climbed a ladder and pulled a massive book off the shelf. He pored through it page by page, squinting where the writing was old and faded, nodding and mumbling to himself, until he arrived at the proper section.

  “Voilà!” he fairly shouted, pointing eagerly. “C’est ça!”

  There was but one owner for all the land: the count Henri deVries. DeVries! The bishop cursed himself for the weakness of his position.

  “We must have the land condemned,” he said.

  Portier shook his head. “Alas, it is not possible, Your Grace.”

  “And why not? Land is condemned regularly by the baron for public works!”

  “Bien sûr, Eminence, what you say is true – except for land belonging to the nobility. The emperor has no wish to alienate them. His orders have been explicit from the beginning: If it cannot be purchased, it will not be condemned. Besides, a condemnation would never work. The count’s land is not essential to the new route. It is only essential to preserve your… should I say… our investment.”

  The bishop resigned himself to approaching the count. There was at least one thing in his favor, he thought, congratulating himself that he had kept his temper when dealing with the count’s woman. Henri deVries surely valued his immortal soul, like any other man. A donation of the land to the Church – or even its sale – would ease the pain he must have felt at entering into marriage without the blessing of the Church.

  So it was that he came to call on Henri. “The project is important for the vitality of the new city,” the bishop told him. “Your family has been more than generous to the Church and served France with distinction for generations. It is fitting that this tradition should continue now, when so much progress has been made. The diocese considers this project good for the city, and good for the diocese. As you see, there will be a park here.” He pointed to the map. “And here, a school. The emperor intends that a wide boulevard be—”

  “Who owns this land?” Henri interrupted. He pointed to a part of the bishop’s new holdings. The bishop hesitated. He thought about lying, but saw no harm in the truth. “It is owned by the Church.”

  “By your diocese, perhaps?”

  “Oui, Count.”

  “And when did the diocese acquire it?”

  “I do not see where that should concern you.”

  “So that I may know your intentions, Monseigneur. I wish to understand why you are here.”

  “Very well. The diocese has owned the land but a short time.”

  A tight smile crossed Henri’s face. “Then I understand, Monseigneur. This is an investment for you. Without my land yours is worthless.”

  “This is not a question of worth, Count deVries. The diocese is engaged in the Lord’s work. It is a matter of the highest use for the land. The emperor has transformed the city. The Church supports him in his efforts when it can. If it is not advantageous for you to donate the land to the city, the Church will of course consider a purchase, and the Church itself will donate it to the city.”

  “Then will you be donating this other property as well, or holding it for sale?”

  The bishop thought quickly. Damn the man! So quick to the point, so direct. Well, if he had to, he would disclose the Church’s business intentions. It was certainly not unheard of for the Church to engage in commercial transactions. He decided it would be good form to admit to certain commercial aspects of the transaction and to donate a portion of the land to the city at the same time. But before the bishop had a chance to answer, Serena walked in. Her eyes fell upon the visitor. A look of distaste crossed her face but quickly passed. The bishop rose but made no attempt to proffer his ring. She greeted Henri brightly and saw the map they were studying.

  “We were just discussing a gift of our land in Montparnasse for the new outer boulevard,” he explained. She looked at the map.

  “Is that near Vaugirard?”

  “Oui,” he replied, smiling. She was still new to the huge city of Paris, yet already knew her way around. She had always been clever with maps.

  “I have just been to Ramiza’s shop.” Ramiza Hamad was an Algerian woman who had opened a dry goods shop in Montparnasse. Serena had met her soon after arriving in Paris and bought material for clothing there. Ramiza knew the oasis of El Gassi, where Serena had broken her leg as a girl. She and her family were regular guests at the Château deVries.

  “It is horrible what is happening there! She is losing everything. Her family paid rent for three years in advance and lost it all. She said they lost it to the Church! I was going to ask you if there was anything to be done, Henri.” She looked innocently at Murat. “But now perhaps the priest can help them.”

  “Is this true, Monseigneur?” Henri asked.

  This time, Murat knew he had to lie. “No. The Church has had nothing to do with any such difficulty, and would not be party to it.”

  “Do you say my friends are mistaken? It is they who live there! It is they who know!”

  “I say only that they have made an error, that is all. I am certain they are well intentioned,” the bishop replied with ice in his voice. “If you will permit me to say so, perhaps the countess should mind matters of her household and leave matters of property to the count.”

  “Perhaps the priest should mind matters of religion rather than matters of property,” she shot back.

  Henri stood up. Serena’s enmity for the bishop had been clear since the prelate’s unsuccessful efforts at conversion. He saw no hope for an amicable reconciliation. The best he could try for was a strained peace between them. “Thank you for coming, Your Grace. I will consider the matter of a gift directly to the city.”

  “It is all I could ask,” the bishop replied.

  “Are you going to give him the land?” Serena asked after he left.

  “Probably. The boulevard is a good project. But first I will see about Ramiza.”

  The next day Henri went to Vaugirard. He talked with the Hamad family, and then with others who had shops in the same area. The picture they drew was disturbing. They had paid heavy advance rents, only to find their homes and shops later condemned for use in the construction of a new street or park. They had not been able to get their money back. They never dealt with the landlord, only with agents. They weren’t even certain who the landlord was. Some said the Church, some said not. The agents told them nothing and said they should raise the matter with the city. The city refused to help and would not permit them to examine the property records, which were confidential. They had lost their money and their property and weren’t even sure to whom.

  If powerless tenants could not obtain access to the records of the city, Count Henri deVries had no such difficulty. He was soon poring over the records and discovered that the landowner, once having collected money from the tenants, had then been paid by the city for the property. The landlord had in fact been paid twice: first by the tenants, then by the city. It was a clever scheme inflicted upon the helpless, repeated hundreds of times.

  There were other papers to see at a different bureau. Henri examined them himself, to be certain there was no mistake. One landlord was dominant, not the owner of every property, but of scores of them. Leafing through the heavy book, Henri saw the name on document after document.

  Msgr. M. Murat, évêque de Boulogne-Billancourt.

  There could be no mistake.

  Henri was furious. He rode to the bishop’s palace and went directly to his private apartments over the strident o
bjections of the housekeeper. The bishop was occupied with a tradesman who was installing new Cordovan leather walls in his private dining room. The emperor had installed imitation leather walls at Fontainebleau. Not to be outdone, the bishop had ordered real ones. He looked up in surprise as Henri entered.

  “Count! An unexpected pleasure.”

  Henri’s countenance was grim, his voice a whip. “No pleasure, Bishop. You lied to me.”

  The bishop motioned to the workman. “Leave us,” he said. The man dropped his tools and hurried from the room. The bishop turned to Henri. He spoke in a low voice. “Do not forget yourself, Count! I will not be addressed in this manner!”

  “What Serena said was true. Your diocese has stolen money from families. From shopkeepers. It is fraud!”

  “You are talking to God’s servant in this diocese, Count. I do not lie.”

  “I have been to the city offices. I have seen the papers for the rents. I have seen the papers for the purchases. They bear your signature.”

  The bishop nodded his head and gave him his most understanding smile. “My signature is on many things. A hundred papers are presented to me every day.” He picked up a folder from his writing desk. The folder was tied with a ribbon and bulged with documents. “The diocese owns a great many properties. Much is left to the discretion of the curés who attend to these matters for the Church. I trust them when they present me with something. I confess that I do not read them all. If what you say is true it is possible one of the curés may be responsible. If so I will find out. I assure you I will get to the bottom of it.”

  Henri looked at him scornfully. “Are you telling me you don’t know what is happening in your diocese? Once or twice I might understand. But a hundred times and more? Over two years? And then you would place the blame on a curé?” Henri shook his head, and looked the bishop straight in the eye. “I said it before. I don’t believe you. You are a liar.”

  The bishop reacted in the only way he knew how. He took the offensive. A thousand times before he had done it with those who challenged him; a thousand times before they had backed down. He raised himself to his full height. His face was flushed with anger, his gray eyes savage. His hand trembled with rage as he shook his fist in Henri’s face. “You speak this way in peril of your immortal soul, Henri deVries! Until now I have treated you with some leniency in deference to your station. I have been reasonable about your marriage—”

  “You dare to threaten me over my marriage?” Henri was incredulous. “This has nothing to do with my marriage!”

  “I only remind you of the pain of excommunication! I remind you of your precarious position! I remind you that I have shown more tolerance in this matter than the holy Church requires I show! What has been done can be undone! Your title and your money and all your self-righteousness will not protect you from the wrath of almighty God!”

  Henri stared at the bishop and felt ashamed. What a fool he had been! He had never seen the man behind the robes. He had never felt the need to look. He had only humored Serena when she criticized Murat. Now what he saw filled him with revulsion. He spoke quietly, the anger gone from him. “I will have no part of your project. For that and for my marriage, do as you will, priest. Do as you will.” He turned and strode from the room, his boots echoing down the hall. The bishop listened until the noise was gone.

  That night the bishop sat in his darkened bedchamber, hunched over in a chair. The palace was hushed, his passion spent. Two bottles of wine lay empty at his feet. His eyes were red and his tongue was thick. His head was pounding; the wine would not make it stop. The storms of his fury had thundered throughout the afternoon. Word of his mood passed rapidly among the secular and clerical staffs at the palace. Curés quickly found business in other parishes. The servants moved silently through the back halls, trying to remain invisible. All dreaded a chance meeting or a summons. His vengeance could be swift and horrible.

  Some had not moved quickly enough. He saw to it that Monsieur Portier was fired that afternoon, filling a note to Baron Haussmann with enough threats to guarantee it. He summoned the clerk of the diocese, a meek but capable priest who had dutifully carried out every instruction of the bishop’s without fail. The man was summarily transferred to Vanves, the poorest parish in the diocese. He fired the housekeeper who had let Henri into his apartments. Yet the anger continued to build inside him, a great bilious anger that consumed him with hatred and spite, and in its fires he found the only other person he could hold accountable for the disaster.

  “Serena said…” Over and over he heard the count’s accusation. “Serena said…”

  The she-devil. Serena deVries. The pagan whore.

  It was her fault.

  When he knew it was true he lay exhausted in his stuporous fog and the voice came to him as it always did, soothing and sure.

  God will punish her for thwarting His works. And I will be His instrument.

  He rose to his feet and staggered. A boy of eleven peered out at the great bulk of the bishop from beneath the silk comforter on the bed. The boy was terrified. The bishop could hurt him so when he was like this. He had lain there for more than an hour, afraid to say anything, afraid even to move. He wondered whether the bishop had forgotten him as he drank and drank. He saw the old man’s head nodding and heard him talking to himself. He wondered whether to run. But then the bishop saw him. The bishop had forgotten it was Friday. There was a boy every Friday. Such a sweet young body, this one had. His favorite. But now he could not focus on the child through his rage. He wanted only to be left alone.

  “Get out!” the bishop swore. “Get out of my sight!” The bottle he threw broke just behind the bare feet of the boy as he fled through the door.

  CHAPTER 4

  Berlin, 1870

  “It is finished.”

  Count Otto von Bismarck, minister-president of Prussia, took a drink of schnapps and sat back heavily in his chair. He was in a dimly lit room on the second floor of the Schloss Charlottenburg in Berlin, eating a late dinner of blood sausage and bread with his ill-humored but brilliant chief of staff General Helmuth von Moltke and the minister of war, Count Albrecht von Roon.

  It would have been difficult to find three more crafty, powerful, or intelligent men in a room anywhere on the Continent that evening. Over a six-year period they had reshaped the balance of power in Europe, redrawing maps, playing royalty like puppets on strings, throwing hundreds of thousands of men into battles that would fashion the future of two continents.

  Yet the mood in the room was somber, for there was very real danger of peace with France. Peace would upset Bismarck’s plans. Peace could end the grand scheme he had carefully tended for years. He was possessed by the dream of a united Germany, a reich dominated by Prussia. A reich of which he would become chancellor. To accomplish this he had to unite swarms of independent principalities and dukedoms, many of which had tiny armies and lone generals. The process had begun with a war against Denmark, which the German confederation – of which Prussia and Austria were the strongest members – had won handily.

  His plan flowered at Sadowa, a massive and bloody battle on the Bohemian plain that pitted the Prussians against their former ally Austria in a struggle to become the pre-eminent power among German-speaking people. Sadowa had been a huge gamble. Under the Hapsburgs, Austria was regarded, after France, as the most powerful nation on the Continent. There was no assurance whatever that Prussia would win, or that Bismarck would not end up on the gallows. But Bismarck was not one for the safe path. He had gambled, and in a few short weeks he had won. From the victory he had forged the North German Confederation. The balance of power had shifted again. Europe trembled.

  What remained of his task was to bring the southern German principalities into the union. This he intended to accomplish by drawing their common enemy, France, into a war. The opportunity presented itself when a junta of Spanish generals overthrew Queen Isabella of Spain. Bismarck had connived with the generals to offer the Span
ish throne to Prince Leopold, the nephew of Prussia’s King Wilhelm. France already faced Prussians in the northeast. If Leopold accepted, she would have to face them in the southwest as well, and German influence would spread on the Continent.

  And that, Bismarck knew, would lead to one of two outcomes. The first was the humiliation of Louis Napoléon, whose position, already weakening among the powers of Europe, would deteriorate further. The second was that France would refuse to suffer such provocation and would instead declare war. Bismarck was banking on the latter.

  “The French ego,” he had assured the generals, “will never tolerate bratwurst on two borders. They will puff their chests and draw their swords and test your armies again.”

  “The French army is larger than ours,” von Moltke reminded him. “They will not fall so easily as the Austrians.” The president laughed derisively. He had once shared the popular opinion that Napoléon was a man to be feared and respected. But no more. He had seen him vacillate in international affairs and stumble badly. His court was corrupt. Reports of his illnesses and dissipation were widespread. He was a man who preferred to follow the flow of events, rather than to shape them as had his uncle Bonaparte. A feeble man at the head of an unraveling empire.

  “I have looked into the emperor’s eyes,” said Bismarck. “They are empty. He is a sphinx without a riddle. His country is no better. From a distance France is stunning, but when you get up close there is nothing there at all. And when they realize we have insulted their precious dignity, they will do as they always do. They will fight. Only now they will show up for battle wearing nothing but honor for armor and pride for a sword. And we shall raise the whole of Germany against them.”

  Bismarck’s generals needed little persuasion of their own superiority. They were confident of their troops. For four years, since Sadowa, they had been rearming, preparing, planning. As generals always did, they wanted more time. But when time ran out, they would be ready.