The Dream Maker

by Jean-Christophe Rufin

  The king had me sit near him. He introduced a few people to me. Most of them were the new stewards to his reign, men with whom I would share for years the daily duties of affairs of state. And they certainly already knew this, but I did not. I saw only a succession of new faces and names that were still unfamiliar to me. The only one whom I recognized was Pierre de Brézé, who was already renowned in his youth as Joan of Arc’s comrade-in-arms, the right-hand man of the former constable. Rumor accused him of having belonged to the little group that had abducted the king’s counselor, La Trémoille, a sensual and amoral man. I immediately liked Brézé for his simplicity. No doubt he looked younger than he actually was. He was slim, and only his strong joints—in particular his wrists, scarcely noticeable above his long square hands—denoted the warrior. I recognized in him an eagerness to serve, a pride in defending the weak, and a propensity to defy the powerful, which must have made him easy prey for the king.

  Suddenly, the king stood up, and before walking on he grabbed my arm to take me with him. I was startled by the familiarity of his gesture. At the same time, just when I might have thought that by clinging to me the king was giving yet another proof of his weakness, I felt his fingers squeeze my elbow like a vice. Limping and swaying, he dragged me to one side. We took a staircase with worn steps and came out at the back of the building into a service courtyard. Two chained dogs leapt up on seeing us. The king had me sit on a stone bench in the shade of a fig tree. He seemed to enjoy watching the huge hounds struggling against their chains, trying to attack us. The chain broke their momentum and they dropped to their paws, tongues slavering. Their barking, the clanging of their chains, their threatening fangs all seemed to amuse the king and even excite some cruel, brutal strain in him. At the opposite end of the small courtyard two washerwomen, arms bared, were struggling with piles of laundry. Charles stared straight at them, and the sight of the dogs had filled his eyes with a brutal desire. The poor girls looked down and concentrated on their work, giving the king the spectacle of their outstretched rumps and tensed muscles. It is no exaggeration to say that I felt my presence was inconvenient.

  The king, however, did count on my presence. However much pleasure he might have derived from contemplating the scenes around him, he maintained sufficient self-control to go on speaking to me gently and questioning me like a sovereign. I would have innumerable opportunities in the years to follow to explore the paradoxes of his tormented nature: even today I still wonder if I truly hate him. At the time, I went no further than to think in passing that it might simply be unwise to love him.

  “France is a pigsty, Cœur. What say you?”

  He sniggered.

  “There is a great deal to be done, sire,” I said, loudly enough to make myself heard over the barking dogs.

  The king nodded.

  “Everything. We are going to do everything, believe me.”

  The mastiffs grew calmer on hearing our voices. To my astonishment, I saw that the king was tapping his feet, urging them to continue.

  “The States-General are asking me to rid the country of the écorcheurs. It is a good initiative, what say you?”

  “Yes, that would be useful.”

  “Of course, they did not come up with this on their own. I suggested it to them. But now that they have requested it, I shall be obliged to go through with it. Too bad for our dear princes, who will have to do without their mercenaries . . . ”

  One of the dogs, exhausted by rage, dropped heavily to the ground and howled in pain. Charles slapped his thighs as he shot ever bawdier looks in the direction of the washerwomen. I had heard a great deal about the king’s sensuality, his propensity to accumulate mistresses of all backgrounds. I found it hard to grasp that such nervous weakness could also harbor this carnal appetite. Witnessing this disturbing scene, I understood that the king’s tormented nature could lead him to both a terrified immobility, where he shook with the tics he affected in the presence of princes, and a lubricious excitement where violence rivaled vice, as in the behavior he was displaying before me at that moment.

  “I am going to reform the Council,” he continued. “They will no longer reign in my stead, of that I can assure you.”

  “They” meant the princes, I understood as much. There was nothing to say. I nodded.

  “They have begun uniting against me. Last year, I had my way with them. But they will start again, and this time my son will be sufficiently scatterbrained and ambitious to join them. It does not matter, I shall break them.”

  A thought occurred to me, which I banished instantly. Noise and violence were Charles’s everyday world. While my dreams were calm and spacious, his must be possessed, full of brutality and hatred. The tics that deformed him when he remained still were surely echoes of the storms ravaging his mind. This was why he felt so at ease amidst the barking hounds. However intense their howling might be, it probably never attained the intensity of the howling he heard inside. I was drifting away on these thoughts when he suddenly turned to me.

  “We will need a great deal of money, Cœur. Much more than the small profits the mint could ever bring. Do you understand why I have appointed you steward to the Argenterie?”

  My plan was to explain to him how the Argenterie and my own enterprise could complement each other. My discussions with Guillaume de Varye had convinced me that with our network of suppliers on the one hand, and orders from the realm on the other, centralized at the Argenterie, we could build an intensely powerful enterprise. But everything we professionals had laboriously imagined, Charles had already seen distinctly long before.

  I had not been sure whether he had listened to me during our first meetings or not. Now I saw that not only had he listened, but he had drawn conclusions that far exceeded in boldness anything the men in his entourage might have been capable of conceiving. Thus, just as my pity was beginning to yield to other feelings, where a diffuse fearfulness prevailed, admiration leapt ahead and showed me why I was bound forever to this strange and fascinating king.

  “First of all, I appointed you steward so that you could examine everything discreetly and make your plans. Have you done so?”

  “Yes, sire.”

  “In that case, as of today I appoint you Argentier. The good man who currently holds that office will not be pleased, but that is his problem. He did not want to exercise it; he viewed it as a distinction that flattered his honor. As do they all, from finance to the things of war: they do not serve. They serve themselves. All of that is going to change.”

  I felt like crying out for joy. For I could see that this sudden conclusion would be a point of departure for everything to follow. It’s absurd to say this, and perhaps you will not believe me. My spirits soared, as if I had suddenly taken flight. I was filled with great serenity; I was far away from the dogs, the washerwomen, the States-General, and even the king. I could see the caravans altering their route and turning for France. My country would become the center of the world, richer, more prosperous, more enviable than Damascus.

  I hardly know how this conversation ended. I think someone came to fetch the king. He left the courtyard skimming the perimeter of the dogs’ chains; their jaws were snapping not an inch away from the sovereign’s legs. I could hear his laughter as he went up the echoing stairway. I was dead to my first life, and now as I watched the sun filtering through the thick downy leaves of the fig tree I felt like a newborn opening its eyes onto a new light.

  *

  In the sun of Chios my skin has turned brown. Elvira came back from Easter Mass this morning full of joy. On this Greek island that knows no winter, Christmas is hardly a festivity. Resurrection, however, sets hearts ablaze.

  During the long nights we spend without sleeping, Elvira has taught me a few words of Greek. These seeds may have fallen on a mind long fallow, but they have caused some very old seeds to sprout, seeds planted long ago by our teacher of catechism at th
e Sainte-Chapelle in Bourges, so that now I am beginning to understand and express myself.

  Only two days ago, I would have said that this was happiness. Alas, yesterday everything changed in an instant.

  At the end of the morning, while Elvira was at the market fetching our weekly supply of lemons and garlic, a man came to the house. Fortunately, I saw him from a distance. I had just enough time to hide under the roof where Elvira dries the herbs she picks from the hillside. The man walked around the house. He called out to see if anyone was at home. I was slightly reassured to hear him speaking Greek, because my pursuers, whoever they are, have no reason to know the language. But he might also be an accomplice, recruited on the spot.

  He went into the house and began walking around the room, opening the cupboards and moving things. I was afraid he might see my writings and take them away with him. But if he saw them, he was not interested; I found them where I had left them.

  When Elvira came home, I was still somewhat stunned by the visit. She calmed me down as best she could. And somehow managed to explain what the visitor wanted. Because she had met him on her way back and spoken to him. He was an emissary from the podestà of Genoa who governs the islands. Upon his return from a voyage, the old man had got wind of my presence on the island and subsequent disappearance. The innkeeper had not felt bound by his promise of silence, since he was answering to the master of the island. When he found out where I was staying, the podestà sent his messenger to inquire after my health.

  I don’t believe a word of these explanations. It is surely a trap. Those who are looking for me must have found a way to convince the podestà to hand me over. If, as I suppose to be the case, my murderers are the envoys of Charles VII, I do not doubt that the good king has deployed every means at his disposal to capture me. Yet I was the one who, once upon a time, brought him the alliance with Genoa. He will know how to reactivate it to have me eliminated. I recognize his absence of scruples, the ardent hatred that I had learned to tolerate. I adapted to such perversity for as long as it targeted other men. Who would ever have thought that one day it would be my turn to be its victim?

  But Elvira had a happy surprise in store for me: she had the presence of mind to tell the messenger that I had died. What I fear is that the podestà might send his people to verify what she said; in any case, since now anyone can find my hiding place, I am no longer safe. At least Elvira’s lie will have allowed me to gain some time.

  This morning she left for a village on the western coast, isolated in a small bay surrounded by cliffs, where one of her cousins lives. She will try to see with that fisherman how I might sail with him to another place. I have heard that a day’s sail from here there are two small islands that belong to Venice. I would be safe there, provided there is enough fresh water to survive. Ever since Elvira spoke to me of these havens all I dream of is settling there. I have been the richest man in the West. I have lost count of the number of castles and estates which are still my property, yet I have but one concern: to find out whether there is enough fresh water so that I might live naked on a desert island . . .

  Elvira made me promise to take her with me. I don’t know what she imagines. No doubt she sees this flight, after all, as the first stage of an escape. I wonder whether, on carrying out the errands I ask of her, she has not learned too much about me. I greatly preferred the time when she looked on me as an unfortunate fugitive. I would not like the notion of my wealth to disturb the simple happiness I feel here with her. Life has taught me that money can transform even the simplest creatures. Nothing and no one can resist it, except perhaps those who, like myself, have surrendered to it completely and have seen its charms fade. Only money can deliver one from money. Elvira, as she has been getting to know me, has started having dreams that she does not share but which, I am sure, lead her toward dangerous desires for finery and worldly goods.

  How can I explain to her that, while I might want to go on living, I no longer have the strength to recapture a place in the world? In truth, I am not seeking to escape. How can I explain what I feel? This unexpected stop at Chios has transformed me. On disembarking on the island, my intention had been to continue on my way. These days of writing and idleness have completely removed any desire to go further. My only hopes and fears concern this story of mine: I’m afraid I might not be able to finish it. If I am trying to save something, it is neither my life nor my future, but this work I took up quite by chance, and which now seems to me the most necessary task.

  Given the point I have reached in my story, one might think it is futile to go on. After all, the day the king appointed me Argentier and named me to his court, my life became public. All my deeds were performed before witnesses, and those witnesses, summoned by the prosecutor Dauvet in preparation for my trial, have told all they know. My business, down to the slightest details, is a matter of public record: the immense success of the Argenterie, my three hundred agents all across Europe, the silver mines in the Lyonnais, the galleys which in my name have exchanged so many goods in the Levant, the commerce in salt, the estates bought all over the realm, the loans I have granted to people in high places, the friendship of the Pope and the Sultan, my sons’ episcopal sees, my palace at Bourges—it is all known and acknowledged and recorded. I could stop my story here because from this point on my life speaks for me.

  But what I feel is just the opposite. During the entire trial this was my greatest despair: to see my life reduced to numbers, property, stones, honors. It was all factual and yet none of that was me. Material success was only one aspect of my life. It is not of success that I wish to speak, but of that which troubled my soul for all those years: the passions, the people I met, and the fear, which from that day in Orléans has never left my side.

  *

  As the sole master of the Argenterie, I gave myself, body and soul, to the work. I wanted to prove myself worthy as purveyor not only to the king, but also to the entire court. The Argenterie must have everything that was needed in store and, above all, everything that was superfluous. I sent orders to all our branches and enjoined Jean and Guillaume to devote themselves for a time to this activity alone. I hired a lot of people. The warehouse in Tours, its doors and windows now flung open, was a beehive of activity. I acquired two more storehouses, one of which I equipped for arms and leather, the other for spices, and I kept the first warehouse for cloth. I worked with my employees from morning to night, in my shirtsleeves and sometimes even, when the heat obliged me to, bare-chested.

  One afternoon without warning, the bastard of Orléans came into the leather warehouse. He found me sweating at the top of a ladder and burst out laughing when he saw me. But he was one of those noblemen who prefer the battlefield to the court. He was sharing the life of his men in camp. He concluded I must be doing the same and he treated me like a soldier on campaign. I clothed myself and invited him for a drink in the upstairs rooms of a tavern where I took my meals.

  He surely had his own purpose for the visit, but I did not care; I was pleased to see him. Apparently he had come specifically to see me. The conversation was going round in circles, like the initial phases of a battle, and then, finally, he got to the point.

  “I came to warn you in person, Cœur. The princes have had it. They ensured the king’s victory over the English and now he despises them and treats them without respect. They are going to rebel. And I am going to join them.”

  “I thank you for your warning,” I said tentatively.

  He leaned closer and looked me deep in the eyes: “Join us! We need a talented man like you. And we will know how to reward you.”

  In the words of the bastard of Orléans there was a touching mixture of enthusiasm, as always when he sensed the possibility of battle, of the doubt one could sense behind his too obvious certainties, and of sadness, because he sincerely loved the king. I understood that he was waiting anxiously for my reply, not only because in joining them I would re
inforce the camp he had chosen, but also because my decision would shore up his own or, if it was negative, undermine it.

  I have never practiced treason, but I have only condemned it weakly, for I know how close it can often be to loyalty. There are moments in life when, faced with the enigma of the world and of the future, any human being can feel torn between a cause and its contrary. The step from one to the other is so small that in an instant one can jump from one side to the other with the ease of a child hopping across a stream.

  To relieve him of his difficult identity as an illegitimate child, Charles VII had recently named him Comte de Dunois. The only grievance he had against the king was the monarch’s lack of inclination to pay the ransom of his half brother, Charles of Orléans, who had been held prisoner by the English since Agincourt. Dunois, in all honesty, had no liking for his half-brother, who, had he been free, would have looked down on him. But that is the way bastards are: the difficulty of their condition incites them to try everything to obtain recognition from the family in which they were born. Charles of Orléans was writing poetry in London, and Dunois, deep down, did not feel sorry for him. The admiration and recognition he showed the king far surpassed the displeasure he felt on seeing him abandon his half-brother. And yet, out of loyalty to a family that did not love him, he was now preparing to betray his king.