The Dream Maker

by Jean-Christophe Rufin

  Finally our steps led us back to the castle where we were staying. We presented ourselves to the sentry and walked into the great courtyard. From the keep, through the open windows of the king’s apartments, there came the sounds of music and women’s laughter. Dunois stopped, looked up toward the lighted rooms whence these joyful sounds were coming, and suddenly turned to me.

  “Beware of him,” he whispered, pointing with his chin in the direction of the king.

  His breath made it clear to me that he was speaking under the influence of alcohol, but while until now his words had seemed confused, and his mind fuddled, at that moment he seemed to master himself perfectly.

  “You saved him, and now he no longer needs you.”

  “Did he say anything that might have led you to think . . . ?”

  But lucidity had already faded from Dunois’s face. He shook his head and made a painful grimace.

  “Goodnight!” he called.

  And he disappeared down the corridor leading to his room.

  *

  I slept poorly and woke the next morning shortly before dawn. The intoxication and feasting had left the castle in a stunned silence. Marc was nowhere to be found. He was surely out enjoying the festivities as well. I went myself to the kitchen to try to find something to eat. Two baker’s boys were sleeping on the chopping table near the warm oven. I went through the cupboards and found a jar of butter, and a crust of bread at the bottom of a bin. I took a stoneware bowl from a mountain of dirty dishes and wiped it on the apron of one of the sleeping baker’s boys.

  I went back upstairs with my provender and cleared a space among the bottles scattered across a stone table on the castle’s flower-decked terrace. The sun had returned and covered the city with warmth, much welcomed by those who had fallen asleep in the street or on their doorstep. I had been there daydreaming for an hour or so when a man stood in the entrance to the great hall. In one hand he was holding a pitcher and in the other a dish of salt meat covered by a red-and-white checked cloth. It was Étienne Chevalier. We had hardly seen each other during the ceremonies: he had been part of another group, riding behind King René. I could see from his demeanor that he had slept no better than I had. His beard, which ordinarily he kept close-shaven, blackened his face, and his eyes were bloodshot and swollen. He sat down next to me, removed the cloth from his terrine and began digging into it. He too must have rummaged to see what he could find in the kitchen.

  We began talking about the celebration, and we both remarked on how long ago it already seemed. We were both surprised, despite our experience of life, at how our exaltation could have subsided so quickly and so thoroughly.

  Sleepy valets were drifting down the corridors. They seemed to be headed to the king’s apartments. Chevalier and I were thinking the same thing, I am sure. He knew Agnès and loved her, too, though in a very different way, with greater distance and respect.

  “I have been told that one of those ladies has precedence over all the others,” I ventured, repeating something I had heard somewhere during the night.

  “Antoinette de Maignelay,” murmured Chevalier, and he cast a dark look at the king’s windows.

  There was a long, awkward silence. We were not well enough acquainted to confide further in each other or speak freely of the king’s behavior.

  “I could scarcely have believed,” he continued, seeming to come back to his senses, “that I would live to see this day. To think I would be here one day, with you, in Rouen, with the city liberated . . .”

  He sniffed noisily, grabbed a piece of terrine and, before lifting it to his mouth, said with a sudden exhalation, “And I never would have thought that such a moment would leave me feeling so unhappy.”

  I stayed three more days in Rouen on business for the Argenterie. We had to seize the opportunity offered by the return of the city to the realm as quickly as possible: Normandy, its products and its maritime trade were now wide open to us. I met the king only once during my stay. He sent for me on the perfectly trivial matter of an embroidered doublet he had ordered from the Argenterie and which did not fit. I was used to having him refer to me for all sorts of things, from the greatest to the most insignificant. This time however, I sensed an ulterior motive behind his summons. While he was questioning me regarding this minor issue about which I, obviously, knew nothing, Charles stared at me with an enigmatic smile. The interrogation was held in the presence of several courtiers and some of the women who had joined the court during the campaign. I tried to determine which one might be Antoinette de Maignelay. But the king did not leave me the leisure of such a discovery. He began to reproach me for mismanaging the Argenterie. Without looking at me, he called on all those present as his witnesses. Clearly he felt a sinister joy in humiliating the man who had provided him with the means to his victory. Thus, my premonition had been correct. By advancing the four hundred thousand écus, I had inflicted a deep wound on him, which might prove mortal for our understanding. This first blow dealt in public was a harbinger of further ordeals and greater danger.

  I left Rouen, trying to put a good face on things. No one could imagine the turmoil in my thoughts. At least there was one advantage to my alarm: it aroused my spirit, made dull by the languor of victory. I was now certain that something had been set in motion. I must find shelter before the king’s vengeance came to strike me. My only chance was his predilection for complicated maneuvers and cold revenge. While he played with me, and grew annoyed with tormenting me, I could act. Thus was I reduced to the woeful extreme of hoping that my ordeal would last a long time.

  I headed first to Tours, where Guillaume de Varye was expecting me on business. We had made good progress by nightfall and had already stopped at a postal relay on the road to Tours when I called to Marc in sudden haste and had him saddle the horses again, though he had just groomed them and led them to the stable. We went back the way we had come, galloping furiously as far as the crossroads for Loches. It was a moonlit night and we continued on our way, in spite of the darkness and cold, until by dawn we were in sight of the castle where Agnès was staying.

  I had dreaded seeing her again, for fear she might question me about the king’s behavior and I would have to lie to her. But such cowardice was not worthy. I had made her a promise; now I must honor it. I lay down to rest on an embellished chest, near the big fireplace, and that is where Agnès found me in the morning. She was as I loved her, unaffected, her hair on her shoulders, wearing a simple chasuble with fine straps that both hid her body and revealed its curves. I soon understood, however, that this relaxed appearance was not a good sign. Her eyes were swollen and her nose was red. Her hands were trembling slightly and her gestures were so abrupt as to be—something which was rare for her—awkward. She almost knocked over a candlestick and somewhat later she broke a glass she was trying to raise to her lips. Above all, she seemed chilled to the bone, as if some invisible protection had been taken away, leaving her vulnerable to everything, including the biting damp air of the old castle.

  The huge chimney in the room where I had slept spread its warmth easily enough for me. But Agnès led me to her room, shivering. Around her bed she had hung a tapestry of Nebuchadnezzar that the king had given her. I had had it made, and for several months I had followed its execution at the weavers’. I was pleased to find it there and, above all, to see that Agnès liked it and was glad to have it there. As soon as we were in the room she climbed onto her bed and motioned to me to sit next to her. This nest kept the damp at bay and preserved the body’s gentle warmth, and she seemed to relax. It was as if her energy could now leave her limbs and enter her mind. She began speaking, so sharply that sometimes she choked on her emotion.

  I realized she already knew everything: I had been afraid she would question me on the king’s behavior, but it seemed someone had already related it to her down to the slightest detail. When she saw that I was surprised, she told me that Étie
nne Chevalier had passed that way two days earlier, and had told her everything he knew. It was not the king’s unfaithfulness that grieved her. If she had learned that he sported with whores during the campaign, she would have understood and not felt alarmed. But she could not bear what she conceived as a double betrayal: Charles’s, and her cousin’s. For Antoinette de Maignelay was directly related to her mother, and it was Agnès herself who had introduced her at court. As for the king, it was a typical betrayal, concealed beneath the appearances of a favor. In fact, at the very moment he sent her the keys to the city of Vernon, he was taking another woman to his bed.

  I tried to calm her down, telling her that the incident would be short-lived, and that the king would come back to her.

  “Short-lived? You do not know Antoinette! She is ambitious, and a schemer. She has come this far, and will be determined to stay there.”

  Now that I know the rest of the story, I have to admit that she was right. Not three months would go by before Antoinette de Maignelay officially became the king’s mistress. But at the time I thought Agnès was exaggerating. When I told her as much, she reacted angrily. Then, very quickly, her anger subsided and gave way to a sorrowful weariness that was infinitely sad to see.

  She looked at her belly, already swollen with the pregnancy, which for once she had desired. Her hands were swollen. She played nervously with an amethyst ring the king had given her and which now would not slide onto her thickened finger.

  “I am confined here—heavy, ugly, weak, and far from him. Whereas she is there, sharing the finest moments of his life, and being with him in his pleasure.”

  I held her in my arms. She placed her head on my chest and began weeping quietly. I could feel her tears trickle onto my right hand. She was shivering. I had never seen her so weak and disarmed. She had always shown such extraordinary energy in every circumstance, and particularly in adversity, but now she was despondent, all her strength gone. No doubt it was also the effect of her condition and probably, already, of illness. I felt immense tenderness for her and a desire to do everything I could do attenuate her suffering, or, at least, not to make it any worse. I felt no pity, because I knew that pity was something she despised, and she would not have liked to arouse it at any cost. For the first time, however, I consciously felt a veritable hatred for the king. The way he had taken possession of Agnès, compromising her by displaying his favor, keeping her in the hopes of a shared love—only to humiliate her publicly and expose her to general scorn: it was despicable. My judgment on his behavior was all the more harsh—although the circumstances were different—in that it resembled the attitude he had adopted with me.

  Our shared experiences seemed to reinforce each other—although I still had the means to escape from the king, and sufficient fortune to find support and protection from others in high places, if I could no longer rely on his patronage. Agnès had nothing. She had been handed over to him, had forced her nature in order to form a sincere attachment to him. He could take everything she owned away from her again. Judging from his behavior toward those he had repudiated or banished, one could not expect him to behave generously toward her if she was disgraced, and particularly now that he might be under the influence of a rival who would set about erasing the very memory of the woman who had preceded her.

  These turbulent feelings tormented my mind, and led me to seek a way to escape their violence. Agnès lay abandoned at my side, and our bodies were closely entwined. We both knew how vulnerable we were despite the protection of the warm sheets enfolding us: all of this conspired to bring us closer than we had ever been. Physical desire overwhelmed the modesty of our usual friendship. I reached for her throat and began to untie the delicate veil of satin covering her. She protested, and this token refusal was all that was needed to convince me that my passion was not coercion. Had she not opposed my gesture I would have been reluctant to take advantage of her weakness. Whereas by showing me her will, even if it was contrary, she proved to me that her lucidity was intact: her consent, should she show it, would be fully valid. And indeed, before long I felt that the gestures with which she opposed my caresses merely served to prolong them. By acting as if she were pushing my hands aside, she guided them. I had often held her body, but chastely, so that this time I felt as if I were discovering it. I was surprised to find how fragile she seemed. At the same time, however delicate her limbs might be, her breasts and belly were full, bursting with life, more burning than I had expected. In such close proximity, the familiar smell of flowers and spices no longer veiled the slightly tangy perfume of her fair skin, but brought my desire to a peak. She could no longer ignore the proof of this, and if this time she refrained from crying out it was because her desire was equal to mine. It was pointless trying to hide it. She stared at me, squeezing my hands tightly, then with a delicious slowness she placed her lips on mine. After this long kiss, she pulled up the covers and, in the darkness of the linen sheets, as they formed a wild and gentle cave, we united our bodies and our pain, our caresses and our rebellion. In a brazier of sensual delight, for the time that love lasts, all our wounds and rancor, our disappointments and disillusions blazed together, melting our souls, uniting them.

  I would like to make one thing clear: the inestimable value of this moment had nothing to do with the satisfaction of conquest or any other form of male vanity. If for me this instant, even with the distance of time and perhaps all the more so because of it, constitutes the turning point of my entire life, it is because it was caught, or should I say crushed, between two contrary forces with an intensity I could never have imagined. On the one hand, our affinity, even to the extremes of carnal union, turned out to be perfect. Everything we had ever imagined turned out to be true, and our mutual attraction was neither an illusion nor a mistake, but indeed the sign that we had been destined for each other from all eternity. But the moment it became reality, our union was soiled by its original sin. We had just destroyed the distance that had allowed us to remain close. Once we crossed that line, everything could come crashing down upon us: the king’s anger, Agnès’s remorse, the fact of my age, and the precariousness of my present situation. It was as if we had broken a vial filled with blood, and our bodies were suddenly splattered and stained by imminent punishment.

  We should have fled. We should have left everything behind at that very moment. But love only gives the strength to maintain its own fire, and the delight of the senses left no energy for anything other than renewing our carnal embrace. The proof of the danger surrounding us engendered only one desire, that of loving again. The more we felt that this beginning was an end, the greater the grip of a desperate desire to prolong its life.

  In a moment when pleasure gave me respite, the only thing I was conscious of was the thought that, until then, I had never loved, and that Providence had bestowed a great favor on me by allowing me to know, even just once, such happiness.

  We stayed like that until nightfall. A serving woman knocked on the door to bring the candles and Agnès called out to her to come back later. The pale remnants of the day filtered through the thick glass windows. Agnès opened the curtains wide and went quickly to wrap herself in a nightgown. I dressed hastily, searching awkwardly for my clothing, scattered on either side of the bed. We were suddenly overcome by embarrassment. Like Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden, terrified to discover their nudity, we were suddenly both aware of what we had done. A strong sense of remorse ordered us to erase any trace of those moments when we had freed ourselves from all restraint and the laws of modesty.

  Either because the act of love had revived the energy she had been lacking, or because she wanted to be active and put her moment of abandon behind her as quickly as possible, as soon as we were dressed and groomed once again Agnès began to speak in a determined manner, and set before me the principles of her future conduct.

  “I will not allow them to trample on me,” she said as we went down to the salons. “
I am going to fight. I will go shortly to find the king. He must yield to me, or explain himself.”

  I was happy to see she had regained her firmness and confidence. But I did not really believe she would act on her words. Beyond the excitement of the moment I could still see the fatigue in her features, and even that which I did not yet know I must call her illness. In the rooms which Marc, at my request, had kept warm with a continuous blaze of elm and birch logs, it was easy to talk of traveling and riding off to see the king. But winter had come to stay, and promised to be harsh. I hoped that Agnès, when it came time to act, would think about the dangers of the climate and the bad roads.

  After supper, she kissed me chastely and went back up to her apartments. I made arrangements with Marc for my departure the next day, and I went to sleep in the room I normally occupied at Loches. I left the castle midmorning. Agnès had risen early. She was wearing a red velvet gown with a collar of marten fur. She wished me a safe journey, and showed every consideration, making sure we had enough food and drink with us. Unbeknownst to me, she slipped into one of my pockets an ivory statue representing St. James. It is an item that the richest pilgrims take with them, hoping for the saint’s protection. I have often wanted to take the way to Compostela and, in consolation for never finding the time to go, I have offered help to many penitents asking for my support. It is not that I believed in these so-called relics. But it has always seemed to me that my fate had a secret and powerful bond with the pilgrimage to Compostela. Was it not St. James who started the movement of peoples all across Europe, instigating trade, forcing the peasants to leave their glebes, and those from the North to discover the South, or from the East to discover the West? Along with war, pilgrimages are the most ancient cause of human migration. I have devoted my life to the movement, everywhere, on land and on sea, of merchandise and merchants, and so I feel I am his heir and, so to speak, the successor to the labors of a saint for whom I am named. Perhaps Agnès sensed this. In any case, I felt her choice of gift was not fortuitous. Of all the things I would lose, later in life, the statue is the only thing I sincerely regret.