The Dream Maker

by Jean-Christophe Rufin

  This news cast an icy chill over my thoughts, gently warmed only moments before by my meeting with Agnès’s daughter, and I exploded with rage. Without making a decision, I retraced my steps, then went down into another wing of the château and, shoving aside the guards who wanted to prevent me from entering, I burst into the council room.

  The king acted embarrassed, but I could see in his eyes that the informers had gotten their way. Any affability or kindness he might have sought to express through his gaze had been destroyed by the keenness of jealousy and mistrust. Everything advised caution, but the rush of strength I felt—too late, alas, and which should have compelled me to flee—inclined me, rather, to confront him. I protested, forgetting the usage of deference, and my boldness caused the evil temptation of cruelty and baseness to shine still brighter in the king’s eyes.

  I could see his weapons, but this time I refused to resort to anything similar to defend myself. On the contrary, out of pure bravado, I suggested they throw me in prison until I could bring them proof that the accusations against me were false.

  I do not believe the king was sincere when he said that he accepted my proposal. He let me continue my defense then, as no one put up any objection, I withdrew.

  Who would ever believe that I felt reassured once I went back up to my chambers? Everything was clear. I had fended off their blows once again, but this would be the last time. That very evening, I would leave Taillebourg. The days were long at the end of July. We could ride without danger until well after nine o’clock. I figured out where we could stop, and how long it would take to reach Provence and Italy. I would write to the Coëtivys; they were greatly in my debt. There was no need for them to take part directly, but they would turn a blind eye to the abduction I would endeavor to organize so that little Marie could come with me. Like her mother before her, she would come to know Italy and enjoy its beneficial influence.

  On my orders, Marc had closed our trunks. I sent for the barber and abandoned myself to the caress of the blade against my skin as he shaved me. I was about to go to supper when a detachment of five men came to my door, commanded by a little Norman nobleman whom I knew vaguely by sight.

  I asked him twice to repeat his words when he informed me, his eyes to the ground, that I was under arrest.

  *

  I felt a surge of hope again this morning. Elvira came back from town bearing news which to her seemed unimportant and which she shared almost in passing when telling me about something else. For me, it is highly significant: my pursuers are not from Genoa but from Florence. What might seem like a detail now changes everything.

  If the Genoese had been after me, it would mean that the king of France had ordered it. I still have too many friends in Genoa for anyone to want to take my life of their own accord. But if my pursuers are Florentine, that is something else, and I know who has sent them.

  In any case, now I know. If someone had asked on the day of my arrest, I would have been incapable of answering. At the time, I certainly felt surrounded by envy; I had found out that the king was being told malicious slander about me; however, I could not identify a particular enemy. They showed their faces when the time came for my trial.

  It is a great sorrow to lose everything and be convicted, but it is an enlightening lesson to be judged, and I might almost say it is a privilege. Those who have not experienced the ordeal of disgrace, destitution, and accusation cannot truly claim to know life. The long months spent waiting while my trial was being prepared were among the most dreadful moments I have ever experienced, and, at the same time, they taught me more about myself and others than had the prior half-century of my existence.

  Never before had I been confronted to such a degree with the truth about the people who knew me. I evaluated the sincerity of those who showed me their friendship, as well as that of those who opposed me, on the basis of my own feelings toward them. But what did they really think? A certain doubt subsisted, and like most human beings I had learned to live with it. Since I had become rich and powerful, it had been even more difficult to see behind the screen of hypocrisy. I myself displayed a surface courtesy, which did not reveal my feelings, and most of the time even replaced them. I had been known on occasion to act abruptly, particularly when I was speaking in the name of the king, in the Languedoc, for example, when performing my duties as tax collector. Impatience, fatigue, and the irritation of having to intervene constantly in transactions and operations that did not interest me had, from time to time, led me to behave ruthlessly. Before my trial, I imagined that my enemies, if I had any, must be among the victims of these abuses of authority.

  The investigation showed me that this was anything but the case. With a single exception, those with whom I had behaved ruthlessly had merely gained even greater respect for me. All I had done, basically, was behave the way they themselves would have behaved had they been in my position. They regarded power and wealth as a justification for intransigence and brutality. Moreover, by treating them harshly, I was giving them my attention; in short, I proved to them that they existed, even if it was to trample on them.

  My worst enemies, as I would learn during my trial, were those whom I had not deigned to acknowledge.

  Among them there were vicious people inflated with pride, and in any case envy would have turned such people against anyone better served by life than they were. I was not sorry that I had offended them. At most, all that one could reproach me for was having given the signal for a war that would have taken place regardless.

  But others, on the contrary, were men of great loyalty, eager to serve, who wished to be part of my undertaking. My mistake was in my failure to understand this, often because I simply had not noticed them. Such was the case of a young Florentine by the name of Otto Castellani, who had come to Montpellier ten years earlier, at a time when I was embarking on great projects in the town. There were already many other Florentine merchants in the Languedoc, with whom I had excellent relations. One of them had been my fellow passenger on board the ship that took me to the Levant all those years ago, and we had remained friends.

  I hardly knew young Castellani. I was told he had tried everything to come into contact with me. Perhaps he actually had, but had failed to make an impression. And although my disdain would have been quite involuntary, it aroused a hatred in him proportional to the affection he had been prepared to show me.

  He was intelligent and enterprising, qualities I would have been glad to honor by employing him. Instead, he placed those qualities at the service of a solitary ambition now goaded by an inextinguishable desire for revenge. He progressed in his career in the Languedoc. His relations with his home country gave him openings for trade in the Mediterranean. But he also tried to expand his activity to the north of France, as far as Flanders. Here, too, my trial was useful in allowing me to trace the agenda of the man who was my most virulent accuser. By the looks of things, unbeknownst to me I had continued to preoccupy him. His ambition, since he could not serve me, was to imitate me, surpass me, and, to reach his goal more surely, destroy me.

  He patiently allied himself with anyone in whom he felt a stirring of spite toward me. And he did whatever he could to make the seed he had planted grow and blossom. Soon he was at the center of a web of bitterness and hatred, and was able to extend its influence to the entourage of the king. Among the mediocre individuals who had infiltrated the grand Council after Agnès’s death he noticed a certain Guillaume Gouffier, toward whom I had always behaved with polite indifference, and who was mortified by my attitude. Castellani also turned my former misdemeanors to his advantage, such as the business with the young Moor who had stowed away on one of our ships and converted, and whom I had sent back to the sultan. The captain of the ship, whom I had reproached for his part in the affair, had quarreled violently with me. To him, his anger might have sufficed, but Castellani knew how to rekindle it and make it burn with a steady fire, which would b
e extinguished only by my downfall.

  I had viewed the matter of the young Moor solely from the angle of our relations with the Sultan. His friendship was the cornerstone of our trade with the Levant. It was vital not to do anything that might displease him. Castellani saw the other side of the coin: I had restored to the Mohammedans someone who had willingly embraced the Catholic faith. In other words, I had lost a soul who had asked for and obtained Christ’s succor. In the ecclesiastical world where my brother’s success and my son’s exceptionally rapid advancement had fueled bitterness and envy, Castellani found willing allies with whom to criticize my betrayal.

  I know now that the Florentine’s relentless activity was one of the primary causes of my disgrace. Castellani achieved his ends so thoroughly that, not merely pleased to see me convicted, he successfully plotted to fill the position I would leave vacant. Thus, he became my successor at the Argenterie.

  You would think that such a triumph would be everything he dreamed of. No such thing. So greatly did he need his hatred that he seemed unable to imagine his life without it. Long after my conviction he went on seeking revenge against me and my family. When Elvira discovered that my pursuers were Florentine, I understood what should have been obvious to me much sooner: once again it was Castellani who sent his lackeys after me to Chios. This news filled me with hope.

  If my pursuers were the instruments of a private vengeance on Castellani’s part, my situation would be less desperate than if these henchmen had been sent by the king of France. Thus far, I had avoided any contact with the Genoese potentate who reigned over the island, for I believed Charles had forced him to spy on me and perhaps capture me. If this were indeed the case, it was difficult to understand why I had been given so long a respite: it would have been an easy matter for the Genoese to arrest me, purely and simply. If the pursuit was being led by Castellani for his own satisfaction, this would explain why it was more difficult for my assassins to do the deed. I could make use of this knowledge. Above all, the Genose podestà, far from being an enemy as I had feared, could become an ally.

  Yesterday I wrote a long missive to Campofregoso, which Elvira took this morning to the port to a ship sailing for Genoa. I asked him for his help and to intercede with the podestà in Chios to ensure my safety. I just have to hold tight for a few more days while waiting for his reply.

  I have regained hope, and the indifference that had made me accept my fate, no matter how tragic, has given way these days to a great anxiety and a desire to ensure our protection. Elvira suggested another refuge, at the center of the island. She has a cousin in the mountains. He owns a sheepfold high in the hills. From there one can see all the surrounding valleys, and anyone who approaches is immediately visible. I had refused because I saw no way out of my situation. If there was no more hope, we might as well end our days with a flourish, in Elvira’s house. But now that I have regained a certain optimism, I want to fight. No matter how uncomfortable the sheepfold might be, we will move there in three days’ time.

  *

  In the meantime, I shall continue my story.

  I thought that once the time came to evoke my arrest, my enthusiasm would have waned. But this is not the case. Oddly enough, I do not have a bad memory of it. I even have the very distinct feeling, now, that my disgrace was a new birth. Everything I have lived through since that day has been both deeper and more intense, as if I had been given the possibility to discover life all over again, but armed with the experience I have acquired through the years.

  I was transported from prison to prison, placed at times under the guard of men who were respectful and even friendly, and at times in the hands of individuals who did not hesitate to show their scorn.

  The first days were difficult. The suddenness of the change in my condition almost made me doubt the reality of these events. It seemed as if at any moment someone would come in and say, “Well now, we only wanted to frighten you. Come and sit again at the Council and show your loyalty to the king.” But nothing like that happened; on the contrary, my trial began and the conditions of my detention were toughened.

  That was when I was overcome by an unexpected, almost voluptuous sensation: I felt something like intense relief. The weight I had carried on my shoulders, the heavy burden that had come upon me as I wandered through the Argenterie, the obvious signs that I was being crushed by my fortune and its attendant obligations, all of that, with my arrest, had suddenly ceased. Deposed, I was delivered, and captivity restored to me to my freedom.

  It might seem incredible that such a catastrophe could be at the origin of a veritable sense of relief. And yet that was the case. I no longer had to worry about convoys and orders, calling in debts or agreeing to loans, levying taxes or supplying markets, leading delegations or financing wars. I had been spread as if on a cross, on a path leading from Tours to Lyon, from Flanders to Montpellier, where all my business in France was conducted: now I no longer had to worry about any of that, or about any Italian imbroglios or Oriental intrigues. It could all take place outside of me, and my detention released me from having to take part in any of it. I was able to devote myself to an activity I had not enjoyed in many years: spending hours on my back, daydreaming. Sitting on the stone bench by the window and watching the horizon turn blue as night fell.

  My dreams took me first to revisit the years I had spent in action, where there had been no distance for contemplation or for the slow judging of events and men. I was helped in my recollections by the trial itself. Thanks to this trial, individuals whom I had forgotten emerged from the past, and for the first time I heard tell of events I had never been informed of. I was accused of the most varied and often most unbelievable things: of having sold arms to the Mohammedans; of having purloined a little royal seal which would enable me to draw up false documents in the king’s name; of dabbling in alchemy and manufacturing gold by means of witchcraft . . .

  The only accusation I was truly afraid of was one that might reveal my intimate relation with Agnès. I knew that for such a crime there would be no clemency, and that I would pay with my life. I also feared, perhaps more than anything, that it would tarnish Agnès’s memory. After her death, although he almost immediately found consolation with her cousin, the king had shown great munificence toward Agnès. But if proof were administered that he had been betrayed, he was capable of withdrawing his magnanimity and sullying the image of the woman whom he had, posthumously, raised to the status of a saint.

  I need not have been so alarmed. On the contrary, and to my great surprise, the accusation against me was that I had poisoned Agnès. The woman who alleged this was half mad. The implausibility of her words, together with her strange manner as she set forth her aspersions, rapidly contributed to her discredit.

  There was one good thing about this calumny, however: it enabled me to take the measure of how cleverly Agnès had arranged to hide our relations. So often and so well had we mimed our quarrels, or an icy difference, or our fallings out, that the memory of our conflicts came first and foremost to corroborate these accusations of poisoning. Other testimonies were required, including those of Brézé, Chevalier and even Dunois, in order to convince my judges that I had, in fact, had harmonious relations with Agnès.

  During the long months of the pre-trial investigation, I lived in complete solitude, relieved only by confrontations with witnesses who had emerged from the past and had something to say about me. As if learning the final clue to an enigma, I found out what all these people truly thought of me. Hatred and jealousy, which are so common and so repetitive, soon aroused nothing more than weariness and indifference. But when a woman or a man, very sincere and often of very modest condition, came to testify regarding some kindness I had shown them, or simply to manifest their respect or their affection, I had tears in my eyes.

  The further the trial progressed, the lighter the injustice of which I was the victim and the heavier, on the contrary, the injusti
ce I had caused to others came to weigh upon my conscience.

  In this respect, it was toward Macé that I felt most guilty. I remembered how we had met and our early years together, and I tried to recall how our estrangement and indifference had gradually taken hold. I received news from her regularly but I did not see her again. It was obvious that she was suffering as a result of my fall from favor. Fortunately, it occurred at a time when she had already fulfilled her greatest dream, which was to see Jean enthroned as archbishop. She did not write to me, but I wondered whether she, too, in her way, was not relieved. Rather than lay herself open to vengeance and show her decline to others, she did what she had always secretly hoped to do: she withdrew to a monastery and gave herself up to contemplation and prayer. She died at the end of my first year of detention. I thought of her a great deal, and as I did not have the resources to pray, I simply expressed a wish that she had found serenity at the end.

  That first year of detention went by strangely quickly. I was moved, transferred to Lusignan and placed under the guard of Chabannes’s men. He was a former écorcheur, murderer and traitor to the king, and the sworn enemy of the Dauphin, yet now he had found an opportunity to prove his zeal, all the more so as he was personally interested in ruining me, and coveted a number of my properties.