Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel (23 page)

He turned to look over them. His little band. Even Albany was risking himself. At least if they fell the
Shadow
would go on – he had preserved that much. He had no children, no legacy save that ship and a hundred men to tell who he had been.

‘Dandon!’ he called and Dandon pulled himself from the gunwale to look back. ‘Have you ever thought that we should write down all of this. Leave something behind.’

Dandon tapped his head. ‘It is all in here, Patrick. I am noting it all.’

‘You should start. Before you get killed.’

‘I cannot die, Patrick.’

‘Why is that?’

Dandon was surprised at the question. ‘I always stand behind
you
.’

John Law’s coach bowled south to meet them, his spine jolting with every rut in the road. Tomorrow he would be in Paris. His first duty as director of the bank of France was to report to the regent Philippe at the Palais Royal and hope that on his face could not be read the wiles and anxieties of a conspirator. He rapped his cane on the ceiling of the coach, to urge his faithful driver onward, then shook his head at the irony of desiring to hurry to his fate.

He had known many long weeks in his life. He had killed a young man once, shot him in a duel, and after such an act, so quick and passionate at the time, a man’s perspective on time changes.

He goes one way or the other. Either he squanders time and smashes the hour glass to watch the sand filter through the floorboards like the spilt blood, or else he wields it triumphantly like a sword and cuts a path of his own, knowing that his death is only ever a moment away and that the moment is at his shoulder if he pauses and looks behind him.

Law had begun his life several times over and was a polymath of infinite talent, its pinnacle the merging of his bank with the Bank of France and the creation of paper money instead of coin so that people would trade via the banks and not with each other. But the riotous trading in New World companies had ruined it all, broken it all, shattered his hour glass.

It could have all been controlled of course; charters and governments could have prevented the release of yet more shares if it wasn’t for the fact that it was those who should have controlled the frenzy were becoming most enriched.

‘
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes
. Who guards the guards?’ he scoffed aloud. And after that who checks the coffers, who is to account for those who only account for each other? And he as guilty as any of them. He was running from a fire with stolen gold bundled in his arms. And a pirate was trusted to save one company and England itself, with Law hanging on his coat-tails to flee when the mountain fell.

He looked past the curtain to the rushing countryside. At this moment, this hour, only his driver knew where he was in the world. He could run north now to Belgium, to Amsterdam, places where his name still carried weight. He closed the curtain. No. There was his family to consider and still the hope that if they could save the South Sea others would also be saved. And the world would learn from its errors with men like Law to teach them.

It was the pirate he felt sorry for.

The naïveté of peasants to trust fine coats and carriages with their future was still obviously ingrained within him. But after meeting Devlin he wondered how it would be done, how they would kill him. Not face to face, that would not work. It would have to be devious and dark or done from afar. Or perhaps just simply with a rope and a hood as befitted his role in life, and no-one listening to his speech from the gallows. Law pulled his cloak tighter, swaddling himself against the shiver of his own trust in those same coats. A man’s final moment always just over his shoulder. It would be a long week for those who knew too much.

Chapter Eighteen

Paris. The Palais Royale. The regent’s rooms
.

Saturday

‘The door,
Lass
, the door! Shut out the light!’ Philippe’s voice boomed from the near darkness. ‘Dubois here surely has his man out and I do not wish to see it!’

John Law closed the study door, sending the room back into its eerie gloaming as the light projected from the ‘Laterna Magica’ shone onto the white sheet against the wall and its returning light silhouetted like caricatures the two seated figures before it.

Law could just make out a valet slotting in and out of a large cuboid contraption the canvas and glass plates of grotesque erotica. Each new plate prompted guttural approval from the two men in the dark.

He moved delicately into the room, seeking a chair away from the projector’s light. By Philippe’s remark he surmised that the hateful, ageing archbishop, Guillame Dubois, was also in the room.

Dubois had been Philippe’s tutor and was now his first minister, the second most powerful man in France and therefore one of the most powerful men in the world. Just this year he had become archbishop, and already he sought to be cardinal. He had achieved such status without ever being able to recite a mass, for Philippe’s rise to power had also been Dubois’s. Each knew enough about the other’s past to cement a lasting bond. Their companionship was balanced like a scale and as long as it had equal coin in both bowls it would stay that way.

Law found his seat and the noise of it scraping on the floor reminded Philippe that he had duties to perform before the real pleasure of the night began.

‘
Light
!’ he called to the valet, a click of his fingers ending the laterna show. Dubois’s gruff mumbling and fiddling of his robes announced his displeasure at its cessation.

‘I do not wish to disturb, Milord,’ Law declared honestly as candles were lit and the two men sat revealed.

‘Not at all, Lass,’ Philippe waved away the apology. ‘You remind me that I still have work to do.’

Nevertheless he slumped back in his chair, his royal blue banyan gown and shirt almost open to his waist, and he scruffed his close-cropped hair as if trying to rouse the blood to his head and away from other extremities. ‘You return from your country sojourn and have settled your business with Pitt? I trust this has served you well, Lass?’

‘Not as much as I had hoped, Milord,’ Law confessed, averting his eyes from Dubois. ‘I take it that the company’s future has not improved?’

Philippe shrugged with the same weary brevity of every Frenchman. ‘I have made you the head of the Indian and American companies and merged your bank with the Bank of France, but even your genius for trade, Lass, cannot save us if there
is
no trade, and so no monies in the bank. It is doomed. France is doomed. My France.’

Law leaned forward. ‘But surely there is money, Milord? The banknotes? The securities are guaranteed?’

Philippe shrugged again, pushed away some papers from his sight and reached for his champagne glass. Dubois scratched his red nose with the gold cross that rested on his chest, showing that there was at least one use for it.

‘Politics is an expensive mistress, Lass,’ Philippe continued. ‘I have policies that would never have been born if it were not for the support of nobility. And I in turn must support them in their follies and furbelows. And they in turn take the money that they did not have in the first place and push it to Switzerland. And do not think that the people have not seen the cartloads of gold being robbed from the bank. I would sell that accursed diamond if I thought that there was a kingdom who could buy it now. What would Spain say about Philippe if he sold the crown jewels? I would be the laughing stock of Europe.’

The words from the regent that all was lost gave some relief to Law that his actions were not betrayal but only survival.

Dubois raised a velvet-gloved finger. ‘Perhaps another conspiracy? Enough to gain public support at least.’

Philippe gave his finest Gallic guffaw. ‘Have you not quelled enough
mistouflet
armies, Dubois! Besides, I do not think we have enemies that are not already in their graves. No, we shall ride it out, that is all.’

Dubois went on unperturbed. ‘A few heretic Catholic deaths always strengthens well our allegiance with the English. Stanhope wishes us to be great friends. And England has much the same troubles. If we make it seem that we are all suffering because of some heretic conspiracy – no fraud or greed – just religion rearing its ugliest head.’

Dubois caught Law’s raised eyebrow at the flippant comments about death from a man of God. He sniffed and rubbed his nose with the cold metal cross once more. ‘Money has no religion, Monsieur Lass. The people forget their poverty if they believe they have a common enemy.’

Philippe smashed his hand down on the desk, rattling more than just glasses and wine. ‘There will be no more conspiracies, Dubois! I have had enough of breaking backs on the wheel! You are as bloody as a real bishop,
dog
!’

Dubois chortled into his chest at the outburst. Philippe’s ministry had crushed two ‘conspiracies’ since coming to the throne, both conveniently engineered to remove those nobles set against him and those who felt that the king of Spain, the late king’s grandson, had more right to the throne than the great-grandson who was but a child. Philippe himself had been fourth in line to the throne when he was born. In the years he was at court, death had whittled that list down to all but the boy. And suspicion amongst the boy’s tutors just sufficient that the child’s handkerchiefs and even his butter were kept from Philippe’s reach, for smallpox travels well.

Six days before his death, after a late and private audience with the man who had now become second in line, Louis XIV added a codicil to his will. Philippe would rule until his great-grandson had reached majority.

Three years remained now, for the boy would reach majority at thirteen. That was three years to fleece as much as possible from France before he would hand back the keys to an empty vault. But there had been so many deaths, necessary perhaps, but what a cost.

His daughter, his favourite daughter, the Duchesse de Berry. The scent of her, her caress, the absence of her was to him like the loss of taste. She had been four months pregnant when the parties and scandal had finally taken their toll. Whispers had circulated around the court that Philippe was too attentive even for a father – especially one who lived separate from his wife.

‘Let joy commence!’ he slammed his hand down again to snap himself out of his melancholy. ‘You will come to my supper tonight, Lass! Eat and drink ourselves out of this misery!’

Law shook his head. ‘I have been away, Milord. I must work. If I can help us it will be from my company.’ Law knew that Devlin might contact him at any moment and, besides, had already been to one of the regent’s champagne suppers. One was enough for a lifetime.

Philippe had removed the court from Versailles as part of the official policy of making the city of sinners royal once more. In truth it was to be closer to the sinners.

Louis XIV had spent a month on his deathbed legitimising his numerous bastard sons. Philippe would need two months at least. There was no need for whores when there were plenty of ladies vying for a place at court through their offspring or plenty of cousins begging you to be godfather to their fourteen-year-old daughters for the same.

‘Very well, Lass. You are a good man.’ Philippe stood, energised again by his draught of champagne and the delicious prospect of the night ahead with its tresses and flesh. ‘Come, you old sod, Dubois. We will dine on breast-milk tonight!’

The bishop dragged himself up. He was in his sixties now and a bladder complaint affected his own participation in the revels, but the sights and sounds of the orgy were like a
carnivale
to him still.

Philippe straightened his dress and moved around his desk to Law’s shoulder. He was shorter than the tall Scot but a broad strong man. ‘Lass, you are a great gamer but we must teach you how to love. Life is joy, Lass. Sadness is a sickness. That is why the poor die so young. They cannot afford to be happy!’

The ruler of France held open the door for Law to exit, even bid his valet through but left the archbishop to his own devices. The whole palace was set in a square and they walked down the window-lined corridor that looked out onto the gardens. Philippe stopped at the man with the two pails who stood like a statue against the wall. He undid himself and resumed speaking to Law, who joined the servant with the pail in staring out at the garden as Philippe urinated noisily into the tin bucket.