The Dream Maker (29 page)

“As it happens, I do have several orders in mind, which I will not hesitate to speak to you about. As you know, there are great celebrations in store. We will need to show ourselves there.”

She burst out laughing, as did her friends. Everything became joyful, hurried, and frivolous. They left again, in a group, saying goodbye with a nonchalance that verged on insolence.

 

*

 

This encounter left me in utter turmoil. In the hours that followed, the most contradictory thoughts went through my mind. I must admit that, in those days, I was becoming more aware of my extreme solitude. The last time I had visited my town I had been able to gauge the indifference I now felt toward Macé. She lived in her dreams of nobility and piety. None of the things that mattered to her—honor, position, the subtleties of social hierarchy in the Berry—had any value in my eyes. At the same time, I met all her demands. The entire family, moreover, seemed to have modeled their expectations on Macé's. My brother was now a cardinal, and he had always gotten on well with his sister-in-law; he surrendered to the same passions as she did, under the guise of his red hat. Our children had also completely adhered to their mother's opinions. My son Jean had finished the seminary. He seemed to have learned more about how to serve himself through the church than how to serve God. My daughter was preparing to make a fine marriage. Only Ravand, my youngest son, seemed interested in following in my footsteps. But it was from a liking for money and not, as with me, in order to pursue his dreams. So much the better for his sake: it would be easier for him to find happiness. I had apprenticed him to Guillaume, and he was doing well.

No one in the family seemed to expect anything from me other than that I keep the riches flowing in. And no one seemed to imagine that I, too, might have desires, needs, and suffering of my own. Ever since my adventure with Christine, I had continued to make use of women without ever trusting any of them. These were brief, carnal, relations, governed by two forms of violence: the cupidity inspired by my fortune, and my mistrust of sentiment. Nothing inclined me in the slightest way toward love, and my solitude was further enhanced by such brutal commerce. In addition, there was my perpetual uprooting. I lived on the highway, and any relations I might establish in the towns I passed through were perforce ephemeral. My friendships were all sealed with the cement of interest. The immense fabric of my business was becoming ever more solid and widespread. But I was all alone in the multitude, trapped like a spider in its own web. There were days when, caught up in the flow of activity, I did not think about it; but other days, as I jogged along on my horse on the open highway, I surrendered to daydreams where my solitude evaporated. But when activity was sluggish, or the news was bad, or I was in the presence of the king and felt physically threatened and endangered, the pain of being alone was overwhelming. This was precisely my state of mind when I met Agnès.

No doubt that is why the desire to see her again, to be with her and to open my heart to her, was so strong. In a split second she had allowed me to glimpse the forgotten delights of love. It was absurd, far too hurried. And yet, ever since I first met Macé, I have known that for me, when true love comes, it is immediate, the instant I set my eyes on the loved one. Moreover, I am sure that certainty, in this matter, does not come with time. It is not habit that creates it. It appears fully armed and unannounced. The letters that love traces in us are never easier to decipher than on the white page of an unprepared mind.

Whatever the case may be, I was in love. At the same time and with the same intensity, I evaluated the horror of this realization. Agnès was the king's mistress. I was entirely dependent on that man and knew only too well his jealous, cruel nature. For a moment I thought of fleeing. After all, my presence was required everywhere by my business, and no doubt I would find some urgent matter somewhere to justify my departure.

It was late afternoon and I was lost in these distressing thoughts when suddenly a messenger came to inform me that the king would be holding council the next day and was counting on my presence. Any retreat was cut off. I had no other choice than to try to remain calm.

So I stayed at court and did not leave except on a few short missions. It was the beginning of a new stage in my life. All at once I found myself parted from my business. Over the last few years I had lived solely amid the frenzy of orders, convoys, and transactions, and now all of a sudden I was instantly handing everything over to Guillaume. This was now possible because we had established a solid network: I had over three hundred agents representing me all over Europe. The movement of money and merchandise was unceasing. Everything radiated from the nerve center of the Argenterie in Tours. The kingdom of France had been reinvigorated through her victories, and in just a few years we had managed to make it the new center of the world, on which the most enviable riches were converging. Once the movement was launched, all that was needed was to maintain it. Guillaume and a few others, all of whom had come from the Berry and were connected to me through greater or lesser ties of kinship, got along perfectly.

Thus, for the first time, freed from the responsibilities that had constantly kept me elsewhere, I immersed myself in life at court.

This world, which until now I had only glimpsed in passing, was a revelation. To begin with, I was dazed by the luxury. The endless processions of carts that accompanied the king from one town to another were filled with treasures. I took the full measure of this when, not long after my arrival in Saumur, we left again for Tours. There, we joined the queen. The negotiations for the king of England's wedding were being finalized, and the duke of Suffolk was awaited, to conclude the final agreement with great pomp. I was in constant demand at these celebrations. Orders to the Argenterie came pouring in, and I agreed to a good number of loans.

This was all quite usual. But once the time for the ceremonies had come, I suddenly saw beneath the vaults of Plessis-lès-Tours all the riches it had become possible to acquire because of me. Fine cloth, embroidery, jewels, weapons, equipages, fragrant trays of spices, bowls filled with exotic fruit—all of this was the glorious, living aspect of the contracts, commitments, letters of credit, and inventories that went to make up my everyday life. Until that moment I had lived inside the clock's mechanism, and all at once, looking at the clock face, I could admire the harmonious ticking of the hands and the precise chiming of the bell. I became aware of how far my heart had traveled during these years of labor. In the pursuit of my dreams I had ended up losing sight of them, for they were hidden by the monotony of numbers and the petty striving of commercial activity. All of a sudden I was once again standing at the heart of my dreams—dreams that, in the meantime, had become reality.

I was grateful to Agnès for having brought about this transformation. After our first brief meeting, I did not see her alone for a long time. Strangely enough, this state of affairs suited me. The feeling she had aroused was so strong that initially I succumbed to panic and wanted to flee. Retained by the king's summons, however, I was obliged to remain in her proximity, and realized that being near her, catching sight of her across a room, or speaking to her in public all brought intense pleasure, and, in a way, this sufficed. I was afraid that if we were brought any closer together, the power of her attraction would become too great and would lead us to disaster.

I observed the king in her company. His love was never bold, and he was careful never to display the slightest gesture of affection in public; as a result, his passion was expressed only through jealousy. I noticed the expression on his face whenever Agnès spoke to another man. His thoughts distracted him from conversation, and his gaze followed her with a mixture of pain, fear, and malevolence. I was careful not to arouse any such feelings in him. And I was grateful to Agnès for never placing me in such a delicate and dangerous position. Given her great tact, she had long before grasped how cautious she must be in the king's presence. Had he been cleverer, he would have understood her game: in fact, it was those she sought to destroy to whom she showed favor in public. Charles d'Anjou, for example: he was the one who had introduced Agnès to the king, since he held not only the official position as head of the king's council, but also the more dubious one of purveyor of young flesh. With him, Agnès was openly affectionate. He was weak enough to find it entertaining, never realizing that she was preparing his disgrace. Brézé, on the other hand, my friend Brézé, always bold, ambitious for the kingdom, and generous to his friends, was someone whom I knew Agnès appreciated greatly. And yet she showed him nothing but coldness when she met him in the presence of the king.

And so these shining, happy weeks went by, and I waited expectantly for the event that would bring me closer to Agnès, knowing neither its nature, nor when it might come. It was enough for me to see her, hear her, and know that she was near me.

 

*

 

I was suddenly very busy with the council, following the king in his majestic wanderings from castle to castle. This was, in truth, the first time that I was completely involved in life at court. I was astonished to see that it consisted of almost equal parts boredom and festivity, two conditions which hitherto I had scarcely known. Boredom reigned over the castle for hours on end. My life had accustomed me to rising early; yet now I discovered motionless, silent mornings where everyone was shut away in their apartments. The space was given over to valets and chambermaids. They maintained this silence in order not to compromise the freedom it gave them. Afternoons were equally languid, either because they were filled with the gloom of a downpour, or, as the season progressed, because sunshine and warm air instilled in people's drowsy consciousness a desire for naps or whispered conversation. But in the evening everything came alive, and the premises were filled with feasting. The brilliant chandeliers, the intoxicating perfume, the shimmering colors and powders all converged to create an excitement that began before supper and ended late at night.

I learned to gauge the refinements of the house of Anjou, now in the ascendant. Charles of Anjou was at the head of the council; René was the future father-in-law of the king of England; Queen Marie, however unfaithful her husband might have been, still gave birth to multiple heirs; and wherever one looked there were Angevins. King René, the head of this house, I did not know well. He was a mediocre politician who had lost all the property he had inherited in Italy, and who was king of Jerusalem only on paper. But one must pay homage to the fact that he knew how to live. Until this point I had served luxury like no other man; the paradox was that I had rarely enjoyed it myself. Since childhood I had been dreaming of palaces, but, as in the old days with my father, I still approached a palace as a stranger, and never stayed for long. It took my meeting with Agnès and my brutal conversion to life at court to experience what it meant actually to inhabit such luxurious dwellings, to feel I had a right to be there, and to live to the rhythm of the festivities.

This conversion, although the causes were very different, was fairly similar to the one the king had known. Prior to this, his life, and his family's, had been austere. Public events were limited to the four plenary courts, at Easter, Pentecost, All Saints', and Christmas. The king gave presents to his courtiers and attended a solemn mass. Then a feast was held, at the end of which valets tossed coins, crying, “Largesse, largesse.” It was simple, short, and basically quite dreary. Now that the king had shown he was open to pleasure, certain customs that were in fashion at other courts had been introduced into his own.

The great organizer of these new festivities was incontestably King René. His energy in such matters commanded admiration. Circumstances were particularly favorable for him, and when we joined him in Nancy he offered us a veritable apotheosis of divertissements of all sorts. Through his travels, his widespread family ties, and his own curiosity, King René knew everything there was to know about festivities in Europe. He did not want to be the last one to indulge. He paid for troupes of artists and impresarios. He was the one to introduce in France the custom of the
pas,
which had long been current in Burgundy. These
pas
were knightly tournaments whose complicated rules had been established in Germany or Flanders. During these celebrations, the old warlike and courtly foundations of chivalry were combined with all the artifices of modern luxury: chiseled weapons, magnificent gowns, and grandiose spectacles preceding the tournament.

The king seemed to enjoy himself greatly during these festivities. After the surrender at Metz, he went to Châlons, where René had organized a
pas
in his honor lasting eight days. Charles was acclaimed when he broke lances with Brézé, who manifestly had let him win. It was clearly Agnès whom the king intended to dazzle. He greeted her conspicuously. For the occasion, she was wearing a silver gem-encrusted suit of armor. This exceptional piece, like almost all the finery, adornments, and saddlery that made the assembly so brilliant, came from the Argenterie. In the preceding weeks I had received all the most illustrious courtiers, and I had done my best to give all of them, even the most impoverished, the means to maintain their rank. Agnès had come to see me in person. She cannot have failed to notice that I was disturbed by her presence. However, she was not alone, and the conversation was limited to practical questions concerning her requirements for the
pas
. Our encounter left me puzzled and somewhat melancholy. This was the first occasion I had seen her on her own since that first time, and so many weeks had passed. Even if I took into account the reserved manner required by the presence of her ladies-in-waiting, I could no longer sense in her those feelings I had once intuited. Not a sign, even the most discreet; not a gaze, let alone an ambiguous word to provide purchase for my feelings. I began to wonder whether once again I had been carried away by dreams that belonged only to me.