Blood Diamond by Mark Keating

Author:Mark Keating
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Tags: Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9781444727869
Publisher: Hodder Paperback
Published: 2013-05-08T07:00:00+00:00

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.

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