Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel (27 page)

Two hours, maybe less, and he would look into the eyes of the pirate and tell him who he was: René Duguay-Trouin. The one who had finally brought him to heel, his end long overdue.

‘Patrick?’ Dandon had felt the body slow beside him then stop dead in the narrow alleyway some feet behind him. ‘
Tout va bien
?’ French only now as they got closer to the palace.

Devlin stalled, a clockwork automaton unwound. Dandon moved back to him. ‘Patrick?’ he repeated. ‘What ails?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’ He looked down at the goose-flesh on the back of his hand. ‘A miasma of the street. It felt like someone had walked over my grave. Come on.’ He elbowed Dandon along and they joined the Sunday afternoon amblers once more.

Almost three now. The Rue Saint-Honoré was an easier walk, the street wide and sided, it seemed to Dandon, with buildings that were palaces in their own right. Rising storeys of glass and great stones, lined with shops and taverns as much as London, but at almost every corner and
place
the trickling sound of running water. Paris, he had decided, was a city of fountains; not just for decoration and beauty but to bless the people with drinking water that had not come from the river but been carried via aqueduct from the countryside. More than once they had to back to a wall to allow passage to a mass of water-porters who earned their living selling water around the quarter.

Londoners drank from the Thames and left their water to sit for a day until the filth sank; or they settled for gin and beer that at least was purer.

On. Past the imposing beauty of the pillared front of the Palais Royale. That would not be their entrance. Minutes later they turned into the Rue de Richelieu and the first meeting with white-jacketed soldiers. Here, at the corner, was the trade and civilian entrance to the palace. Just two soldiers stood guard over the tempting sunshine of the courtyard just beyond.

If nerves trembled the two men did not show it. They had no weapons, and no other hope if they did not make it through this first barrier. But having nothing to lose was part of their daily life. Let other men fear consequences: this was the work they drank to.

Neither of the soldiers straightened at the approach of the two peasants, although their eyes widened expectantly at the trays.

Three years ago Devlin had approached an island fortress that had orders to accept no ship at its shores. He sailed in with a ship of whores and was welcomed with open arms. The world over, common soldiers – who took naturally to the career, being too indolent or drunk for anything else – had only three appetites: lust, thirst and hunger.

Devlin and Dandon, common as any of them, knew how to carve cogs that could turn the world.

‘Well met, soldier!’ Devlin greeted them with a slur in his voice that only faintly alluded to wine. His French, like Dandon’s, who had learnt the tongue at the Mobile fort from the heavy hand of his surgeon master, was of the curt gutter. It would not have carried them into any court but it fitted their current cloth seamlessly. The soldiers eyed them lazily and sucked on empty clay pipes.

‘Gentlemen,’ Devlin continued merrily. ‘My daughter this day has married a good soldier from the Faubourg quarter. In celebration I bring some fine remnants from my
pâtisserie
in Les Halles
.
Free of charge for you and your gallant watch.’ He shrugged then, as if doing them no real favour. ‘I will only throw them away or sell them for dust tomorrow. Help yourself.’

They pored over the trays. Fruit pastries, small meat pies, some glazed tarts. The greedier of the two spied the largest and poked its crust. ‘What is that one? Duck?’

Devlin shook his head. ‘Strange tastes from my new son-in-law’s family. I should not have brought it, but you never know,’ another of the shrugs that passed for a hundred comments. ‘Perhaps you have a friend inside you should like to jape, eh?’

‘Why?’ the soldier picked up an apricot pastry. ‘What is it?’

‘Rat. Would you credit that for a Faubourg?’

The four of them laughed, the second soldier blowing pastry crumbs from his cheeks as he sampled Dandon’s delicacies.

‘
Rat
?’ the soldier pushed it away to a corner of the tray. ‘Those Faubourgs are dogs to be sure! No offence to your daughter for taking one, Monsieur!’ He put down the pastry on his stone seat and picked up and crunched through a tart, the pleasure of its cold sweetness wetting his mouth.

Devlin and Dandon stood shoulder to shoulder with the soldiers, their backs edging past the pillars and under the cover of the passage.

The soldiers shared an ear. If Devlin had not missed his guess there was always a captain who deserved a rat pie. The soldiers filled their pockets with crumbly delights.

‘You should go through,’ the solder waved Devlin on. ‘The courtyard only. Find a Captain Droussard. I am sure he would enjoy your pie!’ More laughter. ‘Tell him it is goose! And good luck to your daughter, Monsieur, and her rat-loving husband!’

Devlin and Dandon bowed their way past and into the sun and Dandon tried not to gasp as his eyes squinted through the glare.

A palace indeed. The building that framed the dazzling garden was the same they had seen from the outside, tall arched windows with blue roofs housing smaller, oval windows – the servant’s quarters – and around the edge a walkway of doric and ionic columns and glass doors as grand as an image of Rome that Dandon had seen as a child, when he had leafed through a book and imagined the gods that walked there.

Devlin snapped him out of his awestruck trance. He cocked his eye to the almost separate building to their right, a low wall shielding a smaller garden.

‘That is the real palace. This is just a garden for fops and mistresses. That is where we need to be. We have the name of a captain: that might help.’ His voice expressed nothing but ease, as if this were simply any Sunday in any garden. ‘And Law is here. It’s three. He should be hungry for some rat pie by now.’

One more guard to go. Devlin leaned into Dandon. ‘This passageway runs around the palace. We get in here and we’re done.’

‘Done what?’ Dandon slowed his captain. I have no idea what we’re doing. Am I about to die?’

‘The pepper pot,’ Devlin shook his tray. ‘It is filled with priming powder. We’re going to make a fire.’ They walked on toward the broad soldier.

‘A fire. Of course. Why should I have not known. I
am
going to die.’ He grinned at the guard and followed Devlin’s lead.

The guard agreed with his colleagues at the gate that Captain Droussard would indeed enjoy a rat pie and he waved them through. Devlin had become sick of simpering, sick of wearing rags. In minutes he could end it. He could burn it.

They clacked down the corridor in their wooden clogs. Diamond-shaped black-and-white tiles graced the floor, silk curtains in gold and pink the tall windows. They stalled at the first corner.

‘Law is with the regent down there,’ Devlin pointed his tray to the adjacent corridor. ‘Get me a candle.’

Dandon went to the walls and plucked one free. They were unlit but Devlin had striker and flint already in his hand and then snatched his fist closed as a tall, white-moustached officer rounded the corner on them.

‘What is this?’ he glowered at them both, taking in the baker’s trays and the candle in Dandon’s hand. ‘Who are you? What is your business?’ He was in his white uniform and red sash but wore no hat and his buttons were open; it was Sunday after all. Devlin and Dandon edged together like schoolboys caught with a frog behind their backs.

Devlin chanced his arm. ‘Capitaine Droussard?’

‘I am,’ replied the officer, surprised.

Devlin offered up his tray. ‘Your men suggested you may like a goose pie for Sunday. I am giving away my last trade for the day.’

Droussard’s face grew lighter as Devlin placed one of the two larger pies in his hand. But he became stern again at the candle in Dandon’s hand. ‘What are you about with that?’

‘Forgive me, Captain,’ Dandon gave the officer his fawn-eyed look that usually persuaded maidens to show him their pale thighs. ‘I like to read at night. The regent has so many. I meant no offence. I shall return it.’

Droussard bit into his rich pie and smiled deep. ‘No harm. Payment for your meat. Keep it, my friend. Read to your children by its light. But both of you will be gone now. Thank you for your delicacy.’ He raised his hand and turned away.

They listened for the squeak of his leather boots to fade. Alone again, Devlin swung his tray to his side and went back to his striker. One moment later the candle was lit. Dandon could not resist one question amid their dreamlike circumstances.

‘The pie, Patrick? Was it really rat?’

‘I saw no geese or ducks where I bought it.’ He unscrewed the pepper pot and poured it at a curtain’s hem. ‘It was fortunate I gave him the right one. The diamond is in the other.’ He flung the candle to the powder but did not expect such a roar of flame, and they both jumped back.

Within seconds the fire had crept to the crown of the wall, and the primer powder billowed out a cloud of smoke like a bonfire – smoke that would panic people better than the flames. They stood mesmerised for too long and followed the flames until they reached the ceiling above their heads, which shook Devlin from his fascination.

‘Maybe better than I hoped! We should go.’ He slapped Dandon and off they trotted.

‘Hmm? I’m sorry, Milord?’ John Law sat in the regent’s office with him and Claude Ronde, the lapidary commissioned to make the crown. He had spent most of the last quarter hour looking absently between the door and the window. His distraction was not missed by Philippe.

‘Your opinion on the crown, Lass? I think there are too many gems. It is not as elegant as it should be. The king would be disappointed I’m sure, no?’

Law managed both to bow and rise at the same time. He walked over to the brass replica of the crown and stole a glance at one of the trio of clocks in the room. Quarter past three. His heart matched the ticking that sounded deafening to his over-alert ears. He casually picked up the crown from its red velvet cushion.

‘These are paste gems I take it, Monsieur Ronde?’

Simpering, Ronde humbled himself to his feet. Although only a replica he forbade his fingers to touch the crown and instead pointed out its detail with a gold retractable pencil. ‘Yes, Monsieur Lass. Two hundred and eighty-two diamonds.’ He touched each arch in turn, his voice clicking out the numbers like a rosary. ‘
Sixteen
sapphires,
sixteen
rubies and
sixteen
emeralds. Two hundred and thirty-seven pearls! A crown truly for the king of kings!’

Philippe beamed. ‘Or a mad pope!’

Ronde could not help his glare which the duke matched effortlessly. Law carried on to distract them.

‘And the Regent? Where is it placed?’

Ronde’s teeth shone. ‘Here,’ he tapped the empty front-flower setting. ‘In pride over all. Even the Sancy diamond will sit humbly at the base of the silver acanthus with the Mazarin stones,’ he touched his pencil against the wooden fleur-de-lis on top of the crown.

Law nodded his approval. ‘I think it will be splendid, Milord.’ He put down the crown reverently and idly pulled his cuffs from his sleeves. ‘Would it suit, Milord, to honour Monsieur Ronde with a glance at the Regent? So he may know what he is to work with?’

Ronde clapped his hands. ‘Oh, yes, Milord! That would be delightful!’

Law went back to his seat and watched as Philippe thought.

‘No need,’ he said at last, and saw Ronde’s shoulders sink. ‘The crown will be made under the supervision of Duflos. He will set the gemstones. I could not risk the Regent and the Mazarin diamonds to leave the palaces.’

Law held in the reeling of his stomach. It was over.

He had only ever heard Claude Ronde’s name mentioned in relation to the crown. Augustin Duflos was the young royal jeweller, resident at the Louvre Palace. Naturally Augustin would look over and approve the work – as befitted his appointment – but it was to be the master, Ronde, who crafted it. Law had always presumed that would be at his own workshops. That was Law’s understanding, that was the tinder that had fuelled Walpole’s plans. But it seemed that Philippe had kept close to his chest the idea that it would be only under the heavy protection of the palaces that the diamond would find its setting. It would not go to Ronde’s workshop in the Rue de Richelieu. It was never going to the Rue de Richelieu. It would never leave the court at all.

Something Devlin had said in London fluttered through Law’s memory. Something about Walpole and himself never having stolen anything. Maybe Devlin had known. A thief’s wisdom. He had known that Philippe would never let the diamond leave his pocket.

John Law was a gambler through and through; but the pirate, surely, was reckless. Yet he had been right. He knew all along that the diamond would have to be stolen from the palace. But where was it? If the regent would not even show Ronde, what were they to do?

‘
Lass
!’ Philippe barked. ‘What is with you today? You sit there like you have lost a bride!’