The Baker's Blood Page 28

  ‘The famine pact?’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur. The idea, as I’ll keep repeating until the day I die, was to lease the supply of grain, renewable every twelve years, to four millionaires. They were to institute regular shortages, constant high prices and, in years when the harvest was poor, general famine in all the provinces of the kingdom, by controlling the market through an exclusive monopoly on wheat and flour. The supervising agent of this operation was a man named Malisset, who had owned a bakery near the church of Saint-Paul. He had become a miller, had gone bankrupt, but was protected by the police. He gave the orders to an army of workers, stewards, buyers, storehouse owners, guards, threshers, winnowers, sifters, controllers, inspectors, tax collectors, clerks, merchants, bakers and so on and so forth! That was what I reported to the Parlement in Rouen, which led to my being snatched from the world of the living.’

  ‘And since then, there has been no change?’

  ‘Oblivion, violence and silence! Even in the lives of the saints and martyrs, Monsieur, there have never been torments so long, tribulations so contrary to nature, as those I’ve been made to endure for six years in this hellish keep. You see me in this reduced state, on a pallet shaped like a scaffold, in a dungeon, chains on my feet and hands, often naked, always starving, deprived of everything, even though my board and lodgings, as I’ve discovered, amount to three thousand livres paid by the royal treasury. It all goes to Rougemont, who treats me far worse than he has been ordered to, and constantly makes false reports about my conduct. Above him, my abductor, the cruel Sartine, whose hatred and anger grow the more I resist, seems determined to see me die, one way or another.’

  Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, Nicolas looked the prisoner in the eyes and murmured, ‘Three points and thirty-one.’

  The man moved back. ‘Traitor!’ he cried. ‘You want to make me talk! Are you, too, part of the infernal plot?’

  ‘Monsieur, I assure you I am not. It is simply that this phrase struck my ears at a popular gathering. It was uttered by some suspicious-looking men who seemed to be organising the disturbance. If you are, as you claim, concerned with the interests of the King, the State and the people, explain to me what that formula means to you.’

  Le Prévôt de Beaumont hesitated, looking deep into the commissioner’s face as if trying to read something in it. ‘Monsieur, I don’t know why, but everything leads me to take you at your word. By ways and means which I cannot describe in detail, for much was down to chance and I was often the blind tool of fate, I heard about this rallying cry. I sense that the world hasn’t stopped and that everything continues as before … There were at the time a number of secret meetings, and that phrase was the password. You can be sure the nihil obstat has changed and may now serve other purposes!’

  ‘But what did it mean? Or was it just an empty phrase?’

  ‘I think these meetings were of the council of plotters. They were held in Paris, in three different places, hence the three points, and had thirty-one participants. That was the first key. A second one, of which I am ignorant, no doubt specified which of the three places was chosen for a particular meeting … That’s what I’ve always thought.’

  ‘I am very grateful to you. Do you take snuff, Monsieur?’

  He held out his open snuffbox and they both took pinches. The resultant explosion of sneezing, as Nicolas had often found, created and strengthened a feeling of mutual trust.

  ‘Monsieur,’ Nicolas went on, ‘I’d like to venture a few more questions. Does the name Hénéfiance mean anything to you?’

  Once again, the prisoner seemed startled by how much Nicolas already knew. ‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘I reiterate, your knowledge of the matter goes further and deeper than I suspect you yourself realise. I don’t think I am risking anything worse by enlightening you, although, to tell the truth, I know little more than you do. The one thing you don’t know is that the younger Hénéfiance’s attempts to deceive the brotherhood were denounced by a baker in Rue Montmartre, whose name I don’t know. This man hoped to increase not his trade, but his share of the monopoly, by destroying a rival and competitor. Hénéfiance, who had never even met the man who denounced him, was destroyed as if by a thunderbolt sent down from heaven.’

  ‘One thing. When exactly did you learn the details of this affair?’

  ‘Not long before I was abducted by Sartine’s henchmen.’

  ‘Monsieur,’ said Nicolas by way of conclusion, ‘I would like to believe that you are telling the truth.’

  ‘As one whose mind cannot abide a lie,

  Our poor Prévost would much prefer to die

  If anything he said was deemed to be

  Untrue or lacking in full honesty.5

  ‘As you see, Monsieur de Laleu’s library has not been looted in vain by a poor prisoner. I hope I can count on your goodwill.’

  Nicolas, still haunted by the past, remembered another desperate prisoner on the eve of his execution, who had also asked for help.6 It was difficult for him to commit himself.

  ‘Monsieur, rest assured that if the opportunity presents itself, I shan’t fail to plead your case.’

  ‘Thank you again. I believe you are a man of your word.’

  Nicolas knocked at the heavy door and it was opened for him. In the large room on the ground floor, he again spoke to the governor, who countersigned Lenoir’s letter with obvious reluctance. Nicolas reminded him of the necessity for his visit to be kept secret. Monsieur de Rougemont’s stubborn, spiteful expression did not augur well for the observation of these instructions.

  In his carriage, Nicolas pondered what he had just heard. The man, despite a degree of over-excitement, did not seem to him to have spoken like a madman. When you came down to it, what was held against him? He clearly had not attacked the King, although what he said certainly implied the complicity of the State. Nicolas saw his act as the protest of an honest, even innocent soul faced with an intolerable situation. Woe betide the man who causes a scandal! In fact, what created suspicion, opening the way to the wildest imaginings, was the secrecy jealously maintained by those in power regarding the mechanisms necessary to the trade in grain. In this activity, king’s men, ministers, intendants, farmers general, merchants and suppliers were involved without anything being visible. The mystery in which the subject had so long been shrouded merely accentuated the general feeling that the only aim of this secrecy was to conceal corrupt practices. Who could be surprised that a man faced with actual evidence had grasped the crux of the matter and launched into vehement denunciation? Who, in such a situation, was in a position to condemn him without first listening to what he had to say? Of course, it had to be taken into account that there was a great deal that was vague and confusing in the words of a poor wretch crushed by many years of suffering. In his honesty and stubbornness, Le Prévôt de Beaumont had never abandoned an obsession which he took for gospel truth, repeating the same old refrain over and over. Constantly brooding in his hopeless solitude on the terrible injustice done to him, the man saw all kinds of unexpected connections between what had happened and a number of highly placed figures, all supposedly in league with one another.

  As a king’s man, Nicolas could also understand the reasons for keeping Le Prévôt in solitary confinement. The idea of a famine pact, in which so many subjects of the kingdom believed, could not help but be revived by the release of a man who maintained the idea so firmly and appeared to have little inclination to tone down his urge to denounce. He himself, a commissioner of the King, had been informed in 1774 by his tailor, Master Vachon,7 of the unfortunate rumours accusing the King of speculating on wheat. Bourdeau, too, had apparently been convinced of it at the time, and had thought his chief quite innocent in the face of so much evidence.

  His own conviction led him to suspect that the truth was somewhere in the middle. A system for regulating the trade in grain, clear in its principles, had doubtless given free rein to too many protagonists ready to turn it to their own advantage. The oppor
tunities for abuse had multiplied, remaining unchecked and compromising the reputation of the old monarchical machine. It was among the merchants and all the obscure figures swarming around that essential commodity that the evil had been born, had grown and spread through all levels of the kingdom. In this way, good intentions had given rise to bad actions, and the resulting corruption had created injustice. For reasons of State, the former secretary to the Clergy of France was paying the price for all this.

  Nicolas’s ruminations were taking him a long way from the urgent concerns of the moment. Even though sadness prevailed in contemplating the tragedy of a man crushed by fate, a fever he knew well, the fever of the hunter on the trail of his prey, soon seized him again. Without any effort on his part, he had discovered the link between the Hénéfiance family and the master baker murdered in Rue Montmartre. That made things more complicated, without doing anything to either incriminate the existing suspects or clear them of suspicion: the two affairs, hitherto separate, might now become hopelessly entangled. Whatever the case, it now became imperative to investigate the precise circumstances of the younger Hénéfiance’s disappearance. It was with his mind filled with these new objectives that Nicolas had himself dropped at the entrance to the tranquil Rue du Poirier.

  Notes

  1. It was not until 1784 that the school for pages and their accommodation were installed in premises belonging to the royal stables.

  2. This is a translation of the actual text of Louis XVI’s letter to Lenoir.

  3. Mirlavaud: see The Nicolas Le Floch Affair.

  4. Le Prévôt de Beaumont: both the character and his story are authentic. He was finally freed on 5 September 1789, after the fall of the Bastille, having spent twenty-one years in prison. He wrote about his experiences in a book entitled Le Prisonnier d’État.

  5. This is a quotation from Racine’s play Athalie (Act III, Scene 4) with Le PrévÔt’s name substituted for that of the character Josabet.

  6. See The Man with the Lead Stomach.

  7. See The Nicolas Le Floch Affair.

  X

  URGENCY

  Truth, like the sun, cannot move backwards.

  BARON D’HOLBACH

  Nicolas jumped lightly down from the carriage. Rabouine, having returned from the Châtelet, must surely be at work again beside Tirepot. As for the cobbler, his workshop had been carefully closed up, indicating that he was absent. Nicolas advanced along the street, which was as deserted as ever in the late afternoon. No doubt his spies were concealed in some hidden recess that was not apparent at first sight. He retraced his steps, undecided about what to do and anxious not to miss whatever unusual signal Rabouine chose to show his presence. It might be a bird call, a whistle or a stone suddenly rolling across the ground. But nothing came and Nicolas began to feel worried, imagining all kinds of things that might have happened. One, which ought to have been reassuring, was that the unknown woman had come out again and they had followed her. But that would mean that both Rabouine and Tirepot had embarked on the pursuit and completely abandoned their surveillance of the house. Or else, if Rabouine was absent, detained by some unknown circumstance, Tirepot had set off in pursuit of the woman.

  The minutes were passing too slowly and, unable to bear it any longer, he approached the ruined mansion opposite the Hénéfiance house. He noted that there was straw strewn on the ground in front of it. The door yielded to his first push. The layout of the house and its outbuildings was a mirror image of that on the other side of the street. The living quarters were dilapidated, with floorboards that sagged as he cautiously advanced. Suddenly he stopped: he had noticed Tirepot’s paraphernalia – the two buckets, the oilcloth and the crossbar – lying on the ground. The fact that they lay in such disorder suggested that some violent act had taken place. His anxiety increased at the sight of Rabouine’s tricorn, battered and soiled but still recognisable from its beige colour. What had happened? Where were his two friends? He went through all the rooms, searching feverishly in every nook and cranny. The wood creaked beneath his feet. Everything appeared completely deserted and his search led nowhere.

  As he was looking for the way down to the cellar, he heard muffled cries. They came from a heap of rotting and mildewed logs which, when moved aside, revealed the top of a narrow staircase. The cries seemed closer and more distinct. He again used a lighted page from his notebook to illumine a vaulted passageway: a draught immediately extinguished it. As he groped his way forward, he hit something with his foot and, crouching, saw a body lying on the floor. He ran his hand over the face and realised that there was a gag over the mouth. He straightened up, searched in his pocket, took out a thin knife and started cutting through the gag, which finally yielded with a tear, releasing a deep sigh.

  ‘Whoever you are, thank you!’ said a familiar voice.

  He helped Rabouine to his feet, cut the bonds from his hands and lit another page, vowing to always have a piece of candle in his pocket from now on. Rabouine was holding his head in his hands and swaying so much that Nicolas had to hold him up by the arms.

  ‘Were you alone? Where’s Tirepot?’

  ‘Outside, where I left him.’

  The pages of the black notebook burnt one after the other. They advanced through the cellar, a kind of vaulted gallery, interspersed here and there with other flights of stairs. They discovered Tirepot lying bound and motionless. At last, after much effort, he was able to speak.

  ‘Once Rabouine had gone inside the house …’

  ‘Why did you leave the street?’ Nicolas asked Rabouine.

  ‘The carriage entrance half opened and someone called my name.’

  ‘Your name?’

  ‘I thought it was you. Who else could it have been? I rushed inside, but there was no one there. I crossed the courtyard, went into the house and there received a massive blow to the head that knocked me out completely.’

  ‘The same thing happened to me,’ said Tirepot. ‘I saw Rabouine’s tricorn being waved in the doorway as if he was signalling to me to come in. I didn’t think and, without another glance, I ran to join him. Much good it did me! There was no one in the courtyard and, once I got inside the house, a bang on my head, and then, as if that wasn’t enough, a punch in the face and down I went!’

  Darkness enveloped them once again. Tirepot took a candle from his waistcoat. In silence they examined the premises. The floor was strewn with wisps of straw. A few yards further on, the gallery ended in a panelled wall. It was only necessary to push it for it to swivel round. Nicolas was astonished to recognise the closed room of the Hénéfiance house on the other side. The moving wall was the same wall that bore the painted inscriptions which had so intrigued him. In the hearth a fire was dying, stifled by a heap of ashes, on which he threw himself. He kicked it onto the floor, helped by Rabouine who had immediately understood what he was doing. The result was disappointing: not a single paper had escaped destruction. Their only harvest was a small piece of brightly coloured cloth with a strange texture, which intrigued them. Why had anyone wanted to get rid of it? Nicolas picked it up, conscious that the slightest clue might help them to identify the mysterious occupant of the house. He would show it to his tailor, Master Vachon, an expert on fashions, cloth and fabric. A close inspection of the rest of the house yielded nothing new. Only the rabbits had disappeared, doubtless transported elsewhere, which explained why there was so much straw on the way from the cellar to the other house. It also meant that a carriage or wagon had been used for the removal.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve left anything to chance. We’ve seen everything there is to see. I’d wager the place won’t be used again.’

  ‘Should we continue the surveillance?’ asked Rabouine.

  ‘There’s no point. Once an animal has been tracked down, it won’t go back to the same lair!’

  Out of caution, he decided nevertheless to place seals inside the carriage entrance to the Hénéfiance house. He would do the same at the entrance to the other house.
That would tell them if there had been any new visitor. Tirepot recovered his paraphernalia, stating that without being fully equipped, he felt only half a man, and set off on foot for other hunts. Nicolas and Rabouine greeted the cobbler, who was just then returning to his workshop. He was full of gratitude for the welcome he had received in Rue Montmartre, and delighted to have discovered that Catherine was a former canteen-keeper. Nicolas asked him to keep an eye on the two houses and to make sure he was informed if there was any suspicious movement. The louis that accompanied this request ensured him the man’s devotion and gratitude, if such assurance was still needed.

  In the carriage, he dropped Rabouine at the corner of Rue Saint-Honoré, then asked to be driven to Rue Vieille-du-Temple. Without further ado, he wanted to consult Master Vachon on the nature of the piece of material he had saved from the fire. The fact that someone had wanted to destroy it continued to arouse his curiosity. He was pleased to pay another visit to the worthy shop he had so often frequented since his arrival in Paris fifteen years earlier. There was still nothing on the outside to mark it out as a place patronised by so many of the greatest names in the land. Situated at the back of a dark courtyard, this temple to good taste appeared as illumined as a shrine on a feast day. Thin and erect, Master Vachon was holding forth to a group of apprentices sitting cross-legged on the light oak counter.

  ‘Gentlemen, I shouldn’t have to repeat this to you. Scissors should never, I repeat never, be passed from hand to hand. One person puts them down, the next picks them up. Otherwise what happens?’