The silence that followed Art's question was a tangible thing. It weighed more heavily than the decorative waistcoat they now buttoned around him, was more suffocating than the blinding perfume. The Duke, the person Art's new brain involuntarily supplied was the illustrious Duke of Richelieu, simply tightened his hold on his bow, his position a tutorial in paralyzing awe. The other servants froze, fingers wobbling over silk hose and polished shoes, eyes stuck to the carpet in case they looked up and catch fire in – well, in whatever kind of inferno might be deemed fitting.
Art was thinking fast, trying to backtrack. Stupid. Stupid. You don't wonder what a man in a powdered wig is when the man calls you 'Your Majesty.'
He cleared his throat, the sound inordinately loud. "Pardon me," he struggled, the words feeling unfamiliar and awkward in this foreign mouth. "A. a moment of confusion. The weight of. recent events."
The Duke stood up slowly, his face once again the well-crafted mask of neutrality, yet his eyes still piercing, analytical. He was re-evaluating. "Of course, Your Majesty. The entire kingdom mourns your loss. France has lost a powerful king." He bowed again, deeper. "And has a new one."
It started all over again, but the atmosphere had changed. The clockwork precision now carried the extra spur of apprehensive nervousness. Art endured the rest of it in a daze—heavy hose, tight pants, cravat tied with agonizing slowness. Each caress a sin, every piece of clothing a shred of a costume that he was being forced to wear. He was a prisoner in this ridiculous, elaborate farce.
When at last he was presentable, the doors swung open onto a long, impossible corridor. Sunlight poured through high arched windows, illuminating dust motes that danced through the air like tiny jewels. It was a place so vast, it was obscene. His two-bedroom condo in Chicago would comfortably fit in a corner of that corridor.
He moved through a sea of humanity. Men and women in satins and in silks, their cheeks powdered and painted, bowed low and curtsied as they went by. Their rustling was a perpetual whisper. He heard the whispers, scraps of gossip that pricked at his consciousness.
"Our condolences regarding the passing of your grandfather, the renowned Louis XV."
"Long live the King!"
"He looks so. pale."
They fit into place, one after another, making the scene even scarier. Grandfather. King Louis XV. The man in the mirror wasn't old yet, not even twenty. He was the next in line. The new king.
He needed to be alone. He needed to focus. He spotted a relatively less ostentatious door off the central corridor and made his way toward it, his attendants fighting to keep up. He flung open the door and discovered himself in an enormous study. It was still extravagant—bookshelves went all the way up, a heavenly globe sat in one corner, and a gigantic stone fireplace dominated one wall—but less dramatic, less display-driven than the rest of the palace.
On a table the length of a small boat was a tangled pile of papers. Letters bound in wax, rolled parchments tied up in ribbons, stacks of official-looking documents. He moved aside a sentimental letter of condolence written by someone named Frederick in Prussia and started frantically searching through the documents. His heart pounded in his chest. He wanted a name. He wanted a date.
He saw it on a official document, the ink still fresh and dark. The calligraphy was elaborate, the French distractingly florid, but two words, written larger than the rest, leaped from the page and struck him like a physical blow.
Louis XVI.
The name echoed through the silent room. He knew that name. His European history was patchy at best, a catalog of half-remembered contents of his senior high school history class and PBS documentaries, but he knew Louis XVI. He was the one. The huge one. The French king whose American Revolution support had resulted from a spat between the French and the British, and in doing so, had destroyed his country. The king who had bumbled through every opportunity that had presented itself, who had been too indecisive to lead, too spineless to reverse the tide.
He was the king whose head was lost to the guillotine.
A cold sweat beaded on his forehead. The guillotine. It wasn't just a museum exhibit anymore. It was an appointment someday. Someday soon. His someday soon. He half-expected the specter caress of the blade at his throat.
He looked again at the paper, his hands shaking as he searched the page for a date. And there, at the bottom, in the handwriting of a clerk: le 10 mai 1774. May 10th, 1774.
A hysterical laugh almost came from him. He was at the beginning. The old king was dead. The revolution would not yet take hold for another fifteen years. He had time.
Relief was quickly dampened by a new, grim fear. Fifteen years. Fifteen years to prevent a centuries-long historical landslide. Fifteen years prior to the mobs invading Versailles, the Reign of Terror, his appointment with Madame Guillotine.
It was a living thing, a squirming snake in his belly. But if it was going to consume him, something else stirred up to fight it. It was a keener, colder feeling. It was the accountant's reflex, the auditor's, the man whose entire life had been spent staring down financial abysses and seeing a way out.
He glanced around the room, the gold leaf, the irreplaceable art, and what he did not see was a palace. He saw the badly mismanaged corporation gazing into the chasm of a hostile, bloody liquidation. The French Revolution had not been some kind of political revolution; it was theultimate bankruptcy hearing. And he, Arthur Miller, accountant, was now the boss, the man whose neck literally was on the block for the loss of the company.
Panic went away, left in its stead a cold, laser-like intensity. He couldn't establish the appropriate etiquette of the courts. He wasn't familiar with diplomacy or battle tactics. He was familiar with numbers, though. He knew how to read a balance sheet, how to spot a piece of chicanery, how to identify the obese and trim the fat. He could audit his way out of this. He had to.
He strode to the door of the study and threw it open, taking the two guardsmen at attention in the corridor by surprise. His eyes scanned the corridor, homing in on the most senior-looking functionary present, a man in his sixties with a grim face and chest studded with medals—Grand Chamberlain, his new brain supplied.
He did not await being called. He paid no regard to the protocol. He gestured.
"You," he said. His voice was flat, direct, and totally devoid of royal courtesy. It was the tone that had highlighted irregularities in the quarterly statement of a client.
The old nobleman blinked, clearly taken aback by the immediate title. "Your Majesty?"
"I need the books," said Art, talking in a slow, staccato style, as though explaining some esoteric principle to a recalcitrant intern.
"There. books, Your Majesty?" the man said again, his confusion clear.
"The account books," Art said, his patience wearing thin. "The royal ledgers. House expenses. State treasury reports. Each of them. I want them all here. Here in this study. Now."
The Grand Chamberlain's mouth had opened. His face was a mask of complete confusion. A king did not call for the books. A king ruled by divine right, not by double-entry accounting. It was the work of the clerks, the ministers, the commoner gifted in figures. It was not the work of the Anointed of God. It was not accomplished.
But the King himself issued the order on his very first day upon the throne. Refusal was not to be an option.
He made a jerky, stiff bow, his eyes bulging in a combination of panic and confusion. "Immediately. Your Majesty."
He turned and near ran down the corridor. Art watched him go, then stepped back into the study, slamming doors after him. He stood in the room's center, the silence a jarring replacement for the rush of thoughts in his head. The weight of an entire kingdom, a broken, decaying kingdom, lay on his shoulders. But for the moment, at least, he had a plan. It was a terrible, demented, impossible plan.
He was going to audit the whole Kingdom of France.