The Sun King Conspiracy Read Online Free Page B

word, Colbert got up and bowed low. Then he walked silently to the door. Calm had already returned to the room when, just as he was opening the door, the Cardinal’s voice called him back.
    ‘Colbert!’
    ‘Your Eminence?’
    ‘Go and see Roze, and retrieve the papers from my private desk. Find a totally secure place in which to hide them. Then come back. We must talk again about my will.’
    Colbert bowed again and backed out of the room. As he turned away, he looked preoccupied and extremely agitated.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Fausse-Repose Forest – Sunday 6 February, two o’clock in the afternoon
    ‘K ILL! Kill!’
    The young King, excited by the last moments of the hunt, spurred on his mount. Keeping the white horse on a short rein, he directed it to follow the master huntsman who was striding down the slope of a hollow. The wild boar had mistakenly taken refuge there, chased by the dogs, and the slavering pack crowded round the cornered animal, exhausted after a chase that had lasted several hours. It was backed up against a wall of earth studded with the roots of overhanging trees. First one then another of the most foolhardy dogs were dealt violent blows as the beast swung its head right and left. As they fell several metres away, their bellies ripped open and their bodies broken by the boar’s razor-sharp tusks, their moans were drowned out by the hoarse barking of other dogs, maddened by the blood. In one movement Louis XIV dismounted and pushed his steed away with a slap to the chest. Three of his companions waited anxiously to see what risks the King was willing to take. The master huntsman came back towards them. Smiling, the King simply stretched out his hand. The man bowed and, holding his large hunting knife by the blade, placed it in the King’s palm. Then he withdrew, head still bowed, overwhelmed by the favour the sovereign had just bestowed upon him by deciding to kill the beast with his weapon.
    The King unfastened his cape, revealing the leather baldrick that protected his chest.
    ‘Come, Messieurs,’ he said to the men surrounding him, ‘let us see what the pig has in its belly.’
    Thus armed, and followed by men with spears and two others carrying muskets, the King took a few steps forward beneath the cover of frozen branches.
    ‘Take care, Sire, the ground is covered in frost.’
    The King smiled disdainfully.
    ‘Don’t worry, Monsieur d’Artagnan. I may not have sea legs, but I have no problem in the woods of Versailles.’
    The wild boar trembled all over, worn out after being harried by the dogs who were now almost touching it, and whose teeth had streaked its bristly pelt with red.
    Louis stopped and took a deep breath, smelling the air. The odour of wet foliage and blood seemed enhanced by the cold. The King of France was covered in mud up to his waist, clad and booted in leather; he was bare-headed, his hair tied back by a thick velvet ribbon, and sweat mingled with the earth on his face. But despite his small stature and stiff, upright stance, he exuded a mixture of hauteur and passion.
     
    The image of another hunt came back to him. A small boy, four years old, escaped the hand of the musketeer who was looking after him and ran towards his father with a smile of wonderment, his blond curls flying behind him in the cold morning air, his eyes swollen from too little sleep; a small boy whose heart was filled with a mixture of terror and joy as he saw his father wiping hisknife, soiled with dark, almost black blood, on the stag’s chest. The clearing resembled those the hunt had just galloped through. The trees were the same, just fifteen years younger.
    They had travelled back at a leisurely pace, the boy seated against the pommel of his father’s saddle, his face pressed into his glove, which smelt strongly of animals, sweat and blood. He had fallen asleep, only to reawaken on a bench in the hunting lodge to the sound of laughter and loud voices, including that of the Duc d’Épernon