Chapter 39: The First Chapter of the Stage (2)
Chapter 39: The First Chapter of the Stage (2)
Uncomfortable.
Far too uncomfortable.
Necker, who had returned to his post as Controller-General after the nobles won their power struggle with the king, wanted to escape this loud, filthy, and vulgar place as soon as possible.
As he thought that, something—maybe a pen—went whoosh through the air in front of him.
At the spectacle of the pen carving a neat arc through the air, Necker covered half his face with his left hand and sighed.
“Y-you bastard! Count! You want to take on our magistrates right now?! How dare you throw a pen!”
A judge in a velvet judicial robe slammed the table and sprang up.
“Hah! Some rootless wretch who only got a noble title in his father’s generation with some petty trick—‘how dare you,’ my ass. How dare you speak like that to blue bloods with lineage!”
Not to be outdone, the count in fine silk clothes slammed the table and jumped up too.
“What, what the hell?! You bastard who’s only a noble because you were lucky enough to be born that way!”
Something flew through the air again.
Necker didn’t even want to know anymore whether it was a pen, an inkwell, or a shoe.
“Do the Notables have brains or not?! Commoners are staging demonstrations in front of provincial high courts, and you’re getting this bent out of shape over merely letting a few more commoners into the Estates-General?”
“Isn’t it your high courts that are soft?! Use the army or use hired thugs and disperse them! Do you judges seriously think we picked a fight with the king just to hand seats over to mere commoners?!”
“It’s one vote per estate anyway! Even if a few more commoners join the Estates-General, it won’t swing the vote, so why are you having a seizure over something like that?!”
“Hah? A sei—zure? You lot only wrestle with legal clauses all day, so you don’t know, but commoners’ default is: give them one and they demand two; give them two and they demand three. Tsk. You have to know something about livelihood before you can talk.”
The chamber had split into the nobles and clergy of the Notables, and the magistrates of the high courts, and it looked like a chaotic marketplace.
With both hands clasped over his face as he listened to it all, Necker muttered so softly that no one could hear him.
“Fu…ck… I want to go home…”
In the end, the disagreement that hadn’t narrowed all day was barely wrapped up when Necker declared they would vote just like before—exactly the same as the Estates-General of 1614.
“Where shall we go, Controller-General?”
The coachman asked carefully, watching the complexion of his employer Necker in the back seat. Even though he had worked as Necker’s coachman for nearly ten years, he had never seen his employer look this empty.
“…To the Palace of Versailles. I have something to discuss with His Majesty this afternoon.”
Necker leaned all the way back in the carriage seat, closed his eyes, and spoke weakly.
“Yes, sir.”
When the coachman gave the reins a sharp upward jerk, the horses snorted and started moving their hooves.
Clop clop.
Necker closed his eyes and sank into his thoughts to the steady rhythm of hooves.
The nobles in the Notables were nothing but reactionary hardliners who refused commoner demands without thinking,
the magistrates of the high courts were trash who only sounded slick and only pretended to be dignified,
the commoners who, not long ago, had been shouting to bring down the king were now shouting “Long live the King!” while demanding the nobles who spoke with forked tongues be brought down,
and the army, instead of stopping provincial unrest and riots, had split into factions defending commoners and factions defending the high courts, throwing the country into even more chaos.
“There’s no mess like this mess. Heh heh heh.”
Necker laughed.
Not because he was happy—just because.
The laughter kept spilling out endlessly.
Because everything was so fucking awful that the laughter just kept spilling out.
And Necker’s fucking-awful reached its peak when he arrived at Versailles.
“…This humble servant Necker must have grown old and hard of hearing, for I failed to understand what Your Majesty decreed. I beg you—please issue the command once more.”
Necker spoke to the king, Louis XVI, who had his back turned to him.
“Hm, is that so?”
Louis XVI, still showing only his hands clasped behind his back, replied calmly.
“I said I will permit the nameless people of every corner of the kingdom to speak their wishes and demands to me.”
“…A truly righteous statement, Your Majesty.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“However, there is one matter this servant worries over.”
Only then did Louis XVI turn and look Necker straight on.
“What is it?”
The tone was curt. Even so, Necker held firm and opened his mouth.
“…Even at this very moment, all of France is in chaos, and in the provinces they cannot even properly collect taxes. This servant understands Your Majesty’s good and merciful intent, but I fear the ignorant people may use this to create even greater disorder.”
After Necker finished, the king said nothing—no interjection, no sound—then released his hands from behind his back, placed one hand on Necker’s shoulder, and spoke.
“Disorder, disorder. So the ‘blue bloods’ who raised you up acted so hostile to the royal house because they didn’t want to throw this country into disorder, did they?”
“….”
“They slandered the queen with baseless rumors, spread those rumors through the marketplaces and smashed the royal house’s dignity, refused even solemn royal commands while clinging to that Orléans bastard, and incited simple people into riots across the provinces—so all that was because they didn’t want to plunge this country into disorder?”
A bead of cold sweat rolled down the back of Necker’s neck.
Louis XVI was a gentle king. A man as gentle as a simple shepherd from the countryside.
But years of constant disregard, restraint, and malicious defamation had made even that gentle king’s eyes turn icy.
Necker forced his stiff mouth open and spoke.
“Then… Your Majesty intends to use the people as a tool? That is far too dangerous. Your Majesty also knows how great their anger is. That is not like Your Majes—”
Louis XVI cut him off with a bright smile, speaking in the plain tone of an ordinary man, with no rhetorical flourish.
“Controller-General, what exactly is ‘like me’?
Would you like me—no, would you like me to become a puppet that only chuckles ‘ho ho’?
I am not a clown for the marketplace.
I am not Jesus who will forgive you no matter how much you spit on me.
Above all—
Controller-General—Necker. Even to you, haven’t I endured enough? Ha.”
Let me try being king, too. Louis XVI added.
At the king’s words, Necker couldn’t even part his lips. He could only bow his head and leave the Palace of Versailles.
It was truly one long chain of fucking awful.
“…So, Boss, you want to increase the volume of trade? Isn’t what you have now already enough to use?”
Charlie, the cargo ship captain of the Boston merchant shipping guild, spoke in a tone that reeked of a sailor.
“Well, no one knows the future. As a businessman, I have no choice but to take out insurance here and there.”
With that, I took a sip of tea. To anyone watching, I looked completely relaxed.
Of course, I wasn’t.
Almighty God, Buddha, Allah, Confucius, ancestors—uh, should I pray to the Toulon family ancestors, or the Im family ancestors? Whatever, please just save me once!
The news Florian brought back from his trip was the worst kind of bad news.
—Boss! We’re fucked!
—Oh, now you’re swearing again? You said not to talk vulgar—
—Toulouse is a bad harvest!
—Ah. We’re fucked.
If Toulouse—the warmest place with the best sun—was a bad harvest, then everywhere else was already game over.
Hey, “god”? No—god bastard, if this is life round two, aren’t you supposed to give me some kind of status window or something that lets me live on easy mode? Are you a salaried slacker? Why aren’t you giving me anything!
“Then how much of an increase are you thinking?”
Charlie stroked his huge beard like Hagrid.
Okay. The Wheat People uses about sixty tons a month, one ship run takes a generous five months, and if I factor in stockpiles for contingencies…
“Probably thre—”
“Thirty tons sounds a bit small…”
“A hundred tons?”
“…What?”
“Three hundred tons.”
Charlie went blank, even stopping the hand that had been lovingly stroking his beard, then finally spoke.
“…Boss. Do you know how many tons of cargo my ship can carry?”
No. How would I know that.
“How much is it?”
“Two hundred tons. Two hundred! If it’s three hundred tons, I have to charter another ship! And for cargo that won’t even fill it halfway! Do you know how much of a loss that is?!”
“No, next time I’m going to order about a thousand tons. Does one ship matter?”
“…W-what?”
Now Charlie’s mouth was just hanging open.
“Ahem. Boss. Your jokes are something else…”
“…It’s not a joke. On the next call, three hundred tons. The call after that, we trade a thousand tons.”
Charlie’s eyes started spinning.
Mm. Those eyes—probing eyes before pouncing on prey. Whether this was prey he could eat, or prey that would make him sick.
“Boss. Did something bad happen?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
No, you furry old man—why would I tell you that nicely? The rule is: act fine whether you’re hurting or not.
“Then why…?”
“You might not know, Charlie, but there’s been a lot of unrest in France lately. I’m thinking of taking out some insurance.”
“Hmm…”
Come on, old man. You’re already making plenty—what are you hesitating for. Want me to play hard to get?
“Well, if you don’t really want it, I can just ask Mr. Jefferson to introduce another merchant shipping guild. Then I’ll be going.”
“H-hey! Wait, Boss! It’s not that I said I won’t— I was just, you know, calculating the cost of chartering a ship! Hey, don’t go.”
“So are you doing it or not?”
“Who else but me, a man who’s lived as a sailor for thirty years, could deliver that much cargo safely? Just trust me, Boss! Hahaha!”
Like a sailor of this era, Charlie laughed loudly and grabbed my hand to shake it.