Every tick of the grand clock in the hall felt like a hammer blow counting down the final seconds of my life.
The orders were given. The agents were dispatched. The gold was being counted. My gambit was in motion, and now there was nothing to do but wait for the pieces to land. Wait to see if my solution—a payroll bonus and a vicious rumor—was enough to stop three regiments of armed men.
The council had emptied, the ministers scurrying off to either follow my orders or hedge their bets. My brother Provence had vanished, his face a thunderous mask. He knew I hadn't fallen into his trap, but he couldn't possibly guess what I was doing instead.
I found Marie in my private study. The vast, ornate room felt like a tomb. I expected to find her pacing, or praying, or weeping.
Instead, she was at my desk, surrounded by flickering candlelight, a ledger book open before her. She was calmly reviewing the palace's household accounts. The vivid image struck me with incredible force: the Queen of France, in a dress worth more than a small farm, doing logistical calculations like a quartermaster preparing for a siege.
She didn't look up as I entered. "Based on the current stores," she said, her voice crisp and business-like, "we have enough flour for four weeks. The wine cellar will last considerably longer."
I came to stand behind her chair, placing a hand on her shoulder. Her back was ramrod straight, coiled with tension, but her hand on the page was steady.
"Is this a gamble, Louis?" she asked, her eyes still on the numbers. "Or a certainty?"
Her question cut through all the political maneuvering. It was the only question that mattered.
"In accounting, there's always a margin of error," I said, my voice quieter than I intended. "I'm betting that the loyalty of a hungry man can be bought. I pray to a God I'm not sure I believe in that I'm right."
She finally looked up, turning her head to meet my eyes. The fear was there, deep in their blue depths, but it was overshadowed by a fierce, unshakable resolve. "Then I will pray with you," she whispered.
A knock at the door shattered the moment. It was Jean, his clothes dusty and his face flushed with the cold night air. His eyes were wide with a kind of breathless excitement.
"Your Majesty," he said, skipping the bow. "It's working. It's working faster than we could have hoped."
I moved to him, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Report."
"Orléans's men are devils, sir," Jean said, catching his breath. "They didn't just spread the rumor; they started a hundred. They hit the taverns and the brothels on the edge of the army's camp. They bought drinks for disgruntled soldiers. They had pamphlets printed and slipped into saddlebags."
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "The whole camp is a hornet's nest. The men are talking. Not about the King, not about the Assembly. They're talking about their pay. They're talking about the gold. They're talking about Baron de Clovis and how he's been living like a prince while their families starve."
My plan was information warfare. A 21st-century concept dropped into the 18th. Instead of attacking the army, I was attacking its cohesion. I was giving the soldiers a new enemy—their own commander.
"They're sharpening their bayonets, Your Majesty," Jean said, his voice trembling slightly. "But they're not talking about marching on the palace anymore. They're talking about marching on their commander's tent."
A cold, vicious thrill shot through me. It was working.
The scene Jean described was playing out in reality just a few miles away. Baron de Clovis, a man of noble birth and middling intellect, stood before his command tent, the torchlight casting flickering shadows across his face. He could feel it. The entire mood of his army had soured. The air, which hours ago had been thick with righteous purpose, now smelled of mutiny.
The low, angry grumbling from the campfires was a sound he had never heard before. It was not the sound of a loyal army. It was the sound of a mob.
A rider galloped into the camp, reining his horse to a dramatic halt. It was a messenger from the Comte de Provence, his face pale with urgency.
He handed the Baron a sealed note. The message was simple, stark, and terrifying.
The King hesitates. Force the issue. Advance now.
Clovis crushed the note in his fist. He was trapped. He turned to bark the order to his adjutant, but a figure blocked his path. It was one of his own sergeants, a veteran with a scarred face and cold, dead eyes. He didn't salute. He simply stood there, flanked by a dozen other hardened soldiers.
"Sir," the sergeant said, his voice dangerously level. "The men are refusing to march another step. Not until we get a straight answer about this royal bonus we've been hearing about."
The Baron stared at him, his face turning a blotchy red. "That is a lie! A traitorous rumor!"
The sergeant's expression didn't change. "Then they'll take their chances, sir. But they won't march on Versailles for a man who might be stealing the bread from their children's mouths."
An order from his patron in Versailles. A rebellion from his own men in front of him. The Baron's world, built on a foundation of birthright and authority, was collapsing around him.
Back in the palace, we didn't have to wait long. Just after midnight, we heard the frantic hoofbeats of a single horse galloping into the main courtyard. It was one of De La Tour's scouts.
De La Tour met him on the steps and came striding back into the study, his face unreadable.
"Well?" I demanded, my voice raw.
"The army has halted," the Captain said, each word precise. "They have made camp two miles from the palace gates. The advance has stopped."
The air rushed out of my lungs. Marie let out a small, choked sob of pure relief, pressing a hand to her mouth. The ministers who had lingered in the halls began to whisper excitedly. The news spread through the palace like a cleansing fire.
My gamble. It had paid off. I had faced down an army without firing a single shot, using nothing but a rumor and a ledger book.
Marie came to me, her eyes shining with unshed tears. She didn't say a word. She just looked at me, and in that look, I saw everything. She wasn't seeing a king. She was seeing the strange, impossible man from another world who had somehow, against all odds, saved them again.
But I knew it wasn't over. A stalled army was still a threat. A wounded snake is at its most dangerous. I had broken their momentum, but now I had to break their will.
"It's not enough," I said, my voice cutting through the rising relief in the room. "They came here for a confrontation. They will get one."
I walked to the doors of the study, my mind clear, the final phase of my plan locking into place. "But I will not meet them with cannons. I will meet them with coin."
My final orders were met with stunned silence.
The treasury wagons, heavy with chests of gold and silver, were brought to the front of the palace. I shrugged off my heavy, brocaded royal coat, tossing it onto a chair. I stood in my simple white shirt and waistcoat. I was stripping away the symbol of the King. I was not going to them as a monarch to command. I was going as an employer to pay his men.
De La Tour assembled my ten loyal guards. "Sheathed swords," I reminded him. "We are not looking for a fight."
As dawn broke, casting a pale, gray light over the fields of Versailles, I rode out on a plain black horse. No golden carriage. No grand procession. Just me, ten guards, and four heavy wagons of money.
The air was cold and misty. In the distance, I could see them. The army. Thousands of men, a dark, silent mass against the horizon. As we drew closer, I could make out individual soldiers, their faces tense, their hands gripping their muskets. They watched us approach, a wave of stunned silence falling over their camp.
I reined my horse to a halt about fifty yards from their front line. The wagons creaked to a stop behind me, the armed guards on them looking like they were about to be sick with fear. The only sound was the wind and the jingle of horse bridles.
Then, a single figure broke from the enemy line.
Baron de Clovis, his face purple with apoplectic rage, spurred his horse forward. He galloped towards me, his unsheathed sword gleaming in the morning light. He saw his authority, his honor, his entire world, being bought out from under him.
He pulled his horse to a rearing stop just twenty feet away, pointing his sword directly at my heart.
"You dare?!" he bellowed, his voice cracking with fury. His shout echoed across the silent field. "You dare to bribe the loyal soldiers of France?! This is treason! This is an insult to their honor!"
He turned in his saddle, screaming at his men. "Arrest this false king! Seize the gold for the true France!"
The front line of soldiers flinched. They looked from their enraged commander and his shining sword, to me, the quiet man on the black horse.
Then their eyes flicked past me. To the wagons. To the heavy, iron-strapped chests overflowing with the glint of gold and silver coins. The price of their loyalty. The food for their families. The cure for their grievances.
Their honor, or their overdue pay.
Thousands of men stood motionless, their loyalty hanging on the razor's edge of a single, silent moment. And no one knew which way it would fall.