“Brienne.” André repeated the name: the place of his own military schooling, and of his father before him.
“Brienne.” Dumas nodded. “Where all our finest officers receive their training. I myself did not have the privilege of attending. I’m an old corporal despite this uniform and all its frills. However, I did make the acquaintance of Nicolai Murat, as well as a particularly promising graduate by the name of Alexandre de Valière.”
André absorbed all of this, his thoughts becoming clearer. So they went to the academy together, his father and Murat. Did Murat still harbor some schoolboy resentment from all those years ago? Was he now determined to enact revenge on his rival’s son?
“But it wasn’t at Brienne that the rift occurred,” Dumas said, pulling André’s focus back to their conversation. “You come from an ancient noble family, André. You need not be reminded of that. Why, your family has ruled vast swaths of the north going back to the Norman Conquest.”
André nodded. Such talk was dangerous—life threatening, even. And yet, he trusted that Dumas did not say it in a damning way.
“My father’s family is similarly ennobled,” Dumas continued. “Not so with the Murat family. Their nobility is not ancient. Not even more than a generation old.”
“It isn’t?”
Dumas shook his head. “Murat’s father bought his title; he did not inherit it. He’s not what one—say, my father, or your father—would call a true noble.”
“But he…General Murat hates the nobility,” André replied, recalling all the times his superior had spewed his disgust against the aristocracy of the nation, and the vehemence with which Murat had persecuted and punished the noble class.
Dumas shrugged. “And now perhaps you can understand why.”
André blinked, trying to make sense of it all: Murat, possessing a title, but not a true one, harbored a bitter grudge against a class that had never truly accepted him.
“Murat’s father came up with the money for his title through trade in the West Indies,” Dumas said, apparently not done with his explanation. “He owned large amounts of land there, including on my home island of Saint-Domingue, the isle of Haiti. Sugarcane, some tobacco, but mostly coffee.”
“So you knew him, all those years ago?”
“I knew of him, his family at least, from the time we were young boys. And I remember when the Murat family came to disgrace in Haiti. The whole island knew they were forced to sell off their land and flee, and in a hurry.”
“But…but why?”
“It happens that the elder Murat, our man’s father, once he’d purchased his title and set himself up as quite the seigneur on the island, became much more concerned with his rum and his local ladies than with his crop. His land floundered. His business suffered. He was a brutal slave owner but a terrible steward. There was absolutely nothing left of the estate of value for him to pass on to his ambitious young son, Nicolai. The old man had accumulated such debts that he would have been run off the island. Might even have been attacked by his creditors, or else his slaves, if not for the young buyer who came forward and swiftly bought up all of his land, settling Murat’s accounts and allowing the fool to retreat back to France with his tail between his legs.”
“Oh?” André didn’t quite understand what any of this had to do with him.
“A buyer whose business acumen—and character—were of a much higher caliber.” Dumas’s dark eyes caught the flicker of the lone candle. “A young nobleman by the name of Alexandre de Valière.”
“Ah,” André said, sitting back in his chair, his heart hammering heavily against his chest. He knew that his father had had business dealings in the New World and that he’d spent time there years ago, before marriage and children.
“Your father,” Dumas said, “had the audacity to save Nicolai Murat’s family from ruin.”
“And so…for that…General Murat resented my father? And now despises me? But that doesn’t seem fair—if anything, he should be grateful.”
Dumas shrugged. “Resented, yes. Probably envied him as well. It was certainly embarrassing for him to see his old man bailed out by a classmate of his from the academy. A young man whose wealth and title—and character—were impeccable, while his own family’s name was as black as the coffee they had failed to sell. But the loathing, that came a few years later.”
“What? Why?”
Now Dumas leaned forward, his voice low and grave. “I was in Paris, a young man, when I first heard about it. Heard about her. A beauty from Blois. The fair-haired daughter of the Duc de Blois—the depth of her beauty rivaled only by the immensity of her wealth. A young lady by the name of Christine de Polignac.”