Quicksilver (74 page)

Unlike most of Paris, these were brick, which warmed Jack’s heart strangely, reminding him of Merry England. The four great buildings rising over the gates at the cardinal points of the compass had enormous steep rooves, two and three stories high, with balconies and lace-curtained dormers, currently all shut up against the cold—but Jack could well imagine how a wealthy horse-fancier would have his Paris pied-à-terre here, so that he could keep an eye on the market by gazing out his windows.

In one of the great squares hereabouts—Jack had lost track of all of them—he’d seen a statue of King Looie riding off to war, with blank spaces on the pedestal to chisel the names of victories he hadn’t won yet, and of countries he hadn’t captured. Some buildings, likewise, had empty niches: waiting (as everyone in Paris must understand) to receive the statues of the generals who would win those victories for him. Jack needed to find a man whose ambition was to stand forever in one of those niches, and he needed to convince him that he was more likely to win battles with Turk, or Turk’s offspring, between his legs. But first he needed to get Turk in some kind of decent physical condition, and that meant riding him.

He was on his way out of the Place Royale, walking under the gate on its south side, when behind him a commotion broke out. The hiss of iron wheel-rims grinding over paving-stones, the crisp footfalls of horses moving in unnatural unison, the shouts of footmen and of bystanders, warning all to make way. Jack was still getting about with the crutch (he daren’t let the sword out of his sight, and couldn’t bear it openly). So when he didn’t move fast enough, a burly servant in powder-blue livery crushed him out of the way and sent him tumbling across the pavement so that his “good” leg plunged knee-deep in a gutter filled with stagnating shit.

Jack looked up and saw the Four Horses of the Apocalypse bearing down on him—or so he imagined for a moment, because it
seemed that they all had glowing red eyes. But as they went past, this vision cleared from his mind, and he decided that their eyes, actually, had been pink. Four horses, all white as clouds, save for pink eyes and mottled hooves, harnessed in white leather, pulling a rare coach, sculpted and painted to look like a white sea-shell riding a frothy wave over the blue ocean, all encrusted with garlands and laurels, cherubs and mermaids, in gold.

Those horses put him in mind of Eliza’s story; for she had been swapped for one such, back in Algiers.

Jack proceeded crosstown to Les Halles where the fishwives—pretending to be dismayed by the shit on his leg—flung fish-heads at him while shouting some sort of pun on
par fume.

Jack inquired whether it ever happened that some rich man’s servant would come around specifically to purchase
rotten
fish for his master.

It was clear, from the looks on their faces, that he had struck deep with this question—but then, looking him up and down, one of them made a certain guttural jeering noise, and then the fishwives all sneered and told him to hobble back to
Les Invalides
with his ridiculous questions. “I am not a veteran—what idiot goes out and fights battles for rich men?” Jack answered.

They liked that, but were in a cautious mood. “What are you then?”
“Passe-volante!”
“Vagabond!”

Jack decided to try what the Doctor would call an experiment: “Not
any
Vagabond,” Jack said, “here stands Half-Cocked Jack.”

“L’Emmerdeur!”
gasped a younger, and not quite so gorgon-like, fishwife, almost before he’d gotten it out of his mouth.

There was a moment of radical silence. But then the guttural noise again. “You are the fourth Vagabond to make that claim in the last month—”

“And the least convincing—”

“
L’Emmerdeur
is a King among Vagabonds. Seven feet tall.”

“Goes armed all the time, like a Gentleman.”

“Carries a jeweled scimitar he tore from the hands of the Grand Turk himself—”

“Has magic spells to burn witches and confound Bishops.”

“He’s not a broken-down cripple with one leg withered and the other dipped in
merde
!”

Jack kicked off his fouled pants, and then his drawers, revealing his Credential. Then, to prove he wasn’t really a cripple, he flung the crutch down, and began to dance a bare-assed jig. The fishwives could not decide between swooning and rioting. When they
recovered their self-possession, they began to fling handfuls of blackened copper
deniers
at him. This attracted beggars and street-musicians, and one of the latter began to play accompanying music on a
cornemuse
whilst shuffling around racking the worthless coins into a little pile with his feet, and kicking the beggars in the head as necessary.

Having now verified his identity by personal inspection, each of the fishwives had to prance out, shedding glitt’ry showers of fish-scales from their flouncing, gut-stained skirts, and dance with Jack—who had no patience for this, but did take advantage of it to whisper into any ear that came close enough, that if he ever had any money, he’d give some of it to whomever could tell him the name of the noble personage who liked to eat rotten fish. But before he could say it more than two or three times, he had to grab his drawers and run away, because a commotion at the other end of Les Halles told him that the Lieutenant of Police was on his way to make a show of force, and to extract whatever bribes, sexual favors, and/or free oysters he could get from the fishwives in exchange for turning a blind eye to this unforgivable brouhaha.

From there Jack proceeded to the livery stable, got Turk, and also rented two other horses. He rode to the House of the Golden Frigate on Rue Vivienne, and let it be known that he was on his way down to Lyons—any messages?

This made Signor Cozzi very pleased. His place was crowded today with tense Italians scribbling down messages and bills of exchange, and porters hauling what looked like money-boxes down from the attic and up from the cellar, and there was a sparse crowd of street-messengers and competing bankers in the street outside, exchanging speculations as to what was going on in there—what did Cozzi know that no one else did? Or was it just a bluff?

Signor Cozzi scrawled something on a scrap of paper and did not bother to seal it. He came up and lunged for Jack’s hand, because Jack was not reaching out fast enough, and shoved the message into his palm, saying, “To Lyons! I don’t care how many horses you kill getting there. What are you waiting for?”

Actually Jack was waiting to say he didn’t particularly
want
to kill his horse, but Signor Cozzi was not in a mood for sentiment. So Jack whirled, ran out of the building, and mounted Turk. “Watch your back!” someone called after him, “word on the street is that
L’Emmerdeur
is in town!”

“I heard he was
on his way,
” Jack said, “at the head of a Vagabond-Army.”

It would have been amusing to stay around and continue this, but Cozzi was standing in the doorway glaring at him, and so, riding Turk and leading the rented horses behind him, Jack galloped down Rue Vivienne in what he hoped was dramatic style, and hung the first available left. This ended up taking him right back through Les Halles—so he made a point of galloping through the fish-market, where the police were turning things upside-down searching for a one-legged, short-penised pedestrian. Jack winked at that one young fishwife who’d caught his eye, touching off a thrill that spread like fire through gunpowder, and then he was gone, off into the Marais—right past the Place Royale. He maneuvered round the trundling manure-carts all the way to the Bastille: just one great sweaty rock pocked with a few tiny windows, with grenadiers roaming around on top—the highest and thickest in a city of walls. It sat in a moat fed by a short canal leading up from the Seine. The bridge over the canal was crowded, so Jack rode down to the river and then turned to follow the right bank out of town, and thereby left Paris behind him. He was afraid that Turk would be exhausted already. But when the war-horse saw open fields ahead, he surged forward, yanking on the lead and eliciting angry whinnies from the spare horses following behind.

To Lyons was a long journey, almost all the way to Italy (which was, he reckoned, why the Italian banks were situated there), or, if you wanted to look at it that way, almost all the way to Marseille. The countryside was divided up into innumerable separate
pays
with their own tolls, which were commonly exacted at inns controlling the important cross-roads. Jack, changing horses from time to time, seemed to be racing the whole way against a slippery narrow black coach that scuttled down the road like a scorpion, drawn by four horses. It was a good race, meaning that the lead changed hands many times. But in the end, those inns, and the need to change horse-teams frequently, were too much of an impediment for the coach, and Jack was the first to ride down into Lyons with the news—whatever it was.

Another Genoese banker in vivid clothing received Signor Cozzi’s note. Jack had to track him down in a market-place unlike any in Paris, where things like charcoal, bales of old clothing, and rolls of undyed fabric were for sale in large quantities. The banker paid Jack out of his pocket, and read the note.

“You are English?”

“Aye, what of it?”

“Your King is dead.” With that the banker went briskly to his office, whence other messengers galloped away within the hour,
headed for Genoa and Marseilles. Jack stabled his horses and wandered round Lyons amazed, munching some dried figs he bought at a retail market. The only King he’d ever known was dead, and England was, somehow, a different country now—ruled by a Papist!

FEBRUARY
1685

W
EE DRIFTS OF
wind-skimming snow had already parenthesized the cherry-red platform soles of the French delegation’s boots, and inch-long snotcicles had grown from the moustaches of the English delegation. Eliza glided up on her skates, and swirled to a halt on the canal to admire what she took (at first) to be some sort of colossal sculpture group. Of course sculptures did not normally wear clothing, but these Ambassadors and their entourages (a total of eight Englishmen facing off against seven French) had been standing long enough that snow had permeated every pore of their hats, wigs, and coats, giving them the appearance (from a distance) of having been butcherously carved out of a large block of some very low-grade, grayish sculptural medium. Much more lively (and more warmly dressed) was the crowd of Dutchmen who had gathered round to watch, and to stake small wagers on which delegation would first succumb to the cold. A rabble of porters and wood-carriers seemed to have taken the English side, and better-dressed men had gathered round the French, and strode to and fro stamping their feet and blowing into their hands and dispatching swift-skating message-boys towards the States-General and the Binnenhof.

But Eliza was the only girl on skates. So as she came to a stop there on the canal’s edge, only a few yards away from, and a foot or two lower than, the two groups of men on the adjoining street, the entire sculpture came to life. Rimes of ice cracked and tinkled as fifteen French and English heads rotated towards her. ’Twas now a standoff of a
different
nature.

The best-dressed man in the French delegation shuddered. They were
all
shivering, but this gentleman
shuddered.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “do you speak French?”

Eliza regarded him. His hat was the size of a washtub, filled with exotic plumes, now crushed under drifts. His boots had the enormous tongues just coming into fashion, erupting from his instep and spreading and curling up and away from the shin—these had filled with snow, which was melting and trickling down inside the boots and darkening the leather from the inside.

“Only when there is some
reason
to, monsieur,” she returned.

“What is a reason?”

“How French of you to ask…I suppose that when a gentleman, who has been correctly introduced to me, flatters me with a compliment, or amuses me with a witticism…”

“I humbly beg Mademoiselle’s forgiveness,” the Frenchman said, through gray and stiff lips that ruined his pronunciation. “But as you did not arrive with an escort, there was no one to beg for the favor of a decent introduction.”

“He is yonder,” said Eliza, gesturing half a league down the canal.

“
Mon Dieu,
he flails his limbs like a lost soul tumbling backwards into the Pit,” the Frenchman exclaimed. “Tell me, mademoiselle, why does a
swan
venture out on the canals with an
orang-utan
?”

“He claimed he knew how to skate.”

“But a lass of your
beauty,
must have heard many brave claims from young men’s lips—and one of your
intelligence
must have perceived that all of them were rank nonsense.”

“Whereas you, monsieur, are honest and pure of heart?”

“Alas, mademoiselle, I am merely old.”

“Not so old.”

“And yet I may have perished from
age
or
pneumonia
before your beau struggles close enough to make introductions, so…Jean Antoine de Mesmes, comte d’Avaux, your most humble servant.”

“Charmed. My name is Eliza…”

“Duchess of Qwghlm?”

Eliza laughed at this absurdity. “But how did you know I was Qwghlmian?”

“Your native tongue is English—but you skate like one who was born on ice,
sans
the staggering drunken gait of the Anglo-Saxons who so cruelly oppress your islands,” d’Avaux answered, raising his voice so that the English delegation could hear.

“Very clever—but you know perfectly well that I am no Duchess.”

“And yet blue blood flows in your veins, I cannot but believe…”

“Not half so blue as
yours,
Monsieur, as I cannot but
see.
Why don’t you go inside and sit by a warm fire?”

“Now you tempt me cruelly in a
second
way,” d’Avaux said. “I must stand here, to uphold the honor and glory of
La France.
But you are bound by no such obligations—why do you go out here, where only harp-seals and polar-bears should be—and in such a skirt?”

“The skirt
must
be short, lest it get caught in the blades of my skates—you see?” Eliza said, and did a little pirouette. Before she’d gotten entirely turned around, a groaning and cracking noise came from the center of the French delegation as a spindly middle-aged diplomat collapsed dizzily to the ground. The men to either side of him crouched down as if to render assistance, but were straightened up by a brisk idiom from d’Avaux. “Once we begin to make exceptions for those who fall—or who
pretend
to—the whole delegation will go down like ninepins,” d’Avaux explained, addressing the remark to Eliza, but
intending
it for his entourage. The fallen man contracted to a fœtal position on the pavement; a couple of sword-wearing Dutchmen scurried in with a blanket. Meanwhile a wench came down out of a side-street bearing a large tray, and walked past the French delegation, letting them smell the flip-aroma, and feel the steam, from eight tankards—which she took direct to the Englishmen.

“Exceptions to
what
?” Eliza asked.

“To the rules of diplomatic protocol,” d’Avaux answered. “Which state—for example—that when one Ambassador meets another in a narrow way, the junior Ambassador must give way for the senior.”

“Ah, so that’s it. You’re having a dispute as to whether you, or the English Ambassador, has seniority?”

“I represent the Most Christian King,
^*
that
lot represent King James II of England…or so we can only assume, as we have received word that King Charles II has died, but not that his brother has been properly crowned.”

“Then it’s clear
you
have seniority.”

“Clear to you and me, mademoiselle. But
that
fellow has asserted that, since he cannot represent an uncrowned king, he must still be representing the late Charles II, who was crowned in 1651 after the Puritans chopped off the head of his father and predecessor. My King was crowned in 1654.”

“But with all due respect to the Most Christian King, monsieur, doesn’t that mean that Charles II, if he still lived, would have three years’ seniority over him?”

“A rabble of Scots at Scone tossed a crown at Charles’s head,” d’Avaux said, “and then he came and lived
here
, begging for handouts from Dutchmen, until 1660 when the cheese-mongers
paid
him to leave.
Practically
speaking, his reign began when he sailed to Dover.”

“If we are going to be
practical,
sir,” shouted an Englishman, “let us consider that
your
King did not
practically
begin his reign until the death of Cardinal Mazarin on the ninth of March, 1661.” He raised a tankard to his lips and quaffed deeply, pausing between gulps to emit little moans of satisfaction.

“At least
my
King is alive,” d’Avaux muttered. “You see? And they love to accuse
Jesuits
of sophistry! I say, is your beau wanted by the Guild of St. George?”

Civic order in the Hague was maintained by two Guilds of civic guards. The part of the city around the market and the town hall, where normal Dutchmen lived, was looked after by the St. Sebastian Guild. The St. George Guild was responsible for the Hofgebied, which was the part of the city containing the royal palace, foreign embassies, houses of rich families, and so on. Both Guilds were represented among the crowd of spectators who had gathered round to partake of the spectacle of d’Avaux and his English counterparts freezing to death. So d’Avaux’s question was partly intended to flatter and amuse the genteel and aristocratic St. George men—perhaps at the expense of the more plebeian St. Sebastian guards, who seemed to be favoring the English delegation.

“Don’t be absurd, monsieur! If he
were,
those brave and diligent men would have apprehended him long ago. Why do you ask such a question?”

“He has covered up his face like some sort of a
volunteer.
” Which meant, a soldier-turned-highwayman.

Eliza turned round to see Gomer Bolstrood lurking (there was no other word for it) around a corner of the canal a stone’s throw away with a long strip of tartan wrapped over his face.

“Those who live in northerly climes often do this.”

“It seems extremely disreputable and in the poorest taste. If your beau cannot tolerate a bit of a sea-breeze—”

“He is not my beau—merely a business associate.”

“Then, mademoiselle, you will be free to meet with me here, at this hour, tomorrow, and give me a skating-lesson.”

“But, monsieur! From the way you shuddered when you beheld me, I thought you considered such sports beneath your dignity.”

“Indeed—but I am an Ambassador, and must submit to any number of degradations…”

“For the honor and glory of
la France
?”

“Pourquoi non?”

“I hope that they widen the street soon, comte d’Avaux.” “Spring is just around the corner—and when I gaze upon your face, mademoiselle, I feel it is already here.”

“’T
WAS PERFECTLY INNOCENT
, Mr. Bolstrood—I thought they were sculpture until eyes turned my way.”

They were seated before a fire in a stately hunting-lodge. The place was warm enough, but smoky, and bleak, and entirely too filled with heads of dead animals, who seemed
also
to be turning their eyes Eliza’s way.

“You imagine I’m angry, but I’m not.”

“What’s troubling you, then? I daresay you are the brooding-est fellow I have ever seen.”

“These chairs.”

“Did I hear you correctly, sir?”

“Look at them,” Gomer Bolstrood said, in a voice hollow with despair. “Those who built this estate had no shortage of money, of that you can be sure—but the furniture! It is either stupid and primitive, like this ogre’s throne I’m seated on, or else—like yours—raked together out of kindling, with about as much structural integrity as a
faggot.
I could make better chairs in an
afternoon, drunk,
given a
shrub
and a
jackknife.
”

“Then I must apologize for having misread you, as I supposed you were angry about that chance encounter, there—”

“My faith teaches me it was inevitable—predestined—that you would enter into a flirtation with the French Ambassador just now. If I’m brooding over
that
, it’s not because I’m angry, but because I must understand what it means.”

“It means he’s a horny old goat.”

Gomer Bolstrood shook his colossal head hopelessly, and gazed toward a window. The pane shouted as it was hit by a burst of wind-driven slush. “I pray it did not develop into a riot,” he said.

“How much of a riot can eight frozen Englishmen and seven half-dead Frenchmen accomplish?”

“It’s the Dutchmen I’m worried about. The commoners and country folk, as always, side with the Stadholder.
^*
The merchants are all Frenchified—and because the States-General are meeting here at the moment, the town’s crowded with the latter—all of ’em wearing swords and carrying pistols.”

“Speaking of Frenchified merchants,” Eliza said, “I have some good news for the Client—whoever he is—from the commodities market. It seems that during the run-up to the 1672 war, an Amsterdam banker committed treason against the Republic—”

“Actually any number of ’em did—but pray continue.”

“Acting as a cat’s-paw for the Marquis de Louvois, this traitor—Mr. Sluys by name—bought up nearly all of the lead in the country to ensure that William’s army would be short of ammunition. No doubt Sluys thought the war would be over in a few days, and that King Louis, after planting the French flag on the Damrak, would reward him personally. But of course that is not how it happened. Ever since, Sluys has had a warehouse full of lead, which he’s been afraid to sell openly, lest word get out, and an Orangist mob burn his warehouses, and tear him apart, as they did so memorably to the de Witt brothers. But now Sluys
has
to sell it.”

“Why?”

“It’s been thirteen years. His warehouse has been sinking into the Amsterdam-mud twice as fast as the ones to either side of it, because of the weight of all that lead. The neighbors are beginning to complain. He is taking the whole neighborhood down!”

“So Mr. Sluys should offer an excellent price,” Gomer Bolstrood said. “Praise God! The Client will be most pleased. Did this same traitor buy up gunpowder? Matches?”

“All ruined by humidity. But a fleet of Indiamen are expected at Texel any day—they’ll be heavy laden with saltpeter, most likely—powder prices are already dropping.”

“Probably not dropping
enough
for our purposes,” Bolstrood muttered. “Can we buy up saltpeter, and make our own?”

“Sulfur prices are also agreeable, owing to some fortuitous volcanic eruptions in Java,” Eliza said, “but proper charcoal is very dear—the Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg controls his Faulbaum inventory like a miser counting his coins.”

“We may have to capture an arsenal very early in the campaign,” Bolstrood said, “God willing.”

Talk of campaigns and arsenal-captures made Eliza nervous, so she attempted a change of subject: “When may I have the pleasure of meeting the Client?”

“As soon as we can find him clothed and sober,” Bolstrood answered immediately.

“That should be easy, in a Barker.”

“The Client is nothing of the sort!” Gomer Bolstrood scoffed.

“How very strange.”

“What is strange about it?”

“How came he to oppose Slavery if not through religion?”

“You oppose it, and you’re no Calvinist,” Bolstrood parried.

“I have personal reasons for feeling as I do. But I phant’sied that the Client was one of your co-religionists. He
does
oppose slavery, does he not?”