The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World (123 page)

I could have tarried on the spot and wept for a long time, but on this bank were several locals who had seen us arrive in the company of the carriage, and it would not be long before one of them sold that intelligence to the Frenchmen on the river. So we struck out for the north, beginning the journey that continues even as I write these words.

J
OURNAL ENTRY
13 S
EPTEMBER
1688

The peasants around here say that the lord of the manor is a Bishop. This gives me hope that we are now in the Bishopric of Liège, not terribly far from one of the outlying tendrils of the Dutch Republic. Hans and Joachim have been having a long discussion in German, which I understand but meagerly. One thinks he ought to strike out alone to the East, go to the Rhine, and then double back to the South and warn the Palatinate. The other fears it is too late; there is nothing they can do now for their homeland; it is better to seek revenge by throwing all of their energies behind the Protestant Defender.

Later. The dispute was resolved as follows: we shall ride north past French lines to Maestricht and take passage on a canal-boat down the river to Nijmegen, where the Meuse and the Rhine almost kiss each other. That is some hundred miles north of here, yet it may be a quicker way to reach the Rhine than to cut east cross-country through God knows what perils and complications. In Nijmegen, Hans and Joachim can get the latest news from passengers and boatmen who have lately come down the Rhine from Heidelberg and Mannheim.

It did not take long, once we left our camp near Liège, to pass out of the zone of French military control. We rode over an area of torn-up ground that, until a few days ago, was the permanent camp of a French regiment. Ahead of us are a few French companies left along the border as a façade. They stop and interrogate travelers trying to come in, but ignore those like us who are only trying to pass out towards Maestricht.

J
OURNAL ENTRY
15 S
EPTEMBER
1688

On a canal-boat bound from Maestricht to Nijmegen. Conditions not very comfortable, but at least we do not have to ride or walk any more. Am renewing my acquaintance with soap.

J
OURNAL ENTRY
16 S
EPTEMBER
1688

I am in a cabin of a canal-ship making its way west across the Dutch Republic.

I am surrounded by slumbering Princesses.

The Germans have a fondness for faery-tales, or
Märchen
as they call them, that is strangely at odds with their orderly dispositions. Ranged in parallel with their tidy Christian world is the
Märchenwelt
, a pagan realm of romance, wonders, and magical beings.
Why
they believe in the
Märchenwelt
has ever been a mystery to me; but I am closer to understanding it today than I was yesterday. For yesterday we reached Nijmegen. We went direct to the bank of the Rhine and I began looking for a canal-boat bound in the direction of Rotterdam and the Hague. Hans and Joachim meanwhile canvassed travelers debarking from boats lately come from upstream. I had no sooner settled myself in a comfortable cabin on a Hague-bound canal-ship when Joachim found me; and he had in tow a pair of characters straight out of the
Märchenwelt.
They were not gnomes, dwarves, or witches, but Princesses: one full-grown [I believe she is not yet thirty] and one pint-sized [she has told me three different times that she is five years old]. True to form, the little one carries a doll that she insists is
also
a princess.

They do not look like princesses. The mother, whose name is Eleanor, has something of a regal bearing. But this was not obvious to me at first, for when they joined me, and Eleanor noticed a clean bed [mine] and saw that Caroline-----for that is the daughter’s name-----was under my watch, she fell immediately into [my] bed, went to sleep, and did not awaken for some hours, by which time the boat was well underway. I spent much of that time chatting with little Caroline, who was at pains to let me know she was a princess; but as she made the same claim of the dirty lump of stuffed rags she bore around in her arms, I did not pay it much mind.

But Joachim insisted that the disheveled woman snoring under my blankets was genuine royalty. I was about to chide him for having been deluded by mountebanks, when I began to recollect the tales I had been told of the Winter Queen, who after being driven out of Bohemia by the Pope’s legions, wandered about Europe as a Vagabond before finding safe haven at the Hague. And my time at Versailles taught me more than I wished to know about the desperate financial straits in which many nobles and royals live their whole lives. Was it really so unthinkable that three Princesses-----mother, daughter, and doll-----should be wandering about lost and hungry on the Nijmegen riverfront? For war had come to this part of the world, and war rends the veil that separates the everyday world from the
Märchenwelt.

By the time Eleanor woke up, I had mended the doll, and I had been looking after little Caroline for long enough that I felt responsible for her, and would have been willing to snatch her away from Eleanor if the latter had proved, upon awakening, to be some sort of madwoman [this is by no means my usual response to small children, for at Versailles, playing my role as governess, I had been put in charge of many a little snot-nose whose names I
have long since forgotten. But Caroline was bright, and interesting to talk to, and a welcome relief from the sorts of people I had been spending time with for the last several weeks].

When Eleanor had arisen, and washed, and eaten some of my provisions, she told a story that was wild but, by modern standards, plausible. She claims to be the daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Eisenach. She married the Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach. The daughter is properly called Princess Wilhelmina Caroline of Ansbach. But this Margrave died of smallpox a few years ago and his title passed to a son by an earlier wife, who had always considered Eleanor to be a sort of wicked stepmother [this being a
Märchen,
after all] and so cast her and little Caroline out of the
Schloβ.
They drifted back to Eisenach, Eleanor’s place of birth. This is a place on the edge of the Thüringer Wald, perhaps two hundred miles east of where we are now. Her position in the world at that time, a few years ago, was the reverse of mine: she had a lofty title, but no property at all. Whereas I had no titles other than Slave and Vagabond, but I did have some money. At any rate, she and Caroline were suffered to dwell in what sounds like a family hunting-lodge in the Thüringer Wald. But she does not seem to have been much more welcome in Eisenach than she had been at Ansbach following the death of her husband. And so, while spending part of each year at Eisenach, it has been her practice to roam about and pay extended visits to shirttail relatives all over northern Europe, moving from time to time lest she wear out her welcome in any one place.

Recently she paid a brief visit to Ansbach in an effort to patch things up with her hostile stepson. Ansbach is within striking distance of Mannheim on the Rhine, and so she and Caroline next went there to look in on some cousins who had shown them charity in the past. They arrived, naturally, at the worst possible moment, a few days ago, just as the French regiments were swarming over the Rhine on the barges built at Haguenau, and bombarding the defensive works. Someone there had the presence of mind to pack them on a boat full of well-heeled refugees, bound down the river. And so they passed quickly out of the area of danger, though they continued to hear cannon-fire for a day or more, echoing up the valley of the Rhine. They reached Nijmegen without incident, though the boat was so crowded with refugees-----some of them with suppurating wounds-----that she was unable to take more than the occasional catnap. When they debarked, Joachim-----who is a Person of Quality in the Palatinate-----recognized them as they stumbled down the gangplank, and brought them to me.

Now the current of the Rhine slowly flushes us, and a lot of other war-flotsam, downstream towards the sea. I have oft heard French and Germans alike speak disparagingly of the Netherlands, likening the country to a gutter that collects all the refuse and fœces of Christendom, but lacks the vigor to force
it out to sea, so that it piles up in a bar around Rotterdam. It is a cruel and absurd way to talk about a noble and brave little country. Yet as I look on my condition, and on that of the Princesses, and review our recent travels [blundering about in dark and dangerous parts until we stumbled upon running water, then drifting downstream], I can recognize a kind of cruel truth in that slander.

We shall not, however, let ourselves be flushed out to sea. At Rotterdam we divert from the river’s natural course and follow a canal to the Hague. There the Princesses can find refuge, just as did the Winter Queen at the end of her wanderings. And there I shall try to deliver a coherent report to the Prince of Orange. This bit of embroidery is ruined before it was finished, but it contains the information that William has been waiting for. When I have finished my report I may make it into a pillow. Everyone who sees it will wonder at my foolishness for keeping such a dirty, stained, faded thing around the house. But I will keep it in spite of them. It is an important thing to me now. When I started it, I only intended to use it to record details of French troop movements and the like. But as the weeks went on and I frequently found myself with plenty of time on my hands to tend to my needlework, I began to record some of my thoughts and feelings about what was going on around me. Perhaps I did this out of boredom; but perhaps it was so that some part of me might live on, if I were killed or made a captive along the way. This might sound like a foolish thing to have done, but a woman who has no family and few friends is forever skirting the edges of a profound despair, which derives from the fear that she could vanish from the world and leave no trace she had ever existed; that the things she has done shall be of no account and the perceptions she has formed [as of Dr. von Pfung for example] shall be swallowed up like a cry in a dark woods. To write out a full confession and revelation of my doings, as I’ve done here, is not without danger; but if I did not do so I would be so drowned in melancholy that I would do nothing at all, in which event my life truly would be of no account. This way, at least, I am part of a story, like the ones Mummy used to tell me in the
banyolar
in Algiers, and like the ones that were told by Shahrazad, who prolonged her own life for a thousand and one nights by the telling of tales.

But given the nature of the cypher that I am using, chances are that you, reader, will never exist, and so I cannot see why I should continue running this needle through the dirty old cloth when I am so tired, and the rocking of the boat invites me to close my eyes.

Rossignol to Louis XIV Continued

NOVEMBER
1688

Your majesty will have been dismayed by the foregoing tale of treason and perfidy. If it were generally known, I fear it would do grave damage to the reputation of your majesty’s sister-in-law the duchesse d’Orléans. She is said to be prostrate with grief, and ungrateful for all that your majesty’s legions have done in order to secure her rights in the Palatinate. Out of a gentleman’s respect for her rank, and humane compassion for her feelings, I have been as discreet as possible with this intelligence which could only bring her further suffering if it were known. I have shared the foregoing account only with your majesty. D’Avaux has importuned me for a copy, but I have deflected his many requests and will continue to do so unless your majesty instructs me to send the document to him.

In the weeks that I have spent in the decypherment of this document, Phobos and Deimos have been unleashed on the east bank of the Rhine. The lead that the Countess so assiduously followed to the banks of the Meuse has been conveyed in bulk to the Palatinate, and ended its long journey traveling at inconceivable velocities through the bodies and the buildings of heretics. Half the young blades of Court have quit Versailles to go hunting in Germany, and many of them write letters, which it is my duty to read. I am told that Heidelberg Castle burnt brilliantly for days, and that everyone is looking forward to repeating the experiment in Mannheim. Philippsburg, Mainz, Speier, Trier, Worms, and Oppenheim are scheduled for later in the year. As winter draws on, your majesty will be troubled to learn of all the brutality. You will draw your forces back, and give Louvois a firm scolding for having acted so excessively. Historians will record that the Sun King cannot be held responsible for all of the unpleasantness.

From your majesty’s many excellent sources in England, your majesty will know that the Prince of Orange is now there, commanding an army made up not only of Dutchmen, but of
the English and Scottish regiments that were stationed on Dutch soil by treaty; Huguenot scum who filtered up from France; mercenaries and freebooters from Scandinavia; and Prussians who’ve been lent to the cause by Sophie Charlotte—the daughter of the cursed Hanoverian bitch Sophie.

All of which only seems to prove that Europe is a chessboard. Even your majesty cannot gain (say) the Rhine without sacrificing (say) England. Likewise, whatever Sophie and William may gain from their ceaseless machinations they’ll have to pay for in the end. And as for the Countess de la Zeur, why, the new King of England might make her Duchess of Qwghlm, but in return your majesty will no doubt see to it that her sacrifices are commensurate.

M. le comte d’Avaux has redoubled his surveillance of the Countess in the Hague. He has received assurances from the laundresses who work in the house of Huygens that she has not bled a single drop of menstrual blood in the nearly two months she’s been there. She is pregnant with a bastard of Arcachon. She is therefore now a part of the family of France, of which your majesty is the patriarch. As it is become a family matter, I will refrain from any further meddling unless your majesty instructs me otherwise.

I have the honour to be, your majesty’s humble and obedient servant, Bonaventure Rossignol