The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World (197 page)

“Remind me to ask you later for your thoughts on disembowelment,” said Eliza, then regretted it, for she was already queasy. They were out on the Channel now, the wind had come up, and she was robed, hooded, and swaddled in blankets like a woman out of a desert land—a very cold desert land.

Bob squinted at her. “I’ve had any number of such thoughts this morning, and have held them back from you.” He was alluding to the scenes that they had all beheld from the deck of
Arbalète
as they had sailed east-northeast along the tip of the Cotentin—that stump of an arm that France thrust out toward England. For the first hour or so, their view had been of Cherbourg, and of the waters north of it, which had gradually been unveiled as the last traces of the four-day fog had dissolved into plain air. A goodly part of the Anglo-Dutch fleet was there. The burning of
Soleil Royal
and the invasion of Cherbourg Harbor by longboats were only aspects of a larger action, which they came better to understand as they drew back from it. The English and Dutch had cut a few ships from the French fleet and were going about the tedious and ungallant work of mopping them up: trying to get enough cannonballs into their hulls to sink or ruin them before they could scurry in under the protection of the shore batteries. By the time that Cherbourg had receded from
Arbalète
’s view, that issue was no longer in much doubt: This remnant of the French fleet, if it reached Cherbourg at all, would never sail again. Not long after,
Arbalète
had rounded the Point of Barfleur, which had brought them in view of a vast bay, fifteen miles broad and five deep,
pressed like a thumbprint into the eastern side of the Cotentin. It was there, in the shelter of the peninsula, that the bulk of the invasion-transports had gathered to receive soldiers and matériel from the great camps around La Hougue. And it was there, they now discovered, that Admiral Tourville had sought refuge with perhaps two dozen of his ships. Now that the fog had lifted, the bulk of the Anglo-Dutch fleet had formed up off La Hougue and were boring in to finish Tourville off; and since the anchorage proper was protected by shore batteries, this meant longboat-work again. What had happened to
Météore
this morning was, in other words, to be the pattern for what would be done to Tourville’s fleet today. Eliza, though she knew little of Naval tactics, could see the logic of it as plainly as if it had been writ out on a page by Leibniz: The English could bring their ships no nearer shore than a certain point because of the shore-batteries. Tourville could not sail what was left of the French fleet—now outnumbered three or four to one—out of the anchorage. And so there was a no-man’s-land between the English and French, which soon developed a dark infestation of longboats issuing from all the Anglo-Dutch ships. Unable to maneuver or even to weigh anchor in the jammed anchorage, the crews of the French ships could only stand on the decks and wait to repel boarders.

Arbalète
, which under these circumstances could be overlooked as an insignificant smuggler’s boat, now made her course due north, threaded her way between a pair of laggardly English men-of-war, and began a sprint for Portsmouth. Before the anchorage of La Hougue was lost to view astern, they noted a spark of light drifting out of it, trying to catch up with its own column of smoke. The burning of the French fleet had begun. Those aboard
Arbalète
could at least turn their backs on the scene, and run away from it. Not so fortunate, as Eliza knew, was James Stuart, who was camped in a royal tent on a hill above La Hougue. He’d have to watch the whole thing. For all that she despised the man and his reign, Eliza couldn’t but feel sorry for him: chased out of England once in girl’s clothes, during the Commonwealth, and a second time with a bloody nose during the Glorious Revolution; loser of the Battle of the Boyne; chased out of Ireland; and now this. It was while she was mulling over these cheerful matters that Bob Shaftoe unexpectedly piped up with his ruminations on the topic of stumps; which gives a fair portrait of the mood aboard
Arbalète
during her passage to England.

“I
HAVE SEEN
altogether too many men in my day, living as I have in Vagabond-camps and Regimental quarters. And so it could be that
my memory has been overfilled and is now playing tricks on me. But I think that I have seen that man before,” Bob said.

“Flail-arm? You mentioned you’d noticed him in Cherbourg, spying or gawking.”

“Aye, but even the
first
time I saw him there, I phant’sied I’d seen his face elsewhere.”

“If he was spying on me there, perhaps he had been doing the same in St.-Malo, and you’d noticed him on one of your visits,” said Eliza, and was immediately sorry that she had raised this topic; for her bowels were in an uproar, she’d spent more time at the head than all others on the boat summed, and Bob had conspicuously refrained from saying anything about it, but only squinted at her knowingly. It was late afternoon. The sun was slicing down across the northwestern sky, making England into a rubble of black lumps in the foreground, and casting golden light on Bob’s face.

“I phant’sied I’d make the return voyage, you know.”

“You mean, back to Normandy tomorrow? But are you not absent without leave from your Irish regiment? Would you not be flogged for it, or something?”

“I got leave, on a pretext. It is still not too late.”

“But it sounds as though you are having second thoughts.”

“The closer we draw to England, the better she suits me. I went to France for diverse reasons, none of which have turned out to be any good.”

“You hoped it would bring you within reach of Abigail.”

“Aye. But instead I was marooned in Brest nigh on half a year, then Cherbourg for three months. And so serving France has brought me no nearer to Paris than if I’d been posted in London. Who knows where they’ll have us go next?”

“If what I have heard means anything,” Eliza said, “the fighting will be very hot in the Spanish Netherlands this summer. They are probably laying siege to Namur as we speak. That is most likely where Count Sheerness is—”

“And so probably Abigail as well,” said Bob, “for if he means to spend the whole summer in those parts, he has brought his household with him. Very well. My most expedient way of reaching that part of the world shall be to re-join the Black Torrent Guards and be shipped thither at King William’s expense.”

“Don’t you suppose your nine months’ absence will have been noted? What kind of flogging will they award you for
that
!?”

“I was conducting military espionage in the enemy camp for the Earl of Marlborough,” Bob retorted; though the look on his face,
and the lilt in his voice, suggested that this had only just come into his head.

“The Earl of Marlborough has been dismissed from all offices, stripped of command. His colonelcy of the Black Torrent Guards will have been sold off to some Tory hack.”

“But nine months ago when my mission of espionage began, none of that was true.”

“Your idea still seems risky to me,” said Eliza, eager to draw the exchange to a curt finish because the rioting had started up in her belly once more.

“Then I shall test the waters first, with Marlborough, before presenting myself to the Regiment,” Bob said. “You’re going to London! I don’t suppose you’d be willing to bring him a private note from me—?”

“Since you cannot read or write, I suppose you’d like me to
pen
the note as well?” said Eliza, and turned her back on Bob, the better to search for a convenient scupper. She did not feel as though she would have time to trudge all the way to the head; besides which, a French sailor was already sitting up there, taking a lengthy shit into the English Channel and singing.

“Your offer is well received,” Bob returned. “And as I am unfit to frame a proper letter to an Earl, perhaps I could interest you in
composing
it as well—?”

“I’ll just
talk
to him,” said Eliza, dropping to her hands and knees. The next thing that emerged from her mouth, however, was altogether unfit for presentation to an Earl; a fact Bob was discreet enough not to point out.

4
JUNE (N.S.)
/25
MAY (O.S.),
1692

E
LIZA FRETTED, AND BELABORED HERSELF
for being too late and too little organized, until the moment that she gazed out the carriage window and saw the waters of the Thames below her, all crammed with shipping. This was too strange to believe for a moment. Then it came to her that this street must be London Bridge, and the carriage must be traversing one of the firebreaks, where it was possible to get a view. The sight of the River triggered a curious reversal in her mood. It was midafternoon of the day nominated, by the French and most of the rest of Christendom, June 4th, and by the English May 25th. Whichever calendar was used, the fact of the matter was that the Bills of Exchange would not expire until the end of the day
tomorrow;
she had, in other words, reached London with more than twenty-four hours to spare. This in spite of the fact that for the last week—since the day that Tourville had assaulted Russell in the Channel, and the fog had closed in—she had been certain she was too late and that the entire enterprise was doomed. From that moment until this, London had seemed infinitely far away, and impossible to reach. Now, having reached it, she wondered what all the fuss had been about. For London was after all a great city and people went there all the time—the number of masts thrust into the air above the Pool spoke to this. Perhaps Eliza had nursed an exaggerated view of its remoteness because of the difficulty she’d had in escaping to it almost three years ago, when her ship had been waylaid by Jean Bart.

At any rate she was across the Bridge and in the City before she had reached the end of these ruminations. The horses irritably dragged the carriage up Fish Street Hill as the coachman irritably popped his whip about their ears. It occurred to Eliza that she had not given the driver a destination, other than London. She had no destination in mind. But the driver had. Presently he turned off to the left, into a slit between new (brick, flat-fronted, post-Fire) buildings. The slit broadened and developed into a rambling composition of chambers and orifices, like the stomachs of a cow. It all seemed to be wrapped around the backside of a big structure that looked somehow like church, but somehow not. Tired Eliza remembered, then, that she had found her way to a country where there was more than just one church. She reckoned that this must be a meeting house of Quakers or some other such sect. At any rate they came, after certain turns, reversals, and squeezings, to a doorway adorned with a sign shaped like the head of an indifferent-looking brown horse. A porter exploded out of the doorway and vied with a footman for the honor of ripping the carriage door open. For painted on the outside of the
carriage were the arms of the Marquis of Ravenscar, who Eliza gathered must be a valued regular of this inn or tavern, the Brown Horse or the Old Gelding or whatever they called it—

“Welcome to Nag’s Head Court, my lady,” said Roger Comstock, the Marquis of Ravenscar, emerging from the door, and bowing as deeply as a man of his maturity and dignity could without peeling a hamstring or lobbing his wig into the gutter. Eliza by now had thrust her head and shoulders out the door (about all she wanted to reveal, given that she had lost contact with her wardrobe some days ago). She ought to have given her undivided attention to Ravenscar; but she could not restrain the urge to look this way and that up the length of Nag’s Head Court.

“No, madame, your senses have not misled you, it is just as mean, narrow, and squalid as you feared, and no apology from me shall balance the offense I have done you, by bringing you to it; but it was a suitable place for me to wait, and behold, it is nigh to the mysteries and delights of the ’Change.”

Eliza followed his gaze down the alley. It rambled on in the same vein for a stone’s throw and discharged into a proper street, which seemed to be crowded with an inordinate number of well-to-do-chaps who were all in a frightful hurry. She knew what it was just that quickly. If she had been wearing Versailles court-makeup, it would have cracked and fallen to the ground like ice from a warming roof. For her face had done something she never allowed it to do at Versailles, namely, opened up into a broad grin. She directed this at Ravenscar, who all but swooned. “On the contrary, my lord, in all London there’s no place I’d rather be than the ’Change, and there is no place I am so well suited for, in my present state, than a dark doorway in Nag’s Head Court—so—”

Ravenscar was aghast, and quick-stepped to the base of the wee Barock staircase that the footmen had arranged beneath the carriage-door. This was to help her down, if she insisted; but really he was throwing his body across her path as a barrier. “I would not
dream
of escorting a
Duchess
into
that
place! I had hoped that the lady might suffer me to join her in the carriage while we proceeded to some destination worthy to be graced by one of her dignity.”

“It is, after all,
your
carriage, monsieur—”

“Nay, madame,
yours
, for as long as you choose to remain on our Isle, and I, your servant.”

“Get in the damned carriage, then. And pray lower the shades, for I am not fit to stop light.”

Ravenscar did as he was told. The carriage began to move. “Obviously, my driver was able to find you in Portsmouth—?”

“
We
found
him
. The skipper of our boat would not go to Portsmouth, or any other proper port-town, but only to certain coves he knew of. Thence we hired a waggon.”

Ravenscar was looking curiously about the interior of the carriage, as if someone were missing. “We?”

“I was with an Englishman.”

“A Person of Quality, or—”

“A Person of Usefulness. But somewhat bull-headed. He had set his mind to looking up his whilom Captain. When we reached Portsmouth he began to make inquiries about the fellow—name of Churchill.”

Ravenscar winced. “Eeeyuh, the Earl of Marlborough has been clapped in the Tower of London!”

“So you tell me
now
, but, isolated as I’d been, I’d not heard that news. Otherwise I’d have warned my companion not to mention the name.”

“They put your man in irons, did they?”

“They did. For I gather that the charge on which Marlborough is being held is that of being a Jacobite spy—?”

“It is
so
ludicrous that I am too embarrassed even to repeat it to you. But a moiety of the English race are the
more
inclined to credit an accusation, the more fanciful it becomes; and whoever it was that arrested your man in Portsmouth—”

“Was of that sort, and, seeing a man just off a boat from Cherbourg, asking the whereabouts of Marlborough, assumed the worst.”

“Have they hanged him yet?”

“No, nor will they soon, for haply your carriage came along.
I
, to them, was just a wench in a wet dress; but when
this
fine vehicle made the scene, with your arms on the door, and your driver started in with ‘la duchesse’ this and ‘the Duchess’ that—”

“Matters changed.”

“Matters changed, and I was able to let those in charge know that hanging my companion would not be in their best interests. But now that I’m here, I would visit Marlborough.”

“Many would, my lady. The queue of carriages at the Tower is long. You rank most of them, and should be able to go directly to its head. But if I might, first—?”

“Yes?”

They had been driving around a triangular circuit of Cornhill, Threadneedle, and Bishopsgate, enclosing some twenty acres of ground that contained more money than the rest of the British Isles. It was remarkable that they had been able to converse for even
this
long without the topic having arisen.

“It is frightfully indecent of me to mention this, I know,” said
Ravenscar, “but I am, at present, the owner of rather a lot of silver. Rather a lot. They tell me ’tis worth ever so much more
now
than ’twas three weeks ago, when I bought it; but if news were to arrive, say from Portsmouth, that the French invasion had miscarried—”

“It would suddenly be worth ever so much
less
. Yes, I know. Well, the invasion
has
failed.”

Ravenscar’s pelvis actually rose off the bench as if someone had shoved a dagger into his kidney. His voice vaulted to a higher register: “If we could, then, pay a brief call upon a certain gentleman, now, before you go spreading the news about—”

“I’ve no intention of doing
that,
as the news shall get here soon enough on its own,” said Eliza, which little comforted Ravenscar. “But before
you
spread the news, by selling all of your silver, I have a small transaction that I must conduct at the House of Hacklheber—do you know it?”

“That? It is a hole in the wall, a niche, a dovecote—if you require pocket money in London, madame, I can convey you to the
banca
of Sir Richard Apthorp himself, who will be pleased to extend you credit—”

“That is most courteous of you,” said Eliza, rummaging in her pathetic bag, and drawing out a slimy bundle of skins, “but I prefer to get my pocket-money from my own banker, and that is the House of Hacklheber.”

“Very well,” said the Marquis of Ravenscar, and boomed on the ceiling with the head of his walking-stick. “To the Golden Mercury in ’Change Alley!”

“I
CONFESS THAT
I was observing through the window—and only out of a gentlemanly concern for your safety,” said the Marquis of Ravenscar, “and only after some half an hour had elapsed—for it struck me as rather a lengthy transaction.”

Eliza had only just returned to the carriage and was still smoothing her skirts down. She’d been in there for an hour and twelve minutes.
Ten
minutes’ waiting would have made Ravenscar impatient;
twenty
, apoplectic.
Seventy-two
had put him through the full gamut of emotional states known to mortal man, as well as a few normally reserved for angels and devils. Now, he was spent, drained. Though perhaps just a bit apprehensive that she would want to go on some
other
errand next.

“Yes, my lord?”

“The fellow had—well, I don’t know, a bit of a startled look about him. Perhaps ’twas just my imagination.”

“Mind your toes!” This warning came simultaneously from Eliza,
and from one of Ravenscar’s footmen, who had carried a box up the wee stairs behind Eliza and thrust it inside; its weight overbore his strength, and it crashed onto the floor, making the carriage rock and bounce up and down for a while on its springs. One of the horses whinnied in protest. “Where shall I place the others, madame?” he inquired.

“There are
more
!?” exclaimed Ravenscar.

“Ten more, yes.”

“What are we—pardon me,
you
—going to do with so much, er…did you say
ten
? Please tell me it is copper.”

Eliza flipped the lid open with her toe to reveal more freshly minted silver pennies than the Marquis of Ravenscar had seen in one place in years. He responded in the only way fitting: with absolute silence. Meanwhile his driver answered the question for him.

“
Not
load it on this coach, guv’nor, the suspension won’t hold.” The driver was struggling to settle the exhausted horses, who had sensed that the carriage was rapidly getting heavier. Another crash sounded from the shelf in the back, causing the vehicle to pitch nose up, and then another on the roof, which began to bulge downward and emit ominous ticks.

“Summon a hackney!” commanded the Marquis, and then swiveled his eyes back to Eliza, imploring her to answer his question.

“What am I going to do with it?”

“Yes.”

“Sell it, I suppose, at the same time as you are selling yours. It is rather more pocket-money than I shall be requiring during my stay in your city. Though I should very much like to go to the West End later, and go—what is the word they use for it now?”

“I believe the word you are looking for is ‘shopping,’ madame.”

“Yes, shopping. The money, of course, belongs to the King of France. But, gentleman that he is, he would never begrudge me the loan of a few pounds sterling so that I might change into a new dress.”

“Nor would I, madame,” said Ravenscar, “if it came to that—but
le Roi
, it goes without saying, has precedence.” Ravenscar swallowed. “It is a remarkable coincidence.”

“What coincidence, my lord?”

More jingling crashes came to their ears from just behind, where a hackney had pulled up, and was being laden with more strong-boxes. The sound was enormously distracting to Ravenscar, who struggled to keep stringing words together. “Our route to the lovely shops of the West End shall take us past Apthorp’s, where—”

“Oh, that’s right. You wish to put your silver on the market. Not yet.”

“Not yet!?”

“Think of a ship’s captain, sailing into battle, guns charged and ready to let go a broadside. If he loses his nerve, and fires too soon, the balls fall short of their target, and splash into the water, and he looks a fool. Worse, he is not afforded the opportunity to re-load. It is like that now.”

Ravenscar did not seem convinced.

“After our epistolary flirtation, which I did enjoy so much,” Eliza tried, “I should be crestfallen if I journeyed all the way to London only to find that you were a premature ejaculator.”

“
Really!
Madame! I do not know how the ladies discourse in France, but here in England—”

“Oh, stop it. ’Twas a figure of speech, nothing more.”

“And not a very accurate one, by your leave; for more is at stake here than you seem to know!”

“I know
precisely
what’s at stake, my lord.” Here Eliza was distracted by some activity without. A man had emerged from the door of the House of Hacklheber, dressed as if about to embark on a voyage, and was signalling for a hackney. There was no lack of these, as word seemed to have spread that coins were falling from the sky hereabouts. Within moments the fellow was on his way.