FEBRUARY 1685
WEE 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.”
“’TWAS 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?”
“Let us set aside phant’sies, and speak of facts.”
“Can’t help noticing, sir, that my question is unanswered.”
“You appeared at the door of our church in Amsterdam—some felt, like an Angelic visitation—with a most generous donation, and offered to make yourself useful in any way that would further our work ’gainst Slavery. And that is just what you are doing.”
“But if the Client is not opposed to slavery, how does it further the cause to buy him powder and musket-balls?”
“You may not know that my father—God rest his soul—served as the late King’s Secretary of State before he was hounded to exile and death by the Papists who do France’s work in England. He submitted to that degradation because he knew that upright men must sometimes treat with the likes of King Charles II for the greater good. In the same way, we who oppose slavery, and Established religion, and in particular all of the abominations and fopperies of the Romish faith, must give our support to any man who might prevent James, Duke of York, from long remaining on the throne.”
“James is the rightful heir, is he not?”
“As those diplomats just proved, cavilling over the seniority of their Kings,” Bolstrood said, “there is no question that cannot be muddled—and powder-smoke muddles things ’specially well. King Louis stamps Ultima Ratio Regum on all of his cannon—”
“The last argument of kings.”
“You know Latin, too—?”
“I had a Classical education.”
“In Qwghlm!?”
“In Constantinople.”
THE COMTE D’AVAUX MOVED THROUGH the Hague’s canal-network in the gait of a man walking across red-hot coals, but some innate aplomb kept him from falling down even once.
“Would you like to go home now, monsieur?”
“Oh no, mademoiselle—I am enjoying myself,” he returned, biting off the syllables one by one, like a crocodile working its way up an oar.
“You dressed more warmly today—is that Russian sable?”
“Yes, but of an inferior grade—a much finer one awaits you—if you get me back alive.”
“That is quite unnecessary, monsieur—”
“The entire point of gifts is to be unnecessary.” D’Avaux reached into a pocket and pulled out a square of neatly folded black velvet. “Voilà,” he said, handing it over to her.
“What is it?” Eliza asked, taking it from his hand, and using the opportunity to grab his upper arm for a moment and steady him.
“A little nothing. I should like you to wear it.”
The velvet unfolded into a long ribbon about the width of Eliza’s hand, its two ends joined together with a rather nice gold brooch made in the shape of a butterfly. Eliza guessed it was meant to be a sash, and put one arm and her head through it, letting it hang diagonally across her body. “Thank you, monsieur,” she said, “how does it look?”
The comte d’Avaux, for once, failed to offer her a compliment. He merely shrugged, as if how it looked was not the point. Which confirmed Eliza’s suspicion that a black velvet sash over skating-clothes was rather odd-looking.
“How did you escape your predicament yesterday?” she asked him.
“Made arrangements for the Stadholder to summon the English Ambassador back to the Binnenhof. This compelled him to make a volte-face: a maneuver in which the diplomats of perfidious Albion are well practiced. We followed him down the street and made the first available turn. How did you escape yours?”
“What—you mean, being out for a skate with a lug?”
“Naturally.”
“Tormented him for another half an hour—then returned to his place in the country to transact business. You think I’m a whore, don’t you, monsieur? I saw it in your face when I mentioned business. Though you would probably say courtesan.”
“Mademoiselle, in my circles, anyone who transacts business of any sort, on any level, is a whore. Among French nobility, no distinctions are recognized between the finest commerçants of Amsterdam and common prostitutes.”
“Is that why Louis hates the Dutch so?”
“Oh no, mademoiselle, unlike these dour Calvinists, we love whores—Versailles is aswarm with them. No, we have any number of intelligent reasons to hate the Dutch.”
“What sort of whore do you suppose I am, then, monsieur?”
“That is what I am trying to establish.”
Eliza laughed. “Then you should be eager to turn back.”
“Non!” The comte d’Avaux made a doddering, flailing turn onto another canal. Something bulky and grim shouldered its way into a gap ahead of them. Eliza mistook it, at first, for an especially gloomy old brick church. But then she noticed up on the parapet light shining like barred teeth through crenellations, and many narrow embrasures, and realized it had been made for another purpose besides saving souls. The building had tall poky conical spires at the corners, and Gothic decorations along the fronts of the gables that thrust out into the cold air like clenched stone fists. “The Ridderzaal,” she said, getting her bearings; for she had gotten quite lost following d’Avaux along the labyrinth of canals that were laced through the Hofgebied like capillaries through flesh. “So we are on the Spij now, going north.” A short distance ahead of them, the Spij forked in twain, bracketing the Ridderzaal and other ancient buildings of the Counts of Holland between its branches.
D’Avaux careered into the right fork. “Let us go through yonder water-gate, into the Hofvijver!” Meaning a rectangular pond that lay before the Binnenhof, or palace of the Dutch court. “The view of the Binnenhof rising above the ice will be—er—”
“Magical?”
“Non.”
“Magnificent?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Less bleak than anything else we have seen?”
“Now truly you are speaking French,” the ambassador said approvingly. “The princeling* is off on another of his insufferable hunting expeditions, but some persons of quality are there.” He had put on a surprising—almost alarming—burst of speed and was several paces ahead of Eliza now. “They will open the gate for me,” he said confidently, tossing the words back over his shoulder like a scarf. “When they do, you put on one of those magnificent accélérations and sail past me into the Hofvijver.”
“Very devious…but why don’t you simply ask them to let me through?”
“This will make for a gayer spectacle.”
The gate was so close to the Binnenhof that they would nearly pass underneath the palace as they went through. It was guarded by musketeers and archers dressed in blue outfits with lace cravats and orange sashes. When they recognized Jean Antoine de Mesmes, comte d’Avaux, they ventured out onto the ice, skidding on their hard-soled boots, pulled one side of the gate open for him, and bowed—doffing their hats and sweeping the ice with the tips of their orange plumes. The gate was wide enough to admit pleasure-boats during the warmer months, and so Eliza had plenty of room to whoosh past the French Ambassador and into the rectangle of ice that was spread out before William of Orange’s palace. It was a maneuver that would have earned her a broad-headed arrow between the shoulder blades if she were a man. But she was a girl in a short skirt and so the guards took her entrance in the spirit intended—as an amusing courtly plaisanterie of the comte’s devising.
She was going very fast—faster than she needed to, for this had given her an excuse to stretch cold stiff leg-muscles. She’d entered the southeast corner of the Hofvijver, which extended perhaps a hundred yards north–south and thrice that east–west. Slicing up along its eastern bank, she was distracted by musket-fire from open ground off to her right, and had a wild moment of fear that she was about to be cut down by snipers. But not to worry, it was a party of gentlemen honing their markmanship on a target-range spread out between the bank of the pond and an ornate building set farther back. She recognized this, now, as the headquarters of the St. George Guild. Beyond it, wooded land stretched away to the east as far as she could see: the Haagsche Bos, a game-park for the Counts of Holland, where people of all classes went to ride and stroll when the weather was better.
Directly ahead of her was a cobblestone ramp: a street that plunged directly into the water of the pond, when it wasn’t frozen, and where horses and cattle could be taken down and watered. She had to lean hard and make a searing turn to avoid it. Swaying her hips from side to side, she picked up a bit of speed as she glided down the long northern shore of the Hofvijver. The south shore, spreading off to her left, was a hodgepodge of brown brick buildings with black slate rooves, many having windows just above the level of the pond, so that she could have skated right up and conversed with people on the inside. But she wouldn’t have dared, for this was the Binnenhof, the palace of the Stadholder, William of Orange. Her view of it was obscured, for a time, by a tiny round island planted in the center of the Hofvijver like a half-cherry on a slice of cake. Trees and shrubs grew on it, and moss grew on them, though all was brown and leafless now. But above and behind the Binnenhof she could see the many narrow towers of the Ridderzaal jabbing at the sky like a squadron of knights with lances upright.
That was the end of sightseeing. For as she shot clear of the little island, and curled round to swing back towards d’Avaux, she discovered that she was sharing the ice with a slow-moving clique of skaters. She glimpsed both men and women, finely dressed. To knock them down would have been bad form. To stop and introduce herself would have been infinitely worse. She spun round to face towards d’Avaux, skating backwards now, letting her momentum carry her past the group. She carved a long sweeping U round the west end of the Hofvijver, spun round to face forward again, built more speed without lifting her skates from the ice, by means of sashaying hip-movements that took her down the long front of the Binnenhof, in a serpentine path, and finally stopped just before running into d’Avaux by planting the blades sideways and shaving up a glittering wall of ice. Nothing very acrobatic really—but it was enough to draw applause from Blue Guards, St. George Guildsmen, and noble skaters alike.
“I learnt defencing at the Academy of Monsieur du Plessis in Paris, where the finest swordsmen of the world gather to flaunt their prowess—but none of them can match your grace with a pair of steel blades, mademoiselle,” said the prettiest man Eliza had ever seen, as he was raising her gloved hand to smooch it.
D’Avaux had been making introductions. The gorgeous man was the Duke of Monmouth. He was escorting a tall, lanky, yet jowly woman in her early twenties. This was Mary—the daughter of the new King of England, and William of Orange’s wife.
As d’Avaux had announced these names and titles, Eliza had come close to losing her nerve for the first time in memory. She was remembering Hanover, where the Doctor had planted her in a steeple near the Herrenhausen Palace, so that she could gaze upon Sophie through a field-glass. Yet this d’Avaux—who didn’t know Eliza nearly as well as the Doctor did—had taken her straight into the Dutch court’s inner sanctum. How could d’Avaux introduce her to persons of royal degree—when he didn’t have the first idea who she was in the first place?
In the end it couldn’t have been simpler. He had leaned in towards Monmouth and Mary and said, discreetly: “This is—Eliza.” This had elicited knowing nods and winks from the others, and a little buzz of excitement from Mary’s entourage of English servants and hangers-on. These were apparently not even worth introducing—and that went double for the Negro page-boy and the shivering Javanese dwarf.
“No compliments for me, your Grace?” d’Avaux asked, as Monmouth was planting multiple kisses on the back of Eliza’s glove.
“On the contrary, monsieur—you are the finest skater of all France,” Monmouth returned with a smile. He still had most of his teeth. He had forgotten to let go of Eliza’s hand.
Mary nearly fell off her skates, partly because she was laughing at Monmouth’s jest a little harder than was really warranted, and partly because she was a miserable skater (in the corner of Eliza’s eye, earlier, she’d looked like a windmill—flailing without moving). It had been obvious from the first moment Eliza had seen her that she was infatuated with the Duke of Monmouth. Which to some degree was embarrassing. But Eliza had to admit that she’d chosen a likely young man to fall in love with.
Mary of Orange started to say something, but d’Avaux ran her off the road. “Mademoiselle Eliza has been trying valiantly to teach me how to skate,” he said commandingly, giving Eliza a wet look. “But I am like a peasant listening to one of the lectures of Monsieur Huygens.” He glanced over toward the water-gate through which he and Eliza had just passed, for the house of the Huygens family lay very nearby that corner of the palace.
“I should’ve fallen ever so many times without the Duke to hold me up,” Mary put in.
“Would an Ambassador do as well?” d’Avaux said, and before Mary could answer, he sidled up to her and nearly knocked her over. She flailed for the Ambassador’s arm and just got a grip on it in time. Her entourage closed in to get her back on her blades, the Javanese dwarf getting one hand on each buttock and pushing up with all his might.
The Duke of Monmouth saw none of this drama, engaged as he was in a minute inspection of Eliza. He began with her hair, worked his way down to her ankles, then back up, until he was startled to discover a pair of blue eyes staring back at him. That led to a spell of disorientation just long enough for d’Avaux (who had pinned Mary’s hand between his elbow and ribcage) to say, “By all means, your Grace, go for a skate, stretch your legs—we novices will just totter around the Vijver for a few minutes.”
“Mademoiselle?” said the Duke, proffering a hand.
“Your grace,” said Eliza, taking it.
Ten heartbeats later they were out on the Spij. Eliza let go Monmouth’s hand and spun round backwards to see the water-gate being closed behind them, and, through the bars, Mary of Orange, looking as if she’d been punched in the stomach, and Jean Antoine de Mesmes, comte d’Avaux, looking as if he did this kind of thing several times a day. Once, in Constantinople, Eliza had helped hold one of the other slave-girls down while an Arab surgeon took out her appendix. It had taken all of two minutes. She’d been astonished that a man with a sharp knife and no hesitation about using it could effect such changes so rapidly. Thus d’Avaux and Mary’s heart.
Once they got clear of the Spij the canal broadened and Monmouth executed a dramatic spin—lots of flesh and bone moving fast—not really graceful, but she couldn’t not look. If anything, he was a more accomplished skater than Eliza. He saw Eliza watching, and assumed she was admiring, him. “During the Interregnum I divided my time between here and Paris,” he explained, “and spent many hours on these canals—where did you learn, mademoiselle?”
Struggling across heaving floes to chip gull shit off rocks struck Eliza as a tasteless way to answer the question. She might have come up with some clever story, given enough time—but her mind was too busy trying to fathom what was going on.
“Ah, forgive me for prying—I forget that you are incognito,” said the Duke of Monmouth, his eyes straying momentarily to the black sash that d’Avaux had given her. “That, and your coy silence, speak volumes.”
“Really? What’s in those volumes?”
“The tale of a lovely innocent cruelly misused by some Germanic or Scandinavian noble—was it at the court of Poland-Lithuania? Or was it that infamous woman-beater, Prince Adolph of Sweden? Say nothing, mademoiselle, except that you forgive me my curiosity.”
“Done. Now, are you that same Duke of Monmouth who distinguished himself at the Siege of Maestricht? I know a man who fought in that battle—or who was there, anyway—and who spoke at length of your doings.”
“Is it the Marquis de—? Or the comte d’—?”
“You forget yourself, Monsieur,” said Eliza, stroking the velvet sash.
“Once again—please accept my apology,” said the Duke, looking wickedly amused.
“You might be able to redeem yourself by explaining something to me: the Siege of Maestricht was part of a campaign to wipe the Dutch Republic off the map. William sacrificed half his country to win that war. You fought against him. And yet here you are enjoying the hospitality of that same William, in the innermost court of Holland, only a few years later.”
“That’s nothing,” Monmouth said agreeably, “for only a few years after Maestricht I was fighting by William’s side, against the French, at Mons, and William was married to that Mary—who as you must know is the daughter of King James II, formerly the Duke of York, and Admiral of the English Navy until William’s admirals blew it out of the water. I could go on in this vein for hours.”
“If I had such an enemy I would not rest until he was dead,” Eliza said. “As a matter of fact, I do have an enemy, and it has been a long time since I have rested…”
“Who is it?” Monmouth asked eagerly, “the one who taught you to skate and then—”
“It is another,” Eliza said, “but I know not his name—our encounter was in a dark cabin on a ship—”
“What ship?”
“I know not.”
“What flag did it fly?”
“A black one.”
“Stab me!”
“Oh, ’twas the typical sort of heathen pirate-galleon—nothing remarkable.”
“You were captured by heathen pirates!?”
“Only once. Happens more often than you might appreciate. But we are digressing. I will not rest until my enemy’s identity is known, and I’ve put him in the grave.”
“But suppose that when you learn his identity, he turns out to be your great-uncle, and your cousin’s brother-in-law, and your best friend’s godfather?”
“I’m only speaking of one enemy—”
“I know. But royal families of Europe are so tangled together that your enemy might bear all of those relations to you at once.”
“Eeyuh, what a mess.”
“On the contrary—’tis the height of civilization,” Monmouth said. “It is not—mind you—that we forget our grievances. That would be unthinkable. But if our only redress were to put one another into graves, all Europe would be a battleground!”
“All Europe is a battleground! Haven’t you been paying attention?”
“Fighting at Maestricht and Mons and other places has left me little time for it,” Monmouth said drily. “I say to you it could be much worse—like the Thirty Years’ War, or the Civil War in England.”
“I suppose that is true,” Eliza said, remembering all of those ruined castles in Bohemia.
“In the modern age we pursue revenge at Court. Sometimes we might go so far as to fight a duel—but in general we wage battles with wit, not muskets. It does not kill as many people, and it gives ladies a chance to enter the lists—as it were.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Have you ever fired a musket, mademoiselle?”
“No.”
“And yet in our conversation you have already discharged any number of verbal broadsides. So you see, on the courtly battleground, women stand on an equal footing with men.”
Eliza coasted to a stop, hearing the bells of the town hall chiming four o’clock. Monmouth overshot her, then swooped through a gallant turn and skated back, wearing a silly grin.
“I must go and meet someone,” Eliza said.
“May I escort you back to the Binnenhof?”
“No—d’Avaux is there.”
“You no longer take pleasure in the Ambassador’s company?”
“I am afraid he will try to give me a fur coat.”
“That would be terrible!”
“I don’t want to give him the satisfaction…he has used me, somehow.”
“The King of France has given him orders to be as offensive as possible to Mary. As Mary’s in love with me today…”
“Why?”
“Why is she in love with me? Mademoiselle, I am offended.”
“I know perfectly well why she is in love with you. I meant, why would the King of France send a Count up to the Hague simply to behave offensively?”
“Oh, the comte d’Avaux does many other things besides. But the answer is that King Louis hopes to break up the marriage between William and Mary—destroying William’s power in England—and making Mary available for marriage to one of his French bastards.”
“I knew it had to be a family squabble of some sort—it’s so mean, so petty, so vicious.”
“Now you begin to understand!”
“Doesn’t Mary love her husband?”
“William and Mary are a well-matched couple.”
“You say little but mean much…what do you mean?”
“Now it is my turn to be mysterious,” Monmouth said, “as it’s the only way I can be sure of seeing you again.”
He went on in that vein, and Eliza dodged him elaborately, and they parted ways.
But two hours later they were together again. This time Gomer Bolstrood was with them.
A COUPLE OF MILES NORTH of the Hague, the flat polder-land of the Dutch Republic was sliced off by the sea-coast. A line of dunes provided a meager weather-wall. Sheltering behind it, running parallel to the coast, was a strip of land, frequently wooded, but not wilderness, for it had been improved with roads and canals. In that belt of green had grown up diverse estates: the country retreats of nobles and merchants. Each had a proper house with a formal garden. The bigger ones also had wooded game-parks, and hunting-lodges where men could seek refuge from their women.
Eliza still knew little about Gomer Bolstrood and his scheme; but it was obvious enough that he was in league with some merchant or other, who was the owner of one such estate, and that he had gotten permission to use the hunting-lodge as a pied-à-terre. A canal ran along one side of the game-park and connected it—if you knew which turns to take—to the Haagsche Bos, that large park next to the Binnenhof. The distance was several miles, and so it might have been a morning’s or an afternoon’s journey in the summer. But when ice was on the canals, and skates were on the traveler’s feet, it could be accomplished in very little time.
Thus Monmouth had arrived, by himself, incognito. He was seated on the chair that Bolstrood had likened to an ogre’s throne, and Eliza and Bolstrood were on the creaking faggot-chairs. Bolstrood tried to make a formal introduction of the Client, but—
“So,” Eliza said, “as you were saying a short time ago: fighting battles with muskets and powder is an outmoded practice and…”
“It suits my purposes for people to think that I actually believe such nonsense,” Monmouth said, “and women are ever eager to believe it.”
“Why—because in battle, women become swag, and we don’t like being swag?”
“I suppose so.”
“I’ve been swag. It didn’t suit me. So, for me, your little lecture about modernity was inspiring in a way.”
“As I said—women are eager to believe it.”
“The two of you are acquainted—?—!” Bolstrood finally forced out.
“As my late Dad so aptly demonstrated, those of us who are predestined to burn in Hell must try to have a bit of fun while we are alive,” Monmouth said. “Men and women—ones who are not Puritans, anyway—know each other in all sorts of ways!” Regarding Eliza warmly. Eliza gave him a look that was intended to be like a giant icicle thrust through his abdomen—but Monmouth responded with a small erotic quiver.
Eliza said, “If you play into the comte d’Avaux’s hands so easily, by diverting your affections from Mary—what use will you be when you sit on the throne of England?”
Monmouth drooped and looked at Bolstrood.
“I didn’t tell her, exactly,” Gomer Bolstrood protested, “I only told her what commodities we wish to purchase.”
“Which was enough to make your plan quite obvious,” Eliza said.
“Doesn’t matter, I suppose,” Monmouth said. “As we cannot make the purchases anyway without putting up some collateral—and in our case the collateral is the throne.”
“That’s not what I was told,” Eliza said. “I’ve been assuming the account would be settled with gold.”
“And so it will be—after.”
“After what?”
“After we’ve conquered England.”
“Oh.”
“But most of England is on our side, so—a few months at most.”
“Does most-of-England have guns?”
“It’s true what he says,” put in Gomer Bolstrood. “Everywhere this man goes in England, people turn out into the streets and light bonfires for him, and burn the Pope in effigy.”
“So in addition to purchasing the required commodities, you require a bridge loan, for which your collateral will be—”
“The Tower of London,” Monmouth said reassuringly.
“I am a trader, not a shareholder,” Eliza said. “I cannot be your financier.”
“How can you trade, without being a shareholder?”
“I trade ducat shares, which have one-tenth the value of proper V.O.C. shares and are far more liquid. I hold them—or options—only long enough to eke out a small profit. You will need to skate about forty miles that way, your grace,” Eliza said, pointing northeast, “and make connections with Amsterdam moneylenders. There are great men there, princes of the market, who’ve accumulated stacks of V.O.C. stock, and who will lend money out against it. But as you cannot put the Tower of London in your pocket and set it on the table as security for the loan, you’ll need something else.”
“We know that,” Bolstrood said. “We are merely letting you know that when time comes to effect the transaction, the payment will come, not from us, but—”
“From some credulous lender.”
“Not so credulous. Important men are with us.”
“May I know who those men are?”
A look between Bolstrood and Monmouth. “Not now. Later, in Amsterdam,” Bolstrood said.
“This is never going to work—those Amsterdammers have more good investments than they know what to do with,” Eliza said. “But there might be another way to get the money.”
“Where do you propose to get it from, if not the moneylenders of Amsterdam?” Monmouth asked. “My mistress has already pawned all of her jewels—that resource is exhausted.”
“We can get it from Mr. Sluys,” Eliza said, after a long few minutes of staring into the fire. She turned to face the others. The air of the lodge was suddenly cool on her brow.
“The one who betrayed his country thirteen years ago?” Bolstrood asked warily.
“The same. He has many connections with French investors and is very rich.”
“You mean to blackmail him, then—?” Monmouth asked.
“Not precisely. First we’ll find some other investor and tell him of your plan to invade England.”
“But the plan is a secret!”
“He’ll have every incentive to keep it secret—for as soon as he knows, he will begin selling V.O.C. stock short.”
“That, ‘selling short,’ is a bit of zargon I have heard Dutchmen and Jews bandy about, but I know not what it means,” Monmouth said.
“There are two factions who war with each other in the market: liefhebberen or bulls who want the stock to rise, and contremines or bears who want it to fall. Frequently a group of bears will come together and form a secret cabal—they will spread false news of pirates off the coast, or go into the market loudly selling shares at very low prices, trying to create a panic and make the price drop.”
“But how do they make money from this?”
“Never mind the details—there are ways of using options so that you will make money if the price falls. It is called short selling. Our investor—once we tell him about your invasion plans—will begin betting that V.O.C. stock will drop soon. And rest assured, it will. Only a few years ago, mere rumors about the state of Anglo/Dutch relations were sufficient to depress the price by ten or twenty percent. News of an invasion will plunge it through the floor.”
“Why?” Monmouth asked.
“England has a powerful navy—if they are hostile to Holland, they can choke off shipping, and the V.O.C. drops like a stone.”
“But my policies will be far more congenial to the Hollanders than King James’s!” Monmouth protested.
Bolstrood meanwhile had a look on his face as if he were being garrotted by an invisible cord.
Eliza composed herself, breathed deeply, and smiled at Monmouth—then leaned forward and put her hand on his forearm. “Naturally, when it becomes generally understood that your rebellion is going to succeed, V.O.C. stock will soar like a lark in the morning. But at first the market will be dominated by ignorant ninehammers who’ll foolishly assume that King James will prevail—and that he will be ever so annoyed at the Dutch for having allowed their territory to serve as spring-board for an invasion of his country.”
Bolstrood relaxed a bit.
“So at first the market will drop,” Monmouth said distractedly.
“Until the true situation becomes generally known,” Eliza said, patted his arm firmly, and drew back. Gomer Bolstrood seemed to relax further. “During that interval,” Eliza continued, “our investor will have the opportunity to reap a colossal profit, by selling the market short. And in exchange for that opportunity he’ll gladly buy you all the lead and powder you need to mount the invasion.”
“But that investor is not Mr. Sluys—?”
“In any short-selling transaction there is a loser as well as a winner,” Eliza said. “Mr. Sluys is to be the loser.”
“Why him specifically?” Bolstrood asked. “It could be any liefhebber.”
“Selling short has been illegal for three-quarters of a century! Numerous edicts have been issued to prevent it—one of them written in the time of the Stadholder Frederick Henry. Now, if a trader is caught short—that is, if he has signed a contract that will cause him to lose money—he can ‘appeal to Frederick.’”
“But Frederick Henry died ages ago,” Monmouth protested.
“It is an expression—a term of art. It simply means to repudiate the contract, and refuse to pay. According to Frederick Henry’s edict, that repudiation will be upheld in a court of law.”
“But if it’s true that there must always be a loser when selling short, then Frederick Henry’s decree must’ve stamped out the practice altogether!”
“Oh, no, your grace—short selling thrives in Amsterdam! Many traders make their living from it!”
“But why don’t all of the losers simply ‘appeal to Frederick’?”
“It all has to do with how the contracts are structured. If you’re clever enough you can put the loser in a position where he dare not appeal to Frederick.”
“So it is a sort of blackmail after all,” Bolstrood said, gazing out the window across a snowy field—but hot on Eliza’s trail. “We set Sluys up to be the loser—then if he appeals to Frederick, the entire story comes out in a court of law—including the warehouse full of lead—and he’s exposed as a traitor. So he’ll eat the loss without complaint.”
“But—if I’m following all of this—it relies on Sluys not knowing that there is a plan to invade England,” Monmouth said. “Otherwise he’d be a fool to enter into the short contract.”
“That is certainly true,” Eliza said. “We want him to believe that V.O.C. stock will rise.”
“But if he’s selling us the lead, he’ll know we’re planning something.”
“Yes—but he needn’t know what is being planned, or when. We need only manipulate his mental state, so that he has reason to believe that V.O.C. shares are soon to rise.”
“And—as I’m now beginning to understand—you are something of a virtuoso when it comes to manipulating men’s mental states,” Monmouth said.
“You make it sound ever so much more difficult than it really is,” Eliza answered. “Mostly I just sit quietly and let the men manipulate themselves.”
“Well, if that’s all for now,” Monmouth said, “I feel a powerful urge to go and practice some self-manipulation in private—unless—?”
“Not today, your grace,” Eliza said, “I must pack my things. Perhaps I’ll see you in Amsterdam?”
“Nothing could give me greater pleasure.”