OCTOBER 1685
IT WAS AS IF WILLIAM of Orange had searched the world over to find the place most different from Versailles, and had told Eliza to meet him there. At Versailles, everything had been designed and made by men. But here was nothing to see but ocean and sand. Every grain of sand had been put where it was by waves that formed up in the ocean according to occult laws that might have been understood by the Doctor, but not by Eliza.
She had dismounted and was leading her horse northwards up the beach. The sand was hard-packed and solid and wet, speckled all over with cockle shells in colors and patterns of such profusion and variety that they must have given the first Dutchmen the idea to go out into the sea and bring back precious things from afar. They made a welcome contrast against the extreme flatness and sameness of beach, water, and misty sky, and exerted a hypnotic effect on her. She forced herself to look up from time to time. But the only feature of the view that ever changed was the signatures of foam deposited on the beach by the waves.
Each breaker, she supposed, was as unique as a human soul. Each made its own run up onto the shore, being the very embodiment of vigor and power at the start. But each slowed, spread thin, faltered, dissolved into a hissing ribbon of gray foam, and got buried under the next. The end result of all their noisy, pounding, repetitious efforts was the beach. Seen through a lens, the particular arrangement of sand-grains that made up the beach presumably was complicated, and reflected the individual contributions of every single wave that had ended its life here; but seen from the level of Eliza’s head it was unspeakably flat, an “abomination of desolation in a dark place,” as the Bible would put it.
She heard a ripping noise behind her and turned around to look to the south, toward the dent in the beach, several miles distant, that formed the harbor of Scheveningen. The last time she’d looked back, a few minutes ago, there had been nothing between her and the anchorage but a few clam-diggers. But now there was a sail on the sand: a triangle of canvas, stretched drum-tight by the wet wind off the sea. Below it hovered a spidery rig of timbers with spoked wagon-wheels at their ends. One wheel was suspended in the air by the heeling of the vehicle. Taken together with the speed of its progress up the beach, this created the impression that it was flying. The wheel spun slowly in the air, dripping clots of wet sand from its rim, which was very wide so that it rolled over, instead of cutting into, the sand and its gay mosaic of cockle shells. The opposite wheel was scribing a long fat track down the beach, slaloming between the dark hunched forms of the diggers; though, a hundred yards in its wake, this trace had already been erased by the waves.
A fishing-boat had eased in to shore as the tide ebbed, pulled up her sideboards, and allowed herself to be stranded there. The fishermen had chocked her upright with baulks of wood, brought their catch up out of the hold, and laid it out on the sand, creating a little fish-market that would last until the tide flowed in again, chased away the customers, and floated the boat. People had carried baskets out from town, or driven out in carriages, to carry out disputes with the fishermen over the value of what they’d brought back from the deep.
Some of them turned to look at the sand-sailer. It rushed past Eliza, moving faster than any horse could gallop. She recognized the man operating the tiller and manipulating the lines. Some of the fish-buyers did, too, and a few of those bothered to doff their hats and bow. Eliza mounted her horse and rode in pursuit.
The view inland was blocked by dunes. Not dunes such as Eliza had once seen in the Sahara, but hybrids of dunes and hedges. For these were covered by, and anchored in, vegetation that was light green in the lower slopes, but in other places deepened to a bluish cast, and formed up into great furry dark eyebrows frowning at the sea.
A mile or so north of where the fishing-boat had been beached, the sight-line from the town was severed by a gradual bend in the coastline, and a low spur flung seawards by a dune. From here, the only sign that Holland was a settled country was a tall watchtower with a conical roof, built atop a dune, perhaps half a mile distant. The sand-sailer had come to rest, its sheets loosened so that the sail reached and weathercocked.
“I am probably meant to ask, ‘Where is your Court, O Prince, your entourage, your bodyguards, your train of painters, poets, and historians?’ Whereupon you’d give me a stern talking-to about the decadence of France.”
“Possibly,” said William, Prince of Orange and Stadholder of the Dutch Republic. He had extricated himself from the canvas seat of the sailer and was standing on the beach facing out to sea, layers of sand-spattered leather and spray-soaked wool giving his body more bulk than it really had. “Or perhaps I like to go sand-sailing by myself, and your reading so much into it is proof you’ve been too long at Versailles.”
“Why is this dune here, I wonder?”
“I don’t know. Tomorrow it may not be. Why do you mention it?”
“I look at all these waves, spending so much effort to accomplish so little, and wonder that from time to time they can raise something as interesting as a dune. Why, this hill of sand is equivalent to Versailles—a marvel of ingenuity. Waves from the Indian Ocean, encountering waves of Araby off the Malabar Coast, must gossip about this dune, and ask for the latest tidings from Scheveningen.”
“It is normal for women, at certain times of the month, and in certain seasons of the year, to descend into moods such as this one,” the prince mused.
“A fair guess, but wrong,” Eliza said. “There are Christian slaves in Barbary, you know, who expend vast efforts to accomplish tiny goals, such as getting a new piece of furniture in their banyolar…”
“Banyolar?”
“Slave-quarters.”
“What a pathetic story.”
“Yes, but it is all right for them to achieve meager results because they are in a completely hopeless and desperate situation,” Eliza said. “In a way, a slave is fortunate, because she has more head-room for her dreams and phant’sies, which can soar to dizzying heights without bumping up ’gainst the ceiling. But the ones who live at Versailles are as high as humans can get, they practically have to go about stooped over because their wigs and head-dresses are scraping the vault of heaven—which consequently seems low and mean to them. When they look up, they see, not a vast beckoning space above, but rather—”
“The gaudy-painted ceiling.”
“Just so. You see? There is no head-room. And so, for one who has just come from Versailles, it is easy to look at these waves, accomplishing so little, and to think that no matter what efforts we put forth in our lives, all we’re really doing is rearranging the sand-grains in a beach that in essence never changes.”
“Right. And if we’re really brilliant, we can cast up a little dune or hummock that will be considered the Eighth Wonder of the World.”
“Just so!”
“Lass, it’s very poetic, albeit in a bleak Gothic sort of way, but, begging your pardon, I look up and I don’t see the ceiling. All I see is a lot of damned Frenchmen looking down their noses at me from a mile high. I must pull them all down to my level, or draw myself up to theirs, before I can judge whether I have succeeded in making a dune, or what-have-you. So let us turn our attentions thither.”
“Very well. There is little to hold our attention here.”
“What do you imagine was the point of the King’s admonition, at the end of your most recent letter?”
“What—you mean, what he said to me after his operation?”
“Yes.”
“Fear me inasmuch as you are my foe, be proud inasmuch as my friend? That one?”
“Yes, that one.”
“Seems self-explanatory to me.”
“But why on earth would the King feel the need to deliver such a warning to d’Avaux?”
“Perhaps he has doubts as to the count’s loyalty.”
“That is inconceivable. No man could be more his King’s creature than d’Avaux.”
“Perhaps the King is losing his grip, and perceiving enemies where none exist.”
“Very doubtful. He has too many real enemies to indulge himself so—and besides, he is very far from losing his grip!”
“Hmph. None of my explanations is satisfactory, it seems.”
“Now that you are out of France you must shed the habit of pouting, my Duchess. You do it exquisitely, but if you try it on a Dutchman he’ll only want to slap you.”
“Will you share your explanation with me, if I promise not to pout?”
“Obviously the King’s admonition was intended for someone other than the comte d’Avaux.”
This left Eliza baffled for a minute. William of Orange fussed with the rigging of his sand-sailer while she turned it over in her head. “You are saying then that the King knows my letters to d’Avaux are being decyphered and read by Dutch agents…and that his warning was intended for you. Have I got it right?”
“You are only starting to get it right…and this is becoming tedious. So let me explain it, for until you understand this, you will be useless to me. Every letter posted abroad from Versailles, whether it originates from you, or Liselotte, or the Maintenon, or some chambermaid, is opened by the Postmaster and sent to the cabinet noir to be read.”
“Heavens! Who is in the cabinet noir?”
“Never mind. The point is that they have read all of your letters to d’Avaux and conveyed anything important to the King. When they are finished they give the letters back to the Postmaster, who artfully re-seals them and sends them north…my Postmaster then re-opens them, reads them, re-seals them, and sends them on to d’Avaux. So the King’s admonition could have been intended for anyone in that chain: d’Avaux (though probably not), me, my advisors, the members of his own cabinet noir…or you.”
“Me? Why would he want to admonish a little nothing like me?”
“I simply mention you for the sake of completeness.”
“I don’t believe you.”
The Prince of Orange laughed. “Very well. Louis’ entire system is built on keeping the nobility poor and helpless. Some of them enjoy it, others don’t. The latter sort look for ways of making money. To whatever degree they succeed, they threaten the King. Why do you think the French East India Company fails time and again? Because Frenchmen are stupid? They are not stupid. Or rather, the stupid ones get despatched to India, because Louis wants that company to fail. A port-city filled with wealthy commerçants—a London or an Amsterdam—is a nightmare to him.”
“Now, some of those nobles who desire money have turned their attentions toward Amsterdam and begun to engage the services of Dutch brokers. This was how your former business associate, Mr. Sluys, made his fortune. The King is pleased that you ruined Sluys, because he took some French counts down with him, and they serve as object lessons to any French nobles who try to build fortunes in the market of Amsterdam. But now you are being approached, yes? Your ‘Spanish Uncle’ is the talk of the town.”
“You can’t possibly expect me to believe that the King of France views me as a threat.”
“Of course not.”
“You, William of Orange, the Protestant Defender, are a threat.”
“I, William, whatever titles you wish to hang on me, am an enemy, but not a threat. I may make war on him, but I will never imperil him, or his reign. The only people who can do that are all living at Versailles.”
“Those dreadful dukes and princes and so on.”
“And duchesses and princesses. Yes. And insofar as you might help these do mischief, you are to be watched. Why do you imagine d’Avaux put you there? As a favor? No, he put you there to be watched. But insofar as you may help Louis maintain his grip, you are a tool. One of many tools in his toolbox—but a strange one, and strange tools are commonly the most useful.”
“If I am so useful to Louis—your enemy—then what am I to you?”
“To date, a rather slow and unreliable pupil,” William answered.
Eliza heaved a sigh, trying to sound bored and impatient. But she could not help shuddering a bit as the air came out of her—a premonition of sobs.
“Though not without promise,” William allowed.
Eliza felt better, and hated herself for being so like one of William’s hounds.
“None of what I have written in any of my letters to d’Avaux has been of any use to you at all.”
“You have only been learning the ropes, so far,” William said, plucking like a harp-player
at various lines and sheets in the rigging of his sand-sailer. He climbed aboard and
settled himself into the seat. Then he drew on certain of those ropes while paying
out others, and the vehicle sprang forward, rolling down the slope of the dune, and
building speed back towards Scheveningen.
ELIZA MOUNTED HER HORSE and turned around. The wind off the sea was in her face now, like a fine mixture of ice and rock salt fired out of blunderbusses. She decided to cut inland to get out of the weather. Riding up over the crest of the dune was something of a project, for it had grown to a considerable height here.
In the scrubby plants of the beach—shrubs as tall as a man, with wine-colored leaves and red berries—spiders had spun their webs. But the mist had covered them with strings of gleaming pearls so that she could see them from a hundred feet away. So much for being stealthy. Though a stealthy human, crouching among those same shrubs to look down on the beach, would be perfectly invisible. Farther up the slopes grew wind-raked trees inhabited by raucous, irritable birds, who made it a point to announce, to all the world, that Eliza was passing through.
Finally she reached the crest. Not far away was an open sea of grass that would take her to the polders surrounding the Hague. To reach it, she’d have to pass through a forest of scrubby gnarled trees with silvery gray foliage, growing on the lee side of the dune. She stopped for a moment there to get her bearings. From here she could see the steeples of the Hague, Leiden, and Wassenaar, and dimly make out the etched rectangles of formal gardens in private compounds built in the countryside along the coast.
As she rode down into the woods the susurration of the waves was muted, and supplanted by the hissing of a light, misty rain against the leaves. But she did not enjoy the sudden peace for very long. A man in a hooded cloak rose up from behind one of those trees and clapped his hands in the horse’s face. The horse reared. Eliza, completely unready, fell off and landed harmlessly in soft sand. The cloaked man gave the horse a resounding slap on the haunches as it returned to all fours, and it galloped off in the direction of home.
This man stood with his back to Eliza for a moment, watching the horse run away, then looked up at the crest of the dune, and down the coast to that distant watch-tower, to see if anyone had seen the ambuscade. But the only witnesses were crows, flapping into the air and screaming as the horse charged through their sentry-lines.
Eliza had every reason to assume that something very bad was planned for her now. She had barely seen this fellow coming in the corner of her eye, but his movements had been brisk and forceful—those of a man accustomed to action, without the affected grace of a gentleman. This man had never taken lessons in dancing or fencing. He moved like a Janissary—like a soldier, she corrected herself. And that was rather bad news. A fair proportion of the murder, robbery, and rape committed in Europe was the work of soldiers who had been put out of work, and just now there were thousands of those around Holland.
Under the terms of an old treaty between England and Holland, six regiments of English and Scottish troops had long been stationed on Dutch soil, as a hedge against invasion from France (or, much less plausibly, the Spanish Netherlands). A few months earlier, when the Duke of Monmouth had sailed to England and mounted his rebellion, his intended victim, King James II, had sent word from London that those six regiments were urgently required at home. William of Orange—despite the fact that his sympathies lay more with Monmouth than with the King—had complied without delay, and shipped the regiments over. By the time they had arrived, the rebellion had been quashed, and there had been nothing for them to do. The King had been slow to send them back, for he did not trust his son-in-law (William of Orange) and suspected that those six regiments might one day return as the vanguard of a Dutch invasion. He had wanted to station them in France instead. But King Louis—who had plenty of his own regiments—had seen them as an unnecessary expense, and William had insisted that the treaty be observed. So the six regiments had come back to Holland.
Shortly thereafter, they had been disbanded. So now the Dutch countryside was infested with unpaid and unled foreign soldiers. Eliza guessed that this was one of them; and since he had not bothered to steal her horse, he must have other intentions.
She rolled onto her elbows and knees and gasped as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her. One arm was supporting her head, the other clutching at her abdomen. She was wearing a long cape that had spread over her like a tent. Propping her forehead against her wrist, she gazed upside-down into the hidden interior of that tent, where her right hand was busy in the damp folds of her waist-sash.
One of the interesting bits of knowledge she had picked up in the Topkapi Palace was that the most feared men in the Ottoman Empire were not the Janissaries with their big scimitars and muskets, but rather the hashishin: trained murderers who went unarmed except for a small dagger concealed in the waistband. Eliza did not have the skills of a hashishin, but she knew a good idea when she saw one, and she was never without the same kind of weapon. To whip it out now would be a mistake, though. She only made sure it was ready to hand.
Then she lifted her head, pushed herself up to a kneeling position, and gazed at her
attacker. At the same moment, he turned to face her and threw back his hood to reveal
the face of Jack Shaftoe.
ELIZA WAS PARALYZED for several moments.
Since Jack was almost certainly dead by now, it would be conventional to suppose that she was looking upon his ghost. But this was the reverse of the truth. A ghost ought to be paler than the original, a drawn shadow. But Jack—at least, the Jack she’d most recently seen—had been like the ghost of this man. This fellow was heavier, steadier, with better color and better teeth…
“Bob,” she said.
He looked slightly startled, then made a little bow. “Bob Shaftoe it is,” he said, “at your service, Miss Eliza.”
“You call knocking me off my horse being at my service?”
“You fell off your horse, begging your pardon. I apologize. But I did not wish that you would gallop away and summon the Guild.”
“What are you doing here? Was your regiment one of those that was disbanded?”
His brain worked. Now that Bob had begun talking, and reacting to things, his resemblance to Jack was diminishing quickly. The physical similarity was strong, but this body was animated by a different spirit altogether. “I see Jack told you something of me—but skipped the details. No. My regiment still exists, though it has a new name now. It’s guarding the King in London.”
“Then why’re you not with it?”
“John Churchill, the commander of my regiment, sends me on odd errands.”
“This one must be very odd indeed, to bring you to the wrong shore of the North Sea.”
“It is a sort of salvage mission. No one expected the regiments here to be disbanded. I am trying to track down certain sergeants and corporals who are well thought of, and recruit them into the service of my master before they get hanged in Dutch towns for stealing chickens, or press-ganged on India ships, or recruited by the Prince of Orange…”
“Do I looked like a grizzled sergeant to you, Bob Shaftoe?”
“I am laying that charge to one side for a few hours to speak to you about a private matter, Miss Eliza. The time it will take to walk back to the Hague should suffice.”
“Let’s walk, then, I am getting cold.”