The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World (152 page)

15
DECEMBER
1689

A D
UTCHMAN PAINTING THIS SCAPE
would have had little recourse to pigments; a spate of gull-shit on a bench could have served as his palette. The sky was white, and so was the ground. The branches of the trees were black, except where snow had begun sticking to them. The château was half-timbered, therefore plaster-white in most places, webbed with ancient timbers that had turned the color of charcoal as they absorbed snow-damp. The roof was red tile; but this was mostly covered in snow. From place to place the presence of a stove underneath was betrayed by a seeping lake of red. It was not especially grand as châteaux went nowadays: a rectangular court open on the side facing the Channel, with stables to one side, servants’ quarters to the other, and the big house holding them together, squarely facing the sea. Before it the ground dropped away sharply, and so the shoreline was not visible: just a distant strip of gray saltwater, which faded into the white atmosphere far short of the Dover shore.

A four-horse carriage and a two-horse baggage-wain were drawn up in the court. Booted footmen and drivers, wrapped in damp wool, were stomping from horse to horse, removing empty feed-bags and cinching harnesses. A large woman, her face lodged at the end
of a tunnel of bonnet, emerged from the servants’ quarters, tugging a heavy blanket over her shoulders. She got a foot on the step below the carriage door and launched herself into it, making the vehicle list and oscillate on its suspension. A pair of men emerged from the stable, whacking smoky wads from the bowls of their clay pipes. They pulled on heavy gloves and mounted horses; as they swung legs over saddles, their heavy riding-coats parted for a moment, showing that each of these men was rigged like a battleship with an assortment of small cannons, daggers, and cutlasses.

The front door of the main house swung open and color burst forth: a dress in green silk, complicated by ribbons and flounces in many other colors, a pink face, blue eyes, yellow hair held up with diverse jewelled pins and more ribbons. She turned about to bid a last farewell to someone inside, which made the skirt flare out, then turned again and walked into the courtyard. Her attention was fixed on the one person here who had not yet mounted a horse or climbed aboard a vehicle: a man as brief and stout as a mortar, in a long coat and boots that had turned black from damp. His hat—a vast tricornered production rimmed in gold braid and fledged with ostrich-plumes—had toppled from his head and listed on the snow like a beached flagship. The prints made in the snow by his boots, and the furrows carved by the skirts of his coat and the scabbard of his small-sword, proved that he had been eddying about the court for quite a while. His gaze was fixed on a small bundle that was in midair just in front of him.

The woman in the green dress bent down to pick up the forgotten hat, and gave it a shake, releasing a flurry of snow from the ostrich-plume.

The bundle reached an apogee, hung there for a moment a few feet above the man’s bare head, and began to accelerate toward the ground. He let it drop freely for a moment, then got his gloved hands underneath it and began gently to slow its descent. The bundle came to a stop only a hand’s breadth above the ground, the man bent over like a grave-digger. A scream emerged from the bundle, which made the woman’s spine snap straight; but the scream turned out to be nothing more than the prelude to a long, drawn-out cackle of laughter. The woman relaxed and exhaled, then jerked to attention again as the man emitted a long whoop and heaved the bundle high into the air again.

In time she managed to get the man’s attention without leading him to drop the baby. Hat was exchanged for infant. She climbed into the coach, handing the baby in before her to a smaller woman who was sitting across from the big one. He—despite being dressed
as a gentleman—clambered onto a perch at the back of the coach, normally used by a pair of footmen, but of a comfortable width for one man of his physique. The train of horses and vehicles pulled out onto the frozen road that meandered along the cliff-tops, and turned so that England and the Channel were to the right, France to the left.

A few hundred yards along, they slowed for a few moments so that the woman in the green dress could gaze out the window at some new earthworks that had been thrown up there: a revetment for a pair of mortars. Then they moved on, a thicket of legs and a storm of reins, black against the fresh snow, which muffled the sounds of their passage and swallowed them up, leaving nothing for a painter to depict except a blank canvas, and nothing for a writer to describe except an empty page.

“O
NE OF THE OTHER THINGS
they have at Versailles is physicians.” The voice emerged from a grate in the back of the coach.

“Oh, but we have those in abundance aboard our ships, my lady.”

“You have
barbers.
You have consulted them for months, and still cannot sit down! I am speaking of
physicians.
”

“It is true that barbers make a specialty of the
other
end of the anatomy from that which concerns
me,
” said the man on the perch. “Nature, though, offers her own remedies. I have packed my breeches with snow. At first it was shocking, intolerable.” He had to wait now, for some moments.

“You laugh,” he went on, “but, my lady, you do not appreciate the relief that this affords me, in more ways than one. For not only does it relieve the pain and swelling aft, but also, a similar but not so unpleasant symptom fore, which any man would complain of who went on a journey of any length in your company…”

Two of the women laughed again, but the third was having none of it, and answered him firmly: “The journey is not so long, for those of us who can sit down. The destination is a place where wit is prized, so long as it is discreet and refined, and does not offend the likes of Madame de Maintenon. But these sailorly jests of yours shall be immense
faux pas,
and shall defeat the whole purpose of your coming there.”

“What
is
the purpose, my lady? You summoned me, and I reported for duty. I supposed my rôle was to keep my godson amused. But I can see that you disapprove of my methods. In a few years, when Jean-Jacques learns to talk, he will, I’m certain, take my side in the matter, and demand to be flung about; in the meantime, I am dragged along in your wake, purposeless.” He gazed curiously
out to sea; but the train had turned inland, and the object of his desire was rapidly receding into the white distance. He was hopelessly a-ground.

“You are forever fussing over your ships, Lieutenant Bart, wishing that you had more, or that the ones you have were bigger, or in better repair…”

“All the more reason, my lady, for me to jump off of this unnatural conveyance and return to Dunkerque post-haste!”

“And do what? Build a ship with your own hands, out of snow? What is needed is not Jean Bart in Dunkerque. What is needed is Jean Bart at Versailles.”

“What purpose can I serve there, my lady? Pilot a row-boat on the King’s reflecting-pool?”

“You want resources. You compete for them against many others. Your most formidable competitor is the Army. Do you know why the Army gets all the resources, Lieutenant Bart?”

“Do they? I am shocked to hear this.”

“That is because you never see them; but if you did, you would be outraged at how much money they get, compared to the Navy, and how many of the best people. Let us take Étienne de Lavardac as an example.”

“The son of the duc d’Arcachon?”

“Do not affect ignorance, Lieutanant Bart. You know who he is, and that he knocked me up. Can you think of any young nobleman with stronger ties to the Navy? And yet when war broke out, what did he do?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“He organized a cavalry regiment and rode off to war on the Rhine.”

“Ungrateful pup! I’ll work him over with the flat of my cutlass.”

“Yes, and when you are finished you can go to Rome and poke the Pope in the eye with a stick!” suggested the smaller of the Countess’s two assistants.

“It is a splendid idea, Nicole—I shall do it for you!” Bart returned.

“Do you know
why
Étienne made such a choice?” asked the lady, unamused.

“All I know is, someone needs to teach him some more manners.”

“That is
exactly wrong
—someone needs to teach him
less.
For he is generally agreed to be the politest man in France.”

“He must have forgot his manners at least
once,
” said Jean Bart, pressing his face to the grate and peering at little Jean-Jacques, who had his face buried in his mother’s left breast.

“Nay, for even when he impregnated me he did so politely,” said
the mother. “It is because of this sense of honor, of decorum, that he, and all the other young Court men, prefer the Army to the Navy.”

“Hmm!”

“At last I have rendered you speechless, Jean Bart, and so I’ll take this rare opportunity to explain further. Every man at Court professes his loyalty to the King, indeed does little else but prate about it from sunup to sundown, which pleases the King well enough in times of peace. But in time of war, each and every man must go out and demonstrate his loyalty with deeds. On a battlefield, a Cavalier may attire himself in magnificent armor and ride forth on a brilliant steed to engage the foe in single combat; and what is better, he does so in full view of many others like him, so that those who survive the day can get together in their tent when it is all over and agree on what happened. But on the sea all is different, for our dashing fop is lumped together with all of the other men on the ship, who are mostly common sailors; he lives with them, and cannot move from place to place, or engage a foe, without their assistance. To order a gang of swabbies, ‘charge your cannon and fire it in the general direction of yonder dot on the horizon,’ is altogether different from galloping up to a Dutchman on a rampart and swinging your sword-blade at his neck.”

“We do not fire at dots on the horizon,” huffed Jean Bart, “however, I take your meaning only too well.”

“You, because of your recent exploit, are a shining counterexample to this general rule; and if we can get a physician to patch up your arse so that you can sit down at dinner and regale some Court ladies with the story—preferably without resorting to profanity or any other ribald elements—it shall translate directly into more money for the Navy.”

“And more Court fops to adorn my decks?”

“That comes unavoidably with money, Jean Bart, it is how the game is played.” And then she was banging on the carriage ceiling. “Gaetan! Over there, I see what looks like a new powder-magazine, let’s go have a look.”

“If my lady wishes to review
all
of his majesty’s new coastal fortifications,” said Jean Bart, “it is a thing more easily done from the deck of a ship.”

“But then I don’t get to interview the local
intendants,
and learn the gossip behind the fortifications.”

“Is
that
what you were doing?”

“Yes.”

“What did you learn?”

“That the chain of interlocking mortar emplacements we viewed this morning was financed by a low-interest loan to His Majesty’s Treasury from Monsieur le comte d’Etaples, who melted down a twelfth-century gold punchbowl for it; and at the same time he improved the road from Fruges to Fauquembergues so that it can carry ammunition-carts even during the spring thaw; and in return the King saw to it that an old lawsuit against him was delayed indefinitely, and he got to hold a candle one morning at the King’s levée.”

“It makes one wonder what fascinations may be connected with yon powder-house! Perhaps some local Sieur cashed in his great-grandpère’s ruby-set toenail-clippers to pay for the roof!” exclaimed Jean Bart, to stifled gurgles from Nicole and the large woman inside.

“Next summer, when Baltic timber is stacked to three times your height around the shipyard of Dunkerque, we shall see then if you are still mocking me,” said she who was not amused.

“I
BEG YOUR PARDON,
mademoiselle; but this sound that you are making, ‘yoo-hoo! yoo-hoo,’ has never been heard before in his majesty’s stables, or anywhere else in France that I know of. To the humans who live here, such as myself and my lord, it is devoid of meaning, and to the horses, it is a cause of acute distress. I beg you to stop, and to speak French, lest you cause a general panic.”

“It is a common greeting in Qwghlmian, monsieur.”

“Ah!” This brought the man to a hard stop for several moments. The stables of Versailles, in December, were not renowned for illumination; but Eliza could hear the gentleman’s satins hissing, and his linens creaking, as he bowed. She made curtseying noises in return. This was answered by a short burst of scratching and rasping as the gentleman adjusted his wig. She cleared her throat. He called for a candle, and got a whole silver candelabra: a chevron of flames, bobbing and banking, like a formation of fireflies, through the ambient miasma of horse-breath, manure-gas, and wig-powder.

“I had the honor of being introduced to you a year ago, along the banks of the Meuse,” said the gentleman, “when my lord—”

“I remember with fondness and gratitude your hospitality, Monsieur de Mayet,” said Eliza, which jerked another quick bow from him, “and the alacrity with which you conducted me into the presence of Monsieur de Lavardac on
that
occasion—”

“He will see you immediately, mademoiselle!” announced de Mayet, though not until after they had watched a second candelabra zoom back and forth a few times between the stall where they were standing, and one that lay even deeper in the penetralia of the stables. “This way, please, around the manure-pile.”

“T
RULY, MONSIEUR, YOU ARE SECOND
to none in piety. Even Father Édouard de Gex is a wastrel compared to you. For in this season of Christmas, when all go to Mass and hear homilies about Him who lived His first days in a stable, Étienne de Lavardac d’Arcachon is the only one who is actually living in the same estate, and sleeping on a pile of hay.”