The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World (83 page)

Normally this whole place was swarming with stable-boys, but now, and for the next hour or two, they’d be busy with ball duty: taking the horses of the arriving guests and leading them to stalls in the duc’s better stables. So a fire in this hearth would be detectable only as a bit of smoke coming out of a chimney, which was not an unusual sight on a cool March evening in seventeenth-century Paris.

But he was getting ahead of himself. This was a long way from being a fire. Jack began looking about for some tinder. Straw would be perfect. But the stable-boys had been careful not to leave anything so tinderlike anywhere near the forge. It was all piled at the opposite end of the stable, and Jack’s chain wouldn’t let him go that far. He tried lying flat on the floor, with the chain stretched out taut behind him, and reaching out with the crutch to rake some straw towards him. But the end of the crutch came a full yard short of the goal. He scurried back and blew on the tobacco some more. It would not last much longer.

His attention had been drawn to the crutch, which was bound together with a lot of the cheapest sort of dry, fuzzy twine. Perfect tinder. But he’d have to burn most of it, and then he’d have no way to hold the crutch together, and therefore to conceal the existence of the sword—so, if the attempt failed tonight, he was doomed. In that sense ’twere safer to wait until tomorrow, when they’d take the chain off of him. But only to chain him up, he supposed, to a whole file of other
galériens
—doddering Huguenots, most likely. And he wasn’t about to wait for
that.
He must do it now.

So he unwound the crutch and frizzed the ends of the twine and put it to the last mote of red fire in the pipe-ashes, and blew. The flame almost died, but then one fiber of twine warped back, withered, flung off a little shroud of steam or smoke, then became a pulse of orange light: a tiny thing, but as big in Jack’s vision as whole trees bursting into flames in the Harz.

After some more blowing and fidgeting he had a morsel of yellow flame on the hearth. While supplying it more twine with one hand, he rummaged blindly for kindling, which ought to be piled up somewhere. Finding only a few twigs, he was forced to draw the sword and shave splints off the crutch-pole. This didn’t last long, and soon he was planing splinters off pillars and beams, and chopping up benches and stools. But finally it was big and hot enough to ignite coal, of which there was plenty. Jack began tossing handfuls of it into his little fire while pumping the bellows with the other hand. At first it just lay in the fire like black stones, but then the sharp, brimstony smell of it came into the stable, and the fire became white, and the heat of the coal annihilated the remaining wood-scraps, and the fire became a meteor imprisoned in a chain—for Jack had looped the middle part of his chain around it. The cold iron poisoned the fire, sucked life from it, but Jack heaped on more coal and worked the bellows, and soon the metal had taken on a chestnut color which gave way to various shades of red. The heat of the blaze first dried the moist shit that was all over Jack’s skin and then made him sweat, so that crusts of dung were flaking off of him.

The door opened.
“Où est le maréchal-ferrant?”
someone asked.

The door opened
wider
—wide enough to admit a horse—then did just that. The horse was led by a Scot in a tall wig—or maybe
not.
He was wearing a kiltlike number, but it was made of red
satin
and he had some sort of ridiculous contrivance slung over one shoulder: a whole pigskin, sewn up and packed with straw to make it look as if it had been inflated, with trumpet-horns, flutes, and pennywhistles dangling from it: a caricature of a bagpipe. His face was painted with blue woad. Pinned to the top of his wig was a tam-o’-shanter with an approximate diameter of three feet, and thrust into his belt, where a gentleman would sheathe his sword, was a sledgehammer. Next to that, several whiskey-jugs holstered.

The horse was a prancing beauty, but it seemed to be favoring one leg—it had thrown a shoe on the ride over.

“Maréchal-ferrant?”
the man repeated, squinting in his direction. Jack reckoned that he, Jack, was visible only as a silhouette against the bright fire, and so the collar might not be obvious. He cupped a hand to his ear—smiths were notorious for deafness. That seemed to answer the question—the “Scot” led his horse toward the forge, nattering on about a
fer à cheval
and going so far as to check his pocket-watch. Jack was irritated.
Fer
meant “iron,”
fer à cheval
as he knew perfectly well meant “horseshoe.” But he had just understood that the English word “farrier” must be derived
somehow from this—even though “horseshoe” was completely different. He was aware, vaguely—from watching certain historical dramas, and then from roaming round
la France
listening to people talk—that French people had conquered England at least one time, and thereby confused the English language with all sorts of words such as “farrier,” and “mutton,” which common folk now used all the time without knowing that they were speaking the tongue of the conquerors. Meanwhile, the damned French had a tidy and proper tongue in which, for example, the name of the fellow who put shoes on horses was clearly related to the word for horseshoe. Made his blood boil—and now that James was King, Katie bar the door!

“Quelle heure est-il?”
Jack finally inquired. The “Scot” without pausing to wonder why a
maréchal-ferrant
would need to know the time went once again into the ceremony of withdrawing his pocket-watch, getting the lid open, and reading it. In order to do this he had to turn its face towards the fire, and then he had to twist himself around so that he could see it. Jack waited patiently for this to occur, and then just as the “Scot” was lisping out something involving
sept
Jack whipped the chain out of the fire and got it round his neck.

It was stranglin’ time in gay Paree. Most awkwardly, the red-hot part of the chain ended up around the throat of the “Scot,” so Jack could not get a grip on it without first rummaging in the tool-box for some tongs. But it had already done enough damage, evidently, that the “Scot” could not make any noise.

His horse was another matter: it whinnied, and backed away, and showed signs of wanting to buck. That was a problem, but Jack had to take things one at a time here. He solved the tong problem and murdered the “Scot” in a great sizzling cloud of grilled neck-flesh—which, he felt sure, must be a delicacy in some part of France. Then he peeled the hot chain off, taking some neck parts with it, and tossed it back into the fire. Having settled these matters, he turned his attention—somewhat reluctantly—to the horse. He was dreading that it might have run out through the open stable doors and drawn attention to itself in the stable-yard beyond. But—oddly—the stable-doors were now
closed,
and were being bolted shut, by a slender young man in an assortment of not very good clothes. He had evidently seized the horse’s reins and tied them to a post, and had the presence of mind to toss a grain-sack over its head so that it could not see any more of the disturbing sights that were now so abundant in this place.

Having seen to these matters, the gypsy boy—it was certainly a gypsy—turned to face Jack, and made a somber, formal little bow.
He was barefoot—had probably gotten here by clambering over rooftops.

“You must be Half-Cocked Jack,” he said, as if this weren’t funny. Speaking in the zargon.

“Who are you?”

“It does not matter. St.-George sent me.” The boy came over, stepping carefully around the glowing coals that had been scattered on the floor when Jack had whipped out the chain, and began to work the bellows.

“What did St.-George tell you to do?” asked Jack, throwing on more coal.

“To see what kind of help you would need, during the entertainment.”

“What entertainment would that be?”

“He did not tell me
everything.
”

“Why should St.-George care so much?”

“St.-George is angry with you. He says you have shown poor form.”

“What are you going to tell him?”

“I will tell him,” the gypsy boy said, and here he smiled for the first time, “that
l’Emmerdeur
does not need his help.”

“That’s just it,” Jack said, and grabbed the bellows-handle. The boy turned and ran across the stable and vanished through an opening up in the eaves that Jack hadn’t known was there.

While the chain heated, Jack amused himself by going through his victim’s clothing and trying to guess how many gold coins were in his purse. After a couple of minutes (by the pocket-watch, which lay open on the floor) Jack reached into the fire with the tongs and drew out a length of yellow-hot chain. Before it could cool he draped it across an anvil, then smashed it with a heavy chisel-pointed hammer, and then he was free. Except that a yard of hot chain still dangled from his neck, and he could not pull it through his neck-loop without burning himself. So he quenched it in a trough of water. But then he found that in breaking it he’d smashed the last link, and broadened it, so it would no longer pass through the neck-loop. He did not want to spend the time to heat the chain back up, so he was stuck with the collar, and an arm’s length of chain, for now. No matter, really. It was dark outside, he would be seen only as a silhouette, and he needed only that it be a respectable type of silhouette—a shape that people would not discharge weapons at without thinking twice. So he yanked the wig (now wrecked and burnt, but still a wig) off the dead “Scot” and put it on—discarding, however, the unwieldy tam-o’-shanter. He
pulled on the boots that John Churchill had donated, and took the long cape that the “Scot” had been wearing. Also his gloves—an old habit to cover the V branded on his thumb. Finally he pilfered the saddle from the horse—it was a magnificent saddle—and carried it out into the stable-yard.

The sight of a supposed Person of Quality toting his own saddle was anomalous, and even if it weren’t, Jack’s dragging one leg, brandishing a scimitar, and muttering out loud in vulgar English also cast uncertainty on his status as a French nobleman. But, as he’d hoped, most of the stable-boys were busy in the main courtyard. The guests were now arriving in force. He barged into the next stable, which was dimly lit by a couple of lanterns, and came face-to-face with a stable-boy who, in an instant, became the most profoundly confused person Jack had ever seen.

“Turk!” Jack called, and was answered by a whinny from several stalls down the line. Jack sidled closer to the stable-boy and allowed the saddle to slide off his shoulders. The boy caught it out of habit, and seemed relieved to have been given a specific job. Then Jack, using his sword as a pointing-device, got him moving in the direction of Turk.

The boy now understood that he was being asked to help steal a horse, and stiffened up in a way that was almost penile. It took no end of prodding to get him to heave the saddle onto Turk’s back. Then Jack socked him in the chin with the guard of the sword, but failed to knock him out. In the end, he had to drag the fool over to a convenient place by the entrance and push him down and practically draw him a picture of how to go about pretending he’d been surprised and knocked unconscious by the English villain.

Then back to Turk, who seemed pleased to see him. As Jack tightened the girth, and made other adjustments, the war-horse’s sinews became taut and vibrant, like the strings of a lute being tuned up. Jack checked his hooves and noted that Churchill had gotten some expert
maréchal-ferrant
to shoe him. “You and me both,” Jack said, slapping his new boots so that the horse could admire them.

Then he put one of those boots into a stirrup, threw his leg over the saddle, and was hurtling across the duc’s stable-yard before he could even get himself situated properly. Turk wanted out of here as badly as
he
did. Jack had intended to look for a back exit, but Turk was having none of that, and took him
out
the way Churchill had ridden him
in:
straight through a gate into what Jack reckoned must be the main courtyard of the Hôtel d’Arcachon.

Jack sensed quite a few people, but couldn’t really see them
because he was dazzled by all of the light: giant torchières like bonfires on pikes, and lanterns strung on colored ropes, and the light of thousands of lanterns and tapers blasting out through the twenty-foot-high windows that constituted most of the front wall of a large noble House directly in front of him. A hundred sperm whales must have given up their bodily fluids to light the lanterns. And as for the tapers in those chandeliers, why, even over the smells of cuisine, fashionable perfume, wood-smoke, and horse-manure, Jack’s nose could detect the fragrance of honey-scented Mauritanian beeswax. All of this sweet-smelling radiance glanced wetly off a large fountain planted in the middle of the court: various Neptunes and Naiads and sea monsters and dolphins cleverly enwrithed to form a support for a naval frigate all speckled with fleurs-de-lis. Wreckage of Dutch and English ships washed up on shores all around, forming benches for French people to put their buttocks on.

The force of the light, and Jack’s hauling back on the reins, had taken the edge off of Turk’s impetuous charge for the exit, but not quite soon enough: the fact remained that Turk, and thus Jack, had effectively burst into the couryard at a near-gallop and then stood agape for several seconds, almost as if
demanding
to be noticed. And they
had
been: little knots of Puritans, Færy-Queens, Persians, and Red Indians were looking at them. Jack gave the warhorse an encouraging nudge, while holding fast to the reins so he wouldn’t bolt.

Turk began following a groomed gravel path among flower-beds, which Jack hoped would take them round the fountain eventually and to a place where they could at least
see
the way out. But they were moving directly toward the light rushing from those banks of windows. Through them Jack saw an immense ballroom, with white walls garlanded with gold, and white polished marble floors where the nobility, in their fancy-dress, were dancing to music from a consort stuffed into a corner.